Ep 226 Get Out of Your Own Way in Grief & In Life

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:

On this Christmas Eve episode, I extend warm, festive greetings to all listeners, no matter how you celebrate. Inspired by my recent newsletter, The Unleash Letters, I reflect on the past year’s experiences and energies while looking forward with hope to 2025.

I discuss the power of self-reflection as a healing tool—especially for those grieving—and encourage everyone to consider what energies from 2023 they carried into 2024 and how these might impact their future.

I’ve experienced a shift in my beliefs about unseen spiritual support, which has renewed my excitement and inspiration for the future. Trusting oneself and having faith in a higher power can truly spark personal growth.

Setting intentions is crucial; it helps us tackle challenges head-on and transform our lives into ones filled with freedom and fulfillment. We can quickly change perspectives by addressing obstacles directly, grounding ourselves, and reframing our thoughts. While conflicts are inevitable when engaging deeply with others, viewing year-end as a new beginning allows us to harness energy shifts for personal growth.

I invite you to reflect on what didn’t work in 2024, consider changes you’d like to make for 2025, and explore my website for services that meet where you are at like the energy healing membership, meditations, or the Do Grief Differently program—with an exclusive limited-time discount available!

My goal is to meet you wherever you are on your journey by helping you take control of your energy and potential. As I close this episode with hope for 2025, remember that unleashing your heart unlocks your life’s true potential!

RESOURCES:

  • The Unleashed Letters Newsletter
  • Energy Healing Membership
  • Do Grief Differently (10% off for two individuals for January or February start date)

_______

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: 

Embrace the Holiday Spirit with Grieving Voices

As we approach the end of another year, it’s a time for reflection, gratitude, and setting intentions for what lies ahead. In this special Christmas Eve episode of the Grieving Voices podcast, listeners are invited to pause and reflect on their journey through 2023 and how they can step into 2024 with renewed energy and purpose.

A Season of Reflection

The holiday season is often seen as a time of joy and celebration. However, it’s also a period where emotions run high—especially for those who are grieving. The host acknowledges this duality by extending festive greetings while recognizing that everyone’s experience during this time is unique. Drawing inspiration from The Unleash Letters, their biweekly newsletter filled with personal reflections and resources, the host encourages us all to take stock of our emotional landscape.

The Power of Self-Reflection

Self-reflection isn’t just about looking back; it’s about understanding how past experiences shape our present selves—and ultimately influence our future paths. For those dealing with grief or other life challenges in particular—self-reflection becomes an essential tool for healing because it allows us not only recognize but also release pent-up energies holding us back from growth opportunities waiting around every corner!

In fact—as highlighted throughout today’s episode—the act itself requires immense amounts both mental physical strength which makes sense why so many people find themselves drained exhausted after engaging deeply introspective work like journaling meditation etcetera…

Trusting Yourself & Higher Powers

One key takeaway shared was trusting oneself alongside greater forces beyond comprehension such spiritual entities which may offer unseen support along way! This belief shift brought newfound excitement anticipation heading into upcoming years including potential breakthroughs transformations awaiting eager individuals ready embrace change wholeheartedly without fear hesitation whatsoever!

By fostering deeper connections within ourselves others universe at large—we unlock doors previously thought closed forever opening up endless possibilities once unimaginable before now suddenly tangible reality ripe exploration discovery anew each day passes bringing fresh insights revelations aplenty wherever turn next no matter path choose follow down road less traveled more familiar territory alike…

Episode Transcription:

Victoria Volk: Hello friend. Thank you for tuning in to this Christmas Eve episode of Greeting Voices. If you’re listening today on Christmas Eve, or Christmas Day, Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah however you celebrate, marry all the things to you and yours. And if you don’t celebrate, that’s okay too. Thank you for listening. Today’s episode is inspired by my last newsletter, which is called the unleashing letters. It comes out every other Wednesday. I will put a link to it in the show notes in case you’re interested in joining me biweekly in your inbox. It’s my place where I share a little bit more personal things and what’s happening, work wise, business, personal, all of the things, my thoughts, I share resources that I come across. It’s kind of a hodgepodge of of things sometimes But my last newsletter, I felt like was maybe too good not to share on the podcast. And so that is what inspired me to bring to you today Basically, my last newsletter to you here on the podcast. So if you like what you hear today, maybe you’d like to join my newsletter. Now I’ve been thinking a lot about this past year, the lessons I’ve learned, which will come in the next episode of grieving voices. But really about the energy. The energy that I feel maybe I I don’t wanna say this. Like, the energy that I embodied the most in twenty twenty four. And for me, it was just laying the foundation of what’s to come because I have a lot of hope of what’s to come for me business wise, personally, I’m looking ahead to twenty twenty five with a lot of excitement and enthusiasm and enjoy and Yeah. So I think this year was really about preparing myself energetically to to really receive all the goodness that I feel is just waiting for me. In twenty twenty five. And if you’re listening to this and you’re grieving, maybe you just lost a loved one. I’ve heard some really sad stories as of late, local to me, people that I’ve I somewhat knew who have passed way before their time. And so maybe this is not the episode for you today, and that’s okay. But at the same time, I think if self reflection can be an amazing healing tool for us, it can help us bring something to our awareness that helps us shift our perspective of things. That can be healing. So in that case, maybe this episode is for you. In any rate, turn this off when it doesn’t feel aligned. Keep listening if it does. But the highlights of the newsletter were pretty much, like, talking about I I mean, I can talk about I can spend things around to be about grief and a lot of my newsletter was about grief. And the energy that grief expands. But his grief expands a ton of energy to both hold in our bodies, but also to release. And we can release grief through breath work or body work, like energy healing, raky, biofuel tuning, like I offer somatic practices, shaking, tapping, even dancing, or other healing modalities that freeze the stagnant tangled energy that allows for allows for our energetic flow. So in a nutshell, Releasing and working through the energetics of grief is a good thing. And so if you are grieving and you’re listening to this, the worst has probably already happened. Is what is one small step you can do today for you to hold your heart with light and love? What is your heart asking of you right now? And I bet if you take a moment to be still and turn off the noise and distractions, you just might get your answer. When you think back on twenty twenty four, what did you energetically take into twenty twenty four from twenty twenty three? Was it heartbreak? Maybe what you’re feeling right now is a little bit of old pain. Is it decades old emotional pain and anger? Is it a longing or a desire burning inside that hasn’t come to fruition? What was the energy you took into twenty twenty four? And are you still holding onto that energy and taking it into twenty twenty five? What can you do or try that could contribute to twenty twenty five being different and not more of the same? Is it time for brave action? There is this unseen force and energy that has your back in mind. And up until very recently, I struggled to believe that this was true for me. I never questioned this being true for others, but my monkey mind always questioned because I very much am a questioner and a natural skeptic. And I was skeptical that the insights and messages that would drop into my mail slot, I’d like to call it, were made up by my monkey mind. But that all changed, actually only within the last month and a half or so, with a meditation that was like the flip of an energetic light switch. Now I fully believe that God angels spirit guides, saints universe, whatever you wanna call it, that there’s something we can’t see Although some people are gifted in that way to see, but that is far more intelligent than we ever will be on this physical plane and in our physical bodies with all of our logic and ego getting in the way. But that support is just waiting for us to knock on the door, waiting to be recognized and acknowledged. And now that I have experienced it fully for myself, I can’t unfreeze what I now know, that I am supported. And so are you? And feeling energetically held in this way has made my December twenty twenty four explode with excitement and buzz and inspiration. It has been as if the floodgates of what’s possible have opened up. Going into twenty twenty five, I feel a theme for me to share is self trust, and trust in something greater, and helping others cultivate that within themselves. Imagine the hope that can come from learning how to trust yourself and in something greater. It has certainly ignited a lot of hope in me. I’m as much a realist as I am a dreamer. Life is gonna life. Things don’t always go as we plan. Energetically finding ourselves in these situations can flip our lives upside down and rightfully so for a period of time. However, one thing I’ve learned about myself is that this past years that my rebound time from challenges like these is much shorter than it used to be in years past. When I can get out of my own way, set my monkey mind straight and get grounded and centered within myself, my perspective shifts so much more quickly. I become more reflective sooner. Therefore, I’m not ruminating and stewing on crap I can’t control or have the power to change in my favor. And although it is painful in the process, I’ve learned that the god angels, spirit guides universe, whatever you want to call it are simply making more room and space for what is meant for me. As long as I do my part and energetically step up to the plate, and I believe that’s true for you too. If we acknowledge the suck in the situation, set an intention with the might with our energy for what is in the highest good for ourselves and everyone involved, and release attachment to any certain outcome. Twenty twenty five can be an amazing year. And energetically, we can feel free. We will forever have conflict in our lives as long as we are in relationships with others and I can’t wait to share more about what twenty twenty four has taught me in an upcoming episode next week, but energetically, get grounded and centered within yourself. And trust, and you will see how the world just seems to rearrange and sort itself around you. Like a dear friend of mine says, metaphorically speaking, of course. The trash just seems to take out itself. We just so easily get in our own way because we’re afraid of uncertainty. We have fear of change because we latch on to pass stories or beliefs that have been passed down to us through generations or the lives that we told ourselves or others told us about ourselves that we accept as our truth. For example, did you grow up in a home with a lack mindset where the your parents and your household were just believed there was just never enough or you were just barely enough or you were just scraping by Or did you have to prove your worth by doing? These are stories that we hold on to that we bring into adulthood. This is the energy that you’re holding on to potentially. And bringing into your present day. What if instead of looking at the end of twenty twenty four as an ending, we looked at it as a new beginning, an invitation to a new beginning. Every single day there’s a sunrise and a sunset. It were given an opportunity every day to start with a clean slate. There’s never a perfect time or a perfect year and the future isn’t guaranteed. And we waste a lot of time, dwelling, ruminating, stewing, procrastinating, holding ourselves back, and allowing our ego and logical mind to get in the way. Which is skewed by our perception of our past experiences and how we see the world. One of the fastest ways we can shift our energy, our perspective, our thoughts around the challenge in the moment or whatever we’re thinking about or struggling with is to ask ourselves better and deeper questions. And so I just want you to think about twenty twenty four And ask yourself, what isn’t working? What hasn’t been working about twenty twenty four? And if I gave you a magic wand, and I could shift your energy and change your energy today, Where would you put your energy to first? What would be the first thing that you would want to change? This is a baby step towards self awareness. To bring to light, that which you wish to shift your perspective around and take action. So if you are ready to do so and go into twenty twenty five with new energy or call in new energy into your life. I invite you to take a look at my website, the onlychart dot com, have a look at the different services I offer. I can meet you where you’re at, whether you’re just starting to peel back the layers, maybe energy healing work is for you. I’ve got meditations on there. I just launched my energy healing membership, which is forty nine dollars a month for founding members. We meet live twice a month. There’s three different modules currently in the membership, plus resources I’ll be adding and I’ll continually be adding to it. And you have access to the energy healing sessions. However, many times a month you want to engage in them and participate. Or if you’re ready to dive deep, into the stories that you’re holding on to. Maybe do group differently is for you. I like to call do group differently, the gift that keeps on giving. And so for two people, I will be offering ten percent off do grief differently, which is a savings of a hundred and sixty dollars for January or February twenty twenty five. So if you’ve been considering the program, hit up the link in the show notes to inquire. And for those that decide to move forward, I will give you that coupon code. And again, it’s good for two people, for January or February start dates. For twenty twenty five. I believe in that program with all of my heart. It changed my life and I’ve seen countless other lives changed and transformed because of it and relationships made stronger because of it. So I’m excited to offer two people ten percent off that program to help you get out of your own way in grief and in life. If you’ve already done a lot of energy work, personal healing, development work, maybe you’re just ready to fulfill your full potential to really lean your energy into allowing yourself to fully become unleashed from whatever it is has its grip on you. Then maybe you map is for you. Again, I can meet you where you’re at, and I’m telling you I’ve walked the walk. I’ve probably been where you are. When you grow up with grief, it it feels like that. Life can feel like a grind, but there is a way to make peace with your past. To move forward, to shift your energy, up level your energy, raise your voltage, so you feel like you have a sense of vitality. You can do the things that you enjoy doing. You feel a creative spark, you feel inspired. And along the way, if you trust in yourself and trust that you are supported, that’ll take you leaps and bounds. Further than I think even I maybe even I feel as possible as I sit here right now. I hope this episode was inspiring. I hope it was leaving with a sense of hope. For twenty twenty five. Check out the show notes for any links. If you’re interested in the energy healing membership, my newsletter, I’m here to support you in whatever way you need. Until next time, remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life, much love.

Ep 225 Holiday Grief Series: Why We Need To Look At the Past

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:

In this final episode of the Holiday Grief Series, I explore the power of reflecting on our past, especially when dealing with grief during the holiday season. It’s about facing those tough memories head-on, much like a buffalo charges through a storm to find peace faster. By confronting these feelings directly, we gain insight into ourselves and can make better choices for our future.

Reflecting on history isn’t just personal; it applies to society, too. Understanding past events helps us break negative cycles and create positive change. As we look back at 2024 and beyond, self-awareness becomes key in shaping who we want to be.

I share my own journey of growth—much like committing to fitness—and how it’s similar to emotional healing. It takes dedication but leads to powerful inner transformation.

The main takeaway? Embrace your past so you can rewrite your story going forward into 2025. Let go of perfectionism; focus instead on progress over time. Remember that you’re unlocking your life’s potential by opening your heart.

I’m here for anyone ready to embark on this transformative path and encourage you all to spread this message of hope and empowerment to others who might need it, too!

RESOURCES:

_______

NEED HELP?

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

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

CONNECT WITH VICTORIA: 

Embracing the Past for a Brighter Future

The holiday season often brings with it a mixed bag of emotions. For many, it’s a time of joy and celebration, but for others, it can be a poignant reminder of loss or emotional pain. In this fourth episode of our holiday grief series, we delve into the transformative power that lies in reflecting on the past—particularly during such emotionally charged times.

Facing the Storm Head-On

Imagine being like a buffalo facing an approaching storm. Instead of running away from it, you charge straight through to emerge quicker on the other side. This metaphor perfectly encapsulates how confronting painful memories head-on can lead to personal growth and healing. By directly addressing these experiences, individuals gain deeper insight into their motivations and actions.

This process is not just about reliving old wounds; rather, it’s about understanding them so that they no longer hold sway over your present or future decisions. The journey through one’s past allows for closure by resolving lingering emotions and ultimately leads to living a more peaceful life.

Learning from History

The importance of reflection extends beyond personal experiences—it applies to historical contexts as well. Societal progress hinges on understanding past events to avoid repeating mistakes while creating positive change moving forward.

As we approach 2024’s end-of-year reflections (and look ahead towards 2025), consider what lessons history has taught us both individually and collectively—and how those insights might inform better choices going forward!

Commitment & Growth

Personal development requires dedication akin physical training regimes: persistent effort yields substantial inner gains over time! Our speaker shares parallels between their fitness journey alongside broader endeavors involving emotional/spiritual growth—emphasizing commitment necessary achieving meaningful transformation within oneself too!

Upcoming collaborations include figures like Amanda Popovski via Instagram platforms plus newly launched energy healing membership opportunities available now! Letting go perfectionism embraces iterative improvement processes vital venturing new projects successfully together alike!

Ultimately though message remains clear throughout entire discussion here today: looking back helps identify behaviors shaped previous experiences empowering rewriting personal stories anew again tomorrow instead…

In closing remarks offered gratitude shared reminder embracing heart leads unleashing life fullest potential possible always remember sharing messages benefit others who may need hear same truths themselves someday soon perhaps?

Episode Transcription:

Victoria Volk: This is Victoria of the unleash tarte dot com, and you’re listening to grieving voices. A podcast for hurting hearts who desire to be heard, or anyone who wants to learn how to better support loved ones experiencing loss. As a thirty plus year grieber, an advanced grief recovery method specialist, I know how badly the conversation around grief needs to change. Through this podcast, I aim to educate Grivers and non Grivers alike, spread hope, and inspire compassion toward those hurting. Lastly, by providing my heart with ears and this platform, griefers have the opportunity to share their wisdom and stories of loss and resiliency. How about we talk about grief like we talk about the weather? Let’s get started. This episode is sponsored by Do Grieve differently, my twelve week in person or online program that helps grieving who have suffered any type of loss to feel better. In do grief differently, you learn new tools, education, and a method you can utilize the rest of your life. In this program and with my guidance, you remove the pain of grief. The sadness will always be there because even in complicated relationships we love, but it’s the pain of grief that keeps us stuck. Are you ready to do grief differently? Check out my website w w w dot the unleashtart dot com to learn more. Hey. Hey. Hey. Thank you for joining me today. This is the fourth episode of my holiday grief series, and I’m gonna talk about why we need to look at our past. It is a theme that has been coming up in conversations lately. Different guesting opportunities I’ve had. I’ve in December, I’ve been in full on creation mode and just having a lot of conversations too. And this has really just come up a lot. And so I figured it was a good topic for me to add and kind of the end cap of the holiday grief series. Because if we really think about our experiences and let’s say you’re grieving right now, you’re listening to this and you are not looking forward to the holidays coming up and you’re thinking about the past and it’s painful. And you do what you can to stuff it down and bury it and just push through and just you just wanna get through the holidays. Like, that’s your goal. It’s just to get through. And yet, the holidays will come and go. And the festivities will be over, and you will be sitting with yourself. And the past might come up again. In fact, it probably will come up again. Those old emotions the feelings, the pain, the reminders, they’ll be back. They always do come back like waves in the ocean. Grief ebbs and flows and hits us when we least expect it. But there’s something that happens when we look at the past and we address it and we act as a buffalo. It’s one of the things that came up in a podcast episode recently with my guest, Chris Cochrane, actually. He had never heard of the I used the Buffalo as an example. And he did not know that the Buffalo will go right head on through a storm. And they do because they realize and know, innately, that it’s the shortest path. There’s a lot of resistance that happens when we try to take the long way around, and it doesn’t do us any favors. We find that All the behaviors that we do to feel better don’t help us to feel better for the long term, and we have a lot of resistance to really looking at the past. Look in the at the past can be a valuable and transformative experience for several reasons. By examining our personal history, we gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and the present circumstances we find ourselves in. It allows us to uncover the blueprints that shaped our lives, revealing the original intentions and motivations behind our actions. We connect the dots, when we have that self reflection. So when we take the time to reflect on the past, we can learn important lessons from our experiences. We can identify patterns, understand the causes and effects of our choices, and make more informed decisions moving forward. This self reflection helps us grow and develop, and as we become more aware of our strengths, hind our weaknesses, and areas for improvement, our lives improve. And exploring the past can provide us with a sense of closure and healing. By acknowledging and addressing any unresolved emotions or incomplete communications, we can release the pain and find ourselves in forgiveness both for ourselves and others. This process allows us to let go of the burdens that have been weighing us down, freeing us to move forward with a renewed sense of peace and purpose. And when I say purpose, it doesn’t have to be something big. We always think that we have to do these grand things with our our pain. You know, it’s that old hero’s journey that from pain to purpose, from tears to triumph, and it’s true, that can happen. And it does, if we look at the past, it can, if we look at the past. I I would say it does if we look at the past. I’ve talked to enough grievers over four plus years to know that to be true. I’ve experienced it myself. The timeline is different for every single human being. It doesn’t have to take over thirty years like it did for me. The important work that we do is in the looking into the past. That is the work. People ask all the time, well, what’s you know, you gotta say you gotta do the work. Well, what’s the work? That’s the work. Look at it. Head on. Be the buffalo. In addition to personal growth, understanding the past can also be valuable on a broader scale. By studying history and societal trends, we can identify patterns and anticipate future possibilities. This knowledge empowers us to make informed decisions, solve problems creatively, and contribute positively to our communities in the world at large. It’s that old saying. History repeats itself. Right? Like, you would think that we would learn in a lot of ways as a society we haven’t, but there is gold there. There is gold in the past. And ultimately, examining the past is not about dwelling in nostalgia, being stuck in old ways. It’s about gaining insight and finding closure and using that knowledge to create a better future. That’s the work. And that’s what I want to encourage you to consider going into twenty twenty five. What has twenty twenty four shown you? What has twenty twenty four left you feeling at the end of it? How do you feel now? How was the year? On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate twenty twenty four? I would rate mine at a seven, maybe even an eight. And I’m gonna have an episode coming up here in a couple weeks. At the end of the month, I’ll share my reflections and takeaways from the year. So I’m not gonna go into that in in this episode. But this year was a year of laying foundations, getting out of my comfort zone, stretching myself, and Again, I I really think it was a laying a foundation. And I’m gonna be talking about that too on an Instagram live with Amanda Babotsky. She was a past guest on the podcast. And I I can’t say her name when I just say it like normal. I always have to, like, pabotsky. And then that comes out. Right? Anyway, Amanda and I are doing this Instagram live, and we’re gonna be talking about this very thing. Going into twenty twenty five. So I’ll put the link in the show notes. It’s when you you actually listen to the when this episode gets published, it’ll be the next day. So add it to your get a reminder for yourself add it to your schedule and come join us over lunch. It’ll be just a really quick, almost like a micro class or a micro what did you call it? Micro workshop. I’m not sure. Anyway, we’re gonna be jamming out talking about this sort of thing. And but the but the message I wanna leave you with today is the past is where it’s at, really. The past is where it’s at. The worst has already happened. If you’re listening to this and you’re grieving and you are feeling emotional pain and you feel like your life has just been one of suffering. Like, the worst has already happened. So what can you do today? Tomorrow By the end of this month, going into twenty twenty five, what can you do differently to change the trajectory of your coming year? What were you doing in twenty twenty four that wasn’t working? What wasn’t working? What steps can you take to shift that? Is it your perspective that needs to change? Is it your actions? One of the things I’m gonna be sharing on this Instagram live is is when we focus on the internal, the external follows. It’s like so many people are so quick to jump on board for New Year’s resolutions and start going to the gym and within three weeks they give up and it’s it’s a grind. I was thinking about that the other day in the gym. I’ve been at it for fifteen weeks going five days a week. For the most part, there have been weeks that’s been four. But for the most part, I’m lifting five days a week. And I’m seeing the gains now. Because I’m certain to do the workouts that I did week one and two and three and I’m hitting personal bests and I wouldn’t have seen that if I wouldn’t have stuck it out I wouldn’t be where I am. Had I not stuck it out? And so when people see me, they might think, oh, shoot. She’s in shape. She’s looking good. Maybe, I don’t know. Got some muscles on her. I do. I’ve I’ve built some muscles. And but what people don’t see is the grind. The day to day grind and commitment that I have had. That’s what it takes to see change. It takes commitment and it takes shifting your perspective that there’s no quick fix. There’s You gotta put in the work. You gotta put in sweat. Whether it’s emotional, mental, physical, spiritual, it’s a practice. Whatever area of your life you wanna tackle, it’s a practice. And what do they say? Practice makes perfect. When I’m not going for perfect, I have to let that shit go because there is no such such thing is perfect. And I had to let that go in order to launch my energy healing membership, which just launched actually, and I’ll put the link to that in the show notes. And what I found myself doing is finding reasons to not launch. I was dragging my feet. And I just had to commit. I just had to commit and decide and let the chips fall as they may. I am not gonna get to the place of perfect with it, and that’s okay. I will be tweaking and tweaking as I need. But for you, moving forward and why it’s important to look at the past is because that’s where the gold is. That’s where you can connect the dots for yourself. The behaviors that you’re doing today are greatly influenced by the past. By your experiences that you’ve had, whether it was three months, three years, or thirty years ago. Trust me. And when you start to have the self awareness, when you start doing the work and you have those connections, you start making those brain and body and emotional connections, like, oh, this is why I was doing this. It’s normal and it’s natural. You will find that the things that you’re doing today are normal and natural. You don’t have to be wrapped up in shame and guilt, which only perpetuates the behavior. That’s why it’s important to look at it. So that you can have the self awareness. So you gain new tools and new knowledge so you can change it, so that you can rewrite your story. That’s my message for you today. I hope you consider looking at the past after you’ve listened to this, listen to this again if you have to. And if you decide to Make twenty twenty five your year. I would be more than happy to be the one to initiate you into that transformation and hold your hand along the way. Alright, friends. Thank you so much for listening. I hope this was helpful and inspiring, if anything. And please share it with someone who may need this message today. Stay tuned for next week, it’s gonna be another actually, the next two episodes are gonna be I’m gonna have two more solo episodes. And and then January is all interviews. I have some great guests coming up and lined up already. I’m excited to share those. So yeah, thank you so much for being here. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life, much love. From my heart to yours, thank you for listening. If you like this episode, please share it because sharing is caring. And until next time, give and share compassion by being heart with ears. And if you’re hurting, know that what you’re feeling is normal and natural. Much love my friend. Hey there, grieving Voice’s family. I love hearing from you, whether it’s a question, a story, or just sharing what you love about the show. Now, it’s easier than ever. You can send me a text message directly wherever you get your podcasts, Check out the show notes. At the top, you’ll see a message. Send Victoria a text message. Your thoughts and feedback mean the world to me. So don’t hesitate. Reach out today. Thanks for listening and for being a part of my community.

Ep 193 Scott Forrester | Coping with Widowhood: A Story of 50+ Years of Love, Loss, and Learning

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY: 

In the quiet aftermath of a personal storm, Scott Forrester found solace and strength in the Feldenkrais method. His journey is not just about physical recovery; it’s a poignant narrative of resilience amid life’s harshest trials – loss, grief, and reinvention.

Forrester’s story began with an accident that challenged conventional healing methods. Physical therapy couldn’t mend what was broken within him. Then he realized that our struggles often lie deeper than muscle or bone—nestle in the intricate dance between mind and body.

Through Feldenkrais, Forrester teaches us to listen—to really listen—to our bodies whispers before they become screams. This method isn’t confined to those seeking physical relief; it extends its embrace to anyone yearning for emotional liberation from grief’s heavy chains.

His tale weaves through his own tapestry of loss—of loved ones who have passed on but whose presence still guide him like unseen stars guiding sailors home. He speaks candidly about embracing life as a way to honor those we’ve lost rather than being anchored by their absence.

But this isn’t just a story about coping with sorrow—it’s also one of profound love. Over 50 years married, Forrester learned that marriage thrives on more than promises—it blossoms through unspoken understandings, shared growth, and enduring friendship.

Scott Forrester stands as a testament to living fully—not despite losses—but because of them, transforming pain into purposeful strides forward…into awareness…into hope.

RESOURCES:
Book | 
The Aware Athlete
The Faldenkrais Method

CONNECT:
Website
Facebook
Instagram

_______

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.

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Unlocking the Healing Power of Movement: The Feldenkrais Method with Scott Forrester

In today’s fast-paced world, we often overlook the deep connection between our physical bodies and emotional health. But what if there was a way to harness this connection to heal both body and soul? Enter the Feldenkrais method—a transformative approach to somatic education that has helped countless individuals improve bodily function and awareness without strain.

A Personal Journey Through Injury to Insight

Our guest at Grieving Voices, Scott Forrester, didn’t just stumble upon the Feldenkrais method; it found him in a time of need. After falling off a roof and facing an unsatisfactory recovery through traditional physical therapy, he embarked on a quest for healing that led him straight to discovering how muscular issues are often deeply intertwined with our nervous system.

Forrester’s revelation—that changing movement patterns could vastly improve overall function—didn’t just apply to his injury recovery. It became clear that these principles were universal, extending their reach into managing grief and emotional trauma as well.

Beyond Physical Therapy: Embracing Life Through Movement

The beauty of the Feldenkrais method lies in its accessibility. It doesn’t matter if you’re an athlete striving for peak performance or someone grappling with neurological challenges—the practice is designed for all who wish to explore their potential through gentle movements and heightened self-awareness.

Scott Forrester’s own journey through grief after losing his mother, beloved dog Stealth, and wife Leanne serves as a poignant testament to these practices’ power. He shares how accepting death isn’t about giving up but rather embracing life more fully—a profound way of honoring those we have lost while continuing our paths forward.

Somatic Wisdom: Listening To Your Body’s Story

When practicing Feldenkrais exercises—whether in group Awareness Through Movement sessions or one-on-one Functional Integration—you embark on an intimate dialogue with your body. This conversation can reveal much about your habitual patterns not only physically but emotionally too.

As Forrester delves into his personal experiences—from adventurous hikes with Stealth to navigating life as a widower—he uncovers lessons learned from love itself. His insights touch upon marriage longevity rooted in communication, understanding, empathy—and most importantly mutual growth beyond individual interests.

From Loss Comes Learning: Writing As Reflection And Connection

Filling days teaching Feldenkrais classes or writing provides structure amid loss for many like Scott Forrester. However, it also opens avenues for new connections—friendships that blossom from shared experiences of grief or simply seeking companionship after significant changes in one’s life narrative.

Marriage requires nurturing akin to tending a garden—it thrives on attention paid not only when convenient but consistently over time. Reflecting on over 50 years together with Lee offers invaluable perspectives on partnership dynamics where unresolved issues might be accepted rather than conquered—an echo of John Gottman’s teachings emphasizing collaboration over conflict resolution alone.

Choosing someone who will walk beside you—in sickness and health—is no trivial decision; values such as family history play roles larger than anticipated initially yet resonate throughout shared lives together.

Aging With Agency: The Philanthropic Method In Action

Discussing philanthropy usually conjures images of generosity toward others—but what about self-care? Actively caring for oneself ensures we remain capable supporters within our communities—as demonstrated by engaging activities like hiking regardless of age milestones looming ahead.

If intrigued by Scott Forrester’s journey or interested in exploring how the Feldenkrais method may enrich your own path towards wellness (both physically & emotionally), consider visiting awareathlete.com where resources abound including access points towards works like “The Aware Athlete.”

Remember—if movement is medicine then let us learn its language fluently so we may converse heartily with every step taken toward healing ourselves wholly!

Episode Transcription:

Victoria Volk: Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, whatever time it is you’re listening. Welcome to grieving voices. Today, my guest is Scott Forrester. He is an author, a Felden Price practitioner. Yep. Podcaster, when licensed physical therapist assistant, and I can’t believe if I pronounced that correctly. Is that right?

Scott Forrester: That’s correct. Yeah.

Victoria Volk: Is there anything let’s start there. What is a filled in Christ practitioner?

Scott Forrester: Alright. So a filled in Christ practitioner. That’s a form whenever you have a method that gets named after someone, you have to put up with the name. So that is a method of somatic ed education. Pulmonic education, soma refers to the living body. So it’s a form of learning with or through the body. Okay? It’s so I’m actually teaching a class a couple classes a week. It’s taught in two different modes. Awareness removal and is their group class name. And functional integration is the name for the one on one work. It’s the same work, but just done either verbally or verbally and with a hand.

Victoria Volk: Okay. Can you just explain a little bit, like, what it looks like?

Scott Forrester: What it looks like?

Victoria Volk: Yeah. Okay.

Scott Forrester: So in the classes, these particular classes I’ve been doing since January and almost none of the movement lessons have been the same. There is really only one lesson that’s how you move your attention around and within yourself. But so the last the last lesson, we do them on Wednesdays and Fridays. So on Wednesday, we did a lesson. And the the class is really good. The people I had Friday, I knew know how to take care of themselves. So we did a lesson that that involved one person at the end of the lesson, being able to put surprise themselves, being able to put their foot on their head. And we did that with no straining, no stretching. And then so we did that on the on the right side. Then on the left side, we did hardly any movements, and that was even better because we we used a lot of visualization after you know how to do it on one side, then you also know how to visualize it. And then Some of the lessons have involved no movement at all. If you are watching them, we’ve done lessons where you just cover the eyes. And improve your vision because the eyes are doing things while they’re covered. And so there’s a tremendous variety. A lot of the lessons focus on most of most of the ones we’ve been doing are awareness for movement, focusing on awareness. But they have a heavy emphasis on function also. So you end up with a lot of movement surprises.

Victoria Volk: So people unless you’re watching this, you can’t see my face. And so I am, like, A little bit and, you know, kinda turning my head to the side because it’s fascinating to me. I find it fascinating and interesting. And I can tell you, like, because I’m an energy worker. I Uh-huh. Bio field tuning with Jeff or raki master and and all that. And I can tell you just living where I live heavily, like, old German country. Right? Like, I’m, like, the unicorn around here. Like so at least I feel like it. Although Yeah. I know that there’s probably people that are interested in the Wu’s stuff like that. And are kind of in the closet of it too. Right? Like, they’re interested in these things that you can’t really explain

Scott Forrester: Yeah.

Victoria Volk: But you have to just experience. And that’s what I’m gathering from you is that this is just something that you have to experience and that before you can really wrap your head around it. Is that

Scott Forrester: it is? It is well, it is. Philadelphia wrote a number of books and so you can’t because he was a scientist, you can, if you understand the book, books, you can absorb his contextual framework. So you could kind of understand it that way. His book, body, and material behavior, he wrote in the forties. And so it has archaic language in it. And if you read the introduction to that and pay attention to that, then you might be able to understand what he’s talking about. Baby.

Victoria Volk: How did you land into this practice?

Scott Forrester: Okay. So this This has made a huge difference in my life. I fell off a roof once. And I only fell seven feet, but it was far enough to break it ankle. Your body weight is seven feet, if you’re not dull lines, man, quite quite right, is still some force. And I eventually had that surgically repaired that was successful. But in the meantime, I had developed a movement pattern with my knee that wouldn’t allow me to run very well any any more. That was about twenty five years ago. So I went to physical therapy and they made it worse. Yeah. I knew they made it worse, so I didn’t go back. And very sincere, nice people. Then I went to another physical therapist who was an ultra runner. He’s about my age, actually. And he had won his age group in the Lenville one hundred more than once. And he was familiar withothelin Christ, but he wasn’t a practitioner, didn’t understand everything about it, but he did apply some some of it. And I had been very interested in the in the method. I I tried to research his online at that course, the in twenty five years, what you can do online is increase dramatically. But So I became very interested in it, and I sensed that, for instance, the first person who made me worse, physical therapy, And I I am a physical therapist assistant. So and I’ve worked in a quite a bit, so I understand it. And and if you wanna get very generalized, every physical therapist is different. But if you wanna really generalize it, strengthen stretch. So if you have a problem, you just have to strengthen the muscles around the area. Well, I already had been relatively at the same time. This is not astounding, but I I was able to deadlift four hundred pounds. So obviously, I was strong enough to run. But the problem was all your movement patterns are not in the muscles. Talk about muscle memory. We understand that, but the memory is not in muscles. It’s in the nervous system. And in the central nervous system, in the brain, that’s where you have your your your movement patterns. That’s where they reside. And you may have even had the experience of forgetting how to do something But as soon as you pick up your hands to do it, you can remember how to do it. Anyway, So that was the first thing. But the real problem was just change your movement pattern a little bit. Now you could do it. I could go into detail about that, but The way we do things, this is profound because it doesn’t just apply to to your body, but the way we do things, the quality of the way we do them. The details of how we do of how we do what we do our makeup profile differs. So this is something that you would have to experience. However, it does have a huge conceptual framework, and you could understand that. The the difficulty with doing it just from the books is you don’t understand the person at first. So you don’t quite understand I could say a sentence. And if you don’t understand the context of what I’d say, words are always always limited. So you always not so you get very little out of it and unless you understand what the person is saying. And he writes in sentences that are paragraph long. So Yes. You could do it either way, but but you do essentially have to experience it. And even in the training, I was myself and others were getting about halfway through it, and we were saying, what if what is this? Eventually, you understand. But it is, you have to experience it. So it became something that with somatic education is making big inroads into therapy too. Felding Christ, didn’t want to. His method is so large as to become unwieldy in in some ways. So you’ve heard the somatic experiencing maybe Peter Levine and there are so many so many techniques and methods that use that. But and so if ethics and ethics can be applied exactly to that. To therapy. The beauty of what he did is that it’s it has great therapeutic yeah, advantages. But some of the some of the the results that you obtain are partly because you don’t focus on the problems, that you don’t focus on therapy. If you have a problem, if you focus on the problem, you have a problem for the rest of your life.

Victoria Volk: Welcome to politics. Right?

Scott Forrester: Yeah.

Victoria Volk: Focus on all the problems all the time. And Yeah. Everybody’s always talking about the problems, but there’s Where are we talking about?

Scott Forrester: It applies to everything. So I Yeah. Made a profound difference in in my life and even how I respond to. Everything. In my class, I I’ve had the greatest compliment lately because people are beginning to say, you know, my whole this is influencing and changing my whole life because I approached life in a different way. You could either I don’t know. I often say you could either do what you always do and do what I what I tell you to. Or you could do what’s right for you and and learn how to take care of yourself and how to move from that place.

Victoria Volk: So who who who is this for? Who is a good candidate for?

Scott Forrester: Okay. So if you if you want to advertise it, as you know, you need to well, you probably know the difficulty of advertising what you’re doing in your location. You suggested that Yeah. But if if so if you want to advertise it, you kind of have to appeal to someone. Some particular group because the problem with it is that it can help anybody that you’re familiar with basketball?

Victoria Volk: Mhmm.

Scott Forrester: So everybody knows Michael Jordan. But just before him was doctor Jay. Julius Irving.

Victoria Volk: Okay.

Scott Forrester: Fellow Christ worked with him. Oh, he he worked with ballet dancers. He worked with children with cerebral palsy because you’re working with the nervous system. And So it it really applies to it would apply So a lot of people that think they’re doing fine and are moving through life. Maybe they’re in in the maybe they’re fairly young, thirties and forties, they probably wouldn’t be interested because they think they’re doing fine. They could improve them tremendously. But if you had cerebral palsy, or if you have neurological difficulties or if you were an artist or an athlete and you have some reason that you really want to improve your skill level, the skill level that resides in your nervous system. Then it’s for you. So the problem is it could help anybody.

Victoria Volk: Well, and what I know about emotions and grief and trauma is that these emotions like that these heavy emotions that we our bodies remember. Right? Our bodies hold on to

Scott Forrester: That’s exactly

Victoria Volk: He’s in the nervous system.

Scott Forrester: Right. Right. So you know if you’re doing energy work. Mhmm. There’s nothing. Fell in Christ to him. There was not a mind body connection. They’re exactly the same thing.

Victoria Volk: Oh.

Scott Forrester: So if if you have a that’s a huge difference between saying a healthy mind and a healthy body. So if what you were saying, everything that happens to us is hell in the body. Well, that’s because it’s Also, all held in the emotions and in the mind. It is held it tells everywhere in the person. Mhmm. So Franklin Christ did feel that working with the with movement was the fastest way to access the entire person. Yeah.

Victoria Volk: There’s a question that’s kinda noodling at me. And so I’m gonna ask, is this, like, similar to like, Thai chis, like chigong, like those types of practices?

Scott Forrester: Yes and no.

Victoria Volk: Okay.

Scott Forrester: It was very similar in in that it, you know, it it emphasizes the mind mindfulness the same way.

Victoria Volk: Okay.

Scott Forrester: It’s very dissimilar in that in Chaiti, you learn a formula and you can improve and improve and improve and improve and prove in that form. Falcon Christ had hundreds. There’s even literally thousands of blessings. Over a thousand. So you come into the class. If you understand that you’re doing the same lesson every time, but it has a different flavor, would you like to improve your eyesight? Would you like to improve your balance, whatever? It was it’s heavily it’s unique and that it’s heavily oriented towards function, but also in that every time you come in, you’ll be doing something non habitual.

Victoria Volk: I have a question. Have you seen people with conditions? Maybe even rare that have seen improvements in their condition using this method.

Scott Forrester: Yeah. Yes, you have. I’ve worked with people who had late stage cerebral palsy and and so on. So yes.

Victoria Volk: Or near blindedness.

Scott Forrester: Yeah. So I think it’s David Webber that develops filled in Christ knew everything in his side. He knew all the all the scientists, and he was a black belt at Juno, so he understood martial arts, and he even understood them to the extent that he wrote a book on the Physics of Juno. So okay. So I lost my check. What was the question again?

Victoria Volk: Vision. Near blind.

Scott Forrester: Vision. Yeah. So that means he knew a number of things about vision. I think it was stated whether that’s developed a lot of exercises there. And they’re I can’t remember the source, but there’s a case study on a person who was legally blind. And he decided to do these eye exercises. And he was prescribed, you know, you should you should do them an hour, maybe even two hours a day. He did him thirteen hours a day. And he went from legally blind to perfectly acceptable vision.

Victoria Volk: I just got goosebumps.

Scott Forrester: Yeah.

Victoria Volk: I am just fascinated with this falling Christ’s guy. So

Scott Forrester: He had completely destroyed knees. And he was born in nineteen o four, lived till nineteen eighty four. So back when he did that as a twenty year old, they didn’t have the knee surgery we do now. But he figured out how to rehabilitate the function of the knees enough that he could practice you. Which Mhmm. With with no meniscus and no legacies. Pretty astoundingly.

Victoria Volk: Yeah. You would go to a physician, maybe, like, that’s impossible. Don’t do that. You’ll just hurt yourself further, you know?

Scott Forrester: Yeah. He was he was cognitively and physically in the body, very aware of what he couldn’t couldn’t and couldn’t do. You know what? He could move fine if he moved in certain ways, which we can, and not fine if he moved in other ways. He had to he had to move within the stability of what he could do, but he understood that and felt that.

Victoria Volk: It’s almost like connecting with the energy within the body to understand it and manipulate it where it can be manipulated, but then almost surrender to it where it can’t be.

Scott Forrester: Yes.

Victoria Volk: That’s a good question.

Scott Forrester: That’s very understandable. That’s very profound. If I I’ll probably butcher the quote, but Find your greatest weakness and surrender to it. Mhmm. He said most people spend all their life either covering up their weaknesses or trying to improve them. Sent those that surrendered to their weaknesses are rare. And he said they actually lead every generation. So obviously, you can understand why he would say that. He has no knees. No functional knees. But in surrendering to that, he found what he could do. He found his whole person. So that applies really to everything.

Victoria Volk: Well, I’m gonna have to look into this guy. He sounds like a true trailblazer in Renegade for his time And

Scott Forrester: He was a pioneer in neuroplasticity when that term wasn’t even used. And there was a brain researcher, Aileen Bakirida, I think, came to some of his classes. Her husband, Paul, Aker Reed Award, won a Nobel Prize in the I believe he won a Nobel Prize in Nobel Prize in Nobel Plastic Research. I think he was the man who took a blind man and hooked sensors to his tongue and hooked that up to a camera. And the man could see. Yeah. He’s done that with us. He he proves a lot of things, sensory substitution that way. You’ve done it done it with a person with a very poor vestibular system. And and he put a helmet on the head so that he could I don’t think he may have used the camera there too. I’m not sure. But then then the in fact, in that case, the person eventually didn’t need the device. Because the brain had been trained to be able to stand in. So

Victoria Volk: Well, listen.

Scott Forrester: So anyway, when when his wife came to the classes, she said, you are able to do more here practically. And our research is allowing us to do in the lab.

Victoria Volk: Well, this is fascinating. And I do want to get to your grief story

Scott Forrester: Yeah.

Victoria Volk: But so I’m sorry I kind of derailed the conversation in my curiosity. But I think it really is a good context into how it changed your life because you’ve got a lot of grief experiences and a lot of loss

Scott Forrester: Oh, in one year. Yeah.

Victoria Volk: Yeah. You were already practicing this, I imagine, for years. Yes.

Scott Forrester: Yeah. Yeah. It made made a big difference to my wife and I. I was finishing PTA school, and I ran by a laundromat where my wife was doing the clothes. And we I had thought about doing this, but it was very expensive In terms of you have to not work for seven weeks a year, you have to find a place to live in another city for that long. Then you have to come up with a tuition and and it takes four years, so it’s quite a commitment. And but there was no training offered near us. So I kinda shut down.

Victoria Volk: You’re talking about the folding price?

Scott Forrester: Yes. And so I I stopped in to see my wife, and she pulls out an ad paper. In the line of math there. And there wasn’t there was a train that’s gonna start up within a reasonable distance. And she said, you have to do this. And as difficult as it was, her that was her attitude clear through the training. So it did make a difference with this.

Victoria Volk: So tell us about your what followed?

Scott Forrester: So I I Our training started in twenty ten, finished in twenty fourteen, so it was much later in In twenty twenty two, in August, we celebrated our fiftieth anniversary. And we came back. So in September, it was, you know, it’s almost twenty twenty three. And two weeks or so after we got back. Yeah. I she had I worked in physical therapy and she had a very tight calf. And I said, you need to go to the doctor right now. So she did and she had a blood clot, but and and it was removed. A lot forty five centimeters. And in the meantime, at at the same time that they, you know, did a scan for the blood clot, they did scan at the aggregate and the physician came back and said, you have stage forecast for her. And So early in twenty twenty three, she began chemotherapy.

Victoria Volk: And

Scott Forrester: she after about three treatments, she had a clean scan. So we were We were happy about that, but it was in the lymph system that it came roaring back. And after three treatments has sensitive as she was to that. She they couldn’t give her anymore because her white blood cell count was way too low. And eventually, they she tried radiation and another form of chemo that was probably not as effective. But, anyway, so my dog whom was not only a family member, I almost got a telepathic relationship with him. The only dog I’d ever had, I got over at sixty. You know what I mean? And he was very important to both my wife and myself. I won’t go into downward, but he died in August. And we’re both here for his last last day. Well, I didn’t say that my mother died January. She was ninety nine, so it was expected. She was very highly functional until the last couple months of life. So my mother died in January, my dog. My wife and I both sat there for his last day, and he was kind of a pioneer for us because he lived his he lived his life every day. And he had wait. He’d had a couple surgeries and they couldn’t do any more for him. And their mask came back on his mouth and other places. And I was building my son’s house down in Chris’ Valley, and it was hot out there. And so I left him with my wife for a few days. And I came back. And she said, yeah. You’ve gotta take him with you. He’s more of us here. So as high as it was, is uncomfortable for for him as it was. He wanted to be out there with me. And, anyway, in in August, he could no longer he he reached the day where his fever came back and and he couldn’t get up. He could barely walk, and he just wanted to sit and look. And he couldn’t get in the car anymore. And he never liked me to pick him up unless he was really weak. And but he was afraid to get in the car because he tried it a couple of times and couldn’t couldn’t make the jump anymore. So I picked him up. He was finishing and he scratched me. Yeah. But once he was in the car, it was fine. And then when he got out of the when we reached the vet, he likes vet because they’ve always helped him. So he hopped down the car and walked in on his own. And then they took him into the bathroom and put it IV in his in his, like, and he was fine with that. He he done it before and then and he and then Dave would do something, you know, do a surgery. He’d come back and be fine. So he was fine with that. He walked in on his own, walked to the waiting room where my wife and I sat with him. And laid down because that’s all I could do. Energy was gone. And then they gave the the shot that you know, slug him down, and they gave him another shot that stopped his heart, but it is extremely peaceful. And so that was a role model for my wife and I. She actually she actually lived a year after the diagnosis. She she made it through September of twenty twenty three. And and passed in in the very first hours of October first. My wife had gone through quite a bit of trauma. And my mom died when she was nine, dad’s bad enough, but her dad was an alcoholic. And so he married another alcoholic. And so her stepmother hated her and and hated her father because she was a terrific alcoholic and didn’t know how to love anybody. Yeah. So she grew up with first the loss of her mother and then people saying, you know, you you gotta be strong for your father. Right? Yeah. That’s backwards. That’s so and through your early teenage years and and later teenage years, you hope. In a family that’s not your family. So she grew up highly sensitive doing due to needing to know every night. Her father was a stable alcoholic. He held a job. But you need to know what Moody’s coming home in every every night. Mhmm. And so she actually suffered from depression quite a bit. And then that last year, she was never depressed. We were both really accepting of death, which is a good place to be because in our culture, we just kinda put it off into a corner. I’ll deal with that in fifteen years. Mhmm. It really could enhance life. To understand it. Anyway, so she would she never had time for that and was never depressed. And she lived every single day Even when she was getting weaker, she got up and did something that was life every day. And that was true for her last day. My son visited and he brought pictures from the grandkids, and she held a nice video call with them. She was fully into that call. And, no, ma’am. I didn’t know. She didn’t know. That was her last day. She was magnificent. And she’s my hero. She did not want to spend one minute in a facility, and she didn’t And and the timing was the whole thing was amazing because I spent a little bit of extra money to have some help. To finish to finish John’s house. And I couldn’t be in two places at once, but when I got it finished, that’s when she really needed vehicle. So it’s a huge it’s it’s a bigger thing than you think. But, you know, in the first week, when you lose somebody that closely, you’re holding their hands when they take their last breath, which was beautiful. But when you do that, a presence tends to be really strong, especially for the first week or two. And I got up one morning, he’s walking down the hall, and I It’s a knowing. I related to hearing your voice. She said, I will always be with you, Scott. Not too much later. I was sitting down at the breakfast table and I said, how was it with you? What are you arguing? She said, Sky is so beautiful. So wonderful. Wonderful. Actually, the word, whether anybody thinks that’s a voice or not, some people understand some it’s a great truth because it says that life is sacred. The right way to grieve is to remember someone as your hero and embrace life. You know, you could think and it’s reasonable to think that the right way to agree with us to be unhappy. But counter intuitively, it’s not the the loss is bigger than you think. Because if you’re orientated correctly and you live day by day, you think you can deal with it. But you find there’s more layers to it because she wanted to be a lie a wife that was actually her goal. It’s not everybody’s goal. Wife, a mother, and a grandmother. And she did that her entire life. I matter when she was maybe eighteen. We spent a lot of time together when she was nineteen. She was married when we were twenty. So her entire lifer, she did that. And that’s all I did or don’t either. You live day by day or do it fine. And then you find out the the loss in the hole is bigger and you thought and you find yourself, you know, searching for something to fill that. So I recently hadn’t aware of this. That you have to relate to the past in a certain way. If you relate to the past as the beautiful blessings that you had, the fun times you had, or as the things that weren’t right but what you learned from them. You’re on you’re on a good path. As soon as you say, as soon as you begin to grasp and say, I wish I had that back. It brings you down, like, falling off a building. So never go there. The first time I had that realization, it was kinda like oh, that’s a good realization. I understand that. I see that. The second time I was, like, I’m never going there again. Then I understand. It was beautiful, but I I still am in touch with her. But after seven months, you have to be very quiet and just I could still ask for questions and feel and answer, but So I felt in Christ this thing about that was the beginning of really developing some awareness within yourself. You can use a method to improve your function, or as you were talking about, you can move that use that method to actually notice exactly how you are functioning. There are places that you can go to as a method that improve your your sense of yourself, your standing, your connection with the ground, just how you feel it in in an overall way. You talk about posture. There’s there’s some ideas about posture and the method. But there’s a certain way of standing in which you’re totally comfortable. And I couldn’t quite go there. I thought that we had experienced a whole year of both joy and grief together, and I realized that there was even another level that we could have experience. So you can tell that in your body, you’re not quite ready to go to that place. After you’ve experienced it and know what it is. And then later you are. Yeah. The whole idea of self and self awareness has been expanding. You know, throughout these entire last ten years.

Victoria Volk: What’s your wife’s name?

Scott Forrester: Namely. But her name was always Leanne and was her Italy.

Victoria Volk: And your dog?

Scott Forrester: Stealth.

Victoria Volk: What time was he hold? Was he?

Scott Forrester: He was a lab shepherd mix, and he didn’t quite make thirteen years. He if I had a dog now, I would have known their limits, but he’s a very strong, strong dog. So I felt like he could do anything I could do. So when he was about five, I took him on a hike through the desert from Walker Pass to Kennedy Meadows. Mhmm. I was lost one day too. So we were probably out there by sixty miles. And, yeah, he was totally exhausted when we got done. He couldn’t even walk very far. I mean, we’d really get through it out there. And my wife picked him up and, you know, picked us up. Actually, Actually, she I was a kennady medalist store, and she was up to the campground. I didn’t know that. And I I couldn’t get in touch with her cell phones for her working. And eventually, I had somebody I could have walked up there. But still is good. So I’m gonna leave him with the campground. I I was gonna leave him with the campground manager, but it said he took us up there. That’s how tired stealth was as strong and tough as he was carrying his backpack and and always leading the way. And I’ve taken him on hikes through the wind river range in Wyoming. And Well, one one day we did from Snora Pass to Echo Pass or whatever it was in the Sierra. And we did thirty one miles in one day. The last part of it, it was actually getting dark. So you’re walking up the steepest part of it to ten thousand five hundred feet. The rock is part of it. And you can’t see the trail. So every time you go to a rocky spot, you can’t find the trail. Because now you have to negotiate out of this Rocky area. Which way did it go? My GPS did that for us. But it took a minute to find the trail each time we were crossing streams at night twenty hours and he was right up right here. I had no estimate for a vehicle. Yeah. Yeah. So Yeah. We did some big adventures together. And then finally, he got to the place where I wouldn’t do that with him anymore. It it didn’t have quite the stamina for it. It was too dangerous for him.

Victoria Volk: So growing up, had you had any loss experiences? And and how did how did what did you learn about grief growing up?

Scott Forrester: Okay. So basically, no. I mean, we’re We’re it was pretty isolated from everything. But I both of my grandmothers did die. We weren’t there for it. You know, further passing or anything. We they both had funerals. And then that was way back in my childhood. The first one, my my dad’s mother. The second one was was actually actually after I got married, and she was way up in her nineties. And she passed the way she wanted to. So those are significant. But then my father died when I was I think I was young, but I was forty three. So it’s not a childhood loss. But that one was in such great contrast to to my wife later thirty years later because that one I couldn’t accept it.
And I couldn’t even say that my father had died. I couldn’t use that word. He was so strong. And you know, to a kid he seemed invulnerable and then he had Parkinson’s disease in every a piece at a time what he could do. Went away. I couldn’t even say Parkinson’s for years. And, you know, five years later, I could I had trouble accepting it. And for thirty years, he’s always been there. With me. That was a completely different experience.

Victoria Volk: I noticed you didn’t even mention that in what as one of your losses.

Scott Forrester: No. I I was pretty much focusing on on what happened within the space of the year as pretty dramatic. And I think my wife knew she knew how much she meant to me. Even more than I knew how much I meant to her. She knew what what it would be like. And I think she guided me through a lot of it. But, yeah, there’s a thirty year difference between those two and in the intensity of you losing three, actually four. In one year because I I’m by myself, so I adopted another dog. And my son said, that he would help with it. But in reality, it turned out he couldn’t. And so I found that I couldn’t really take care of but I kept him long enough. He was potty trained, and I kept him long enough that we found a really good home for it.

Victoria Volk: Why do you think you couldn’t take care of him?

Scott Forrester: Because I did what I usually what I wanted to do was get a dog who is full of energy. And so he was like a border collie, and he was only about seven months old. I could take care of him. But if I did, that if I were retired and didn’t have anything to do, I could take care of because it took the entire day. I had to take him for a life.
If I took him to run for two hours, he’d go quite okay kind of for one day. But I couldn’t do that every day. So I had to take him for, like, five walks a day. And and I had to keep an e eagle eye on him to make sure that the project training was holding, and I had to do all kinds of things like that. So I could have taken care of, but I wouldn’t have any relationship with people outside the home. You know, drive to bed there. So it was either the dog and you and you stay in the house with a dog for the rest of your life or, you know, you can you can work with other people.

Victoria Volk: Is there a part of you that feels it was maybe just too soon?

Scott Forrester: To seem to get the dog? No. I just I just couldn’t. I don’t I don’t have a fancy yard. And I don’t have anybody having your wife at home that can watch them while you go to work and while you do something.

Victoria Volk: Yeah. That’s yeah.

Scott Forrester: Yeah. I couldn’t I just didn’t have the ability to do it.

Victoria Volk: So earlier you mentioned you just kind of made a statement about trying to fill the void. I that those weren’t your words, but to that effect, trying to fill the space and time and

Scott Forrester: Not not so much the time. I’ve been pretty busy with with the space.

Victoria Volk: I’m actually trying to keep busy. I suppose is maybe the good a good way to say it. Like, you’ve been trying to keep busy. Is

Scott Forrester: that No. No. I’m just no. It’s easy for me to keep busy. I I have things that I wanna write a book. I’ve read written a couple of books. I wanna write a book. About this. I think there’s some useful things in it. And at least there’s some at least your story needs to be told.

Victoria Volk: What were some of the things though that you found that you have found yourself doing since your wife passed away that Oh. Are out of character lead.

Scott Forrester: Well, she loved to cook, and I had no interest in it. So I I don’t know how to cook. So now you have to take that up, and she gave me some hits before she passed, and I’ve been feeding myself quite well. But so now you have to do that. And you find out that it took a lot more time to do some of the things that you thought. So now I’m it’s only me here, so it’s not a big deal, but I’m cleaning the house. I’m teaching my classes. I am I want to write that book. Trying to find time for that. Eventually switching over the cell phone, you wouldn’t believe how much trouble that was. I keep sending you the bills for the person who’s not there anymore in front of the plan and switching insurance and say doing all the paperwork and she paid the bills, so I had to figure out what she was doing there. And then my son needs help. I have two sons. One’s an engineer in Arizona. The other one is not this ability. And he needs some help. Although, I’m proud of him. He’s needing a little bit less as things go. But so I had to figure out his finances and that was and we have to make trips down to Social Security, and then that does get you know, you have too bad. I was totally busy with that stuff for a long time. So during the during these classes, I put quite a bit of work into you’re doing two a week and I’ve I’ve actually kept them so I don’t do the same class every week every twice a week. I could. But so I put quite a bit. Excuse me. I didn’t. I can’t think. I’ve been doing so many things. I can’t I can’t really

Victoria Volk: do you feel like now, like, the dust is settled a little bit? You’ve gotten a lot of that administrative stuff that, obviously, when some when your spouse passes, there’s so much paperwork and you’d kinda hit on that a little bit. Do you feel like now is when you you finally maybe have time to, like, sit with how you’re feeling and sit with your grief and kind of maybe just now being able to do that? Yeah.

Scott Forrester: Yeah. It’s getting a little bit more like that. So something that’s, excuse me, have been crying. I mean, crying a little bit.

Victoria Volk: Okay.

Scott Forrester: Yeah. I wanna get back to the right. See, I still my time will be filled. I I if I have enough time, I would like to get back into painting. But something that takes a good chunk out of my day every day is that, you know, I have to get outside I have to do.
I have a friend that finished a hundred mile race not too long ago, and it was one with a big cut off. And so I get together with her and we’ll do eight, ten, twelve miles. And, you know, you know, we’ll go up we We did Smith rock the loop around that the other day for about eight miles, and it has something in it. They called Missy Ridge, which is just a big steep climb. And then we can jog back down a lot. But every day, so I want to spend if I’m really busy, I only get outside for half an hour. But I I like to spend an hour or two every day and, you know, to start the day doing something that’s movement or exercise. And I do a lot of movement preparing for the lessons. But see there’s that is so important to me that I make time for it. So there’s an if you if you go outside and do heart rate training for two hours, it takes more than that. You had to make sure you had to do whatever things are necessary to prepare for it. Then you’re a little bit more tired, sometimes even requiring a nap. So that’s a foundation to my day. Because if I do live to ninety or ninety five or my like my mother about a hundred, I wanna be fully functional at that age. So

Victoria Volk: Don’t we all?

Scott Forrester: I don’t have any trouble being being busy. But, yes, the other day, I was able to sit down in the sun, and there’s been a I mean, seven days a week, I’m busy. I’ll go out and see my son Christmas valley here. But I have had a couple times where it’s been very wonderful to sit outside and just reflect. In terms of filling the void, it’s a it’s a little embarrassing. But I found myself. So I I didn’t want to just put myself in a closet, turn the light out. So I found myself reaching out in a lot of different ways and making trying to make new connections, which I have. And that’s good. I found myself making new friends on Facebook and trying to find people that live in the area. And it was not obvious to me. Believe it or not that I was searching for somebody to fill that gap. And because it’s not what I was doing, but it was. It’s not what I was doing, but it was in there. It’s all I’ve ever known. So you’re I talked about a habit that’s in the body and an entire person. Yeah. I I went to the store the other day. This has been a little while ago. All of a sudden, that became kind of clear that happened in that in that looking error. And I actually kinda cried because isn’t that obvious that you would do that? Right? It wasn’t completely obvious. It became obvious. So I’ve I I think I’ve kind of indicated that all my friends are twenty years younger. Not all my friends, but but my close friends, Laura is twenty years younger, but a friend that may visit that I used to run with in Cheyenne. He’s twenty years younger. My friend Carlos, and his and his partner, Monica, are twenty years younger. Somebody I did go to visit some people at at the senior center the other day on invitation. And I like the people great. But I couldn’t go there again.

Victoria Volk: Well, I think what I mean, just based on how physically active you are, Yeah. And your background knowledge and stuff, is it accurate to say that you are a bit of a unicorn in the population of your peers?

Scott Forrester: I guess so. I mean

Victoria Volk: And that I

Scott Forrester: don’t think there are

Victoria Volk: other people are is not where you are.

Scott Forrester: They don’t do that some of these things that I do.

Victoria Volk: Exactly. And

Scott Forrester: so I love to talk to.

Victoria Volk: It’s how do we improve our lives, how do we better ourselves, it’s by surrounding ourselves with people who are doing what we who are where we want to be. Right? Yeah.

Scott Forrester: Right.

Victoria Volk: Where we’re at? Does was your wife very active with you as well?

Scott Forrester: No. She was always physically weaker than I was on it. She on her honeymoon, we hike eight miles in and eight miles back to the old mill the crystal mill in Colorado. And on the way out, I care I used to carry her backpack. She was only twenty, but she supported me.

Victoria Volk: And that’s what I was gonna say too is, but she never took that she allowed you to be you fully you?

Scott Forrester: She did. She supported me so much. In fact, there was a time when I I get lost all the time. She was a navigator. But I do have some sense about where I am when I’m when I’m outside.
Mhmm. And but I had no experience to do this, and I was backing very light. And by the time I just lost a couple days.

Victoria Volk: A couple days?

Scott Forrester: Anyway, I I just lost a lot out there. And Let’s see. So it was between fifteen and twenty years ago that I decided I was going to be in the wind river range and go from Green River lakes campground to Big Sandy, which has totally changed now. And they were keeping it kind of wilderness, so they weren’t a lot of sides out there. So you can imagine that was, you know, maybe seventy eight miles or something.
It turned out to be more than that for me. I didn’t know if I didn’t receive it again because what happened was An hour in, I dropped my GPS at the stream, and it was supposed to be waterproof, but it dropped it to a deep part of the stream. And It took me a lot of fishing out there. It worked. It was full of water. It worked well enough for me to find the trail one time. And then it never worked yet. So I’m out there with no GPS. I did have good maps in a compass. And I thought maybe I should go back. And then I thought, well, I might never have the opportunity to do this again, so I’ll go a little farther.

Victoria Volk: Man, you got gumption.

Scott Forrester: So I I know she would be at the campground for a better hour or so, I mean, probably that day. So I could have gone back, but I didn’t. And five days later, I walked out and I’d lost so much weight that she didn’t recognize me. I made a statement.

Victoria Volk: You ran you ran out of food, I take it.

Scott Forrester: I still had two or three hundred calories left, but I had

Victoria Volk: Futch hell from her when you finally met up with her.

Scott Forrester: Well, when I yeah. When I approached enough to talk, you know, but because I was walking towards her, I’m wearing the same clothes, but she didn’t recognize me. And I’m I’m but anyway, that night before the seasons were changing in the melons. I had a one pound sleeping bag. And It was getting too cold. I tried to get out of the wind because I didn’t have a tent. I brought my rain poncho that I strung up over myself, which actually protected me from the rain, but not the wind. And last night, I tried to hike the ice boulders there. My bag wasn’t doing it. I was I was shivering through the night. My my shoes were icy and frosty. In the next morning when I put them on. So I I wasn’t I was thinking, you know, if it gets more be more than shivery, I’m gonna have to get up and start doing jumping checks or something. Anyway, we made it through the night. But that night, I was I was sitting up and I felt her beside me. And I said, she’s here. No. She’s not here. I kept going back and forth before I she’s not here, but she is. And when I the next day, It took me four hours to find the trail. It went through a rocky area, and Anyway, so when I got out, she told me that she had taken, and this is not something she did all the time. She had taken my wallet and held it held it closer to her to her heart and projected herself out. Out beside me. She knew she knew that it was getting it was getting cold where she was. So she knew. So she wasn’t very active, but she she supported me in so many ways.

Victoria Volk: So you could have died. Were you not were you not fearful? Were you not? Like, what was going through your mind?

Scott Forrester: Their last day, I had let myself get dehydrated or and and the lack of food, which you know, you can go coin ways without food. I I knew that, but I didn’t know it in my body yet. In five days, it’s enough to get hungry if you’re not used to what you’re doing, not prepared. Right?

Victoria Volk: Well, when you start hallucinating?

Scott Forrester: I wasn’t to that point, but I was to the point where I didn’t have any extra energy to think to to think about worrying. Mhmm. So I was I was just pretty pretty steady to just kinda do what you go back, come back. I make it or I, you know, I find it or I don’t. You do get to the place where you’re at where you say, oh, somebody help me.
But, yeah, I found the trail. And once I did, I was up to three or four miles an hour again.

Victoria Volk: What I’m hearing in this story is it is a a metaphor for grief. Right?

Scott Forrester: Yeah.

Victoria Volk: We’re you can feel so lost. Like, can you see the parallels of getting lost?

Scott Forrester: Oh, yeah.

Victoria Volk: Not knowing where the trail is, not like losing your path, losing your self identity?

Scott Forrester: I did lose my identity. I’ve been a husband all my wife, life. And she was my everything, and she said to me before she passed. She said she said, yeah. We both wanted her to go first because I wanted to take care of her. That’s always been the case. She was weaker physically. And Yeah. She said you you were in my rock. So you you lose that identity. It’s gone. She no longer needs my help. You’re right. And then it’s every day at a one day at a time, and so you learn and you learn new things. It is a metaphor for them. I could.

Victoria Volk: I see a book along those lines.

Scott Forrester: Yeah. I I really would like to say some things that I think will help other people because I’d like to tell her story. So you know that all my friends are twenty years younger. And I’m not I wasn’t looking for anybody. But I found somebody who I knew I could I knew it was worth with, but I’m I’m not gonna tell you the whole story.
It’s just too funny. But I so this person was actually twenty nine years younger.

Victoria Volk: Okay. So

Scott Forrester: I went way out of him and and asked her to marry me knowing that. Very likely he was gonna say no. So she did say no. So anyway, I wasn’t looking for it then, and I’m really not today either. But that that all is there. It’s a good thing because it’s what I’ve really needed. I recently talked about the difference between being alone and being lonely. Mhmm. If you’re if you’ve never done it before and you’re forced to be alone, you have to learn some things you’ve never learned before. And it’s exactly what you need.
So that’s my story. For the pilot.

Victoria Volk: Thank you for sharing.

Scott Forrester: Thank you. Thank you for being a great host.

Victoria Volk: I would ask you what your grief has taught you, but I feel like you’ve fully answered that question. Do you feel like you’ve answered that question?

Scott Forrester: I have. But in looking over her wonderful marriage, and it was. I saw I saw in retrospect, I saw areas where I really wish I’d been more for and then I got carried away with that to the point where, you know, boy. You could look back and and and say, I was so selfish in in some marriage. When you’re you’re twenty years old and you get married, you don’t know We just had dumb kid. So you asked everything you learned in life. Everything we learned, we learned together. And so you you can get you can kinda get out of focus on that. Yes. I do wish I’d done some things even more for, but you can’t say, I wish I’d known fifty years ago what I know now because it’s impossible.
It’s so it’s always a very beautiful thing and then I I for a while, I got so carried away with. Which I I do acknowledge and I do want to bring into life and other people’s lives. What I learned there how much how much freedom is encouragement that you want to give the woman your a r I two? So that’s there. And I’m working with that. But for a while, it overshadowed what was something that was really beautiful even though it was very imperfect because it could not have been anything else. So, yeah, that’s another lesson.

Victoria Volk: So what his love taught you?

Scott Forrester: What his love taught me? Yeah. I understand the commitment. I understand what it takes it takes a whole lifetime to build that kind of a relationship. The amount of comfort that we had with each other, the we really were one person.
And she has she has guided me through all of this. And love love has taught me, you know, look look at the love, don’t and look at whatever lessons you can learn, but But don’t forget that there was something there that was beyond anything that was done. It’s you can’t encapsulate it all in one mistake or one love is something that goes beyond. It’s more than the sum of the parts. The whole of the whole relationship if it works in the marriage is more than the sum of parts. It works better than it should. It can work better than it should.

Victoria Volk: And what do you think is the key to it working? For fifty years?

Scott Forrester: So I don’t wanna be too tried, but we we were careful to be committed to that idea at the start. I’ve been kind of astounded if I look back, I see. I guess, you know, there were places where it could not have worked. And then I’ve been kind of astounded when I’m getting a better view of what marriage is for people overall. And and there are a lot of divorces. Yeah. So I’ve been kind of astounded by that. It’s so logical that it wouldn’t work. So I I really have gained no understanding of that. From a perspective of what? You know? Because okay. So a couple of other things that I know even when in my wife’s journal that she said I could read shows up is that commitment’s not enough. If you don’t know how to make the relationship work, commitment is not enough because you’re committed to something that doesn’t work. So then the thing of communication is really essential. And you should develop the skill of nonviolent communication. Of being able to communicate without blaming. But even but we always communicated but we didn’t even know that skill sometimes. The person that can hurt you most in the world is your spouse. And if you have not shed a lot of your ego, everybody wants to be hurt and everybody wants to be loved. And if you have a very strong egoistic way of doing things, which we all do, then somebody gets hurt, and then they say, but you did this, that as a matter of self defense. There’s various ways that can happen. I just listened yeah. You’ve been very patient. I just just listened to an interview with I think his name is John Cotton. And he was saying that after all the studies he’s done, you could predict whether a couple would stay together in as little as fifteen minutes with eighty five or ninety percent accuracy. Because we talked about the fellow Christ method that it’s the quality of what you do dictates what you learn, not the quantity. So you can do a lot of quantity and you end up with neck pain or or hurt because you’re doing the same thing the same way and you and you increase the intensity, but you’re using the same habit. So because of the quality of couples interaction, they can tell just a short period of interaction would typify the quality of what you’re doing. So do you do you still enroll? You don’t even listen and they know you’re not listening. So they upped the volume. I mean, do you do that or or do you even when you hurt one another, are you really seeking for something really knowing It’s not even compromise. There’s some truth somewhere. And are you really pursuing this? Which we did as a friendship? Or are you trying to be right? And those those little things and you can eventually to be learn to communicate much better. But then So that brings you to the other thing and you can’t up your what’s the quality of your communication in the first place? Are you trying to be right or and that comes you know, you have to learn that because that comes through. But but the friend aspect of it, you know, is that the most important thing? And like I say, in beyond compromise, are you looking for something together? I we weren’t great at it. Just I mean, and and and listening with a high degree of awareness. If you bring complete awareness, complete observation to that in a non bias, non passionate way, then you are you are observing your own self in my con. You are observing your wife’s body language. You are observing her words. You are observing hell around. She holds your head, and and you are seeing the meaning behind it. And if you don’t, you ask that’s a high level of communication. And we didn’t always have that, but we we did have this basic belief in. What we were doing. So you need that communication and then you need that continued growth. That self growth. If you don’t have that, that’s a well, that’s a hard place too. But but if you have that friendship aspect, if that’s really what you’re what you’re after, you you can keep going. I mean, you you’ll probably make it. What what was very interesting? And John Gottman’s speech I was listening to was he said, most married problems don’t they don’t ever get accepted or changed. Resolved, but they get accepted. So the friendship, the aesthetics really what determines it all. If you want to go farther, you can. And and you show that it might be dangerous not to.

Victoria Volk: Well, that’s the foundation. Right?

Scott Forrester: Yeah. But that’s the foundation. Mhmm. You can learn better communication skills and you can learn learn not to to put that ego first and you can learn to do that. And then something that you should have learned that is it’s becoming more a possibility in a in a country you can learn. We throw the word partner around. It’s a good work. But it loses some of its meaning if you throw it around too much. Like so to add to that, you can say, you collaborate with your wife or your colleagues or and then you can go back to use the word partner with a different meaning. As equals.

Victoria Volk: I had a conversation yesterday with a minister. Mhmm. He said the most important decision you will ever make in your life is the person you choose to spend your life with.

Scott Forrester: Yeah. Liam was eternally kind. That was so important. So Yeah. You’re you’re right.
That is and so you should be a little nervous about it. And take your time. I actually I asked, actually, after before he got married, we were a kid. I said, what makes you think you can stay better?

Victoria Volk: What’d she say?

Scott Forrester: She told me, you know, she’d never experienced. Divorce in her family. Her mother was always there. Even her father was there. Even though her father invited to a horrible marriage, he never left his wife. And then I thought that was a pretty good answer.

Victoria Volk: What is it that you would like to scream to the world? You were on a long hike and you were out in the mountains and you’re at the top of the mountain, what would you scream?

Scott Forrester: Well, in a book, I would like to scream, scream, her her story. It’s amazing. Overall, I would I would just I would just like people to know how how great marriage could be even though it’s it’s a process to see through. It’s not great every day. It can become great every day, but that’s a that’s a long story. I would like them to see how wonderful it could be. I would like to I would like them to see two things. One, the beauty of how how much my wife or a woman can give, and then I would like them to see the wonder of what the husband how he can lay himself aside. That I’m I’m not talking about wear yourself doing a wear yourself out doing everything for for your old wife, but you give your entire heart to to her elevation. Those two aspects. I mean, what she gave is astounding. And it’s hard to put it into words. But I would like I would like so I would like overall people to know, you know, what what marriage could be. How you could get there. What a wife really? What a gift a wife could be? And And I think there needs to be more a lot more knowledge of of how a husband needs to function in terms of putting his eagle down and and any leadership comes from my my entire heart is in elevating my partner. I yeah. So the the beauty of the whole thing, I can I cannot overappreciate the gift that she gave? Her entire life.

Victoria Volk: That’s beautiful. Is there anything else that you would like to share that you didn’t get to?

Scott Forrester: No. I just appreciate the opportunity to talk about even. I I guess Yeah. The fact that I can still I can still ask her questions and I feel a response just in the smile or It is it’s never it’s not really a loss. I only lost the physical things.
Anyway, I I thank you very much for the chance to share all that even some of the most embarrassing things.

Victoria Volk: It was my pleasure to have this conversation with you, and thank you for describing this new Well, it’s not new, but this the method.

Scott Forrester: Oh, the the film price method if you

Victoria Volk: Yeah.

Scott Forrester: If you didn’t any help understanding that get in touch with me.

Victoria Volk: Yeah. So thank you for bringing that to my awareness, to my audience who Yeah. I mean, there’s so many neurological issues out there. And as we talked about grief and emotions and how they get held in the body and I see that it’s something that could be very beneficial for everyone just as you shared and It’s obviously been helpful for you in navigating your grief and bringing a sense of awareness to your body and being within the body and Okay. Has allowed you to live an exceptional physical life.

Scott Forrester: Yeah. Without that, I wouldn’t be doing some of the things I’m doing right now.

Victoria Volk: And isn’t that the whole goal of I think all of us, you know, I’m forty five. I’m thinking, oh my gosh, I’m gonna be fifty. And you’re thinking, oh my gosh, I wish I could be fifty. Maybe, you know. But that’s the goal. Right? To get to as we get older, it’s not to view it as a death sentence or slow progression of debilitation and weakness and all of these things. And so I try and take care of myself so that truthfully. I can probably take care of my husband because I feel like I’m the stronger of us too, you know.

Scott Forrester: Really? Yeah. Yeah. I can still lift my wife. It’s That’s incredible.
Absolutely. That’s we wanna live our best life and we we don’t wanna accept unnecessary rehabilitation.

Victoria Volk: And that’s the key unnecessary. Right?

Scott Forrester: And so when you get out of the Pacific, unnecessary, exactly. And if we have the necessary, then we want to incorporate that into our life the best we to be the best that we are. And if you get on the Pacific Crest Trail, you find, you know, you hike all day. Entire day, you take your breath, breaks, so you make sure you eat and drink enough. But that’s all you’re doing. The entire day from when you get up in the morning to when you when you need to allow enough time to set up your tent. But there’s old people out there. And they’re in shape you wouldn’t believe. There’s, you know, there’s a lot of twenty, thirty, forty, fifty year olds out there, but there’s older people out there.

Victoria Volk: Well, in thirty, forty year olds that can’t do what you can do, wouldn’t even dare do what you’ve done?

Scott Forrester: Yeah. I throughout my life, I have shunned any job that involved eight hours a day of sitting.

Victoria Volk: Oh, Yeah. Sitting if they face sitting as the new smoking.

Scott Forrester: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No. That was the same.

Victoria Volk: Well, thank you so much for your time today and sharing about Lee and stealth and your father and your and your mother and all the wisdom that you brought to our conversation, I I thank you for your time.

Scott Forrester: Thank you. You are an an excellent host to enjoy talking to you. Get in touch with me if you wanna learn more about the fellow price benefits.

Victoria Volk: And where can people find you if they would like to get in touch with you?

Scott Forrester: I’m actually reworking my website, but you can get all my contact information off of the aware athlete dot com.

Victoria Volk: K. I will put

Scott Forrester: a link. Not the aware athlete. Aware athlete dot com.

Victoria Volk: Aware athlete dot com. And I will put a link to that in the show notes as well.

Scott Forrester: I’m actually yeah. I’m I’m I’m actually working on a website that’s not really live yet, the aware human.

Victoria Volk: Okay. I like that.

Scott Forrester: Yeah. And you can find my books. You wear athlete book. Your warehouse to find that you should put in the warehouse, the entire title I won’t give you the subtitled now. But the awareness, like, by Scott Forrester, you can find that on Amazon.

Victoria Volk: And I’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well. Yeah.

Scott Forrester: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Victoria Volk: Thank you. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Watch your growth.

Ep 177 Searching for Alignment

Searching for Alignment

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:

Have you ever felt like a ship adrift, disconnected from your true north? In this profound journey we call life, alignment with our authentic selves is often clouded by the fog of grief and loss. But what if I told you there’s a compass waiting to guide you back to yourself?

Tune in to this week’s episode of “Grieving Voices,”  where I unveil the transformative potential of the Youmap framework.

In this heartfelt session:
– Explore what it means to live in alignment with our authentic selves and how misalignment can lead to grief.
– Discover the four pillars – strengths, values, skills, personality – that form the foundation of living an aligned life in the Youmap framework.
– Learn about the various forms of grief that arise when we stray from our true path.
– Emphasize the importance of self-understanding as a tool for unlocking one’s potential.

Who Can Benefit From Youmap?
– The newly widowed seeking new beginnings
– Those who’ve experienced job loss
–  New divorcees aiming for self-discovery
It also holds value for college-bound students navigating their future paths.

Whether facing significant life transitions or seeking deeper self-understanding, Youmap offers clarity and direction. And for those supporting others through loss? It’s essential knowledge.

Special Anniversary Giveaway Announcement:
The Unleashed Heart is turning 5! 🥳 In Celebrating five years of transforming lives and supporting grievers, I’m giving a special giveaway. Get a chance to win 2 prizes: a 60-minute Distance Energy Healing Session and a 60-minute Distance Heart with Ears Session 🎉 The giveaway starts this January 11, 2024, and ends on January 23, 2024. The winners will be announced on the 5th-anniversary date, January 23.  I encouraged listeners to join and participate. For more details on entering the giveaway, check the resources below.

Dive deep into who you are and discover what makes you tick; it’s time to live a life aligned with your purpose!

Key Takeaway:
Misalignment with our authentic selves can manifest as various forms of grief – from career dissatisfaction to deep personal regret. But there’s hope!

Remember: “You always had the power, my dear. You just had to learn it for yourself.”

RESOURCES:

  • YouMap
  • 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!
  • 5th Anniversary Giveaway! Register before 1/23/2024 at 11 AM CST to win a 60-minute Distance Energy Healing Session OR a 60-minute Distance Heart with Ears Session! ✨

_______

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
00:01:29 – 00:01:56
Welcome back to another episode of Grieving Voices. I am your host, Victoria V. And today, I have a thought-provoking topic to explore, finding alignment in our lives and the grief that can arise when we stray from our authentic selves.

Victoria Volk
00:01:57 – 00:02:56
In this episode, I’ll dive into alignment, its impact on our well-being, and the steps to align our lives with our strengths, values, skills, and personality, which these are the 4 pillars of what’s called the Youmap. So grab a cup of tea, find a comfortable spot, and let’s dig in, shall we? I wanna begin to explore what it means to live a life in alignment with our authentic selves. Alignment is the state of being where our actions, choices, and pursuits align with our core strengths, values, skills, and personality, essentially, the essence of who we are, which is provided as a snapshot in what’s called a Youmap. For those who are new to this podcast or who haven’t heard of Youmap before, Youmap is a comprehensive framework and a tool that helps individuals better understand themselves and align their lives with their authentic selves.

Victoria Volk
00:02:57 – 00:04:08
It comprises 4 pillars, your top five strengths, values, preferred and least preferred skills, and how you’re wired or your personality. By exploring these aspects of ourselves, we gain clarity on our unique gifts, what is most important to us, our abilities, and how we are inspired. Youmap provides a language and framework to articulate our strengths and gifts to the world, and it helps us make informed decisions and pursue opportunities that align with who we truly are. When we deviate from this alignment that’s expressed in our unique Youmap, grief can emerge as we mourn the loss of our true selves and the missed opportunities that come with it. A quick rundown of the different grief experiences that can arise from living a life that is not in sync with our Youmap, saying yes or mistakenly no, like likely due to the lack of clarity, uncertainty, and or fear to opportunities, pursuing the wrong partners or careers, dishonoring our own values, burnout from not understanding or misapplying your skill set, overuse of your strengths.

Victoria Volk
00:04:08 – 00:04:51
For example, if one of your top five strengths is responsibility, you’ve likely found yourself in burnout, especially if you also have the belief strength in your top five. Moving on, why does knowing all of this even matter? The awareness and understanding of self is the gateway, I believe, to all of the potential, your potential, that life has to offer. The Youmap Framework provides us with a powerful tool for understanding ourselves and cultivating alignment in our lives. The 4 pillars, again, strengths, values, skills and personality are discovered through 4 different assessments that typically take 2 hours or less to complete.

Victoria Volk
00:04:51 – 00:05:27
At the end of it, you have the Youmap snapshot of who you are, providing you with the language of what you have to offer the world and others. You discover what is most important to you through your values. As a result and through coaching, you’ll recognize where there may be need for boundaries to be put into place. And overall, the magic and the uniqueness that is you, that you bring to those around you. By clarifying our strengths, values, skills, and personality, we can make informed decisions, pursue meaningful opportunities, and create a life that resonates with our true selves.

Victoria Volk
00:05:27 – 00:06:01
The whole point of the Youmap is to bring to the forefront what makes you, you. That being said, because we are souls having a human experience, we also navigate the mess and challenges of life, and the shadows of our gifts can also be expressed in covert subconscious ways. Living a life out of alignment can lead to a deep sense of grief. We may mourn the loss of time, energy, and potential that could have been directed toward Suits that align with our true selves. The emotional toll of misalignment impacts us and those with whom we live in close proximity and in relationships.

Victoria Volk
00:06:01 – 00:06:33
You’re probably not living in full expression of your magic. On the other side of that coin, maybe you believe you are living in alignment or are making great strides towards doing so. Have you then been told you’re too much, or do you have people in your life who are uncomfortable seeing you succeed at living in alignment? It’s such a mind trip figuring this all out, but I never said awareness would be painless. These realizations and revelations of what you want for your life are often met with resistance and naysaying from others.

Victoria Volk
00:06:33 – 00:07:03
As a result, we can fall back into those old familiar belief patterns that then hold us back. Acknowledging and processing our grief around these awarenesses can pave the way for a more fulfilling and purpose driven existence. Before I go on to share who Youmap is for, let me pause to share about the sponsor of this episode, Magicmind. Magicmind helped me write about this podcast episode. I don’t usually write out an episode, rather I usually record off the cuff.

Victoria Volk
00:07:03 – 00:07:25
However, I felt inspired to write this episode out, and perhaps in part, due to the magic mind shot I took this morning. The words have just flowed, so I ran with it. Magicmind is a 2 ounce shot that gives 7 hours of flow state. Customers report a 40% boost to productivity on average.,Take it alongside your usual morning coffee or tea or in place of.

Victoria Volk
00:07:25 – 00:08:09
Reduce stress, gain focus and clarity, steady and calm energy, which I can attest to and without jitters, by the way, and see the benefits build with daily use. And for you, my dear listeners, only for the month of January, Magicmind is offering 1 month free with a 3-month subscription when you use my link atmagicmind.com/Jan GrievingVoices, j a n, grieving voices, and with my code, grieving voices. That’s an extra 20% off, which gets you to 75% off to give it a good try. Again, this only lasts until the end of January, so hurry up before it goes away. Magicmind.com/jangrievingvoices and code grieving voices.

Victoria Volk
00:08:09 – 00:08:40
The link is also in the show notes. Now let’s focus and get back to the Youmap, now that you understand the importance of alignment and the grief that can arise from misalignment, there’s one thing you can do right now, discover yourself in your Youmap. Youmap isn’t just for the young or middle aged adult who is newly widowed and has been awakened to the fragility of life after loss and wants to embark on something new. It’s not just for the adult suffered a job loss and feels like a needle in the haystack of other applicants.

Victoria Volk
00:08:40 – 00:09:13
And it’s not just for the new divorcee who wants to understand themselves better and is in need of a change. Youmap is also for college bound students. You may have heard this story before in a previous episode where I discussed Youmap, but if not, my son, now 18, dreamed of enlisting in the marine since he was around age 12. However, life threw him a curve ball that made that dream impossible when he was going on 17. He decided to pursue nursing through that life-altering experience and with the newfound awareness his Youmap gave him.

Victoria Volk
00:09:13 – 00:09:52
He’s currently a freshman at college and loves what he is learning. He has also become the certified nursing assistant and finds a lot of joy in working with the elderly. However, he has chosen to pursue the area of neonatal and pediatrics instead. I also recently had my soon to be college bound daughter complete it, and it was uncanny how spot on her strengths were, which are all people facing and relating strengths, which is rare to have all 5 strengths in 1 category. I know that 1 pitfall she may experience due to all 5 being in relating is that she will never feel within herself that she is making a difference.

Victoria Volk
00:09:52 – 00:10:15
She will need to ask for feedback from others on how she has helped them to feel within herself that she’s having a positive impact. She is also planning to pursue a degree in nursing. However, she has an interest in the field of psychology. Finding alignment is a lifelong process. It requires self-reflection, courage, and a willingness to embrace change.

Victoria Volk
00:10:15 – 00:10:47
By cultivating awareness of our strengths, values, skills and personality, we can navigate the grief of misalignment and embark on a transform transformative journey toward living a life that is a true reflection of who we are, remember, you can create a life of purpose and alignment. And as the good witch, Glenda, in The Wizard of Oz says to Dorothy, I will say to you now. You always had the power, my dear. You just had to learn it for yourself. To learn more about Youmap, head to my website.

Victoria Volk
00:10:47 – 00:11:10
And under services, you will find a link to Youmap with more information at theunleashedheart.com under services, the link will also be in the show notes. Around the new year, you’ll see new your new you said a lot. Rather, I will say, new year evolved you. It’s more conducive, I think, to the human experience. We are always a work in progress.

Victoria Volk
00:11:10 – 00:11:39
Youmap is a tool among several others that I offer that can help you with your evolution. Hey.  Speaking of evolution, before I let you go today, I just wanted to share that last week on January 11th, I launched a giveaway. On the 23rd of this month is my business’s 5th anniversary. And to celebrate, I’m giving away A 60-minute distance healing session and also a 60-minute distance heart with ears session.

Victoria Volk
00:11:39 – 00:12:18
There are multiple ways to enter, And this will run into through next week, 23rd, at 11 AM Central Standard Time. So head on over to theunleashed heart.com/5th anniversarygiveaway, or there’s gonna be a link in the show notes where you can easily sign up and register there. And check out social media @theunleashedheart on Instagram, Victoria The Unleashed Heart on Facebook, and it’ll be shared in all those places as well. And I hope you enter. And if you are lucky to win, I look forward to meeting you.

Victoria Volk
00:12:18 – 00:12:45
I just wanted to do something fun to celebrate 5 years, which has been very much an evolution in my business as well, and to share my joy and my passion and to give back to the community that has been so supportive of me and my podcast and the work that I do. So good luck, my friends. Until next time, remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.

 

Ep 158 Q&A | Why Do I Struggle In Friendships and Find Parenting Unfulfilling?

Q&A | Why Do I Struggle In Friendships and Find Parenting Unfulfilling?

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY: 

In today’s episode, I share an a-ha realization with you: a question I’ve wondered about myself for the past eighteen years.

I answer my own question in today’s episode regarding relationships with friends, my kids, and myself.

An important aspect of growth is self-awareness. Sometimes, we need to hear the right thing at the right time, unlocking an a-ha moment we’ve been waiting to receive. Those a-ha moments can shift our perspective or even possibly change the trajectory of our entire lives.

The best way to put ourselves in the way of a-ha moments is by diving into self-awareness, utilizing tools, and seeking out connections with others who can reflect what we can’t see for ourselves.

As you listen to this episode, maybe you can relate, and if you do, I hope it’s the encouragement you need to explore the inner workings of your mind and heart, too.

RESOURCES:

_______

NEED HELP?

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

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

Are you enjoying the podcast? Check out my bi-weekly newsletter, The Unleashed Letters.

CONNECT WITH VICTORIA: 

 

Victoria Volk: Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, whatever time it is that you’re listening to this episode. Thank you for tuning in. And today, I have a bit of a different episode. It is a Q and A, but I’m pretty much going to be answering my own question that I’ve asked myself for eighteen years and that I essentially discovered the answer to just this week. And if you’re not familiar with human design, you may want to be If you’re into kind of a little bit of the woo woo, it’s kind of woo woo, but it’s really not. If you’re into astrology, things like that, this is information and data that can’t be manipulated or skewed because your birth date and your birth time and your birth place are unique to you. So with personality tests like Myers Briggs and things like that, you can easily manipulate the questions, right, to get a desired outcome.

Victoria Volk: On Myers Briggs, I am an INFP but I’m also a Pisces and so that makes a lot of sense to me. But human design is a little bit different in that it’s I’m not gonna get into all the explanatory things about it just because I’m no human design expert. I’m just sharing a pretty big aha moment that I had a realization that I had this week just based on what I’ve learned about my own human design. I originally came into human design, not through human design itself, but through another modality called Gene keys which is kind of uses a similarity of astrology and things like that as well, like human design, but I’m probably saying something wrong in this, description of gene keys, human design, all of that. Again, I’m no x spart, just take it with a grain of salt, do your own research.

Victoria Volk: But I would just If you’re curious, I’m gonna put a link in the show notes to where you can input your birth information and find out which of the four energy types you are. And I think there’s four. Right? Projector, Reflector, Generator, Manifesting Generator, and Manifestor. So there’s five. And I am a manifestor. Interestingly, my husband is also a manifestor, and all three of our children are manifesting generators.

Victoria Volk: No wonder why I was exhausted, raising children. Anyway, because as a manifestor, we have periods of rest. We need periods of rest. And this really this conversation does tie into what I do because this is all about our energy. It talks human design helps you understand where your energy is may be being taxed. It takes a little step further than even like the quiz that I offer on my website for free. We can go really deep with human design, really deep. And when I was first came across it, well over a year ago, almost two years ago, I believe it was. It felt so big to me. It seems so overwhelming. There’s so much to it.

Victoria Volk: The one thing I want to share with you today though is being a manifestor with an emotional authority, with a split definition. And again, these things probably don’t may not make any sense to you, but do your own research and you’ll understand what I’m talking about. But I’m a four-six opportunistic role model. So I’m a manifest emotional manifestor with lines four six.

Victoria Volk: What I’ve learned this week is that I listened to a podcast from that was that’s was started by another fellow manifestor. And aside from my husband, I don’t know of another manifestor. Now, again, I have ran the the body grafts of everybody I know. So there could be manifestors in my life that I’m just not aware of. That being said, this week, I’ve had so many awareness is about probably why my marriage works, why we’ve been able to celebrate twenty years this week. We get each other. We truly get each other. I think if I would have maybe married any other type other than maybe a projector because manifestors and projectors seem to get along beautifully. There could have been a lot of conflict that I would have experienced otherwise. What I’ve also realized is I’ve had relationships in the past, particularly friendships, particularly one friendship I was reflecting on just today as I was listening to another podcast episode about manifestors, is that as a manifestor we generally don’t need people. We don’t need relationships. However, we want relationships. And one of our core wounds as a manifestor is rejection. And so oftentimes, other people are drawn to the manifestor energy. And that can be to our detriment as a manifestor I’ve certainly experienced that myself. You don’t have to be a manifestor to for that to be your experience.

Victoria Volk: I think there’s there’s a lot of different aspects of the body graph of the human design that can influence those things, those experiences you have in your life. But when it comes, when I circle back to that friendship relationship that I previously mentioned, I realized that in listening to this podcast episode because what happens is because we don’t need people, we are rarely inspired by others. We as a manifestor are the initiators. We initiate other people. We initiate within ourselves. I don’t need someone else to initiate anything for me because as a manifestor, I do that on my own.

Victoria Volk: So this is what I mean And what I’ve learned when I say we don’t, as a manifestor, you don’t need other people. But we want relationships. Because we’re human and we desire connection and all of those things. But what happens is as if as a manifestor, you find yourself infatuated with someone else, which from what I’ve learned from this manifestor expert who provides trainings and things on human design. She had said that we early as manifestors, fan girl or fan boy, have fascination with other people. So when that happens, it’s really jarring to us. It’s really uncomfortable. Because that’s when we might have our wounds being exposed that fear of rejection. There’s four core wounds, and I that’s the only one I’m thinking of right now because that’s what I wanted to talk to you about, particularly as it relates to relationships in this aha moment I had.

Victoria Volk: But everything just came so clear to me today that in that relationship, that friendship that fell away, it was me I became I I I absolutely fell in love with this person’s personality. They inspired me I felt. Not infatuated, but just intoxicated by this person’s energy. Like, I was really drawn to this person’s energy which hadn’t happened before in a friendship like that since I’ve been in business. Like, that’s the first business other she’s in business. It was the first business friendship colleague that does healing work and things like that that I became enamored by her and all my shit came up. All of my core wounds came up and I sabotaged the friendship. I realize now the way my energy operated and how my wounds came up to teach me something.

Victoria Volk: I’ve done a lot of grief work and personal deep work since that friendship, like after that was around twenty eighteen. So it’s been several years, but just today, just this week, I’ve had this awareness of this is the pattern for me in friendships, certain friendships at times. Is that’s the shadow of working with your core wounds, and that’s what the human design can tell you. What those are and you can bring them to your awareness and you can have this clarity that makes you hop on a podcast to talk about it like I’m doing right now. Okay. So that’s friendships that’s just one aspect of human design that has blown the lid off of my awareness cap this week.

Victoria Volk: And the main topic and question that I mentioned in the very beginning that I haven’t even talked about yet, and I’m like, twelve minutes in is relates to parenting and parenting as a manifestor. And the same woman who started this manifestor podcast, it’s called, what is it called hunting for purpose. If you have not listened to it, if you are a manifesto, run, don’t walk. Listen to the podcast because I have had so many moments of clarity just listening to her because not only is she a manifests her. She’s also a four line four six just like me, and she also has the thirty five thirty six gate like I do, which is like the gate of, like, the first thirty years of your life, you’re gonna go through a lot of shit. And then from thirty to fifty years old, you’re gonna sit and ponder and reflect. And then from fifty on, you become this wise sage. So I’m I’m getting closer to that fifty in beyond, so I’m looking forward to that.

Victoria Volk: But anyway, she has because she shares so many similar qualities as myself, which a defined spleen as well. We both have. It’s almost as if when she speaks about herself as she is describing me. But she’s coming at it with so much more wisdom about human design that I can’t even like, my brain has been mush almost the sweet just because I’ve been having to do a lot of driving and so I’ve been listening to podcasts pretty much all day, every day. And this one thing that she talked about was motherhood as a manifestor. And yesterday, as she spoke about it. I felt myself getting emotional as a typical emotional manifestor would because I realized that what I was feeling, especially when I first had children and when they were younger, it’s become a lot easier now that they’ve gotten older, they’re more self-reliant. We’ve developed it’s just when you become when they become teenagers and they’re coming to their own. It’s I really feel like we’ve developed some really rich relationships. My children and I individually. And I say with so much gratitude, I have so much gratitude for the growth I’ve had in the last five years that have enabled me to develop those deeply rich relationships I currently have with my kids. And I’m getting emotional, as I say that. So I fiercely love my kids. And so what I’m about to say has really helped me release a lot of grief and grief a little yeah grief, guilt, shame. Because I wasn’t understanding my own energy. I didn’t understand myself.

Victoria Volk: Yesterday, she shared how she announced manifestors as mothers. Motherhood is not fulfilling for us. It’s not enough, and it will never be enough. And I felt a lot of guilt because I felt that way. I have felt that way. I could never just be a mom. I always had to be doing something else for myself, for me that was and I’ve spoken about and tidbits. Like, here and there, like photography starting my photography business was my creative outlet. But, really, tt’s because motherhood wasn’t fulfilling to me that was not enough and that brings up makes me remember another core wound of a manifestor as mediocrity. It’s this feeling of what am I going to leave? What’s gonna be my legacy? Like, not meeting my own potential? My own expectations for myself?

Victoria Volk: And we can I mean, expectations is a whole another episode, but that’s really been another key awareness for me this week? But I just wanted to leave you with this that I cannot stress enough the importance of understanding yourself and getting to know yourself on a level that you probably have never even given yourself the opportunity to explore. Because what I have released this week and what I have learned this week about myself just in my thoughts, just as just in reflecting it with my own thoughts. I feel I’ve grown exponentially as a mom, as a person just be having these things come into my awareness because now I can look at relationships moving forward and look at being a mother moving forward with an understanding of that’s just who I am and that’s okay. And that I’m enough.

Victoria Volk: Please check out your human design. If you’re the least bit curious and you can write it off, you can just like I did at first, like, oh, this is too much. It’s too overwhelming. I don’t have time for this. And it is a lot of in information. Trust me it is. But the website that I’m going to link to in the show notes, it’s has really great explain it. When you click on something or you hover over, it really explains it well. And you’re gonna be like, oh my god, this is this is totally me. This is totally me. But to have someone as another manifestor because only nine percent of the world are manifestors, and our world has been built by manifestors. Because manifestors are the initiators. It’s just been really fascinating to learn that. Yeah. It’s just been really fascinating week. Learning about myself.

Victoria Volk: So anyway, I don’t even really know what the question is this week that I should title this, but why should I care about getting to know myself? Here’s two reasons for you today. If you are a parent and you have relationships, because life happens in the context of relationships, and I can tell you with all the grievers I’ve worked with and the grief work that I’ve done personally myself we grieve in the context of relationships and that includes with ourselves the guilt and shame that we carry for various reasons and feeling misunderstood which many manifestors do. You’ve probably grown up feeling misunderstood.

Victoria Volk: In fact, I was just reflecting yesterday. I had to classmate actually right on my the back of a senior picture that was given to me that I was weird. That I was weird. My kids have told me that, you’re weird. You know, and people need no harm. This classmate meant no harm. It was his opinion, whatever. But I thought about that. I’ve been out of high school. Many years. So the things that stick with us. Right? I just felt so misunderstood. And that remark right there on the back of that picture just zoomed right in on why that’s true. Why that is true, why I felt that that was true. But now at the HIM. Older, wiser I guess, I’m gonna own my weird. I’ve started to own my weird in the last several years and my kids seem to love it. They love my weird and I’m happy about that. My husband seems to love my weird, but he’s weird too because they’re both manifestors because manifestors are kinda weird.

Victoria Volk: So anyway, you’re a manifestor? I see you. If you’re not a manifestor, I also see you because that’s one of the gift gifts of a manifestor as we see people for who they are. Because if there’s any energy type that is misunderstood, it is the manifestor.

Victoria Volk: Get to know yourself, my friends. It is the greatest gift that you can ever give yourself and those you love. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.

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