High-Frequency Living: Love, Loss, and My Meditation Homework, with Amanda McKoy Flanagan

In this episode, Amanda McKoy Flanagan shares her journey through multiple losses, spiritual awakenings, and discovering how to break generational patterns of emotional protection. A New Yorker turned Colorado resident, Amanda opens up about losing five family members in three years, saving her marriage to a 9/11 first responder, and learning that what first appeared as emotional breakdowns were actually spiritual breakthroughs.

Amanda discusses the "great myth" passed down through generations - the belief that we should love less to protect ourselves from inevitable loss. Through therapy, meditation, and deep inner work, she discovered how this unconscious operating system affected her relationships and ability to connect. She shares insights about marriage, PTSD, and how couples can heal together through understanding their generational patterns.

The conversation takes an unexpected turn into meditation guidance, with Amanda offering practical wisdom about different ways to meditate and connect with higher consciousness. She emphasizes that meditation isn't about achieving a quiet mind but rather an open one, and that it can take many forms beyond sitting in silence.

Key Takeaways:

1. When experiencing major life changes, recognize that even positive changes involve loss - of familiarity, routine, and certainty.
2. Meditation doesn't have to be perfect - find your own way in through whatever puts you in a flow state, whether that's running, walking, writing, or sitting quietly.
3. Consider how your family's approach to grief and loss has shaped your own - these patterns often go back generations.
4. Focus on being "all in" with yourself before trying to be all in with another person.
5. Trust that painful experiences can lead to spiritual awakening and growth, even if it doesn't feel that way in the moment.

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Transcript

Jessica Fein: Welcome. I'm Jessica Fein, and this is the “I Don’t Know How You Do It” podcast, where we talk to people whose lives seem unimaginable from the outside and dive into how they're able to do things that look undoable. I'm so glad you're joining me on this journey, and I hope you enjoy the conversation. 

Welcome back to the show. Today's guest is Amanda McKoy Flanagan, a native New Yorker who now lives in Colorado, masterfully combining urban insights with a nature inspired philosophy in her approach to love and loss.An award winning author, motivational speaker, writing coach, certified intuitive grief coach, and energy healer, Amanda launched her debut inspirational memoir, Trust [00:01:00] Yourself to Be All In, Safe to Love and Let Go, last year, and is the host of the “Soul Rising” podcast.

Amanda has had multiple spiritual awakenings, all of which followed profound loss. And all of which first appeared as emotional breakdowns. The most recent and poignant loss was her brother's overdose and death in 2018, four months after her cousin died. In today's conversation, Amanda shares her story of moving through multiple losses, confronting generational patterns, saving her marriage, and ultimately discovering that the darkness does not have to scare us once we've walked through it and emerge stronger on the other side.

She also schools me in meditation. and spiritual awakenings. It's my pleasure to bring you Amanda Flanagan.

Hi, Amanda. 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: Hi, Jessica. I'm so happy to see you again. 

Jessica Fein: There's so much for us to talk about. So let's start off by introducing you in terms of the fact that your adult life has been punctuated by a series of major losses. And you've had a lot of different kinds of loss.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: Yeah. So my adult life has definitely, it's a good way to good word punctuated has definitely been punctuated, but it really all started probably when I was born. There was just a lot of I don't know, I guess in my family I felt maybe there were some secrets or there was just some stuff going on like in my parents marriage and things that were happening behind closed doors that I knew something was going on, but we weren't told, we were kids, right?

So it felt like this loss of family structure, I guess you could say, like togetherness, it felt like this disconnect. It was just something that I didn't know and I've come to find out later there were just issues of infidelity and stuff in my parents [00:03:00] marriage. But I had a couple of sexual traumas when I was young, when I was five and seven.

I mean, those are probably my first two major losses of innocence. Didn't put that together until I was in therapy. Years later, after my adult life, I had five major losses within three years of death. But there have been many other types of loss, like you said. Then just loss of my own self, really. I'm an alcoholic.

I've been sober 18 years. So those years of just totally disrespecting myself, we call it incomprehensible demoralization. The things that I had done, the things that I experienced were just a loss of myself. I just lost myself. I didn't know who I was. Then moving out to Colorado, when I was sober, eight months sober, I had a boyfriend in recovery who died.

And he didn't wake up on Easter Sunday, which I found ironic. And that was my first major sudden and unexpected loss. You know, I had lost both my grandparents when I was in high school, 12 years old and 17 years old. [00:04:00] They were old. They were sick. That was expected. But Mike, drug overdose and diabetic coma, you know, him just not waking up that day.

We're both eight months sober and it was just this, Whoa, people can just be gone like that. That was the first, right? That was the first time I experienced that, that like shift, you know, trauma. 

Jessica Fein: I do. I do know. And it's interesting because with my sister's loss, as you know, when I was 27, it was like that.

It was just that sudden. And it really does change everything in terms of how you see the world because the grandparents loss, which I had had too, we expect that's going to happen. And even horrible, horrible diseases. We are aware that those happen, but they're like, what do you mean they're there one second not there the next I mean It's just earth shattering and earth shaking.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: Yeah, and it can definitely mess us up like internally mentally Emotionally and I didn't really deal with that loss and that's why the losses [00:05:00] later in life really were Extremely profound and kind of kick started this whole work that I'm doing the book that I wrote all of that Because I didn't really deal with it.

I think I thought I dealt with Mike's death. Again, I'm in recovery. I have a sponsor at the time who had lost her husband a few years before that and I just moved on. I met my now husband five months after Mike died and we started dating and I didn't think I was ready, but I just jumped into it. It's part of my story.

After five months of heavy grief is when I've noticed I have a pattern. I just think I'm okay and jump back into life and then it comes back up later. Yeah, you didn't really look at that. 

Jessica Fein: Yeah, five months, not so much. 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: No, I just didn't have the tools. I didn't really even know what grief, grieving, I didn't know how to do it.

I just had no idea how to do it because I wasn't taught. It wasn't something that was talked about, right? Like when my grandma died at 12, when I was 12 years old, my mother grieved heavily, but it wasn't shared with us. We didn't know the words to put to our emotions, we [00:06:00] just didn't know. So this was something that, Mike's death was totally something that just blew the lid off of what are these feelings, what are these emotions, and I just did not deal with them so I just kept going.

Jessica Fein: I'll just interject there to say that I think that is such a gigantic pattern that we hear so frequently, people didn't even know they're grieving, they don't know how to grieve, they don't know what grief is because it's never talked about. Right? It is like this little secret we talk about in hushed whispers, right?

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: Yeah, because I don't think my mother even knew how to handle her grief. She wasn't in like therapy. I knew she was really affected just by the way that she was behaving and then four years later she found out my dad was cheating on her with her best friend and the same summer she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

So more grief for her, right? She just didn't even know how to handle her own. So how could she even help us through? Because again, think of she's born in 1952, right? How she was raised. So it just was what it was, but I just didn't have the skills. So we get married, have a couple of kids. We get [00:07:00] hit with hurricane Sandy.

Actually before my second daughter was born, we get hit with hurricane Sandy in 2012. And I decide that I want to move off the coast and I want to move to Colorado. So we move out here in 2015. I had my daughter in between that time. And that was when I hit my second emotional bottom. The first one was after Mike died, the second one was after we moved.

I was here about a year. And I just was so lost. I had no idea who I was. I had no idea that my identity was completely wrapped up in being a New Yorker. We're very prideful. There's a joke. How do you know people are from New York? How? They'll tell you in the first five minutes. 

Jessica Fein: What even made you be like Colorado is the place for me in the first place?

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: Well, really, Jessica, I took out a map in the middle of Hurricane Sandy. I couldn't get in touch with my husband. My father had to leave the house, my childhood house, which was on the water, which he'd never left. Hurricane Gloria, all these hurricanes, he's never left. I knew this one was really bad. I was traumatized.

Pulled out a map, went into the [00:08:00] middle of the country, because I'm like, I'm getting off the coast. And that was Kansas. And I was like, uh, I don't think I can, I don't think this New Yorker can really go to Kansas right now. And I saw Colorado was right next to it, and I had a friend who had just gotten back from a beautiful retreat up at Estes Park in the Rocky Mountain National Park.

And she was raving about it, and I trust this woman with, like, my soul. So I was like, you know what, I'm gonna check out Colorado, and I kinda knew. It's one of those things you just know, like, you just know. 

Jessica Fein: If I fast forward a year and you're like, maybe I didn't know, were you feeling lost because you had been uprooted?

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: I had never questioned it once. It wasn't loss that was connected to a doubt or I'm feeling this way, maybe it was the wrong choice. I always knew it was the right place for us and this is where we belong, but it still came with a lot of loss. I always say good change, good things, things that you want also comes with loss.

Jessica Fein: Yes, that is such an important point. Thank you. Yes. 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: [00:09:00] Because it was just familiarity of streets. You're driving down the street. You just know where to go. You know, I use this example in my book. I'm in the supermarket and this was like right before I had this second breakdown where everything was just coming to a head and I couldn't find the milk and I was just so Frazzled.

It was right. The broken shoelace. It was just a straw that broke the camel's back. It was like, where is the milk? I just want something to be the same. I just wanted to know how that muscle memory. It was a loss of muscle memory and then feeling comfortable and safe in the knowing and the certainty and the predictability.

That was really what it was about. And I had no friends here. I had very little family support. A few people that I was close with were kind of not happy that we moved here. And I just felt very alone and I felt very lost. So it was an identity crisis. But that was a beautiful time. I mean looking back all of the pain and the growth, right?

It's all beautiful. But that was when I first really committed to [00:10:00] meditating. Because I was in so much pain and my sponsor here at the time said meditate, meditate, meditate, meditate. And now I'm nine years sober at this point. And that's our 11th step in the program. And I just wasn't doing it. I just wasn't doing it.

I would try it here. I would try it there in my brain, my squirrels. I just wouldn't do it. Wasn't that I didn't want to, I just was very uncomfortable. In the silence. That's how I feel. And I was very scared of what I was gonna maybe know, or hear, or be asked to do. You know, show up, assert, change. If I'm aware, uh, sitting quietly, this loud thing is telling me, like, this thing you're doing, whatever it is, is not working, but I'm like, I know, but I don't know how to change it.

Right? So, I think that was my fear. 

Jessica Fein: So how'd you get over that? Yeah, what did you do? Because I have tried meditating, and I have never succeeded. 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: I was in so much pain. They say pain is a great motivator. I was in so much pain that I was willing to do whatever I had [00:11:00] to. I knew that the pain that I was in, it wasn't going to end.

And I knew that if I tried something else, because I already had nine years of sobriety under my belt, I know what being uncomfortable, I know the gains of being, what that brings, the rewards. So I was like, I'm willing to try. I mean, what do I have to lose? I could just stay miserable or possibly there would be a light at the end of the tunnel or I would grow in some way, right?

There was that hope that we talked about when you were on my show. There was that hope that I could feel better and that this might work. So that was the beginning of creating a personal relationship with a higher power because a higher power, God, universe, source, whatever you want to call it. It's a very important part of sobriety.

And up until that point, it was like somewhere out there. You know, you go to church and God's there. You got to pray to him instead of it being inside. And it came inside of me at that point. It was just like, whoa, like I have this power in me. And this power was love. And the power was this self worth that [00:12:00] was just starting to like appear.

Like it just started to burgeon. And it was just like, okay, it was still uncomfortable. But I was willing to sit in it until it became comfortable, and it did. I would just discipline myself every morning, 5. 30 in the morning, the alarm would go off, I'd go downstairs by myself, light a candle in the dark, read a passage from some inspirational book, and just sit and wait.

And something just happened, but it took time. 

Jessica Fein: Okay, that was gonna be my question because people like me who have wanted to meditate, I'm like meditation curious, and when we say it didn't work, it's like, you know, I'll try it two times, and I'm like, oh, my brain is racing, so when you say it took time, I'm curious about two things, number one, when you lit that candle at 5:30, how long did you have to sit there in the discomfort?

And number two, what was the period of time before it stopped feeling yucky and started feeling maybe even beautiful? 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: I think because I was already in a zone and seeking and searching for so long before it actually happened. [00:13:00] I think maybe it happened a little more quickly, but I'll tell you from the first time I ever sat down to try to do it, it was years before I actually got to that point where I was just so open and ready, but it still felt uncomfortable sitting down lighting the candle like for probably I'd say it took about 15 minutes.

I get really good 45 minutes. Oh my God, 45 minutes? That's a long time. But as you do it, it comes a little bit sooner and I can go in now really quickly, but it just gets deeper and deeper to the point where sometimes I feel like I'm floating. It's very strange. It's a very strange feeling. Sometimes I feel like I'm sinking, but floating or buoyant more than floating.

I'm sinking but buoyant at the same time, and I'm just in another frequency. So I can get there more quickly, but the longer I sit, the further I go in. 

Jessica Fein: So How do you get out? Because if you're in this place and you're like so [00:14:00] deep in and it's buoyant and the candle, you know, it makes me feel like, ugh… 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: You’re not gonna get lost.

You feel safe in it. You feel like You're occupying another frequency really is what's going on. It's a frequency of God. It's a frequency of the universe. And it's really awesome. Like you're going to want to go back to it again. It's not nothing to be like afraid of. It's like, wow, this is where I belong.

This is the truth. This is truly what's going on. This is what it means to be human and spirit combined. And this is where the knowing happens. And you feel really like self assured in that knowing, like you don't question it. It's just like, okay, I get this information and I know you have it. You have it.

It's in you, Jessica. 

Jessica Fein: Well, I gotta go. I'm like thinking like, okay, we got to hurry this up because I got to go lie down and try this. It sounds so good. And I really do want it. I want it to work. So maybe I'll give it another try, a renewed try. And this is not what we had planned to talk about, but it's fascinating to me and I know there are other people out [00:15:00] there who hear about the benefits of meditating and who want to do it and just don't even know how.

I remember when I heard about the Blue Zones and for people who don't know these are the regions in the world where people have the longest lives and what they discovered when they looked at all of the characteristics that these people have in terms of what their level of activity is and social connections and eating and etc.

One thing they have in common is they all meditate, people in these communities where people live longer. I mean, that's pretty compelling in terms of some good push to go do it. 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: Look up the Blue Zone's minestrone soup. We call it the live forever soup in our house. We make it. It is so good. Just to digress.

Jessica Fein: Good. I'll try that. Minestrone, Blue Zone recipe. Okay. I'm going to this evening. I'm going to say to Rob, my husband, I'm going to be like, Hey, listen, I got to make minestrone. I've got to go light a candle. He's going to be like, what were you doing today? 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: So let me dispel a myth though, for the people who want to meditate, who are a little bit intimidated.

[00:16:00] Meditation comes in many forms. You do not need to be sitting in the dark with the candle lit. You could be running, you could be walking. You could be sitting outside, looking at a tree. You could be looking at the sky. You could be anything that puts you into a flow. You could be writing. You're a writer.

You probably get in like a flow where it just comes, right? Like, that's a form of meditation. You start with whatever puts you where you feel like that flow of the universe. There's some kind of wave you want to jump in and just jump in in whatever way feels good to you. You could listen to birds chirping.

You could listen to music. You don't have to be quiet also. And there's guided meditations, which are really helpful too, for beginners or for anybody. So do whatever it's really just about getting in tune with your higher self and aligned with something greater than you. And getting out of your own self so you don't even have to quiet the mind.

I do a lot of thinking when I meditate. My mind is really not empty, it's open. And I'll feel something and then I'll question it. [00:17:00] And I'll be like, okay, so what does that mean? Or how did that show up maybe in my childhood? Or how do I need to heal that? Or what relationship is bothering me right now and why?

I'll ask questions. So it's not just a silent thing for me. It's a communication. 

Jessica Fein: I love the idea about it's not about having an empty mind. It's about having an open mind. That's a huge distinction because I feel like it's very hard for me. My mind is going a million miles a minute and I have heard it's not that you're trying to stop thinking.

Thinking just happens. But you're trying to observe it. You're trying to be watching what's happening. I don't know. It's a hard concept to, I guess if you know, you know. If you get it, you get it. And I think until you get it, which I still don't, it's hard to grasp how that can work. 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: Just make it your own and take the pressure off to do it right, but I was given the permission to just meditate in whatever way felt right with me as long as I'm communing with a higher power of some sort. I mean, I have my own [00:18:00] thing that I do. I say a certain kind of intention or prayer that I've kind of packed together through the years from different things I've heard.

You know, I have a process. I clear my chakras. And then if I feel like, oh, I need to write, I'll pull out and I'll write and that'll start. So it's like a whole kind of process. Just kind of wrap it up in the ball of, I call it meditation. And it's not the same every single time. It's just going wherever you're supposed to go without your own human will putting pressure on it or making the decisions for yourself.

It's kind of like allowing something else to say, all right, go here. Now go here. Now go there. 

Jessica Fein: Okay. I'm going to get back to you. I'm going to have a renewed effort. 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: I can help you. I can help you. Text me. Call me. Whenever you need a little guidance or you have a question, I will help you.

Jessica Fein: Okay. So you’r in the grocery store, you don't know where the milk is.

You're at the low of the low and you go back to meditation. 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: Uh huh. And I get this consistent meditation practice down and doing good. Things are going well. It's seemingly going well. My marriage is falling [00:19:00] apart. I'm asking my husband to go to marriage counseling. My husband is a 9 11 first responder. He was a transit police officer first before he was a fireman, FDNY.

And he did 25 years and he retired right before Hurricane Sandy in 2012. So he's 45 years old. So we've been home together, raising our kids together all of this time, which is definitely a unique situation. And with each child that's born, moving to Colorado, buying a home, all of these things are ratcheting up his PTSD.

And it's starting to affect our relationship, starting to affect my children, most of all, and that's getting me mad and resentful. And now I'm meditating. My self worth is growing. My self love is growing. I remember telling him when we were sitting, going through therapy, because we wound up in therapy.

And I said, this is just a race between you getting better and my self worth. Because if I grow too fast and outpace this, I'm not going to be willing to stay. [00:20:00] Kind of lit a fire. Okay. So back it up. We're here for a while. I'm not totally happy in my marriage. My brother dies. Well, first. A month after moving to Colorado, my aunt dies.

About a year after that, my mother's first cousin, who I was close with, dies around the same time that my other aunt dies. My cousin, who was my aunt's daughter, she dies about a year after that, and then my brother four months later. So there was five major significant, I mean, everybody's significant, but significant family members, not like a great aunt that I haven't seen in years, right?

Five major losses within a three year period. And my brother, I say, ended the procession. When my brother died, that was when, pfft, it all just hit the fan. And I didn't know I was pushing it down and pushing the grief down. You know, I really didn't know. I thought I was kind of doing the work all along.

You know, I was. I mean, I was working my steps. I was sponsoring them. I was doing work for my sobriety. But I wasn't [00:21:00] in therapy. I wasn't really processing all the stuff super deep. And Jeremy dies 5 months later. I tell my husband, I think I want a divorce again that 5 month mark, which is what I mentioned in the beginning, the pattern.

Three months in after Jeremy died, I think I'm better. I think I'm good. I was in grief counseling. Then I tell my husband a couple months after that, I don't think I love you. I don't think I ever loved you. I had this like crazy awareness epiphany of like, I don't feel connected. Call it like the netherworld.

I was not here and I was not obviously there, but I was in some really deep spiritual place that like I couldn't define, but I felt like he was just in another world. I felt like I just could not reach him. And it wasn't just him, it was PTSD played a part. It was me. And what I learned through, we go to finally go to marriage counseling.

What I learned is that I was carrying this generational family dysfunctional message that everybody leaves. Everybody dies, which they do, but [00:22:00] it was this, protect your heart, always love a little less, never really give yourself to anybody, never be all in, because they're gonna hurt you. So if you could stay a little bit protected, you won't be as devastated when they leave, and that, I think, has been like a century old.

Like, passed down, and I think it really helped the women in my family way back when, when they had to survive.

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Jessica Fein: So we need to talk about that because. That becomes a very, very big thing for you, this idea of wearing the armor, and how do we let go of that, and how do we give our full selves, even knowing that, yes, it's true, in the end, people leave, people die. But I'm curious, how did you discover that this was something that women in your family had been experiencing and believing for generations?

How do you go back and realize that? 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: It was through therapy. I don't know, my relationship with my mother, my relationship with my father, just a family dynamic. And we just kind of looked at things the way that things were. And this sort of disconnection this lack of really kind of attachment probably that probably happened when I was born and this kind of keeping yourself a little bit separate so she looked at my [00:24:00] relationships and she asked a lot of questions about my ability to be vulnerable.

So really it's a fear of emotional intimacy and she was able to pinpoint that in my relationships in my family and how my parents relationship was and then how my relationship is with my husband. She just exposed this whole thing of holy cow, like I've never actually been able to connect on a deep, deep, like wholehearted level because of this fear.

Now, like I said, my husband's, I didn't say, but he's 12 years older than me. And he's chronically ill, right, from being in 9 11. And my brain went into this self protective mode, unconsciously. He's next, he's gonna die, so we're just gonna push him away right now, I'm gonna grieve it all. You know, I'm like, I joke, I'm like the queen of efficiency, even when it comes to grief.

I'm like, you know, let's just get this all done now. So, yeah, she just asked the right questions and she got me to really see that I was contributing and that my husband and I were [00:25:00] brought together because of our anxiety. Our anxiety played off of each other when we met and neither of us were really comfortable in that emotionally intimate place and neither of us were going to push each other to go into it.

And we were safe. And now, all this time later, my brother passes. I need that. I need that like I need air. And he tries to offer it to me. He does. I mean, I say this in my book too. I remember laying in bed and he came over and sat down next to me and tried to talk to me and I like physically moved away.

Like, I was that uncomfortable. Because I had already decided that I couldn't get there with him, and it just felt like not right. So it wasn't just him and his PTSD, it was how we worked together. And then we did something called Imago Relationship Therapy, which we did on our own. So this is 2018 2019 when therapy COVID hit.

We stopped going into the office. We're home. We didn't want to do zoom. So Jim had told us, my husband, he had told me about this guy, Harville Hendrix, that he saw give a [00:26:00] talk when he worked at the counseling unit at the fire department. And he talked about a mogul theory and he would tell me about it here and there, like throughout a relationship.

And I'm like, Oh, that's interesting. It's kind of like the idea of you marry your father or you marry your mother, that they have similar traits. So we asked Tracy, my therapist, about it before we sign off with her for a while. And she goes, yeah, well, I've been using some of those techniques with you, but I'm not calling it that.

So we get the workbook and cause she goes, I think you should do this on your own. So we get the workbook and during COVID for that year, maybe it wasn't the whole year, but we would meet once a week and we did this workbook and we identified why we were drawn together. And I'm like a bearer of bad news when it comes to falling in love.

It's not really like Real true falling in love. It's a feeling of euphoria when you meet somebody reminds you of childhood before your parents showed you their humanness is what it comes down to when you had all your needs met and then all of a sudden, even just growing up, right? Like mommy can't [00:27:00] be there with you 24 7 or you have to learn to do this on your own, right?

It's deep. It goes into like emotional abandonment. It's a lot, but we're drawn into partnership because we're not attracted to the things that we need. Yeah. Think the good parts necessarily. So they were to both parts that serve, but more parts that don't serve. It's more about it's better just to put an example, say for me, I didn't grow up in a very warm home, right?

So I didn't know about that emotional intimacy. So if my husband, Jim says to me, I need you to be more emotionally intimate, just like Not even physically, just like be there with me, or even physically, even hold a hand, you know, I was uncomfortable with that, probably from the sexual trauma and stuff like that.

And he says, can you work on that? And I said, well, I don't know how to do that. And he says, well, for the sake of the relationship, can you try? And I say, okay, for the sake of the relationship and my family and my children, I'll try. The beauty of it is that I'm not just healing that part for him, I'm healing that hole in my own soul that I'm looking for somebody else to fill.

That only I can film myself. So we become whole [00:28:00] through partnerships, specifically ones that we think are not good for us. We stay. 

Jessica Fein: Okay, this is, I am telling you what I am doing right now and what I am sure all of our listeners are doing is like thinking about whoever they're partnered with and trying to figure out like, wait, is that my mother, my father, trying to put these pieces together and see if that rings true for us personally.

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: Yeah. And don't get me wrong. I mean, I'm not all about saving marriages. I think some marriages should not be saved. But what I always say is like, if you are struggling in a relationship, it's worth it to kind of dig and look at this stuff because you're just going to be healing yourself. 

Jessica Fein: Right. It's not going to help you when you get to the next relationship anyway.

So tell us what happens with you and your husband. You're at home with the workbooks. 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: Yeah. So we're doing the work and we just kind of both become very willing to work on ourselves. That's what it comes down to. And I have to thank our sobriety for that because both of us were willing to look to look underneath.

Okay. What is this? What's the fear? What am I afraid of is really what it comes down to. And the fear is [00:29:00] what we call emotional abandonment, which is the undercurrent of why we don't completely give ourselves over why we always hold ourselves back. Just a touch. Because if we do give all of ourselves and that person does leave or can't fill that void, it goes back to childhood.

It feels like a physical death when your parents abandoned you emotionally. And that sounds like harsh emotional abandonment. It sounds like they just like left you on a corner or they just left you in a room by yourself for hours and hours and hours. Maybe some parents did. But it happens naturally as well, just from the nature of growing up, right?

Having to learn to soothe yourself as a baby in your crib, crying, crying, crying, where's mommy, where's mommy? We think babies sometimes, I think we think they just don't have all this wherewithal, like they're feeling everything, they just don't know how to express it. 

Jessica Fein: Right, but we're supposed to give them the opportunity to learn to soothe themselves.

I mean, I remember sitting outside my eldest's room and listening to the sobs and the tears and being like, don't go in, [00:30:00] don't go in, they need to learn to soothe themselves. 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: This is all the way it's supposed to be. None of this is bad news. Okay. This is all why we're here and drawn into partnership. We all have these soul lessons, these life lessons that I believe we agreed to accomplish, achieve, whatever, heal.

I believe in reincarnation when we come back. Nobody goes unscathed through life. We all have to experience some sort of maybe trauma on all different spectrums or levels of being a child. It's just hard. Growing up is really, really hard. So, it's all purposeful. It's all supposed to be this way. So we're supposed to have these experiences of childhood to then heal later in life.

I call it, we go through life, we go through life, painful things happen and we hit a crescendo of lament. Really, it's probably like a midlife crisis. 

Jessica Fein: But Crescendo of Lament is so much better than Midlife Crisis. So, do you make it? Do you and your husband make it? 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: Yeah. We make it through because we both were willing to [00:31:00] do the work and there's always more to do.

I'm not like healed and everything is great. We still have our issues, right? Every marriage, I think living with another adult is always going to bring its problems no matter if you're married or roommates or whatever. It's just, it's life. It's not perfect, but we know how to communicate and we're a lot more comfortable with each other.

My validation was very wrapped up in his approval of me because I needed that approval from my parents that I felt like I never got. Now I give myself the approval and the validation. I'm not seeking it from him, so I'm less worried about what he thinks all the time. It's just the way it's supposed to be.

Life was never promised to be easy. 

Jessica Fein: It was never promised to be easy. That's true. And you and I have both learned that the hard way. You know, it's interesting because when we think about this and so much of it is the family dynamic and what happened when we were younger, what's interesting to me is to think that even with siblings who have the same two parents and grow up in the same house, It can be so different [00:32:00] based on where your parents were emotionally at the time when you were at those key ages.

And what I mean by that is my eldest sister was eight years older than me. And so when my parents got divorced, I was five and she was 13. Now if we backtrack that, we realize that the bad years between them that preceded the divorce were when I was three and I had my older sisters and she's an adolescent.

And so her issues in relationships. That came about for the rest of her life were very clearly based on a lot of what had happened during that time and I, as the sister, it had a much softer impact on me. 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: Yeah, we always wonder, oh, two kids grew up in the same, you're 100 percent right. It has to do with the stages of development when those things happen.

Jessica Fein: Exactly. Exactly. Now, one of the things that you talk about is that each of your profound losses led to a spiritual awakening. Yes. And, first of all, I mean, spiritual awakening, it gets back to the meditation. It [00:33:00] sounds so great, but tell us, I mean. What does it look like to have this spiritual awakening?

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: It's just like an overwhelming, we use the word also in the program, God consciousness. It's a shift, we call it a psychic change also. It's a shift in thinking that is so profound that it just kind of blindsides you. And they're not always pretty. Spiritual awakenings are usually not pretty when you're going through them, but then you get to the other side and it always results for me in self love and self worth and a feeling of, I belong.

But my first one probably was when I got sober was just the knowing that I was going to die if I didn't stop drinking or I was going to kill somebody else driving around in a blackout. And I'm not proud of that. I do that very often. So that first one was just like laying in bed after this. 28 hour bender and I just have this knowing this feeling this awareness [00:34:00] that it's now now it's over.

The jig is up. Like you need to go get help or you're going to die. And then the next one after Mike dying, it was, I have to help people because I was in the process of the 12 steps after that you sponsor people. And it was, I need to be of service, I need to give back. And that was a spiritual awakening in terms of like, it's not all about me.

It's not all about me. I was awakened to this idea of your happiness, your peace, and your purpose is going to come from helping others. It's like a shift. It's like a whole shift in mindset. And then moving here, it was the beginning of the self worth of, okay, there's something inside of me and I just need to keep nurturing this thing and it has to come from within.

And then, after Jeremy dies and the spirits awaken me with my marriages, I'm gonna be okay no matter what. I have my own back. I don't need anybody else to fill any pieces of me to make me feel safe. In whatever life events are going to occur. And when I say I'm going to be okay, that doesn't mean I'm going to [00:35:00] be skipping through a meadow, but I'll hit the floor, but I'll get back up and I'll call the right people and I'll find the right resources.

And I will always make it through. And I will do that, not just on my own steam, but with the help of my higher power, that was the awakening that came. So it just looks like a complete, like 180 shift of perception or perspective. Like I used to look at things this way and now boom, I completely look at them another way.

Even like with my relationship with my mother, I used to look at it as very painful. I used to look at it as I deserved more or I deserved better or resentment. Now, I'm like, thank you, mom. You gave me the exact lessons that I needed. And you gave me so many great things. We always look at our parents or ancestors as like, all this trauma, all this bad stuff.

My mother gave me a very good work ethic. She taught me what loyalty means, what discipline means, what determination. And she taught me how to [00:36:00] get back up. My mother has been to the ringer and I tell her all the time, um, you gave me the gift of survival. Do you need to go through a big, huge loss to get that spiritual awakening?

I'm sure it comes with a lot of delivered in other ways, but for me personally and the people that I know and the people, maybe it's just the circles that I run in, I don't know. But it seems to be as a result of loss of some kind of pain. I feel like spiritual giants through the ages. You know, Rumi, like all these people, Ram Dass, all these beautiful spiritual people through the years, even God, Jesus, Buddha, life is suffering, right?

Like we talk a lot about that, and we don't have to be in it. There's a time, there's a time for pain, and there's a time for joy. There's a time to experience the lesson, and then there's a time to just be and to just live. Listen, life is gonna deliver. What needs to deliver without us trying to manufacture more pain and more loss.

Jessica Fein: That is true. That is true. You say that the spiritual awakenings radically transformed lies you didn't [00:37:00] even know you believed. 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: Yes, exactly. So all of this was happening unconsciously. This whole, I call it the great myth. That's the lie. The lie is everybody leaves, everybody hurts you, everybody dies. So protect your heart.

Love a little less. That's how I kind of sum up the great myth. I had no idea that that was an unconscious operating system within me. I remember telling my friend that I wanted a divorce. I had actually met somebody and I had this like crazy connection with this person and I told my husband, I don't think I love you.

All this kind of stuff. And when I told my friend that she, my best friend from seventh grade, she said, Amanda, you've never been as into your boyfriends as they've been into you. And I had to like, really, really look at that and be like, holy cow. Like she's right. I always pushed them away or made things hard, created fights.

Like I just always kind of got in the way of a pure romantic, healthy relationship that were never healthy. And I never allowed it to happen. So that was [00:38:00] because when I looked at that and I'm in therapy and telling my therapist about that was another way she helped me to see I was always keeping this distance, this distance because I was afraid of loss.

So really telling my husband, I don't love you was really, I'm afraid you're going to die. That's really what was the undercurrent of all of that. 

Jessica Fein: You talk about maintaining consistent high frequency energy. That's pretty central to your philosophy. Well, first of all, that sounds exhausting. 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: Oh, it's not.

It's not. Because if it's true and it's really coming, flowing through you and you're really connected, it's effortless because you're not doing anything. You're just opening up and letting it flow through you. 

Jessica Fein: So, how do you get the high frequency energy? Is that through the meditating and having the spiritual awakenings?

Because I would like consistent high frequency energy. 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: It's not consistent. It's definitely not consistent. I mean, I was just sitting in my car in front of the dollar store two hours ago, bawling my eyes out. Okay, good. 

Jessica Fein: That makes me feel better.[00:39:00] 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: The goal or the desire is to make it consistent, but it's definitely not consistent all the time. It's a putting the effort in, I guess, and you'd say it sounds exhausting. It's just, you just kind of hop in and just be like, all right, I'm open to whatever is going to happen today. Getting out of my own way.

Getting out of our own way. 

Jessica Fein: Yeah. 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: Taking that whole like expectations and pressure and everything and just allowing life and the universe to deliver whatever it's going to deliver. That's opening up. That's getting into the high frequency. Join us. 

Jessica Fein: Yeah. Surrender. Surrender. 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: Exactly. 

Jessica Fein: You wrote that the deepest growth happens after going through the dark and emerging into the light, and after that, very little can shake us.

We're free to exist in the world untethered to the fear of potential loss. Mm hmm. Now, that is very interesting to [00:40:00] me, because I think sometimes the opposite is true. I think sometimes once we experience loss. And no, it can happen as you experienced with the sudden not waking up on Easter. Then we might have the opposite, which is it could happen at any time.

So how do you say, okay, I've been through the darkest and I know I've gotten through. How does that give you strength rather than perpetual fear? Oh my God. What if it happens again? Like, why don't you then put the armor on even more so? 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: Well, it's about learning how to live with uncertainty. It's just a matter of, again, knowing that you're going to show up for yourself in good times and bad, that things are going to happen.

It's not like living with these rose colored glasses, like, okay, yeah. It's really using past experiences of getting through things, right, of overcoming obstacles as a frame of reference. To say, you know what? I got through that thing and that's the [00:41:00] gift that we've been given probably going to hopefully be the worst thing that's ever going to happen to me.

Then I can get through whatever else is going to come up. So it's like thinking back and remembering, how did I get through that? So when the next thing happens, you think back and you say, how did I get through that? You just call upon the stuff that you did and you just do it again. So that's why I think it's a gift.

Jessica Fein: It's so interesting. It reminds me of a conversation I had with a past guest and a friend, Jessica Waite, who wrote The Widow's Guide to Dead Bastards. And she talks about her husband. Dies suddenly in an airport when he's on a business trip, and she's got to go pick up her young son at the bus stop and tell him what's happened.

And she says she knew right in that moment she would never be afraid of anything again because she's already done the worst and hardest thing she will ever have to do. 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: There's a song I love, it's by Lord Huron, and it's called Moonbeam. And there's a line in there that says, [00:42:00] “Now the darkness don't scare me much.”

That's exactly it. Now the darkness don't scare me much. Because I've already been there. Once you've been there, that's where fear comes in. It's the fear of the unknown. Right. Once you've been there. Yeah, it's unknown. Uncertainty, life is going to happen. It's unpredictable. Yeah, that's always going to be a thing.

But once you've experienced it, and you've proven to yourself, That you survived, and you, and me, and many other women, and men, we're thriving. We're not just surviving. We're taking this pain and doing something with it. Once we assign meaning and purpose, right, to the pain, then whatever pain is gonna come, yeah, it's gonna suck.

It's gonna be rough. Really rough. But I know what's going to be at the end of it. If I can continue to use it as a stepping stone to further growth, emotional growth, spiritual growth, that there's beauty in the pain, there's beauty in the grief and beauty in the darkness. 

Jessica Fein: So tell us about the book. Tell us about, first of all, the [00:43:00] name of your book, which is one of the things we've been talking about, is this being all in and not holding back.

And so tell us about that. 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: It's called Trust Yourself to Be All In, Safe to Love and Let Go. When I say let go, it's not like Completely letting go. It's safe to let go in a way that the grief is not, and the loss is not controlling your behavior, your life, your mood, right? Like I put those people, those things, those experiences, all the loss in here.

And I take it with me. So it's about being all in with yourself first. It's not about when you say be all in, we always think, I feel like I always think it goes to a relationship. And you would think so after what we just talked about with my marriage, that comes secondary. Primarily, I first have to be all in with myself, which is all in with my emotional security.

It's really what it comes down to. Feeling emotionally secure that I know myself and I like myself and I love myself enough to do the things that I need to do to get me through the hard [00:44:00] times. You know, after I lay in bed for a month or two or whatever it is that I know I trust myself to show up for myself because I care enough about myself.

And then that naturally bleeds out to relationships. So it's about connection. The whole book really, The Undercurrent, is about connection, and it was spurred, came upon me as I was running one day. It was a divinely inspired thing. It wasn't like, oh, I'm gonna write a book about this. It was like, how can I help the world?

Cause it was the beginning of 2021, right? The crazy 2020 COVID presidential election disconnection, fierce disconnection, crazy disconnection. Right. And I was like, I feel like I have to do something. I feel like I have a calling to help this. So the premise of the book, the introduction is that this work is not just about you and healing your pain, which is great, but it's about helping to heal the collective because I believe that the unhealed energy in here, the chaos in here is creating the chaos out there.

It's not anything I made up. I mean, this is like spiritual stuff we've been talking about forever, right? Law of attraction. If I'm [00:45:00] putting positive out, I'm going to get positive. It's the same thing. If I'm putting negative out, I'm going to get negative. If I'm feeling negative in here, I'm going to get negative out there.

The world is just a reflection of what's going on in each of our hearts. And our generation, especially, we were, We're aware we have a lot of pain. We're carrying a lot that we're not willing to sit with anymore. So I think that we're sort of charged to be the change makers, the chain breakers really to do the work internally.

So if we want anything to change out there, it has to happen in here first. So the book is really a way to use your pain, use your fear, use your relationships, your resentments, all the stuff that has come up for you, all the pain in your life as a pathway. To that emotional freedom and I say and soul evolution.

Jessica Fein: So tell us then people are going to want to be reading the book and getting more of you after having heard this, but they also can be tuning in because another way that you're serving is through your podcast. 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: Yeah. So my podcast is [00:46:00] called “Sol Rising,” S O L Rising. And it started, it's all about how human emotion serves to connect or disconnect us from ourselves and each other and the universe.

And it started with me and my good friend, Ginny. And the whole first season is just she and I having these amazing conversations. And then unfortunately she had to go back to work. Now it's me interviewing guests. Season two, there's still some of us and some guests and then now it's just all guests. And it's not just about grief.

I do have a lot. Yeah. of grief experts. Like, you should go check out the show with me and Jessica. I just put it out last week. How to show up in meaningful ways in grief. And it's great because it's broad. Emotions are broad. So I could talk about so many different things with so many different people, but it has to relate to personal growth, healing through feeling emotions.

Jessica Fein: I am going to take you up on your offer to reach out to you as I begin my spiritual awakening, starting with my candle and my meditation, because I liked that one better than having to like go run and do it that way. [00:47:00] 

Amanda McKoy Flanagan: Right? Yeah. It's a beautiful experience. so much. You’ll love it. Thank you so much for having me.

Here are my takeaways from the conversation with Amanda. Number one, when experiencing loss or major life changes. Recognize that even positive changes involve loss. Loss of familiarity, loss of routine, loss of certainty. Give yourself grace as you navigate these transitions, and acknowledge all the layers of what you're losing.

Number two, you don't have to meditate perfectly to benefit from it. Find your own way in. Start with whatever puts you in a flow state, whether that's running, walking, writing, or sitting quietly. The goal isn't an empty mind, but an open one. Number three. Consider how your family's approach to grief and loss has shaped your own.

The messages you received about how to handle emotions and loss often go back generations. Understanding these patterns is the first step to changing them. Number four. When working on relationships, it helps to focus first on being all in with yourself rather than another person. And number five. Trust that [00:48:00] painful experiences can lead to spiritual awakening and growth, even if it doesn't feel that way in the moment.

The darkness becomes less frightening once you've walked through it and emerge stronger on the other side. Thank you so much for listening today. If this episode resonated with you, take a second to rate and review it, subscribe to the show. All of these things are the best ways to help us grow. It's also a great time, if you haven't read my memoir yet, to check it out.

Breath Taking: A Memoir of Family, Dreams, and Broken Genes, available wherever you love to get books, in whatever format you prefer, audio, print, or ebook. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great day. Talk to you next time.