Learn to Live Again

When life falls apart, how do you begin again? In this deeply moving episode, Autumn sits down with Vickie Menendez, a self-described Soul Midwife, to talk about what it means to rebuild your life when everything has changed.

Vickie shares how her lived experience with profound grief, including the loss of four children at different stages of life, shaped the work she now offers others through self-care, breathwork, ritual, energy work, and nervous system support. Together, Autumn and Vickie explore what it looks like to reconnect with your true self, move through transition with more grace, and listen to the wisdom your body has been trying to share all along.

They also talk about shadow work, intuition, emotional healing, childhood patterns, and why self-care is so much deeper than surface-level habits. This conversation is especially powerful for anyone walking through grief, identity shifts, burnout, or a season where life no longer looks the way it once did.

To learn more about Vickie’s work, books, workshops, and offerings like The Chrysalis Code, visit www.vickiemenendez.com. You can also connect with her on Instagram at @vickiemenendez and on Facebook through Learning to Live Again.

For more wellness tips and exclusive content, join my newsletter! Sign up now at https://wellness-in-every-season.kit.com/5-days-to-mastering-mornings-and-evenings receive a free 5-day guide called "Awaken and Unwind: 5 Days to Mastering Life's Mornings and Evenings." 

Transcript

we are diving further into self-care.

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We are diving further into self-care. We are talking about how to learn to live again. Welcome to Wellness in Every Season. We talk all things wellness to help you align yourself, align with your goals, get find balance in your life, and just recalibrate yourself. If you are listening for the first time, welcome, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. And let's get started in the rest of the podcast. Today I have with me Vicky Menendez, and she is the author of this beautiful book. And she also has it in her background. It's called Crystal's Butterfly Effect. I am so grateful you're here, Vicky. I loved receiving your package. You had Sage in there, and I still haven't used it. But it was very thoughtfully put together. I love having people on my podcast who are very intentional like that. It made me even more excited to interview you because those are people who are real helpers, thoughtful about it, and meaningful interactions happen with them. So I've been super excited for this. Let me read a little bit about you from the outline, and then you can fill in the gaps and we'll go from there. Miss Bluella, and her overarching theme is learning to live again. And I love this idea because I have four young children, and she had three very young, close together and age children, and she struggled with this too. That's led her here. Her lived experience became the catalyst. After the loss of four children at different stages in her life, she realized the path she had been walking for over 35 years through self-care, wellness, energy work, breath work, ritual, and nervous system support was preparing her for what was to come. I'm excited to dive into this. The tools that carried her through unimaginable grief are now the gifts she shares with others. And I love this part about where you talk about what you're passionate about, and you say it's helping people reconnect with their soul's wisdom and remember who they were before the world told them otherwise. That is a big deal because our 30s and 40s are when we are undoing most of the damage from our childhood and really discovering who we are. No wonder why the midlife crisis happens around here.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Yes. I think that as soon as we can put two words together, we're being shown what's good, what's bad, what their beliefs are. They got their beliefs from their parents, and it's this generational thing that keeps moving forward. It doesn't mean that there's not good stuff that goes from generation to generation, but sometimes there's limiting beliefs that we tend to strap on, just like, okay, that's written in stone. And we don't realize until we're really unhappy with their lives that we're following somebody else's plan. We're not following ours. And how do we reconnect with our true essence, who we truly are, and learn how to just be our authentic self? Sometimes I think we're afraid of that, afraid of judgment or rejection. There's all that fear that sometimes rises up through that. But I think, you know, between say your 30s, and sometimes it's late until you're in your 60s, you realize, you know, I'm not living the life that I want to live. You know, I'm not doing what I'm truly passionate about. And then they start making these shifts, and all of a sudden their lives really change, and people fall away, and new people come in. It's just the changing of the guards. You come to a place, a fork in the road, and that's where you decide who, and it's not really even who you're going to be, but who were you always inside that you never connected with because you had all of these ideas coming at you from the outside saying you should be this, you should be that, you can't act that way. There's just so much there.

Parenting and Self-Discovery

SPEAKER_00 4:22

It reminds me of the Russian dolls, where we're okay, here's the text layer, and we'll eventually get to ourselves. We're lucky. And maybe it's not really lucky actually. If we do the work, we get to ourselves. My two middle children were off at the dentist. My youngest was playing in the toy room. So I actually had time to spend with my oldest. And he is personality-wise plus age-wise, we're to this point where I'm now starting to discuss with him about my marriage with my husband, my side of things. And I'm sharing with him the difference between my marriage here and the way I grew up and what I saw and how other marriages are. He's not anywhere near it, which is when you should start the conversation, in my not very humble opinion. I was really trying to also talk with him about, and here's where it really connects for me with those differences. So let me start off. My husband and I have an amazing marriage. He is my best friend. There are times, and I was telling my son this where I get really mad at him and don't want to talk to him for a couple days. And I'll tell him, I don't want to talk to my husband right now. I need my best friend because I need a complaint about my husband. And he's like, Okay. And that usually resolves the conflict.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

Right.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

The other one could just go away. My first memories are of my parents physically fighting over me. Very traumatic. I did a lot of EMDR over it in therapy. And I was sharing that with my son without going into details, he does not need that. But sharing with him the differences and how it makes the biggest difference to really think about what do you want in life, like for your partner? And then what do you need to start accomplishing so that you can attract that type of person? And realizing that relationships are hard. And I was trying to share with him, even with your parents, even with your siblings, even with your friends, because he's starting to have some of that friendship drama because he's a little bit of a tattletale because he's the oldest and he's a rule follower. We were having some of those conversations about the pros and cons, the things that you need to do and undo, how there's a lot that you need to undo as you get older because your parents aren't perfect. And I was telling him how when we are lazy parenting, instead of calling him out for the things he's doing well, we're calling him out and correcting him. And when he has the critical voice, whose voice is it really? It's probably more mine than his. Right. I'm around a lot more often than my husband because I'm the work from home where he drives to work. My husband's very involved, but I'm the one who's more critical because that's the way I grew up. And I'm telling him about how I'm trying to undo this, and I know I'm struggling and failing. It was really nice to have that conversation with him for him to start to understand I'm not perfect. He needs to start to think about that critical voice and who is it really, and how can he undo that? Because I think if we gave all of our children that, we would not spend time in our 60s doing these things. Exactly.

Teaching Children Self-Care and Emotional Awareness

SPEAKER_01 7:40

I think we're in the age where we're supposed to be teaching our children this. We need the next generation to be better. They are our future. The way things have been going over the last few decades, it's not going in the direction it should be. It's up to us in this decade to start teaching children earlier how to really find themselves and have the courage to walk that path. But you have parents, and it is difficult because they both came from totally different environments. You grew up your way, your husband grew up his way, beliefs, galore going all over the place because his parents believed in yelling, where your parents were very quiet. There's all kinds of things you have to work out in order to have a good relationship. It can go back for generations and generations on how they actually treated each other and how they even treated themselves. So breaking that being aware of what you're doing and making him aware of it is huge. You know, that's gonna get you off where you have him thinking. He's not just waiting for you to tell him what to do, you're giving him a voice. So I applaud you for that because you're gonna be so glad that you did start it now before he has all of these ideas of what it's supposed to be like to have a girlfriend or to have friends. I'm sure he has friends now, but sometimes you don't make lifelong friends right away. You know, sometimes you'll meet somebody early on and they're just with you forever, and you met them in the second grade and you're still friends with them. But a lot of times our friendships happen later in life because people start going in different directions after school, and you don't always keep those close relationships you used to have. So just him being able to maneuver those relationships and be forge new relationships and know how to do that, you know, with a self-care and just having awareness around relationships and what they're supposed to be to him.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

Especially in the relationships of yourself to start with Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

Undo those things now because if he knows everything starts and ends with him, and that he has full 100% responsibility over every decision he makes, then his decisions will start to get better. This really it comes back to me. If something doesn't happen, it means I didn't think it through, or I didn't take the time to think about what I was deciding on. So him being able to make some of these changes in his life right now is just monumental, you know.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

There are very good times where I thought, especially when I'm frustrated. You have your own brain, you don't need to use mine. You're overwhelming me. You have your own big, beautiful brain, and I trust you with it. Go use it.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

Yeah. And you're giving him permission to do that. Some kids don't have that permission. Some parents really, and there are times when it only goes the father's way or the mother's way. There's no talking about them having a voice. They need to start learning how to have that voice so that when they're out there in the world, we know they can speak up for themselves and do what they need to do.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

For me, that's very important because I did not have that. And suddenly I'm 18, I'm out on my own, and I have to figure out all of these things. I would call my friends and be like, make a decision for me. I have decisional fatigue, I can't anymore. And it's hard when you get to that point where you're just so rewhelmed by life, and that's not very fair to do that to our children. Start giving them the options now when there's this huge safety net in place.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Now, there's one thing I could highly recommend for parents with kids, they're at that age, they're really able to understand what you're talking about more. For them to be able to tune into their body and feel their intuition taking place. Like, you know, did somebody said something to them? But for them to know how to tune into their bodies so that they know is that a yes? Is that a no? Is it a lie? Is it the truth? They can really feel once they learn how to self-soothe, how to bring their nervous system into, because sometimes they get really agitated in school or around other kids. Can they learn just taking a few breaths, meditating, writing, you know, just putting pen to paper sometimes can be all it takes for them to release something. Because you think about it, kids, their stuff might seem small, but it's huge to them. We're dealing with big problems, but those small problems are their big problems. If they can learn how to really move through those and how to deal with the emotions that come up and how to look at that, it's gonna support them a lot through going through school, through high school, through college. It's a great foundation for them to know that early on.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

What would you say for the people who had a traumatic childhood like me, but have not walked the path of self-care yet?

The Power of Frequency and Healing

SPEAKER_01 13:00

You have awareness. That's always the first thing, having the awareness that there are some things you want to work through. And it's you finding the answers for yourself, you know, and that's the reason I don't like to call myself a coach, because everybody have they have all of the answers that they need within them. You have this blueprint within yourself that is uniquely yours. Nobody else's blueprint is exactly like yours, and God put that there for us. Sometimes all of the other things get in the way, all of these experiences that we just hang on to, learning how to process those emotions for yourself, you're gonna be teaching that. That's a ripple effect. They're going to see you healing and they'll want what you have. Because even though they're still really young, when you're sitting down, let's say you're starting to meditate or breath work, you invite them into your circle, you have them do what you're doing and just start off because you're starting off right. So you are going to be starting off slow, which would be perfect for them. And before you know it, they're gonna be asking you, when are we gonna do that meditation or breath work? Because they'll know how much better it made them feel, how much calmer they are soon to bring them in and show them how to get through life, because life can be really hard, it can be difficult. And when we can start this journey and start this healing process, we can decide that our life is also going to be easy. You know, if we think that doing this work that you want to do, that it's gonna be hard, so you're kind of afraid of it and you're, you know, kind of like, oh, I don't know if I can face some of these things. Then if you were to say, you know what, it could get emotional, it could be deep, but I get to do this, I get to deal with and embrace and integrate all of dark work, the shadow work that we have to do, but there's always a gift on the other side of that. So if we give it a definition, like, yeah, I'd never like to put heart in there though, because it is whatever we make it. So if we think, you know, I am going to just glide through this and learn what I need to learn from this. And sometimes some of the epiphanies we have, it's like it takes all the pain out of that wound and out of that trauma. My dad was an alcoholic, and we were always afraid of him. We would know when he was a happy drunk or a mean drunk. Living through that, I could have had all of these feelings about him and really hung on all of the things that he did wrong. But the one thing that I loved about my dad, his soul guided him to teach my sister and my brother and I how to sing together and how to play instruments. I didn't know what it was then. It was frequency. He was giving us the gift of frequency, and it was like this big bubble that would form around us after school. We would come home and sing for hours together, and it didn't matter what was going on around us, we were in bliss at that moment. So I look back at what did he give us? You know, and he gave us a voice, our singing voice, but the frequency that came from our voices was healing in itself. So no matter what was going on, he was healing us at the same time, and we didn't even know it. He didn't even know it. But it's beautiful to look back on that.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

I know that music can be so healing, but I never thought about the singing part being healing. Yes, I would say.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Because our voice is everything has a frequency. Essential oils has a frequency, even things like furniture and stones, all of the white crystal and the tourmaline and all of the different types of stones, their own frequency. They all have the ability to do something like either draw out negative energy from your body or to uh give you healing qualities, you know, in some of the stones. So everything around us has frequency. And when we think about if somebody was yelling at you, that comes at you very different than somebody talking to you in a loving, calm voice. That two different levels of frequency feels different to your body when it comes to you, and it feels different coming out of the person saying it. We are in control of that. What do we want to broadcast out into the world? Do we want to be a bringer of light or do we want it to be negative or dark? That's really up to us on how we express ourselves. And our voice is really powerful.

Understanding Shadow Work

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Okay, so let's circle back for a second. You talked about shadow work, and I've never talked about it on my podcast before. Can you explain what it is for those that don't know?

SPEAKER_01 18:31

Shadow work is when something triggers you, it usually brings up things within yourself that you don't want to admit or confront. Little parts of your personality that you would rather just pretend is not you. But we all have these different parts within us. One that protects us against this, one that stands up for that. We have thousands of different parts within us created throughout our lifetime. When a situation happens and we need that protection, a part is formulated in our brain and it helps us. It's like our soldier, you know, for that particular situation. When things happen, a lot of times shadows will start coming up. Maybe we're judgmental and just don't want to admit it, you know, and we'll catch ourselves being judgmental, but we don't like the fact that we're doing it. Doing that kind of shadow work, we realize what is the opposite of judgment. And what is the opposite of anger or hatred? On the opposite of hatred is love. If we can transmute that into something that is the opposite of what we're trying to face within ourselves, then we have just given ourselves to gift.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

It reminds me of my therapist saying, what if he gave them a different job?

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

You hold on to the white side of it and then the dark side of like thinking, yay, here. Yeah. Give them a different job. And when she said that, I was like, huh. Well, what job would I give them? I don't remember what topic we were working on, but it was something that kept coming up for me. So like, okay, obviously they need a job. What should it be? And it was just one of those, huh, we have to think about this for a while, type thing. So we ended up doing a couple sessions just on that.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

And there's patterns too. You know, those are patterns that last throughout our lifetime, you know, and they may be with different people, different situations, but sometimes the meaning is the same, like it's the same emotion or the same thing coming up over and over again. And the way I like to look at that is one of the books that really helped me more than anything was Radical Forgiveness by Colin Tipping.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

It talks about that, but have yet to read it.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

You have to read that book because that's what changed my life. That one book. Because it explained how when people cross your life, think of it as you're all sitting at the table and you know, like your souls sitting at the table, and you're like, I'm gonna be your mom this time, I'm gonna be your dad, I'm gonna be your sister. You don't always come back in each lifetime with the same body or being the same person. We all agree to the experiences or the lessons we're gonna help the other person with. We get mad at people for triggering us or saying something of it, they're just trying to unearth that shadow within ourselves that we need to look at, that we need to transmute. So when you don't do that work and you're only looking at being the victim of that situation, right? You're not looking at it at that level, so you don't understand it that way. So it might be A different person, but that same trigger is going to come up over and over again until you realize, oh I could have stopped this a long time ago had I just done the work ten years ago or five years ago. It's like you're just not being aware that's there for you. It's not against you. And so if you let it be for you and you thank that person for bringing that up so that you could transmute it and turn it into something better, you can't get mad at people. You just try to look at it as what is this here to teach me? And then once you start looking at it that way, it changes every relationship, every situation. Even if it's somebody that you've met for the first time, you spend five minutes with them and you never see them again. They may be giving you that epiphany, that idea that starts your whole life over again. You have this great idea about a business or about where you want to take your life, and it came from somebody you didn't even know. They just said one sentence and it was exactly what you needed to hear. And that was planned. That wasn't by accident. And so if we can look at life like everything is just perfect all the time, and that things come to us if we're aware and have our eyes open and we look at things as to okay, what is this really? instead of what our egos say. Because when we're in our ego, when we're in our head, we can look at everything very judgmentally, where if we really drop down in our heart and say, I've got an opportunity now, I get to transmute this, I get to turn this into something really beautiful. So that's a much better meaning than look what they've done to me. Now I'm depressed. It takes you in a totally different direction.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

Thinking about the I have to versus I get to.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

Yes, because the child. But when you get to, it's like, oh wow, this is something that's actually going to make my life better.

Incorporating Rituals into Daily Life

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Yeah. Reminds me that we have to hear something seven times before it makes sense sometimes, and that's average. Depends on the topic. Sometimes we need to hear it differently each time, too. So that makes sense for the situation as well. That it needs to be slightly different each time. And it's very interesting that there are things that come up for us that we're like, I swear I healed that. I worked on that. Why is it coming up again? Okay, there's that little jagged piece that's still in me, and I got triggered. What's going on? So that makes sense. So you talked about ritual in here. What is ritual?

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Um, a ritual is anything that you do that like you can do a moon ritual, you can do a meditation ritual, or journaling is, you know, it's anything that you want to do on a soul level, give it some meaning, give it some intention. If you have like a little sacred corner in your house where you do your journaling, you sit down there to do your breath work, you've got your candles, you have your sage there, you have everything that you need to do all of the work that you want to do. If you had something visible like that, wouldn't it call to you to sit down and do the work? Where if it wasn't there at all, you may forget it, get too busy, you know, you just don't have time today. So I think it's the little things that really move the needle more than having all of this time. Everybody thinks I have to have an hour in the morning to do this, or I work out for an hour. What if you just did five or ten minutes of your favorite yoga poses or stretched for five minutes or breathed, do breath work for 10 minutes? It would change your entire day. You don't have to have an exorbitant amount of time to get some really good work done because the little things stack up through the day. Well, you might set it on your phone to remind you every two or three hours to pause or do something for three to five minutes. And if you can do a few days of that, you're just gonna feel better. You have things to look forward to. You have these pauses to look forward to, you have these little breathwork sessions that you get to look forward to. And when you're a mom and you've got small kids, any moment that you can take out for yourself feels like you just won the lottery, but it doesn't take a lot of time. And that's one thing that I would love to get across to mothers, especially mothers that work full-time, have kids, small kids, especially. It's the little things, just the little one to five minutes can change your life.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

I love that. Don't feel guilty about this because they should catch you doing these things because then they'll try doing them too.

SPEAKER_02 27:19

Yes.

The Importance of Self-Care Lists

SPEAKER_00 27:20

And if they're in your hair and it's like, you're not leaving me alone, we're gonna meditate together. There are different types of meditation, thankfully, with little kids. You can do a walking meditation where you feel all the areas of your foot. I plan on recording that at some point. There are all different types of meditations that you can do. You can teach them breath work. My favorite really easy one is where you're focusing on breathing out fast. So you're naturally breathing in. There's a ton of different breath work techniques. You can have them holding crystals, the ones that resonate the most. I would not do oils with little kids. Maybe. I would be more careful with that one because their bodies are smaller. That would make sure you're well versed in that if you're gonna start that. You can have them do yoga poses with you. I did that with my oldest, especially during COVID. I'd be in a pose. He's supposed to hold it. I look over and he's wrapped in the yoga mat. It's hard, not to be cracking up. There are several poses I fell out of because I'd look over at him like, you're such a doofus. But he's there. He's there with you. Even if he's rolled up in the mat. My youngest doing that with him a couple years ago, and he'd be doing his own thing. And then he got to the point where I'd bring toys down so he'd play with toys, and I could get my yoga session in. Your children should see you doing these deep self-care things. What I recommend for moms, and there are so many good social media gifts and videos on this. You have the buffer because all of a sudden you have time, you didn't expect them to take a nap, and they took an extra long nap when they haven't been. So you just sit there, you're like, I don't know what to do with myself. I don't know how long I'm gonna have, and you're just buffering. That circle is going, you know, just like it happens on your computer. Make a list.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

I have one of those. I have a gentle reminders list that I would be glad to share with whoever watches this. It's broken down into one to five minutes, five to ten minutes, ten to twenty. It has like a half day, a full day. Let's say you catch yourself with a whole day and you're like you can ask for it. Yes, exactly. And it just has a few ideas on there, but ideas that maybe you wouldn't think about that is a little outside the box. So, what this list is so beautiful for, and I use this when I lost Crystal and Jesse so close together, that was really difficult. And a friend of mine made a list of things for me. She knew I loved my essential oils and my stones and lots of other things that I use. And she just made a list. And when I was just like you said earlier, I don't know what to do. Like you catch yourself in a moment and you're like, oh my God, what do I do? I've got five minutes. Can I do something for me? By having that list, you can go down the list, either try something quick and easy, or pick up something you've always wanted to try on that list. It's just a reminder. It even reminds you to drink your water. This is a one-page list you can print out, fold up, stick in your purse, put it in your back pocket, whatever. When you have those moments of grace, and you're like, wow, let me see what I can do. And then you're not going to the same thing over and over again. Okay, I've stretched a hundred times today. It'll give you some other little things so that you don't feel like it's so mundane. They just stack up one on top of the other. It's a really beautiful list. So I'd be glad to share that with you. Yes, please.

SPEAKER_00 30:57

I have been stuck on how do I deeply share what self-care is to my listeners. Oh you defined it. It's not doing the same thing. It's what do I need right now? And then go to that deeper level. I love if you have a list, you can let your heart guide you of like this is what I need right now. And if there's several things on there, which it should be, think of it like that ladder of like, these are the things that I need. Which one resonates the most?

SPEAKER_01 31:28

And your body will tell you if you really just take a second to get in tune with your body before you look at the list. As soon as you hit the thing that you need to do on the list, you're gonna know it right away. And that's learning how to be in tune with your body and how our body speaks to us all the time. Sometimes we ignore it and then it gets louder until it puts us down. Then we're like, okay, I'm stopping. I'm gonna rest. Eventually we end up getting sick, or something happens that our body just says, I've been trying to tell you this for months. Now I'm gonna put you down so that you have to rest, or you have to look at this or that. So if we could just learn how to be more in tune with our bodies instead of thinking so much in our head, we'd be a lot better off. I'm really excited to share this list with them because it is, and what I'll do is share the whole thing. It's about a nine-page document. It does have the one pager of all of you know the list on there, and it's so helpful. Even things like drinking water, you know, sometimes how long have you gone and you forgot that you hadn't drank water in three or four hours?

SPEAKER_00 32:39

You're working that you're not even listening to your body's signals, and your body's holding on to the toxins along with that.

SPEAKER_01 32:45

Get it out. And our body was so intelligent, our body knows it holds everything, it holds all the scars, the wounds, the traumas, but it also holds all the joy and all of the good stuff, too. But those lower level emotions get stored in our body, enmeshed into our organs, even, and can manifest an illness at some point down the road if we don't learn how to get that negative polarity transmuted. It's not about removing, because we can't ever forget losing a child. What's always going to be there? But can we change it? Can we transmute it into something else and learn how to change that energetic that is living in our body? That hurt never goes away, but we can give it a different meaning and do the work to transmute those energies and get that negative polarity going in a different direction to give it a higher frequency.

Overcoming Anxiety and Stress

SPEAKER_00 33:48

And with all this, and you touched on this a little bit, I was hoping with going to therapy, I would get to the spot where I am just this beautiful, energetic white light and could spread it around everybody. Oh, here's rainbows, the flowers. Unicorns, but realizing that I will never get to this point where I arrive. It is this journey. I keep quoting this a lot, but Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where it's like, okay, I have met this level of healing, this is the one that I need next. And I have not experienced what you have experienced at all. But our bodies have experienced similar things with the stress. You experience a lot more than that, but we're just gonna go to the stress part. I think everybody will resonate with this. And I've gotten to a point where my anxiety and stress are pretty much gone.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

Good.

The Healing Journey

SPEAKER_00 34:43

And it was not expected. I started ADHD medicine, and it's one that also helps with anxiety, which I had never been diagnosed with. But now having it completely gone, I realized oh, yep, definitely have anxiety. There was a whole bunch of healing journey to even get to this point. Therapy, somatics, coaching, a lot of inner work, a lot of classes while I was in college, my own coaching. And what's really great is me coaching people, I receive healing. That's not why I decided to do it, but I'll take the bonus.

SPEAKER_01 35:19

I think you just didn't know it was there. That was always in the plan. You just didn't realize it was what was gonna happen for me, too. Now we talk about this journey, and we know there's no destination healed. We will never be healed from everything. We're gonna transmute these things and have it feel different in our bodies, but it is the journey we take along the way. That's what we need to be remembering, that's what we need to be documenting because that's how we get from here to there. What did we do along the way? How are we different now than we were a year ago? You know, where our consciousness level is higher, and you are already a light. You said uh you wished you were a light, right? Can we think that we are already when we are trying to manifest something? We think of it as that we already have it, right? So why not think that we already are the light? We already are the lighthouse for others.

Self-Care and Energetic Hygiene

SPEAKER_00 36:22

I mean, because I'm doing too much and then it dims. How do I keep it consistently glowing during all the time? Just to think it is, and that's self-care.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

Look in the mirror every morning and just say, Wow, I love you so much. Sometimes it's hard for us to look at ourselves dead in the eye and say something nice and kind about ourselves. Mirror work is something that I really suggest. Think about all of the things that we could be washing away, all of the attachments, all of the energies that has attached to us during that day, you know, because sometimes, especially for empaths, we'll attach other people's energy, and it may not be clean energy. So we need to learn how to do some energetic uh hygiene. I just had a session on that a week ago, and we talked about the aura. It really starts with the inner dialogue. What kind of relationship do we have with ourselves? Our inside is what shines outside. If we're a mad and just irritated person, you know, well, we see that in other people, right? That they're just angry all the time and nothing is ever right. So they give off this energy that we can feel. We don't even have to be in the same room with them. We can just watch them on the television screen or, you know, like somebody's acting and they're mad or something. That's a totally different energy. So we are in total control over how we feel, how we're gonna move through certain situations. And I find that there's very few things I know I've experienced the pentacle trauma in my lifetime, but still if I can do this, anybody can reach or a place where they really feel at ease and at peace.

SPEAKER_00 38:20

How does this book fit into all this?

SPEAKER_01 38:23

The book does have some healing toolkits in there. One has a standing meditation, the other one has a timeline. I did the timeline when I was in the hospital with my daughter. She was in there for 48 days before she passed. Doing that timeline made me aware of my calling because I had already kind of heard my calling after I lost my son in 2017. Then I lost my dad a year later. And that's when I really stepped into okay, I know what I'm what I'm supposed to be doing in my life, what I agreed to, what my contract is with God. I just didn't know that the healing journey I went on after my son was preparing me to lose two children 12 days apart. I mean, 48 days in the hospital with my daughter, and she passes, and I go home and receive a call, and they're trying to identify my son's body. It had a seizure and drowned in the neighboring pool. And that was a shock. You know, I was expecting crystal, I knew what was going on there, and I could prepare myself, but that was a total shock to my system. And to have all of these tools that I had learned over the past 35 plus years, it really supported me in a big way. And I think that women don't do enough of that, that self-care. It's not about slabbing on creams or just journaling, it could be just whatever moves you, whatever makes you really feel better. And today it could be just stepping outside and feeling sun on your face.

SPEAKER_00 40:07

He did numbers on it. Lotion is self-care, but I think it's like level one. Right. And then journaling is depending on what type of journaling you do. Mine is probably level two or three. I'm journaling about the day, and there's affirmations and then a prayer. But it's still not like deep journaling by any means. So I think it's almost like there's levels of self-and if you're going into energy work, if you're going into shadow work, that's like I don't know how many levels are there. If there's 10 levels, that's like level 10, level 9, yeah, up there. So I think if you leveled it, like it is, and I think that's where I've been struggling of how to explain it, is if you did it in levels. Like, sure, you can start on the lower levels and work your way up. But what do you need that's like the really deep? I need this amount of self-care. Maybe go for some of those upper level works.

SPEAKER_01 41:07

Well, I think it depends on where you are in the moment. If we're living in the moment, today might be digging deep. Tomorrow maybe something surface level that's listening to your body. What does my body need right now? Can I get out of my ego long enough to really feel what's going on? Something is not right, something feels off. So let's try to figure that out. But we have to get out of our head before we can actually really feel into that. The list I'm gonna send you is a beautiful way to do it with what time you have. Because as a mom, you never know when your next five minutes of freedom is gonna come up. Can you lean on something like this and think, oh my God, I love this list. I'm so happy to have this. And then you can add things to it. You know, don't just go by my list. You think of something else that only takes a few minutes, write it down there. It's like you've got this best companion right there with you saying, Hey, why don't you just sit and breathe for two minutes? Just take a walk. You're sitting there at the school waiting for your kids. Is there a place where you can get out and walk for a minute or do something instead of scroll your phone? I think self-care, I would look at it as levels because every day and every moment, depending on where you are, it could be anywhere along the scale. It could be something that's really lower level or something really heavy. And so just being aware or know how to kind of move through those things. And I think a good coach or someone that can walk you through that and show you different tools. When I learned and really gathered a lot of the tools that I had not been using before, I leaned on them all the time. And before I knew about them, I would just drown in whatever I was feeling at the time, you know, because I didn't really know what to do with those emotions. Having that toolkit is everything. And the book, the book does have some healing toolkits, but there is a book coming out in the next 30 days called Compass to the Soul. That is the companion book to the memoir. The memoir is my story. It's about all of the kids, it's about my life from younger years until I lost them, and then the year following. Everything that I did to be sitting here with you today, the speaking engagements, the trips to the island to write my book, all of that is in there. But the compass of the soul is the guide for somebody that's like, you know what? God, it was a good thing that she went through that healing journey, because there's no way she could have gotten through losing two children that close together had she not had the tools. They Pick up this companion book and it has everything in there from movement, essential oils, juicing, self-care, journal, everything that you can imagine is in there. Whenever they find something that really resonates with them, they can dive a little bit deeper in there. You can give them ideas, prompts, things that they can do to really utilize that particular ritual.

SPEAKER_00 44:21

So you're saying that this is the why, and the other book will be the how. Yes. That totally makes sense. Because there's so many times where I read a book like this, and I'm like, but but how? Like I want a little bit more of that. Like this one with shadow work journaling where you're giving ideas, but like, I want more about this. I love that you have the book for them more where some people are like, this is where I need to be.

SPEAKER_01 44:46

Yeah, because they're gonna resonate with parts of the book, you know, where the if it's a timeline, they might really dive deep into that because they're ready for it, or the shadow work, they're curious, they know that there's some things that they need to work through. So the book was to dive in deeper because there was no way. I mean, that was a pretty thick memoir as it was without having to add like in-depth, going in depth with some of these rituals or these stuff.

SPEAKER_00 45:14

The size makes it easy to read, the amount of space and the margins, like eye appeal, definitely has eye appeal. I think that's a word for books. I don't know. I'm a reader, I'm not an editor, as you can tell. But I really love this and I love butterflies. My daughter took you, added some butterfly stickers, she took all of them from me. Her nursery was butterfly themed. And when we moved houses, she wanted to keep most of it in her room. So she's our butterfly girl. Butterfly cats, unicorns, she is all girl. It's really fun.

SPEAKER_01 45:53

Well, and I put the mandelas in there to for my son. The one that died of the overdose was my artist, and so I put those in there for him. And so I have a mandela at the front of each chapter. So when you put the pencils in with your book, that is so you can jump right into coloring those. And you think about it, when you color all of the mandelas, you're bringing the book to life. Once you open it and you start seeing color in there, it just does say really your spirit, like you smile when you flip through it, and the mandelas are all colored. It's an immediate smile. It's really amazing.

SPEAKER_00 46:33

And there's actually science behind adults coloring, really good science around it. And personal experience, I really enjoy it. I don't do it enough, but when I do, I feel really good. And then, of course, my kids want to join in. It's like, no, no, no. You have your own coloring book. I have my adult version, you have yours. Sometimes I'll let them color with me, but sometimes it's like there's not enough space in this tiny page for both of us.

SPEAKER_01 46:57

I have a mandela coloring workshop that I'll be starting after the first of the year. I have an audible for the memoir in my voice, and we focus on a chapter, color the mandela from that chapter, we listen to the chapter, then we reflect on the chapter, and then we play some more music to finish the mandelas, and then I'll have a library, a mandela library, where whoever wants to send in a picture of their mandela, then it'll all go in there and people can look back if they come in late into the game, you know, they can still look back on the previous sessions and see what we've done.

SPEAKER_00 47:37

I love that you're building a community around this.

SPEAKER_01 47:39

Yeah.

Navigating Life's Transitions

SPEAKER_00 47:41

And it sounds like it's for Grie. Who else do you want to mention that for them to be like, oh, it's for me too?

Regulating the Nervous System

SPEAKER_01 47:48

It's for anybody going through a difficult transition in life. You know, losing a job, losing a spouse, not even physically, but a divorce or something major. Even moving homes. That is one of the most stressful things. Moving, divorce, losing someone, and there's a list of the most stressful things we deal with in life. Sometimes we think, well, it's just a move, but it brings up certain emotions within you. These tools give you a way to move through life more gracefully. It you just don't get as wound up over things as you do before. And that's just learning how to regulate your nervous system so that you're not always in fight or flight. If you grew up in a dysfunctional home, then you were probably living fight or flight most of the time. And it tends to follow you through your life. If you really think about it, you were probably in flight or fight most of the time. And we don't know what it feels like to be calm, to really be in our true essence. And so that's what this work helps you to do is to really just get seated in your own beautiful energy and learn how to appreciate it and live from there instead of letting everything else bombard you.

SPEAKER_00 49:17

And what I've noticed for me is I have a very huge freeze response because of sexual abuse on top of I have fight or flight, but I have very big freeze. And it comes up the biggest for me when well, it came up on vacation. My husband was playing like he was the shark in the water, and then he started turning towards me, and I was like, Nope, frozen. The reason why it was on top of mind for me is because I started playing pickleball, sport I've never played before. I played soccer, and still, when the ball comes at me, if I don't have the freeze response, my foot comes out, and I have to remind myself, no, hand, not feet. Right. But there's a lot of work that I need to do there. And for me, playing sports is actually helping with the free, but the fight or flight response is the other toolkit for sure.

The Importance of Consistency

SPEAKER_01 50:10

But we don't realize we're so used to it, we don't realize that that's where we're living 24-7, that we're in that, and our bodies will start working against us and we'll start manifesting all kinds of illnesses if we can't learn how to regulate the nervous system. By regulating my nervous system, the work that I do is actually really anchored in. It's like getting a massage and you feel really great for an hour, and then you go back to life. The pain or whatever comes back, it's because your body is shifting from that that regulated state back into what you're used to. And it just takes a while of regulating your nervous system a little bit more each day until that's your norm. Because right now it's not your norm because you've lived it your entire life. Doesn't that make sense? That it would just keep showing up so frustrating. Yes, but we just have to train our bodies, which means we have to be consistent with the work. We have to be consistent with either the meditating or breath work and vagal toning to get yourself in a parasympathetic nervous system rather than the sympathetic. And those two are amazing, both breath work and vagal toning, which is chanting. Some people don't even know they have a vagus nerve. And so then when you start explaining that to people that don't know it, they're like, oh wow, you know, and it it when they know that there is something else, they could feel something else if they just did these few little things every day, their whole life could change in the way they feel their emotions and all of that. We would have a lot more happy people out there because they would have the tools they need to shift things when they need to.

SPEAKER_00 52:05

And if anybody who's wondering about what she's talking about, go like 10 episodes back and you'll find somebody who's talking about it. She actually is the one who talked about shampoo bars. So find her. I was actually thinking about that today while scraping my shower. So for me, I am at the point where I've done enough work and I've healed enough that now my body's like, and we're falling apart because it's so used to living in a state of stress. And that goes along with the idea of I have arrived, I should be done by now. However, no, there's more work to be done with putting back together more of my physical health. What am I doing, vitamins, minerals-wise, with actual vitamins, but also food? What else am I doing that I can add to bring a deeper level of relaxation and grounding as I'm doing this work? But it's layers of okay, now I'm doing more of the nutrition. Now how could I ground myself more? So realizing that this is going to be a three-month journey if I'm lucky.

SPEAKER_01 53:15

The journey's never over.

Mercury Detox and Physical Health

SPEAKER_00 53:17

If you can accept the fact, yeah, that part of it. Right, right. But it's going to be three months worth because I have mercury that my body needs to get rid of that it's been folding on to for decades. And realizing that my body is in a state of not being stressed, so I can finally get rid of these things. But because it's moving through my body, it's creating a little bit of havoc. But not in a I'm going the hospital way, just like my GI tract is like, I don't know what to do with this. So it's been kind of a journey through that, and knowing that it's gonna be three months to get rid of the mercury, and then from there I can focus on another part. So, yes, I have no more mercury from the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 54:07

Yeah, I've been through the mercury thing. I had all of my fillings taken out. This was probably 10 or and it was really hard on my body. So I don't know if that's what you're doing, but you want to make sure that you have a dentist that really knows how to remove them properly, because I don't think I did. And it took me a long time after that for my body to feel right again.

SPEAKER_00 54:29

Mercury would be the metal fillings. Okay. Yeah, so I looked it up more and it looks like it was more environmental. I grew up in an older house, and then our last two houses were older. This one's not, so I'm already in an environment where I don't have to worry about it anymore. I know it can be like in tuna, and there's a lot of other things. I I do eat tuna, but I don't eat in excess, so I think I'm fine there. The environment has changed, and my body is relaxed enough to be like, all right, time to get rid of this. With all of what we're talking about, if we're gonna sum all of this up, you are giving your body the space to do what it naturally does by making sure that you are grounded, that your body fully feels a sense of safety. Yes. And it can't run through processes correctly if it does not feel safe because it's in the fight light or freeze. Yes. And there are so many people who live this for such a long period of time that they go into retirement or they go into right now, I just turned 40. And I know so many people that are now going in and out of the ER. They're seeing specialists that they've never seen before because they lived all of this time, and now their body is saying, I can't do it anymore.

Teaching Self-Care to Children

SPEAKER_01 55:56

And one thing I have to say about that is like you said, we go through our life, and by the time you've worked so hard, you go into retirement, and then you get sick. Back to bringing our children in, teaching them how to do all of this work, how to self-soothe, how to get their energy the way it should be to regulate their nervous system, how that's going to carry them throughout their life so that they can be vibrant at 80 or 60.

SPEAKER_00 56:29

Satsy playing the sports better than the youngins when I'm in my 90s, when I'm 100, I'm gonna be that spry thing.

SPEAKER_01 56:38

Yes, absolutely. And because I heard somebody one time, well, I'm just old, and I'm like, Oh, I'm gonna be able to do it. You are old.

SPEAKER_00 56:45

My mom has said that my whole life, and she had me very young, and I've always rolled my eyes, and I still will.

unknown 56:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:52

Your head. There's so much in teaching our children as much as we can, and they're curious, even if they didn't come along with you the first time, just do it out in the middle of the living room floor, play the music, create a little bit of curiosity. And then they're in there looking, saying, hmm, I wonder what she's doing. Eventually they're gonna join in. You don't want to force them into it, but if you can make it inviting for them, and if they can learn how to invite that presence and that being in the moment and learning how to do that at a young age, they're just gonna glide through life. They're still gonna have hurdles to jump over, but they're gonna fly over them instead of letting it put a big wall in front of them, you know, because that's what we have, right? We have all these fears and that flight or flight thing. So we don't move through some things as easily because we're afraid of what's on the other side. Where if we have that parasympathetic nervous system, it's like we know everything's cool, everything's exactly the way it should be. Makes a big difference in how we move through life.

Community and Resources

SPEAKER_00 58:04

I love that. So let's end by telling people where to work with you if they want to work with you. You mentioned so many things, and thankfully we did not have time to go over every single detail. Those that are curious, you can reach out to her to learn more. Where can we find you for that?

SPEAKER_01 58:24

You can go to vicky menendez.com. I'm in the process of, I mean, new things are going on the site every day. You also can join the flow collective community. We meet every other week and we have different topics. The last topic was about aura. This coming up topic on the 2nd of December is just about energy, our bodies, some of the things that we can do to create that balance in our body and how to do that during the holidays. The holidays sometimes are tough to get through. How can we make it easy? How can we really feel like, okay, this is easy because I know what to do now? And have that meaning behind it rather than oh gosh, I have to go there and see him. We already have it all worked out and what the day is going to be like. Can we change the story? Can we write a new script for that? You know, and there's so many different ways that we can look at every dinner that we're stepping into and how to prepare ourselves for it before we step in there.

SPEAKER_00 59:30

Love that. And then where can we find your book? And for the social media junkies, where can we find you on social media?

SPEAKER_01 59:37

Well, there's Learning to Live Again, which is a group that I put together about two years ago. And then there's Vicky Menendez. You can find me on there. I can send you all those links if you share. I'll do that along with the flow collective community, that gentle reminders list. They're gonna really love that. Your book is available on Amazon. And there also the Audible, you can get that both of those on my site as well. What you get when you order the book through me, you get a signed copy and all of the little extras. Some people don't care about that, and you can get it cheaper, probably through Amazon. It just won't, you just won't get it in the nice pretty box. Because it really went out of my way. Somebody said, You know, you're not going to make any money on your books. I said, That's not what it was about. I wrote the book to heal, but I wrote it for other people to get something out of it. When they opened it, I wanted them to smell that white sage. I wanted them to feel like this was a gift. This was something that they should open, they should read, they should do the mandelas. You know, I just wanted them to be invited to the book instead of just opening up a brown paper bag.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:50

Our kids got very excited over the package. They were all smelling the sage along with me. And just on Jair, why it's white sage, what it means, and everything. And they immediately started taking out different parts. And I'm stealing this, and I want this. And then I had to do the hold on. This was for me.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:10

It's addressing me. And the little heart, if you read the letter that was in there, the little heart was for you to put in your purse, put in your pocket, whatever. So every time you went into your change purse and you see the heart, it's just a gentle reminder to show gratitude for something or to show gratitude for all of the money that you've received through your whole lifetime. Because showing gratitude makes room for more of the good stuff to come in. The 28 days of gratitude, by the way, is the other thing besides the radical forgiveness book that I told you made such a big change in my life. I did those two things at the same time and it completely turned me around.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:52

Oh, that's great. I love when there's tips and tricks within an episode for different things that resonate at different times. It makes it so that you want to go back to it and re-listen at different points in life. I hope everybody else feels that way. We would appreciate it if you share with those you know who are struggling with a transition that they decided that's been forced upon them by life. We all know people who are struggling right now, and sometimes it's us as well. We have much available to us just from this episode. And within the description, look there because she has given us her skull self-care. What did you call it? The gentle reminders list. Yes, the gentle reminders list. You can find her website, social media, you can find her book, and you can really start to join her world. When she was talking about how every other week they have a different topic that they learn about, I was envisioning myself thinking, you know what? I could totally see myself doing this too. Yeah. We all need it, no matter what point we are on our journey to wellness, to self-care, to becoming a butterfly from a caterpillar, just looking at your book. I love that idea how we all can form our cocoon, but it's that reminder that we don't need to stay in the cocoon. We're supposed to get out of it. So, what are we doing to get out of it?

Final Thoughts and Gratitude

SPEAKER_01 1:03:24

Yeah, and think about what's happening. The caterpillar is totally dissolving and turning into a liquid, and then it turns into this beautiful butterfly. And if you were to try to help it out of the cocoon, it would die because that's where the wings get its strength, so it can fly. It's just such a beautiful metaphor in life. Sometimes those tower moments have to happen before the beauty comes on the other side of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:52

Thank you for this conversation. This was amazing. And I just love looking at this cover with the butterflies. I'm looking at this more than I'm looking at you now. But we all have struggled, and I love that you have taken some horrific, heartbreaking, powerful emotions, so much grief and channeled it into something absolutely beautiful. And then you've decided to turn it around to help other people, and that speaks volumes as to who you are as a person. Thank you for being on to share that with us.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:29

Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed this. Me too.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:34

We could probably talk about many other things, especially because you've done so much that I was like, oh, which direction do we want to go?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:42

Yeah. We might have to have a few more of these and have different topics.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:46

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope that you found the answers that you needed and you had some amazing aha moments. Please share this episode with others because it helps us align ourselves and then better align the world so that we can seek the healing that we really are looking for. This is general advice taken as that. See you in the next episode.