Coffee with Vanessa and Jennifer

In this episode, Jennifer and Vanessa deepen their conversation on healing from past hurts, exploring forgiveness, the importance of bodily awareness, and the journey from victimhood to creator. They share personal stories, insights from their season of solo episodes, and tease upcoming season themes on dignity.

Main Topics Covered

• The role of forgiveness and its alternatives in healing
• Recognizing and honoring emotions in the forgiveness process
• Bodily awareness as a tool for understanding readiness to forgive
• The significance of physical reactions like lying on the floor as part of emotional processing
• Shifting from victim to creator: acknowledging participation and reclaiming dignity
• The metaphor of calling back one’s dignity as a hawk
• The importance of positive emotions like hope and joy in healing
• Navigating the complex process of forgiveness across different ages and circumstances

Exploring what it means to live and lead with dignity at work, in our families, in our communities, and in the world. What is dignity? How can we honor the dignity of others? And how can we repair and reclaim our dignity after harm? Tune in to hear stories about violations of dignity and ways in which we heal, forgive, and make choices about how we show up in a chaotic and fractured world. Hosted by physician and coach Jennifer Griggs.

For more information on the podcast, please visit www.thedignitylab.com.
For more information on podcast host Dr. Jennifer Griggs, please visit https://jennifergriggs.com/.
For additional free resources, including the periodic table of dignity elements, please visit https://jennifergriggs.com/resources/.

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Transcript

This is The Dignity Lab, a podcast that seeks to define dignity, its violations, and its reclamation. No matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done, no matter what’s happened to you, you can reclaim your dignity.

Hosted by physician, narrative medicine practitioner, and leadership coach, Dr. Jennifer Griggs.

This season focuses on healing from past hurts through forgiveness and its alternatives.

Today’s episode is a dose of dignity, a solo, bite-sized episode that focuses on living and leading with dignity.

Jennifer

Vanessa, hi.

Vanessa

Hi, it's nice to be back in the speaking seat.

Jennifer  

I love having you here. You have your tea or coffee?

Vanessa  

I do, I've got my coffee. I know it's 419, but it's a good time for a second cup.

Jennifer  

I have my tea and we call this coffee with Jennifer and Vanessa, so I'm off-brand a little bit.

Vanessa

That's true. Go get yourself a cup of coffee.

Jennifer  

So thanks for meeting with me to talk about this season. It's always nice to hear your take on the content. And this was an unusual season because it was all solo episodes and it was all on one theme, which is healing from past hurts through forgiveness and its alternatives. And I thought it would be fun to debrief, if you will, or chat through it, because you've listened to these episodes, I think, at least once apiece.

Vanessa  

Yeah, I actually listened to them a second time through front to back in advance of this episode. And I don't know if our listeners know that you offer a forgiveness and its alternatives class, but I was fortunate enough to be able to take that a couple of years ago now, I think. It's funny how time flies. And I got a lot from that class. So re-listening to some of the concepts as you've done them throughout the course of the season has been a really nice way to remember how much, not only how much I got from that class, but to sit with some of these concepts again, because they're helpful to go back and revisit.

Jennifer  

I'm curious what stands out to you as you think about the material in these 10 episodes.

Vanessa  

Well, I do... There were many things and I'd love to go through a few of them, but I think one that occurs to me initially is when I was listening to your first episode a second time...Reasons not to forgive I think is the name of the episode five reasons not to forgive and I…when I was listening to that, it gave me permission to not be ready, to not be ready to forgive. I think that that's really, that permission is something that I sometimes need to be reminded that I can own, right? I can own that timeline and there will be days when I'm interacting with my past harms, there will be days when I'm ready to do the work and then there are days when I'm not ready, I'm not okay and I need a little bit of extra time or a little bit of extra grace with myself. And so I think that's the first thing that really stood out was just this permission and actually in your emotions and feelings episode as well, that one really hit me in that same way because emotions are like a bodily response to a harm and therefore not in my control in the same way that feelings and actions are. And so that felt really, it felt like a relief to know that if my dignity is harmed, it's okay to have a negative response. I'm the kind of person where I want all of my responses to be positive all the time. I'm constantly working towards being flawless in the realm of positive feelings and that's not reasonable and it's not human and it was really helpful to hear that.

Jennifer  

I love that, needing to be reminded that you are allowed to have all your feelings and to have the process unfold in the time it's going to take.

Vanessa 

Yeah. And I think where that's really obvious is like a grief process, right? With grief, it's obvious to me that you can't speed that process up too quickly. It's helpful to relate it to the world of forgiveness as well.

Jennifer  

And forgiveness is a lot about, forgiveness is grief.

Vanessa  

Yes, absolutely.

Jennifer Griggs  

We have a grievance against somebody it's the same root word as grief.

Vanessa  

Mm-hmm.

Jennifer  

How do you know then when you're ready?

Vanessa 

Bodily awareness, another thing that comes up a lot throughout your episodes and I really took to that. I study and teach yoga and so bodily awareness is a big one for me. And I have noticed and I again, I've been thinking a lot about some of the things that I learned when I took your forgiveness class and I recently had an interaction with a friend where my body responded in a hurt way. And I found myself literally laying on the floor on my back and just paying attention to the signals that my body was giving me because like hurt is an experience like in my chest or in my head or in my, like I can feel it in different parts of my body and just noticing that tension and understanding that when that feeling, that physical feeling is there, that I'm not ready has been incredible. Like it's just been an incredible practice. It's certainly, I mean, it's never flawless work in progress, but bodily awareness is a huge one for me.

Jennifer   

Can I ask you a couple of questions about that episode? So you were so hurt, what took you to the floor?

Vanessa  

So, I, when I, and I recognized it as a, like in order for my body to react in that hurt way, that it was likely, I was, it was a violation of dignity. And so my instinct to lash out, to move that forward was strong. And like I mentioned before, as a student of positive emotions, I'm also a student of positive interactions and relationships and…and so I've been practicing not pushing that forward if it's something that I catch in time. And so that frustrated and angry reaction and desire to lash out in order to still it, it helped me to literally lie prone and allow my body to relax and calm down to stop that angry lashing out.

Jennifer   

So you made a choice to lie down when you noticed you were hurt.

Vanessa  

Yes I did. Yes.

Jennifer  

Wow, a lot of other people would have made other choices.

Vanessa  

It would not have been the choice that I would have made five years ago. I think that, and that's what I love about the concept of naming, telling your story, like a lot of the pieces that you bring out throughout the course of this season, giving it name, giving it physicality, like giving it substance allows me to work with it and process it.

And I think that that really, when I, and giving myself the space, physically, by laying down, by taking up room, by taking up space, I was also giving myself emotional and mental space to just spread out, name things, work through it, process it, practice it, and the outcome I think was much better than if I stayed contained and angry.

Jennifer   

And yeah, what was the gift in that that move that you made?

Vanessa  

The friend who lashed out, was, she was hurting and it allowed me to hopefully give her more space to heal and for our relationship to progress instead of taking steps backwards. And conflict, you and I have actually discussed fairly recently how conflict can sometimes bring people into a more genuine space and we were able to talk about it. We did have a conversation 

where we kind of opened space to communicate about it in an open setting, which I think depending on any particular person's relationship with a hurt can...be more or less open. But we were able to have a conversation but I think it really made the process of moving through that in a more graceful way just feels better in the body, feels better in the soul. And your episode about the physical and health ramifications. And I realized that not all of the science is in, but...my body feels that, right? Like it feels that there's less negative energy and more room for me to be a whole and healthy person.

Jennifer   

It's interesting, I'm just reflecting that you listen to the body. You served the body by lying down flat in contact with the earth instead of lashing out. And what returns to you is also the health of your own body.

Vanessa 

Yeah, and connection, which I think is also linked to the health of my body, right? Like if I can progress those relationships, if those connections can be stronger and healthier, then it will make me a stronger and healthier person.

Jennifer   

Thank you. Thanks for sharing that personal story.

What else came up for you in the season? In particular, I'm curious about the somewhat difficult episode about shifting from victim to creator. That was a hard episode for me. It was probably the one I spent the longest on because my own thinking has shifted and I had to sort of, actually used that episode to work through what it means to reclaim dignity. So I'm curious what came up for you as you listened to that one.

Vanessa  

The concept of the victim's stance for me is very personal. I've had a number of experiences throughout my lifetime where I have stayed in that victim's space longer than I would have liked with the, you know, through the eyes of current present day Vanessa.

And many times, many times I, by recognizing that I'm participating in that victim space, I am making myself a victim as much as someone else. That's typically for me the very first step of being able to release it, even if I'm not ready to forgive. That has been a huge part. the, in, I think it was episode two, you talk about some of the choices that we might make when we're interacting with other people who have been harmed and we may offer well-intentioned pieces like you know they didn't mean to or look at it from their perspective like not recognizing that we might be adding harm because the the person who's been harmed has to be in a ready space, in an open space to be able to see that they might be a player in their own victim story. And I know that there have been many times in my past where I've not been ready to interact with that at all. I just needed to be angry or I needed to be the victim in the story. And yet now, as present day, Vanessa, I know that that was a first step that I needed to get to in order to start my own healing process. I think you, the desire for an apology, the desire for justice is so strong when you're in that victim space, but it also links so closely with that anger.

Jennifer   

Yeah, and some self-righteous indignation. “I would never have done that.” I would say I'm sorry when most of us are not particularly good at that. I know for me, I honestly had this fantasy that an entire workplace of 500,000 people would apologize to me. I only needed I only needed a couple people to, but I needed them to do it on behalf of this entire institution. On behalf of blah, blah, blah, we want to apologize for the terrible wrongs we did you. And I think I kind of committed to not getting unstuck until that happened. And of course, what's the flaw in that logic is it's not likely going to happen.

Vanessa  

Do you remember the moment where you started to let that go?

Jennifer   

A very wise person said, Jennifer, it's not going to happen. This is in front of other people. We were all in a bitch and moan session. And I said, “I'm just waiting for them.” And she interrupted. “It's not going to happen. They're not going to apologize.” And I think it's hard for that was for me to hear it turned, not just the page, it like closed one book and opened another book.

Vanessa  

Are you grateful that somebody said that to you?

Jennifer   

So grateful and now I'm on a mission to tell other people you don't have to wait for other people to fix this to fix you to fix the situation that you have this in you and you can take charge of what happens next.

Vanessa  

Yeah, I think, and it's funny because in hearing you even say, I wanted a whole room full of people to apologize. And I can think of a million times that I've wanted an apology. But then when I think about my own, like when I realized that I've done something wrong, it takes me a minute. And I spent a lot of time thinking about these concepts. And yet it takes me quite a while before I can choke down whatever pride I'm holding on to, whatever self-righteousness I'm holding onto to say the words I'm sorry and I have to be very intentional about make sure you say the words.

Jennifer   

I think we put ourselves in the suspended animation waiting not just for the apology, but the perfect apology. The apology in which the person who hurt us shows that they understand how much and in what ways they hurt us. And if we're waiting for people to apologize for us to heal, what if they don't even know that they hurt us? Or what if they're not sorry?

Vanessa  

There's a point that you made, and I thought about not to continually go back to our forgiveness class, but it was a really amazing experience for me. We did a session on revenge fantasies, and I had a very visceral reaction to it. And to me, these two things are linked because we spend a lot of time in this fantasy world when we're hurt and when we're in that victim space. And if I could if I could just get them to hurt the way that I hurt or if I could just get the apology that I need. And in one specific example, I spent a good portion of my childhood wanting the other party to hurt the way that I had been hurt. And at the point at which that happened, it did not feel good. And I think apologies often are follow that meaning that I want an apology, want an apology, I want an apology. If I get that apology, it's probably not actually going to heal the hurt that I think it's gonna heal. It's not gonna be the words that I would choose in my fantasy world. It's not gonna be for the reasons that I want it to be in my fantasy world. The reality of an apology is not ever going to meet the expectations of a fantasy apology.

Jennifer   

Yeah, so given that that's the case, I think I'm pretty persuaded that apologies may go part way if they happen. They may go part way to reconnect people, to create harmony again. But if that's not the answer, what is, what are the ways we can move forward without an apology? Let's say somebody's died, they can't apologize or they're not sorry or we don't know who they are. What are we left with?

Vanessa  

Calling back our hawk.

Jennifer   

Calling back our hawk.

Vanessa  

I think that's what we're left with. Let's call back our hawk.

Jennifer   

So for people who are hopping in this episode and haven't listened to the other ones, first of all, you probably should. Second of all, this is a reminder that reclaim comes from the old French word to “call back your hawk.” And we can reclaim our dignity because our dignity was always ours. You can't call back something that wasn't yours, in other words, and you don't have to lose something forever that was yours. So if we imagine our dignity is a hawk, reclaiming our dignity is calling back that hawk no matter how far away she is. Even if we can't see her or hear her, we can call her back and take her back to us.

Vanessa 

Which I secretly love because I'm the kind of person where anytime I play a fantasy realm game, where I get to create my little side animal partner, I get really excited. So the that I have a hawk in this version of processing hurts is fantastic to me.

Jennifer 

So if you were in Dungeons and Dragons, one of your characters, your avatars would be a hawk.

This is storytelling. What you're doing in Dungeons and Dragons and in games like this is storytelling, which is much more ancient and true than so many other things. I remember you called your hawk Anastasia.

And the people I work with, ask them, where's your hawk right now? And people tell me she's behind me with her wings outstretched around me. She's in me. She's on the curtain rod over my boss. When I meet with my boss for a difficult conversation. I've heard that she's outside the room waiting, so when I come out of a meeting, she's there for me and will hold me. I think this works for people to imagine your hawk is your dignity and she's always there.

Vanessa  

Yeah, and think you can learn a lot about the person by asking them questions about their hawk and their hawk’s name and where they might be at any given [moment}?

Jennifer 

Yeah, it's one of my most fun questions to ask and I'm often surprised with the answer, which I really love too. I love being surprised.

What else? Talk about positive emotions. You told me you liked that episode.

Vanessa  

I did like that episode. I because I am a practitioner fostering positive emotions. Some days a better practitioner than others. Just going through them. Hearing you go through them, the 10 that you selected, because of course the list is longer, but just thinking about each one as an individual item, love, joy, tranquility, etc.

Like just being able to sit with each one is not to continually go back to the bodily experience, but it's amazing how it changes how you feel physically in addition to emotionally to just really sit there and think about what brings me joy and just feeling your face light up, feeling your body want to dance or shine or glow. What inspires me?

What am I curious about today? What can I go learn about? Just the idea of each of those words can be so powerful.

Jennifer  

And do you think this fits in a season on healing from past hurts? Because it sometimes feels when I talk about it like it's an add-on. And I'm curious how you think it fits with healing from harm.

Vanessa  

I think that some of these words fit with healing period. I think that they are healing, I think they're healing words and I think everyone will have different healing words, words that hold that power for them. So I think that any positive emotions, and some days we just aren't as capable of exploring that space. Like there are gonna be days where the negative emotions just reign supreme and that's okay.

It can be that kind of day, but there is always a tomorrow. And I think that all of those positive emotion words speak towards healing. Healing words, healing concepts. 

Do you have a word from your list of ten that really calls to you today?

Jennifer  

I think hope, which is elusive sometimes, especially where we are in the world right now. And I feel it's a radical act to stay hopeful. I like saying, I'm going to hope even when people think I shouldn't, even when it seems like it's a foolish act. And I think hope is bigger than than all of us. And who am I to tell hope It has to stay in a small box.

Vanessa  

That reminds me of your segment that you did on, and forgive me, I don't know what episode, I don't know what episode it's in, but you talked about sometimes the harms are an individual harm and sometimes they are a community harm that you're interacting with. And what you just said about hope really reminds me of that. I think that it can be a particular challenge to...stay hopeful in the face of harms that are done not only on that individual level but also on that community level.

Jennifer  

I think that's why I like it. Because it is counterculture.

Anything that sits poorly with you in this season, anything that rubs you the wrong way, you know you can tell me anything.

Vanessa  

I don't know today if there's anything that rubs me the wrong way. I do know that I have been in a position before where I was not ready to accept my participation in the harms done to me. And I'm sure that's true of some in present time that I'm not processing actively, but I can think back. You know, I had a challenging relationship with my father.

And there was a large portion of my life where I was not ready to hear that I participated in the challenges. And I could see that being a real struggle for anyone who's potentially new to this journey in forgiveness because, and its alternatives, because...

And we have said this before on The Dignity Lab, and I'm sure we'll continue to say it. This is not a one and done process. It is a continual progression with practice. And I have many times in my life not been ready to hear that. That has been a really difficult thing. And I mentioned at the beginning of our day today that it's usually the first step for this really healing journey for me, but that doesn't mean that it's also, I mean, I have been stuck there for a long time before. so that, depending on the day, I think that one can be really hard.

Also, anytime I think in terms of interacting with my own anger as being a necessary part of that process, there's a part of me that wants to fight against that. I don't want to ever be an angry person and so when I feel anger, I think I'm doing something wrong. so hearing you say anger is a part of the process, you don't necessarily have control over that and feeling shame feeling grief. Those are things that are unavoidable in life that's hard for me to hear because I want to eradicate them from my being and I and I can't I'm a human being that can be really hard for me

Jennifer

So both the taking some responsibility for your part and the anger over what happened, the situation, the person, those two things are hard for you to hold. And yet I hear you doing them anyway. Yeah.

Vanessa  

I try. try. Every day is a different day, but I do try.

Jennifer  

What's the payoff for you?

Vanessa  

I love this kind of work. I think that I want to do less harm in the world. I want to step as lightly in this world as I can. And if that is a goal of mine, to be as healed and whole as possible and to do as little harm as possible, I think that this kind of work is necessary. And we're going to mess it up day by day and it's a messy process.

But I think there's real value here for my own sense of worth and happiness and also to step as lightly in this world as possible.

How about you?

Jennifer 

You know, as somebody who teaches it and holds people as they go through the work, sometimes I forget I have to do my own. And so I think my biggest challenge is remembering, here comes that grievance story again, let's work through it. Just because you teach it doesn't mean you don't need to learn it. In fact, we teach what we need to learn. So I think those are my my hardest things and then I also in terms of accountability at what point is somebody old enough to play a role?

Vanessa

Mmm, that's a great question.

Jennifer 

 You know, because there are innocents who, if you were listening to this and you're saying, I was a child, I did nothing to cause this, or even if I did something wrong, I was a child, you know, at what point do we know better? So those borderlines I struggle with a little bit.

Vanessa 

Yes, I actually had a really great breakthrough with a personal interaction, a personal harm of mine recently about that where I was revisiting a hurt from when I was a teenager, probably 16, 17 years old, and I was ghosted by a friend and I spent a shocking amount of my life wondering why and never having an answer and…”What did I do wrong? What did I do wrong? What did I do wrong?” And I had a moment recently where I was like, maybe I did do something wrong. Like I spent all of these years, these decades in between thinking I didn't do anything wrong. Why would my friend ghost me? And then, wait, no, was, I can't even remember what I did 20 years ago. Maybe I did do something inexcusable. And then that immediately was followed with, “But I was just a child. I was 15, 16, 17 years old. Like I didn't know what I was doing. And then a heartbeat later, I was like, neither did she.” Right? Like she also was a teenager. She also was 20 years ago. And why am I still holding this? We were, we were, and that's even getting into that gray area, right? But certainly in, in the world of younger developmentally children that there is no…there's no way to do this kind of processing. There's no way to understand what a violation of dignity even is. Like it's just all, it's all sort of taking that trauma in and not being able to do anything with it until, in my case, 20 years later, right? But.

Jennifer 

So I think that's where I think this work could be could be harmful, as if people hear this and they think that they did something as a child. First of all, nobody does anything to deserve horrible violations of dignity. That's not the point. The point is, is there something you can undo?

Vanessa  

Mm-hmm.

Jennifer 

Or is there a way to make sense of what need the other person had or the need you had you were meeting, however unskillfully? You so if we put ourselves in a difficult, dangerous situation and something happens to us, we didn't necessarily do something wrong. We were unskillfully meeting a need that we had. And that's why I think the language of needs can be so helpful.

Vanessa 

Yes, and I also think that finding help, especially depending on the level, the age, like all sorts of different variables within any particular, especially a trauma with a capital T, I think getting help to move through that process in a healthy way can be so valuable. I think sometimes it helps to have somebody reflect for you that we can move through this process together. We can look for forgiveness or an alternative to forgiveness, but it doesn't excuse the actions of the person who created that capital T trauma. It doesn't mean that there was not harm done. And I think it can be really helpful to have somebody to help with that process.

Jennifer 

That's key, isn't it? That healing doesn't mean what they did was okay. If we have a scar from a knife and we heal, it doesn't mean that it was okay that the knife went through the arm. Yeah. Yep. By somebody who had agency. Yeah.

Vanessa 

Still got stabbed. Yep, still got stabbed, absolutely. Right. And that was real blood.

Jennifer  

Yes.

Vanessa, thank you so much for coming on and debriefing this season. I'm so excited about Season 6. You want to talk about that for a minute?

Vanessa 

Absolutely, we're bringing guests back.

Jennifer  

We are, we have a bunch of really amazing guests coming and the theme is Dignity, Thickened. And what we mean by that are sort of nuances and some difficult things to wrestle with around dignity. We'll be talking about dignity in people with serious illness. We'll be bringing back Rachel Thienprayoon to talk about how leaders' dignity can be violated. We'll be talking about dignity in the global South, we'll be talking about dignity at work, in law firms, in personal injury law. 

And we'll of course have some doses of dignity. I'll be talking about the drama triangle because that will be important in listening to some of our guests. And also we have somebody who's gone through this process who talks about dignity and the drama triangle and how she's been able to shift from victim to creator, watching everybody else reshuffle around her. 

So I'm really excited to thicken dignity. I'm really excited to thicken dignity in our next season.

Vanessa 

Me too.

Jennifer Griggs  

Well, thanks, Vanessa. We'll see you next time.

This has been The Dignity Lab with Dr. Jennifer Griggs.

If you have experienced a dignity violation or have a dignity dilemma and want to be a guest on our show, contact us through our website, www.thedignitylab.com. Guests may remain anonymous. 

And If you’re a leader wanting to up level your leadership with a small community of like-minded people, visit our website thedignitylab.com to learn more about the Dignity Lab (yes, the same name), our group program for leaders.

Our website and the show notes have downloadable resources that you can access from anywhere.

More information about any of our guests can be found in show notes for that episode. 

This season of The Dignity Lab is produced by me, Vanessa Aron. Pete Carty is our audio engineer and sound designer. Chase Miller composed our theme music.

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The content discussed is intended to explore and raise awareness about dignity. Sensitive topics may be discussed that could evoke strong emotions; discretion is advised, and listeners are encouraged to engage with the material with empathy."

Remember, “...be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the Universe, no less than the trees and the stars.”