Charting a Path Through Grief with the Wisdom of Human Design

I found clarity and understanding recently with the help of Vicki Dickson, who offered me some insight into Human Design . Our conversation was a deep dive into this complex system that blends astrology, the chakra system, the Jewish Kabbalah, and the I Ching to offer insights into our soul's purpose. As I recounted my journey of self-discovery during my husband's illness and passing, Vicki helped me understand how human design can guide one through life's most harrowing transitions, allowing us to rediscover our true selves and emerge from grief with newfound purpose and strength.

Contact:
www.asiliveandgrieve.com
info@asiliveandgrieve.com
Facebook:  As I Live and Grieve
Instagram:  @asiliveandgrieve
YouTube:  asiliveandgrieve 

To Reach Vickie:
Listen to her podcast here: https://vickiedickson.com/podcast/
Follow her on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/vickie.dickson
Download your free Human Design chart here: https://vickiedickson.com/
 

Credits: 
Music by Kevin MacLeod 

Transcript

Kathy: 0:00

Hi everyone, welcome back again to As I Live and Grieve .

Kathy: 0:03

Yes, it really is, Kathy. I have very little voice because I got an upper respiratory infection. Oh, it's just going around, everybody's getting sick. I escaped COVID, RSV and the flu. That being said, the coughing was so bad that I've injured my vocal cords. But I'm persistent, I feel fine. So please forgive my weak voice this time. Maybe it'll make you smile a little bit, just know that everybody gets sick now and then. But moving forward, great guest. Gonna be a fascinating conversation, so hang on to your seats.

Kathy: 0:43

Everyone - With me today is Vickie Dickson. Hi, Vickie, thanks for coming today. Absolutely my pleasure. I am so looking forward to this. Our paths crossed recently, excuse me, and in that normal, oh, what is it you do a podcast about? Or what is it you do? You said to me, human design. What the heck is human design? Heaven knows there are parts of my life that I would like to remodel, renovate, maybe destroy and start over, but let's start with that. First of all, if you could tell a little bit about yourself,V ickie, for our listeners, and then maybe let us know what is human design.

Vickie: 1:31

Sure, that's a hard question. A little bit about yourself. Where does one start? I am a lifelong entrepreneur. I've been an entrepreneur for over 30 years. My first job was making Barbie doll dresses out of Kleenexes when I was five and trying to sell them to the neighborhood kids, and I've been hooked on entrepreneurship ever since then. I've done all kinds of businesses. Usually I take them to the top and then I rebuild over again. It's actually part of my own human design and I have a background in holistic health. I had a holistic health practice for about 10 years after both my own health scare and diagnosis of one of my parents. I am a Mimi to four grandchildren. We had our third and fourth grandchildren were born 27 days apart in December. So that was super fun. And yeah, I'm Canadian and I'm a human design specialist.

Vickie: 2:22

So what is human design? That is a big question. I was so surprised at the event that we were at that so many people didn't know what it was. It's always fascinating when you're involved, when you're so immersed in a world and then other people don't know what it is. So a friend of mine describes it that if astrology and the chakra system and the Jewish Kabbalah and the I Ching had a baby. It would be human design, and what it basically is.

Vickie: 2:47

We're looking at a blueprint or a snapshot of you at two moments in time. One is the moment of your birth, where different planets were aligned at the moment of your birth, and 88 days before your birth, which is said to be when the soul is called into the body. So what we're looking at in your human design is both your soul purpose what did your soul come here to do, what experiences did your soul come here to learn through and your life purpose. And somehow we get this beautiful picture. When I look at it, it comes in the form of a chart. It almost looks like a chakra system that we call it a body graph, and when I look at it, I see you as a newborn baby. I see who you came here to be before the world kicked you around. And we get conditioned away from ourselves. We get conditioned away from our purpose. We get conditioned away to think we're something that we're not to act like. We're something that we're not. So human design is really an invitation back to yourself.

Kathy: 3:41

I love that description and I especially love how if all of those components got together and had a baby human design. The reason it intrigued me and, of course, one thing I do I am a learner for my entire life, so I did a little digging, went down a few rabbit holes, as you might expect, on Google to learn a little bit more about human design after I met you, because I was fascinated by it.

Kathy: 4:08

My experience on my grief journey and this is why I'm tying it in with grief is that while I was caring for my husband because that's my most recent grief experience and journey I felt that I told myself in the process I didn't object to it because I was taking care of him and I love him, but every day it was trips to the lab, trips to the doctor, trips for chemo, trips for radiation, one thing or another, or even if we were home for the day, it was 10:15, have to give him this med. It's 1:45, have to do this, have to put this gizmo on his head that was helping to temper some of the brain waves in his head. He had a brain tumor. I totally lost myself, so that after his death and after the celebration of life, I said to my daughter at one point I feel like I am redefining my entire life, my entire being In that process and of course, it's been almost six years now since Tom's been gone In that process I found a person that to me, I have never before been doing things I have never before done, nor would have considered doing, probably, and probably being the happiest I've ever been in my life.

Kathy: 5:45

That to me is kind-blowing. And when I talk each week to guests on the podcast and I learn more about energy especially, I learn how vital energy really is in our lives. So for me, human design all of a sudden is like a natural component of what I have been going through and where I am right now. So of course I want to know more Now. I did do my own chart and for our listeners, just for purposes of maybe making it a little more meaningful, many of our listeners have been listening to me week after week, so we're friends already. We might not know each other face to face, but they know me, they have a better understanding of me, so hopefully this will provide them some connections. So I'm guessing similar to astrology, because that's something very common for people If it's tied into your birth and everything, the day, the hour. Now, I don't remember and I didn't go dig up my birth certificate.

Vickie: 6:53

I don't remember exactly the hour of my birth, so. I will say on my chart.

Kathy: 6:58

there could be some errors here or there because of that, but I started with the chart. Is that the place you normally would start?

Vickie: 7:07

Absolutely, yeah, you need to have that snapshot. So that is your baseline for everything that you're going to learn about your human design, and I love that. You said that you go deep into every rabbit hole, and that's totally who you're here to be is the researcher the investigator, the experiential learner, and the purpose of that for you is to bring it back to others.

Vickie: 7:28

You go through these things. You find the details of research, all of that stuff, but you don't do it just so you can hoard the information and hoard the experience. You do it so that you can share it with others and here you are living part of your purpose, Isn't that amazing?

Kathy: 7:40

That is amazing. That is amazing and I love it when pieces fit together like that. I really do, excuse me. That type on my chart, I believe, says projector it does yes, now, is that like a personality type? Is that what that category is?

Vickie: 7:56

Well, there are five human design types and each has different characteristics. So, for projectors, you make up about 20% of the population and you are here to be a guide. So, for projectors, hold the energetic potential of the planet. No pressure they often need you can tell me if any of this resonates with you but they often need more rest than others do, and sometimes throughout their life. You may have been kicked around a bit because your family of origin maybe didn't understand and thought you were lazy.

Vickie: 8:25

If you were tired out and I'm wondering about your husband, Tom, when you said that now you feel like you're coming into yourself I would wonder about his type, because what happens is that we condition each other. So if you're a projector and you're living with a generator, you've got all of this will go type energy inside of your body. But that's not how you're meant to be. You're actually meant to take pauses because you need to have not just rest, where some people would think I'm going to lie on the couch and watch Netflix. You need to be just actually in your own aura for a little bit, to recharge, so that you can do the work that you came here to do and, as a projector, the work that you came here to do is to guide the rest of us, so it's a really important role that you play, and you're such a small percentage of the population 20% of the population. You have great wisdom as a projector.

Kathy: 9:11

The pieces that resonate with me is many people have said to me in various forms of statements that they feel I am one of the most intelligent women they've ever met. Now, that's not because of actual college education or degrees, because I hold none. I've started many, but I hold none About every one. Three, yeah, okay. So that resonates with me. The times that I find I feel most rested are when I am totally by myself 100%.

Kathy: 9:48

Totally by myself, not necessarily sleeping, rest, just reflecting, just being by myself. So those pieces really resonate with me. As far as Tom, I'd have to try his chart too and see what he was, but he was a very driven man. He was retired arm. But the piece of the conversation that I want to just pick or grab onto at the moment is the fact that so, even though we have our personality types and I know there are other influences as well, but we are also influenced by those around us correct?

Vickie: 10:25

Yes, every minute of every day that you are in the aura of someone else's human design, so to speak, you are being conditioned, potentially away from yourself and just think about your childhood experience of life, and I believe that we choose our journeys and that everything is the way it's supposed to be. And when we look at how we condition children away from their natural tendencies, how we condition children away from what they're naturally drawn to, it's really crazy. We condition everyone to fit in. The founder of human design would call it homogenize. We homogenize people but, yes, you are always being conditioned by the people that you're with, by their energies, so your energy is rubbing on them, their energy is rubbing on you in different places in your design.

Kathy: 11:09

Okay, so somewhat quickly, because I want to attach it back to grief again. What else, in looking at my chart, what else can you tell me about me?

Vickie: 11:20

Oh, gosh thousands of things.

Kathy: 11:23

We don't have time for thousands, but if something else jumps out at you.

Vickie: 11:28

Well, I think so the the way that you go into we'll call them rabbit holes, the way that you go deep on everything and you said you've started all of these college degrees and things. So you have a real desire to go deep into the well of knowledge and you innately have. When people say that you're so wise, you innately have. There's a theme of wisdom in your design, beyond your project yourself. There's a deep theme of wisdom in your design. But with that wisdom theme can come, the thing that will catch you up sometimes is that you'll feel inadequate. You'll think, oh, but I really don't know enough. I really don't know enough, more than anybody else, about whatever the topic is that you're speaking on.

Vickie: 12:04

And one of the other things is that you have a real knack for inspiring people to see things in a different light. Excuse me, and I look at what you're doing with this podcast and you are like I was listening to the. I'm gonna cry now. I was listening to the podcast about your son and I'm like it was the most beautiful thing that I have listened to in a very long time. Horrific and beautiful.

Vickie: 12:27

How you are able to turn it and see some light in it and bring the light to others, and that's such a big part of why you're here and you can see the big picture of things without getting bogged down in the details. You know what the details are, but you don't have to get stuck in them in order to move forward for the big vision. That's just a little bit of a highlight reel. One of the other things is that there's a lot of pressure in your design. There's a lot of pressure to feel like you should be doing things even when you don't want to do the thing or you don't have the energy for the thing, and that could be conditioning. But it's also because they're going to adrenalized pressure in your design.

Kathy: 12:59

Wow, wow. Where has human design been on my life? It would be so much more valuable than astrology. Okay, so how then, can human design help someone who's grieving?

Vickie: 13:16

I've been sitting with that a little bit since you asked me to come on the podcast and I'm like, hmm, that is an interesting thing, and I think the invitation is that it's showing you the way back to yourself, because I think that in times of grief and we all have times of grief that we go through more than once in our lives it is really easy to get sidelined and think about whatever, what everyone else needs and what you should be doing. I should be doing this, I should be doing that, I should be doing the other thing. This person needs something more than I do. So you're grieving your spouse and you're thinking about what your children need or what your grandchildren need, or you're grieving your child and you're thinking about but what about this person over here or this person over there? And so human design, I think, is really allowing you to stand in your strengths and to be who you really are, away from everything, away from everyone else, away from what you've been conditioned to be. It allows you to stand in your gifts, and I think there's a great acceptance around the places that we see as not right and I'm putting that in air quotes Because there's nothing that's not right about you and I think that when you know that and when you know that this is a process, that you allow yourself a little bit more space to go through it, it also tells you how your energy is meant to flow.

Vickie: 14:38

So I'm a manifesting generator. There could not be a more opposite energy than you and I. So I'm going to grieve very differently than you're going to grieve For me. I probably will not come to stillness as much. I will probably need to be moving and being out in places in order to process that grief through my body. My grief might look more like moving my body, whereas yours might look more like stillness. And that's not just because of your type. That's another few places in your design. So I think it just allows you to see how is energy meant to flow through my body, because grief is a motion that needs to move through our body. Emotion is energy and motion. We got to keep it moving and your human design allows you to see how does that work for me specifically and, I think, accept how it works for you specifically, because you know it, but you've probably been told it's wrong.

Kathy: 15:28

Now that is so interesting. Now here's the little pieces that I hear and that I take away from that. In our grief, that very early phase of grief, when we are just devastated, it's difficult for us to even consider taking a shower, putting clean clothes on. We want nothing but to have time pass. One of the realities we know is that the person we lost is gone. We know that reality. It's difficult for us to accept, but we know it. We also know that we remain here, living, and a reality for us, even though we fight it, is that we have to go on.

Kathy: 16:25

At some point in our grief we are going to have to start moving forward. Excuse me, so if you know your personality type, then can it help you determine how to help yourself get moving? Like you mentioned, you probably would be better off around other people, for example, or moving or doing something, maybe even taking a walk, okay Whereas I might grieve more I don't know effectively or efficiently, depending on my personality type to spending more time, maybe in reflection or reading something quiet, something like that. So can knowing your personality type help you in that process, then? Is that a way that we can connect human design to the grieving process?

Vickie: 17:22

Absolutely it is. Absolutely it is. And each of the five types has a different strategy for how they show up in life. So I think knowing your strategy also helps you to not maybe try to do the things because you should do them, To instead lean into your own. Okay, this is how I'm supposed to show up and this is what it's going to take for me. May I share a story? Absolutely so. I don't know if you remember at all March 2020. Remember that time that we were in COVID yeah.

Vickie: 17:56

So I had opened a business. We opened our doors on March 3rd, 2020, with three partners, and one of the partners was my oldest friend. She is the person who was in my life, who had been there the longest. She was my witness in my childhood and we opened our doors again June something and four days later she died of an aneurysm and she was a month before her 49th birthday.

Vickie: 18:24

And then, within a few months, another close friend of ours died a day after his 49th birthday and I was turning 49 that year, and it really that's when human design really came hard for me. I had heard of it over and over again, but it didn't really resonate with me. And then, all of a sudden, between getting closer to 50 and these losses, I needed to find my purpose. Even though we feel like we're living on purpose, sometimes we feel like we never know our purpose. I don't know if that's the same for everybody, but I feel like the people that I work with, it's like we're always driven to find our purpose and that 4950 and again 5860, there are different stages in life where it comes out. It's not as hard, and between these losses and this real, I don't know what it was. It was crazy.

Vickie: 19:09

I'm not a big crier and I remember sitting at a campfire and crying for hours and hours and hours and hours, just because it was so real to me my own immortality because of these losses and I think that bringing human design into it, it helped me to find my purpose. It helped me to understand really that your purpose is who you are, it's not what you do. So most of us are already living our purpose in what we're doing and especially if we're feeling that little bit of angst in us that, oh, I got to do this before I'm gone, I got to do this before I'm gone, we already know what our purpose is, but it's always the thing that we want to know. So human design allows us to look at the chart and be, oh, there, it is Okay, I do that, I do that in my podcast, I do that with my grandchildren, I do that in my job. It doesn't matter what it is, who you are, not what you do. I was a really round the mulberry bush, but that's okay.

Kathy: 20:02

It's got the point across and I love it. I love it All right. So I'm a projector, You're a generator. How many types are there?

Vickie: 20:12

There are five. So I'm a manifesting generator and then there's a straight up generator and a manifester and a reflector.

Kathy: 20:21

Okay, and a projector.

Vickie: 20:23

And projector.

Kathy: 20:23

Yet yeah, am I just a projector? I can't remember, or am I some type of projector?

Vickie: 20:30

Well, there's no such thing as "just anybody. Okay, so every design is going to have a few qualifying factors because it's going to talk about. There's something in human design called your inner authority, and I know that human design has weird words. So once you start to go down the rabbit hole of human design, you'll just figure out some of the weird words. Just give yourself space to be like okay, I get this today, I don't get that, and leave it. So the inner authority is what I call your decision making superpower, and yours, I believe, is you're a mental authority. So for you, you need to verbally process. There's a lot of times where you're not going to know what you think until you hear yourself say what you think. Oh my gosh, yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh, yeah. So it has to be safe for you to do that with somebody. You need to have people, that's. I wonder how that played out with an army husband, yeah.

Kathy: 21:20

He was always he would listen to a certain point and it was all about him. But, as you might expect but I can't tell you how many times I have read a book, or read something or seen something on television, or even right after the conference where we met, on the way home, I was presented with a new trend in grief called grief tech, and I was it ate at my brain, literally. I could not sleep for three days and then I finally I came home and I have such a wonderful son-in-law I call him golden boy, but he is so good to me and I live with my daughter and her family, so he's here during the day working upstairs and I'm downstairs and I said, neil, I have to talk to you, I have to run this by you. And I told him what I was, what I had learned and everything, and we talked about it for a long time. And then you say that to me and I think, oh, my gosh, there really is something.

Kathy: 22:21

This human design stuff is on point. No kidding, yeah, I know it's on point. Yeah, wow, more so than anything else I think I've ever encountered. Agreed.

Vickie: 22:32

Yeah.

Kathy: 22:33

I have more work to do. Obviously, yeah, obviously yeah, but just what I'm hearing now it sounds to me just a little piece, as I'm hearing you tell me about myself confirming is that I'm kind of in the right place right now, and that's probably one of the reasons I'm happier than I've ever been. So time is winding down quickly and I hate that part of it because I could talk to you about this for a long time and at some point you'll be back and we'll be talking again. But for this, and to tie it all together again, I would like to suggest to our listeners that, wherever you are in your grief journey, or even if you're just listening because others that are grieving and are really struggling, that, even if it oh, it's not like a parlor trick, because there's so much truth in it, but even if you just want a momentary break from some of the stresses, consider checking out human design.

Kathy: 23:38

Look into it a little bit more. You may find it's got more to offer you than you even fathomed. And to learn about yourself is never a bad thing, especially at a point in your life where you are feeling truly lost because you have given up not willingly, you've given up another connection in your life that you love so deeply and you are feeling bereft, totally alone, maybe isolated. So why not do any little thing you can do that might help you find your way back to where you belong, and if that's learning a little bit more about yourself, even if all you do is say, oh, that is me, and maybe it will just unknowingly instill in your head a little bit of a desire to find your way back and pull you away from that so devastating phase of grief, that really does us no good, except to give us time. That's all it does, but you can have time while you do other things as well. Did any of that make sense?

Vickie: 25:02

It's beautiful. I could listen to you talk all day.

Kathy: 25:06

Oh, my goodness. Oh, then I'd have no voice left at all. Okay, so we know the different personality types. Suffice it to say that, just looking at the body chart that I did for myself there's also on your website, but you can tell everybody about that there's a little booklet that they can purchase Very fair price, by the way that will give them more information about their body chart and everything like that, and, of course, they can always reach out to you as well.

Kathy: 25:37

But I would just like to propose anyone listening, whether you're grieving or not. You may be grieving and not know you're grieving, because we all know it's not just about losing someone to death. You could be grieving from a divorce, losing relationship, losing a job, losing the nice weather outside your window. We can grieve, our children can grieve about losing a toy or having a toy break and no longer be available. Grief is ever present in our lives, and how we deal with that grief can make all the difference in the world. So at this point, what I would like to do, vicki, is turn the microphone over to you and let you tell our listeners, who actually are an international audience all around the world, and let them know how they can find you and learn more about human design Sure.

Vickie: 26:37

So I do have a podcast. It's called, Unjaded. Listen to it, because I believe that when we are intentional, we have the relationships, the life and the businesses that we're made for, the careers that we're made for. So a big part of the podcast is leaning into your human design and showing you how to lean into your human design. As Kathy said, on my website you can run your chart for free, and there's also a lot of free information there that you can download. So I would just invite you to step into the fact that you are here for a reason, and human design can really help you to find that reason when you aren't quite as connected to it as you would like to be, because we all have times like that in our lives where we kind of forget who we are and why we're here.

Kathy: 27:20

That's well said. All of Vicki's contact information will be, of course, in the podcast notes, as always, so you'll be able to pop over to our website and check it out. It's a trip worth taking, I guess that's the best way I can say it. I'm fascinated and I'll be going back there later today just to get more information and learn more.

Kathy: 27:42

We know about ourselves if we really sit and think and usually once a year I try to take a weekend and I call it my introspective weekend and I try to just get a chunk of time by myself, with no interruptions, and I just think about myself. Am I happy, am I not happy? And it's really simple Are you? Yes, good, keep doing what you're doing. Are you happy? No, fix it. Those are your choices.

Kathy: 28:14

Nobody should go through life without moving toward their happiness, and one of the ways I'm convinced, now more than ever, one of the ways you can move closer to happiness is by understanding who you really are, and if who you are does not connect with where you are, you need to work on bringing those things closer together. We talk about self-care a lot people. This is like number one self-care. If you are not happy, do whatever you can to move closer and closer to that. I feel fortunate in any ways that finally, at this point in my life, I honestly can say I'm happier than I've ever been. I have my family around me. I have I have amazing daughters. I have even more amazing grandsons. I have an incredible network of people.

Kathy: 29:19

I have met locally through the podcast 160 episodes with as many guests. I am truly blessed, but a lot of that is because of who I am and how I react and respond to others. So you can do that too. It's not just me and it's no longer a secret. Everyone Human design. I believe that's the path. So take care of yourselves, stay well. I'm going to get past this voice and hopefully next time you hear me it will be better. So, everyone, stay healthy, stay wise, check out human design. Vicki, thank you so much and we'll catch everyone again next time, as we all continue to live and grieve.