Ep 210 Carolina Sotomayor: From Fatherless Daughter to Womb Healer

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:

Today’s guest, Carolina Sotomayor, is a renowned fertility Reiki womb healer who shares how Reiki helped her conceive her son. We also dive deeper into her childhood stories and the emotional wounds that created what Carolina believes were the energetic blocks to conceiving.

Carolina’s Path to Healing 🧘‍♀️

  • Personal Struggles: Initially struggling with conception despite no medical issues, Carolina turned to Reiki after suggestions from her grief therapist and a psychic.
  • Journey Through Adversity: Her pregnancy was filled with challenges, including anxiety, surgeries, and postpartum depression. Reiki played a pivotal role in her recovery.

The Power of Energy Healing 💫

  • Reiki Success Stories: With experience in four different lineages and over 100 successful “Reiki babies,” Carolina’s practice connects mothers-to-be with their spirit babies.
  • Make A Baby Membership: Offers live sessions, guided meditations, prerecorded modules, and masterclasses for women on their fertility journeys.

Embracing Self-Care 🎗️

  • Cultural Reflections: Highlights how societal conditioning often undervalues self-care leading to involuntary life pauses such as illnesses or accidents.
  • Nonnegotiable Self-Care: Stresses make self-care nonnegotiable in releasing trapped emotions and preventing physical ailments and emotional blockages.

Overcoming Childhood Trauma 🛤️

  • Tumultuous Upbringing: Raised by a single mother struggling with alcoholism and anger issues, she faced neglect from both parents post-divorce.
  • Resilience & Boundaries: Shares insights on generational pain while emphasizing the importance of setting boundaries for emotional well-being.

Transformative Insights 🌺

  • Recognizes that ignoring personal healing can lead to profound crises.
  • Advocates for prioritizing oneself as central to breaking cycles of trauma.

Carolina’s experiences underscore the transformative power of confronting unresolved emotions. She passionately advocates recognizing self-worth while creating supportive communities worldwide to help women achieve their motherhood dreams.

Let this episode inspire you to embrace your journey toward healing and hope! 💖

RESOURCES:

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CONNECT WITH VICTORIA: 

 

The Healing Power of Reiki in Fertility and Personal Growth

In the latest episode of “Grieving Voices,” I delve into a profound conversation with Carolina Sotomayor, a fertility Reiki womb healer. Carolina’s journey from personal struggles to becoming a beacon of hope for women on their fertility journeys is nothing short of inspiring.

A Journey Rooted in Personal Experience

Carolina’s path to motherhood was fraught with challenges. Despite having no medical issues, she struggled to conceive. Her grief therapist suggested exploring Reiki or antidepressants due to unresolved sadness. This advice was echoed by a psychic who identified blockages in her throat and sacral plexus chakras.

After sustaining a concussion, Carolina decided to delve deeper into Reiki healing—a decision that changed her life forever. Shortly after beginning her practice, she conceived her son Ollie.

Overcoming Adversities Through Energy Healing

Carolina’s pregnancy brought its own set of complications—anxiety, medical surgeries, and ultimately a traumatic birth leading to Ollie’s NICU stay and severe postpartum anxiety and depression. It took 18 months for Carolina to recover fully through the combination of traditional therapy and Reiki healing.

Her experience profoundly transformed her understanding of energy healing’s potential, motivating her mission to help other women facing similar struggles.

The Cultural Undervaluation of Self-Care

One significant insight Carolina shares is the cultural undervaluation of self-care. She emphasizes how ignoring personal healing can lead to involuntary pauses like illnesses or accidents that force us to slow down and address our unresolved emotions.

Carolina recounts “God smack moments” where life forced her into reflection—moments crucial for releasing trapped emotions that could otherwise manifest as physical ailments or emotional blockages hindering fertility.

Societal Conditioning Against Emotional Expression

The discussion also touches upon societal conditioning discouraging emotional expression. Unresolved grief often manifests physically if not addressed properly—a point where practices like Reiki become invaluable in releasing these pent-up emotions.

Breaking Cycles Through Generational Pain

Raised by an alcoholic single mother amidst emotional neglect compounded by an abusive father post-divorce shaped much of Carolina’s resilience today. Through extensive therapy combined with support systems including friends & family alongside reiki practices allowed overcoming such adversities while setting healthy boundaries ensuring better mental health well-being now being passed onto future generations within families breaking cycles trauma altogether!

Practical Applications And Recommendations:

1) Prioritize Self-Care: Make time every day dedicated solely towards yourself whether it be meditation yoga etc., ensuring overall wellness both mentally physically spiritually alike! 2) Explore Alternative Therapies: Consider incorporating alternative therapies such as reiki acupuncture aromatherapy among others aiding holistic approaches addressing root causes rather than just symptoms alone! 3) Set Healthy Boundaries: Learn importance saying ‘no’ when necessary avoiding burnout maintaining healthier relationships around you too!

By sharing stories like Carolinas’, we hope inspire readers take proactive steps nurturing themselves fostering balanced lives benefiting everyone involved! For more insights connect directly via Instagram handle @thecarolinasotomayor website www.carolinasotomayor.com joining community supporting each other throughout various stages life’s beautiful yet challenging journey together!

Episode Transcription:

Victoria Volk: Hello. Hello. Welcome to another episode of grieving Voices. Today, my guest is Carolina Sotomayor. She is a fertility, rapey, womb healer, serving women who are trying to conceive. She’s the founder of Make A Baby membership, a monthly membership providing monthly live Reiki healing Zoom calls, Reiki guided meditations, prerecorded healing modules and master classes. Carolina has personally coached and helped women all over the world with over a hundred Reiki Babies into bringing over a hundred Reiki Babies into the world. She has a tune to four different lineages of Reiki and has a proven medium connecting mom to their spirit babies. After conceiving her own son with Reiki, Carolina has been on a mission to help women conceive with energy healing and heal through pregnancy and postpartum. I’m so excited to have you here because this is a unique line of work. And reiki isn’t unique, but I love how you’ve adapted it and have wielded its power for good and positive in your own life, but also in the lives of other So thank you for the work that you’re doing, bringing motherhood and parenthood to over a hundred people now.

Carolina Sotomayor: It’s been exciting. Thank you so much for having me. I it was I believe in divine timing, intervention happening. And for me, Reiki was when it was happening to me and offered to me, I didn’t know it would end up here. So for me, I was struggling to conceive, and I was a newly wed, very much a struggling newly wed, married to the best man I had ever known and still heavily married too.
But we were not getting pregnant. There was nothing wrong with me. They said, you’re just really sad. So I started grief therapy. Still not getting pregnant.
And then I plateaued in my healing journey with her, and she’s like, you need to either do Reiki or get on an anti antidepressant because I was still the sad girl. Also, at that same time, I had fallen off my horse and it was put on medical leave. That conversation of, like, you need to do reiki or get try antidepressants because the trauma wasn’t leaving my body. I was still sad after her going for her for over a year and a half. Sometimes twice a week, it was definitely weekly. And essentially, she wanted me to get reiki because one I was introducing, I was like, I I’m purifying my body and birth control, like, I don’t wanna put anything else on my body. And that’s just a personal decision. I support anyone that if you do what’s best for you and your medical team. So that same week because I had suffered a concussion from falling off my horse. I went to my favorite psychic town where I was taking workshops, and she had offered she’s I she’s, like, your throat and your sacral plexus shockers are blocked. You need Reiki. You don’t need any crystals for your concussion. And it’s, like, I don’t know. I’m not ready yet, but then this then the therapist that same week had recommended and they’re two separate sources, not related to each other. So I was like, wait a minute. What is this? So I went with because I was still, like, I was still very medically inclined at that point. And I went and got Reiki the next week. And then the next month, we were testing positive with our son, Oli, who’s now almost eight. He’s seven. Second grader. And I continued to get ricky through my pregnancy, and it helped me with my anxiety. I had prenatal anxiety. I had my gallbladder removed. I had totaled my car.
And Henry Gold Butter removed within a week of each other. Ollie, very much, is a miracle baby, had a really traumatic birth, because of the birth trauma and just the way that the hospital handled everything. Allie ended up with NICU. I had a nasty infection. Allie had an infection from a prolonged labor. My Reiki master sent me Reiki during that time. My postpartum was very tumultuous with just a lot of irrational thoughts, and I just got diagnosed with severe PPA and PPD, which is postpartum depression and anxiety. And through by postpartum, I really leaned into the talk therapy and the Reiki as a combination. And it took me about eighteen months to fully come out of it, but because of the consistent support, of both together. That helps me come out of the darkness is what I like to say.
It allowed me to function. I stayed home with him for four months. I had six months postpartum. I got certified in Reiki one and two, Levels one and two, which gives you the ability to give yourself Reiki and others. And I started to give Reiki to myself and my son. He suffered from chronic ear infections. I suffered I had mastitis several several times, so I would give Reiki to myself, and I would in support of my breast milk supply because it’s all heart chakra based. And I was still I I became sad again. I was sad because I had not gotten the birth that I wanted to. We knew we only had one child and I had lost mine shot. I was grieving the loss of that positive birth and everything I had worked for. And when people say, well, you just have a healthy baby. Wasn’t it worth it? I was like, no. That’s that’s bullshit.
Like, I I got this is a one time, right of passage moments for a woman. And I did not get what I had painted or I had written down in my size nine font birth plan, and my birth plan had gone sideways. So I had spent I spent a big majority of my time reliving my birth in that eighteen months and that’s what plagued me and my darkness. And I was fine taking care of baby. I was happy to climb as long as I was with him, but I’d just be these moments of things that went wrong with my birth that plagued me. And you know, ups like, just certain things that were very violent in my birth that were unexpected and just really shook me. And it took me a long time to come out of, but it was because of the ragey that I learned how to heal myself I learned about energetics truly in my postpartum of, like, things that erupted from my childhood that because I was so sleep deprived and I was so tired and I was just really at my most raw, your mind can can sometimes unlock things that you were not prepared to face again or remember or remember even that they occurred at all the first time. So in my postpartum, I felt like my childhood abuse and my trauma has just kind of exploded. And my wound healing really started was as the postpartum. I had an abortion in my twenties.
I had been raped in my twenties. My and that really plagued a lot with my birth trauma and combined was really, really messy and really dark along with a lot of, like, worth issues in my dad’s death, like, really missing him and really trying to, like, have this baby and my favorite person died. And I really wish he was here, the one person that I was so close to. How can I exist in a world where I have this beautiful baby and I don’t have him to share it with? Was a lot.
But with Ricky and being able to heal myself, it was more about moment by moment as those things came up because it didn’t all happen at once. It was riding the wave and understanding that It’s okay to feel what you feel, but it’s about releasing it and understanding, okay, what do I need to do to get back to what’s really important and putting boundaries around my grief I learned that was there there’s it’s okay for me to put a pause on things so I can still be a working mom and be present or I need to be present, but then also create space. In time where I get to feel those feelings, honor them, and release them because I was still working a manufacturing job. I was in pharmaceutical manufacturing. It was a very demanding job, breastfeeding, pumping, and taking him picking up up from day care. And that was a very real thing, breadwinner of the family. I still had to be a person, so that was the main thing is that I would Reiki would allow me to be grounded enough to function but also I could go deeper when I needed to. And that’s really the gist of it, you know, that was long.

Victoria Volk: What do you say to those people listening that say, well, I don’t have time. I don’t have time. To for energy healing work. We are in this Western society that’s going to go go go. So, I I mean, I know the answer. Like, we just have to make our self care non negotiable, but how did you how did you do that? Like, what did that look like? Like, what how did you decide

Carolina Sotomayor: on that? I have chills. It’s very easy. Either you make the time and you prioritize yourself or whatever you believe in will make you life will make it happen for you or the universe or God whatever is your belief. There was a term I once heard and say, God’s smack God will smack you if you don’t do it first.
Like, he’ll show you signs of what you need to do, or the universe will send you hints. If you don’t take care of it yourself, they’ll put you in an adult time out is what I was calling it. When I fell off my horse, that was the first time I was forced physically to sit still in my entire life. I did not know it at the time, but I was in fight or flight. And it was the first time that I had to sit still. Couldn’t be on a phone. I couldn’t drive. I had depth of perception, like, with my vision, like, my foot would miss the curb because of my concussion. I had fell in a ditch off my horse and the con and I had memory problems. So I couldn’t drive can be in the iPad, I couldn’t read, my eyes couldn’t focus on a page, I would get dizzy, and I couldn’t remember the the numbers. They would say, okay, here’s a series of numbers, say them backwards, and I couldn’t do it. So I was out of work for eight weeks. And that is when Ricky was introduced to me. And I wasn’t I lived in a one floor apartment, so it was very safe for me. But basically, I just sat there and I would welcome anyone that would come and sit with me I couldn’t do anything else, but often the time people were busy, so it’s during that eight weeks that I got to sit alone with myself and learn to really be okay with that because there’s really nothing else to do.
And that was my opinion, god saying, hey, you’ve been running and you can’t run away from your feelings anymore. Your dad died. Your horse died. And you’re married. What if you wanna have a baby, you need to fill your stuff. And that was the first time that I was open to really making a shift of when she had the conversation with me. And the Ricky was offered to me. And then I had the Ricky session and I and my husband, he had to drive me and pick me up. And I came out, I felt like I was floating. I had remembered I was like, it was the first time that I had a huge shift in my energy. I felt like this fifty pound boulder ever since my dad had died had been lifted from my chest. And that was something that changed for me. So for me, it’s my opinion, what I tell my clients is pay attention to the patterns and the signs. Either take care of it yourself or something will happen where it will cause you to. And sometimes that looks different from me. I was able to recover from my concussion and I went back to work and I went back to work and I was pregnant. Mhmm. So or some people get sick. Physical illness is a manifestation of something of a stuck emotion in your body. And we’re not we are conditioned to stuff our emotions and not release them. Our emotions last for ninety seconds, but we have to be consciously trained? Like, we have to be trained? We have to consciously be mindful of do I wanna keep this? Am I ready to release this? Or are we gonna release it? And I think that I mean, that’s something I’m constantly reminding my son up. I’m like, okay. Breath work. We’re gonna release this. Are you ready to release it? No, I’m still mad. Okay. Let’s hold on to it a little bit longer. Check-in, are you ready to release this? And like, this is me breaking that cycle with him. You don’t have to hold on to it. So that prevents disease and him. That prevents you know, infertility issues in him and them getting stuck in his home because men have wounds too. And our emotions can get stored anywhere in our body, but the most commonly concentrated a concentrated area are our wounds is that particular chakra. And infertility is just a really stuffed emotional reservoir that needs to be released is what I find. So either take care of it yourself or I think you will be made too. I do know that from all of my work, there is a pattern. When people say, oh, I just don’t have time to heal, obviously, it’s not a priority for them. Well, we have to look at a couple of things why it’s not. Either they’re putting other people before themselves or they’re too scared to do it at the moment.
Both both are that is just a valid Those are things that people do. However, I ask you is who is more important than you? And who is going to save you when you do have that life moment when you’re in hospital or you fall off your horse? Or you have that car crash or you are whatever. He was going to fix your body in that moment. They might be able to bring you soup. They might be able to take your kids to the park. They might be able to do some grocery shopping for you to help you out a little bit. But you are the most important person in your life, and I really believe that in your relationship with yourself, and it and when people don’t prioritize themselves, it’s a lack of worthiness. For me? it is the root causes? Like, you don’t feel worthy to prioritize yourself or they have to prove or earn their worthiness to put themselves for, like so if they do need to have a break or they need to have energy healing, well, I have to do this entire to do list before I actually earn that time out or that that relief. And for me is that is that’s an indicative thing of, like, you learned something in your childhood where you had to earn, rest. You had to earn healing, and that is not correct. I will battle anyone for that.
Healing is your birthright. Rest is your birthright. You are born worthy of being happy and your life is not meant to suffer. Will we suffer? Yes. But it does and how we move through that is really a choice in my opinion. So for me is, like, where where are you prior who are you prioritizing? And for me as a mom I had to learn because I burnt myself several times out is the more that I put myself first and I am pouring from a full cup, the happier my son is the better my marriage is, the happier my partner is, the calmer and more emotionally regulated my house is. Because for us, I’m the heartbeat of the house. So if I’m on if I’m dysregulated, if I’m angry, if I’m super upset, if I’m depressed, all shit’s going haywire.
So that’s that’s my when I put it in non frame, it’s, like, everyone else is gonna thrive when you thrive. When you are and when they see you actively caring for yourself and prioritizing yourself, that is teaching them that they need to do the same. Like, my little says, I need a loan time. I I’ve had enough of you. I need I need a loan time, please. And he goes in his room or he goes in his reading corner. Legit, bro, that’s good. Like, that is, like, that’s generational breaking actively. So I it’s not just, like, you’re not gonna get rewarded for burning yourself out or putting yourself last. Actually, you’re going to condition people to know that’s how you want to be treated.

Victoria Volk: And then you’ll end up in the hospital or in an accident or

Carolina Sotomayor: Yeah. All of these things. That’s just my lived life experience. I’m forty one, so I still think I’m twenty. But I mean, I’ve I’ve lived a little at this point and seen a lot and and human design, if you’re into that, I’m a projector.
So I am to guide. But as a healer, regardless of your human design projector or not, as a healer, and you take on that occupation or that hat in a in a lifetime, you have to live through some things so that you can be at least one or two steps ahead to provide enough wisdom or insight for the people that are going to go through the same things you did. Which means you have to live, fall down, crash, and burn, have your heart broken. You stab it a couple of times emotionally. Right.
I’m a three five.

Victoria Volk: Three five. That was my second that was my second. I’m a

Carolina Sotomayor: three five point. I teach human design in my membership to use to help manifest better for your babies. Okay. So Yeah. It’s pretty simple.
It’s just the arrow at the top. It’s the point left or point right. And then looking at your defined centers, but that’s how I think about it. It’s like it’s like the what’s asked, like, okay. So I don’t have time, but where are you putting your time?
As an entrepreneur, I over the past year, I have looked at sales, I’ve looked at revenue and things like that. And I was, like, where am I really spent? Where am I why do I, you know, have time to do the things that do make money? I had identified the things that didn’t make money. And what was I doing?
I had to perform an audit. I the things that don’t make me money are not important. The things that do make me money and create impact on my audience, those are the things I’m gonna spend eighty percent of my time on. The other things don’t matter. They don’t even I don’t even do them anymore.
So where are you spending your time? Who’s consuming it? And how much of it do you have left over as a current state? And why are these people more important than you and your well-being?

Victoria Volk: I love that because energy is currency. Right? Is oh, yes. And I

Carolina Sotomayor: like to put it as the word as attention. Who has your attention?

Victoria Volk: Do a self audit. Right?

Carolina Sotomayor: Self audit. Do an inventory. It’ll be a surprise.

Victoria Volk: I just wanna touch on too something that you said that, you know, how physical things manifest. And that is completely true. Like, in the work that I do is in grief recovery and what I’ve learned about grief and my own story and the story Right. People that I’ve been in my podcast and that I’ve worked with. When we look at our lives like, okay, fender benders, blowing up horse, accidents, missteps, if you’re kind of known to be the clumsy person or and physical manifestations, right, migraines or body pain that has no explanation, like, fibromyalgia, you know, things like this.
Like, this is grief. Friends. This is grief. What is it that you are holding on to? That you are unwilling to let go of?
Or that your body is screaming to you? To be energetically released. And so you touched on it growing up, but you what can we dive deeper into what you said?

Carolina Sotomayor: Up in book, go for it. I love having these deep conversations.

Victoria Volk: So growing up, you haven’t mentioned your mom

Carolina Sotomayor: Mhmm.

Victoria Volk: And sometimes the mother wounds. Can you attach to the mom? Can you elaborate what your childhood was like,

Carolina Sotomayor: oh, sure. It’s funny. We talk about the ones that are ruined a lot in fertility, father wound too. Mhmm. I have recently put a lot of effort into my mother wound because I spent a lot of, like, the past decade. Telling my father wouldn’t. My childhood was I was it was very tumultuous. It was very chaotic. Full of different people. My parents got separated when my dad gave my mom an ultimatum and he didn’t want a third child. I was the third child. She chose to keep me and they got divorced. Formally when I was eleven months old and she moved from Florida to Pennsylvania and she was a single mom that eventually just stopped to stopped growing at that point. Emotionally. And from what I have learned from my healing with a lot of therapy, hypnosis, and a shaman, Anne Rieke is my mom was ill equipped to be a single mom of three children, that had had a magnitude of issues individually. And she is an active functioning alcoholic with anger issues and the most unhealed person I’ve ever met but I have learned that and what I have grown to deeply appreciate and love for her is she’s the ultimate survivor. And what I have identified her life purpose was to endure and survive so that I could launch from there. And appreciating and seeing her as a person has allowed me to see her more as my mom instead of I used to call her I won’t share her name, but I used to call her by her first name. And that was because it was easier for me to just use that. It was really hard because of all of the things that had been done said and it was really difficult for me to use the word mom. So I would call her by her first name. She actually kind of coming to visit next week, but my childhood was with her and then my brother and sister both My brother graduated high school, went into the military, my sister decided to go in to live with my dad at age fourteen, and I was young, I was kindergarten, first grade when all this happened, and they dipped. And I was alone. So I was her I was an only child from early elementary age. And then I left her at age fifteen to Intellate with my dad.
And I graduated high school and did college in Florida, and then I moved to Nebraska when I was in my when I was twenty nine. So that’s pretty much my span. But when I went from a single mom household to a single dad, it was not without abuse. My dad never hit me, but I didn’t know what an emotional abuse was or mental abuse or or financial abuse. I just didn’t know any of those things.
Until probably I got married, and I started with a different therapist. And I didn’t know he was a narcissist. But he was I felt safe with him because he didn’t he didn’t hit me. So I identified abuse as physical abuse, as like he didn’t hit me. Oh, this is what safety is. At least it’s calmer. He doesn’t yell. But it it was it was very controlling. He was very he would wait in my parking lot. I’d soccer practice.
He would wait during prom. He drove me there waiting in the hotel parking lot, picked me up. It was very there was no independence. Wanted to pick my college classes for a semester, I mean, just very controlling Latino dad but, like, beyond normal. So I went from being abused and trying to avoid conflict and being trying to be perfect straight a student to you have to be perfect straight a student.
This is what you have to live up to. This is what your sister did. You’re the only child here in the house again, and he hadn’t been a parent for a long time because my sister had been out of the house. My sister and my brother are, like, ten and twelve years older than me. And and that is really significant for me because I it was it was again feeling unwanted, hearing the story of, like, you’ve never been wanted by him.
I chose to keep you, but then you’re not, like, very loving or wanted, and then going to, well, you’re only here because there is nowhere else to put you. And you and your mom, obviously, you’re not getting along. That was an understatement. So it was a lot to work through and feel very much a man abandoned and neglected emotionally. Even physically, we run food stamps. My mom, we were the when I live with my mom, we were the family that went to the pantry, and I remember getting, like, this large thing of baloney. And cheese. And I learned to slice the baloney at a really young age to make baloney sandwiches. I learned how to make my own, like I knew how to use the stove and She was gone a lot. She we lived in a trailer on some land next to her sister and her husband. And her husband was really nice, but he made it very clear that, you know, we were visitors. Perfect. And we lived there from one to fifteen. But you I could you I could kick you guys out at any time. So there was not an there was not a strong feeling of being wanted anywhere. And that was something I really struggled when it affected my self esteem. I felt very ugly, got bullied a lot. It was not a very easy time in my life for sure. But what I do take away from all of those things was what not to do. I knew for a long time, like, during my teenage years, early twenties.
I was like, I don’t wanna be a parent. I don’t wanna get married. But then I matured. I healed. I got into the European college. I took advantage of those services. And and I just learned, like, some of the shit that happened to me was really fucked up. And it wasn’t my fault because I got blamed for everything. This is the youngest. You’re the one who broke up the family and that’s a huge reason like I just don’t get along with my siblings. They’re both toxic. They think I’m toxic and that’s okay. You know, I haven’t seen them since we settled my dad’s estate and that’s okay. I wish them well and I didn’t used to. I wish them well. I don’t know anything about their lives. They never been to my wedding. They didn’t know anything about my husband or his son. And that’s okay. Like, I have peace in neutrality about that decision. I am now I’m not emotionally charged where I’m like, I hate you. No. Go do you and I appreciate you. Balnges are set for a reason. You don’t want me.
I don’t want you. It is for valid reasons. I feel like they find me threatening because I still talk to my mom, and they are no contact with her. And they blame her for a lot. But they had very different life experiences. They grew up with them as a married couple with two parents in a home for part of their lives. I have no memory of them being married. I have no memory or life experiences other than two people who created a trial that they accidentally made and they both equally hated each other. My brother and sister grew up in a home where My mom was a state home mom a state home mom and they had barbecues with my grandpa and visits with with my dad’s parents from Ecuador and my mom cooking and birthday parties in the backyard. I mean, it was the same house I lived in with him, but very different life experiences, and I respect that. So they have a very different emotional feeling in regard for my mom, but I did learn about emotional availability because of my siblings. I learned what it’s like to not be emotionally available to people And I was like, well, that’s exactly what I mean. I don’t want to be shut off from people. I want to be united with people. So that was a key thing that I learned at a very young age was I want to be emotionally available. I want to be vulnerable. I want to be accessible so I can connect with people. I don’t want to feel cold. And that’s essentially what I took away from that. But I I think that It was not it was not an easy childhood that’s for sure.

Victoria Volk: And this is a perfect example of how growing up in the same home. You have a very different perspective and a different lens of how you look at life and Mhmm. Because all relationships are unique, even if you would have all grown up in the at the same in the same time frame, in the same home, you still would have had your own perspectives, your own experiences because your relationships would have been unique. The word that comes up for me in as I was hearing you share was was shame.

Carolina Sotomayor: A lot of shame. I’d still something I struggle with. I feel I feel like I apologize a lot or So there’s guilt and shame still, like, shame that I went through the shame that I I don’t talk to them. That’s still something I have not fully healed or even, like, that’s a new one for me. I just discovered that probably.
I saw a TikTok maybe eight months ago, less than a year ago, and it was like, shame. I was like, that’s an emotion I haven’t danced with yet.

Victoria Volk: And it’s insidious.

Carolina Sotomayor: Right. So it is that would be probably next year of healing that I would need to do, but definitely a lot of shame because there was a lot of embarrassment. There was a lot of things that shouldn’t have happened. That did happen and that we’re real and that we’re hidden. A lot of secrets

Victoria Volk: and secrets really are what keep people separate. Barry, thank you for sharing.

Carolina Sotomayor: Always welcome.

Victoria Volk: And all of that being said, with your father passing and your siblings kind of creating this unpleasant environment because you said they sued the estate. Mhmm. At the same time you’re trying to conceive a child, would you agree? And what would you say to or add to this idea that grief is often like, what blocks us from greatness in our lives.

Carolina Sotomayor: A hundred percent grief was the number one thing that blocked me from conceiving. And once I started to feel safe, after he had passed is what was the result of that one rapey session? I was able to conceive because what I associated my dad with at that point in my life, not anymore. But at that point, I had related safety with my dad because there was an abandonment wound there from him and little girls want their daddy’s for particularly for me, I wanted to be a daddy’s girl. And once we reconnected, I had to work really hard to keep his attention. And once he died, I was like, I don’t have that safety anymore. Because when I did have his attention and when we were good and we were in speaking terms, I felt safe. I felt whole. I felt like I had everything I needed. And then and I feel like death is very bizarre. Like, a person that would call me every day or would pick up every day and send me an email and the emails were dear little girl. I stopped. And it was so weird because the people I had lost prior to that, they didn’t have consistent communication. They weren’t active in my life the way my father was up till his death. And having to write the check for his cremation, it was all very surreal. Like, it’s just so weird that they go from existing and talking to, like, they weren’t here at all, except some things. So

Victoria Volk: was it unexpected?

Carolina Sotomayor: He had colon cancer and he had stopped going to the doctor. He had a large mass on the side of his belly and never would go to the doctor. So what happened was I was in Nebraska. He was in Florida. He took a taxi to the hospital, checked himself into the emergency room. They admitted him. I got an accidental call. From a person, from his cell phone, and she was speaking Spanish. And I said, who is this? I was working in my cubicle. And the lady said, this is your dad’s nurse. He’s in the hospital. And then she hung up. And then my dad called back and I was like, my dad had never been with another woman since my mom. So I was like, who is this? I mean, it was a very strange occurrence. Like, my dad was always alone or he was like, he had never been with another person. So for another person to have possession or even to speak on his cell phone was very alarming. So And he goes, I’m fine. I’m like, where are you? He goes, I’m fine. I was like, where are you? And he and he was like, I’m in the hospital. I’m like, tell me everything. And it took a couple of phone calls of me harassing because he hung up on me. And I called back, and he was like, I’m in the hospital. I flew out the next morning, and he was very sick. And I had seen him two months prior, and I he did not look well. And he said, we should go to the doctor. You know, He was a very independent, strong minded person that could not be influenced by anyone.
So he slowly declined over the next three weeks from there. He got a colonoscopy in it. The colon cancer hadn’t metastatized to his liver. And all over in it, and he passed away. He went into hospice. And I was in a cart next to him the night he had passed. The ladies came in at six AM to check on him. I sat up, and then they said he’s taking his last breath. And then that was it. And it was, like, six AM on April sixth. My god to stay in it was a Catholic hospital. It was really beautiful. And I said, that’s that’s all he wanted was for me, like, he had stopped talking, but he knew. He’s like, I know this is gonna happen. He’s like, I just want us to be in a space where we can be together. He didn’t want me staying in a hotel. I’ve been seeing him with friends in our hotel, and he goes, I just want you with me. He’s so worried about money. And I was, like, just stay with me. And I was, like, okay.
But it took me a while to get him in out of the hospital into a private hospice. So we were able to do that the last two days, but the the last night, I was able to finally get a caught and I sat next to him and I sat next to his bed and it was so nice. And I just remember them coming in, and it was, like, so fast. And I just set up, and I was, like, stunned. And I just started making phone calls at that point.
This really, like, texted my brother. He’s like, you need to come. He’s gone. And then, like, texting, like, my I call her my fairy godmother, like, she used to be my old boss. And I was like, Rosa, you need to come. And my friends my best friend’s dad was incredible support. So he was like, I need to come. And they came and then I had to handle the cremation and just having people that didn’t have to be there that were just really looking out for me because as a thirty year old, I didn’t know what to do. No one tells you, like, my best friend’s dad, he taught me how to drive. And he was like, come with me. You can’t see him be bagged. Come with me. We’re gonna go we’re gonna go to another four. I was like, I just need to be with him. I need to be with him to the end. He goes, he’s already gone. You can’t unsee those things. And this is not your place. He this I’m being your dad. And I’m just like,

Victoria Volk: And I

Carolina Sotomayor: was like, okay. Because nobody you can’t unsee those things. Like, I had changed his diaper and I had fed him and I was making all of his phone calls and all of his demands and running all of his errands during the time that he was awake. And it was very messy and it was very angry. I’m so grateful that I didn’t see that because, like, I feel like during those moments, I was so blessed by these two caring people who were really looking out for me. So when there was so much against me with my siblings and I was a naive, thirty year old who was just trying to take care of her dad who had no idea what the hell she was doing. So I think a

Victoria Volk: lot of this experience taught you how you needed to be loved.

Carolina Sotomayor: Oh, yeah. It is a huge reason why it’s a huge reason of why I live my life now. Like, I live intentionally slower. We live a very simple life because it allows us to have a more regulated nervous system. When I’m more when your my nervous system is more regulated, I have more capacity or emotions and to be careful and mindful of how I want to love myself and others. Because that takes effort because it’s very easy for me to default to angry, controlling, yelling. I think it takes more effort to not do those things when you are ingrained DNA coded trauma lived to resist those responses until those responses are no longer an urge or the reactiveness. It I may spend the rest of my life resisting those urges or even, like, you know, hitting, wanting to hit. You know, I that not like, because I was hit. Like, that’s you don’t know until you’re in those situations, like, when you’re treated, you take so much effort to undo. And because my husband comes from such a different background, it’s a lot of conversation. So I have learned, like, what are my triggers? And what that allows me? What do I need to stay in this embodiment of a life that I want? What are the absolute non negotiables that I must have to exist so that I can love myself. I can live in a state of being. And it’s taken a lot of, like, trial and error and a lot of discussions and a lot of commitment to I am worth this. I am worth the effort. So it’s not just like, I’m gonna choose to be happy. I’m gonna choose not gonna be angry. No. It’s also like decluttering their house and making sure their systems and that I have a ritual in place. Like, so when I am triggered, I we have safe words and safe words are, you know, for a place where my kiddo has one and that that’s, like, and immediate. Okay. Let’s go have a talk. Do you wanna leave? And it’s just, like and then it’s, like, they’re my husband and I have a say, there’s the reason why there’s two of us. I’m, like, I can’t type out. I’m tapped out. And they’re, like, we have words for that to, like so it’s just an immediate, like, attention grabber and and it’s because I love myself enough that I don’t have to suffer and I don’t have to endure. And that I can my life can be full of love and I can’t give my son that different life.

Victoria Volk: What I hear you saying is that communication

Carolina Sotomayor: is huge. We overcommunicate We I think over communication in our marriage has been very good. Very It’s been really helpful. I think I’ve undiagnosed ADHD. So he reminds me of a lot of things we put things in a family calendar. I think that active listening and over communication has been really healing too because it’s being because I feel like that means you can be feel seen, heard, appreciated, valued. When I feel hurt, I feel safe. It creates a lot of peace knowing what to expect when he’s gonna go into the office or when I need to boot pick up or when he has flag football or soccer or when I’m gonna be doing a Ricky call. I have find a lot of safety in my marriage, and it’s been really I think when I think if I have helped lived over many lifetimes, it’s probably one of the greatest things that’s ever happened to me.

Victoria Volk: I’m happy for you.

Carolina Sotomayor: Thank you. He is he’s made me feel safe at the very beginning of her marriage. I think the first thing was I felt safe to be myself fully with him and that’s been the launching pad from there.

Victoria Volk: And that’s a great mention too. And I think, you know, aside from all of the things you just said about over communication and boundaries and safe words and systems, it’s a self awareness of of who you are Mhmm. And what you need. Yes. But more so who you are at the core of who you are? Like, who so many of us, I think, we walk through our life, like, who am I? And we can search our entire lifetimes, go to our deathbeds, not really be asking that.

Carolina Sotomayor: I feel like my dad did that. He didn’t know. I I it’s what I feel. Anything that’s I think I relate that to emotional availability and vulnerability is, like, their any resistance to that is a lack of is also a resistance to know or have awareness. Because if you can’t feel what are you telling clients, if you can’t know what you’re feeling, You can’t tell me what you need for your next step. I don’t care what you want. I need to know what you need first before we get to the want. Can’t run before we we can’t crawl or walk. Like, if you can’t tell me I because it’s different energy versus, like, I think I need this versus I feel I need because then those are two different parts of your body and two different depths. Versus, like, first layers, I think I need a hug or I feel I need you to to hug me and hold me.
It’s two different things. And then the receipt of that is gonna be different. If you were to receive what you asked for. The impact will be different. In my opinion,

Victoria Volk: I was listening to a podcast the other day, and It was it was about, like, manifestation and energy and and money and things like that. But you can apply, again, energy is a currency. Right? And everything is energy. Everything is energy. And it’s like this what comes to my mind now as we’re talking and having this conversation is, what do you have the capacity? What do you have the energetic? What can you energetically hold in your tank? Because we can have this you know, if we’re at an energetic place in our lives where we it’s like one thing after another, like this snowball effect of this this relationship going bad or credit card debt. It’s like so many things happen simultaneously in all areas or various areas of our lives and we don’t connect the dots that we are the common denominator. And it’s like, if you only have again, it comes back to the energy. If your energy is currency and you you’re putting it in all these unhealthy or unsupported whip things, that’s what you have energetic currency for. You’re not gonna have room to let anything else in if it’s all going out. And I think that relates to healing too. It’s like if if you’re looking at your life energetically.
Like, it’s just I’m just gonna suffer. It’s just I have a life. I’m just meant for a life of suffering because I believe that at one time in my life.

Carolina Sotomayor: Which is this the way life is? That’s what I’m saying. You’re gonna see the way they’re

Victoria Volk: suffering. Yeah.

Carolina Sotomayor: And they she really believes that.

Victoria Volk: You That’s that that is the energy you walk the world with that you’re walking life with, and you’re bringing that to everything.

Carolina Sotomayor: And she goes, you’re so lucky. She said, no, I have made choices. And she goes, I don’t get that. I said, she goes, you’re so lucky to have a man like Ryan, or my husband’s hiding in him consciously. So lucky to have a husband like yours. Your dad x y z and like stop. He’s dead. You’ve been divorced my entire life. When is the dead horse gonna be beaten enough? Like like I need a choice to marry a healthy man based on our healthy relationship. He’s a whole person. He’s not he’s not an abuser. I made that choice. Yes, am I blessed to to have this, but I made that choice consciously. You know? I don’t know. I I don’t I get That’s for it. Yeah. I did the work. Like, I was the happiest at that point in my life I had ever been when I met him. And he also said that he knew that when by dating me and marrying me his life would ever be boring.

Victoria Volk: That’s what I say about my husband.

Carolina Sotomayor: And I tell everyone if the a member, his mom asked me he could she goes, why do you want to marry? Him. And I said, is that you know that no one’s ever gonna love me any better than him. He is everything. And I there’s not enough time I never there’s I never have enough time with him. I soak up I still love going on dates with him. Like, they’d say it’s the best. Like, I same Steven says that she goes, I love how good or friends you are. You generally enjoy your husband’s company, never called my husband a man child, or he’s my first child, and I would have never married him. But I never get enough time with him.
And I had dated and engaged before. I’ve never married before, but that’s how I knew. Like, this one’s the one for me. Yeah.

Victoria Volk: You had said, on your website, you have a a part that says, your dad’s death in reference to your dad’s death, that it changed me, and it woke me up. In what way, do you feel like it changed you? And were you asleep in your life? Like, the the Carolina before and the Carolina after his death, how would you sum those two people up? Because death does change us.

Carolina Sotomayor: I I’ve thought about this before, and deep deep reflection are a couple of things. My dad’s dad’s death was a hundred percent the start of my spiritual awakening. I had been a faith girl. I had been a Christian girl. I had been a churchgoer. But because of his death, I was spiritually curious. I had believed in I have seen ghost. I have expelled I I even felt ghost in an energy in his house where, like, this stereo, if I fell asleep on the couch, it would turn on in blast static sound. It was awful. So his house was definitely haunted. My mom’s trailer had was haunted. So I had already had the basis of feeling like there was more after you die. I definitely believed in the afterlife in the spiritual realm. I’d never I’m into a cup in in Miami, you can go to Santa Yeah. It’s very real. So which is like, are are very prevalent. You can find them. I have been to a witch before. Usually, if you’re in a Cuban neighborhood, so you if you need They call it a bad news. Like, if you need a bath or, like, a spell, everyone’s at least gone once. So when you’re, like, early twenties or in your teenagers, you do stuff. So I had been to and I was, like, oh, shit’s real. So I had a little bit of a curiosity with that. So when he died, I was very curious to know what happened to them. And I was like, he can’t just not exist anymore. My love for him so strong. His love for me just does not exist. I don’t believe that. Because I’ve had dreams, like, of my Ebola who had died. And I was like, this can’t be the end. Like, my dad believed ashes to ashes, dirt to dirt. Like, he really believed nothing. And I was like, I was like, okay. Like, he didn’t really care where his ashes ended up. Like, his ashes are at my feet. They’re under they’re in his arm. Like, I keep it under my desk. I I move it around. Anyway, I started taking classes with the psychic, the local psychic, she offered like spirit guides, aliens, she would teach about Guardian angels, how to talk to people who have passed, Oracle cards. And I was starting to take these classes. And then I got a reading from her right before her wedding. I got my dad died in April. We got engaged in September. We got married in December. Of that year. So from the time that he proposed to the time we got married, it was very fast. It was ninety days. Just because we we wanted to be married. And right before our wedding, I got the reading. It was Thanksgiving time frame. And she she just said there would be certain things that would happen on our wedding day because my biggest my biggest sadness going into the wedding or my biggest grief was that he wasn’t gonna walk me down the aisle. And the wedding wedding was beautiful and there were certain things that happened that day that we that she said his presence would be known and there’s still things that happen that we don’t know. Like, there was a medallion placed that several people commented on on this table on the beach where we had poured the sand and the fishy and stood in the passers stood in front of. I didn’t see it. It’s not in any of the photos. But several guests had plummeted on it. My cousin goes, did you see that medallion that was on there? Did you where did that come from? And was like, are you talking? I never saw it.
It’s not in any of the pictures. For several people, Anodeon are like, what was that medallion? What was that was that a coin? I was like, I have no idea, but that was on the table in front of everyone. And there was only, like, twenty five thirty people at the the ceremony. So that was one thing. The sky was perfectly blue. And with white clouds and we got married in front of the lighthouse, he used to take us all too. He took them when he was married and then he took me. So this is a special place for us and we got married there in a way to honor him.
But my spiritual weight keying was just so that I could talk to him. So all this exploration, all these workshops, all of these psychic readings, was for me continued to hear from him. Didn’t I a hard time coping not talking to him? So I thought if I became a spiritual medium and I believed when someone said, like, everyone’s a psychic, you just turn it off. I was like, well, okay, let me start taking this seriously and it was I started to have experiences with him. Like, I would feel I I would have certain moments that this is before the horse fall, and this is before I had two horses. This is before the first horse died. I would go to the barn and I would cry on her. And it was during usually these drives on these gravel roads that I would have these experiences. I remember my right leg my right thigh got very cold, and I was sobbing. I know I’d play different songs to make me think of him. And I was just like, I just miss you. I just I don’t understand why this is my life now without you. And I would just go to the barn and I would cry. I would just stand and cry in my horse. She was everything to me and it was through that connection that idea experiences, little things like that. And then I started to smell him climbing up my apartment stairs. And I took a workshop on clear abilities and which is like clear cognizant. Clear sentence, clear audience, like, you can hear things, vision, you can see things, symbols. I started learning about angel numbers, and it started playing weird things like my girl was our song. And it would be I’d be walking through the office, and then I would just hear my girl playing. And it would just be, like, just little things that he would send me and was, like, okay, there’s something to this. So then I started getting repeated. I would hear that often and in rain in place because my girls are very specific. Mhmm. Song would hear it at Walmart on the speaker or it’d be somebody’s ring tone or it would play on my on my radio in the car. My new this is twenty twelve. So this is this is twenty fourteen. So it’s a very different time than, like, I I still listen to the radio and stuff versus, like, Spotify now. But then I I started to I got Reiki Attuned. And with every Reiki Attunement, my mediumship, my ability to channel got deeper and stronger. And when I started to use Oracle cards, I could start to channel with him. I started intuitively journaling, and he would show up in every medium I would try. So it wasn’t just straight senses of clear abilities and symbols. It was also using, like, my dad had a very specific b o. So, like, it was old spice and old man smell. Mhmm. So, like, when I smelled that, I was climbing up the apartment stairs that I had just moved into, and it was just, like, And I was like in the light flickered. I was like, okay. So now I have learned to believe occurrences. So and I can feel him when he’s around and when he’s not around. He’s not always around. So that my dad’s death led me to stretch me to believe that I was possible to I did a desire to wanna communicate with them, which meant I need to become a medium, which then let me to channel spirit babies I am doing now. I believe that because of his my desire to continue to talk to him, is what led me into my ability to channel. Because then when I started to channel professionally in paid sessions, I could talk to other loved ones. I could and then it and then I was in Ricky Sessions. I was working with moms who’ve lost babies. And they were grieving the losses of stillborn or medically terminated or a topic or a chemical pregnancy or a failed fertility treatment or an embryo transfer that didn’t work out. Connecting to those babies was the end result. Mhmm. What what Carolina was before my dad’s death? She was a she was a she was a lot more carefree. She was a lot she was a lot lighter, meaning, like, or a a blue yes. A lot more care free. I was a less healed, less considerate. I was very caring, but I was not as careful as I am. I’m very not self aware as I am now, obviously. But I also didn’t have a relationship with healing other than talk therapy And I was very much stuck in a dysregulated nervous system seeking everyone else’s approval to get validated. And had no self love and no self confidence. Everything was if I work hard, I’ll work harder, and then that’s how I got stuff. There was no there was not much self relationship other than work hard. Do what people tell you. Honestly, we’ll get you far, Ray. And try to have some fun sprinkled in. So I I I think I’m probably cutting myself short a little bit, but now it’s it’s a lot more I feel like just it’s just lightened day. I’m I can generally say I’m happy most of the time. And I love who I am. I love the life I’m living versus before I took a job because it was my first big girl job after graduating. I graduated twenty nine and got jobs early after, moved from Florida to Nebraska, didn’t know anyone. And it was because I wanted to start over, but I think she was strong.
But just didn’t have a lot of self awareness or a lot of love for herself.

Victoria Volk: I think what sums up what you just shared is if you wanna heal, Get to know yourself.

Carolina Sotomayor: It’s true. Yourself.

Victoria Volk: Right?

Carolina Sotomayor: I’m sorry. That was pretty long winded.

Victoria Volk: No. It’s beautiful. That’s what I hear in what all that you shared. And even just my personal experience, it’s like, if we give ourselves the time and attention, like, really, it’s our inner child. Right?

Carolina Sotomayor: It’s yes. As an inner child, when I moved to Omaha, I didn’t know anyone. So I was like, I I was so lonely, and they didn’t wanna I’m not much of a drinker and all my coworkers, they drink because that’s what you do in the Midwest. Mhmm. And that’s where you meet people. Like, where do you get a boyfriend? Go to a bar. I can’t hold my liquor. I’m such a lightweight. So I started making a bucket list and playing visitor in my city, and Omaha is a great city.
I love it so much. And I was like, I had ahead disposable income for the first time. And I was like, what am I gonna do with a little money? So I went on Craigslist. And I said, what is the thing that I always wanted to do? I was like, this is my guest season because I was so lonely. Like, I didn’t know what to do because I was like, I wanna have some fun. So I found a trainer that was doing twenty five dollar horse lessons. And I would go because I wanted I always wanted a horse Like, I dreamt of horses. I would look up before I left Miami would look up how much horses cost?
How much could they how much does it cost to board? And I was like, that’s a nonsense. I can’t afford that. So then I I was like, and four twenty five dollar horse lessons. Well, three months in, I bought the horse less I bought the lesson horse.
And and she was the greatest thing that I had ever loved and the joke was the I love the horse more than my husband when we got married. It’s my husband’s still jokes because if she was still around, she would still outrank me. She was my hard horse. I knew it was Cheyenne. And that horse cared me for years, like, from, gosh, twenty twelve to twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen.
I loved her so much. She was amazing. And my inner child wanted a pony, wanted a horse so much. And I bought her. And she was in my engagement photos, like, and so lying about it. Like, the vet became a good friend to my husband and I, and he goes, I’m sorry to tell you this. It was kinda hurtful. He goes, I think you killed your horse. And I was like, I didn’t I don’t know what you’re talking about. He goes, you cried so much on her. Her she ended up having asthma and she couldn’t eat and breathe. At this like, she couldn’t eat and breathe at the same time in no matter for several months of steroids and treatment, her quality of life wasn’t very good anymore, and we just couldn’t and her cough was so bad. We the vets said the most humane thing was to put her down. So that was the hardest thing ever, but she so grieving her that the first two years of her marriage were shitty. And we I was I don’t remember a lot other than those moments. Like, my dad died. We got engaged. We got married. We settled the state. My horse died.
That was the order in which things happen. And we were trying to help, baby. And, you know, things, you know, you

Victoria Volk: didn’t have the energetic capacity for a baby.

Carolina Sotomayor: No, I didn’t. No. But with my horse dying, I think that was even harder. I think the I have it when I think about the grief, the grief from the court case of this this date settlement was harder than actually losing my dad, fighting with them. But the grief of losing my horse oh, god. Because she carried me, and it was it was my it was like a child to me. And having a relationship with a horse and riding them and training them and caring for them, especially if they’re sick and it’s your first horse. An animal that large, it’s and I have dogs now and I’ve had cats. It’s very different than relationship with dogs because it’s it’s very dangerous sport. It’s a lot of trust building, a lot of there’s a lot of energy that goes into a horse person relationship.
So, greeting her was really hard.

Victoria Volk: They say that emotionally, horses are the most similar to humans, emotionally.

Carolina Sotomayor: I quit horses. I I still had the second horse, but he was a butthole, and he was too much horse for me. And whereas the first horse, she made me overly confident, but she really was such a good horse he made up for my incompetence. And so the second one, we had a love hate relationship. But he ended up hurting his leg and he had to be put down too in twenty seventeen.
Yeah. So he had him for a while, but he was so old. I couldn’t he just became a lawn ornament. So I gave him treats. He was he was so ornury. I loved him, but I hated him. He was it wasn’t the same. And I was kinda resentful after she died. I was like, I’m stuck with you. So isn’t it like

Victoria Volk: seeing how you described your dad? You didn’t say the word ornery, but you said stubborn.

Carolina Sotomayor: Does that No. It’s transcribing my horse.

Victoria Volk: Right? But that’s how you described your dad. Like, not ordinary, but you meant describe

Carolina Sotomayor: Oh, my dad was ordinary.

Victoria Volk: Oh, my

Carolina Sotomayor: dad was stubborn. Yeah. But this horse was, like, he was, like, the one of my bad boyfriends. Like, he was so good looking. Like, he was so gorgeous that as soon as you’re about to get over him, he’ll do something really nice. But then, like, a little bit later, he’ll turn around and do something really shitty. So, like, he would do things like bite me or, like, I’m grooming him or I’m I’m cinching up the the saddle to ride. He’d come around and try to bite me and or he would nip me. Like, he just loved to bite me. And I was like, why you?
Or, like, he’d push me and I’d fall down. He was sixteen hands high. He was huge.

Victoria Volk: Maybe he was never taught how to be gentle. You know what I mean?

Carolina Sotomayor: He picked on me. He was perfect for other people.

Victoria Volk: The bully. Oh.

Carolina Sotomayor: Other people would write them that were more like, I was a novice and that were, like, good writers and are born. They’re, like, oh my god, he’s such a good boy, or he would fake trip to, like, scare me while we were trail riding. And then he would just, like, look at me. Like, he hated my husband, so he stepped on my husband’s foot, and he looked at me while he was doing it and pricing his foot down. I yeah. No. Like, his name was Bucks Mosipi, and you. Absolutely.

Victoria Volk: Well, you know, we meet assholes in our in our human relationships. I guess we meet them in the animal world too. Right?

Carolina Sotomayor: Yes. It was like but he loves treats.

Victoria Volk: My youngest, we just watched a video just the other day of her. She must have been maybe three. I say around three years old, three or four. And my I had asked her on the video. I said, what do you wanna view when you grow up?
And she said, a vet. Wait. I wanna be a cow girl. And she has wanted a horse and dreamt of horses and horse, horse, horse, horse, horse, since she was eighty bitty. And so I imagine one day she’ll be just like you and have her own horse, and she’s actually planning to go to vet school. So she’s a sophomore in high school and she wants to be a vet, and she’s still pursued. She’s going to pursue that. So

Carolina Sotomayor: good for her. I think,

Victoria Volk: doubt she’ll have a horse.

Carolina Sotomayor: I would if I if I could have the first horse again, I would do horses again. Yeah. But because because of gotten the garter questions, like, you’re gonna get another horse? No. Nebraska winners could be brutal.
And we boarded they have a shelter, but they’re best if they’re in a herd. So not like stalled. So our horses would have a barn that they could fully go into as a herd, and then they would also have free access to go out. Like, but having I had older horses, they required extra care and not just, like, shots and floating their teeth and all that. Like, they need to be blindkicked. That’s very controversial. But, like, to keep weight on, to keep all those things. And in Nebraska, you can have three or four seasons on a day. And, like, depending on our winners, you can we’ve had winners where it would snow, but then it would get really warm. And if they sweat underneath their blanket, it’s bad. Like, and it could ruin their code and all of these things. So, like, to go out there, put the blanket on, take it off again, and it and it’d be in cold and, like, also be are you close enough to the barn? I just don’t wanna do that anymore. But if we had the first horse, guarantee you would be still a poor girl. But if it was for the second, the second one ruined me. And then this finally had one kid. Like, I was like, this this pregnancy, this birth, this is for is is was really rough. I don’t wanna do this again. And we we pretick, we had talked about only having one kid, but I was like, if it’s anything like the horses, I don’t wanna gamble this, bro. I don’t I we’re good. We’re good. We have three dogs. We’re good. I have three dogs.

Victoria Volk: Brings up a question for me. I’m glad you mentioned that because you essentially grew up as an only child.

Carolina Sotomayor: Oh, yeah.

Victoria Volk: So, what does that bring up for you as your son being an only child?

Carolina Sotomayor: Oh, god. He would give anything to have a sibling. He asked he asked if we could adopt, if we could foster, we talked about those. We were very open, and I was like, listen. The fact I literally I literally said it was, like, my ability to have a baby, this factory is closed. Was very difficult to achieve you. And he goes, why can’t you just go save a baby? I was like, it doesn’t work that way. I was like, we had to to talk about, like, you know, that it costs a lot of money to adopt, to foster. And I was like, we really like the way our family is now.
And then I was like, so, like, really trying to understand his need for a sibling. Essentially, he wants to belong. He wants someone that’s like him. He wants So what we have done to mitigate that is we’ve made extra efforts to my husband has a brother and we do I will move mountains to even it’s first for a day, we live in different states. So, aren’t my in laws live in Kansas now that used to live here?
So, they live in Wichita and my brother-in-law lives in Fort Worth. So, if there I will move efforts so that he can have cousin time, visits to to to get that sibling time that’s as close as possible. But my husband, he was very adamant coming into our marriage, so he only wanted child. And I was like, I think I would want one or two. Let’s see how it goes with one. And then as we had went through everything, he very much wanted to only have one child. And he’s like, you’ve had a really bad child experience like sibling experiences. He has his own he had a very good childhood, but he has his own feelings about certain topics. So for his purpose, like, we discussed, and he’s, like, we both decided collectively just one child, but I am in strong opinion. Our son will probably have, like, seven or eight children.
He loves babies. He he’s already told me he wants to be a dad and he goes, when I I have a family, he’s already thinking about it. I think it’s because we talk about babies all the time and people having babies because of what I do. We got another Ricky baby. They’re and and I had to describe, like, IVF is they have to have surgery sometimes to have the baby. Babies are made different ways. And he’s like, well, when I’m seventeen, I’m gonna have a family. I’m gonna be a dad. I was like, let’s wait a little bit longer. He told me that two days ago, because when I said it to you, he wants to be a dad. Do you have college to be a dad? No. No.

Victoria Volk: You go through college as you’re being a dad. I swear to say good. That’s about diversity you never get out of.

Carolina Sotomayor: But I think I I am actively working on being more I think I have a good I think as an adult, sometimes it can be really hard to be a kid again, but I think as a parent of an intentionally only child, you have to be their plainly at times. And I watched a creator in TikTok say that he was an only child in the consequences and how lonely it was. So I only became aware of this because he is now older. I mean, he’s still very young, but I am actively trying my like, over the past month, I realized, like, he he told me he at the end of summer, he was on pretty lonely, jam packing, late dates, grading community, community was really important to us, but, like, having regular play dates with the same people, so there’s more of a kinship there. I think it’s gonna be the best I can do.
We have three dogs. I hope that I hope that helps him.

Victoria Volk: And to help him, you know, we need a community, right, as adults. Like, we

Carolina Sotomayor: Right.

Victoria Volk: Driving community, and kids are no different. So it’s helping him find his people.

Carolina Sotomayor: Yeah. I I noticed that we tried Yeah. We tried soccer for the first time in the spring as an invitation from a preschool friend and to continue that relationship. And I was like, oh my gosh. Look how much more productive we are in a Saturday. Look, we made I made a friend who doesn’t even speak English, should we share the same name? She’s from Ukraine. And I learned to use Google translate, and our world exploded in the best ways with, like, new connection. So I think understanding the need for him to feel like he belongs somewhere is what I think it is and that he is he has a connection with someone. So me actively working on that part. Mhmm. I think will kind of

Victoria Volk: enrich his life.

Carolina Sotomayor: Yeah. In a so we may not be able to do this, but I am like, he may not understand the emotional you need is. You wanna feel connected. You wanna feel like you belong. You wanna feel like you have something with someone.
And I’m creating that in different spots. So it’s not all in one pot too. That’s very strategic. So if, like, something goes south with school friends, he still has sport friends and he still has plate eight friends that are all not in the same bucket.

Victoria Volk: Yeah. My youngest too, she just had someone some a family moved here and now they’re they’re all about the horses together and, you know, they share the same interest and she’s phoned. You know, she was struggling, I think, for a while there to try and find somebody that had the same similar interest, you know, as her and

Carolina Sotomayor: They can do wonders. He’s relating to Pokemon. Yeah.

Victoria Volk: Yeah. Even coming out of their shell more so.

Carolina Sotomayor: Yeah. We have he made a friend in his class, and he’s also into Pokemon. And he has a special he needs special attention throughout the day. And Ollie has sought him out, and he goes, I like being his friend because he needs me. And he also likes Pokemon. And as So we’ve done play dates with this kid, and he is so so sweet. And I’ve seen Ollie just light up, oh, my turn on scene dates, but I’ve seen my son light up so much because of the shared interest and the depth of, like, Do you have this card? Do you have do you have the evolve form so much? I know so much about Pokemon. But, you know, and it’s just I they just light up different than another like, is it something that they really care about?

Victoria Volk: Well, I’m gonna tell you something. My son would probably hate me for mentioning this on a podcast, but he’s into Pokemon. Helly. He’s nineteen.

Carolina Sotomayor: You be surprised. I looked up there’s a lot of grown adults who do it post a month ago. And we’re learning to battle. I’m not really sure. I’m I’m trying to get people to answer my questions on, like, how to build a deck so he can go to one of the tournaments. And their their website doesn’t work. Oh, goodness. I’m in a Facebook group with grown men. Really?

Victoria Volk: But I mean, it’s like and he’s been collecting these since he was a kid. So he’s nineteen. So

Carolina Sotomayor: It’s like,

Victoria Volk: well, like, plus years, ten years. For sure, ten plus years, he’s got a lot of cards. And he’ll show me the ones he’s really proud of and what they’re he’s been looking up, how much they’re worth, and so he’s you know, he’s got quite the collection.

Carolina Sotomayor: He goes to trading events as far as we’ve gotten, but we have three binders, and I’ve organized them by Yuval formed with him. And down the street, he had a there was a little bully down the street. And he kept saying how much he has, like, these v stars. And I’m like, what’s a v star Ollie? What is that? He goes, oh, so and so says that he have ten and I only have two. And I was like and he said it’s a mean things to me. I was like, Let’s go on eBay. And I’m a spiteful human. And I I bought I was like, is this one good?
I was like, we can’t spend, like, twenty dollars on a card, but we can spend a couple dollars on a card. And I ordered I ordered like I’m not kidding you. Fourteen or fifteen. I ordered so many VStar’s so that the next time they battled, he had just two pages full of v stars. And I was like, you go to show that little kid.
How many v stars you have? But it was not my finest parenting moment, but I was like, you you wanted like, in my instance, like, you’re taking this a little too far. I was like, no. It keeps going down. All you came home crying and I was like, no.

Victoria Volk: Not having this.

Carolina Sotomayor: Not having this. We will we will be victorious every day because they came for anyway, drive, like, in these little white envelopes. So excited to go get the mail. Yes.

Victoria Volk: My son loves it too, getting the mystery packs. Oh. It’s like Christmas. You know, you never know.

Carolina Sotomayor: Have you watched a livestream of those?

Victoria Volk: I’m sure he has. He’s like the

Carolina Sotomayor: only guy we have. We’ve gone in TikTok and we’ve watched these people unbox stuff. Wild.

Victoria Volk: It’s yeah. There’s you know, just like Ricky, you know, it’s like kind of feel like unicorn sometimes when you’re into the energy work and especially probably in the Midwest. You know, that’s I’m glad, you know, we kinda talked about that. But being in the Midwest, it’s not something we’re not as, like, progressive. Right? So do you did you ever feel like you know, like, it’s, like, grown man adults who love Pokemon. They’re probably kind of in the closet a little bit. It’s, like, didn’t you ever feel like that? Like, when you first, like, really got a little awkward. You were

Carolina Sotomayor: especially when I was still working corporate. I quit corporate about three years ago, three and a half years ago. So I did I’ve done I’ve been doing Ricky for seven years, and it was something I was really proud of, but also, like, really skurdish because I had also lost a lot of people who told me I was doing the devil’s work. Mhmm. So I was really kind of, like, in the closet about it because of how people reacted. But now there’s, like, a huge move movement. There’s a lot of spiritual practitioners in Omaha that are very open, and now it’s, like, fun to manifest. But it wasn’t like that in twenty seventeen. Like, if you use the pendulum, we were gonna hell. And I I my best friend, actually, last August, we went to visit her last July. So last August, she said, I’m really scared for your soul. You’re going straight to hell. I’m like, dude, this is not new. Like, you know, I’ve been doing this forever. But I was like, okay.
And she’s like, well, you’re not gonna you’re gonna stop it? Or do you wanna be my best friend? So it’s like, bro, even I don’t know I’m used since I was twenty. If you’re not into this, that’s okay. I’ll love you from afar, but we don’t, you know, I’m not I don’t believe in hell. I just believe in the other side. But if you think that’s what’s happening to me, then you don’t have to be a part of this show. You don’t have to be part of this party. And we parted. So for me, now I it took me a long time to really be, like, yeah, I’m a psychic medium. But it took, I think, time. It took years for me to be, like, get over those losses and, like, for me to stand strong. I’m like like, this is my life purpose. And I think I just needed proven evidence over time and time and time again, you know, when and to make like, to have, I think, the more legitimate I’ve I’ve really proven myself as into, like, my branding, my marketing, like, just it made me feel more legitimate. Mhmm. And when I switched from in person to online right before COVID happened, I quit seeing people in person. I I got more confident. I was like, Omaha is too small for me. I think that’s also why I went online. Was this like, there’s only so many people who are open to this and I feel like if I go online, I’ll find more people I’m meant for the world. That’s what I told myself. And essentially, that’s essentially what’s happened. I started the podcast and I’ve met so many people. And I we have eighteen thousand followers on TikTok, and we’re globally ranked every day with our podcast that make me be behind a podcast. So I don’t hide anymore. Like, either you like me, and I’m not gonna convince you, either I’m like, here here’s a FAQ question. If you wanna go look what it is, great. But I don’t convince anyone that they should do this. If you’re curious, I’ll talk to you. But that’s not my mission to convince you to do this.
And if you’re curious, I’ll I’ll have a conversation with you, but I’m not gonna convince you to do anything. That’s not my problem. It’s not my job, not my circus, not my monkeys. It’s certainly not gonna own that problem.

Victoria Volk: And if you are curious, it’s probably the universe, like, knocking you on the head. Yeah.

Carolina Sotomayor: I looked curious.

Victoria Volk: Called me too. Like, I kept hearing rapey, rapey, rapey, you know. What’s this rapey? I bought in the night. Went through rapey one and two and then I got my rapey master and then I went through corona, holy fireakey, and so that’s What do you

Carolina Sotomayor: think of holy fire corona? I love that that one changed my life, the corona. Mhmm. I like that one. And I did I did I want him to I was I was like a needle jut. I mean, the professional certification. So I took it with a licensed Yeah. I see our t teacher. I need that certificate. That level of certificate.
I couldn’t be, like, regular person.

Victoria Volk: Oh, I didn’t go through the licensing, but I was trained, like, my racking master teacher was one of thirty licensed rate emails. Yeah.

Carolina Sotomayor: No. That’s who you went like, so you can get, like, this special certificate. That’s what I really, really wanted. Yeah.

Victoria Volk: Yeah. It was my Reiki I think it was my Reiki too. I had a really profound experience and that kind of, like, solidified the deal for me for my healing personal healing.

Carolina Sotomayor: Yeah.

Victoria Volk: Then I went into biofuel tuning. So now I use tuning force.

Carolina Sotomayor: Really? Oh, I’ve never played with tuning forks.

Victoria Volk: My friend, that is for me, personally, in my opinion, it’s more bang for your buck.

Carolina Sotomayor: It Oh. Tell me more.

Victoria Volk: It is it it is really deep. It’s it really matches the energy work that I want to be doing with people to help people really move through stuff because it’s it yeah. Biofil tuning.

Carolina Sotomayor: Oh, we’re gonna have to check after this. Yes. I

Victoria Volk: would love to. But, yeah, it’s that has been

Carolina Sotomayor: you should come in my podcast.

Victoria Volk: I would love to. I would love to. Jazzy. Good. So, yeah, it’s enabled me to do the work that I do with Grievers and, you know, I know what’s not mine?
You know? And I didn’t know that in the beginning, especially, and I’m maybe

Carolina Sotomayor: really hard to decipher.

Victoria Volk: It is. It’s like, oh,

Carolina Sotomayor: what am I feeling as this comes up? Yeah.

Victoria Volk: Yeah. And I was like, wait a minute. I’m not I got a clear my stuff

Carolina Sotomayor: a hundred percent.

Victoria Volk: Mhmm. Yeah. It’s energy work has enabled me to do the work that I do with with grief and talking to Grievers and, you know, because people

Carolina Sotomayor: move it out

Victoria Volk: of pressing. That’s so depressing.

Carolina Sotomayor: And I’m

Victoria Volk: like, grief is my jam. Like, it I could talk about it all the live long day. I never lived part of it.

Carolina Sotomayor: Yeah. I hear stories of loss. I worked with a person yesterday who did a termination at twenty five weeks, which is really difficult to go for a person to go through. My husband’s like, are you okay? I’m like, yeah.
Just gonna make my decaf. And I was like, it it just becomes I was like, I can hold space for a lot because I’ve gone through a lot, but I also can appreciate her pain. Mhmm. I can see, like, I can hold space for it because but it’s not my story. I’ve done, like, enough it’s I’ve had enough practice to hold it apart from me and also no big grounded going into it and then cleanse after. Understand what I’m feeling is enough practice of know who’s talking to me when I’m in the session. Mhmm. I have a question. Have you I have you ever gotten a tune to another lineage of Ricky or only Holy Fire?

Victoria Volk: Only Holy Fire.

Carolina Sotomayor: I got a tune to Crystal Ricky, and then I got certified in Ricky for childbirth.

Victoria Volk: Mhmm.

Carolina Sotomayor: And then I when I what I’ve settled on, it was kundalini Ricky. I found this woman and corporate

Victoria Volk: I’m sorry, what? Does she she incorporates breath work?

Carolina Sotomayor: No. It’s just basically there’s a few different symbols with the kundalini Reiki. It’s more potent and it’s easier from, like, with my practice with I have traditional use to eat, reiki chris o Reiki, the Holy Fire, one two Ricky Master in Corona, and then I got and I did childbirth in there, and then I did Kundalini last. I did this two years ago. She does she doesn’t teach, like, chakras, doesn’t teach anything about cord cutting. She gives you the ultimate and gives you a packet. And it’s was fifty bucks for every achievement, for the three achievements. And she does everything virtually over Zoom. And I found her in TikTok. And I had seen a video about Kundalini, and I became very interested in mother earth, like obsessed with her. And then the Kundalini awakening And I started to dive into I had a student and also a dear friend who I was training in Holy Fire Ricky Master. Mhmm. And And I and and then showing Charlie went on to Corona. And I was like, she’s she was studying Sandskrit, and she was discussing, like, the true meanings of some of the words. And I was like and she’s like, I don’t feel very settled by this. And when we’re having this discussion, I was like, well, I’ve been playing with Cunalini. Do you want didn’t come over to my side? Do you want this? And we played with that together. And I just find it more organic. It’s less like, I can get more done in a short amount of time. Like, I can do, like, a ten minute session and it feels like as if I done with corona for thirty. Mhmm. So it feels also just if Corona felt feminine and I still love corona, but if this feels like the most feminine for me, and it’s just very, very simple. It doesn’t have all the symbols, but it does have some symbols. But and it has different, like, DNA diving. It has this all these other things on the Reiki master, but that’s what I mainly practice now. And it’s I don’t know. It feels sparkly. It feels it’s it’s just flows easier for me. It feels lighter when I’m done with the session too. Like, when I have when I have to, like, tense myself after a session and I feel lighter. It’s not, like, it’s easier for me to move through sessions if I have to do a start role a day. I’m less tired at the end of the day.

Victoria Volk: Sounds interesting.

Carolina Sotomayor: You should play together. Yeah. Sounds like forks. I’ll tell you, like, clearly. Yeah.

Victoria Volk: We’ll have to yeah. We’ll have to connect after. And it’s what’s funny is that before we even started recording. We joked about this not being a two hour guest. It’s

Carolina Sotomayor: a big two hours.

Victoria Volk: And here we are an hour and fifty seven minutes

Carolina Sotomayor: set up. That’s funny.

Victoria Volk: So You are Oh, goodness. It’s one o’clock, the longest podcast. And I’ve enjoyed every minute of

Carolina Sotomayor: it too.

Victoria Volk: I think it was we went to a lot of different places, and I you know, there’s a lot of stuff on here. I haven’t asked, but I think in a lot of ways, you answered for me. I mean, you kinda went into the medium and how you kinda came. Yeah. I think you answered all the questions I had.
And that switches to Zaro.

Carolina Sotomayor: It’s not in my world.

Victoria Volk: But on the end with this, what gives you hope for the future?

Carolina Sotomayor: Or by future or just future in general.

Victoria Volk: It gives you hope for, I don’t know, the collective however you wanna answer that, however you interpret that,

Carolina Sotomayor: that you can redeem yourself at any time. You can start over at any time. Last night, I I I let a circle a a boom activation inside a membership. And somebody and I said, what is the most fearless, most fertile version of you? What is she like? And somebody said that they smiled knowingly that they were having the redemptive pregnancy in birth. And I that word was so powerful for me for me, I cried and I got goosebumps. And I love that how many times I can always start over and that gives me hope that I have that and I like that I can always redeem myself because I love myself enough and I love unconditionally the people around me and I’ve learned to love unconditionally. And because of that, I can always apologize and start over. I could always forgive myself and I could always start over and do better and try again. Anything that has allowed me to have hope that if I make a mistake, I’ll do better. I won’t repeat it. And that gives me hope. And because that means I can always be better and without mistakes, I will not grow. And I have a firm belief that whatever I am, my dad taught me this because whatever you are is the baseline of what your children will be. He goes, so make sure you’re really great. And I feel like I am doing what I was meant to do in this lifetime. And I hope if that is true that my son sees that, then I can only imagine what he’s going to set intentions for to make the world a better place because he can always start over. Because he loves himself enough that he can forgive himself. If he has to forgive, he can grow and expand, he can redeem himself again. And you think starting over, it also feels very fresh and that’s exciting. So when she like, and she I don’t know if I would have answered that before yesterday. I think just being loved probably would have been being loved by my husband and my son would have been my answer before yesterday.

Victoria Volk: I can tell you what your answer was before yesterday.

Carolina Sotomayor: Oh, shit. Are you serious?

Victoria Volk: Yeah. Because I asked it on my form.

Carolina Sotomayor: Oh my god. It’s so exciting.

Victoria Volk: If I can find it. When I think what would they really want for me in the the x situation, then I sit with that and proceed. It makes it easier to be fearless and go live the life I want. I think there’s more, but your answer today was perfect. It was beautiful. And it sounds like the antidote for shame too.

Carolina Sotomayor: Yeah. Yeah. You’d always start over. I I didn’t think a lot of people put like, if you have to start over, like, it’s a like, it you don’t have to start over all the way at a point x, you’re just starting over where you’re right now. Mhmm. So it’s it’s easier because you’re you’re at you’re evolved. You’re not starting over at the very beginning. You’re starting evolved from a further point. I think people underrate how, how good it can be just start over. You can start over just by a new day or the first of the month or the first of the year.
I mean, that’s why everyone does New Year’s resolutions. Right?

Victoria Volk: Yes.

Carolina Sotomayor: You can start over mid afternoon or at one:thirteen in the afternoon. I love the thing that’s really helpful.

Victoria Volk: Where can people reach you if they’d like to connect with you?

Carolina Sotomayor: I think Instagram is the easiest. My handle is the Carolina, like North and South, search my org, s o t o m a y o r. Or my website, caroline is it to my org dot com, or you can I think messaging and dimming me on Instagram is either you can follow me on TikTok and YouTube? We’re pretty active on YouTube too. We’re active on these things. Oh, my podcast. Yeah. Listen to the podcast. So forget about that one. Make a baby. Make a baby podcast. We are into making babies. We make babies with Reiki as our tagline. We’re two years old, and we’re close two. We’re a little over six thousand downloads. So we’re slow and steady. We’re we would love for you to take a listen. We come out weekly at minimum. Sometimes, like, this week, we’re doing in prompt two. We’re gonna post every day. Because we’re doing a healing challenge inside the membership. But, yeah, come and join us. Yeah. If you’re with listers once, I can give you the link. They can try the membership out for three days for free if they want to come and join us.
You can try it out before deciding if they wanna stay or not.

Victoria Volk: Tesla on the link. I’ll put that Yeah.

Carolina Sotomayor: I’ll email it to you right away.

Victoria Volk: Yeah. Along with your contact information and

Carolina Sotomayor: Absolutely.

Victoria Volk: Thank you so much. I feel like this was a really I say it’s a lot, but when this is what’s so important to me with this podcast is to be able to give people the time in the space to Go Deep, to really share the story. To develop for me to develop a connection with you so that my listeners feel a connection with you. And I think that’s so that’s so important to me. And so thank you for coming to my podcast and True Ireland. And allowing me to sit with you through your stories.

Carolina Sotomayor: Thank you so much for for listening and having me.

Victoria Volk: And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.

 

Ep 178 Mandy Capehart | The Integration of Grief and Restoration of Self

Mandy Capehart | The Integration of Grief and Restoration of Self

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:

In this week’s heartfelt episode, we dive into the complexities of grief with my special guest, Mandy Capehart – a trauma-informed certified grief educator and somatic embodiment life coach.

Mandy shares her journey through grief, which led her to establish the Restorative Grief Project, an online community dedicated to supporting grievers and those who stand by them. Her book, “Restorative Grief: Embracing Our Losses Without Losing Ourselves,” is a blend of memoir and practical guidebook that offers insight into managing loss.

We touch on topics like:

  • The universality of experiencing loss
  • Moving beyond minimizing pain
  • Navigating uncertainty in times of sorrow
  • How our upbringing shapes our understanding of grief

Mandy also delves into how COVID-19 has highlighted the need for greater ‘grief literacy’ – acknowledging that you don’t need death as a reason to grieve. She emphasizes validating experiences rather than dismissing them and discusses how she uses storytelling as a tool for connection and healing.

Moreover, Mandy opens up about personal losses such as miscarriages, providing raw insights into the emotional turmoil they entail while calling out common misconceptions surrounding them.

This episode is not just about dealing with grief but learning from it, embracing vulnerability, and engaging in deeper conversations instead of hiding behind social niceties or sugarcoated interactions.

This conversation provides solace and guidance for anyone grappling with loss or seeking ways to support others in their grieving process.

Key Takeaway:
Grief isn’t solely triggered by death; it encompasses various forms of personal loss and change. The conversation challenges us to confront cultural tendencies that often minimize these experiences or avoid deep discussions.

Mandy’s insights remind us that grieving is not just an emotional process but one that touches every fiber of our being – physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Your story matters. Your pain deserves recognition. And together, we can find pathways toward restoration.

RESOURCES:

CONNECT:

Episode Sponsor: Magic Mind | Use the code “GRIEVINGVOICES” to receive one month free with a 3-month subscription. This special promotion is only for January!

_______

NEED HELP?

  • National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
  • Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support via text message. Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a trained Crisis Counselor

If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.

CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:

Victoria Volk
00:00:00 – 00:00:16
Thank you for tuning in to grieving voices., If this is your first time listening, welcome., And if you are returning and listening again, thank you for coming back. Today, my guest is Mandy Capehart. She is a trauma-informed certified grief educator and somatic embodiment life coach.

Victoria Volk
00:00:17 – 00:00:47
She’s an author, speaker, and master mindset coach located in the Pacific Northwest. She is the founder of the Restorative Grief Project, an online community of grievers and grief supporters looking for movement while they heal. Her own experience with grief left her searching for resources while offering empathetic long term support without minimizing the pain of the moment. When she found nothing, she created it for herself and for you. Her first book is Titled Restorative Grief, Embracing Our Losses Without Losing Ourselves was released in 2021.

Victoria Volk
00:00:48 – 00:01:19
And this is a memoir and a 31-day guidebook for managing grief and growth in the aftermath of loss, no matter how long it lasts. You can hear more about her work on her podcast, Restorative Grief with Mandy Capehart, or consider working with her 1 on 1 on her website. She has all the resources and I will put those links in the show notes. And she’s a storyteller through and through and always in pursuit of adventure, grace, and opportunities to express gratitude. No matter the medium, her work revolves around learning how to honor our process of becoming.

Victoria Volk
00:01:19 – 00:01:29
She currently lives in Southern Oregon with her husband, daughter, Border Collie Rescue Pup and way too many houseplants. Thank you so much for being here. I too have way too many houseplants. I am told.

Mandy Capehart
00:01:29 – 00:01:43
I know., Right. I mean, I loved houseplants before the pandemic, but it was an easy hobby for me. I think I was up to, like, 95 at one point before I just said, this is a problem. I don’t wanna just let these die, but I also don’t know what to do.

Mandy Capehart
00:01:43 – 00:01:51
And so we’re down to probably a solid 40 now. We’ve recovered. They didn’t die. They were lovingly rehomed, but yeah,

Victoria Volk
00:01:51 – 00:02:05
I have not counted mine, but I know it’s not 40, but I went from like 0 to just kind of like an obsession. I just kept buying and kept buying. Oh, I need another plant. I need another plant.

Mandy Capehart
00:02:05 – 00:02:24
Well, we needed the dopamine. We needed the immediate gratification of something beautiful in our home. We can justify it because plants clarify the air and there are so many collect. It’s like, you know, us elder millennials are, like, barely on the cusp of when Pokemon was, like, practically Introduced. We gotta catch them all.

Mandy Capehart
00:02:24 – 00:02:31
We have to collect every variety of Echeveria that exists. And until then, I will not be satisfied.

Victoria Volk
00:02:32 – 00:02:35
I know it’s like people walk in, welcome to the jungle.

Mandy Capehart
00:02:35 – 00:02:39
Yeah, exactly. It was very, humid in our home for a while.

Victoria Volk
00:02:40 – 00:02:53
I bet. But you know what?, Like you said, it puts oxygen in the air. And when especially living in, like, a rainy climate like yourself or like a snowy cold climate like I where I live and dry. I need all the nature inside.

Mandy Capehart
00:02:53 – 00:02:56
I can get everything I can. Yes. That’s right.

Victoria Volk
00:02:57 – 00:03:18
So we’re not talking about houseplants today. But if we were I’m sure there’s a podcast for that there’s a podcast for everything. That’s right. But today we’re talking about grief, which fortunately for you and I is becoming much more talked about and the work that we were doing. And I think COVID but a huge spotlight on that for everybody.

Victoria Volk
00:03:19 – 00:03:44
Like, hey, nobody has to die for you to grieve. Right? And so I guess let’s, I really want to start out with  kind of your origin story as to what led you into the work that you’re doing today, because I know firsthand for myself and everyone that I’ve talked to on this podcast for every guest I’ve had, their work is really born out of their story. So where would you like to begin?

Mandy Capehart
00:03:45 – 00:04:35
Yeah, we’ve got this legacy as wounded healers. And when we get to that
point of recognizing where the needle moved for us, we can start to develop a way to, offer it to others. And so for me, I don’t remember a time in my life that I didn’t have some form of grief event, whether it was a person dying, a person moving away, divorce, relationship loss, illness. There was always something or someone leaving my world, my circle of influence. And so I, as a young person, did what we all do and stuffed it down and became very outwardly loud and big and vivacious and tried to live a very happy, playful life because I didn’t have the tools to navigate the loss I was experiencing.

Mandy Capehart
00:04:35 – 00:05:08
And that’s not to say that my parents didn’t know what they were doing because in a lot of ways they did, but at the same time, they were also very young when they had me. And so as we all experienced these losses together, including their, divorce when I was pretty young, I think I was 9. It doesn’t It just didn’t translate until I was older. And so, instead of giving you a list all the people I’ve lost in stories, I’m just gonna jump ahead because when my mom died in 2016, this month, it’ll be 7 years, I think. That right?

Mandy Capehart
00:05:08 – 00:05:30
Good math. It was pretty sudden. It was after after a few months of cancer treatment and unexpected, illness on top of that. And so I spent the next 4 years quitting everything I knew. I stepped down from being a worship leader of 16 years at my church.

Mandy Capehart
00:05:30 – 00:06:15
I pulled away from the career, I almost became a youth pastor so that I could move closer to being near her. It would have been the absolute worst position for me and all the children would have like perished under my anger because I was in so much pain, but I was willing to do anything to try and get close to her while she was going through, treatment. And I’m very grateful that didn’t happen. But I realized in 2020 when January started, I was starting the year with a miscarriage with the anniversary of losing my mom with a job loss and with a former employer, spreading gossip about me. And so I was in, like, trauma city all by myself.

Mandy Capehart
00:06:15 – 00:06:32
And then I’m starting to hear on the news about COVID and pandemics, and I became really guarded and angry about it. Like, hey, guys. 2020 is my year to have a mess. Everybody get it together. And in March, when our school shut down and I lost another job, I realized this is not the world I can live in.

Mandy Capehart
00:06:32 – 00:07:17
I cannot live in a world where there are going to be generations of untended grief and a complete lack of understanding and brief literacy. So I started writing my story down. That was where the book came from, over the course of a couple months, I just went through everything that I had experienced that was encouraging and positive to me, both within the of my faith and without it looking for pathways forward that were relatable to others, that could be relatable. Not just like this is what worked for me. So it will work for you, but creating more of an invitation into exploring what might be possible through these different methods of approaching our grief and ourselves differently.

Mandy Capehart
00:07:17 – 00:08:02
And as the book was finished, there was a wildfire in our town that destroyed 25100 homes. So I got firsthand an opportunity to not only share this work of my heart and to connect with people I knew who lost their homes and were now survivors of this wildfire. There were 3 people who died as well, but I also took that into this idea of what if I became a coach around the idea of what it means to grieve and to survive. And so I took my my personal background, my educational background, and poured it all into this, practice that I’ve built. And it just has transformed everything I expected my life to become.

Mandy Capehart
00:08:02 – 00:08:09
I always knew I’d be a writer. Right? We always have those threads. I always knew I’d be a writer.  I’m very, people driven.

Mandy Capehart
00:08:09 – 00:08:29
So I always knew I’d be working with people. I never expected that I’d be working as a grief and trauma educator, showing up for people in their worst moments and sitting with them through the enormity of it. So that’s my quickest way to describe why I decided grief and death were the things I wanted to talk about all day long.

Victoria Volk
00:08:30 – 00:08:38
Kind of similar to my story. Started very young. How old were you when you had your first loss that you can recall?

Mandy Capehart
00:08:42 – 00:08:58
I mean, I was probably that I can recall would be my great grandmother. My grandparents are all I mean, every generation is at 10, 20 years, 19 to 20 years of each other. So I knew all of my great grandparents., Wow. And a couple of my great great grandparents.

Mandy Capehart
00:09:00 – 00:09:16
Wow. I’m sorry. It was my great great grandmother, Selma, who died when I was 3. And I have memories of sitting in her kitchen and being with her and having her read to me. And that I would say that would probably be the earliest loss I can recall.

Mandy Capehart
00:09:16 – 00:09:23
And at that age, what do you know? You’re 3 and great grandma great great grandma’s almost just not around anymore. We don’t have framework for it. But,

Victoria Volk
00:09:25 – 00:09:37
Yeah. Do you know what’s fascinating though? By age 3, we have learned 75% of our of our awarenesses of how to respond to life.

Mandy Capehart
00:09:37 – 00:09:40
Right? It’s wild. Like it’s in there’s

Victoria Volk
00:09:40 – 00:09:53
no conscious, conscious recollection and hindsight about that. But yeah. By that, we’re sponges. So how young were your parents when they had you?

Mandy Capehart
00:09:53 – 00:10:00
I think my mom was 20, 21. My dad was 24. Sounds right.

Victoria Volk
00:10:01 – 00:10:06
And you knew your great, great grandparents? Yeah. Wow. That’s fascinating. Yeah.

Victoria Volk
00:10:06 – 00:10:07
Incredible, really.

Mandy Capehart
00:10:07 – 00:10:24
Yeah, I mean, my grandmother is in her eighties now and consistent. Like we’ve stopped correcting people. That is my mom. We just don’t correct anyone because people assume it is my mom because the age range makes sense.

Mandy Capehart
00:10:24 – 00:10:31
Right? And with my aunts, people assume that we’re sisters and I’m just like, you can have it. Take it. Like, sure. We’re sisters.

Mandy Capehart
00:10:31 – 00:10:41
It doesn’t bother me. It’s who cares? But it’s interesting the way that we perceive age gaps. That’s a whole other conversation, but anyway. Yeah.

Mandy Capehart
00:10:41 – 00:10:42
Young family.

Victoria Volk
00:10:42 – 00:10:58
What did you find yourself saying the most during COVID, to others? What was the story that was playing in your head over and over as you were kind of reflecting on your losses, as you’re writing your book, as you were working with other grievers and talking to other grievers.

Mandy Capehart
00:10:59 – 00:11:55
Yeah. I think a lot of what I experienced personally and also in the stories of others was this pain around being minimized and dismissed. So in my immediate family, I have an immune disorder in our family. And so we were really guarded and absolutely afraid of the unknown and the uncertainty of this pandemic and what would be happening. And we did lose people that we knew and where I would support others and be working with people around the fear of that was invalidating was through validating the stories that they were telling as well and through validating their experiences and helping them to validate and not minimize the enormity of their experiences, their emotions, their sensations in their body, like we as a people, and maybe just this is western culture.

Mandy Capehart
00:11:55 – 00:12:39
I don’t know. Became so quick to justify and minimize our responses for survival so
we could socially still belong or mentally not cave under the pressure of choosing all of these black and white dichotomous opportunities that were handed to us. I feel like there was so much of you’re either with me or you’re against me and, and that in and of itself is a distorted way of thinking, but it’s also such an eliminator of that gray space, that grief exists within. Right? We cannot navigate grief without recognizing it is all gray space.

Mandy Capehart
00:12:39 – 00:13:13
There really is no black and white. And so when I would come up against those black and white thinking patterns in clients and in friends and family members. It was an exercise in, do I wanna do this for a long period of time or is this just the COVID reaction to losing my job and having to pivot and having zero certainty for the foreseeable future. And so it really transformed into this understanding of, oh, no, certainty is the lie. Certainty is the addiction.

Mandy Capehart
00:13:13 – 00:13:32
What does that look like then as a griever and even as a grief professional to help individuals not minimize their fear of certainty or their fear of a lack of certainty, and come to embrace uncertainty and all of its beauty and all of its gray space and all of its opportunity, to find healing.

Victoria Volk
00:13:33 – 00:13:51
What were the lessons that you were taught about grief as you grew up within your family? Like, how did how did that because you had a lot of grief in your life growing up. Yeah. How was that shaped your belief before you knew now what you know. Right?

Victoria Volk
00:13:53 – 00:13:57
Like, what were you taught about grief and how to grieve?

Mandy Capehart
00:13:57 – 00:14:09
You know, not a lot. I think and keeping in mind, like, this is the early nineties. Right? Late eighties, early nineties. We, weren’t necessarily stiff upper lip people.

Mandy Capehart
00:14:10 – 00:14:21
We were very strong back. We can do this, push through it. There’s always a solution. You’ll figure it out. Just keep going kind of people.

Mandy Capehart
00:14:21 – 00:15:05
My dad still to this day says work smart, not hard. And so as a young griever, I can I translated that to It’s hard to grieve, so I will work smart by not grieving and just truly minimize my own experience so that I can do the task in front of me? And I think that that’s a pretty, pretty expected and universal response to grieve as a child, I also think I was watching my parents grieve. And when I was a teenager, I remember having a distinct moment of deciding, oh, my parents are human. So I’m sitting back here angry with them, grieving everything that they’ve gone through, that they’ve put us through trying to survive this ongoing grief experiences that we’re having.

Mandy Capehart
00:15:05 – 00:15:31
And yet I have failed to see them as people as well who are at that time 30. And I think now to when I was 30 and realizing, oh my God, I was no one knew what they were doing. I was a mess at 30. Even for as much as I had figured out, I was a immature trying to just prove that I knew what I was doing and I was valuable in the world. What if my parents were in similar boats?

Mandy Capehart
00:15:31 – 00:16:14
And so I think even grandparents and extended family members had their own opinions about grief. And there were some very strong, religious influences on part of our family, which was, of course, a different layer to how people wanted to navigate grief or not navigated at all., But I feel like it just wasn’t really a conversation to the degree that when my mom died, that following she died right after Christmas, not following Christmas. I went back home for the holidays and remember thinking this is gonna be either a mess or the most restorative experience we could ever have together. Like this is a definitive Christmas gathering.

Mandy Capehart
00:16:14 – 00:16:28
What do I wanna do about it? What do I wanna bring to this family? So the first night I brought bourbon and I got everyone really sick and hungover the next day. And we all pretended we weren’t hungover, which was in retrospect, my favorite thing. We were just like, wow, I don’t feel good.

Mandy Capehart
00:16:28 – 00:16:40
What did we eat yesterday? And I was like, guys, we drank too much bourbon. I don’t know why that’s unclear. Why aren’t we admitting? But that was such a perfect example of like, oh, we’re all grieving as well, and we’re not admitting it.

Mandy Capehart
00:16:40 – 00:16:54
Okay, It opened it up so that I was able to say, hey, this whole denial thing is not serving us. We’ve tried for a year to survive on our own. It does not work. And so now I’m going to start asking you guys some really vulnerable questions.

Mandy Capehart
00:16:55 – 00:17:10
And even if it’s just for me, if you need to believe that you’re answering those questions so that I can heal. That’s fine. But don’t shut down. Don’t pull back. And so it’s really become this family that I mean, still still grieving.

Mandy Capehart
00:17:10 – 00:17:31
Like I said off air, I have an aunt who’s in the hospital right now for cancer and her daughter is in the hospital as well for some medical crisis, that she’s been navigating. And these are not simple, small things. These are not I had a wart removed operations. Right? It’s still a family unit where we can say, this is horrible.

Mandy Capehart
00:17:31 – 00:18:13
How do we survive this? How do we hold each other In the midst of the uncertainty of if we’ll survive it or not, if our family members will be okay. So I think that, lack of grief literacy kind of articulated in my childhood is a big part of why now, despite the discomfort, despite the, pushback I get when I bring it up in certain situations when people just wanna have a good time. I don’t care. I’ve seen the benefit of pushing into those uncomfortable places and teaching both myself and my nervous system, how to remain aligned and resting even amid what feels like a threat to my health and my mental stability.

Mandy Capehart
00:18:13 – 00:18:21
Grief can disrupt all of that. And yet it can also be the doorway into like binding restoration in that area as well.

Victoria Volk
00:18:21 – 00:19:02
The thing I heard you say in I’ll say it how I heard it is that there’s this deep desire to have deeper conversations instead of all that surface level stuff. And, I’ve even found myself, I’ll be out and about mingling in the bar or whatever with friends and I’ll say something and they’ll look at me like, okay. Yeah. That’s, that’s too depressing. They’re kind of like, to be not to be the Debbie downer, but it’s like, let’s, I have friends too where it’s like, I don’t I don’t even know what their dreams are.

Victoria Volk
00:19:02 – 00:19:08
Yeah. But I know if I ask them, it’s like, why are you asking me that? Like, they don’t want to talk about it. Like,

Mandy Capehart
00:19:08 – 00:19:33
Sure. You know, I think often whether they wanna talk about it or they don’t have an answer or they haven’t gotten through the the layer of, but what if it doesn’t workout. But what if I can’t the uncertainty. Right? They their relationship to uncertainty is directly impacted by their desire to control the outcome and control their experiences.

Mandy Capehart
00:19:33 – 00:19:57
And I think those uncomfortable conversations, those deeper conversations are sacred ground. We’re asking someone to step forward and be seen and be known and to not have the answers. And certainly, it’s a collective approach. Right? It’s collective healing that I’m inviting people into when I say, share your deepest, darkest moments with me.

Mandy Capehart
00:19:57 – 00:20:14
Tell me what you’re afraid of, because guess what? You’re not only totally valid and being afraid of that. I’m afraid of that too. But now what do we perceive each other to be less than or weak or an trustworthy? Like, I don’t know.

Mandy Capehart
00:20:14 – 00:20:50
I see that depth and that willingness to be seen as such a a flag of safety. My aunt the other day, a different aunt was telling me how this family member in the hospital is the strongest person that she knows and gave all this evidence. And I responded, it takes one to know one. And I say that because you lost my mom, your sister, you’ve experienced heartache after heartache. And here you are In person, caring for our family members that are in the hospital all by yourself.

Mandy Capehart
00:20:50 – 00:21:13
And while I would, if I could drop everything and come to you, our lives are very different and she has that ability. What does that what does it look like to be supported by me right now? Like, you don’t have to be so strong all the time too. And I think when we can finally tell people that you don’t have to be strong, like you don’t have to keep being strong. I personally hate it when someone’s like, oh my gosh, you’re so strong.

Mandy Capehart
00:21:13 – 00:21:32
And I was like, no. What you see, because you’re not safe for me to not be strong, is the strength. You see the backbone. The soft tender side of me is available to people who aren’t going to disrespect or diminish me. And to be honest, I show that side to a lot of people now, but when I was younger, not so much.

Mandy Capehart
00:21:32 – 00:21:59
And I think being able to just call that tenderness out in people toward themselves, right? Show yourself your tender side. Be honest with how much you’re carrying and let’s see if we can’t offload some of that weight simply by Identifying and addressing it and letting it move through our life and our story and our experiences. So it’s not Debbie Downer to me to bring up like deepest, darkest fears in the bar. That is the moment of vulnerability that I can say, hey.

Mandy Capehart
00:21:59 – 00:22:14
Your walls are down and you’re with safe people, If I’m not a safe person, probably don’t invite me to drinks again, because alcohol is gonna make you say and do things you don’t want me to remind you of the next day. Otherwise, I must be a safe person because I’m here. So let’s just be real. K?

Mandy Capehart
00:22:14 – 00:22:28
Because we’ve got limited time. We don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow. Tell me what should tell me what hurts. Let’s talk through it and just bear witness to each other in a way that we’ve been discouraged from doing.

Victoria Volk
00:22:29 – 00:22:38
Yeah. I made sugar cookies recently and I was just thinking, yep. Just like sugarcoating. Just it’s it’s that. I mean, it’s a terrible Yeah.

Victoria Volk
00:22:38 – 00:22:46
Literal sugar coating. That’s what we do. Right. And yeah, like you said, just to get real. Let’s get real.

Victoria Volk
00:22:47 – 00:23:03
I don’t want to gloss over something you said because, I feel like it’s an important lost to talk about because there’s not just you, it’s also your partner involved. But you had, shared that you had lost had a miscarriage.

Mandy Capehart
00:23:04 – 00:23:19
Oh, yeah. I actually don’t know how many miscarriages I’ve had. We got married pretty I was early twenties and our daughter was born when I was 30. And so we had years of infertility. We weren’t trying right away.

Mandy Capehart
00:23:19 – 00:23:51
But when we did start, just years of infertility and the undeniable pain that goes with that is when they come on and say like, oh, we’re not sure why everything about you is normal. I’m like, cool. Except that my body can’t do the one thing that like It was created to do okay. Like all of the uncertainty, every question and, anybody who’s ever experienced infertility knows immediately the question is like, what did I do wrong? What am I doing wrong?

Mandy Capehart
00:23:51 – 00:24:14
Is it because I did x y z. If there’s religious trauma on top of it, there’s all of that blame that comes along from a spiritual side as well. There was so much, built in. And then we so our daughter was born in, 2014 as a miracle. Like she was a surprise and I was terrified the entire pregnancy.

Mandy Capehart
00:24:15 – 00:24:25
And then a few years later, of course, in 2020, on New Year’s Eve, I knew I was pregnant. I looked at my husband. I’m like, I’m pregnant. And he’s like, really? Did you take a test?

Mandy Capehart
00:24:25 – 00:24:41
Are you kidding? That doesn’t make sense. How how do you know? And I was like, no, I just, I have a feeling. And I tested positive a couple of days later and started bleeding a couple of days after that and just sat with it because it was the one I knew about.

Mandy Capehart
00:24:41 – 00:25:23
It was the one I had a test, a positive, Oh my God. Is this really happening? Experience, especially 4 years after losing mom and realizing, like, the hope I had placed in that little pregnancy, it was interesting because I remember feeling very much, and this is similar to how I felt in the week after my mom died, feeling very much that, okay, I can safeguard and bear in mind. This is before I wrote my book or any of the like, started doing any of this work really professionally. I’ve been speaking publicly and leading a small, church in a bar for years up until then.

Mandy Capehart
00:25:23 – 00:26:28
But, and so I talked about loss and grief plenty of times, but this was really a moment where I again decided, okay, I can choose to numb myself and step away from the hope of ever having another baby from the fullness of what this means and what it doesn’t mean, or I can choose to really lean in to both the grief I’m going to experience from this and the stillness I need to heal because it is not a the misunderstanding of what a miscarriage does to a human body is so offensive is the best way I can put it. Like the lack of understanding people have about what actually happens and what you’re experiencing. I had to give myself a lot of permission to be tender and still, and unproductive. I’m extremely busy and productive when you were listing all the things in my bio was like, jeez, I have done so many things. Maybe it’s time to calm down a bit.

Mandy Capehart
00:26:28 – 00:26:44
But, anyway, the sensation even of having the pregnancy and knowing, oh, I’ve got untold number of miscarriages in my past. What do I do? Do I Dream. Do I hope? Do I pretend I’m not pregnant?

Mandy Capehart
00:26:45 – 00:27:02
Do I wait? Do I tell anyone? Do I panic? I chose hope I chose to lean in fully and say, I’m going to imagine our life with another baby. I’m going to lean fully in and completely invest.

Mandy Capehart
00:27:02 – 00:27:26
And so when, the miscarriage began, I had to tell my husband. Yep.  I’m going to lean fully into the loss here too. And not just for me, although I will say his ability to support me has often been at the expense of him supporting himself. And that’s a, that’s a whole nother topic of how to help your grieving partner.

Mandy Capehart
00:27:26 – 00:27:43
Right. But it’s been a very healing journey for us to come back together and really talk About what that meant and what it means ongoing.  And yeah, miscarriage is a very, very nuanced experience of loss.

Victoria Volk
00:27:43 – 00:27:54
What would you like to say and clarify for people about what you said, how the misconception about miscarriage and what it does to them.

Mandy Capehart
00:27:55 – 00:28:07
Yeah, it’s a good question. I think It comes back to that recognition that we are holistic beings. We are heart, mind, body, spirit.  We are not just a body. We are not just a mind.

Mandy Capehart
00:28:07 – 00:28:54
We are not just the emotions that we feel. And when we approach ourselves from a disjointed perspective trying to heal, trying to experience grief. We dismiss the wisdom that we have carried from all of our other experiences into this moment where we could integrate them together and actually experience healing. And so I say that in regards to miscarriage because the emotional impact, the true emotions, the things I’m feeling in my heart, the thoughts I’m thinking about the miscarriage itself, about the loss of my future, about the rationale behind what happened and why about the debate internally. Is it a baby?

Mandy Capehart
00:28:54 – 00:29:03
Is it a fetus? Is it viable? Is it not? What will people say? What will people think like the mental fireworks that are just exploding left and right?

Mandy Capehart
00:29:03 – 00:29:25
And then that piritual side. And, in my framework, there’s sort of grief framework. Spirit refers to that connection to self, to others, relationally to the world, at large. And then if there is a spiritual practice to our sense of higher power. But all of those pieces have to be included, honored, and addressed when we’re healing.

Mandy Capehart
00:29:25 – 00:29:38
And I think with miscarriages, because there have been such again, black and white perspectives discerning. Okay. It’s just a scientific process. I don’t know if you’ve read Becoming Michelle Obama’s first book. It’s beautiful.

Mandy Capehart
00:29:39 – 00:29:50
She tells the story of her miscarriage and she’s very practical. She’s like, it it was just a clump of cells to me. And so and that’s how she moves through it in the book. And I sat with it for a long time because to some degree. Yeah.

Mandy Capehart
00:29:50 – 00:30:19
Totally. Just like not viable outside of me, scientific process. And like I said, I don’t know how many I’ve had.  I had such irregular cycles that I’ve probably had multiple. And yet here I am choosing hope on the front of that and saying, if I don’t lean fully in with my emotions, with my mind and with my sense of connection to this little clump of cells, then I may miss out on the fullness of what this experience can be.

Mandy Capehart
00:30:19 – 00:30:57
I think when we discredit people who have babies and who can carry life and put them into this well, and you see this in legislation right now, everywhere. We’ve minimized their personhood as autonomous individuals. We’ve minimized their ability to advocate for themselves, which is because we don’t think it’s important. We don’t see the enormity of what life and giving life and going through all of the steps of that can be. So I think that the misconception of like, oh my gosh, you’ve had a miscarriage.

Mandy Capehart
00:30:57 – 00:31:13
I’ve had some too. That immediate centering of yourself in someone else’s experience when they share with you. Right. When they are real and vulnerable and honest is a reflection of that other person’s discomfort. Like, I’m not comfortable with you telling me that you’re hurting.

Mandy Capehart
00:31:13 – 00:31:25
So I’ll just say I’ve been there. We don’t have to talk about it. I’ve been there too. And that goes to all grief experiences. People center themselves and minimize pain easily.

Mandy Capehart
00:31:25 – 00:32:12
But I think, at the crux of it would be recognizing the individual experience of a miscarriage or infertility or pregnancy loss or child loss. They’re so complicated and nuanced because there’s every day a reminder that you’ve experienced this loss where I can say, oh, man, my memories of my mom come back probably every day in some way or another, or my grandfather or any of these people that I’ve lost. Those come up so differently than the miscarriages do because I have a little girl who’s constantly, she’s backed off now, but begged for a sibling for years every day. And how do you explain to a little girl? Well, mommy can’t.

Mandy Capehart
00:32:12 – 00:32:17
Mommy’s tried. You had one. Kind of. Maybe. I don’t know.

Mandy Capehart
00:32:17 – 00:32:35
And then you spiral again right down that same mental explosion of, I don’t even know how to think about this without hearing the input from judgmental voices and critical voices Oliver. It’s a long way to answer that question, but there’s a lot about it on my mind.

Victoria Volk
00:32:36 – 00:32:45
And you bring up a very good point in that for your daughter. That’s a grieving experience too of not having a sibling. Right? Yep. Maybe that’s a book you could write.

Mandy Capehart
00:32:45 – 00:32:58
Oh, man. The other day she, well, I guess it was a couple of years ago. I found a piece of paper she’d written on that said reminder, biggest reminder of your life. She was probably 6 or 7. Mom is willing to adopt a baby sister.

Mandy Capehart
00:32:58 – 00:33:13
And I was like, oh, child. Again, like, immune disorder, constant treatment happening in our house. So our lives are not simple. Adoption would not not that that’s simple, but no easy path forward on it. It was pretty hard to read that.

Mandy Capehart
00:33:13 – 00:33:37
And then fast forward a couple of years the other day, she was saying to a friend, hey, guess what? I’m an only child, so you should come to my house because we can do anything and there’s no one taking our toys. We don’t have to include any siblings. And I just thought, thank God she’s embracing the positive because I was not an only child and yet we were years apart. And so it felt a lot like I had both the best of both worlds, I think.

Mandy Capehart
00:33:37 – 00:33:41
So it’s interesting. Yeah, that would be, that would be quite a book.

Victoria Volk
00:33:43 – 00:34:00
And I think, in grief recovery, we talk about replacing the loss. Right. And so as children, one of our first losses is usually an animal or a pet, or let’s say a dog, and then the parents say, well, that’s okay, Sally. We can just go to the pet store and get a new dog tomorrow. You know, like, right?

Victoria Volk
00:34:00 – 00:34:24
And so I was just thinking about that, like, when she asked for a sibling, it’s like, well, maybe we can start with a puppy, but then at the same time, it’s, it’s minimizing, right? The loss of hope, dreams and expectations that she had for her life, sharing it with the sibling. Right? And that’s gonna be a grief story she’ll grow into tube. And like you said, it’s I think that would be a very important book.

Mandy Capehart
00:34:25 – 00:34:38
We have to move into that space of both and. Right? We can both grieve the loss of a sibling and celebrate the life we have. They don’t cancel each other out. They don’t negate.

Mandy Capehart
00:34:38 – 00:35:04
When we were, let’s see. I was probably 14 when my stepmom’s dog died, and we loved Riley. She was the sweetest black lab, and she was full of energy, and she ran in front of a vehicle and didn’t survive. And it was probably 6 months later and that my we were grieving and my stepmom was really like, I miss Riley so much. I want another pet, but I don’t know if I’m ready.

Mandy Capehart
00:35:04 – 00:35:30
I had found golden retriever puppies for sale in the newspaper like that weekend. And we were on the way to go. Like our weekend plans were, do we go get this puppy or do we go see this musician at the park? This musician that I loved and I was convinced if I just met him at 14, he would want to marry me and we would just have to have a long courtship because I was a child. I did not marry that musician, but I did marry a musician.

Mandy Capehart
00:35:30 – 00:36:00
But anyway, I, like, remember my stepmom saying, I’m not sure if I’m ready, but I guess we can go meet these dogs. And when we got there, they were in squalor. Like my dad got in this guy’s face and said, if you don’t just hand me this puppy at this price point That I’m saying, because the guy wanted 1,000 of dollars for these dogs that were being abused. He said, I’m gonna report you to the city for illegally, breeding these dogs and keeping them, abusing them. And of course we reported them anyway, but we took home this, the runt of the litter that was covered in its own filth.

Mandy Capehart
00:36:00 – 00:36:30
And, and my stepmom realized I was ready not to replace Riley, but to invite an opportunity to love another little Cue another little creature and an experience that reciprocated affection. Right. And so tucker moved in with us and was amazing until he died as well. But, it’s, it’s remarkable. We, I know that story is so different.

Mandy Capehart
00:36:30 – 00:36:49
I know most people who would have partners can tell you stories of their partners who’ve just brought home another pet or something like that and said, don’t worry. Now you don’t have to be sad anymore. And again, it’s that minimizing of our experiences. Instead of recognizing we can integrate the experiences together for a more holistic and restorative and healing experience.

Victoria Volk
00:36:50 – 00:36:52
I look forward to that book you write.

Mandy Capehart
00:36:54 – 00:36:55
Both hands. Got it. Okay.

Victoria Volk
00:36:56 – 00:37:07
Well, and I think I think your daughter would be a beautiful you know, she could almost see herself as the character in that book. Right. And probably help you write it. Yeah., She’s a brilliant little writer.

Victoria Volk
00:37:07 – 00:37:07
She,

Mandy Capehart
00:37:09 – 00:37:24
She could write it herself. I think that that’s part of it is recognizing too, like, that is also her story, and that is something that she deserves to be the one the authority of. And as parents, it’s easy for us to say like, hey, we’ve got the perspective. We’ve got the age. We’ve got the experience.

Mandy Capehart
00:37:24 – 00:37:55
We know better. And that’s one thing with our kiddo that we’re trying to raise her with is a sense of autonomy where she can push back on us. She can ask questions that are really hard when they come to mind and that she can walk away from conversations with unsatisfying answers and not not to the degree where mom and dad said so, and that’s why. But this, like, that didn’t clarify or that didn’t answer anything because mom and dad don’t have the answer. They don’t act they’re not actually infallible.

Mandy Capehart
00:37:55 – 00:38:23
Okay. What does that mean for me? And at the same time, she’s like, she’s 9. We’re trying very hard to protect her from the enormity of all the things and keep her young and keep her innocent as much as possible as in this stage, but, but giving her a chance to just have a childhood. Like, she experienced losing her nana, when she was 1a half, and my mom had moved across the state to help care for her when I needed to go back to work.

Mandy Capehart
00:38:23 – 00:39:18
And so we had a very special relationship that my daughter doesn’t remember. And I think she deserves to experience what that mean what she has carried with her from that loss in her body and how it shows up for her. I mean, anxious kids are a dime a dozen these days with how life happens around us, but it’s a very special opportunity for us to teach them differently than we were taught and to help them understand how to move through anxiety and stress and fear of loss In ways that we really needed when we were young. And that means getting really uncomfortable and not being able to just fix it or answer it away or explain it away. There’s a lot of when you’re older, I’ll go more in-depth, but for now, please take this information and hold onto it as fact and trust me that, I’ll share more later, but

Victoria Volk
00:39:19 – 00:39:50
So far, Mandy has shared some beautiful bits of wisdom with us all, and she’s going to continue in a few moments with some practical tips. But first, I just wanted to share a word from my sponsor, MagicMind. Consistently creating new content isn’t easy, and it does require a lot of focus and energy. And it can be hard to balance them. Either you have too much energy and you feel amped up and, like, you’re ready to bounce off the walls instead of feeling dialed in.

Victoria Volk
00:39:50 – 00:40:28
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Victoria Volk
00:40:28 – 00:40:58
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Victoria Volk
00:40:58 – 00:41:19
Let’s get back to the episode so Mandy can share some more of her wonderful wisdom with us. That’s a great lead to, into my next question in people listening, who are just really walking through a really difficult time. What, what is, what are some practical things that you can suggest to those people.

Mandy Capehart
00:41:19 – 00:41:43
Yeah. Well, absolutely. As a somatic practitioner, I am very, very hopeful when people are willing to pay attention to the sensations that are happening in their body. Like, we’re really quick to disconnect, like I said, our heart and our mind and our body and our spirit because we think we can think our way through a problem. If that were the case, we would have no more problems.

Mandy Capehart
00:41:43 – 00:41:52
So, like, that’s an easy dismissal. No, girl. You can’t think through that problem. No arguments against, like, the mental exercises., I get it.

Mandy Capehart
00:41:52 – 00:42:31
There’s value in them sometimes, but, ruminating takes it too far. So I think that keeping ourselves humble enough to say, maybe there’s something in my body that I can sense that will bring me some wisdom. There are a lot of somatic practices that I share, on my Instagram page and through my podcast and the work that I do, because I want these practical Habits to become the things that we go to first. Right? So in our neuroplasticity world, we know our brain can be we know that even just imagining a thing can cause our nervous system to react.

Mandy Capehart
00:42:32 – 00:43:16
And so if that is true, then the inverse is true of the way that we heal and the way that we can experience positive things as well. So if I imagine a bear is standing in front of me threatening my family, my nervous system is going to say, hey, holy crap. You should probably strategize and run away. And so the same is true of peaceful experiences and moving through loss and even restoring relationship with people that we’ve lost. And so engaging the somatic, the body, the nervous system in ways that, might feel a little a little, uncomfortable or maybe a little have some skepticism attached to it is one of my favorite ways to bring people in because the the Feel Your Feelings crowd, which we’ve all done that.

Mandy Capehart
00:43:17 – 00:43:42
And it was very popular for a while. It, for me, I witnessed it transform into good vibes only, which is probably like the one phrase that I would eradicate from the common collective, if I could. I hear good vibes only. And I see I what I actually hear is my neutral vibes aren’t welcome. My human existence isn’t welcome here.

Mandy Capehart
00:43:44 – 00:44:11
So, yeah, I would say start with recognizing going beyond just trying to think your way through a problem or let me just feel this and then I’ll feel better. That’s not true, but Your body is in internalizing and holding all of the things that you’ve experienced and to invite those things gently and very carefully with guidance to the surface and to get some wisdom and just some compassion for the things you’ve carried is really important.

Victoria Volk
00:44:12 – 00:44:21
I wanna ask something. You just mentioned it. You said restoring of the relationship with someone you’ve lost. Can you elaborate on that?

Mandy Capehart
00:44:21 – 00:44:42
Yes I can., Okay. So this is going to, might be slightly activating for people who have been In situations and I’ll say this just spiritually or even like religious situations where we talk about prayer or we talk about, afterlife. So bear with me. That framework is where I come from.

Mandy Capehart
00:44:42 – 00:45:20
Right? I have a strong background in different Flavors of Western Christianity. But where I’m going with that is this idea that If a person is removed from us often, whether through divorce breakup, literally moving away, or death, we often think, okay, I have to find closure and it’s going to look like whatever Hollywood tells me it looks like. So we get this idea in our head about what closure is, and we pursue that. And when it doesn’t work, because it typically does not work, we give up.

Mandy Capehart
00:45:20 – 00:45:55
We just think, okay, I guess that’s it. The truth is, if I can imagine a scenario where my nervous system will literally calm back down from a bear in front of me, then does it not stand a reason that I can imagine a connection to the person I’ve lost, a conversation with the person I’ve lost, not to deify them, not to put them on a pedestal and say they were perfect and did no wrong, and I’m the problem. And now I’m having better thoughts about myself. That’s not it. But to the degree where we can say, I’m gonna confront.

Mandy Capehart
00:45:55 – 00:46:16
Here’s an example. My mom with all of her heart led a very private life. There were things after she died that I learned about. There were things as she, as a teenager that I learned about that I could never about or ask about. At one point I was wrestling with something and realized, oh, this is connected to that story.

Mandy Capehart
00:46:16 – 00:46:41
I know about my mom’s life, But I’m not in a place where I can call my grandmother or my aunt or my dad. I don’t have capacity to have a conversation and have them worry about protecting her reputation or her experience. Right. She told me what she told me because she needed that was what I was welcome to be prepared YouTube. But what I knew had affected me and I was carrying it and I needed to process.

Mandy Capehart
00:46:41 – 00:47:19
And so I sat down and started to write a letter about I’m pissed off at you for not sharing and being honest, or I’m hurt that you didn’t share this, or I see that you’re human, but, like, why couldn’t you trust me? Whatever whatever the feelings were. What I ended with was this experience that ended up being verbal. I didn’t write it all down, but I was crying and feeling seen and held by my mom unable to respond. I wasn’t imagining what I ended with wasn’t this experience of, like high spirituality where I would say, oh my gosh.

Mandy Capehart
00:47:19 – 00:47:51
I’m healed from that wound with my mom just not disclosing something. I ended this cathartic expression of just not being able to be honest about what I’ve been carrying. All of the emotion of feeling untrusted and feeling unseen or feeling unworthy of hearing this hard thing in my mom’s life. Even the losses connected to it because, you know, I learn a piece of information and my brain goes to, well, what did that mean for me if that had happened? If it hadn’t happened now in the in between, what does it mean for me?

Mandy Capehart
00:47:51 – 00:48:10
All of those pieces that felt so open ended didn’t necessarily feel like closure. They felt like integrated. It felt like I could ask those questions and not fall to pieces. It felt like I could approach it with a sense of clarity but, yeah, there are still uncertainties attached. I’m not gonna have an answer that’s satisfying.

Mandy Capehart
00:48:11 – 00:48:33
I’m not going to resolve it. I, however, notice this piece of my mom’s relationship with me has lightened. When I think of that moment. When I think of that memory with my mom, that information withheld, I’m not having this sharp pressure. So part of somatic work is about learning to notice the sensations in your body.

Mandy Capehart
00:48:33 – 00:49:16
And sometimes it’s really hard to describe them, which honestly means that people are usually onto something there. And even now as I’m like talking about this, I can feel this like finger pressure, amount of pressure, like right behind my sternum, right around my heart. And it’s still less now than it was when I think about how I felt, what, 16 learning this piece of information and feeling trapped and not feeling Able to even talk about like, even as I’m thinking 16, my throat is starting to like get tight and want to close-up because I couldn’t talk about it. And I didn’t have that freedom to come into a place where it was a safe thing to converse about. So, yes, I have lost my mom and no, we never talked about it.

Mandy Capehart
00:49:16 – 00:49:59
And yet here I am talking about it in a way that I don’t actually need to imagine that she’s sitting there with me. You know, there’s this, practice called the empty chair in therapeutic Modalities where we invite the person to that chair, or we talk to the chair as if the person is with us. It doesn’t have to even be that activating because that is a hard Practice., It can be as simple as just letting myself be really honest and vulnerable with how what I’ve experienced is true and there were ugly parts of it. And I’m going to for me, vulnerability is accepting but those ugly painful parts are true and present and not trying to minimize or push them away.

Mandy Capehart
00:50:01 – 00:50:18
And I think You know, it’s a really difficult place to get to, but we don’t have to start with doing it in our own internal work. Right. We can start with an external relationship where we’re looking for a little bit of understanding or integration
when we know we’re not going to get answers at the end of it.

Victoria Volk
00:50:20 – 00:50:52
In grief recovery, we talk about and that really just reminds me there’s an exercise that we do where you do just that really. It, and, and it’s because you can have all these feelings and not get the closure. Right. And you’re stuck in emotional jail. But if you can get to that place through the way, the way you described, the somatic work that you do with people or through the grief recovery work with me, that’s that it’s possible, Right?

Victoria Volk
00:50:52 – 00:51:12
That is possible that that emotional energy, because emotions have energy, right? Can be lessened, enlightened, and worked through and filled with a fresh, newer perspective and maybe a whole lot of compassion yourself and the other person.

Mandy Capehart
00:51:12 – 00:51:35
Absolutely., I mean, emotions are energy in motion. They are literally little tiny vibrations that we’re sensing in our body that our brain is making a thought about, is making sense of, and then we spit it out and we call it a feeling, but it’s not. It’s you know, the feeling is the physical part. And the more we can allow ourselves to like, oh, maybe I misunderstand human emotion.

Mandy Capehart
00:51:35 – 00:51:53
Maybe I don’t know myself as well as I think. Maybe I’ve really protected myself from having to get into those vulnerable, uncomfortable feelings. Even this morning, I was talking with my husband, in response to 2 conversations yesterday about people who say, well, I’m not angry. I’m not angry. I don’t have a right to be angry.

Mandy Capehart
00:51:53 – 00:52:13
I have nothing to be angry about. I’m like, oh, but you do. You do have a right to be angry. You deserve to be angry, but also your relationship to anger might need to shift because if you’ve minimized it and disqualified yourself, you’re missing the fact that anger is a secondary emotion. And it’s really protecting you from those more risky emotions.

Mandy Capehart
00:52:13 – 00:52:41
There’s more vulnerable emotions behind it that maybe pointing to the fact that you’ve been invalidated or treated unjustly., Right? Our relationship to our emotions, but specifically, the uncomfortable emotions, is often so muted when we grieve that we don’t even notice we’re muting our access to the comfortable positive emotions at the same time. Right? We just we feel numb, and then we say, well, I don’t have emotions when No numb is an emotion too.

Mandy Capehart
00:52:41 – 00:52:57
Numbness is a feeling that has information for us. And we just get to a point where we’re willing to say, okay, well, what are you trying to teach me?, That then The floodgates open and it feels cathartic instead of just a fear driven. I’m never going to stop crying if I start. So I just won’t start.

Victoria Volk
00:52:58 – 00:53:25
I’m in a Voxer group with some, some friends, from all over the world. And I happen to have listened to one of my friends. She called it a rant and she was very she was angry about something and I heard it. And after I heard it, she had recalled it and I called her out on it and she’s like, I, you know, I just recalled it because you know, it, it doesn’t serve anybody. It doesn’t, it’s not helpful.

Victoria Volk
00:53:25 – 00:53:43
And I said, oh, wait a minute, I said, you have every right to be angry. Anger is a valid emotion. And it needs to come up and out. And unless you’re ruminating on it, and you’re telling every Tom, Dick and Harry the same story and you ruminating on it. Right?

Victoria Volk
00:53:43 – 00:53:54
Like, that’s not helpful. Like that doesn’t serve you. But to get it up and out and like, like, let that emotional charge go. Yeah. That’s helpful.

Victoria Volk
00:53:54 – 00:53:57
That’s serving you. Don’t minimize that. Right?

Mandy Capehart
00:53:57 – 00:53:58
Yeah. It’s like,

Victoria Volk
00:53:58 – 00:54:02
She didn’t mean she didn’t mean my permission. Obviously. Right. Right.

Mandy Capehart
00:54:03 – 00:54:29
Giving you having your permission to be a witness is a big deal, and I think we, you know, every time I hear someone say, oh, well, that’s not a helpful thing. Actually, it is. It’s helpful because it allows you to be honest. It allows you to be seen and known. And if you are translating that it is not helpful for you to be seen and known, then there’s a lot more work for you to do, not with any judgment attached, but just, hey, that sounds like a pretty painful belief that you’ve carried.

Mandy Capehart
00:54:30 – 00:55:11
What’s possible if it’s not true? What’s possible if the inverse is true that you are worth known being known and being seen, and your anger is worth expressing what’s possible for you. I can’t tell you how many grief clients I have that conversation becomes the focus for months because there’s so much to unwind around how we have minimized and invalidated our personhood and our humanity just to belong and survive in places where we’re not going to belong. This goes back to my community loss. I was telling you about like realizing that I only belonged in this large community because I made myself fit.

Mandy Capehart
00:55:11 – 00:55:25
I made myself take on the shape that was acceptable is why when I said I’m no longer going to look sound and act like you guys, do I still belong? They said, absolutely not. No. You don’t. Okay.

Mandy Capehart
00:55:25 – 00:55:39
Does that mean all that we shared was meaningless? No. But it does help me recognize pieces of myself that I sacrificed and decide, was it worth it? Ultimately, no. No.

Victoria Volk
00:55:41 – 00:55:44
But there is no failure in learning either.

Mandy Capehart
00:55:45 – 00:55:45
No. There’s like a failing.

Victoria Volk
00:55:48 – 00:56:08
Our best lessons come in failure, right? That’s why it’s not failure. I was at a wrestling term that my when my son wrestled me was just a young squirt. And on the back of the t-shirts for the wrestling team, this other team, they had, I can’t remember exactly how it was written, but something to the effect of failure is only learning. Yeah, absolutely.

Victoria Volk
00:56:08 – 00:56:11
That’s Yeah. I’ve never forgotten it.

Mandy Capehart
00:56:11 – 00:56:14
Just education. Just information., Yep. This information.

Victoria Volk
00:56:15 – 00:56:22
Is there anything else that you would like to share today. I feel like we could talk even longer, but I want to be respectful of your time.

Mandy Capehart
00:56:24 – 00:56:44
Let’s see. I think the last thing I would invite people into is just giving themselves permission to take up space, might look different than you think. It’s not saying, oh, I need a weekend away. I need to go to the spa. Giving ourselves permission to take up space means learning that self-care is simple.

Mandy Capehart
00:56:44 – 00:56:58
It’s accessible to everyone. Often I say the first step of self-care is a glass of water, right? You take for granted the fact that you can access clean water. So for the moment, you’re probably dehydrated. If you’ve cried today, you’re probably dehydrated.

Mandy Capehart
00:56:58 – 00:57:53
If you’ve pretended you haven’t cried today, or you’re not sad, you’re probably dehydrated. Just go give your skin some love, take a drink of water, a big glass, and start with this baseline understanding that the simple approach to who you are as a human, as my husband so eloquently puts it as a meat bag, as a body, go restore a little piece of that and see if it doesn’t change how you’re feeling because we, were, I think we complicate self-care and, and honoring the simplicity of our personhood because we’re mental creatures. We overthink things. We create robots and incredibly complex Mathematical systems to try and solve all the world’s problems when really, maybe we just need some clean water and a nap. I’m a I’m a big fan of that.

Mandy Capehart
00:57:53 – 00:58:03
So if you’re feeling a little like too muchness, clean water, a glass of water, and a nap is really, for me, a smart place to start.

Victoria Volk
00:58:05 – 00:58:14
I am gonna circle this conversation back to houseplants. Okay. Because this is the best., I don’t know. What what’s the word?

Victoria Volk
00:58:15 – 00:58:21
Segue. Segway. Thank you. And to bringing the conversation back to houseplants, because what do houseplants need?

Mandy Capehart
00:58:21 – 00:58:29
Water, sunlight, and something’s good. Absolutely. Yes. I love that saying that you’re basically a houseplant with emotions. Yes.

Mandy Capehart
00:58:29 – 00:58:45
Get some sunlight, get some water, get a little food occasionally, clear the cobwebs. Do you have fungus gnats? Alright. There’s a there’s a medicine for that. There’s a combination of care and, and lendliness and things you can do, and you’re going to lose some leaves.

Mandy Capehart
00:58:45 – 00:58:50
Yep. That’s a good metaphor. And it’s okay.

Victoria Volk
00:58:50 – 00:58:56
And if they start to turn and if they start to turn yellow, yeah. Check the soil, right? Yeah. I’m looking

Mandy Capehart
00:58:56 – 00:59:11
at the plants in this office right now. There’s probably let’s see. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. There are 14 houseplants in my office right now. Half of them are happy and thriving.

Mandy Capehart
00:59:11 – 00:59:26
One of them is my oldest houseplant ever. It’s like 20 years old, and it has brown spots and it loses leaves all the time. And this year after like 20 years of owning it. It started a second sprout for the first time ever. I started asking myself, what am I doing differently?

Mandy Capehart
00:59:27 – 00:59:39
Because this is this is wild. It’s never done that. It’s just gone straight up and lost some leaves and had some leaves at the top. It looks like a weird palm tree. I can’t even remember what Parietal it is.

Mandy Capehart
00:59:39 – 00:59:58
And I realized, oh, I just started giving it more attention on a consistent basis. Not just the oh, God. I forgot to water. Because for all intents and purposes, as much as I wish I was, I’m a very My ADHD comes in strong. It’s probably why I had so many houseplants at the one point.

Mandy Capehart
00:59:59 – 01:00:20
I just don’t I’m not consistent with them. But when I realized I’ve just been consistent with this one recently and it’s beginning to thrive and new things are growing in it. I thought that, yes. That’ll preach. That is a metaphor right there that if we can attend to ourselves in a consistent and loving and simple manner, something new just might take root.

Victoria Volk
01:00:22 – 01:00:28
That’s a beautiful way to end this podcast. I knew this podcast could be about houseplants.

Mandy Capehart
01:00:29 – 01:00:31
You were right. You were a 100% right.

Victoria Volk
01:00:33 – 01:00:53
Oh, I trust that everything that came out to be shared was shared and I would love to have you back. I think we discussed this before we started to record about having you back on to talk about Enneagram and how that relates to grief and the different Enneagram types. And so I would love to explore that with you in a future episode.

Mandy Capehart
01:00:53 – 01:01:03
Absolutely. I love that topic. I think Enneagram work is so easily aligned with grief work and recovery and integration. So absolutely.

Victoria Volk
01:01:04 – 01:01:36
And I’m like I shared with you too, I’m deep diving into human design. And that’s, you know, comes down to your birth time and place and where, where the, where the stars were and all of that at the, at the time of your birth. And, it’s been a huge, I had a lot of shifts in my perspective towards relationships, just in exploring my own design. And, so it’s information. It’s another tool in discovering who we are and learning about ourselves, and how we show up in our grief.

Victoria Volk
01:01:37 – 01:01:38
Yeah. And otherwise.

Mandy Capehart
01:01:38 – 01:02:11
And also too, I just remembered as you were talking, I will tell you that anybody who wants to get like a head start on what grief and Enneagram work together can look like, I’ve seen the benefit of pushing into those uncomfortable places and teaching both myself and my nervous system, how to remain aligned and resting even amid what feels like a threat to my health and my mental stability. Grief can disrupt all of that. And yet it can also be the doorway into like binding restoration in that area as well.

Victoria Volk
01:02:11 – 01:02:15
And where can people reach out to you if they want to learn more?

Mandy Capehart
01:02:15 – 01:02:34
Yeah. So good. So everything is at Mandy Capehart. So my website, mandycapehart.com Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Pinterest, TikTok, but barely all the things, at Mandy Capehart. And then The Restorative Grief Project is my free online coaching group that is posted, excuse me, hosted on Facebook.

Mandy Capehart
01:02:35 – 01:03:18
And it’s just an environment where we can practice grieving together and practice supporting one another and learn how to respond when people hit us platitudes and and learn how to invite our beloved people into the world of grief support without criticizing how they’ve shown up or not shown up in the past. Like, this is an environment and a place where we just hold space for each other and learn what that means to practice breathing with intention. So, Yeah. I love getting messages and DMs and new connections online about these really uncomfortable conversations because they deserve. It turns out every single one of us deserves to have space to fall apart.

Mandy Capehart
01:03:19 – 01:03:21
So that’s the aim of all of it.

Victoria Volk
01:03:22 – 01:03:28
I love that. And I will link to all that in the show notes. Awesome. And thank you so much for your time today, Mandy.

Mandy Capehart
01:03:28 – 01:03:32
Yeah, absolutely. Victoria, thank you for having me. It’s been my pleasure.

Victoria Volk
01:03:32 – 01:03:37
And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.

Ep 176 Kiki Tyler | Best Friend Loss & A Midlife Awakening

Kiki Tyler | Best Friend Loss & A Midlife Awakening

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY: 

In the symphony of life, each person’s journey hits a unique set of notes, creating a melody that resonates with their experiences.

Welcome to another episode of Grieving Voices, where we explore the therapeutic and transformative power of sound healing. Today’s guest is the incredibly talented sound healer, Kiki Tyler, who takes us on a journey through her personal story of grief and how it led her to discover her purpose in helping others heal.

Kiki Tyler is a renowned sound healer known for creating immersive sonic landscapes that promote healing and self-discovery. She harmonizes body, mind, and spirit using various instruments through resonating frequencies. Her intuitive approach and extensive knowledge allow her to facilitate deeply restorative experiences.

In This Episode:

  • Learn about Kiki’s transition from experiencing deep personal loss to finding solace in sound therapy.
  • Hear the poignant tale of how losing her best friend inspired her to become a healer.
  • Understand the importance of allowing oneself to grieve openly without societal pressure.
  • Discover how grief evolves from sharp pain to fond memories that inspire growth.
  • Gain insights into navigating friendship dynamics after loss and honoring those connections moving forward.
  • Learn tips on how you can help loved ones cope with their losses based on real-life experience.
  • How encountering multiple losses prompted significant lifestyle changes, including setting boundaries for better work-life balance.
  • An overview of distance Reiki sessions and virtual sound baths – demystifying quantum healing across physical spaces.

Takeaways:
Kiki’s story encourages us to reflect on how we handle loss within our networks — supporting colleagues during their times of need fosters deeper connections and community strength. It also poses a question worth pondering: How do we honor ourselves and others amidst adversity?

Remember — It’s okay to feel and express emotions; vulnerability isn’t weakness—it’s human strength unveiled amidst adversity.

RESOURCES:

  • Reiki
  • Biofield Tuning
  • Episode Sponsor: Magic Mind | Use the code “GRIEVINGVOICES” to receive one month free with a 3-month subscription. This special promotion is only for January!

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: 

 

Victoria Volk:
(00:01:37 – 00:02:16)
Thank you for tuning in to Grieving Voices. Today, my guest is Kiki Tyler. She is a sound healer known for her transformative ability to weave intricate sonic landscapes that guide individuals on journeys of healing, expansion and self-discovery. With a deep understanding of the therapeutic power of sound vibrations, Kiki creates immersive soundscapes using an array of instruments, resonating frequencies that harmonize the body, mind, and spirit. Her intuitive approach, combined with her knowledge of sound therapy techniques, allows Kiki to facilitate deeply restorative experiences, helping our clients release tension, restore balance, and unlock their inner potential.

Victoria Volk:
(00:02:16 – 00:02:57)
Through her gentle and compassionate guidance, Kiki Sound Healing Sessions offer a sacred space for profound healing and inner alignment. Thank you so much for sharing that beautiful bio with me and for the work that you do because, clearly, it’s needed because who doesn’t need some inner alignment, right, these days in a world that seems very out of alignment? What I’ve come to know even for myself personally and majority of people who come to my podcast, their work is from a place of pain often from pain to purpose. Right? And, that’s what I often see.

Victoria Volk:
(00:02:57 – 00:03:02)
And so what led you to doing the work that you’re doing today.

Kiki Tyler
(00:03:03 – 00:03:31)
It was definitely from a place of pain and intense grief, and it was one that I was in denial from, very close friend of mine, we had been close friends, best friends for almost 9 years. Traveled around, did fitness events together. During 2020, she was diagnosed out of the blue with stage four lung cancer. Doctors gave her 2 weeks, and she said, I’m gonna hang around a little bit longer.

Kiki Tyler
(00:03:31 – 00:03:50)
I wanna vote this year. And she was she was stubborn. She hung around for a little over 4 months, which I got to spend a lot of time with her during the lockdown. We both were safe. She took hospice into our own hands and kind of just maintained and managed her pain, and she made it fun.

Kiki Tyler
(00:03:50 – 00:04:12)
Like, she had her own visiting hours. She used cat means, like, it was her personality through and through all the way up to the end. We’re actually coming up on her 3 year anniversary of her passing. She passed peacefully in her sleep on December 12th. And I was close to their husband and worked closely with him kind of just clearing things out, packing up for things, donating things.

Kiki Tyler
(00:04:12 – 00:04:30)
So through all of that, I didn’t realize I was in denial. I was shoving everything down and showing up for him. And plus the lockdown, and we couldn’t have the traditional funeral or life celebration or say any type of goodbyes. It was a very unique time for me.

Victoria Volk
(00:04:31 – 00:04:36)
I’m just trying to wrap my head around because she would have been quite young at the time.

Kiki Tyler
(00:04:37 – 00:04:37)
55.

Victoria Volk
(00:04:38 – 00:04:41)
I mean, I’m looking at you, and I think you look really young.

Kiki Tyler
(00:04:42 – 00:04:53)
Thank you. I yes. I’ll be 43 in March. But, yeah, she was like the older another older sister for me. We just it. It was it was great.

Kiki Tyler
(00:04:53 – 00:05:00)
She’s here in spirit. She’s actually one of my spirit guides. Purple she dyed her hair purple. It was one of her favorite colors. She was a huge Baltimore Ravens fan.

Kiki Tyler
(00:05:00 – 00:05:25)
And, usually, there’s purple, purple orbs or things when I’m doing healing sessions or when I’m working with my sound bowls. Like, I can always feel her here. So that was a beautiful transition, but, I’m kind of skipping ahead. I had all that denial, and I didn’t know what I would to do with it. I and then I went through anger, and a girlfriend had invited me to a women’s retreat.

Kiki Tyler
(00:05:25 – 00:05:37)
You know, what the heck? I’m tired of being cooped up. Like, I need to do something.
We were all safe and distanced. It was outdoors mainly, and that’s when I had my 1st reiki and sound experience.

Kiki Tyler
(00:05:37 – 00:06:05)
And we were we did a beautiful sunrise yoga world, and there were reiki walking around asking if you wanted to receive. And I was like, I don’t know what it is, but sure. And it was like the tap had opened, and I was just sobbing and crying, and it was the waterworks. I was ugly crying laying on the floor, but it was like this huge weight had been lifted off my heart and my shoulders. And I kinda opened my eyes, and there were tears coming down the practitioner’s eyes.

Kiki Tyler
(00:06:05 – 00:06:17)
Like, she was an empath, so she was feeling what I was feeling. And I remember connecting with her immediately afterwards. And what was that? How can I learn more about it? Like, I’ve never experienced anything.

Kiki Tyler
(00:06:17 – 00:06:39)
It was intense, but it was also very liberating. And the other woman was a sound practitioner, and she was doing, chakra tuning, like alignments with her tuning forks. And she was doing little 15 minutes, and I was like, sure. Let’s try it. And, you know, I had a headache from all the crying and dehydration.

Kiki Tyler
(00:06:39 – 00:06:55)
I was about a 5, 6 hour drive, so I had low back pain. I didn’t tell her any of this. She intuitively scans me, pulls out her tuning forks, and picks 3 that that she was drawn to work with and she’s playing them over me. Headache was gone. Low back pain was gone.

Kiki Tyler
(00:06:55 – 00:07:04)
I slept like a baby that night. It was amazing. So, of course, same thing. What was that? What did I just experience?

Kiki Tyler
(00:07:04 – 00:07:09)
How can I get more of it, and how can I share this with the world? This needs to be, like, mainstream knowledge.

Victoria Volk
(00:07:10 – 00:07:34)
My story too, I fell into reiki and it finds you. Right? I think when the student is ready, the teacher appears and then, that’s I kinda fell into it by accident too. I put accident in quotation. But I just wanna share this because I’m still thinking about what that would have been like for her and your your friend and to be, I mean, relatively young.

Victoria Volk
(00:07:34 – 00:07:44)
And to be told, you have 2 weeks. Like, 2 weeks? How many people I mean, like, what did she take that for an answer?

Kiki Tyler
(00:07:45 – 00:08:01)
It was hard. Throughout that period, we had just said goodbye to another dear friend of ours who passed from breast cancer who had made it through 3 different rounds of chemo. And they were also really close. She was going and she saw her friend do that. And that could have been an option, but it would have only given her a handful of months.

Kiki Tyler
(00:08:01 – 00:08:17)
And she saw what it did, and she’s like, that’s not worth a few extra months. Like, I want to be happy. I want people to remember me this way, and I don’t want them to see me whether it way like that. And I kinda wanted to go out on my terms, and we did different pop-up classes. We visited her apartment complex.

Kiki Tyler
(00:08:18 – 00:08:29)
She was just a really bright light, like, throughout the whole process. And she was there for me. She was there for other she was worried about every of it. She’s like, I’m okay. I’m not in pain.

Kiki Tyler
(00:08:29 – 00:08:53)
I’ve made my peace with it. Worried about my husband and my cats, but other than that, like, she reconnected with family, made sure that she saw the people she wanted to see, made amends with the people she wanted to make amends with. She was in a really like, I very strong. I have a lot of respect for her.  I don’t think I I would handle it that way, but you don’t know until you’re in that situation.

Kiki Tyler
(00:08:53 – 00:09:19)
Between 2018 and 2020, we had lost 4 different instructor friends to cancer of some kind or another. So it’s we I always do the fundraisers when it comes around, whether it’s breast cancer, colon whatever it is. Sick. We go and we dance and we would be part of them, but that’s when I had a lot of people reach out and say, are you gonna do 1 in her honor or her memory? And the questions are, what are you gonna do?

Kiki Tyler
(00:09:19 – 00:09:35)
How are you celebrating? And a lot of people reached out to me because we were the we were the dynamic duo. Like, we would co-teach and and host a lot of events together. And I was like, guys, she doesn’t want this. She just wants to hang out with her friends, visit her, have a coffee.

Kiki Tyler
(00:09:35 – 00:09:56)
She doesn’t want like, if there are no medical bills, she’s fine. She’s not gonna need help with anything, thankfully, again, she was very blessed in that area. And she stayed at home, so she didn’t even have traditional hospice care. She had a nurse come once or twice a week, manage her pain med meds, and that was about it. But, yeah, very young.

Victoria Volk
(00:09:57 – 00:10:12)
You know, not a lot of people would have the wherewithal to choose to have a death that they want.  And do you think it was just the work that she had been doing? Because she had been doing the similar thing as you, I imagine.

Kiki Tyler
(00:10:14 – 00:10:39)
I don’t I don’t know. I know she and I talked a lot when our friend Donna had passed, and it was really hard for both of us to watch and she was withering away. I mean, I don’t know the dosage of the chemo, but she was on her 4th round, and she had lost, like, 60 or 70 pounds. She would had very low energy. And I know Sonia was very much like, I don’t want that for myself.

Kiki Tyler
(00:10:39 – 00:10:54)
I don’t want my friends and family to see me go through that. I don’t wanna see me go she was just very clear on what she wanted and didn’t want, and she controlled the narrative of her exit and her final chapter.

Victoria Volk
(00:10:54 – 00:11:14)
And I think if we all can take anything from you sharing that is that if you have an opportunity to do so, to not be afraid to speak up for yourself. Right? Yes. Have the kind of death that you want to have. Because I know that can probably be very difficult for the for the loved ones.

Victoria Volk
(00:11:14 – 00:11:21)
Right? Like, do the chemo. Do the treatment. I want you know, I don’t want you to they don’t want their loved one to go. Right?

Victoria Volk
(00:11:21 – 00:11:24)
So I can’t imagine. I’m sure she got a lot of pushback maybe.

Kiki Tyler
(00:11:25 – 00:11:36)
She did. She controlled her socials and how people communicated, and I was kind of a little bit of a buffer. We talked about that. I was like, how can I help you? Even just announcing it and sharing with certain people.

Kiki Tyler
(00:11:36 – 00:12:00)
She told her close family, but she asked if I felt comfortable sharing with people and just making announcements to more of our closer circle. And I think that opened the door for people to reach out to me instead of her, but it was why isn’t she getting chemo? Why isn’t she fighting? I wish she would have changed her you know? And I know and understand now those suggestions recommend they were coming from a place of love, but also fear.

Kiki Tyler
(00:12:00 – 00:12:15)
Like, they didn’t want to lose her. And I don’t know what was going through their mind. I just knew what going through my mind. I wanted her to have the happiest transition possible. So if I can make that happen, and she didn’t want parties or she didn’t want fundraisers.

Kiki Tyler
(00:12:15 – 00:12:19)
She didn’t wanna go to chemo. Like, I wanted to honor her wishes.

Victoria Volk
(00:12:20 – 00:12:30)
Some people may be wondering after she passed in with the anniversaries and things, how do you personally honor her memory?

Kiki Tyler
(00:12:31 – 00:13:10)
I mean, she’s with me every day. It’s hard for me to teach a dance class where I don’t think of her. I actually had to take a break for about 6 months from teaching. I thought I was not gonna teach again because of how raw and real. The grief was once I finally did allow it out and up, but It brings me joy.

Kiki Tyler
(00:13:11 – 00:13:35)
It brings others joy, and that’s one of the things we both wanted to do together. And I used to not even be able to cry in public, and now I’m crying on a podcast. So progress, It’s okay. It’s okay to feel. It’s not a bad thing.

Kiki Tyler
(00:13:35 – 00:14:01)
It’s not a sign of weakness. I mean, I sat on the couch and I cried when we cried together, just absorbing the weight and the gravity of the news. I don’t think, as a society, we allow people that time to process. We kinda wanna rush through the pain. We wanna rush through the hard parts, and that’s where the most growth happened.

Kiki Tyler
(00:14:02 – 00:14:18)
I wouldn’t be where I am today. I wouldn’t have unlocked and reconnected with the gifts that I have, if I didn’t go through those experiences, not saying I want them or wish for them, but I needed to go through those shadows to really appreciate and honor the light.

Victoria Volk
(00:14:20 – 00:14:36)
That’s beautifully said, and thank you for sharing. And just so people listening, it’s not like you’re never gonna be sad. Right? Like, the sadness doesn’t go away. You still would rather be teaching with your friend.

Victoria Volk
(00:14:36 – 00:14:53)
Right?  Like, that’s not gonna go away. But can you describe how it’s different now versus how the grief is different now than how it was maybe even after a year, you know, the magical year.

Kiki Tyler
(00:14:53 – 00:15:07)
Right. I feel like mine was 2 years, but that’s because I stunted my grief personal, and I was in denial. So, it does get I don’t even wanna say easier. It’s it gets different. Right.

Kiki Tyler
(00:15:07 – 00:15:18)
You look back and you remember things in fondness and the pain isn’t as sharp. You know? You miss them. Like, there are times I’ve gone to text her and I’m like, alright. I’m just gonna talk to you.

Kiki Tyler
(00:15:18 – 00:15:29)
You’re here. I know you’re here. You know? Like, I have voice memos or, you know, Facebook has the time hop or the time memories that come up. And I’m like, oh, that was such a fun dance.

Kiki Tyler
(00:15:29 – 00:15:37)
I’m gonna put that in. Like, I saw that. It’s for a reason. I miss you. I love you, and I’m gonna share it again.

Kiki Tyler
(00:15:38 – 00:15:46)
But, some days it just hits you, and you have this sharp memory and you just wanna hug them.

Victoria Volk
(00:15:50 – 00:16:22)
You know, and best friend loss, even friend loss, is something that I wouldn’t say it’s minimized, but it definitely doesn’t get the attention that other losses get, death of a spouse or significant other or a child. Yeah. Of course, a child or a parent, grandparent, or what have you., But friendships, how would you describe how what your friendship meant to you and the importance of friendship in someone’s life.

Kiki Tyler
(00:16:25 – 00:16:54)
That’s a really deep question. I have friendships on and I don’t even like to say levels. They’re just you have different people in your life, and you can go to them for different types of support, different types of advice. She was that all around girlfriend or sister that I could call, and I knew she’d support me. I knew she’d call me on my BS.

Kiki Tyler
(00:16:54 – 00:17:26)
She was not the I’m gonna tell you what you want to hear person. She’s like, I’m here for you, but we’re not gonna sit in this type friendship. And It’s been hard to I don’t wanna say replace, but to fill those shoes, and I avoided making new friends. After that, I still stayed close with my current friends, but there was this, is there ever gonna be anybody close to her?  And it’s not to replace her.

Kiki Tyler
(00:17:26 – 00:17:55)
That’s not the intention. But when I started to make new friends, particularly in the the spiritual and the healing space, I realized there were more women out there like that and started to open myself up to deeper friendships and let them all back down because I don’t wanna get hurt again. And I was I was only blocking myself from those connections. And we’re we’re human. We’re people.

Kiki Tyler
(00:17:55 – 00:18:37)
We gather. We need that socialization. And as much as I love my alone time and I’m an introvert and I like to grab a book and snuggle with my cats, like, I also like to sit and have cacao with my girlfriends and, like, talk about really deep, cool woo woo stuff too and sound healing and reiki and, like, let’s feel better. What hurts? You know, and we just are all brainstorming instead of sitting watching dumpster fires and getting sucked into that lower vibe energy, and she was definitely that high vibe, alright, where you and the same she would do it with her students, and she was just genuine with every single person in her life.

Kiki Tyler
(00:18:37 – 00:19:00)
It didn’t matter if you were an acquaintance, she saw you once a week, once a month, once a quarter. Like, she would just treat everybody the same, and she’s she’s had a lot of admirable qualities. So I remember those skills and traits that she shared and showed me, and I honor her by emulating that. And sometimes think, what would Sonia do or say?

Victoria Volk
(00:19:03 – 00:19:24)
You know, so she had a spouse, has a spouse, who was left behind. Right?, Mhmm. How did what can you share with listeners on how, as her best friend, how you supported him and her family and if you have if you learned anything from that experience that you can share.

Kiki Tyler
(00:19:26 – 00:20:06)
Yeah. It was the 2 of them and their 2 cats, and her father had passed, and I believe her mother had, so I never met her parents. She was close with his mom, and she had just reconnected with her son. So he was starting to come back into the picture, and her son and husband developed a very fast friendship and started walking every week, where they spread her ashes. And I remember after we finally packed up and cleaned out a lot of her clothing and everything, and and cleared out that room.

Kiki Tyler
(00:20:06 – 00:20:43)
He as soon as his lease was up, he moved into a new apartment, which I mean, I spent 20 years in that place, so I couldn’t even imagine what it was like for him. But we had several, like, brunch dates, lunches, just messaging him and reaching out. He had a very good support system hit with his family and her son as well. And, he unfortunately  passed of a heart attack earlier this year, which was  they say it could be broken heart. I mean, it was tough.

Kiki Tyler
(00:20:44 – 00:21:07)
But I had reached out and we were seeing each other less and less, and I don’t know if I didn’t take that personally. I don’t know if that was too much of a memory for him, and he needed that space. But I promised her I would check in and reach out and at least do what I could on my side, but it was hard. It was hard for him. He would we try to make light of it, but, yeah, we sat and cried a bit too.

Kiki Tyler
(00:21:08 – 00:21:08)
Yeah.

Victoria Volk
(00:21:08 – 00:21:24)
After losing so many, you said 4 different friends in a short period of time, did that how did that make you did that cause you to change anything in your life or cause you to look at your health differently or your life differently?

Kiki Tyler
(00:21:25 – 00:21:47)
Yes. It really helped me create boundaries. And before that, I was very much a yes person, a people pleaser and a workaholic to the point where I wasn’t seen as much of my friends as they would have liked or I would have liked. And it was easy to say, oh, but I have work. But I could have basically said no.

Kiki Tyler
(00:21:47 – 00:22:34)

So there was a lot more no. There was a lot more, I’m not gonna sub as many classes because I’m gonna spend quality time with my loved ones, whether that be family, friends, girlfriends, what have you. More more time with myself to dial into what I felt were my priorities and really sit with, are these mine? Is this something that was planted whether it be from Parents or other parental figure society. It doesn’t matter where it came from, but just really revisiting my belief system and just kind of checking things to make sure I wasn’t you know, we talked about alignment at the beginning of this, and it’s so quick and easy to get just a little a little off.

Kiki Tyler
(00:22:34 – 00:22:51)
But if you if it goes unchecked, now all of a sudden, you’re all the way over here. But if you catch it, it’s easier to bring it back to the center line. I mean, it’s like, we take better care of our cars and our instruments than we do our bodies. Right? You get that gotta get that oil changed.

Kiki Tyler
(00:22:51 – 00:23:11)
You gotta get this the all the fluids and everything fixed. When you have instruments or a piano that’s out of tune, you’re calling somebody to fix it, so it sounds right. But we often ignore our our creaks and cracks and, like, our body sending that signals. So just slowing down was a big thing for me because I was go, go, go, go, go. 100 miles an hour.

Kiki Tyler
(00:23:11 – 00:23:15)
Right? Don’t wanna stop. Don’t wanna think. Don’t wanna slow down. And it’s easier.

Kiki Tyler
(00:23:15 – 00:23:16)
You don’t have to feel.

Victoria Volk
(00:23:16 – 00:23:16)
Mhmm.

Kiki Tyler
(00:23:16 – 00:23:46)
And feeling that the feeling can be painful. And I avoided the pain, and I avoided the darkness, and I didn’t want to do the work. I kept telling myself, I’m not ready, but things like this hit you. And like you said, there were the 4, and then with her, and then I had this denial and anger, and I just I had shut down. My partner, like, you’re wearing a lot of gray and black where I always used to wear a ton of color.

Kiki Tyler
(00:23:46 – 00:24:11)
He’s like, you’re coming home, you’re reading, like, you’re not active. You’re not seeing people, and this is when things started to open back up when we could. He’s like, I’m worried about you, and that’s kind of around the same time the retreat happened. And that’s what led me like you said, the the teacher appears when the student is ready, so I took my 1st, Reiki Practitioner training level 1. And my intention was only level 1.

Kiki Tyler
(00:24:11 – 00:24:37)
Like, I really wanted to focus on healing me and getting better. But in doing the work and tapping more into my values and my sole purpose, I’m here for a bigger reason. My purpose is bigger than me. So continued to follow that path, and now I’m teaching and then same thing with sound. Just really wanted to learn and play for myself to heal and get into a better feeling place, but then started sharing it with girlfriends and, like, can you play for me?

Kiki Tyler
(00:24:37 – 00:24:55)
Maybe you should do this. Oh, this makes me feel better. I can sleep better. I’m not stressed. So and just if I was still in the same state of a 100 miles an hour and being a workaholic, I never would have heard these pulls and these tugs on my soul to go in the right direction.

Victoria Volk
(00:24:57 – 00:25:21)
We have to pause in order to hear those things. Right? You have to be able to so I everything you shared about, like, our body alignment and getting mislined and taking care of our cars better than we do our bodies and all of those things you said I just said in a healing session just a couple of days ago, 1st time healing session for someone. It’s like we don’t understand. Like, we haven’t we are energy.

Victoria Volk
(00:25:21 – 00:25:29)
We are an energetic body. And just you go to the chiropractor. You don’t think twice. You know? Get your Right.

Victoria Volk
(00:25:29 – 00:25:31)
Neck put in alignment, like,

Kiki Tyler
(00:25:31 – 00:25:32)
Yeah.

Victoria Volk
(00:25:32 – 00:25:41)
Connected. Everything is connected. And so do you use sound bowls, or do you use the tuning forks like you initially experienced?

Kiki Tyler
(00:25:42 – 00:25:43)
Both. How about

Victoria Volk
(00:25:43 – 00:25:44)
the count?

Kiki Tyler
(00:25:44 – 00:25:59)
The weighted forks were the were the first things I purchased. I loved them. I worked with them on myself. I’ve shared them with family and friends, and I pretty much mimicked what I went through and just got better at trusting my intuition of what forks use, doing chakra scans. Love the singing bowls.

Kiki Tyler
(00:26:00 – 00:26:20)
That was my next investment. I now have added flute, gong, drum. I’ve got a list of other things I wanna add, and it’s kind of just following that intuition and what I’m drawn to, what the people need. And many of my Reiki clients asked for me to play at the end or they’re like, can we do half and half? And I’m very a la carte.

Kiki Tyler
(00:26:20 – 00:26:46)
There’s no, like, regimented or cookie cutter. It’s you may have signed up for Reiki, but I’m feeling like I really need to play this goal for you while I’m sending Reiki, and they’re like, I’m here for it. So I’m a 100% virtual. I have had the opportunity to teach some small group in person sound baths, but everything I do has been over Zoom, and My clients love that. A lot of times, they’ll turn their screen off or they’ll have their phone next to them.

Kiki Tyler
(00:26:46 – 00:27:07)
So I’m looking up at the ceiling or the van, and then they’re like, thanks, Kiki. And they, like, turn it off, and then they’re already in bed. So they have the best night sleep of their life. A lot of times, they’ll get visions or answers things that they were seeking and setting intentions for throughout the evening. And I love the convenience of it because I’m, like, right in our back pocket with the use of a phone.

Victoria Volk
(00:27:08 – 00:27:13)
So how would you describe how do you describe to your clients? How does this work over distance?

Kiki Tyler
(00:27:15 – 00:27:17)
The sound or the reiki?

Victoria Volk
(00:27:18 – 00:27:31)
Both. Right? I mean, well, the sound. I mean but you can even do sound like, I do sound healing. I do the tuning forks, but I tell clients, like, you can go about your day, and I can conduct a session.

Victoria Volk
(00:27:31 – 00:27:55)
And but explaining that is re like, how like, I had the hardest time wrapping my head around it too when I first started. And I still honestly, I  like, trip over my words, and I feel like I’m a blubbering mess when I try to explain because it’s so mystical even to me. Like, it’s so childlike. Like, it’s you know what I mean?

Kiki Tyler
(00:27:55 – 00:27:55)
It’s magical.

Victoria Volk
(00:27:56 – 00:27:56)
It is.

Kiki Tyler
(00:27:56 – 00:28:05)
Yeah. It is. And that’s and I guess I don’t question it.  So for me, it’s like, I get the same thing. People ask, oh, what?

Kiki Tyler
(00:28:05 – 00:28:15)
Like, it’s quantum healing, and then you get another look. And I’m like, okay. So Everything that we’re talking about is very etheric. Right? There’s this etheric realm, different dimension.

Kiki Tyler
(00:28:15 – 00:28:36)
So I do the healing in that realm. So we don’t you know, time is not linear. It’s past, present, future. It’s all happening at the same time. So I’m doing, Akashic answer sessions right now, and it really I was talking about this with a woman last night, and she’s like, it just blew me away that you can go into my records, and I don’t have to be, like, present on Zoom.

Kiki Tyler
(00:28:36 – 00:28:42)
And I said, no. As long as your higher self gives me permission. Same thing with Reiki. Like, I need your permission. You need to reach out and request.

Kiki Tyler
(00:28:43 – 00:28:58)
I can’t just arbitrarily, like, pop in and do this work for you. And I love that the energetic space is permission-based. And it has a spiritual aspect, but it’s not religious based. That’s another Mhmm. Question that pops up a lot too.

Kiki Tyler
(00:29:00 – 00:29:14)
But you brought up energetic bodies. So we have 4. Right? The shamanic there there’s the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. So in the quantum realm in the ethers, we’re healing all 4 bodies because they’re interconnected.

Kiki Tyler
(00:29:15 – 00:29:33)
Mhmm. And, yes, you mentioned the chiropractor. That’s great for your physical, but you could have trapped emotions, and that could be causing the back pain. So it could have nothing to do with your spine whatsoever, and your spine’s gonna continue to get out of alignment until you work through these issues. So that’s where the reiki energy can come in.

Kiki Tyler
(00:29:33 – 00:29:57)
And, honestly, I just invite people to have their first session because after I experienced it, I didn’t question anything. And, like, once you whatever your intention or will is, it’s gonna happen. And if you don’t want it to flow, the Reiki energy won’t flow. And I did a group, self-love event with a woman. She was teaching the gentle yoga.

Kiki Tyler
(00:29:57 – 00:30:15)
I was providing Reiki and sound healing. And chatting with everybody in the beginning, there were 2 ladies and one was really she’s like, well, I’ve had Reiki before, but I didn’t feel anything. So we thought I was like, this is great. I love that you brought this up. Are you skeptical?

Kiki Tyler
(00:30:15 – 00:30:28)
Are you open? What are you seeking right now? Because if you don’t want me to send, even though I’m sending it to the whole room, you won’t receive anything. But if you set the intention, I’m tired. This is a self-love experience.

Kiki Tyler
(00:30:28 – 00:30:36)
I’m here to receive. You’ll get what you need. That could be sleep. That could be deep relaxation. You could get images, answers.

Kiki Tyler
(00:30:36 – 00:30:49)
You don’t even have to share it with me, and you will get what you need. And she was floored. She had been sleeping for weeks. She didn’t share this with me. But at the end, after I had gone around, she was one that fell asleep and was snoring.

Kiki Tyler
(00:30:50 – 00:30:58)
And she was like, I felt tingly. I felt hard cold. Like, I actually felt it flow. And I said that had nothing to do with me at all. I’m just the channel.

Kiki Tyler
(00:30:58 – 00:31:05)
You know, I like to tell my clients I’m the faucet, not the water. You’re the healer. You’re controlling. It’s your adventure. Right?

Kiki Tyler
(00:31:05 – 00:31:24)
You want a lot. You want a little. It’s too intense. You are in control of the tap, so you decide. And I do like to give people a heads up when I’m in so they know if they feel tired or something like they get really thirsty or they, like, get their energy sapped because it it can impact people differently.

Kiki Tyler
(00:31:25 – 00:31:41)
But I did 4 sessions on Monday energetically connecting, not over Zoom or in person and everybody I sent their notes and feedback to, they were like, did you do this at this time? I felt really tired at this time. Was it this time? And you know. You know.

Kiki Tyler
(00:31:42 – 00:31:46)
Your body knows. All of them. All the energetic bodies now.

Victoria Volk
(00:31:47 – 00:31:47)
Yeah.

Kiki Tyler
(00:31:47 – 00:31:47)
So I don’t

Victoria Volk
(00:31:47 – 00:31:48)
Know

Kiki Tyler
(00:31:48 – 00:31:50)
if that helps, but that’s one of the ways.

Victoria Volk
(00:31:51 – 00:32:25)
Yeah. Like you said, you just have to experience it, and that’s that’s kind of how I end the conversation too. It’s like, you just have to experience but I just wanna share with you a little something that I’ve been trying out. Speaking about trying things like Reiki or energy healing, I’ve been trying Magicmind, and they are actually sponsoring this episode. But even though that they’re sponsoring this episode, I would not tell you or share about it if I personally have not tried it, and I personally wouldn’t recommend it myself.

Victoria Volk
(00:32:26 – 00:32:52)
Seeing how well it’s worked for me. I would really encourage you to try it out as well if you’re having trouble being at a 100%. It’s been a total game changer for me. I can, in fact, tell on days when I haven’t taken it because I’m just a little bit more scattered. I have more difficult time getting into a flow, and my energy is kind of more like a roller coaster rather than like this steady, calm, focused energy.

Victoria Volk
(00:32:52 – 00:33:18)
It changes my energy. It changes my ability to let’s just say, get shit done. So if this is something that piques your interest, right now for January, they have a or buy a 3 month subscription, and you get a month free. This is only for January. It’s like getting an extra 20% off, which gets you to 75% off, actually, and this only lasts until the end of January.

Victoria Volk
(00:33:18 – 00:33:44)
So if you wanna give it a try, again, it’s not gonna hurt you to try it. And it actually tastes good, and it’s like 2 ounces. It’s got so many good things in it. Neuro tropics, what do they call them, adaptogens, some of the things, specifically lion’s mane mushrooms, ashwagandha, bacoba monnieri.  I’m probably botching those, but it actually does taste good.

Victoria Volk
(00:33:44 – 00:34:19)
And I can tell in days when I haven’t taken it when I end up doing productive things that have me on the struggle bus those days, actually, kinda like today, if I’m being honest. So head to magicmind.com/jangrieving voices, and use my code, grieving voices, at checkout. And this is, again, for 3-month subscription. You will get 1 month free, only this January, to help you gear up to crush your 2024 New Year’s resolutions and get fully focused. Alright.

Victoria Volk
(00:34:19 – 00:34:35)
Back to the episode. What drew me to biofield tuning, particularly biofield tuning, was, just the science of it. Like because it really gets into the science of quantum physics and yeah. And I geeked out over that stuff. But

Kiki Tyler
(00:34:36 – 00:34:36)
Yeah.

Victoria Volk
(00:34:36 – 00:34:55)
To, like, succinctly explain it. I haven’t found my language yet. I’m still I think that’s still a work in progress for me because it still feels like child play to me in so many ways. I feel like a kid in, playing. It’s just  I get a lot of delight from it.

Victoria Volk
(00:34:55 – 00:34:58)
And I just saw your face light up as you’re talking about it too.

Kiki Tyler
(00:34:58 – 00:35:01)
I know. I was gonna say that was not a succinct explanation. I kinda

Victoria Volk
(00:35:01 – 00:35:05)
Went off by a couple’s hand. And that’s how I get. Yeah.

Kiki Tyler
(00:35:05 – 00:35:10)
Yeah. I feel like Harry Potter and the 1st time I’m going to Hogwarts, I’m like,

Victoria Volk
(00:35:10 – 00:35:19)
Where else? You know? Right? Right? We have and this is the thing, like, as the person receiving, you it’s empowering.

Victoria Volk
(00:35:20 – 00:35:40)
It’s an empowering experience because it’s like like I you know, walking clients through a guided visualization. It’s like, woah. It’s like you’re introducing them to childlike play for the since they we just don’t do that as adults. Right? We don’t we have really difficult time just imagining.

Victoria Volk
(00:35:41 – 00:36:26)
Like, our imaginations just kind of, like, just it’s like our imaginary world just gets smaller and smaller and smaller. The more grief that gets put on top, stacked on top and trauma and societal pressure and all these things that happen in life. It’s like the child within us just gets kinda squashed, and this is, I think, what helps, energy healing is what reignited that within me. And I think that’s where My face lights up when I share it with people. And I love first time sessions, but I just I it’s like I get so excited for them to experience it, and it’s like, I just don’t know how to explain it.

Victoria Volk
(00:36:26 – 00:36:30
It’s just magic. You know? Like you said, like, it’s just magical. Yeah.

Kiki Tyler
(00:36:30 – 00:36:42)
Yeah. Yes. Magic is real, and that’s what I tell people. And I have a woman, I’m working with now, and it started off as a one off session. She’d never heard of Breaky or Acacia Records or anything.

Kiki Tyler
(00:36:42 – 00:37:08)
And after her 1st session, she’s and she didn’t consider herself creative, like, didn’t have that visual. But as soon as I dropped her in, she was having her own journey while I was sending her healing and tapping into her spirit team for guidance on her intention she shared with me. And she was like, I need more of this. One isn’t enough. And then we’ve been working together now for 3 months because it was like you it’s like an onion.

Kiki Tyler
(00:37:08 – 00:37:22)
Right? You heal one thing, and then something else pops up and something. You’re like, I didn’t realize that. So and then same thing on my journey. So went through a phase and stage of healing grief and got to a point where I was feeling okay, but I was like, there’s more work here.

Kiki Tyler
(00:37:22 – 00:37:41)
And now that I’m accustomed to where I’m going, my emotional values, and what I want, I dove in this time last year to an inner child work. I wanted to reconnect with my inner children. Pros and cons. Right? We’ve all had you know, wounds.

Kiki Tyler
(00:37:41 – 00:37:53)
There could be trauma. I mean, I think I saw a TikTok where he said, you know, if you stub your toe, that’s trauma. If you got yelled at, that’s trauma. Like, we don’t need there’s no scale or level. It like, your trauma is not bigger or smaller than mine.

Kiki Tyler
(00:37:53 – 00:38:10)
Like, let’s just acknowledge it. Feel it. And that’s the thing our inner children wanna be seen and heard. They wanna be given the space to feel so they can heal. And certain inner children I’ve connected with, I’m like, I pulled out my coloring books and have been coloring.

Kiki Tyler
(00:38:10 – 00:38:24)
I love to do puzzles. I’ve re I’ve always been an avid reader, but I’ve gotten back into, like, my fantasy and fun books. A lot of my inner children love that. And then I got to my angry teenage years, and we’re a little rebellious. And that I’m like, oh, that’s you.

Kiki Tyler
(00:38:24 – 00:38:45)
That that that’s you who wants to go and get in trouble. Okay. We gotta we gotta check that at the door a little bit as we’re an adult now. But just opening that box and reconnecting to all the pieces of you because, like you said, we we tamp that down whether it’s responsibilities or adult team or we think we should or have to. It’s what mask are we putting on.

Kiki Tyler
(00:38:45 – 00:38:55)
And just being free to be yourself and surrounding yourself with people that not only allow it and it feels safe, but encourage it.

Victoria Volk
(00:38:55 – 00:39:13)
As a kid, I was told I was weird. And as an adult, I wasn’t told I was weird again until, like, the last 4 years or so. And I’m like, alright. I’m reconnected. I’m good to go.

Kiki Tyler
(00:39:13 – 00:39:14)
I love it.

Victoria Volk
(00:39:14 – 00:39:39)
Letting my weird flag fly. I mean, it’s embrace it.  Embrace your weirdness. Embrace what makes you you what would you say to people who you know, I’m a Christian. And what would you say to people who think that the work that you do or I do is not like devil work, but like this, I don’t know.

Victoria Volk
(00:39:39 – 00:39:51)
Like, we should be ashamed of ourselves or you know, because I I might pull, not a I don’t do tarot tarot, however you say it. I like more, what are the other ones?

Kiki Tyler
(00:39:51 – 00:39:54)
Oracle. Yeah., Oracle. Thank you. Yeah.

Kiki Tyler
(00:39:54 – 00:39:56)
Yep. I can’t even think of the day.

Victoria Volk
(00:39:56 – 00:40:15)
I mean, that’s that’s how that’s how, like, much I follow the rules. Right? Like, it’s just a card, and it’s more play to me. I like to just draw a card and, it’s amazing, though. It’s, I have a specific deck that I took I  take it to events that I do.

Victoria Volk
(00:40:15 – 00:40:21)
Mhmm. And, I talk about grief. Right? That’s my that’s my shtick. That’s what I talk about.

Victoria Volk
(00:40:21 – 00:40:44)
And, it’s I had I would ask I would have conversations with people, and at the end of our conversation, I would ask, do you want me to pull hard for you. Like, what do you mean pull a card? Like, most people a lot of people don’t even haven’t even heard of what these are what the cards are or what they the purpose of them are. And I’m like, you know, it’s nothing sinister. It’s you know, this is you’ll get a message.

Victoria Volk
(00:40:45 – 00:41:00)
I believe that you’ll get a message that you need to hear in this moment. 1 by 1, time after time, completely applicable, like tears start flowing, and it’s a healing message for them. There’s nothing absolutely wrong with that. You know?

Kiki Tyler
(00:41:00 – 00:41:22)
I agree a 1000%. So I was raised in a conservative Christian household, and I have no idea what my family thinks about me, and that’s none of my business. If they wanna share, great. And, there but like you said, oh, she’s doing weird stuff again. And the oracle cards, the crystals, the tarot.

Kiki Tyler
(00:41:22 – 00:41:32)
To me, I view them as tools. Right? Just like a hammer or a crowbar. And the tool is not evil. The person who wields the tool can either use it for good or evil.

Kiki Tyler
(00:41:33 – 00:41:47)
Yes. Just like a hammer. It can be used to destroy or to build. And I love oracle cards, and I do offer them. And I even shy away from the deck and, like or the the guidebook that comes with the deck.

Kiki Tyler
(00:41:47 – 00:42:07)
I like people to tell me what they see because it’s not me. It’s not my message. And my goal is to help them really tap in to their own inner voice again because there’s so much noise and so many people telling, yes, what we should or shouldn’t do in society. And, now you should have a white picket fence. You should have the 6 figure job.

Kiki Tyler
(00:42:07 – 00:42:13)
You should drive this kind of car. Whatever it is. Right? But what do you really want? And I had a woman.

Kiki Tyler
(00:42:13 – 00:42:29)
She pulled the same she started pulling for herself from this deck, and we were shuffling it and cutting it, and she kept getting the same card. I was like, do you not like the message? Because it’s really the universe is trying there it’s it’s trying to tell you something. Right. I don’t know what it is, but it’s trying to tell you something.

Kiki Tyler
(00:42:30 – 00:42:37)
She’s like, I know. I was just hoping for a different answer. I’m like, 3 of the same after so much shuffling? That’s no longer a coincidence.

Victoria Volk
(00:42:37 – 00:42:42)
Right? I think even after the 2nd time, it’s like, okay. Better pay attention.

Kiki Tyler
(00:42:42 – 00:42:56)
I usually pull for myself for guidance before sessions. And with 1 client, it was, like, 3 weeks in a row. She and I were getting the same card. Even though I was shuffling while we’re talking and everything and I was and I was like, I pulled this card, and she was like, do it again. Do it again.

Kiki Tyler
(00:42:56 – 00:42:58)
So then I stopped pulling before her sesh.

Victoria Volk
(00:42:58 – 00:43:00)
Because I was like, I don’t know

Kiki Tyler
(00:43:00 – 00:43:10)
If we’re, like, the mirror. We’re at different stages, but, like, the messages we were getting were slightly different. But that’s the thing. We could both hold the same card and interpret it differently. There are colors.

Kiki Tyler
(00:43:10 – 00:43:36)
There are numbers. There are words. There It’s like what you see and what I see are gonna be 2 different things. And it’s I guess, in the olden days where you would look for omens or you would look for you know, birds would say things everything meant something and not in a bad way. It was just we were more tapped into nature and or everything around us because things were not going that 1,000 miles a minute.

Kiki Tyler
(00:43:36 – 00:43:38)
Didn’t hear? Yes.

Victoria Volk
(00:43:38 – 00:43:44)
We viewed death. Death was viewed completely differently. Right? Mhmm. Like, we spent time.

Victoria Volk
(00:43:44 – 00:43:59)
We took pictures with their dead loved ones. They would that’s have you seen this? Like, when your when your loved one passed away, you would take a family portrait with your dead deceased loved one. Like, we yeah. Death was done so differently.

Victoria Volk
(00:43:59 – 00:44:02)
Everything was done differently. Right? Yeah.

Kiki Tyler
(00:44:02 – 00:44:12)
Yes. And and there is evolution, and there are pros and cons. And I don’t know. I work in the I tell people I work in the light. So it can’t harm you.

Kiki Tyler
(00:44:12 – 00:44:31)
It can’t harm me. You’re in control of it. So I never it doesn’t bother me, and it cracks me up because I’m sure everybody’s getting these direct messages where it’s like, I was drawn to your energy and felt like you needed a reading. That could be a bot. That could be who but if you’re authentically in the energy space, you’re not reaching out to offer readings.

Kiki Tyler
(00:44:31 – 00:44:57)
As a person, you seek out who you want to read your energy and go into your records, provide you Reiki. It has to feel good to you, and you’ll know. For me, I get like a visceral gut response if I’m not meant to work with someone. Like, even going in certain metaphysical shops, I’m walking around and I can I’m like, there’s something in that corner that’s bothering me. I need to go to the different part of the store.

Kiki Tyler
(00:44:57 – 00:45:14)
It could be a crystal. It could be a type of method of physical media. Who knows? But I’m just like, just gonna listen to it. But before I got into this, I would have paid no attention because there were so many different signals going on that I wasn’t paying attention to.

Kiki Tyler
(00:45:14 – 00:45:21)
And we make excuses. Oh, I’m sitting too long. It must’ve been what I ate. I didn’t sleep well.  And now it’s okay.

Kiki Tyler
(00:45:21 – 00:45:33)
What is that trying to tell me? Where is it in my body? What have I not allowed myself to feel? Like, the questions and the perception, I’ve shifted the lens in which I listen and also in which I view myself.

Victoria Volk
(00:45:35 – 00:46:01)
So what would be your tip to grievers who yeah.  I’m really not I don’t wanna, like, learn Reiki or do Reiki or get into that spirit sort of practice or anything like that. But what would you suggest to grievers listening who may have lost a best friend like you did. What did self-care look like? Okay.

Victoria Volk
(00:46:01 – 00:46:15)
I’m really ahead of myself with, like, a bunch of questions. That’s what I do. But kind of wrapping it around the bow of self-care, but, like, something that people can do to, like, dip their toe in. Yes. Connecting with themselves.

Kiki Tyler
(00:46:16 – 00:46:37)
Yes. And be easy on yourself, and I know it’s easier to say than do, but let yourself feel and just be okay. Give yourself permission to let it all fall apart. Like, just have those ugly cries. Cry until you don’t have any more tears anymore, until your throat’s raw.

Kiki Tyler
(00:46:37 – 00:46:57)
Like, just that is a human emotion. If the emotion is coming out, it up, it wants to come out, and I kept shoving it down until it was overwhelming. So it got to a point where I couldn’t even get myself to start crying, so I was like, okay. What movies can I watch where I know it’ll start the waterworks? Right?

Kiki Tyler
(00:46:57 – 00:47:07)
And rent’s a rent’s a good one for me. Like, I always cry every time I watch rent. Like, I can go to certain parts of it and I’m like, oh, yeah. I’m definitely gonna cry. So that was a  trick that worked for me.

Kiki Tyler
(00:47:07 – 00:47:39)
A lot more rest because emotionally, you were draining a lot of energy. I was I felt a lot of energy being drained whether it was to push the the emotion down or to actually allow myself to feel it. So if you need to take a nap, if you need to sleep in, if you need to take a day off from work, it’s hard not to feel guilty that first time, but I promise you it gets easier. And putting yourself first is not selfish. We every time we get on a plane, we’re told to put our mask on first.

Kiki Tyler
(00:47:39 – 00:48:04)
Right? If anything happens, you put your oxygen mask on first. But in real life, we tend to put ourselves on the back burner and take care of everyone else and wonder why we’re passed out on the floor. And crying isn’t a sign of weakness, which is a big lesson that I needed to learn the hard way, unfortunately. Crying is vulnerable.

Kiki Tyler
(00:48:04 – 00:48:11)
Crying is, like, are you hurt? Are you in pain? Yes. But the pain you’re going through, no one can see. You don’t have bruises.

Kiki Tyler
(00:48:11 – 00:48:44)
You don’t have scars. Like, you don’t it’s not like you go out in a fight and people knew you got in a fight and there’s some sympathy there. Let’s say you’re getting beat up from the inside and putting yourself first does get easier as well the more you do it, and the shame and guilt does move away. Because by taking care of yourself, you can then show up as the best first interview for everyone else instead of half full and or pouring from an empty cup. And then I found myself in places of resentment, yeah.

Kiki Tyler
(00:48:44 – 00:48:55)
And it wasn’t because of anybody else. My choice pouring from an empty cup and not refilling my cup for so long. Bottled up anger. You know, emotions can change. It wasn’t anger.

Kiki Tyler
(00:48:55 – 00:49:00)
It was sadness, but I wasn’t allowing myself to feel to heal.

Victoria Volk
(00:49:00 – 00:49:17)
What were the messages around grief that you received as a child since you had a really difficult time as an adult allowing yourself to cry. Is that something that you witnessed as a child? Like, the people around you didn’t express the show emotion?

Kiki Tyler
(00:49:18 – 00:49:37)
Not negative emotions, not dense, heavy emotions like happiness and joy and positive things. But If you were crying, something was wrong, what’s wrong? And or I’ll give you something to cry about. Yeah. That was a lot very common for that generation.

Kiki Tyler
(00:49:38 – 00:50:00)
I know for my brothers, they got different messages like suck it up, boys don’t cry. There were a lot of different things that I heard over the years, whether it was from coaches, in the sporting events, or parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles. It could have just been mainstream media. You know? It’s hard to pinpoint where it came from and that really doesn’t matter.

Kiki Tyler
(00:50:00 – 00:50:30)
It’s more, is that what I believe now? And kind of that unlearning. So when I say, like, allow yourself to tear it all down, like, rebuild what you believe and what feels good. And on the esoteric side, the woo side, like, the divine masculine and feminine, I was functioning very highly from my masculine, and I had suppressed a lot of my feminine. The crying, the flow, the letting things be instead of, like, the assertive, the action, the force, the push.

Kiki Tyler
(00:50:30 – 00:50:59)
So I did allow myself to be more in flow for a time and not so much action, which was really hard for me to retrain my it’s okay. There was a lot of guilt of me not acting or not showing up for other people. So that’s gonna happen, but you’re still in charge of whether you say yes or no. And saying no the first time is hard, but it gets easier. And now I have boundaries over when people have access to me.

Kiki Tyler
(00:50:59 – 00:51:10)
And that’s everyone, significant other, parents, like, whether I accept or respond to text messages, whether I call people back, and it’s really about me protecting my peace and my happiness.

Victoria Volk
(00:51:11 – 00:51:13)
Amen to that.

Kiki Tyler
(00:51:15 – 00:51:17)
Yay.

Victoria Volk
(00:51:17 – 00:51:23)
I was gonna say that old, what is what movie is it? There’s no crying in baseball. You could say

Kiki Tyler
(00:51:24 – 00:51:25)
Oh, League of Their Own?

Victoria Volk
(00:51:25 – 00:51:31)
League of Their Own. Yeah. They say it. There’s no crying in baseball, and you could say, there’s no crying in grief. There’s no crying in grief.

Victoria Volk
(00:51:32 – 00:51:38)
That’s wrong. That’s so wrong. Yeah. There can be crying a baseball. Like, maybe we need to embrace that message.

Victoria Volk
(00:51:38 – 00:51:59)
There can be crying a baseball. I don’t think I asked you this yet, but I’m curious. So I’m gonna ask it because there’s probably someone listening who’s probably curious too. Did this experience of all this loss of young people, young-ish people, I imagine, make you a little scared for your own health.

Kiki Tyler
(00:52:00 – 00:52:11)
It didn’t, but I guess that’s because I’ve always been very active. I’ve definitely made better food choices. I sleep more. I drink more water. I’ve always been one to get my annual physical.

Kiki Tyler
(00:52:11 – 00:52:29)
I love get that’s like my, report card for my health, how I’m doing. Like, how’s my blood sugar? How’s my cholesterol? I could have very easily gone down, and I think old me was very paranoid. Like, try to head everything off at the past that that people please, like, try to figure it out.

Kiki Tyler
(00:52:30 – 00:52:50)
But I kinda went the opposite way. And I was like, worry isn’t helpful. Like, it doesn’t do anything but stress you out, could reduce your time here, and it doesn’t prevent what could or couldn’t happen in the future. So I’m gonna still continue with my regular checkups and stay super active. I love to move.

Kiki Tyler
(00:52:50 – 00:53:23)
I’ve always loved to move as a young kid, and I’ve definitely made better eating choices and food choices, but it didn’t. I didn’t. I’ve a few of our friends in our circle have, and they’ve started to get more mammograms and get me, like and when I say the other end, I mean, like, probably overkill just in my personal opinion. Like, the I think there’s balance to that as well because you can get too much information and, like, get to nitty gritty, but find out what works for you. Right?

Kiki Tyler
(00:53:23 – 00:53:37)
What works for me might sound a little crazy to you, so that’s cool. Like, leave it. Don’t take it. But if you don’t get annual physicals, maybe think about doing that, you know? Find a primary care physician that you connect with.

Kiki Tyler
(00:53:37 – 00:53:54)
I actually changed doctors because I wanted one that’s more open to holistic remedies and not someone that’s gonna write me a prescription right off the gate. I am not very much into big pharma. And I’m like, well, why are you just giving me something for the symptom? We didn’t even talk for very long. So how do you know that’s the root cause?

Kiki Tyler
(00:53:55 – 00:54:13)
So I’m like, I have a whole list of things to share with you that my body’s been communicating to me. And I don’t know about you, but I live in my body. Yes. You went to med school, love doctors, but they don’t live in your body. So you have very specific information that you can share with them.

Kiki Tyler
(00:54:13 – 00:54:21)
So when you find one that you connect with and who ask the right questions and that is in alignment with you and what how you wanna take care of your body.

Victoria Volk
(00:54:22 – 00:54:37)
Step 1, pay attention to your body. Yes. So you have to pay attention to your body to recognize the signs. Right? And you’ve described many of them throughout this podcast you’ve described several of different signs of that our body gives us.

Victoria Volk
(00:54:37 – 00:54:49)
I believe you have. So Yeah. Just If it wasn’t there before, it’s something new? Take a look at that. Investigate.

Victoria Volk
(00:54:49 – 00:54:52)
Get curious. What gives you hope for the future?

Kiki Tyler
(00:54:52 – 00:54:53)
The alpha generation.

Victoria Volk
(00:54:55 – 00:54:56)
Do you say more?

Kiki Tyler
(00:54:57 – 00:55:18)
So I am one of 6. I’m an aunt. I have no babies other than my fur babies, and I’m really close to my nieces and nephews. So my youngest niece is 7, and she’s part of the alpha generation. And In spending time with her, she’s extremely curious, and she teaches me so much about myself and about life.

Kiki Tyler
(00:55:18 – 00:55:42)
And I love she’s tenacious, and she doesn’t take no for an answer. But when it comes to technology, her older brother, I guess he’s Gen z, he’s the one above that, they he’ll text me at the table. I’m sitting right across from him, and they’re more comfortable with text. My niece, not so much. She’s like, excuse me.

Kiki Tyler
(00:55:42 – 00:56:08)
Excuse me. And they’re bringing it back to what I call the old school ways, like looking people in the eye, having a conversation. She wants your undivided attention and spending time and watching her with her friends. So I know this is a small sampling, but it I’m seeing patterns and ripples, and it’s just very refreshing in there. I’ve done some research and read several articles too, but they’re the new wave.

Kiki Tyler
(00:56:08 – 00:56:25)
Right? They’re gonna bring things back to, like, the humanity of it., Just the Connection., Community, the connection, all the c’s., But they’re very curious, and they’re not afraid to ask all these questions.

Kiki Tyler
(00:56:25 – 00:56:38)
Like, you think she would have outgrown her twos or threes or whenever the why phase was., I was like, oh, she’s gonna be like me, and she’s gonna be a why person forever. And she challenges me. She challenges her mother. They’re so smart.

Kiki Tyler
(00:56:39 – 00:56:56)
They’re very, I don’t wanna say cynical, but they can they challenge things. Well, why if that’s this, but it doesn’t work here. Why? And they let they really keep you on your toes. But they’re very refreshing.

Kiki Tyler
(00:56:57 – 00:57:06)
And I enjoy spending time. I’m heading there. This weekend, we’re doing our cookie bake day. And, she loves that, like, tradition. They’re very big on tradition.

Kiki Tyler
(00:57:07 – 00:57:19)
And I don’t even wanna say rituals, but family traditions, like, what we do every year. Like, we’re like, oh, I don’t know if it’s gonna happen next year. What do you need? Oh, you’re getting older, so we’re doing this forever. Okay.

Kiki Tyler
(00:57:21 – 00:57:22)
Can’t say no to her. Right?

Victoria Volk
(00:57:23 – 00:57:37)
So perhaps around the anniversary of your friend Sonia’s passing, it would be hopeful and refreshing to spend some time around that energy for you. That’s self-care too.

Kiki Tyler
(00:57:37 – 00:57:47)
Yep. Absolutely. Yes. And she loves going there’s a metaphysical shop by them. They’re in Virginia, and we go together.

Kiki Tyler
(00:57:47 – 00:58:06)
And she’s like, this this crystal is calling to me. I think it needs to come home with me. And she saw me do some oracle readings for my sister, and she grabbed the deck went upstairs, and she has an American Girl doll. And she’s I go up, and I’m like, where did she go? And she’s like, oh, I’m just giving a reading to my dolls, and she had them all lined up.

Kiki Tyler
(00:58:06 – 00:58:23)
And she’s like I was adorable. They paid attention. They’re so observant. Like, they see and hear and take in everything like a sponge, and their perspective is so fresh and innocent. Like, it has not been tainted.

Kiki Tyler
(00:58:24 – 00:58:41)
And she’s not plugged into social media, so it’s still that fresh new. She’s not bombarded. She doesn’t have all of these different voices and things in her head coming her way, telling her how to think, act, breathe. It’s she’s just like, this is who I am. Take me or leave me.

Victoria Volk
(00:58:41 – 00:59:54)
And I think that’s the message that the youngest of the young need to be reminded of constantly, that they are enough exactly who they are. There was a quote I heard yesterday, when I’m I had a call yesterday with, Fellow Youmappers, Youmap coaches, and the founder. She’s always got something brilliant to say, but she said society judges you on what you do, what degree you have, the work you do. There’s so many different judgments that people can that people will draw just based on what you do and not on who you are. And so I think the hope for the future is that we allow the youngest of young to grieve exactly how they came out of the womb knowing how to grieve and allow that to keep going and to allow that to keep happening and to express themselves and to question and to let curiosity be their leader, and just always reminding them that they are enough just exactly as they are.

Victoria Volk
(00:59:56 – 00:59:58)
Yes.

Kiki Tyler
(00:59:58 – 01:00:10)
We all are, and we forget that. And that’s an amazing point to you bring up because this has come up with a couple of my clients. We tend to overtalk. We tend to overgive. It’s a compensation.

Kiki Tyler
(01:00:10 – 01:00:37)
There’s this un layer of unworthiness in multiple areas of our lives. It’s not always business or with products or it can be in relationships too, and you deserve to be loved just for being you, not because of what you do or the gifts or skills that you bring to the table. That’s like a cherry on top. That’s the added bonus. Whether you have them or not, you’re enough.

Victoria Volk
(01:00:39 – 01:00:48)
And I think that is the beautiful place to end today unless there’s anything else that you would like to share. Oh, wait. I actually have a question.

Kiki Tyler
(01:00:48 – 01:00:51)
Okay. 6 more.

Victoria Volk
(01:00:53 – 01:01:28)
What is the meaning that you feel you have drawn from your grief. How have you created meaning from your grief? And what would be your advice to other people in creating their meaning? And when I say creating meaning, it’s not like you have to do something grandiose or you have to, create a nonprofit or write a book or it’s none of that. It’s and it’s a very individual experience.

Victoria Volk
(01:01:28 – 01:01:48)
So I’m just curious how maybe it’s even not even creating a meaning, but how have you reframed? Maybe that’s a better question. Have you reframed how you view grief since your experience?

Kiki Tyler
(01:01:50 – 01:02:31)
Well, it has evolved. I feel like in the beginning, I viewed it as pain and something to avoid. And then, in that 1 to 2 year mark, it was memories, and how can I remember her and honor her, and then it has turned into purpose? I wanted that relationship, that friendship, that whole life, to me and it did on its own. Like, it I don’t it doesn’t need to meet for me to do anything for it to be anything better, but I wanted to reframe it.

Kiki Tyler
(01:02:31 – 01:03:09)
It’s exactly the word from pain to purpose, and it has had it’s a very pivotal moment for me. Yes, it happened during the pandemic, the shutdown, everything else, but I have now reacquoined that as, like, the midlife awakening instead of the shutdown or the pan like, we don’t have to be defined by our grief. We get to choose How we define it for ourselves and it changes in each chapter of our life. Like you asked me the same thing next year, it could mean something different. And that giving yourself permission to change your mind.

Kiki Tyler
(01:03:10 – 01:03:34)
I feel like we feel like we have to lock in and and get married to something, whether it’s an idea or a feeling or we can only do one thing. And we’re so multifaceted as human beings. It can be both. It can be painful and purposeful, right, and everything in between. And telling stories like this, sharing with others.

Kiki Tyler
(01:03:34 – 01:04:05)
I mean, if you came to me a year ago, I would not have thought this is the 3rd podcast I’ve been on where I’ve talked about her and cried, and that was not something I would have pictured for myself, but it’s helping others get through it. And just talking about it is also therapeutic for me. And each time it gets a little easier. And I think I’ve cried it all out and then someone asked a question or I remember something, and it’s like, it’s fresh, but it’s still beautiful.

Victoria Volk
(01:04:06 – 01:04:40)
And I think the key point in sharing the story, right, it’s not sharing what happened. It’s not like you’re reading a recipe card of that relationship or that experience and how the person died and all of that. Like, did so many relive over and over and over, if there was a traumatic death, things like that, depending on what they witnessed. It’s sharing the story, the emotional story. That’s where the healing is, is sharing the emotional story and reframing the meaning of of what that means for you moving forward.

Kiki Tyler
(01:04:42 – 01:04:55)
Yes. And that’s a good point as we feel like we get trapped in that moment of when it happened and we forget to live for ourselves. So grief is important. They were a part of our life. It’s a way to honor them.

Kiki Tyler
(01:04:56 – 01:05:23)
And this is about how we can continue to honor ourselves and move on with their memory with us. But thinking about everyone else in our life, like, they’re gone, but how many beautiful souls presently in the future are gonna impact your life? And you might be head down right now, but when you start to look up, they’re gonna be there.

Victoria Volk
(01:05:25 – 01:05:29)
And not to mention the impact that you have on other people’s lives.

Kiki Tyler
(01:05:30 – 01:05:31)
Yes.

Victoria Volk
(01:05:31 – 01:05:36)
And what kind of impact do you want to have? And that’s the choice we all have.

Kiki Tyler
(01:05:37 – 01:05:57)
Yes. We feel like we forget choice. Like, we feel like we’re forced into it. And sometimes just hearing someone say they did this instead gives you that sign, that permission slip, whatever it is you needed to hear or see or feel to make a small shift.

Victoria Volk
(01:05:59 – 01:06:01)
And that’s why I started this podcast.

Kiki Tyler
(01:06:02 – 01:06:03)
I love it.

Victoria Volk
(01:06:03 – 01:06:07)
Thank you so much for sharing with me and my listeners today.

kiki Tyler
(01:06:08 – 01:06:09)
Thank you for having me.

Victoria Volk
(01:06:09 – 01:06:14)
People reach out to you if they wanna learn more, connect with you? Where can people find you?

Kiki Tyler
(01:06:15 – 01:06:33)

Yes. So I am Kiki Tyler, Facebook, Instagram. Kikityler.com is my website. I love connecting with new women. I also have a group for healers, spiritual people, those that wanna learn and grow in their gifts, and I’d more than welcome to come into that community.

Kiki Tyler
(01:06:33 – 01:06:43)
And, yeah, love to hear from you and support you whether you’re in grief, have gone through it, haven’t been part of it, but want that community.

Victoria Volk
(01:06:45 – 01:06:49)
I dare to say we’ve all been a part of it. Yeah. We all grieve something.

Kiki Tyler
(01:06:49 – 01:06:51)
Yeah. Yeah.

Victoria Volk
(01:06:51 – 01:07:00)
And your gifts and your light is very much needed, and, we need more light. We need more light in the world, my friends. So thank you for being the light for so many.

Kiki Tyler
(01:07:01 – 01:07:03)
Thank you for having me.

Victoria Volk
(01:07:03 – 01:07:07)
And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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