Four DEAD children later, she discovered why she was still alive

What happens when the universe takes everything from you, not once, but four times? Vickie Menendez thought losing her first child - a full-term stillborn at 20 - was the worst pain imaginable. She was wrong.

In 2017, she found her son dead from a drug overdose. Decomposed. Alone. A sight you don't unsee.

A year later, she lost her father the exact moment her husband was having heart attacks.

But the universe wasn't finished with her yet.

Then came the ultimate test: losing two children just 12 days apart. After 48 days in the hospital watching her daughter die, Vickie came home to mourn - only to get a call from police trying to identify her 37-year-old son who had drowned after a seizure.

"That was when it shattered me, but that was when I was like, there's something more to this. No one goes through something like that without there being a much bigger mission behind it."

Four dead children later, Vickie discovered why she was still alive. Not just to survive unimaginable loss, but to transform it into spiritual awakening and teach others that even the deepest devastation has divine purpose.

Discover how a woman who should have been destroyed by grief became a beacon of hope - and why your darkest moments might be preparing you for your greatest calling.

Chapters

• 0:00 Meeting Vicky Mendes
• 1:38 Early Trauma and Loss
• 4:21 Losing Children and Finding Purpose
• 7:13 Beauty in Death and Soul Contracts
• 14:34 Message to Those Suffering
• 21:09 Closing and Preview of Part Two

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of Rise from the Ashes podcast. How are you? And welcome back. I'm Baz Porter and I'm joined by an amazing guest today named Vicky Mendes. She lives in the East Coast and her story just captivated me Incredible, heroic and compassionate. So, vicky, without further ado, please say hello to the world, say hello to the listeners, who you are and a bit about what you do.

Speaker 2: 0:33

My name is Vicki Menendez. I take on the role as a sole midwife. I'm not a coach, I'm not into the transformation or anything like that. That is something that takes time to unravel and to unfold. I have found through all of the trials and the traumas that I've gone through in my life from starting off with being in a dysfunctional home as a kid and feeling unsafe a dysfunctional home as a kid and feeling unsafe, and my father actually taught us how to sing, how to harmonize, and I realized just in the past year or so that was his soul, giving us that protective bubble around what was going on in our home, in our space, in our home in our environment, and that carried me through all of my teenage years. I went through bullying as a child from the second grade all the way up to high school and I know a lot of women can really connect with that. I've talked to a lot of women that have had that experience.

Speaker 2: 1:43

Sexual trauma as a teenager. But my first true trauma was losing a full-term stillborn at 20. And at that time my awareness level was pretty limited but it did create this curiosity into the spirit realm and what it all meant. But I never really processed that trauma? I thought I did, but it just created this distance. I loved my kids. I went on to have three more children with my ex-husband, but I realized just recently that I had this distance. I love them, but there was that fear of loss always hanging out there. And so, fast forward to 2017, I discovered my son dead of a drug overdose in a decomposed state. So that is a sight that you don't unsee, and I was by myself when I found him and I just it's like you're standing outside yourself looking in, and it was a shock to my body. Anytime you go through a trauma like that, it's a total shock to your energetic field and to your body in the whole.

Speaker 2: 3:07

A year later, I lost my dad and, at the very moment my sister calls, my husband was in the middle of having a heart attack. So I lost him while my husband was having a heart attack was having a heart attack, and it took about two years for me to realize that I needed some help. I was looking at a picture of myself and, even though I had a smile plastered on my face, there was pain written all over me. You could see it, and so I hired a spiritual coach, I learned so many tools. I always leaned on 35 years of self-care and wellness. I grew up and was passionate about that, since I was a teenager and had spas and like. I knew all of that and self-care was a big part of me taking care of myself during this whole thing. But the one thing I didn't know was the emotions, processing those emotions and being able to embrace it all. And so, in learning that, it prepared me for the biggest loss, which was losing two children 12 days apart.

Speaker 2: 4:21

I was in the hospital with my daughter for 48 days before she passed, and that experience walking into that hospital room with the heightened awareness and consciousness that I had through my healing journey made all the difference in how I approached that whole situation and what I was able to see, what was really revealed to me during that whole time. And even though my daughter was in an induced coma, there was communication there and it was beautiful. And then I came home to mourn her I'm in the middle of the grocery store and get a call from the police station trying to identify my son who had a seizure in the neighboring pool and drowned, and he was 37. And that was when it shattered me, but that was when I was like there's something more to this. No one goes through something like that without there being a much bigger mission behind it. And that's when, over the last couple years, it's just been revealing itself, one layer at a time, and it's just being able to see it for what it is, and that the contracts that I had with God, with all of my children we agreed to this before I even stepped into this life experience that this was our experience, this is what we were going to do for each other.

Speaker 2: 5:57

They gave me a profound story that nobody can unhear yeah, story that nobody can unhear. I get the attention of the people that really need to hear it. And all of my kids went out in a way that, like my son going out the way he did both of them and my daughters that's how they would have gone out like in a blaze of thunder or with my daughter spending 48 days pulling all these people together and making these healing environments for me and her husband. We were never fans of each other. She put us in a room for five days, 24-7, and we got to know each other. That was her orchestrating that whole thing. And so when you really sit and look at it. I went over a timeline when I was in the hospital and it was like I realized that every trauma, every success that I had, all of those things were just a part of a beautiful mosaic that was just coming together and preparing me for what I was about to step into.

Speaker 1: 7:05

What you've just described is a beautiful journey. It has components to it that are extremely challenging. I have no comprehension over anything you're speaking into, but it's the message behind it that astounds me. It's your courage that strikes me, because it isn't just it's happening to me, vibe. It's happening now, in this present time. But how can I, what can I learn from it and how I, how can I embody this? And what's behind this? There's a message or there's a phrase that was taught to me a very long time ago and it was simply said the pain, the message, is in the pain, the pain is in the message. But you took that to a whole different level. Most people in your situation would have stayed in that frame and grieved for many years. I'm not taking away from that and you are and you still probably are. I don't know, but what you're doing with it is a goddamn miracle, because you've taken something and you've elevated it and you've put the message out there for other people to understand, embody and grow from, which is just nuts, in my view.

Speaker 2: 8:29

I feel like that it's happening through me and because there's some people when they're saying this happened to me, everything happens for us, but can you get from everything happening life is happening for us to life is happening through me? That's a whole different level and I'm just honored that for the longest time I was like me, I'm supposed to do this big thing, I'm supposed to, and I'm like, why not me? Why not Just your everyday person? Nobody knows me, I'm nobody famous, but I think people connect with everyday people and everyday experiences, and so I've really learned to really embrace what's being revealed to me and how I'm stepping into this, because I really feel like that I have a mission, that it's time for this to come forward and for people to know that there is another side to that grief and there's gifts wrapped up all in. But you have to sometimes go through the shadows into the light.

Speaker 1: 9:45

Without the shadow, you don't know what the light is and this is the whole, the whole components of the journey is stepping into that shadow work and understanding the concepts of humanity, energy, connection, spirit, realm, consciousness, super consciousness. There's so much layered upon it, but when you really open yourself up to that journey, it's truly profound and it sounds like you've experienced a lot of that within your journey. Can you share a pivotal moment after the incident? I'm gonna call them that because I don't want to detract from anything that you've just shared. Is there a pivotal moment after the incident that you remember going? I get it. I truly get this now.

Speaker 2: 10:39

A couple of times when I was in the hospital with my daughter, a good friend of mine said you need to talk to this person. She was like a spiritual guide and she was the first one that said I really believe what I'm feeling. She said and my intuition is telling me that in this lifetime you were supposed to see the beauty in death. To see the beauty in death, yeah, and I was like whoa. That really resonated with me on a deep level and I started looking at everything in a different way, like thinking about the contracts I had with my kids and the fact that they met their contract. But we're still walking this path together because everything that they had plans in their life and now I am their vessel. When Wesley died of the overdose, his art can speak to both parents of addicts and to the addicts themselves and that's his message. And I was writing an article and realized when I was reading it back to myself, he came through and was like Mom, this is our contract, you are supposed to be my vessel. Think about it If he's standing on stage saying I almost died, but I'm standing on stage saying my son did die. It's a totally different level where both either addicts or parents of addicts feel it at a totally different level. And then my daughter wanted to help people with addiction through plant medicine. I've experienced a lot of that over the last couple of years and it's been a heart-opener for me. And then my son wanted to stand on stage. He wanted to share his story of his addictions and him coming out as a gay man, and how hard that was. And so I'm standing on stage speaking his message as well, and so I just feel, like this dance with my children, that I didn't lose them. We're just communicating on a totally different level. That I didn't lose them. We're just communicating on a totally different level.

Speaker 2: 13:08

And another time in the hospital, when we were about to put her into comfort care, I went to get my clothes because I knew I would be in the hospital. I might be in the hospital for a while. They said a couple of days at the most. 19 days later she's still there. And so I was going back to my room to get my clothes and I felt this I'm like asking the universe where is my daughter right now? Where is she in her journey?

Speaker 2: 13:40

And all of a sudden I had this burst of energy coming through me. It was like it came through my back and out from my heart chakra and for just a moment I was sad. And then, all of a sudden, this laughter started coming through. I'm like I'm crying. How could I be laughing right now? And it was my daughter coming through. She was saying Mom, I'm more than okay, I am just pure essence, I'm just pure love. There's no judgment, there's no anger, there's none of those lower level vibrations. I'm all pure essence right now. And how could I feel bad about that? How would it feel to be there all the time? And then, after my son, I dropped to my knees in the grocery store when they told me what had happened.

Speaker 1: 14:43

Sorry, Vicki, you were in the grocery store when this happened.

Speaker 2: 14:46

I was in the grocery store when the police station called me and was trying to identify my son.

Speaker 1: 14:53

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2: 14:54

Because somebody said I think I know who this is. They find out how to get in touch with me and they were trying to identify him by the tattoos he had on his body and I knew, okay, something's really wrong here. So they finally divulged the information. I dropped to my knees and I'm like how could this be happening? It's 12 days. It's hard. What do you want from me? But the first thing that came to me was how am I supposed to serve? Was how am I supposed to serve? I knew there was a totally different level of a mission that I was supposed to step into here and, although I'm still warning, I still have my days when I miss them terribly. But it was.

Speaker 2: 15:46

All of these messages started coming through after that and I knew that there was something so much bigger than me happening and then I realized that I needed to have patience. I wanted it all to happen because I'll be 65 this year and I'm thinking, okay, I don't have time. I felt I'm older and I was really eager to get out there and help people with this, but it wasn't quite time and it's just slow down. Have patience, let this unfold. Let this all come to you, reveal to you, let this all come to you, reveal to you, and through the journeys that I went through the plant medicine and that kind of thing it just opened a whole new world to me. And so now and just recently I'm saying like in the last month is when everything came together and it's just been a beautiful ride.

Speaker 1: 16:49

I love that.

Speaker 2: 16:51

And it's just been a beautiful ride. I love that. And it's still unfolding. It's still we were talking earlier the 1,094 days. I get that.

Speaker 1: 17:00

You're a few days in.

Speaker 2: 17:01

I'm maybe 700 and something days in and it's still not. I think that's like a lifelong journey, right? It's not just something that you arrive at, you like in my what I've put together. You might earn your wings and feel like you can fly all over the place, but then sometimes you have to go back into the cocoon, you have to go back in and take care of that next layer. So you're in that dance between really feeling like you could take on the world and feeling like, okay, here's another layers coming up. But with that new layer you have more wisdom and you can get through that next layer and you're only given what your soul knows that you can handle at the time.

Speaker 1: 17:50

I'm going to pause part one just here, because that was profound what you just shared, and I want to honor that memory for your family and your legacy because it's what you're building. But on a happy note and a forward note, you've got something to share. You've got celebrations with a book and other things going on at the moment, haven't you? Before we go into part two, is there anything that you would love to share with the audience as a parting gift? Not the book, because that's coming next time. So if you're watching this going, I want the book come back to part two to find out where the book is and all the rest of it. What is the message you would love to share to the that person now listening to this going? Oh my god, that's me. I need that support. Who's that person? What was? What would the message be?

Speaker 2: 18:46

I think for me, the the message was it was me like when I had that call to go on that healing journey, I answered that call. I not answered that call. Then this last loss of losing those two children so close apart together I'm not sure I could have gotten through that at this, where I was at that moment. That opened up, and we never know. Things happen throughout our life. We never know what we're going to be faced with. And when you feel that tug, when you feel like, yes, that's me, then run with it, do the work, because it will give you a whole new lease on life.

Speaker 2: 19:33

I really feel like at this point that you could throw anything at me and it wouldn't phase me, because I look at everything as what is it here to teach me? And it's something that we need to listen to. Our body, our body holds all the pain, but it holds all the wisdom and the answers too, and so how do we unlock that? How do we get in there? And that's what I teach is how to regulate the nervous system, how to make sustainable changes that you can move on with your life with.

Speaker 2: 20:10

But the main thing is, if you really feel that heaviness and you know that you can't go on another day feeling like this, that it is possible to get the other side of it. You just have to commit to it and agree and just make that decision, that today is the day that you make these changes for yourself and for everybody around you. Because I know when I healed it caused a ripple effect. It affected everyone in my energetic field my family, my husband, my. I still have a son at home who was my God's gift. He got me through a lot of this.

Speaker 1: 20:54

Yeah, I love that. Thank you for sharing that For my listeners. Thank you very much for tuning in. Please share this message, utilize this platform and really understand and connect with Vicki on a deeper level. If you are resonating with this, go and follow her on LinkedIn. Go and share this message to somebody that's going to change someone's life. This is a podcast for you and a safe space for these conversations. Vicky, until part two and my audience. Thank you very much. This is Arise from the Ashes and I appreciate every single one of you for everything you do. I'll speak to you very much. This is a rise from the ashes and I appreciate every single one of you for everything you do. I'll speak to you very soon. Thanks very much. Have a blessed day. See you soon.