She became nobody when her children died then butterflies taught her who to be

What happens when losing your children means losing yourself completely? After four devastating deaths, Vickie Menendez faced something even more terrifying than grief - she became nobody.

"When my kids passed away, it's like that identity was dissolving," she admits. "Even though I still had my son with my second husband, it's like when you lose those things, like you lose your home, you lose your job, you lose a relationship, you lose your children. Then you start asking these questions, who am I?"

The woman who had been defined as "mother" for decades suddenly had no children to mother. The identity that had anchored her entire existence was gone. She wasn't just grieving her babies - she was grieving herself.

But in her darkest moment of complete dissolution, Vickie created something that would save her: the butterfly field visualization. Instead of remembering her daughter dying in a hospital bed, she imagined their last moments together in a field of wildflowers where her daughter turns into thousands of butterflies, saying "bye for now."

"Every time I think of her, we go to that field together," Vickie explains. Those butterflies didn't just help her remember her daughter - they taught her how to become someone new.

Discover how a woman who became nobody when everything fell apart used butterflies to rebuild her identity from absolute nothing - and why your complete dissolution might be exactly what you need to discover who you're truly meant to be.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Rise from the Ashes
• 1:27 Connecting with Different Types of Loss
• 4:56 Building a Regulated Nervous System
• 8:36 Finding Essence Beyond Identity
• 12:40 The Crystal's Butterfly Effect Book
• 16:24 Creating Healing Visualizations
• 19:06 Where to Find the Book

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to part two of Rise from the Ashes. I'm joined once again with Vicky Menendez, who has just shared one of the most powerful, profound journeys I've ever heard. But what she's done with it is more inspiring. We've gone from losing her son, her daughter, her husband, through pain, through tribulation, and really inspiring other people. This is what life is about. It's about moving on and inspiring other people, rising from the ashes into a new level of awareness, and Vicky has done just that. Vicky, thank you very much for sharing your incredible journey with me and the listeners here. You shared earlier that the awareness heightened and it brought around a new vibration for yourself. What I find even more profound is what you've done with that vibration and how you're impacting not just the localized, but people internationally. Can you explain a bit about who your client is, who you're looking for, who people find you and what that process is when you help them?

Speaker 2: 1:27

I think that, of course, mothers I feel very connected to mothers because I am a mother, I know what it feels like to have that loss and my avatar is a little bit different because I can connect with so many different types of loss. Now I've had the stillborn, I've lost children to addiction, I've been in the hospital with someone for days on end only to lose them, and then the shock of losing someone and never even being able to identify them, never seeing them again. And I think that could connect with people during the COVID era where you were losing people and they really don't know how to process that. They don't know how to. I think sometimes they don't feel like they should be happy again and I feel like that I want to show them by them connecting with that joy and that love and happiness within themselves. It raises their vibration so that they can connect with us.

Speaker 2: 2:54

And there's so many different ways that they do that. Just by a butterfly coming and landing on your lap to the other day, a rainbow shot into the water. I have the bay right in front of me and I'm standing on the balcony and a rainbow just shoots right into the water and it's rare that you see the end of a rainbow, and I've done that twice since my kids passed. I've seen the end of a rainbow and I know that it's them just coming and tugging at my heart. So I really feel like I can connect just with mothers who have lost children either, even if it's just one child or multiple children.

Speaker 1: 3:46

There's a whole different dynamic there that's so profound the signs you're getting, understanding and communication, but also the self-awareness. And so the self-awareness bit is the most, probably the most profound part of this, because it's the part that most just want to push down and not feel or see, because it's a protection mode of if I, if it's, if I know it, it becomes real or reality. But reality is what you make of it. Reality is creation of an energetic vibration that we all hold. Some people call God frequency, some people call it universe. Whatever it's the same vibration, just dressed up in different ways. The profound effects you have on people and their journeys aren't just for short term, they're for a much longer process. Can you, if you will, explain the process that you have to help go deeper into these layers and extract the energy they have and the potential within them?

Speaker 2: 4:56

I know that when I went through I leaned on all of those years that I've had in self-care and wellness and then with the new tools of processing that emotion, and I realized, especially just in the past, in the last year, that sustainable growth is having a regulated nervous system. When you're in a state of fight or flight and some people have been in that state their entire lives that's not something you just shut off. It takes time, for you don't go to the gym once you know and work out and say, okay, I'm done for life. It takes work and you have to build that muscle and in this it takes time for your system and for your nervous system to really be able to stay in a state of calm or for you to be able to get yourself there and know how to do that. And then, once you learn how to do that, then the work that you do really is more sustainable and it's not like you're always going to stay in that state of calm, but when something does trigger you, you know what to do to get back to where you need to be. And then, as you build that muscle, it's like things bother you less and you look at things totally different, because you used to look at something as a trigger, as something that someone's doing to you, and then it's revealed that everything, of course, is happening for you and through you. And what can I learn from this so that I can move on to the next level? And each level that you go to just creates this lightness, this airiness to just how you move through life. It's just more graceful than being in the muck, being in the mud. It's like trying to move your feet through mud Now it's like you're walking through water and it's a lot easier to move through that than to move through quicksand or mud.

Speaker 2: 7:06

So it's a process and people have to know that wherever they are in that moment is exactly where they're supposed to be. We just have to learn how to embrace it and how to meet it and be okay with being in it For a little while, but knowing that you're going to get up and you're going to have those wings To just fly around. But you're going to go In between those stages and it's something that you can learn To dance with and be okay with. Wherever you are in that moment and know that you're not failing, you're not taking two steps back. Some people say I take one step forward and two steps back. That's something we need to change that mindset. That's not what it is at all. It's just the process, and can you be okay with that and know that you're exactly where you need to be in that moment?

Speaker 1: 8:04

I think that's great advice Before I know you've just released a book. I want to need to be in that moment. I think that's great advice Before I know you've just released a book. I want to speak about that in a moment. Who are you now? That you could not have been a few years ago Because this is a very intentional question in the way it's phrased because you've got two identities at least on this journey, and you alluded to it earlier about leveling up through this process who are you now?

Speaker 2: 8:36

There is no way you could have been that person before this journey started now I don't have identities toward being a mother or being a wife, or being all of these things that society and family and everything hands to us throughout our lifetime. All of those things, especially when my kids passed away, it's like that identity was dissolving, you know, even though I still had my son with my second husband. It's like when you lose those things like you lose your home, you lose your job, you lose a relationship, you lose your children then you start asking these questions who am I? And can we connect with our essence? We're compassionate, we're loving, we're caring and really focus on that, because that's what people feel from you, not that you're a mother or that you're a CEO or that you're this person or that person, and I just feel like that I've really connected more with who I came into this life, as Just the pure essence of who I'm supposed to be and who God made me to be.

Speaker 2: 9:58

We're all made in His image and so we're all amazing, we're all magnificent, we're all brilliant. And can we bring that out? Can we see that we are enough, that we are everything? Because we tend to compare ourselves to other people and they're more successful than why can't I do that? And then that self-talk that internal dialogue just brings. You're sending out that frequency and you're broadcasting at every moment. So what are you saying? What are you saying to yourself? What are you saying out loud? What are? Are you thinking that all is like a mirror so you get that back from the universe? They send back to you everything that you're putting out there. Changing that inner dialogue is probably one of the biggest changes that I think people can make yeah, 100, and to that point.

Speaker 1: 10:53

That doesn't happen overnight. It takes years sometimes to not even accomplish but to even make a dent in the society's impact, corporate impact, labeling, etc. Etc. It's conditioning.

Speaker 2: 11:10

We've been conditioned our entire life and to think that you can do that in a few months, or even a few years, it's like it's because it's a process.

Speaker 1: 11:19

Yeah, and it's a lifelong process. I talk about this when I'm helping people, but it's all about understanding the language from you said earlier, mindset, that's a limitation straight away. A set is a limitation, it's a box. So I embody the mind state, which is the awareness of becoming the soul and a very granular essence of who you already are, and remembering that process. There's personal development, bs that goes out, and I know you've got to spoke about mindsets and a metric that is wrong and been overused for so many times and diluted. So it's about time we like what you're saying about changing the language, changing the formats, changing what we're doing at a internal level. So so thank you for sharing that, your book. I want to hear about your book. It's behind you. I can't see it because it's blurred, so can we put it in front of you? Thank you, there we go. That's it. Put it in front of your body, that's it. Yeah, let's see it now. So the book what's it about? Where people can find it and awesome.

Speaker 2: 12:40

I love that mandela's that I colored. So, yeah, brings the book to life. This book came to me when I was in the hospital with my daughter and I had opened a zoom call for her friends to call in and talk to her, and I called it the Crystal's Butterfly Effect so that's where the name of the book came from was from that Zoom call that I set up and her friends would come, they would jump on. I would have it open for a couple hours every morning and people would just dial in. They would have the link and they would dial in and they would just talk to her. Just dial in, they would have the link and they would dial in and they would just talk to her. They would. This always gets me because they would always talk about things that they did together, this experience that they had when they were teenagers, or the time that she stayed on the phone with them for hours because they needed her.

Speaker 2: 13:35

And I met my daughter all over again. As they get older, you're not as in their life, like you don't know every facet of their life and what's going on in their life, and by hearing them talk to her, it was like opening a whole new portal to her, to her, and I knew that I had to write about this. I had to share with the world what I experienced in that 48 days. It was like inside of me and it needed to come out, because that was part of my healing, that was part of me being able to work with these emotions and these events that happened. And in the book you'll see a section where I visualized our last moments, my daughter and I, and the last day. I knew that. I just had a feeling that that was the day. I had been thinking for a couple of weeks about this experience that I was going to create for us.

Speaker 2: 14:41

And instead of thinking of her now in her hospital bed, we're in the middle of a big field with wildflowers and the sun shining and the birds are chirping and the insects are making their sounds, and it's all like a serenade. And we're walking through this field together and she looks at me, she stands, turns to me and says bye for now, and she turns into thousands of butterflies and they're flying all over the field and they're landing on flowers, and those are the people that she's going to look over in the spirit realm. Those are the people that she's going to protect and be there for, and it was just so helpful to me because I didn't realize how helpful it was until years late, until in the last few years. Every time I think of her. We go to that field together, and so that's one thing that I have in the book. That I really suggest that people do is to take their self out of those last moments, and I have one for my sons as well. But that is I don't know.

Speaker 2: 15:54

It's one of the most beautiful things that I did while I was in the hospital was to create that movie, that internal movie, and then every year I go and add an element. This year I added her dog, sokka. She loved animals and her dog is running through the field with us now, and next year it'll be something else that I add. So the Sokka keeps expanding, it keeps growing, but what it does is it sends my mind to something that's good, to something that's happy about her life, not going into the depths of sorrow that she's gone. I'm adding an element to it that I know would make her smile or that would make me smile. And then, with the mandalas in the book, my son was an artist and I put those mandalas in there, not only as a healing art form but to honor him. And then the letters in the back of the book. Writing a letter to your children can be one of the most powerful things that you do, and then writing a letter that they're writing back to you.

Speaker 1: 17:10

I love that. So where can people find the book? Obviously it's on Amazon, it's on your website. Can you just say where they can get it and how they can get in contact with you if they want to have a conversation?

Speaker 2: 17:22

Sure, if you go to vickimanendezcom and there's a tab and it's actually on the main page as well, but there's an Audible version and the Audible version has a 111-page living journal that you get for free when you buy the Audible version and you can just. It's a flip book and as you listen, you can flip through, look at the pictures, look at all of the profound quotes that I have in there. All of the heart of the book is in there and there's pictures in there that you won't find in the physical book. And when you buy the book directly from me too, you get a signed copy and there's a few little extras that I put in there. That's really nice.

Speaker 2: 18:07

There's a heart stone that I put in there so that you can put that in your change purse. You can put it in your pocket Every time you feel it or touch it. It's a reminder to be grateful, to just show that gratitude for being alive, for having all of the money that you need to come to you. It's like showing more gratitude just means that you have more to be grateful for. And that has white sage. It has pencils in there to color the mandalas. It's just really it's a gift. When you open it up, it's like opening a Christmas present.

Speaker 1: 18:44

I love that. Thank you very much for sharing that story and to the listeners please share this message. Please put it in the right areas. This is about you understanding a deeper level of who you are, where you're going and inspiring not just this generation but future generations. Thank you for being a part of my world. Vicky, you're awesome. Thank you very much for sharing this story and being who you are. I truly appreciate you and your time. My listeners. Thank you, share the message. You have an amazing blessed day and make sure you always have an amazing day on purpose. Speak soon.