Ep #30. Pregnancy Alchemy with Pilar Lesko {Podcast}

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Full Episode Show Notes

The Medicine of the Bare Minimum, Entrepreneurship and Inviting More Spiritual Energy Into Your Work, & Navigating Death and Grief in Pregnancy

This episode has been years in the making and is an honor to share with you. Pilar has been one of my mentors for the last 6 years, and soon after I found out that she is also pregnant, I knew we had to sit down together to explore:

• How the spirit of her baby waited for her to release the energy of working herself to death before dropping in
• The medicine of the bare minimum and how pregnancy has forced a complete reorganization of our lives
• How the physical limitations of early pregnancy revealed inauthentic doing energiesthat were ready to be transformed
• Experiencing divine creation happening internally while facing very human challenges of not feeling well externally
• Pilar's mother's death and how her pregnancy has created new understanding and healing
• Altering our relationship to social media and creation
• Pilar's father's recent death and the relief she felt in his release
• The power of having the opportunity to face our greatest fears through losing our parents, and find more aliveness than ever on the other side.

Exclusive ways to work with me before I take Maternity Leave: 

• I have very limited spaces open for 1:1 work in September and October. Explore more + apply here!

• Melina and I are hosting our last Sacred Ground Ceremony for Grief and Growth of the year on Sunday, September 28th at 1pm ET / 10am PT. Sign up to join us here. 

More about Pilar Lesko: 

Pilar has been immersed in a world of mysticism her entire life. The death of her Mother at age two and subsequent karma-laden childhood cracked open her intuitive gifts, connection to the Great Mystery, and a trust that couldn’t be broken.

She has spent the last 15 years studying and training in energy work, psychic development, trauma integration – and anything that helps her become more human.

She bridges 15+ years in the healing arts with 10+ years of experience in entrepreneurship to teach business, leadership, and money differently. She is passionate about offering this work to those here to steward a new era of life-giving success and generative commerce.

Pilar is the founder and steward of The Hive, a virtual membership to train your energy and build your business, and The Hivemind, an invitation-only mastermind for female business owners.

She also offers occasional masterclasses, courses, and private mentorship for conscious leaders.

She makes but one promise with her work: to develop a deeper intimacy with Life itself.

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I would love to hear what arises for you as you listen, and anything specific you'd like to hear on the show. Shoot me a note via email (hello@ellieflow.com), or respond to the episode directly via the feature on your podcast app. 

Transcript

Ellie: 0:03

Welcome to Transformed by Grief. My name is Ellie Thomas and I am here to guide you on your transformational grief journey From feeling lost, raw and brokenhearted, questioning everything in you and around you, to reconnecting to the truth of who you are and the beauty, fulfillment and vibrancy of life that is still available in you and through you. On this podcast, we explore the depths of what it means to say yes to life again after you've been broken open by pain and grief. We will explore what it means to create a deep, loving and reverent relationship to yourself, to grief and to life in a way that allows you to begin to rebuild from the inside out and to create a powerful foundation for a joy-filled, alive feeling and fulfilling life you love. Hello, welcome back to the show.

Ellie: 1:04

Everyone, I feel really emotional as I open up this episode, the first Transformed by Grief podcast episode that has been aired and published and shared for you since I found out that I was pregnant in February 2025. It's actually pretty funny to go back and look and see that the last episode, which is like it felt like the energy of its own standalone season of potency and power and fire. It felt like it was kind of the entryway into what was about to happen and I had no idea. I had no idea what was coming my way and in the last couple weeks I have slowly found more and more energy, more and more words, more and more desire to share this whole process and this whole experience with you. What 2025 has been, the ways it has deeply shifted and changed me and also opened me and tapped me so much more fully into myself, and how that dance with what my work is has been involved in that, and how that has impacted the ongoing grief journey. And after recording this incredible conversation with one of my long-term mentors, pilar Lesko, which I am so honored to bring to you and to be one of the vessels that gets to share the intense and immense level of heart that she has, that I have, that we share together in our many differences and also our similarities of our paths.

Ellie: 3:14

As I was anticipating sharing it with you, I really wanted to record a full-on episode for you all about just leading up to the now, before I shared this and I was planning on doing that last week and I made space to do that on my calendar and it was in my focus and then we received just some news of unexpected things in pregnancy and things that need to be considered and potentially shifted a little bit, and I had to truly live the energy and the medicine that is this episode and walk myself through the process of meeting all of the emotion that was here and all of the humanness, and also feeling the profound divinity and reassurance that my husband and I have both felt alive in our hearts in this process, and to open and trust that when this episode comes out, it is the perfect reintroduction to who I am through this journey and it's only going to change again soon, I'm sure, as I give birth in the next couple weeks or months and also just the deep trust that this is the most perfect introduction to topics that I cannot wait to explore with you in the weeks to come. I have many episodes and shares and wisdom portals and nuggets that I have recorded that I can't wait to be dripping out for you over the next few weeks. This feels like its own kind of mini season of the show, of all of this heart, energy and love that is here to share and put out into the world before baby arrives, and then I will probably take another break and just let it all marinate and come back to life in its new form again. So today's episode is extremely special. It is a long, long, long time coming.

Ellie: 5:36

I mentioned that at the beginning and share a little bit. But Pilar has been a mentor of mine since. But Pilar has been a mentor of mine since well, actively since the beginning of 2020, when I had this massive opening and shift in the way, own deep inner unravelings and work with another long-term mentor and was hungry to join everything that was happening with me on the inside, with my work and my business and my sense of calling to entrepreneurship, and also while honoring my energy and honoring who I was discovering that I was and all of the deconditioning that was happening in me through that process. And so it's been almost six years and potentially it has been six years since we initially connected. But I have been in Pilar's fields and her containers of all kinds since then and just continue to receive so much from her as a mentor, as a teacher, as a, as I mentioned in this episode.

Ellie: 7:06

The feeling I've always gotten from her is just like this older soul sister that she has been to me without necessarily even knowing it and in the process leading up to my mom's death, her last year of life. I had many dreams where Pilar showed up in them and had some very powerful accompaniment energetically in that process with my mom and I have shared so much life and so much loss with her and in her spaces in a way that has been deeply nourishing, and it feels like an incredible full circle moment to share with you that she shares for the first time publicly some of that process in her own life and what that has been like in the past couple months for her around a loss that has occurred while she has been pregnant. So I feel incredibly honored to get to be the oh I don't even know what to call it like steward of this conversation and to get to share it with you. We go into so so, so much. We talk about entrepreneurship and what I call now the medicine of the bare minimum, being projector, feminine beings that, through our bodies, have been slowed down to what has felt like zero in the external to create life internally and everything that has opened up in healing for each of us in parallel ways and very different ways as well, being in different states of business. We both share our heart and medicine so fully in this conversation and we go into grief and grieving those we have already lost. She shares the process of grieving her most recent loss. We talk about social media and how it feels from this place and what it's like to be walking this line between divine creation and absolute humanness at the same time, and there's just incredible richness and wisdom alive here for you, and I can't wait to hear how it lands in your heart and your being and your life and what it feels like. It opens. So, pilar, to you. Thank you for trusting me, thank you for loving me, all these being such an incredibly open and integrous teacher, always willing to offer your medicine as it is now and also let it evolve and refine through life. So much of my profound relationship for life. I think it was inevitable that that happened in me, but so much of it has been supported by the work that you do and that we have done together, and so thank you. Thank you for trusting me, for being here, for opening your heart and your wisdom and for the listener.

Ellie: 10:50

There are a few really important announcements I want to make sure you know about before we dive into the episode. The first is that I have very limited but sacred spaces available for one-on-one work before I leave for maternity leave at the end of October. If you have felt the call to work together or if, through this episode or any other episode, you feel the call to work with each other, now is the moment, the time I am sure I will offer space again in 2026, but I don't know exactly when that will be and I can feel the richness and the ripeness of the medicine and the perfect timing of this container and the container of working one-on-one with people in this time period. And so I have kept space open and if you feel the call, I invite you in. There is the option for a four-week container with me where we meet weekly, and there's also an option for a one-on-one private grief flow for you or for a small group of people, like your family or your community.

Ellie: 12:02

And the second really important announcement for right now is that Melina and I are leading our last Sacred Ground Ceremony for Grief and Growth on September 28th of this month. That's the last Sunday of the month. It's at 1 pm Eastern, 10 am Pacific, and these ceremonies have now almost been running for a year. Again, we will run them at some point in 2026, but we do not know exactly when that will be and how frequently we will do them. After this big transition and after I complete my maternity leave and these gatherings, I can feel how important this last one is. These gatherings have been a source of life and healing for so many women in the past year, and if you have felt the call to join any one of them and have not been able to, this is the moment to do that. So I will leave the links in the show notes for both one-on-one work and for Sacred Ground to make it really easy for you. Please also feel free to reach out to me if you have questions.

Ellie: 13:17

And yeah, I can say that I think it's clear in this episode, but there is so much deepened medicine alive here in the process of what 2025 has been, and I can't wait to continue to offer it, continue to let it deepen and to involve and share it with the perfect people right now as it is. In further episodes that are coming out in the coming weeks, I will share more about the ways that the sanctuary will be transforming in this time, but for now, one-on-one work and coming to Sacred Ground feels like exactly what is supposed to be out there, so I welcome you in if that is for you. I can't wait to work with you, to be with you, to support you in that process, whether it be just with me or with the beautiful group that's forming for Sacred Ground at the end of the month, or with the beautiful group that's forming for Sacred Ground at the end of the month, and if you feel called to dive into Pilar's medicine in any way. After this episode, I have listed her membership and every other way you can find her and connect with her in the show notes, her membership. The Hive has been something that I have been a part of for years, on and off now, and has been one of my favorite places to be in the online world. So if that calls to you and the explorations of business and energy that we explore here feel alive for you, make sure to check those out as well.

Ellie: 15:05

Without further ado, here is this incredibly deeply nourishing, powerful, heart-filled and opening conversation with Pilar Lesko. Hello, welcome back to the Transformed by Grief podcast. I'm really honored today to have a longtime teacher and someone that I consider to be. You feel have always felt like an older soul sister to me, and yet you're younger in your human years, but I have received so much just in sisterly and profound mentorship and teaching from you. So, pola Ilesco, welcome to Transformed by Grief. Thank you for being here, thank you for having me.

Pilar: 16:13

I'm so happy to be here.

Ellie: 16:15

I'm so glad to have you. I shared a little bit of this with you already, but I wanted to say it here and elaborate a little bit. Wanted to say it here and elaborate a little bit. When I started the show, it was very much meant to be an Ellie show, not a lot of guests I could feel that very clearly. But there's a few people that I've just wanted to jive with and you've been on the short list of those people since the very beginning and I also was always tuning into where I was at with myself and in relationship to you as a teacher and mentor and someone that I have looked up to and received from and you know all of the dynamics that I've just moved through and my own reverence of being with you in that role and I often got this little tap like yeah, you'll talk to Pilar at some point, but it's not time yet. And recently that felt like it started to clear and then when I found out that you are also pregnant, everything was just like oh, I was like whoa, things are happening and I have felt so incredibly deepened into myself in a way that I can show up to this conversation from a different place with you now and welcome you in in a different way, and I am so kind of in awe of the under, under workings and unravelings that are happening, so this feels extremely special.

Ellie: 17:49

Years in the making. For context. I will share a little bit in an intro, but for context, I've known you virtually for five, over five years, like five and a half years, over five years, like five and a half years. And wow, thinking of the me that maybe I've known you for almost six I think. I remember booking in and in a kind of exploratory session and I was, oh my gosh, I feel like such a different person. That is so wild to think about that. But yeah, this really feels like an incredible moment to come together and talk about some really potent alchemical aspects of pregnancy and grief. And I even feel like there's this conversation around work and especially as projector, human design projectors, but just in general that entrepreneurs that wants to weave into. So thank you for being here. Anything you would like to share as we begin?

Pilar: 19:01

I'm just really honored to be here. I'm just really honored to be here and I remember you. In 2020, and I know you were different, I know we were all different, but your medicine was there. It was there. It was so clear and powerful. You brought the whole Projector Magic group together. Through sharing your heart, we had our first shared moment of total silence, just witnessing you. That had never happened on a call before. That was you and that's was you and that's who. That's who you still are, just more you and, not surprisingly, that was about grief.

Ellie: 19:53

So I feel like the interweaving of so much of our it's just expanding, but so much of our connection and so much that you've offered me and that I've learned and then has become my own version, has been this beautiful interweaving of giving grief space and also coming into fullness with my work and the ongoing dance of that, and it feels like now that's just being amplified and added to. But, yeah, okay. So I think of grief and pregnancy as very similar in many ways and, at the same time, very different, obviously. And the first thing that I want to ask you is when somebody is grieving or when somebody is pregnant, asking how somebody is is not, doesn't, makes no sense. It's like how are you in this moment? What are you moving through right now? Things can change from hour to hour, from minute to minute. So where do you find yourself in your process right now and how are you today?

Pilar: 21:07

Oh, that's such a good point. Let's see today, and in my process today, I feel uh, good-ish, um, physically. I just had a hard weekend. I said I just had a hard few days physically, uh, which also kind of results in having a hard time energetically and emotionally and psychically and, to give context to that, my whole pregnancy or not my whole pregnancy. But since I've started to feel a little bit better, I'll get really excited like a child who thinks it has all the energy in the world and I'll be like this, feel really unwell again and have to accept that that wasn't who I was. Now. That was just part of what was happening and inevitably there's ebbs and flows. So I just had a really big ebb and now I'd say I'm kind of like coming back up, maybe heading towards flow, and then the let's see the like, what I'm in, not just how I'm feeling or not just how I'm doing today, time doing today A very, a very, very bizarre level of acceptance.

Pilar: 23:23

Like I didn't know acceptance could go this deep, and that's not just the last few days, that's been the last few months, but it just keeps getting deeper and I am nowhere near close to meeting who I am through this. I feel like I've met 1% of her, but the 1% that I've met is so markedly different and feels like a version of myself that part of me knew I wanted. Part of me didn't know I wanted. And if you would have shown her to me even six months ago, and then all that her and all the past versions of me would have laughed like there's no way you access that that quickly. There's no way you access that that quickly. There's no way you become that or feel that that quickly. Okay, and then the final thing I'll add is this and this is cool is Chris and I are starting to together, on our own, and together deepen in meeting the personality of the baby and we're like terrified terrified of mine too.

Pilar: 24:55

That's hilarious yes, we're looking. I'm like what are we gonna do? And chris is like it's gonna be fine. Yeah, that kind of sums up all the different spots happening, oh my gosh, wait, let's talk more about that for a second.

Ellie: 25:13

because, um, this child inside of me is so active and I am scared, shitless and like, and everyone turns to me and I'm like, yeah, because Ellie, you are so active, and I'm like, no, but this is another level, the spunk level, and even as we've been exploring names there's been a few names I'm like I like that name, but it is not spunky enough for this human. It is, first of all, I think it's so wild to have to name a human when you haven't met them yet. But, uh, or come up with ideas. But also, it's been so fascinating. I'm like, yeah, I love it, but it just doesn't work for this child, because the energy here is so, so beautifully wild and also that level of surrender that is needed to this process, and while also being in the deep, knowing that this is my child and you know we, we know each other and we are here for this and this is all interwoven purposefully.

Pilar: 26:17

Yeah, it's so wild, anything's why you two are the perfect person to name her Like. Because because you've the naming process is so beautiful and ancient. It's not just you and your husband thinking separate from your collaboration with the baby about names. It's like thinking into the collaboration, yeah, and you'll feel her like yes, that's a good name, or that's my name, yeah.

Ellie: 27:14

It's a really, it's a really special process. Okay, I want to go back to feeling the physical aspects of this process and how that interweaves with the quick deaths and the quick welcoming in of parts of you that you never imagined could come in so fast. I was you know this, obviously, but nobody else listening may. Um, I was in your mastermind when I found out that I was pregnant and I had invested and started from a very different place, looking at my life from a very different place, looking at what I wanted to focus on from a very different place, and I was humbled to the core. And the process of finding out which felt so right, and also just the unraveling happened so quickly and I could even feel it.

Ellie: 28:13

When I look back again, feel it kind of the month beforehand already starting to happen, but how quickly and I explained this happening in grief a lot too where like an atom bomb goes off and then the ripples move really quickly at the beginning and then they slow down, but they are there for a long, long, long time and you are just meeting every ripple and so the velocity in which you're meeting them at the beginning is very intense potentially, but then over time they're spread out infinitely. And so that was my experience in this too. It was like, oh yes, this is happening, this is real. Here we are, boom and life you know life being as I knew it being shattered, and then also the ripples that were met over and over and over again, so much of which came on with the limitations of my body and the limitations of my energy. For me, I, from what I've gathered, you've been pretty sick. I wasn't as physically sick, but I was so fatig literally I can get food and be in bed and that is it.

Ellie: 29:30

And having to enter into a level of trust and welcoming that I mean that was as I've offered this idea, but I'm starting to call it the medicine, the medicine of the bare minimum and the intense initiation that that was and has been and continues to be, and also the lessons of starting to let go of so quickly what isn't going to be included in the season, and that is an ongoing process, and an ongoing process in motherhood, I can imagine. But something that I really felt, so accompanied by our mastermind group and by you, and also tremendous grief, was in that for me of the ideas and the visions and the what I thought this, you know this what I thought this season was going to be, and coming into what you said, that acceptance on a level that you didn't know was possible place, but initiated through the body. What comes up for you around that?

Pilar: 30:42

That's such a good description of all of it. I went and I'm going through something really similar. I'm trying to decipher where to begin because this story for me, is all intertwined, yes, and it's woven into the conception. So let's start there. So I got a very strong feeling when we were and I don't even like this phrase because it trying to conceive like I really don't like that phrase it's it's like we were co-creating to conceive, we were collaborating to conceive, but we weren't.

Pilar: 31:36

I was trying, I was trying, chris was making art, he he was in total flow, I was trying and I, we were sitting in bed one night and I felt so clearly the, the spirit who I was in communication with and was it knew. I knew it was in communication with and was it knew, I knew it. I'd known it for around a year. This, this specific spirit, and I feel like this is a very strong foreshadowing to its personality and our dynamic. But I I felt it like I'm not coming down until, like you, work through this thing more, and the thing was this energy of working myself to death over responsibility, and it wasn't like nurturing about it. It was like your uterus feels hostile. I don't want to be in it. It was like your uterus feels hostile. I don't want to be in it, and it was just so clear and it wasn't. Hey, you need to heal this whole thing. And it also wasn't news to me that that wanted to transform again, because that's been transforming for a really long time. But as we were conceiving it, the over responsibility I just call it the working myself to death energy, which is an extreme way to put it, because, if I'm being more grounded about it, the majority of this energy wasn't mine. It just pulsed through my system and my first energy center really strongly, and it's always an interesting thing to talk about, because we're used to hearing stuff like this and then seeing images of coal miners or people breaking their back in a job they despise.

Pilar: 33:48

When for me, this, this energy, was coexisting in a career that I'm absolutely in love with. It. It wasn't so black and white, but it it snaked its way kind of through everything and we had uh, we had a number of things happen in a very small period. One was we found out we needed to move. I was in a very busy season in the business and then we were trying to conceive and it was like my plate of trying and doing and responsibility got so full. And it wasn't responsibility. The way I was relating to everything was sticking it all on my back, not sitting it in front of me and being in relationship to it. And when we added conceiving, it was just so obvious that the spirit was like no, like that, I'm not being created. Like this, like this is not how it's going down.

Pilar: 34:55

And that night I I had uh, I was really overwhelmed, I had hit a wall and I opened up to Chris and one of the things I said, which it's like it's how I felt in the moment, but I understood more of the picture than this, but I said I feel like something's wrong with me because we're I, we're not getting pregnant, like I like, I feel like something's wrong with me. And and Chris heard that and was like he, he, it upset him so much that this was an experience I was having and he didn't even really know I was having that experience. And he looked at me and I cried. I had like a nice dry, heevy cry and I had a really, really beautiful release and I wasn't seeing clearly and it was like the thing I was expecting to hear back, not from Chris, but from the way those energies in my space would have talked to me was we'll just keep pushing.

Pilar: 36:16

And I looked at him, thinking I was going to hear something like that. And he looked at me and was like take everything that's not the essentials off your plate tomorrow. He looked at me and was like take everything that's not the essentials off your plate tomorrow. He's like rearrange the whole business if you have to. He was like give yourself a break, take a sabbatical, change everything. He was like you're allowed to do that. It's not even just you're allowed. We are able to do that. And he was like you're not 25 anymore driving with negative dollars in your bank account. This is something we can do.

Pilar: 36:52

And to have a man who sees me so deeply hear that whole, change it with, with with no concern of getting a house, conceiving the business, like none of that mattered to him at all. And he said he's like I'd live in a box with you, you, me and the baby can. It was like. And that, uh, that window from having that release to the next day, rearranging everything and opening up this glorious space. We were pregnant, I think within the week it w. It was like the spirit was sitting on my shoulder with its like weird clock, its weird watch, where, like, the time's all wrong and everything's going in different directions. It was like I'm ready, but you need to do a little bit of rearranging, and so that was.

Pilar: 38:02

If you want to look at it in this way, that was an element of the seed. The beginning said you have to let go of this for me to come in. And then the pregnancy has been just an absolute dissolution of exactly like you said, anything that is not the bare minimum, of exactly like you said, anything that is not the bare minimum, and saying bye-bye to all the parts of my identity that were wrapped up in anything that was more than that Thinking. That's how I, if I were to really simplify and sum it up, it would be thinking that that is the only way to do something. That's doing something when what we're both doing right now that nobody can see, is doing something in such a profound way, and that is so a testament to the feminine, to being projectors, to being highly sensitive, to being psychic. We're doing so much and, other than our bumps, no one can see and there's no measurable metric of like. Look at all the stuff I did yeah, yeah.

Ellie: 39:32

So many thoughts. The first is I love hearing that story with Chris. My husband and I had a very different but a moment where, after a very hard fight in a car ride home, of talking through it, the car held the space for grief that's been there for years of watching our friends become parents in a timeline that was perfect for them but but wasn't right for us and I in no moment felt like this should have happened already. It felt very clear to me, but he had his own process with that and I also have my own grief with just watching everyone around us that was younger than us, you know, in the human aspects, step into this new phase of life, when I was having to do things differently and process loss and process parts of work and life and our move from South America to the US, which takes so long to truly feel like in rhythm again, individually and together. Um, and home, you know, home wise all of the energies of that and while there was no doubt for me that that was the correct path, it was also extremely painful and moments and I just remember that car ride of like watching my husband finally share some of his grief and me being able to see. I've had that grief too, and maybe we've shared it in nuggets, but something about that moment, just let it all be out there and released from the energy of the two of us together and the energy of his body and my body and my. I think I had my last period while we were having that conversation.

Ellie: 41:35

Um, and I don't know if you know this part of the story, but I'm sitting right next to a window and there's a yard light that comes out from the edge of my house and this tiny little screech owl came to visit us one night on a Friday night. I happened to be working at like 8 pm because I had stuff I had not finished yet and Saba and Pepper were watching TV and I'd gone outside and came running up like, look out your window and there's this tiny little screech owl just staring at us through the window. I literally could. It's like two arm's lengths away on the other side of the window. And we came back to the calendar after we found out they were pregnant and looked at the pictures and that was within 24 hours of conception. Um, and these like moments of just I. This owl was just peering into both of us would look at me, would look at him through the window, was not freaked out at all. It was the coolest thing in the world and also quite eerie and and so magical and just coming back to like the, the thread that was there and the openings that were happening and the presence that was there in ways that I hadn't personally made much space to connect with.

Ellie: 43:03

I don't know, it's added to this sense of awe of this entire process for me, even though there have been so many extremely painful parts of this. And when people ask what's your favorite part of pregnancy, which people have asked, which I find such an interesting question and from a very you know, I'm not really willing to bypass any of the hard. So, from a very real place, my answer, as I've sat with it, has been the incredible opportunity and gift of allowing divine creation to be happening inside of me while I am still so, so human and I'm gonna miss that part, like I think it will continue in its own way through motherhood. But the yeah, it brings me to tears. It's this incredible sense of awe that in every moment of the suffering, of every moment of grief and every moment of the suffering, of every moment of grief and every moment of not feeling well, of just like feeling ridiculous, basically because this process is kind of ridiculous in the human aspect of it. That balances so beautifully with this energy of trying which I wanted before I let you like respond to anything you want to respond to.

Ellie: 44:51

I, when you were talking about the trying, I was like wow, yes, because the medicine of the bare minimum for me has been so much around letting go of trying to be something and someone that I'm not hoping to get somewhere through that. And it's like this baby came in and was like no, we can't do that, there's no energy for that. This like you're done. You're done. You have not graduated, but I'm going to help you graduate because it's time. You know you've like gone through the ringer enough with this that it's time to just take the leap forward.

Ellie: 45:26

And that energy of trying and the relief of the invitation to stop trying so hard for me has been continuously on many levels and, as you said, something that I think I even mentioned in our in our mastermind sessions, in over responsibility with my family or things that I over caretaking, that I was working through in the months before I we conceived, and that was like this is a do not pass go thing and then boom, that atom bomb thing where just everything is leveled.

Ellie: 46:11

So I'll let you kind of see whatever you want to respond to about any of those aspects. But yeah, wow, it's also interwoven. I have trouble really parsing it into compartment, a compartmentalized conversation, but, um, it's a very profound feeling to for me it has been to come to acceptance of not not having to try so hard and literally not being able to try so hard, and then to surrender to the fact that within us, this unseen process that is so divine is happening. As you said, minus the bump, nobody is, is aware right Of, of, I mean aware, yes, but uh, really taking stock and yeah, what comes up for you uh, so much your.

Pilar: 47:17

Your answer to your favorite part about pregnancy is so perfect. I've been saying something similar, but not as eloquent Like mine has been the fact that I am growing life and the magic of that. And then getting to feel the life and feel the spirit amidst so much poop, like feeling, amidst never feeling worse and never so much death, so much rearranging, but you summed it up so perfectly amidst being more human, more human-y, human than anything has ever been, on all levels, from my body, what it does, to everything happening in my life, to what my days look like, all of it. And then this is just happening, this is just happening inside of me, and that, when I was really sick, was other than the psychic elements of what was occurring were very difficult but, uh, really really profound in terms of things that wanted to clear out of me and things that wanted to be transformed. That was, that was a huge part of being sick, but in all honesty, that was still kind of hard work in a way, and the thing that got me through was like seeing that that week the heart had grown, or feeling the spirit hanging out outside of me, like checking in, or or feeling the spirit's collaboration with what was happening, that that was like the thing that it would. It would like we.

Pilar: 49:35

When we went and got an ultrasound, I was like and we heard the heartbeat. I was like this will see me through weeks of feeling horrible the sound. Yeah, I don't know what else to respond to. You said so many amazing things. Can you like cue me up with a specific thing?

Ellie: 49:56

Yeah, trying More. Any other thoughts on trying? You spoke to it a lot already, but yeah, let's see For.

Pilar: 50:07

Okay, for for me, because we're having very cool parallel experiences. And then there's some awesome differences. Yeah, for me, uh, there's always. I've been working with this for a long time, but now the process has been immensely expedited. But and this is really common in almost everyone I work with and it's it's very it it takes on a very specific flavor for women and that's how we have been modeled through, whether that was actually modeled to us in our lives or we just inherited the modeling of how we relate to and run our energy around doing. And then for a lot of women, where I'll see it as it comes up in work and it's comedic because everyone I work with, the majority of people, are in the healing arts or do something very niche and esoteric, but it doesn't matter, it still shows up. This way we start to run our energy when it's time to do, and I had that very strongly and it formed it. It was interesting how it entangled with different parts of my personality and my, my identity that are natural, but it's like when something mixes up like that, it's like what's me and what's that, and they seem to have created a whole new being and now I don't know what comes from what. And so I had been working on this for a while, leading up to becoming pregnant, and I was moving at very much a snail's pace and because I had the energy to still do in a much more, in a much bigger way than I can now, it was easy to work on it a little bit, but still not not intensely overload myself. But it's like it's like oh, I, I'm just going to have a candy bar Cause it's there, you know what I mean? Like I have a job, there's like a whole cabinet of candy bars and they're just, it's like that. It's like the cabinet of candy bars was full so I could just take one and eat one, cause it was right there. And that, uh, that energy we could call it like a trying energy. But the way it would if I were to really really simplify, running my energy like that took all the fun and richness and beauty out of anything I was doing, even if that thing was rich and fun and beautiful, anything I was doing, even if that thing was rich and fun and beautiful.

Pilar: 53:11

And as I was, as we were leading up to becoming pregnant, I was having a really deep go of it with time, with linear time, and I it was a I was having a very, very Saturnian period and this this actually really wove in with with conceiving, because I remember I was like conceiving cannot be a thing I'm doing on my to-do list. It cannot like this and that don't belong together. But I was. I was just coming in to deeper contact with the nature of linear time and our collaboration with it and how me running my energy like that Time would go, like this it would just drain, a day would go by and it would feel like two minutes and the day was gone and I had been watching this, noticing it, and being like this cannot, I cannot live my life like this. And it doesn't matter that I love everything in my life. That's not enough. I have to be so much more diligent about the energy I'm running when I come into my life, because it can go so fast and that is not what I want, and this was like a year so fast and I, that is not what I want. And this was like a year, a couple of years before, and I remember thinking I I don't want to become pregnant and become a mom and miss my life. Yeah, because there's more to do and sports and like car rides and and you know all the things, and it can just become more to do, more to, more to track, and I was like I cannot. It's like what better way to be completely obliterated by the need for presence than building a life and birthing a life and then meeting that life and stewarding it? And I felt that coming and so, okay, all this to say I was working on these shifts in my energy, I was starting to experience them, I was making some nice progress. Then I got pregnant and it's like you said, it's like the atom bomb or the. This is the. You said it so well. You were like your daughter was like okay, you've, you've made some nice progress and now we're gonna, we're gonna take it home, we're gonna like bring this home. It was like that I got pregnant and it was like everything came together into a zero point and took it home.

Pilar: 56:14

Where, where now I I feel so free, because not only is my energy completely different when I do, to a comedic point like I, the other night I wrote an email at like 9pm, naked on the couch with the TV on. That was like a big no no for old Pilar, like old Pilar. It was like we don't work at this hour and like we don't, the TV can't be on. There was like all these, all these like things of like what we can do, what we can't do. And Chris just looked at me and he was like welcome to motherhood. When I was like I just wrote an amazing email at 9 PM and he was like yeah, that you're. He's like this is part of it, like you're becoming so flexible, but now it's I.

Pilar: 57:04

I feel free in the nothingness because how can I put this into words? I have done in my work and in the house home activities, cleaning, laundry, everything, work, work at home, work at work at work like all my chores, my to do. I've done almost nothing for three months and I have been completely carried by the wings of grace. And one of my teachers said to me he's like well, now, he said, you're streaming more spiritual energy into your work than you ever have before. And he was like look at how much that does. And then he said and this is what you do when you become a mom and your plate gets fuller, is, he said, you do it with your kids, you do it with your work, you learn how to exert less and offer more spiritual energy into everything. And he was like and that's how everything miraculously gets done without you overdoing it. And I've experienced that, I've tasted that and it's hilarious because you know this.

Pilar: 58:24

I've talked about this for a very long time. Like I've talked about, like, there is a power in your being and in your engagement with life that carries your work. That can't be defined by how many tasks you did that day or how many emails you've written tasks you did that day or how many emails you've written and it will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. And old me knew that to a degree, but this me is like the roof has been blown off of what that actually means, and it's only just the beginning and I'm no longer. I used to look at women and go how are they doing all this? Women with multiple kids who run businesses, and it didn't make sense to me. And now it makes sense to me. Like you are rearranged and everything is rearranged.

Ellie: 59:21

Yes, yes, yes. Understanding that this is preparation is something I did not understand before, and Melina said it to me and now many other people have said that to me. It's like, yeah, really, on many levels, prepare. You know this, this chunk of time prepares you and and and also, and, and I, and I want to follow this beautiful arc of transition. I can feel coming of like very again, something that I find similar to grief is like you are prepared sometimes and then you also can never prepare, and so we'll get to that in a second.

Ellie: 1:00:07

But I just wanted to laugh around, like as I'm listening to him, like, yes, you have been so instrumental in me over the years and your teachings and the message that you just shared, and your teachings and the message that you just shared inviting in, okay, maybe I can relax a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more, not even relax, just let go a little bit more and let what actually wants to happen here happen, which is something that I am so in love with and have such a hard, have had such a hard time with, especially when it comes to my relationship with work, and, at the same time, it's so fascinating to hear you talk about this requirement for presence because in my healing with my mom before and after her death, in the unseen often, but in certain moments, seeing the part of my inner child, my young parts that were yearning for her, were just yearning for what I call wide open presence, like, and how much her diagnosis just snapped that away from us, even though she was physically there. And, um, you know there are many, many, many details where or moments where she was present. But there was also just this sense of that not being there. And then to see in me all of the places, through this process of oh, it's ready, you're ready to not only receive this medicine fully but give this medicine through being so present and letting everything else not matter quite as much and letting and trusting the spiritual energy of what is here to do what really matters and to bring into uh, to bring into form what really matters for you, to gift you energy where you need it to really do the orchestration of all of the pieces.

Ellie: 1:02:18

Wow, that has been extremely humbling to me and also like I can feel the wild aspects of being challenged by my own in the same way, the places that I can, am challenged and could be challenged as a mother and the same way, this is what I needed for my mom and the you know karmic pieces of all of that. But, yeah, it is such a relief. It is such a relief. I feel so grateful to get to experience that. Yes, like I care about the same things, but I care in such a different way and I think after birth I'm going to care even differently and the ongoing exploration of that can sometimes feel a little daunting to me and also feels completely magical to me and also feels completely magical.

Pilar: 1:03:37

Yes, yes, it, it. Can you feel your brain changing? Oh, yeah, yes, it's, it's. I keep saying this is the craziest psychedelic I've ever taken. I keep saying this is the craziest psychedelic I've ever taken. It's just like you said the caring For me. The ecosystem of my life has been rearranged in a way that I never could have done on my own, and it is so much better and more true. And it has made in this paradoxical way, the appropriate caring and things in their appropriate place have given them a deeper relationship to their power. Yeah, that they couldn't access before.

Ellie: 1:04:35

Hmm, yeah, yeah to this infinite aspect of them that, like for me, is so much of. You know, I'm in a very different stage of my business than you are with yours and this, this invitation to feel how infinite this work is and that it's not going away, and I'm not going away and we're not going away together. And this child, no, is, you know, part of that, in ways that I don't fully understand yet and maybe I won't even when, in the physical, but understanding the yeah, how it, how it's all infinitely entwined and just the deep rest that I think is I've been invited into in that Mm-hmm, yeah, okay, anything else you want to say about that? I want to transition us into grief a little bit. That feels perfectly complete, okay, anything else you want to say about that? I want to transition us into grief a little bit that feels perfectly complete Okay.

Ellie: 1:05:51

So your mom died when you were two, and do I remember correctly that she found out that she had a brain tumor when you were in her womb?

Pilar: 1:06:04

The day I was born, the day you were born, yeah, so I was an emergency cesarean one month early. I could have been earlier than a month. It's hard, because that experience was so traumatic for everyone that I can tell. When family members are telling me, you can feel that they're no one's remembering entirely well exactly what happened. So I could have been a month and a half early, which used to not really mean that much to me. Have been a month and a half early, which used to not really mean that much to me. And now that I'm pregnant, I'm like so I was going to be a monster baby, because I was a normal sized baby. I was not small.

Ellie: 1:06:58

My neighbor says, that she just cooks them fast.

Pilar: 1:07:01

Yeah, I wasn't. I was normal size, I was normal height, normal weight, but uh, it was. So my, my mom had either a seizure or a stroke. I think it was seizures. I think it was seizures and up to that point her and my dad had, to my knowledge, no awareness. Anything was wrong. And she loved being pregnant. Everyone. I totally took on some like fantasy pictures. I was like I'm gonna, it's gonna be amazing, I'm gonna feel so good because everyone said that's how she was. So I was like that's how I'm going to be. But anyway, she loved being pregnant and she had what I think was a seizure.

Pilar: 1:07:54

They rushed her to the hospital and this part is interesting because I almost feel like what happened is either they knew something was really wrong but didn't know what, or they knew, they had a pretty good idea that it was brain tumors or brain tumor and didn't want to freak her and my dad out because it went pilar. That I just was telling. My aunt was just telling me there was a big meeting with the OBs and the doctors and I think probably brain surgeons, of can we take the baby out. It was like a Grey's Anatomy episode, like they had a meeting of can we take her out? It was decided, yes, they took me out and, according to my dad, they took me out and, according to my dad, they took me out and within minutes, doctors filled the room and my dad knew something was horribly wrong. But and again, being pregnant, I'm like you just continue to understand your parents For the for the rest of our lives, we'll be making sense of our parents. But I am very I am, I think, almost the exact age of my dad. When this was happening, my mom was two years older and I'm also now pregnant like she was, and I'm just it's blowing my mind what they experienced. It is like it is incomprehensible. I'm wrapping my head around it, but what they went through would destroy almost everyone I know, so they.

Pilar: 1:09:52

I think she might have had brain surgery the same day. She had a C-section, I think, because it was. I was just talking to my uncle about this and he said because there's something happening in my family right now that's extremely similar that happened to my mom, which has been its own big thing happening while I'm pregnant. And I was talking to my uncle, my mom's brother, and he said what's happening with our other family members? I had asked him I said is this what happened to my mom? Is this the same tumors my mom had? And he said yes, this is exactly like your mom. And he said the only difference is they've had more time to make decisions, whereas with your mom it was so bad they just immediately went into whatever they had to do. So I think she might've had brain surgery not soon after having a cesarean Wow, had brain surgery not soon after having a cesarean Wow, and then she was given not long to live Like I think it was maybe six months max and and she had um there it's called geoblastoma, it's when the tumor has progressed and spread to stage four. And so she lived for two years.

Pilar: 1:11:13

And this is crazy, because I'm understanding this now in a way that I didn't before and I'm sure once I have a child I'll be understanding it in a whole new way again.

Pilar: 1:11:23

But something I've felt and uncovered is everybody loved me so much, but nobody was saying hello to me. Everybody was so wrapped up in what was happening Because it's like I came into the world and my dad's wife Is dying, my uncle's sister Is dying, my grandparents daughter Is dying. Everybody is now experiencing this From the moment I enter, but my mom Was with me, she was the one With me and that was like. That was like she knew she was going to die and and I can't I can't imagine what that does to your consciousness and it was like the person who knows they're going to die is actually the person that can give the most presence, because everyone said she was just accepting, she fought and she did live longer, but there was an acceptance that kind of freaked everybody out. But the gift she gave me was being my mom and being with me when nobody else could in that way yeah, we get the wide, open presence.

Ellie: 1:12:56

Yes, wow, you've already spoken to us a lot, but what I was gonna ask you or is how is? I don't know if carrying is the right word, but how is carrying the story, or relationship to the story, or feeling the the still potentially alive psychic exploration of this story? What's that been like for you?

Pilar: 1:13:30

it. It so, as I was, as I was leading up to being pregnant, I was getting whiffs of understanding in deeper ways than I had previously experienced, because it's like this is so hard to put into words, I really think, unless you've experienced it. But if, when you're not pregnant, your life is about you, you're living your life through your eyes, from your perspective. And for me and Chris, the day we found out it was bizarre. We were like watching Modern Family as Claire and Phil, we were watching commercials as the parents, and Chris was like, is this happening to you? And I was like, yes, it it all of a sudden. We would just be watching our funny shows and we'd be all of a sudden we're, we're empathizing with the parents just so quickly in that consciousness, and so I had been getting these whiffs through. A lot of it was through. Uh, our old neighbors have two kids that were really good friends with and I'm really close with the daughter and she's nine now, but she would our relationship and just watching her would invoke things in in my experience that helped me make sense of me and my mom and my childhood and my life and all these different things. So I was getting these kind of like whiffs. And then I became pregnant and I was, oh God, like there's the healing you do as the person who went through it and just feeling like I am so in awe of my parents, like what they went through, everyone, what they all went through, the magnitude my dad, my mom, like I, just they became the magnitude of their souls and what we all set up together and how chaotically and horribly perfect it was, became so much more clear. And this is weird, but I sort of tapped into like not anywhere near I know what she experienced, but how my mom was able to just accept I, I, I and yeah, it's been, it's been wild, like every day was kind of like a new layer opened.

Pilar: 1:16:59

And then the first, there's been these cataclysmic events, my whole pregnancy, which I am not blind to, the fact that this spirit, it has like a very volcanic energy and is pulling strings and threads to get things, help, help things along that that are in deep service to not just me but my family, everyone. And one of the things that happened is I have a dear, dear family member who, like I said, she has a geoblastoma. A geoblastoma and we found out. I found out the week I was going to tell them all I was pregnant, and so then it was like, okay, this is what's happening now and I want to create space for this because this is big and this is impacting all of us and it's happening on my mom's side of the family, and so I'm creating space for what's happening and to support and to be there and to just you know all the psychic work of like we're going to support.

Pilar: 1:18:21

Midway through my process, I almost feel myself to a very similar energy that I was born into and it's all the same people, some of the same people, and I was getting it from everyone's perspective. It was like now I have an understanding of what all the adults were going through because I'm a baby. Everyone else is adults, other than some of my cousins, grown people with fully developed brains, finding out either their daughter, their wife or their sister, their sister-in-law is now dying and has a baby, like that's. That's a crazy thing to go through, but then I also, simultaneously, was becoming aware of it. How I would describe it is for me there's always been different energies in my space that I know they're not mine, but I don't know what they are, and they've been with me for so long and I know if they're meant to leave one day they will.

Pilar: 1:19:52

But it almost has kind of felt like I was born and I was handed like six backpacks and it was like here, carry these until it comes time that you don't carry them anymore, but you have them and they're heavy and you're going to be walking around with them for a very long time, and so it was like a backpack of like boulders that filled my space. I became aware of this is the energy I was born into. That's always been swirling around me, and this happening in my family gave me a chance to start seeing and clearing something from my field that I just thought was there forever, for a very, very long time. And if I were to describe it, it was like I came in. I left the womb and I came into like a different womb of shock and fear and confusion and grief and anger and and just total chaos. Like the atom bomb dropped the day I came in. So it was like I entered in the atom bomb.

Ellie: 1:21:02

Yeah, it's like hard to separate the two of you. Yeah, yeah, it's like hard to separate the two of you. Yeah, yes, and and this process.

Pilar: 1:21:15

I just never thought I'd know there, I couldn't have ever conceived of this that while I'm pregnant I would get this opportunity to see and start to release some of these energies that were just a backpack I had just been handed and I felt the baby, like the spirit, like you can let go of this now.

Ellie: 1:21:41

Yeah, this isn't you. Yeah, Wow, yeah, this isn't you. Yeah, well, I was listening to you. Well, I don't, this is what came up. I don't know that you would and you can tell me uh, really, that backpack carrying to the word responsibility.

Ellie: 1:22:12

But something that came up for me is this experience that I've had, which I assume is my own version of an experience that I think a lot of people have, but we all have it so differently that there's almost a loneliness in it. That's been what my sense has been, which has been the sense of feeling this exit of responsibilities that cannot be there anymore or are not ours to carry, or were never our backpacks to holds, that are being cleansed and released. Finally, and then, with time, feeling the energy and responsibility of motherhood, but in a very because responsibility is something you've also worked on with you and throughout your work a lot, and I remember years ago, when you were teaching about it and someone, I heard someone say their responsibility, ability to respond, and I was like, wait, what? How did I never think about this this clearly before? But now, thinking about this ability to respond to the energy of motherhood and feeling that descend into my body and like into my life and start to touch me and and start to prepare the space for what's to come. The first few moments that I felt that I was just in tears all weekend I moments that I felt that I was just in tears all weekend I yearned for to talk about it with my mom and and like yearn for the person that felt that for me when I was growing inside of her and felt so much compassion and curiosity and understanding and healing in the sense of whoa.

Ellie: 1:24:11

She felt this for me, like her version of this for me, even though I don't didn't necessarily know how to receive it as a kid. It was there, or her version of it didn't look the way that you know. I perfectly received it, but I have zero doubt that she had her own experience of that and there's been a lot of moments of Sigh. Yeah, just wanting to be able to talk to her about it, I mean to be able to ask her what that was like. When I think of your mom, just like whoa, I want to know this person how did you do this? How did you move through that? How did you know to? These aren't questions that will have answers, obviously, but just these questions that live on in the heart of how were you able to gift that wide, open presence to Pilar that you did, I don't know. Just all these beautiful kind of curiosities come up and there's grief in the not ever knowing and also beauty in the not knowing.

Pilar: 1:25:36

That exists, I think but I was just many is that they live those answers through us and we might not even know that the answer, we're living the answer, or we might get a sense we are, but they hear the questions and they find a way to breathe the answer into us.

Ellie: 1:26:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that feels right. Anything you want to say about the energy of motherhood, as you're beginning to explore it more and more, what that's been like for you.

Pilar: 1:26:45

Yeah. Yeah, I really resonate with what you said about feeling how my body, nervous system or we got this, we are rearranging to do this and in that vein this is an odd thing to share, but it's what's coming in I have had this very strong kind of splenic instinct of really not it. It's. I'm not being avoidant of information, I just am being. I don't want to read 80,000 books, I don't want to read every article on everything that could happen. I don't want to know every article on everything that could happen. I don't want to know the infinite vortex of experiences. I already know them psychically, and everyone's different.

Pilar: 1:27:56

I've had a few friends who are mothers, who are like oh, I have this PDF of all the best books and I'm happy to receive that from them and I'm like, happy to receive that from them. But I've, I have felt, you know, and I think part of this is the age we live in knowing the the all the way from primal, physical to like soul level intelligence, that we were born to do this and there is straight, there is live, living libraries of wisdom pouring through our cells and I haven't I haven't wanted to shroud those in too much information. I've, I'm reading some stuff I'm happy to to. It's like you know, the stuff that comes in, you're like, oh, that's right, I'm supposed to read that. I'm still having those experiences, but there's a whole book I'm reading. That's just happening through my body, my consciousness and my communication with the child and with Chris, and the collaboration of all of us that I, pilar, would be missing if I was oversaturating myself in information.

Pilar: 1:29:25

I'm also like like you, I'm I'm so sensitive so I can get like really full of things you know, like on Instagram.

Pilar: 1:29:34

I'm like I I just looked at three people and now I, I need to like take a bath because I and and so that that has been really cool and it, that has been really cool and it feels just oddly very right and I'm not blind to also feeling like the spirit of the baby is like yep, yep, like I'm teaching you right now and that's part of this and I want you to hear what I'm and then the awareness that I have been being prepared for this, this parenthood, but also this to parent this specific soul, probably for lifetimes, in one way or another, and that's all available yeah, yeah, it is really wild to feel the humanness of the preparation happening for me personally, like in the emotional realms especially, and the levels of maturity that I've been able to step into through that alchemy in my life over the past seven years of now being able to interact and lead and guide and be present from the me that I am now, but then to think about it in the vastness of eons of energy, of knowing this being and this being knowing me.

Ellie: 1:31:11

I had this incredible glimpse of an image about a year ago. It was really my arrival to feeling quote unquote ready, which I never expected to feel ready and I, uh, also just felt so, not ready. Um and so, and this inner I had this inner battle for a long time that I worked with a long term mentor of mine, um around, because she was like there, your motherhood is here, where are you in relationship to it? And I was like work I have to choose work or motherhood, work or motherhood. And this um, constant feeling like I had to make a choice, like where's my energy going to go? If I have the energy that I have, I don't have it for both places which has now fully been, is being reworked and it's on many levels.

Ellie: 1:32:14

But I had this image at one point in that exploration that just calmed all of that. That was if I saw myself at the center of my life and all of these parts of my life and just let this baby arrive like where did it? Or let a child arrive, where would it arrive? And it just showed up in my lap and so clearly knew everything about my life, so clearly knew what I was here for, what I was doing, what was happening in my marriage, what was happening in my other family was just, you know, in my lap, a part of it.

Pilar: 1:33:05

And that image was the beginning of like this exhale from that tension that I felt for so long. That's just beautiful. It's so beautiful that you got to transform that before it arrives and that you got to open your perception, your perception widened to see. It is in collaboration with everything I had for years in my 20s so many different wise women. You know, when, like, there's a message you're supposed to get and people just randomly give it to you for years and you didn't ask for it One of the ones I've been getting, honestly, since I was little and Nona would look at me and go, pilar, babies aren't bad. She'd always say that. She'd say babies aren't bad, babies are a blessing. And Nona lived that Like it was not. She lived that my mom's mom and then also basically raised my one of my cousins and then me and we were her fifth and sixth children. And when, when my mom was pregnant, uh, when my cousin was, was when, when his mom was pregnant with him, um, both situations were were interesting circumstances Mine, because of what I shared, his was different and she dropped everything to support the babies and so she'd always say babies aren't bad, babies aren't bad.

Pilar: 1:34:40

And then different women as I got older and once I had the business it became. There's this one woman who I love and every time I met with her she'd say she'd be like, are you pregnant yet? And I'd say no, and she'd be like you know, the baby will enhance your work. Like she said, babies bring abundance. They bring their own set of tools and abundance and ideas and visions. And she'd always say it's not going to take away from, it's going to enhance your work. And she's saying that to me all through my 20s. So I kept getting these messages of like, similar to what you learned. It's like people were trying to get that through to me of, yes, you'll change, yes, your energy will rearrange, but it will come and it will know what you're up to and it will enhance it. And and I for I, I know there is not a sliver of doubt in my mind now around that. It is so obvious to me, not even being a mom yet, just being pregnant, it is so obvious to me that that is true. Yeah.

Ellie: 1:36:05

Yeah, and I think in every layer that we're humbled in the process of the letting go. It's like, oh yeah, this is part of it and it's knowing that offers so much in that rapid release and rapid welcoming in. I just want to make a comment about social media. It's so funny, I am so bored by what's out there, like I look at that from a pregnant place and I am like this is so flat. Yes, there is this and I'd still play with social media because there's no one's world really enjoy it. But it's the awareness of how flat it is is like never before and is only growing.

Pilar: 1:37:07

Yes, ok, yes, like never before, and is only growing. Yes, okay, yes. So I was feeling this right before I got. I was like, the three months before I was, I was like I'm so bored with all of this, all of this, as in even parts of my work, and I kept saying bored and Chris was like pick a different word, it's not bored, it's something different.

Pilar: 1:37:39

And so the thing I came up with was the frequency of disenchantment. I was disenchanted and I recognized before I was pregnant, this is a natural part of evolution. I'm seeing this differently. Clearly there's an evolution afoot, there's nothing to do, but things are changing. Then I became pregnant and it hilarious because, like before, I was like there's going to be this rebirth and I'm going to be passionate again and I'll be enchanted again. And I became pregnant and the frequency of disenchantment went up like a thousand. Like a thousand hits where I was like now I just really don't care, just really don't care, and the way I've been relating to it. This is actually such a great thing to talk about because if I didn't have a relationship to hormones and just took everything that was happening as this is what it is now, I would have closed down everything I do. I would have literally shut down everything. I would have gotten off social media. I would have done very extreme things.

Pilar: 1:39:03

And I was working on this with one of my teachers and there was two really profound things that came up. The first was the level of knowing I had before felt big compared to now. I feel very, I like I don't know about my work, it's just a big, I don't know. And he was like I can so relate to that, yeah. And he was like, well, look at your knowing before and how much of that energy was yours. And I was like, oh, some of my knowing before wasn't even mine, it was other people's, it was other energies creating a stronger sense of knowing than what I actually had.

Pilar: 1:39:51

And then I also looked at look at how normal it is to go through something like pregnancy and feel your knowing get really, really, really small and how that's completely natural. And he even said you're in a better place now because you're starting with what's true, which is, like I know, 5% rest I don't know. And so there there was that piece. And then there was the piece of and this one has been more difficult for me, recognizing that the level of passion and creativity I felt from my work before is just not there now. And that doesn't mean I I mean I shouldn't say it's not there across the board, because the one thing that's held true is, when I work with people, I'm on, I feel it, I feel the projector magic, I feel the baby, all excited whenever we're working with someone and that's there and that's alive, and it's where all the life force is. But in terms of me creating things which is funny because it's like, well, I am creating something- Yep, your creation energy is redirected.

Pilar: 1:41:13

Yes, in terms of that which social media is us creating things to share and so anything in that arena, I've just felt like a nothing, and what I've been, I guess I want to say, grappling with, but then also kind of successfully doing, is still doing what I committed to do, still showing up for what my commitments are, with a lesser amount of passion and a lesser amount of external creative energy like pulsing, and then just letting that be okay and seeing that everybody's totally fine with it. Yeah, like it's. It's not a huge deal. But but to what you said in the beginning, yes, I, social media feels like a flat, like flat papers, and it's very bizarre.

Ellie: 1:42:16

Yeah, and the people that I'm enjoying the most are surprising to watch or to like observe in the flat paperness are really surprising me. You know who. One of them is Ishany frankel, who I didn't. Well, I love her. She was never, oh not surprised, but I was never a housewives person. I didn't even know really who she was until not that long ago. And yet I my sister asked me like what do you get out of this? Like engaging with her stuff. I said I just so appreciate that. She just is who she is and just does what she wants to do, and so much of my medicine in this process has been embracing that about myself. And, of course, the person, one of the people that I'm most enjoying engaging with is somebody that you know in her 50s, is just living.

Pilar: 1:43:09

That I I love her, she, you should. You should go on youtube and just watch clips of her from when she was a housewife. She, she was. I loved her on the show. She, she, she was one of the best ones. She would just say it like it is. She'd have the funniest commentaries. She, it, it was, yeah, it was great. She, she's, she's a. I think she's a scorpio sun, capricorn moon. She's very to to the point.

Ellie: 1:43:41

Yes, yep, and not only to the point, but just doesn't give any Fs, and there's so much of my version of that medicine that's coming online of me getting to experience that. But it's really fun to watch somebody else and it's like that. In that there's a spark of something for me. But I'm just looking at the normal aspects. Yes, flat papers passing by. It's really, really, really interesting and I'm really excited for you. I'm really excited to watch what happens in the next. How many weeks pregnant are you right now? Like today is 19, 19, okay, I'm really excited to watch what happens to you around this.

Ellie: 1:44:35

I don't know, because I have had this reflection in the past few days. I was like wow, I really didn't know for a long time and I found so much acceptance and peace in that. I don't know. And all of a sudden my work is like circling back, hardcore as I'm entering, like my last, of course, stint Right and it's hilarious, and the depth and all of the beautiful parts of all of the pulling off, the pieces of the trying and the carrying and all of the things.

Ellie: 1:45:28

It's starting to circle back, question and release the grief label of my work at the beginning and at the same time knew there's no way.

Ellie: 1:45:38

Grief is never going to be part of my work, right? And so the invitation of the unknown, of the I don't know around that was just like okay, welcome in the other things, but don't get rid of the things that are here. And now I'm finding this massive circling back around where, oh yeah, it all is starting and ending here and then it's going to have a new iteration on the other side of birth. But it's so wild to see and I'm really curious to see what will happen to you as you're attuned to that, because that's very, very, very recent. Like I'm 30, going to be 32 weeks on Friday and only in the past two to three weeks have I felt that happen. And it's as the slowdown is happening in a different on my body level, and then I'm allowing that to happen on another level, because second trimester has its own kind of energy that starts to take form, and only in the slowdown is that starting to happen. So I'm really curious to check back in and see what that's like for you.

Pilar: 1:46:50

Wow, what you're describing right now is something a lot of women have told me about that. I have to be very careful not to be like is it coming?

Ellie: 1:47:12

Sure sure I can imagine.

Pilar: 1:47:16

But beyond, where I create rigidity around things. It's very apparent to me and I think this is so. It's very apparent to me and I think this is so, oh God, I feel like this makes the work so much more real when you have to just sit there for however long and be like what are you? Who are you? What am I doing? What am I here to steward Like? What is like cause?

Pilar: 1:47:45

My prayer has been like what is life asking of me? What, what can I offer? That life is truly asking of me right now? What is it? Because I'll, whatever that is, even if it's it's the simplest, subtlest thing. That is where I will put my energy, and it has it's been.

Pilar: 1:48:02

Just just keep showing up for your commitments, keep working with people one-on-one and and just just do it. Just that's where, that's where you have the skillset, that's what you can offer to life. But in terms of like the larger work as a whole, you just described it so beautifully because I could see my work asking for this long before I was pregnant, and would I have ever given it to it in the way I am now if I hadn't become pregnant? And now I'm just, I'm sitting at it and it's like, whatever you want to be, I'm here and I can feel you know you can, you can kind of track cycles. There was a huge death, a huge letting go, and now it's definitely in the quiet. The wave has receded. It has not yet come back. Yep, there's nothing to rush or force, but I, I couldn't be the pressure force if you tried.

Pilar: 1:49:09

Yep, and then, in that space too, getting to see what the spiritual I was pregnant. Like 40 to 50 moms follow me on Instagram and I'm like what is going on? Like I was like did, where did they all come from? It did? It's not like my pregnancy post was shared by tons of people. You shared it and my friend Amaruka shared it, and that doesn't necessarily equate to 50 moms appearing, but they just all appear. And I'm like now, when people follow me, I normally don't click on who's following me. I'm clicking on it because I'm like are you pregnant or a mom? I just had you know. Meg Meg Thompson, yeah, she joined Innovate and in her reason inside the forum, she's like reason number one Pilar is pregnant. I'm just like I'm not, this is just happening, this is just happening.

Ellie: 1:50:26

That's so cool. Yeah, I know something good is happening and I want to be a part of it. Wow, that's so cool. Well, how do you feel about talking about your dad?

Pilar: 1:50:37

Good yeah, yeah.

Ellie: 1:50:40

I would like to with me yesterday via email that not only have you been walking through this tremendous process on its own, but that your dad also passed away very recently. Grief and life and death and life, and all of it so intertwined Like I can feel the vastness of it, as I said to you, and the words to say tell me about this are not even here, because whoa and then you shared when we came back, when we started today is how different of a process it's been than anyone can conceptualize and how weird it seems from the outside, and yet, I would assume, how correct it has been for you to live it this way. So what would you like to share?

Pilar: 1:51:37

Uh, yeah because my dad has been. I've never known a physically healthy version of him, but the last 10 plus years, probably a solid decade, he was sick and getting worse and and the the getting worse was something. Every time I saw him I would notice something, something worse. And oh, this is the first podcast, not even the first podcast, this is the first time in my work that he's ever been brought up and I feel him just chair pulled up, legs crossed, so present, like, so tuned in to me and my life and my work, and so here, in a way that he, I know, wanted to be but could not when he was alive. So, yeah, his I, like I told you before and I think you know, with knowing you, knowing Melina, when Melina's mom was was getting worse while she was pregnant, mom was was getting worse while she was pregnant, I remember creating space for her and in that space not in, not from projection, but from that space, feeling this thread of I think this is going to happen to me too. There's something here and and but, but not. It's like her, her and her mom's relationship was so wildly different than mine and my dad's. You know there's every experience is so different, but there was that like supporting Melina and witnessing Melina is offering me a point of resource for something I think I will walk through my own version of.

Pilar: 1:54:12

And that was when it really started to click for me that this was probably going to happen either while I was pregnant or not soon after giving birth. I even was like it could happen the day I give birth, because in my family the way people choose to leave it's like it's like Kara's always like your family is crazy the way people come in and leave and the dates and how it all happens. But so I had a feeling. I had a feeling my dad was going to die. I had a feeling. I had a feeling my dad was going to die and, like I told you, he died the day I was going to tell him I was pregnant because I knew it would be so hard for him to know that and there was even this part of me that was like it could kill him if I told him. And when I found out he had died and I shared this with you before, but I'll say it again, I had, yes, I was shocked, yes, I was sad, but never before have I felt such an ecstatic release from the physical and I felt him here, finally, looking around. You're pregnant, look at your life, look at your marriage, look at who you are. I felt him just in awe and getting to have every experience that he couldn't but wanted to so badly, and getting to have it free of shame and free of fear, and I felt I felt him like instantly meet the baby. The baby was like laughing at me, like you think I don't know your dad, like just this, and you know, yes, it's intense to have something like that happen while being pregnant, but it happened while I was pregnant. For a reason.

Pilar: 1:56:53

I have grieved my dad and our relationship a thousand times in the last 10 years and even before that, I think I started grieving my dad young, and so it's still surreal and it's still momentous and there is still grief. It's still surreal and it's still momentous and there is still grief. But my, the deaths I've experienced prior to this um, that I was cognizant of is part of what you're grieving is the loss of the physical relationship you're grieving. I can't talk to you like I used to, I can't pick up the phone, I can't see you like I used to, and that is exactly what I've spent the last 10 years grieving around my dad is like you're, I miss who you were when I was a kid. I miss our relationship, I miss you being present. I like I, I miss all that and you can't give that anymore.

Pilar: 1:57:50

And so when he died, it was like.

Pilar: 1:57:55

It was just like freedom, like relief, freedom, like ecstatic I felt. I felt an aspect of my mom just waiting for him. Oh yeah, and that was the first thing I said to Chris and Kara. I was like he's finally with my mom again and like the dad I knew. I only knew him without her and so I only knew him missing the love of his life and I just he died exactly 30 years after her, exactly 30 years after her. So it was like this it was like 30 years without her and then finally with her again, in a way, died and it's like everything pulled back and it was just your mom, your dad and you again and the baby and like that's what was? That's what was there, what was there?

Pilar: 1:59:33

And and even in like really weird logistical ways, like I didn't ask for this, but his ashes are going to me and I knew instantly I'm taking them to my mom's grave, like and and that will be the baby's first trip wow is me, chris and the baby will go to my mom's grave and spread his ashes.

Pilar: 1:59:58

Yeah, I'm so it's. I've been working on it with my teachers and I was I was with one of my teachers and she I said now it's like I've been making my way towards this awareness and now that he's gone, it's, it's sealing of. There was so much to process and transform while my dad was alive, so much and then in his death, of course, there's been new waves and my dad gave absolutely everything he had to me. He gave absolutely everything he had and, regardless of there's could be infinite perceptions around that and there is in our family there's lots of perceptions, but I just felt so clearly that was his absolute best and that is good wow, I'm receiving some you saying that, thank you you're welcome yeah, I just need a second to see what wants to come now.

Ellie: 2:01:34

Did you know that Melina had that same thing with me? Where? No, yeah. So the summer after my mom died our relationship started to deepen. We were already good friends but we were like, once a month we'd have really long phone conversations and the very beginning of them I would just be laying in the park under a tree like I don't know what is life, what is happening, like I was in the it was maybe three months after she died just like so much was stripping, had been stripped away and just in the, in the pullback of the wave of, you so beautifully explained it and I would just be in the park laying there and just talking about it and she'd listen and then just say I don't know why, but I know I'm going to need you someday and I this was a couple of years before her mom was diagnosed the first time and I was like I hate that and also yeah, and I will be here, and also feeling that I trust you and what you're saying, like if you feel that I don't, I'm not going to talk you out of, I'm not going to talk you out of that, but that's really powerful to hear you then like pulling that, and I think it's such a gift to just let it be recorded and to whomever the like one of these things you would never wish on anyone.

Ellie: 2:03:20

And at the same time, it's like if you need to receive this somehow, this is the best way to do it and this is a pure just offering. That is not even intended, but here it is and it's really special to have heard you share that here and to like, just like, let the lineage of whatever that is continue with whomever, whether we know them or not can I add something to what I share that feels really important for other people to hear?

Pilar: 2:03:56

that, I know, is not an not an isolated experience. I I think we we are in some ways born with the fear that our parents will die and obviously everyone has wildly different relationships to their parents and I spent a lot of my childhood absorbed in this. There was this existential aloneness I was afraid of and I used to cry myself to sleep and I used to go when my Nona's gone and my dad is gone, I will be completely alone and I will not be okay and it was like a terror I felt. And I've been talking to people and everyone has kind of reflected to me that I've talked to. They have their own version of who will I be when my parents are gone, what will happen to me. And I've even talked to people who said I used to cry myself to sleep, thinking about when my parents would die or when my mom or my dad, whoever they were really close with.

Pilar: 2:05:13

And it's also funny because I as a child, everything I liked media-wise was about orphans. So like Matilda, annie and Anastasia were like my three favorite movies and I was already very much identified with the orphan archetype, like very, very young and anyway, obviously, when I was little was a very long time ago ago, and so when, when my Nona died in 2022, that was its own and her, her death. She was 90. She died on my 30th birthday. It was. We couldn't have planned it better, her and I. It was, it was, it was and she was so complete, her life was so full. And when she died, I was like my aunt and uncle called me and I wasn't expecting this and they reflected to me what I knew and they said she let go because she finally trusted you were okay without her. And I remember feeling that and feeling that little girl who was terrified of being alone is gone. And she understands that and I understand that. And when my dad died, there was this like okay, it's happened. The thing little, you was most terrified of your, your three main people are gone your, your mom, your dad and your Nona and my groggy too, that everyone's gone.

Pilar: 2:07:04

And a part of me looked for that, that terror of aloneness. Like, okay, here it comes. And and like it was like 5% of me tried to backslide into like is it? Is it going to come? Am I going to feel that way and I have never felt more surrounded and together with people than I have now. I have never felt less alone, and it's not just that I have community, it's also the ancestors. It's something I've been working on with my teachers, where we work on, like you know.

Pilar: 2:07:48

This is a deep energy in your system you can start to let go of, and it was to get to experience I feel like you understand this so deeply to get to meet yourself on the other side of your deepest, deepest fear that kept you up at night. To get to meet that version of you and recognize you're not just okay, you are more alive than you've ever been. It's like you said you wouldn't wish the death of a parent on anyone, and when you walk through initiations like this, you also you wish the what comes on anyone who wants it. You know what I mean. Like it's it's the one time I heard this woman say congratulations for your pain, say congratulations for your pain, yeah, and it's been horrible but perfect to, to, to meet this version of me while pregnant, to feel my child, like we got this, like you are not alone.

Ellie: 2:09:09

It that is so old yeah yeah yeah, one thing that I lived with consciously that I didn't understand for decades was and I think I had and you, because your mom wasn't physically there anymore but there's like this gift and also this also really strange aspect I don't even know what to call it of the awareness of death so early on, where it's unconsciously always there, like I. I agree with you that there's this awareness that they could go in any moment. But then to have this moment of a diagnosis where my hyper vigilance to okay, this could happen at any moment now like this is this is not only just a ethereal possibility, this is on a platter of possibility in front of us, and then to live with that and so much of that for me activated. There's so many intertwined pieces of it that it's not even the right moment to go into them because they would take a long time. But the moment that my mom died and in the subsequent months, my experience of I thought I was going to die too if she died and I didn't realize that was going to die too if she died and I didn't realize that. I didn't realize that so much of my protection, my desire to protect and keep her alive and control all of that destiny, which is uncontrollable, is also the deep fear that was in me that I would no longer be as well. And yet I am, and I'm not right, and I am so much more alive than ever before and at the same time, the that was a huge process for me, I guess is the best way to say it.

Ellie: 2:11:30

It was wait, I didn't die. So now what? Like what happens now? Yes, there's the grieving of her and our relationship and all of these things that didn't didn't get to happen, that you know, I continue to live in those atom bomb waves that come.

Ellie: 2:11:47

But then this like kind of dumbfoundedness in my system of like, wait, you're alive, wait what? And how beautiful to hear you be in a place where not only the presence of your child, but also to be in a place with yourself where you get to be feeling that already and to be swimming in that and exploring it. And I guess that's what the transformed by grief journey is, you know, is the willingness to see that and the willingness to live the pain at the same time and the yes to all of it, the yes I am still alive and there's so much here for me, there's so much inside of me and there's so much that once unfolds through me and at the same time, I am not going to push away or back down from any of the ripples that cause me pain in the process, which will probably last the rest of.

Pilar: 2:13:04

To live that in a time and a world where that's not necessarily offered to you and you have to be willing it exists but it's not widely offered and to be to say like I'm going to take my machete and I'm going to carve this space around me and I'm going to be in this process and I'm going to let everyone sit outside of it and have their own responses and reactions to it, but I I'm I'm gifting this to myself.

Ellie: 2:13:50

Yeah, yeah. And to end, maybe, just I love well, soft ending because there might be more, but just the gratitude I have of every time we get to share the multi-dimensionality of this experience and let it defy the understanding of loss and grief and also the willingness to constantly let that change and to know that in one month and five months and five years, if I'm in a different place around that, that's okay. But right now I get to live in the relief and the pain. I get to live in the ecstasy and the pain. I remember hours, less than an hour, my mom died at our childhood home with my dad and my sister and myself and me, and there was actually a nurse there too, and it was so, so funny actually she I don't think I've ever gotten to tell you some of these details, but the nurse came because we needed to move her, like rotate her body to keep bed sores from forming, and it was so hard. It was so hard emotionally, it was so hard physically, like we didn't know what we were doing, we had gone through, it was the middle of a pandemic, and so we ended up being the person giving the morphine and the lorazepam and all of this stuff. And I was to a point where like we should not be doing this, there should be somebody else that knows what they're doing doing this. And so we had had this really horrible night.

Ellie: 2:15:38

Two nights passed and I was just like that's it, we're calling for help. And so we called and we're like we need someone to come shift her because we are afraid it's so painful, there's so many layers of it to think about, like moving your person and in that state, and the nurse came and I don't even remember if she shifted her or not. She called us into the other room to have a conversation about where things were at and basically told us like we getting close and then literally we're sitting in the other room because she didn't want to talk about it in front of my mom. And she moved us into the other room and all of a sudden goes I'm going to go check on Joanne. This is maybe like 20 minutes later and comes in and calls us in and says she's really close to taking her last breath. And we were literally only there for her last like three breaths.

Ellie: 2:16:33

And I was like, of course, mom, you, in your lack of not wanting to be vulnerable and weak in front of anybody else. You waited, first of all to know that there's somebody else to take care of us and to be with us in this process, but also I kept feeling that she's going to die in the middle of the night because, yeah, I was like she doesn't want us to be watching her, like she wants us with her, but she doesn't want us watching her. And my sister had the same sense and we both, you know, it was just so wild. Anyways, why did I start saying all of that?

Ellie: 2:17:07

Oh, a couple hours later, I needed to go pick up my dad's dog, who was being boarded, so that we could bring her home to smell her before they came to attend to my mom's body, and it was maybe a 15 minute drive and I was rocking out to music in the car and one of my best friends called me and I was like I don't know, I'm just, it's like such a relief and there's all this stuff.

Ellie: 2:17:35

And for weeks I had this energy and of I'm not relieved that my mom isn't here, but I am relieved that the suffering is no longer and the weight of the blanket that that was over our life and over my life and that existed for so long that didn't allow what we all wanted.

Ellie: 2:17:56

It's like thank god, thank god that that is gone and with time there's other processes to live with it. But in that period you said I don't know if you said this right now or you said it earlier, but you said it grieved him in anticipation for so long. And when the physical body is so burdened and the fight has been so long, that's something we it's so complex and we don't get to see or talk about it, and a lot of people don't die when their kids are in their 30s, and so it's also like a different experience to live it later on in your life. But yeah, I don't even know how to conclude what I want to say. There's just this deep importance of being able to share about it and to be able to invite in the full spectrum of the experience, and only in that full spectrum do we get to tap into the heart of what's really happening.

Pilar: 2:19:04

Yes, I love that story. I can sense her personality as Joanne, the way she left yeah, she didn't want that. She didn't want to. All of you there for a whole thing.

Pilar: 2:19:43

Yeah, about this is funny because you're so you've, you're so separate from all of this. It's like not in your space at all, um, but the way it it, especially being pregnant the way we're so conditioned to be obsessed with life and so avoidant of death when they're actually it's so funny, even like the way your mom, when you described it, finally released and the ecstasy I imagine when you give birth and there's there's a release of it is here. Now it is out of me. There's an ecstasy of, of like, and it's here just like. There's an ecstasy of when someone lets go and and we're the the mass overlay of death is it's just horrible, it's just horribleness, that's like.

Pilar: 2:20:54

The main thing I see is it's, it's, it's both. It's, it's horrible and it it kicks up for most people what they think they would experience or what they have, and it's often one of those two. It's what I have or what I think I would if this were happening to me, when, exactly like you said, if you don't take that on and you're just there. It's, it's everything, Everything is within it, and it's it's I think of. Have you read Martine Prechtel? The Smell of Rain on Dust?

Ellie: 2:21:45

No.

Pilar: 2:21:46

Oh my gosh, it's like my favorite book on grief. It's, it's I think it. The subtext is like on grief and praise and it's. He lived with an indigenous in how they related to death and grief, experience that there there was grief and ecstasy, and grief and praise, and like loss and celebration became one in the same. For the, for the tribe and the, the main thing they did that was like one of my huge takeaways is the moment of death. They all, they all stopped their lives together and just created space for the, the whole experience, and they didn't go back to their lives until there was a point of completion for everyone. Wow, which we can't do in the same way, but we can in our own way. Yeah, like you can be in the car going to pick up the dog, blasting music, just so alive in the process.

Ellie: 2:23:22

Yeah, three things came to mind and then I'll let you say anything you want to say to end, but one is here we are circling back to wide, open presence and the gift that we have both received in our own ways and lived very differently of having enough pulled away and being willing enough to release over and over and over again, to make space for that presence when it's time. And I feel like we, we and many people we know, and just this generation of sensitive people, intuitives like this chance transformational workers I don't know what to call us or beings it's just like opening that possibility in the collective, because the preparation, that is, the preparation that allows you to live, and not everybody gets that and it's not needed to be able to live the moment, like that atom bomb will offer you what you need if you are willing. You know whether you are prepared or not.

Ellie: 2:24:39

And yet, similar to that moment with my mom, and then similar to pregnancy, looking back and be like, oh, everything's been leading to here, and then now, knowing that like, yeah, I, and now I'm totally different than I was four and a half years ago when that moment happened with my mom, but here I am again in that process, with her being prepared into motherhood and everything's leading to here, and then knowing that that kind of string is going to be, there's going to be another tack on the map where that string is going to be extended over time. But so much of it has come down to, for me, the reflection of the willingness to be with what's there and then allow the clearing, the cleansing, the letting go whatever the word is that resonates and is true for you, and sometimes it feels pretty violent and fucking sucks, but you know it's not fun. But there's so much there and so much um, such a deep gift in that, and I was just thinking about that while you were talking.

Ellie: 2:25:55

And then the last thing I wanted to say was I love that you married that moment of that ecstasy, of like releasing back to birth, because recently I've been thinking a lot about how, having lived, walked somebody to that death portal and knowing that death portal so intimate I've actually done that with multiple people. Now, as I'm starting to think about the physical, psychic, mental, emotional aspects of preparing for birth and I have like, oh, this is circling in my energy field, is this awareness of the marriage that I've had of life and death right here together in the circle, and how willing am I and how trusting am I to walk up to that threshold? Again, I don't have a choice. I'm going no matter what, but how open can I be in approaching that without the fear of being swept away by it?

Pilar: 2:27:07

Just like that.

Ellie: 2:27:09

Yeah it, and of course many parts of me will be swept away by it. But that my body, that my aliveness, that my vitality is not going to be. It's pretty wild to walk into that moment with that awareness. It's something I think I'll probably be talking about for a long time and yet haven't experienced yet. So I don't have anything else to say on it yet. But anything come up for you that you want to share on that.

Pilar: 2:27:45

Or to conclude with it's just beautiful, it's I, I it's just like you. I have no idea because I haven't experienced it, but my sense is just like you. The intimacy I've had with death has most likely been some of the best preparation. And everyone I know a lot of women who they're like birth death workers. So they're at a lot of births and they're at a lot of deaths and the resounding thing they all say is they are not that different. Yep, yeah, they're, they're. They're oddly and eerily similar. Yeah, and I'm so glad I incarnated as a woman in this lifetime. I just I know I've been a man before, I know I've been a woman before, but I, it's so cool.

Ellie: 2:29:23

Yeah, it really is, yeah when I have friends. When I asked her yeah, it really is, yeah, when I have friends. When I asked her if she wanted to guess the sex of the baby before I told her she goes, it's a girl. Because you are so overflowing with feminine energy that can't not be shared into another human and I was like, wow, I've never thought about them hit that way, but I felt so touched, as somebody that doesn't necessarily speak in those terms very often, but I was like, wow, yeah, I wouldn't have it any other way for now and there will be other ways. There will be other ways later on, but that was pretty cool. Yeah, thank you for being here. Let's take a second to check in if there's anything that feels incomplete or needs more space.

Pilar: 2:30:33

I feel great, me too. Yeah, I feel like a beautiful ripeness.

Ellie: 2:30:44

I love that, thank you, I love that. Thank you, I love you. This is really special and I feel like there We'll get to journey back and reconnect on these things for years to come. And what a gift.

Ellie: 2:31:02

I love you too, thank you for listening to transformed by grief. Please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe to the show and to share it with a loved one that needs this medicine today. If you are ready to deepen into your own transformed by grief process, you can join the sanctuary membership or work with me one-on-one at eliflocom. See you soon.

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Episode Music credit:
Embrace by Sappheiros | https://soundcloud.com/sappheirosmusic
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Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Ep #29. Welcoming the Totality of YOU into the Totality of Life: A Raw Transmission to Kick Off 2025 {Podcast}

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Full Episode Show Notes

This episode invites you to embrace your grief and recognize it as a pathway to uncovering your total Self. We discuss the balance between masculine and feminine energies, the significance of community support in the healing journey, and the importance of allowing all parts of oneself to be welcomed and expressed.

• Transformational grief journey and personal exploration 
• Importance of acknowledging grief as a messenger 
• Balancing overdeveloped masculine and underdeveloped feminine traits 
• The need for community support and safe spaces in healing 
• Saying "yes" to life and rediscovering your truth and vibrant life through grief 

If you are ready to dive deeper: 

 Book Your First 1:1 Session here

Join The Sanctuary Membership here.

Join the next community grief event.

Join my newsletter
Find me on instagram

I would love to hear what arises for you as you listen, and anything specific you'd like to hear on the show. Shoot me a note via email (hello@ellieflow.com), or respond to the episode directly via the feature on your podcast app. 

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Episode Music credit:
Embrace by Sappheiros | https://soundcloud.com/sappheirosmusic
Music promoted on https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Ep #28. Tea Ceremony, Slowing Down to Connect with Grief, and the Importance of Sacred and Ceremonial Spaces for Healing After Loss with Melina Charis {Podcast}

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Full Episode Show Notes

Join me in this episode as I chat with my dear friend Melina Charis, as we share our personal stories of losing our mothers and the profound impact it has had on our lives. Together, we created Sacred Ground, a virtual community event featuring a guided tea ceremony and embodied movement practice, designed to provide a sacred space for reflection, healing, and connection.

Grief isn't a neatly organized series of steps; it is a deeply personal, non-linear experience. In our conversation, we challenge societal misconceptions about grief and explore its unpredictable nature. By sharing our own experiences, we highlight the importance of allowing emotions to flow naturally, embracing the full spectrum of feelings from joy to sadness. Through rituals like tea ceremonies, we can create intentional spaces to honor these emotions, providing a sanctuary for self-awareness and growth. Listen as we discuss how these sacred spaces can guide us toward a richer understanding of life and help us stay connected to our true selves.

In this heartfelt episode, we invite you to explore the depth of your own grief journey, recognizing it as a sacred part of life. Through personal anecdotes and insightful discussions, we emphasize the transformative power of being truly present with your emotions. Whether through Sacred Ground or other supportive environments, we encourage you to find the courage to embrace the sacred space of grief, honoring its role in your life and allowing it to guide you toward healing and new beginnings.

If you are ready to dive deeper: 

 Book Your First 1:1 Session here

Join The Sanctuary Membership here.

Join the next community grief event.

Join my newsletter
Find me on instagram

I would love to hear what arises for you as you listen, and anything specific you'd like to hear on the show. Shoot me a note via email (hello@ellieflow.com), or respond to the episode directly via the feature on your podcast app. 

Transcript

Ellie: 0:03

Welcome to Transformed by Grief. My name is Ellie Thomas and I am here to guide you on your transformational grief journey From feeling lost, raw and brokenhearted, questioning everything in you and around you, to reconnecting to the truth of who you are and the beauty, fulfillment and vibrancy of life that is still available in you and through you. On this podcast, we explore the depths of what it means to say yes to life again after you've been broken open by pain and grief. We will explore what it means to create a deep, loving and reverent relationship to yourself, to grief and to life in a way that allows you to begin to rebuild from the inside out and to create a powerful foundation for a joy-filled, alive feeling and fulfilling life you love. Welcome back to Transformed by Grief. I'm happy to bring you an interview slash more like a conversation, I guess, but an interview conversation with one of my best friends, melina.

Ellie: 1:10

Charis and Melina and I are coming together. We're bringing our beautiful, powerful work and containers together to bring a new community grief event to life, and this event is called Sacred Ground and it's happening on November 17th and you can sign up now. I'll leave the link in the show notes for everything. And so we wanted to have a conversation about bringing kind of our journeys together. Bringing kind of our journeys together and I interview her about what transformed by grief means to her right now. She shares some of her story and then we really get into talking about the power and the importance of different aspects of finding presence and coming into the body and exploring and connecting with grief beyond words, beyond mental and intellectual exploration, and we talk about the event a little bit more at the end.

Ellie: 2:17

But I want to give you some details here. Sacred Ground is a ceremony for grief and growth and the beginning portion of it will be a guided tea ceremony. It's all virtual, so you'll be doing this from your home. Melina will be guiding us on zoom for the tea ceremony and then I'll lead us in a longer invitation of connecting to what's present emotionally and with our grief, and into a embodied, intuitive movement practice that will help you process and feel and begin to tap into greater nuggets of wisdom or greater release really whatever is there for you and then we'll close with space where you can ask questions or we'll have a circle to really witness each other and offer you space to share what your experience was and receive anything that you would like to receive, and I just wrote a really powerful newsletter a couple days ago about how incredibly powerful and life-changing the openings are when we come together to let our grief be shared in community and when we allow ourselves to be seen and witnessed in our grief fully. This opens the doors to the tremendous medicine of being actually truly seen and known for, potentially the first time in our lives, I know the first time I was witnessed in my grief by people that got it, by people that knew how to hold space for it. It totally transformed my life and my work really and gave me access to this feeling that all of me can be present here and I am loved and seen and respected and held in my highest, and my wounds can be here too. There is no pity that's alive here. It's just a total process of revering and honoring everything that we've walked through to get here and being held up in the truth and potential of your heart and the greater parts of you, beyond just your pain or just the world's understanding of who you are.

Ellie: 4:29

So we would love to have you join us for Sacred Ground on November 17th at 1 pm Eastern, 10 am Pacific. All you need to have with you is some tea or herbs. It's all on the registration part A safe space to move, to be. Still, we're going to play some music, so you might want headphones. You're going to want comfy clothes. This is going to be like a one and a half hour retreat that you get to kind of check into and move into a space of softness, move into a space of slowing down, move into a space of silence and really honor and allow whatever is there to come up. So we can't wait and we hope to see you there.

Ellie: 5:15

Let me just read Melina's bio so you have some background on her before I share our conversation. Melina Cheris is a mother, ceremonialist and guide for those walking in the intense initiations and transitions of life. She is a giver, a void walker, a space holder, a bridge. She is fiercely devoted to the wisdom of her body and the initiatory path of grief, death and sacred creation. She has 10 plus years of experience with transformative embodiment practices and she's here to hold you deeply and fully through your own initiations, to guide you through your dark nights of the soul as you remember, and find the light within. You can visit her website at wwwmelianacheriscom and connect with her on Instagram at Melina Cheris. Here is our beautiful conversation on grief and being transformed by grief. Thank you. Nobody knows this probably, but you gifted me the name of this podcast, so it feels very appropriate to welcome you here, thank you, thank you, such a gift such a gift to be here.

Melina: 6:59

Yeah, I got. Yeah, I got so excited when you said the name. It feels so. You and, as I said to you, I gifted you the name, but I really thought you had already come up with it. My energy had, and you read it back to me exactly so so it's so beautiful to be a part of the yeah, the new evolution of your beautiful work and magic and sharing your voice thank you.

Ellie: 7:40

So melina and I have been friends for four and a half years. We've been very good friends for about progressively, for the last four years and in these past four years both of our moms have died and we've sat with them in their last breaths, have died and we've sat with them in their last breaths and, as the people that listen here know, mom died almost four years ago, a little less three, yeah, almost it'll be four in February, which is wild yeah and your mom died this past June.

Ellie: 8:20

yep, um, and you also had a baby in the past year, and two years ago mom was diagnosed with cancer, and that's when, well, you had really accompanied me in all parts of my grief journey, truly, but, and we deepened our friendship in that.

Ellie: 8:49

I think our friendship went to a whole nother level when you experienced your mom's illness for the first time yeah and we've been able to just turn toward each other over and over and over again with more and more depths for the past many years. And now we walk with the tremendous gift of sharing our grief together and welcoming others into spaces where the raw aliveness of their grief lives and allowing that to like I'm almost seeing like literally the rawness of a beating heart, like connect, that place where grief pulses right along with our heart, and allowing ourselves and others to to tend that and to experience that and to be transformed by it. So I think I'd like to start with just what, when you sit with the energy of, transformed by grief for you, what that looks like and feels like right now. Now, hmm, you.

Melina: 10:29

Yeah, I think it's so devastating to me that in our we've largely lost the art of being with our grief and a very unfortunate part of that process is that a lot of people don't know what to say. A lot of people drop off, a lot of people say weird things. People just don't know. Don't know, they were not taught or shown most people, how to be with their own grief, how to be with someone who is grieving, and that is another layer of grief. When you are in that, whatever your grief is, but specifically with the illness of a loved one, the death of a loved one, there's another layer that the griever has to be with, of other people, not in our society as a whole, expecting grief to be linear, you know, as time goes on, expecting you to just like really actually glorifying, quickly going back to work, quickly quote unquote being moving on Moving forward.

Melina: 12:16

Yeah, like moving on, as if we could ever do that Um. So to really tend to our grief in a way, an ongoing way for the rest of our lives, and to be willing to tend to all of our grief, um is an art. It is a lost art and it is one that for the aliveness, for the to really feel the full spectrum of life, to really feel our full joy, our full aliveness, we have to be able to meet the depths of our grief regularly. You know, you and I have talked about this, but it's often these cataclysmic events that I just wrote a piece on how I was.

Melina: 13:15

As you mentioned, my mom was diagnosed with cancer two years ago and it ripped me open in so many ways and a lot of people. It was like stage two, you know, stage one, and nobody could really understand in my life why it ripped me open. So, except you, like you understood, and that's why you were a safe place for me, because everyone else, literally almost everyone else in my life was like everyone else, literally almost everyone else in my life was like she's going to be fine, it's cool, it's all good, like you know, like why is this affecting you so much? And in that moment my life completely changed, obviously with her death as well, but that was really the moment of receiving that text from her that they found cancer, which in my body and heart I already knew the truth of and I think somewhere I also knew the truth of her life was going to be connected with my tears in this way. You have really walked this before and shown me along with other people, but really you're such a beautiful begin to me of like just and, and everyone who I really admire is able to just feel their tears in this way and to like, when the tears come, we don't apologize, we we let them go.

Melina: 15:16

And this was not always how I was. I would push them away, I would apologize. I was not this open, I would apologize. I would. I was not this open, I was not this connected to my sadness, to my grief, to my aliveness. Ultimately, and I'm like anytime I feel the tears this way and I allow them to be here, I'm so grateful to to be moved by life and be like really fully in touch with what I'm saying.

Melina: 16:02

I'm talking about the death of my mother, I'm talking about this intense journey that I walk and as I, you know, just wrote this piece for a long time. I thought, oh, two years ago, when my mom was diagnosed, that was my first experience of grief. And no, I realized no, no, no, no. We all walk with grief through all of our lives Grief of leaving childhood, grief of the parents we didn't get, grief of dreams not followed or relationships that needed to end. But you know just so much, there's grief, we all walk with it. And just because we pretend it's not there doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Melina: 17:06

And so that moment was not my first experience of grief, but it was the first moment I could no longer look away from my grief. It was in my face and it's like, yeah, she was diagnosed, she had surgery. And it was like, yeah, she was diagnosed, she had surgery. And it was like, okay, she's okay. And so much of me just wanted to go back, like, just take me back before I. You know, this was in my face, the fragility of life, cause it's so hard, it's so painful, it's so much, it's like it's so painful, it's so much, it's like oh. And then, in the early days of raw grief, after just receiving a diagnosis or just a death or a breakup or you know, whatever it is that those early days of raw grief are just so fucking hard, so hard, and of course it's like I don't want to go back to that place. Um, and then when she was re-diagnosed last year, I was like here it is again.

Melina: 18:19

I'm a little bit familiar with it, but here it is. And then, when she died, six months later, again here it is. So, to me, being transformed by grief is just allowing yourself to be transformed by grief, to be changed to, to to acknowledge your grief, to tend it, to be with it, to feel it like as it moves, to just to not apologize, to not stop the tears, to not you know. And grief isn't just about sadness, as we both know. It's so much more than that. It's so deep and rich and and it's it's so much, it's so much it's like.

Melina: 19:12

The more I learn about and embody and experience grief, the more I'm like I don't really know what it is. It's so big, I can't. I can't put it into words, and I think so many people are like grief equals sadness, grief, and I thought that too. I mean, right after my mom died, I was like why am I not laying in the bed crying? I mean, I also had a three-month-old baby, so that was also a big part of this process learning to be a mother at the same time as losing my mother.

Melina: 19:50

But grief wasn't at all what I thought it was going to look like. And I remember, in those intense months of anticipatory grief in the six months before she died, before that, but it really intense in the six months before she died, when we knew her cancer was terminal and she had about six months to live, it was like it could be any moment that you know, I'm pregnant, I'm giving birth, is she going to be here to meet my son? I mean so many layers of it, um, but I remember just being like what is it going to be? Like what is it going to? I don't know what I, what is it going to be? And you were like like what is it going to? I don't know what I, what is it going to be? And you were like I don't know. You were like I have no idea. And it's like I was like I just want somebody to tell me what it's going to be like.

Melina: 20:38

You know, and that's also what's so hard about grief is that it is it is such a individual experience and it can feel so, so lonely, and it is lonely and I think that's a part of it and there's so it's so universal at the same time. I mean it's like we're all going, like I said, we're all living with grief of many things, of the planet, of the environment, of, you know, colonization, like so much, so much grief, patriarchy, like they're endless, and it just does us all, it makes us sick, it does us all such a disservice to stuff it and to not have these rituals and ceremonies, and I am not one of those people. So I knew I needed support groups and spaces after my mom died and I joined a few and quickly realized, oh, I need something deeper than this. Like I am a, you know, ceremonialist, I do, you know I do tea ceremony. I am like I work with my body, I like to move and dance and cry and write and channel. And you know I needed, I just needed deeper spaces. Like I love these spaces to talk about our grief are so beautiful and important. And I was like I need something deeper than this. Like I love these spaces to talk about our grief are so beautiful and important. And I was like I need something deeper than this, like I need a space to just feel. And I think that's something that's so beautiful about tea ceremony, which is one of my practices that I have been practicing for almost four years, um, and serving others now for a couple years a year and a half maybe. And one thing people say when they come to tea ceremony with me is wow, I just I just heard this from somebody the other day who came like who is in a deep grief process and she was like the other day who came like who is in a deep grief process and she was like I've been talking about my grief non-stop.

Melina: 23:08

I've been talking, talking, talking. I just need a, I just needed a space to feel and cry and that, and I'm so glad for this space and I have needed spaces like that as well. I had, you know, I have a like regular therapist and that's beautiful. And I talked to you and you are so great at also talking and holding deep space and we kind of we weave in and out of that, which is so incredible, like in some of our conversations, as you supported me so beautifully through my grief journey, I mean we weaved between talking to sobbing, to praying, to meditating, to breathing, to silence, to more talking. You know, beautifully, just weaving all of these, because you know that's the other thing is like talking is so beautiful and important and we need crying, we need yelling, we need laughing, we need music, we need dancing, we need you know, all of these things too, and grief is going to tell you what it means if you're open to listen.

Melina: 24:13

So I really needed in my grief just a lot of different spaces, and I needed also just spaces to just drop into my body and just feel, and sometimes it was crying, and sometimes it was joy and peace, strangely, and sometimes it was stillness, and sometimes it was just that beautiful sense of like I am being held.

Melina: 24:44

I'm, you know, when I was holding so much try tending to a newborn, losing my mom, my, you know, dealing with my marriage, dealing with the family dynamics and every everyone else's grief and everything that shifts when someone you love dies, and, um, I needed, I just needed to be held by somebody who had the capacity to hold that and wasn't going to turn away and wasn't afraid and wasn't going to think I was too much or wasn't going to try to give me platitudes that so many people, which I just heard from a family member who, again, I know, means well, well, but I heard so much and I still hear well, at least your mom got to meet him, at least your mom got to meet your son, wow, and I'm like.

Melina: 25:35

I just said this. I had a family gathering and one of my family members said that to me and I said, yes, and it is still very devastating. It was beautiful and she's not here to see the rest of his life. She's not here. She was here for 11 weeks of his life. She deserved more than that, I deserved more than that, he deserved more than that. So both of those things can be true.

Ellie: 26:00

Yeah, yeah, when you allow the tears and and this is a you to Melina, you and you to the global, you, well, you just so beautifully shared that with us.

Ellie: 26:18

I was just sitting with you as you let the tears come right now.

Ellie: 26:44

The tears come right now and there is this moment where, when we allow ourselves to go beyond the words of grief and we feel it in our bodies, whether it's coming up as tears, as groans, as yells, as physical movement or some kind of creative thing, however it wants to come, it's like the greatest.

Ellie: 26:54

What the words that are coming is equalizer of life. Like everything that feels distant all of a sudden feels close and everything that feels topsy-turvy all of a sudden comes even. It's like this opening into living, into the current of life, in that moment, so deeply and so connected, and in that there's movement that happens in our being, there's healing that happens in our being, there's cultivation, there's growth, there's all of these things. Not trying to approach grief, to get to those things, but allowing grief to be our doorway into these things. And so, sitting with you now, as you were letting the tears come out, I just wanted to say to the people listening that can you feel that, can you feel just this? It's so, it's so interesting. It's just like grief it's hard to put words to.

Ellie: 28:08

It's like this stillness that is not flat yeah, yeah, it's not empty, it's very full yeah, it's so luscious, it's so um, almost voluptuous in its form, like overflowing out, and it's deeply painful, and also so much more is there.

Melina: 28:41

Yeah.

Ellie: 28:42

And so I love that you just shared us with that, or shared that with us in that way, and I love this idea of you know you and I met in a spiritual based group. We're not entry-level spiritual people. We've been engaging in the depths and explorations of spiritual life for many years. We've shared that, and so for you arriving to grief maybe you hadn't engaged with grief in the way that you began to when your mom was diagnosed, but you were beyond the entry level of that exploration, and so I also love to speak to that, because that in and of itself can be extra lonely a little bit.

Ellie: 29:39

Our society operating in a and I don't mean to say that these things are entry level because I think that so much has grown from them. But when there is a culture of a lot of interconnection, spiritual connection and inner evolutionary work that's already been there, and then grief arises or meets our world, it can feel like what do we turn to and where do we turn to now? Yeah, and you and I have had each other to know what the power of letting all of that alive together feels like, like I don't need to let go. I might question everything that I've ever explored before I might change, I might not want to engage in these same things, and yet I can let all of these questions, all of these doubts, all of these recalibrations, these spinning of these questions, all of these doubts, all of these recalibrations, these spinning of my lens, this turn of my lens, be here at the same time as all of these other things.

Ellie: 30:54

And in order for all of that to be present, I think that usually there's like a process on the other side for somebody holding space. They've needed to go through their own journey with that. Maybe it wasn't through death and grief, Maybe it was through something else. But yeah, yeah, there's, there's this well of, there's this well underneath the um, the grief work that we know in the world, that's, it's ripe and ready to hold people at whatever level they're coming in at, or and I don't mean level in a hierarchical way, it's like level they're coming in at, or and I don't mean level in a hierarchical way it's like, however, you're connecting, but you are, it's ready process, yeah, in your journey yeah, it's ready to hold people as you float and let the water carry you.

Ellie: 31:55

Yeah, and I love how beautifully your story speaks to that.

Melina: 32:00

Yeah, notice how, in the moving with the tears, a couple things there's and you mentioned it too like there's the speaking about the grief which is so important, the process to write right, all of these things, and then there's the bodily experience of grief, and I think we're in our culture, we're getting more into oh yeah, the body is important, like we're. So you know in the mind about a lot of things, and grief too, and that's a beautiful starting place. Um, you know, talk therapy and talking with friends and all of that is so important and, and I think what people are starting to wake up to more and desire is spaces to drop it, the deeper layers that live in the body, um, and there's no, yeah, there's, there's absolutely no rush for that. I mean, I think, with my own grief, like you, yeah, it's not. Like you know, for me, I think, which you will remember from my grief process right after losing my mom, I was like I couldn't cry a lot, which was very strange for me. I mean, most of my life I intellectualized my pain and I was told by so many therapists After it was like the third or fourth therapist or coach or healer I was working with who was like you're talking about your sadness but you're not feeling it, which would annoy me so much. I was like, no, I am, because I understand it, like I love understanding and analyzing, so that's like my safe zone and I'm I'm really like it.

Melina: 33:54

Just I'm so, as I mentioned earlier, like I'm so grateful that I am now so much more in touch with actually feeling things, and that's not to say I'm perfect at it whatsoever. However, I know the importance of to stay open to all of life, to my vibrancy, to creations, to all of it in an organic way. That's not let me just do my gratitude, you know, in an organic way. Let me just do my gratitude, you know, in an organic way. It just requires this relationship with pain and sorrow and grief. That is open and it's not. And it's not a forced rush thing, because for me, the other side of this can be like when she first died, I was in shock, even though I knew, because that's the other thing people love to say to me. I just had someone say this Well, but it's easier because you knew, you know, you knew you had six months.

Ellie: 34:52

That's another thing I hear you know, I could talk about that for a long time.

Melina: 34:56

That's another thing that people think and it's fine and in some ways, sure, like, yes, I, it was beautiful that we had this time, that I had time to start processing, and it's it is different than losing someone suddenly and it's still, they're still dead, you know, and um, it's just so anyway, I mean, I could go on about that, but oh, I lost my train of thought. What was I saying?

Ellie: 35:24

you were saying that. Someone just said to you that it would be easier, and I'm just caught on the word easier. I just want to invite anybody, if anyone ever said anything is easier to you about your grief easier doesn't really exist in the vocabulary of loss and grief, or even pain I just want to invite that in. First you were speaking to that. It was hard to connect with your body.

Melina: 35:45

Yeah it was so now being in my spiritual journey and all of this stuff, just really for me, it's been a journey of returning to my sadness and allowing that, and allowing my anger and allowing these quote unquote negative emotions.

Melina: 36:03

I hate that we call them that, because they're just emotions and we're, we're all, and it's not to like, like we're not trying to heal our way out of them. We're actually trying to meet them more deeply, so that we're not like, oh my God, this is completely overtaking me like or breaking me or whatever. And of course, those moments are beautiful too, and a lot of us have those, I've had those. But it's like can we build relationships? Tending the garden is coming back. Can we build relationships? Can we tend to these emotions? Can we allow them to move?

Melina: 36:37

You said something beautiful about moving with it and, as you, you know, you all felt and heard when I was moved. There's a natural pause. It's just like a, a pause and a and allowing myself to really feel that wave, rather than explaining it or saying I'm so sorry or rushing through it, and that's hard in spaces where that's not always the norm or that's not always welcomed. I have been in spaces like that, where it's really brave, and I also wanted to say that if you're not there, that's okay. Like there's no, like oh, I'm crying. So this like great, you know it's, that's not. You know, because I was in shock for a while and again, even though I knew I'm putting this in air quotes even though I knew she was going to die, I was still in shock because nothing can prepare you, like, again, the mind cannot prepare you for the embodied experience of a loved one's death, just nothing. So what you knew, and when I was trying to be like, tell me what it's gonna be, you're like you're just gonna have to go through it. And I was like okay, because, yeah, nothing can prepare you. So I remember feeling like, why am I not crying more? You know, I'm in touch with my feelings, what's happening is something wrong. And then just kind of realizing grief cannot be rushed. And the other side of this is like wanting to just rush to get somewhere in my grief, wanting to rush and and for me you know that when my mom died I was 11, 12 weeks postpartum, which is a strange time because most people are kind of coming out of the bubble and wanting to start to see, to see family and friends, which I did, and I had really put my life on hold for a long time for my to tend to my mom and her last months I shut down my business, which was doing really well. I shut it down completely and really publicly and um tended to her and tended, and then tended to my son after he was born, and so when she died, I was really feeling a strange desire to return outwardly to see friends and to.

Melina: 39:16

I attended a concert, you know, and in my mind I was like what, like this is weird, I don't know, you know, and in my mind I was like why, like this is weird, I don't know, I shouldn't be, I should be like crying in the bed and what I thought grief should look like. But, you know, I just really trusted that, because that's what that's where I wanted to go, and I and I did, and and then, after about a month and a half of that, my nervous system was fried and my nervous system was like, okay, we did that and you're attending a new baby, you're, you're, you know, and like I started to like just realize, okay, I'm entering the shock was wearing off. That was, I think, giving me some energy to do these things. And I just heard really clearly and my body was speaking to me. My body, I mean I was exhausted, I mean I wasn't sleeping because of my baby as well. So there was that, but it was, my body was just exhausted and it was like okay, time to rest, okay, time to rest. And I listened and it's funny because so many people were like, wow, it's incredible that you just I just shut everything down.

Melina: 40:33

I had gone back, I had started going back to my business a little bit and I shut it down again, which was really hard because I felt I was like I just came back and now I'm shutting it down again. But I mean, when my body speaks, I listen and I've learned, I've learned over the years to do that even when it's really uncomfortable, and yeah. So I really slowed down again and I, I, I honored that for like six weeks after her death. I needed to just be back out in the world and that was beautiful and that it wasn't at all what I thought that grief would look like. And then I realized, okay, I'm past some of the shock and I am out of the death portal, which, as you know, is an intensely psychedelic experience portal which, as you know, is an intensely psychedelic experience and just so intense, and so I was like coming off of that and coming off of the birth portal that I had been in just weeks prior to that.

Melina: 41:35

So I've been in a lot of portals and my body was just craving rest and to slow down, and I was scared because I knew that meant that the grief would would come up, um, and it did and, and I slowed everything down and I would. I just remember driving around and crying and then, at the same time, I was like, oh, I'm so like. I was like my tears are back, like I felt as I really listened and slowed down. Of course, I was afraid, and I was, I knew, is what I needed to do. And that neck, when I was ready though you know I wasn't ready to do that right after she died, I wasn't and, um, but when my tears kind of came back, I was grateful because I was like, okay, I'm, I can, I have more capacity now that I've slowed, I've taken a lot of things off my plate so that I actually have space and time as much as I could, as a new mother, to just be with some of this. And you know, yeah, it's, it's especially as a new mother.

Melina: 42:50

I mean I remember, like in the, it wasn't that I didn't cry at all, but I was ready, I could feel my body was ready for rest and more space so that I could meet the grief on a deeper layer and I mean I know I will forever, for the rest of my life. You know I have no, luckily. I know that grief is not linear, like I think we really think in this culture like the more time that passes, the more it's quote unquote, easier there it is. I have no illusions of that. I think the grief shifts, of course, as we shift and I think, yeah, there's always new layers. There's always there's just more that we can access and different and that comes up and and just I think the main thing is to, just as much as we can stay, stay open to it.

Melina: 43:53

Um, and I think you mentioned another thing about people that have met this and it's not that the people, the containers that I wanted to be a part of that could really hold me. It's not that anyone was quote unquote over their grief or a master at it. Everyone is in relationship to it. And the people that I really trusted and needed to hold me in my grief, it didn't, it didn't matter if they had had the same circumstances with me or not, you know, or lost the same person or not, or experience whatever, like it wasn't that at all. It was, it was, oh, this, it was a felt energetic sense of this person honors their grief. This person has met their grief. This person makes space for and goes deep with their grief, doesn't push it away, you know, and that's felt. I mean someone does not need to really say anything to me, I can feel it in their energy and those are the spaces that I really needed and, yeah, just like the spaces I really needed to were like that you are so beautiful at. And then the other people I chose to hold me is like there's no judgment at all, even when I needed to avoid my grief, even when I needed to numb it, that's fine, like that. We, it's okay, you know, that's part of it. It's not. Sometimes we can't, you know, sometimes it's like titration and it's different for every person.

Melina: 45:44

But for me, I had just been through such intensity for six months. I had been through the ups and downs, the anxiety of when, when is she gonna die, her, watching her suffer, bringing my son in. I need so much like I'm gonna be processing this year for the rest of my life, so much um, that I could not. I, just right after she died, was not the time and and everyone I was with just trusted my process so deeply and I did have a beautiful mentor, jasmine, reflect to me. And I did have a beautiful mentor, jasmine, reflect to me lovingly. You know, when I was hitting that kind of breaking point in my nervous, I just had a kind of complete breakdown, like six weeks after she died, where a few things were just converging and my body was losing it. I mean, I was, my nervous system was just so fried.

Melina: 46:38

I did have her, in one of our sessions, lovingly reflect to me why are you like? I think she said can you share with me why you're wanting to go back to work? I was so triggered. I was like because I love my work and my clients need me back. And like love my work and my clients need me back. And like you know which I do and it's true, and I was resisting the void, I was like so angry, I was so annoyed, I was like I've been in the void for so fucking long.

Melina: 47:10

I just want to be out. You know I just want to be out and you know you lovingly reflected to me too that I just needed to try it. That is really what I needed. I needed to try to I do some sessions with my clients. I needed to go attend events and it was great until it was not great and it was like, okay, now is the time to. I now have a little bit more space from all this to to rest and to allow more grief to come up, as I will continue doing for the rest of my life. And so it's.

Melina: 47:50

Yeah, it's that beautiful balance of like not non judgment of wherever you are is perfect, and sometimes we do need that loving mirror of like. Your body needs to rest a little bit and it's. You know, I kept, I reflected on it and I was so triggered at first by what she said. I was like she doesn't know anything and and then I realized, yeah, she's right, she's right. And I had so much resistance to going back into the void, into the just letting everything go. I was like I, I've done that so much resistance to going back into the void, into the just letting everything go. I was like I've done that so much, I'm so tired of just letting everything go.

Melina: 48:27

But the void and the liminal space is so fertile and so full of importance and that's another thing in our culture, right Like the winter, when nothing is sprouting or this, you know, where there's nothing that can be seen on the surface, the void, the darkness we're getting back to. Like nature has four seasons and their cycles, and there's times to rest and there's times to to create and and and all of this. And, yeah, I think we just really desperately need to be reminded that those are really sacred spaces too. That and grief is a lot like that of really giving yourself the space when you can, when you're ready to just be in the darkness. You know, as I mentioned, I think, in the beginning, it's like there's so much wanting to rush through, wanting to get back, wanting to, and people will honor you and they'll say, oh, my gosh, you're so strong. So, as you and I have talked about many times, it's brave to be like I'm sad.

Ellie: 49:58

I'm still sad. I'm still sad Not going away.

Melina: 50:02

Correct, it's not going away. And, yes, my mom got to meet my son and it is still extremely sad constantly that she doesn't get to see anything else in the physical. And I mean, even now this is coming through too. Like I think I am talking about spirituality and connection, right, I'm like before she died I was like this is gonna be fine, like I'll just connect with her spiritually and it'll be great, and like I'm so glad I'm a spiritual person. And, yes, and I was so shocked by I couldn't feel her at all after she died. I was just so fucking angry at her for leaving me, for some of the choices that she made, um, and I could not feel her at all and I was like terrified because I was like I was banking on that, like like that, I'm going to really feel her.

Melina: 51:03

And again, in that case, I gave myself space. You know a lot of people like other people in my life, because I am around a lot of spiritual people were, who are connected to her, were like are you, are you, are you connected? Like, oh, my God, I'm, you know, really just kind of this, trying to connect, which I think is, again, totally fine If that's what you are doing beautiful. Um, I was. I just knew there was like this knowing of I need to wait. I don't want to try to force some kind of connection with her and I did feel there were a couple moments in those early weeks when I did still feel that I was so angry I was like I don't even want to be connected to her. Right now I'm angry and I needed to feel that and I needed again in my this container with my mentor, just to scream and pound my fists. My throat was raw, my fists were sore from pounding pillows. I mean, I had so much anger and I needed to move through that. You know, I needed to let that in and that was really scary too. Um, and I needed to just be with everything that was there.

Melina: 52:20

And slowly, over time, I have felt more and more connected with her and I'm still allowed to miss her in the physical. I'm still allowed. You know, there's anger. That's still there. Of course. There's longing, there's sadness. There's longing, there's sadness. There's it's all. It all can exist at once. It, you know it just because I feel connected with her spiritually. It it also exists right alongside the like. Why isn't she here in the physical?

Ellie: 52:55

yeah, there's a lot of pulling apart we can do of all this, but the one thing that's not true. I'm never gonna say just one thing, as everybody listening knows, you included. We had let many great conversations around not comparing what it's like you having really respected the way and admired the way that I had moved with my grief, and both of us but me, me needing to kind of say and I'm, you're going to do it super differently than I did, it's going to be different. And not comparing circumstances and also finding the beautiful overlap of circumstances and how similarities are there. We've had so many incredible conversations around what I call like finding your attuned pace and you doing all of that so beautifully. And attuned pace for me is allowing yourself to connect with what you need where it is now, follow that until it changes and trusting that. That is your way of honoring your grief journey and you did that so beautifully of like, no, I need to be out, I need to go, do these things, I need to see people, I want people to meet a baby and great. Trust that and it will take you right to the next thing. That's maybe that's five years of doing the exact same thing and maybe it is in. Okay, in two weeks I'm going to realize I'm right, I'm in a different space already because, in its non-linearness, these are arcs, constant arcs. They might be baby arcs, they might be lifelong arcs.

Ellie: 54:53

You know, every moment that grief invites us into something, there is a whole storyline that comes along with it, a whole experience of you know, like many lifetimes that get to be lived within it, and so I well. First of all, I love how grief invites us into deeper relationship with ourself, but also how it requires deeper relationship with ourself in order to continue to meet it over and over. And when we talked, I loved how you started using layers. I have used levels Levels is really not the right word for what I was talking about earlier but the sense of layers, of letting the grief work and the grief experience penetrate us on greater layers than just the mind, because the mind, also in our world, ends up being a protector from feeling our grief, because it's been deemed unsafe for so long, it's been deemed vulnerable, weak, whatever. There's thousands of other things that go along with that, and so part of the reason that I believe that you were able to step into, in different places at different times, this, the exploration that you're on and in with grief now, is that you already, through your process, had already been on a journey of developing a deep relationship to yourself. And so as we talk about a journey of developing a deep relationship to yourself, and so as we talk about you know you heard, your body spoke and you listened.

Ellie: 56:29

Some people might not yet have that relationship with themselves, which is fine. And in the grief process you will probably be invited into little nuggets of beginning to listen to and connect to and decide oh, do I want to honor this or not? Am I ready to honor this or not? Do I need help in honoring this or not? Do I have capacity to honor this or not? And this brings me to kind of the sense of ceremonial space and to slowing down and to beginning to cultivate relationship with our pain, or continue to nourish that relationship with our pain over time.

Ellie: 57:05

If we already have cultivated is really in order to listen to those parts of us, in order to offer space to us, we really do need to let our nervous systems land. We do need to feel safe and held. We do need to um spaciousness, because it isn't something. Yes, some people get into you and I both have our own versions of quick intuitive hits or body hits or something, but the very deep messages and knowings that have guided both of us have come from um having just enough space to be able to hear that or feel that. It doesn't mean that it was, you know, six days of silence or anything like that, but I wish yeah, it was just like one hour of somebody holding space for you to step into a little bit slower of a cadence.

Ellie: 58:08

And because grief carries and it's like a symphony of cadences really it's not just like one specific People. When I first lost, my mom talked a lot about, or I would read a lot about this idea of the cadence of grief and in that early grief I really felt like, yeah, it is. There is this kind of downward feeling cadence that I'm being asked to meet and over time I have realized that there's just like the opening cello note to the symphony of your life. You know it ultimately takes on so many different rhythms and this is part of the reason that you have a deep relationship with music, that I love. Music connected to grief work too, because the many notes and the many rhythms and the many beats of music bring that cadence alive in our bodies in a way that we can't always, you know, through the mental world, connect with.

Ellie: 59:13

And so a little bit of holding just I mean I was gonna say a lot of holding just uh, uh, I mean I was going to say a lot of holding is fantastic too, but just a little bit every week is enough to kind of let your system ease into listening to what's there and feeling what's next, and receiving what is here in the moment that's needing to be tended to, that's asking to be tended to, that's asking to be tended to, that's asking to be trusted, so that, whatever the next exploration of this, you know, of this journey is, can have space to, to come up and to move through you, whether that be another expression of grief, whether it be a new idea, whether it be a conversation that needs to be had with, you know, a loved one, in order to feel like you are living your life in the way that you need to be living your life right now. There's a million different expressions of that, and I love one of my favorite conversations. I mean, I don't have a favorite conversation, I love all of our conversations but I specifically remember this moment where you had had maybe it was like in July, it was right before it was right as you were getting in touch with your anger on a new level. And you texted me about a session you'd had with Jasmine and somebody else and that you had sat for tea and somebody else, and that you had sat for tea in like a 24 hour period and I was like whoa it? And then you said I felt the new iteration of my business starting to come through for the first time and I was like, yes, because there was enough space to like, really, and you had had this powerful release of anger. It's like so much release that got to happen while you were so held that then you just like got to receive what was you know, the droplets of the golden liquid, of what would be next Right, and it didn't all come like okay, here, now go do it, melina. It was just like this, it almost like fairy dust sinking into your cells of like, okay, there's something. Yeah, and and I know you've experienced that in body work related stuff too, and I have, I have two in this process, but I, you know, as we offer sacred ground and welcome people to join us in this.

Ellie: 1:01:41

I think it's so powerful to talk about how, ceremony and sacred space, and what do we mean by sacred space? For me you can answer this differently if you want to For me, there is this sense of bringing like intention, um of, and a heartfelt intention that is, that truly sees everything as equal, that sees everything as welcome and that says, yeah, I am here and I am willing to be with what's here and I. I see that there is life in this, even though it feels like death, or even though it is life right now, that there are parts of me that are needing to die to meet it. And in the complexity and completeness of that, that's what I feel is connected to the word sacred. And so, as we carve out these sacred spaces, they nourish and offer us so much in how we can begin to, layer by layer, make space for a different relationship with our pain, where our body actually feels like it's safe in this moment, because I am not alone, I am not judged, I am not going to be overcome, I'm not floating in the ocean by myself. Somebody is on a surfboard holding onto my hand. I am not going to drown here. Okay, I can let even a fraction of my grief or my sadness or my pain be present and like, feel it today. I don't need to go beyond what I'm ready for, but I can say yes, I can say okay to just whatever it is. That's there, and the beautiful thing about this is your system and your body and your energetic and emotional system. In my experience with these things, never it's not like a tidal waves comes over you. If you're ready for just a baby, baby, still ocean, it's just like you. You are met with what you're ready for and what is the perfect layer to be with. Um, to continue like this is.

Ellie: 1:04:05

I've really been talking, wanting to write or talk about how I really despise the terms like we need to move forward or are how are you moving forward or you need to move forward. Like that was something that came up for me a lot in my early grief and something that was I knew that just by living, just by being here, I was moving forward. But this idea of moving forward being so linear, whereas I feel like moving forward is actually round, it's actually this like rolling yeah, it's a spiral. It's actually this like rolling yeah, it's a spiral. It's like this rolling sensation that swell like, folds into itself over and over and over again. And so I don't know how I got on the topic of moving forward, but basically, by just allowing, like, whatever's there to meet you, that is all that's needed to continue the very, whether it be fast or slow that day, the natural momentum of your being and moving forward, and then moving forward and like not leaving grief behind.

Ellie: 1:05:13

But what is this walk with it that I'm going to continue to have, continue to deepen into, continue to deepen into, continue to live and share? I mean, as you were talking about connection with your mom, I don't know that I've told you this, but just in the past week, twice one was in a dream and it was actually at your house. I dreamt that my mom and your mom were at your blessing, or we were at another version of your blessing way, when Melina had her blessing way we weren't sure if her mom was going to be alive at the time and I traveled to California and we made a bunch of food and we had, like, the most incredible day and.

Ellie: 1:06:00

I got to meet your mom, cuddle on the couch with your mom. You and I got to like embrace and tremendous sobs afterwards. It was something I'm sure neither of us will ever forget and I had this kind of dream. I've had a lot of dreams recently and I had this dream of my mom when she was well like, being in your kitchen with your like, being in your kitchen with your mom, being in your kitchen with your mom, and I was talking to my mom about helping me make some food. And then, a couple of days later, my sister just texted me I miss mom. And I said, yeah, me too.

Ellie: 1:06:37

And I just happened to be sitting in the same chair that I'm sitting in now and for the first time, I was able to imagine her knowing my house like as if she were well, walking around my house, as if she knew it like the back of her hand, like she'd been here 5 million times, and hollering up the stairs to me while I was in my office and imagining sitting on the couch with her, which she probably sat on the couch with me 5 million times.

Ellie: 1:07:12

So that's probably why, but this is almost four years of never having imagined her so far in this space and one of the griefs being, when we bought this house, she'll never walking out of our old apartment a couple months after she died, she'll never know. Another home that I'll live in was so beautiful. Because, also, when you've seen someone deteriorate physically over time, it takes a long time to unravel those images and to um be receive the restored images of them and their vibrancy again and their radiance. And so you know, as we move forward, as you so beautifully spoke about like it's, there's this continued deepened relationship with grief that we welcome in, when we welcome in that spiral moving forward, not when we think of moving forward as like well, that happened and now I need to go this way.

Melina: 1:08:26

And something that's so beautiful about just witnessing you on your grief journey that I admire is all those griefs you mentioned, right, I mean that one that you just mentioned, yeah, like the griefs that I never heard anyone. I mean there's the grief of, like, losing this person is no longer here physically, and that's the one that a lot gets a lot of attention. And then there's so many others the changing family dynamics, the exactly what you mentioned, like my mom is not going to be here to see when I move, and that grief and all the little griefs like they're, they're just constantly knocking at the door. Yes, and we have a choice. We can push them away and say, no, not right now, which is valid Sometimes.

Melina: 1:09:21

That's what we need to do. We have I mean, I'm a mom, you know I can't let it all in all the time. I remember in the days after my mom died, like after I put my son to bed, I would just cry. I would just be like, okay, now's my time to cry Like he's in bed Cause I didn't have time, you know, I just couldn't during the day. So sometimes we do need to push it but it, like you said so beautifully, just taking even an hour. It doesn't have to be six days of silence, and for most of us that's not attainable, but just have a desirable.

Melina: 1:09:59

Yeah, and that's why I love ceremony too, because ceremony I think you would ask what sacred space means, and I love what you said about being heartfelt, intentional, and to me it's really honoring our grief. What keeps coming up is like honoring our grief as sacred. It's not something we need to move on from, it's not something we need to escape, it's not something we need to minimize or heal from or it's like no, we need to honor this. This is part of being a human being. This is sacred ground Like this is connecting us with life and and with our hearts and with our purpose and with our, you know, with our joy and our creativity and all of it. And to me, ceremony and dropping into these deep spaces is such a beautiful part of that. I mean you mentioned I've received beautiful visions. I've received so much from those, these kinds of spaces, and I need these spaces. And you know, if you're someone who's, I think, with grief, you and I talk about it's like no-transcript and just just be there, that's it and and and not say a word, like you're met and held, and I totally understand that it can feel scary and that's also why I think these loving containers are so needed, because sometimes you just need someone to hold you and it, when you are starting out, when you are like, where do I even begin with this? And like you and I fully trust that we trust in everyone who joins us that there's you're. You're exactly where you need to be and you're going to experience exactly what you need to experience, whether that's complete stillness, whether that's just a sense of ease and being held, whether that's tears, whether that's an idea it could be so many of these things and there's absolutely zero pressure to be feeling anything or doing anything and there's zero judgment. I think that is, there's zero expectations, and I think that those spaces are, are so needed to just be still to, to listen, as you said, to feel the body, to feel what's here and on the other side of the fear of oh my gosh, is what? If there's this thing that's gonna come and overtake me, which I've totally felt, there's just so much peace and there's so much, just more available when you're willing to be held, when you're willing to take a chance on something that you might be scared to, especially when you know that there's no expectation of anything you need to be feeling, and that's ironically. You know tea ceremony, which is part of our event is, is such a beautiful, has been such a beautiful ally for me and my grief journey.

Melina: 1:13:27

Um, and what I hear from people over and over again is because people come to ceremony and some cry the entire time, some sit in silence, some are like, yeah, I was thinking about my lunch, you know, like I was thinking about going to the farmer's market, like it, there's no expectation, you can, you can. Or sometimes people will say my mind was so active I couldn't really drop in. Or some people will say my mind was so active I couldn't really drop in. Or some people will say, oh, I dropped in the very last bowl. Or you know, I don't know. Like there's zero expectations and I think we just crave, we're craving spaces like that, where you're just, you can just come exactly as you are, but you're held in a really strong container.

Melina: 1:14:09

You know you and I are strong containers and I know that that. I mean, I don't even need to say that. I don't need to say it because it can be felt by everybody listening to this. And yeah, we don't this faces.

Ellie: 1:14:21

The spaces we hold are very multi-dimensional and well, just welcoming to the full being and experience. Did you? What? Were you remembered what you were going to say? Yeah, but then I thought of a note, so bring me back to. I want to talk about tea and my first experience with tea with you, because I I think that that might help kind of this exploration of tea, and I would love for you to talk about that more so.

Ellie: 1:14:47

What I was going to say earlier that I had forgotten was we've also talked a lot and I talked to clients about this a lot of the grief that nobody talks about, about any step in life you're taking and that person just not being there for it, and we talked about this with the houses. But it's really heartbreaking, it's really devastating to be it's its own, you know, its own. One of those instruments in the grief symphony is this devastation that, even though something can be so incredibly beautiful and joyous and good incredibly beautiful and joyous and good that whomever is there, whomever you've lost, is not going to be there with you in it. And I have worked with this with people that have gone through tremendous breakups where, just stepping into, actually they feel more authentically connected and more alive and more excited about their life than they've ever felt before. But they miss that. For even somebody that's still alive, they miss that person so much. Or it's so sad to imagine having a whole, nother life without them. And I know you and I have talked about just like it's so crazy and hard to imagine an entire lifetime of our moms not being here and an entire lifetime of like, yes, you are still in the first year.

Ellie: 1:16:19

In the first year there's so many firsts, like everything is a first, and on top of that you have a baby and he's living all of his firsts and you're living all of your firsts as a mother. And then it doesn't stop at the first year and a lot of times the first year is given this kind of time period of like, oh yeah, all of the firsts. And it's this, um, just you know, just like moving into my house, or like stepping into something beautiful, or you, you know. Or starting your business from a new place, like kind of creating the next iteration from your business from a new place. Or for me, when I have my children, or um, all of these things that are so incredibly beautiful that they won't be here to be living with us beautiful, that they won't be here to be living with us. It's incredibly heartbreaking every time it doesn't get better or easier.

Ellie: 1:17:17

And in order to walk with that, um, I think also another thing that ceremony offers us and tea offers us so beautifully is presence, and this attunement to presence and this is presence is really kind of at you know, again, going back to the symphony, it's like the through line of all grief stuff. The more we can attune ourselves to presence and learn um presence and invite ourselves into presence and welcome in presence and I could say a million things about using a million different words for that the more we experience that presence with our grief, the more we can say welcome into our life, to the life that's coming, and know that we are gonna meet everything with presence as it comes and in that, have space to meet the layers as they arise. And part of you know these, these sacred spaces, is the invitation to become like present, not only present with your eyes and your mind, and like this hyper focus. I'm squinting and putting like narrow, narrow vision focus with my hands. It's like this heart presence and this body presence and this like seated in your root and your womb presence and feeling body presence and this exceeded in your root and your womb presence and feeling your hips and letting everything be alive here now and just experiencing that and so going.

Ellie: 1:19:04

Moving to tea the first time that you shared tea with me and served me tea, it was at my house. You came to visit and we had never been together in person and we were both really looking forward to it. Such a great time. And I had heard you talk about tea but I hadn't really experienced, I didn't really know what to expect, and it was really beautiful and I want to reflect on this for the people that have never done quote unquote done tea before? Yeah, done tea, yeah.

Ellie: 1:19:40

Or experienced Done tea is a verb Experienced the ceremony that's what I say?

Melina: 1:19:45

No, I say done tea. Yeah, I know, it's so funny.

Ellie: 1:19:48

I know you and I say we did tea or whatever. We did tea or whatever, but ultimately what it and we've had many conversations about this too, because you've really shared this great exploration that you've been on for many years with me in the past year or so. But this kind of invitation to come present, to bring our focus here to this moment, to the tea, the tea representing and bringing us into this moment, and then allowing ourselves to receive the medicine of the tea, allowing ourselves to be in the practice of receiving, as we also, you know, sip our, you know offer it to ourselves through our hands, and to just be in the experience of letting something move into us and maybe through us. Sometimes, when I drink tea, it's almost like I can imagine the heat moving into me and like going into all of my you know channels and everything, and then I sweat a little bit. Or there's something moving out it's like a total through me experience bit or there's something moving out. It's like a total through me experience and in a way, that's a metaphor. You always say t is a metaphor for everything it's like, but it's also a metaphor for learning how to allow grief to move through like that and for it to hit and heat and touch all of these places in us and then come out in another form.

Ellie: 1:21:13

And so when you served me most days while you're here visiting, like the first day, I remember, yeah, my mind was wondering okay, what's this going to be like, what am I supposed to be doing? What am I, yeah, what are all these things? And then also receiving these messages, and then, over a couple of days of of doing this with you, receiving more and more messages, just feeling a really also deep connection to gratitude that I think can be hard to find in grief, really hard grief moments without that kind of sacred pause. And every time I've sat with you when you serve me, I think it has been a little bit more emotional and person like I've definitely there's definitely been tears. I've definitely received intuitive visions and messages, really beautiful ones, that have stuck with me. And when I sit by myself, now that I've learned and, you know, have, thanks to you, my own little set of things, I some days, this incredibly beautiful connection to my wholeness, to the energies, are alive in me and around me, and this, it's like the tea gently brought all of me and all of life online. And now for the rest of the day, I get to move from that place and so I'd love to for you, if you want to add whatever you want to add about tea ceremony.

Ellie: 1:22:59

But I just wanted to share somebody that was is new to tea and hasn't done a lot of the philosophical explorations of it or learns the technicalities of it like you have. I wanted to share a little bit about what that experience has been like for me. Um, and yeah, it's something that I feel like I can incorporate and sit with in and welcome into every part of my life, and so if maybe on the day we're doing sacred ground, you're not feeling ultra connected to your grief at the beginning, or maybe even through the entire thing, the tea will offer you whatever you need, you know, whatever is there, and the awesome thing about this not being a linear journey and those no expectations, as you were talking about, is like it's all great, it's all welcome, whatever that is yeah, thank you for sharing your experience and I'm so happy every time you text me your tea that you did tea.

Melina: 1:24:13

You're, like I sat with this tea, like, yes, it's so great, I love bringing people into tea and also, yeah, it's so beautiful. I always kind of see tea I love you have that vision of it like moving through your body. I really see it like moving through people, yeah, and like this, the fluidity of like it, just it touching the people it's meant to, and that there's no expectation around any of it. But then I always just love it, kind of it's slow, organic, unfurling and and to those who are called to it. And, yeah, tea is, I mean I could say so much about it, but really it is a beautiful space holder in and of itself. It's a beautiful medicine, it's a gentle medicine. Um, the teas that I drink, um, both ceremonially and, you know, casually but ceremonially are called living teas. So I recommend for anyone who's going to join us not required, but these teas, the specific types of teas, hold a really powerful energy, the plants themselves, energy, the plants themselves. And so we think of tea in the West, as you know, chamomile, and there's herbal tea and there's all these other teas, but the tea that I'm talking about is from the plant Camellia sinensis. They're tea trees. The teas that I drink ceremonially all come from China, certain regions of China, which is the birthplace of tea, where they have these tea trees, and the living teas have to meet many different criteria to be called living tea, so they're beyond organic. The trees are wild. The farmers have relationships with the trees, these trees are hundreds of years old, they're tended to really lovingly, and part of tea ceremony is the energy of all of it is important and the way the trees are treated, the way the farmers, the energy of the farmer, the energy of the person shipping the tea I mean all of it is part of the experience and the teaware and you know there's like endless stuff. But really, to just get started, the one thing I would recommend, if at all possible, is to purchase the living tea, and so two of the places to do that are Living Tea and Global Tea Hut, which I'm sure you'll link to um, because the energies of those teas have been so carefully and lovingly harvested and tended and that will really add. That's a big part. There's many parts of tea ceremony specifically, but that's the most important part is the tea, right, that's the most important part, where we all start, and so, if you're completely new, recommend doing that if possible.

Melina: 1:27:15

If you're sensitive to caffeine, we've, you know, I've put in our description a couple of teas that have been aged for many, many decades, so the caffeine levels are very low. I know you're sensitive to caffeine, so we've been testing some out, and so there's some that and these are not. The caffeine is still not going to be the same as a plantation tea or a regular tea bag, right, but these are like, again, really, the caffeine levels are. It tends to be just very clean and not, you know, crazy levels of energy, if that's something you're sensitive to. But, yeah, these specific teas all have such a different energy to them and, um, if not, you know, if you're not able to purchase, also, totally fine, you're more than welcome to join us, because the next aspect of this is just present, as you mentioned, is just like I hear from so many people and it is so hard to describe until you've experienced it like grief, right, yeah, it's like um, but what I hear from people constantly is wow, I did not know how much I needed to just sit here and sip this tea, like whether it's just hot water and lemon or hot water and mint, like anything, um, to have that experience of just being dropped in, to feel the warm water running through your body and just be present.

Melina: 1:28:40

And for me, a tea ceremony is so sensory and sensual, right, it's like the feeling of the bowl in my hands, the warm bowl, the steam rising, the sound of the water hitting the bowl, the leaves and if you're just starting, um, if you don't have any experience with tea ceremony, we're going to be doing leaves in a bowl, which is the simplest.

Melina: 1:29:01

You don't. All you need is a kettle of hot water and a bowl and some leaves. So we've put in the recommendation some keys that are a little bit larger leaves so that you can just place a few in the bowl and then you just put some hot water in the bowl. And what's so beautiful about leaves in the bowl? The simplest method? Um, it's just watching the leaves like, like, expand, and it's it's such a beautiful connection with the tea and the leaves themselves. Um, so that's what we're going to be doing in our ceremony. It's just super simple and, yeah, you don't need to know any of the technical aspects of it. It's really just about bringing presence to your cup, your bowl and seeing what's there, and there's so much more that can be explored from there, but that is. That's the basis of it.

Ellie: 1:29:51

Yeah, I was sitting with an oolong this morning that I've grown to really like I've tried it a couple times now called mercy, and I was observing the leaves in my bowl and how like tight and dry they looked. And then you know they're rolled, yeah, with every cup.

Ellie: 1:30:09

just I felt like this blossoming happening and it was really cool. I know that you and I could sit here for 5,000 hours and continue on and, yeah, maybe just do a moment to check in with if there's anything else you want to say to conclude no, I feel really complete.

Melina: 1:30:42

Um, do you want to share a little bit about sacred ground, or yeah, okay?

Ellie: 1:30:47

so on November 17th, melina and I are having our first sacred ground event, which is a ceremony for grief and growth, and the first 30 minutes of this time together will be a tea ceremony. It's all virtual so you can show up. It's a Sunday. You can show up from your home in a cozy place and experience this. You know the tea leaves the presence.

Ellie: 1:31:14

We'll have some time for meditation once we complete the tea and some musical explorations with our bodies, whether it be like somatic and intuitive guided movement, or whether you're already ready to write and express or some kind of expression wants to come out and I'll guide that after the meditation.

Ellie: 1:31:32

And then we'll have time to circle and come together and for gentle guidance and for connection and witnessing around anything that's moving for you, you want to share or anything you have questions about or want support around.

Ellie: 1:31:48

And I know we both know how rich and important the communal space, our friendship, is a tiny microcosm of the experience, of how powerful and necessary it is to be able to share our grief over and over and over again in sacred spaces, and I'm so like we have cultivated this together and I'm so excited to welcome people into the next evolution of it on a more public level, of being able to experience and receive the witnessing. I've just wrote my reflection. Actually it was in the program that you and I met in my first time being fully witnessed in community in my grief, after years of crying and having grief expressions that people, either you know, pitied me around or one of the leaders of another group, like because people weren't really grief literate or hadn't had these experiences themselves, or had had them but weren't in connection with their grief. The response was, I think Ellie just likes to cry and he was like no, I mean like I don't have anything.

Melina: 1:33:08

I don't have anything against crying.

Ellie: 1:33:11

Does it feel fun to sit here in front of 20 strangers at a retreat and, like bawl my eyes out? Not really, um, but I can't not do it because I can't. I'm unwilling to look away. You know, and I admire that so much about you, so to, I have learned over the years and you in your own way, like basically anything that could come from you in this experience will not scare us, could not scare us, and I am excited to just offer a space where you get to experience and receive whatever is there for you. So welcome and please join us in sacred ground.

Ellie: 1:33:58

We can't wait yeah can't wait Anything you want to add.

Melina: 1:34:05

Yeah, thank you so much for listening to this. Yeah, I love you so much, ellie, and it's an honor, absolute honor, to walk alongside you in life and grief and love and friendship and community. And I, ellie and I have. We had planned an event together. We've been wanting to do an event together for years and we had planned one and had a date and everything for last December and then my mom went into the hospital and was diagnosed with terminal cancer, so we, of course, lovingly set it aside and then it was not the time.

Melina: 1:34:43

I was deep into the void really until now, until about this month, when I have been feeling the call to come out and I am so honored to you know, ellie and I were like, all right, I think it's time, and so I'm just so honored to be offering this with you and so excited that it's time to offer it and I can't wait to see where it goes. And and, yeah, if you're feeling called to join us, we would love to have you at $33. So really accessible. And if you know, if that's not even accessible, like, please just let us know an email Hello at Ellie, flowcom or hello at Lena chairscom, and let us know we want it to be accessible and we'd love to have you and we can't wait to meet you and honor you and, yeah, just hold really beautiful space for you, um love you.

Ellie: 1:35:41

I love you too. It's gonna be so beautiful. We both know I'm smiling so big because I'm like. We both know we have so many future offerings coming and like it will be. This is so special because the first one- yeah, a year in the literal year, yeah.

Ellie: 1:35:58

And I think, around the date when we were going to have it, your mom was literally like almost, almost died those few days in the hospital. It was ended up being a very intense moment and yeah, I'm, yeah, I'm in awe of these journeys. I love you. Thank you for listening to transformed by grief. Please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe to the show and to share it with a loved one that needs this medicine today. If you are ready to deepen into your own transformed by grief process, you can join the sanctuary membership or work with me one-on-one at eliflowcom. See you soon.

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Episode Music credit:
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The Loneliest I’ve ever been

Grief is one of the loneliest walks on earth. Every story and experience is so different. Every relationship unmatched. Every human so unique. And yet, everyone experiences this pain someway, somehow. 

For years, while my mom went through cancer treatment, I watched others around me living their lives seemingly innocently and freely while I felt hopeless, heavy and alone, often thinking, 

“Nobody gets it. No one knows what this feels like – to feel the weight of the unknown deep in my gut. To feel like I can’t make plans for my life or fully commit myself to the things I desire to experience because it could all take a turn at any moment, and then what will become of my life?! Of me?!”.  

Even though I was doing a lot, I felt like I couldn’t give my full attention where I truly wanted because at any moment a matter of life and death could require me to drop everything. I searched for ways to anchor myself into a bright, exciting feeling future that I sooo badly wanted to believe could be possible. 

But with the life and well-being of one of the most important people in my life on the line, trying to create a shiny vision for the future felt frivolous and fake.

I was a master at hiding my worry, anxiety, and fear, a master of appearing to ‘have my ish together’, but on the inside I remember so many days feeling dull, half alive, my mind swirling and my body lethargic.  As I denied my pain, grief and the impending doom of potential loss that often felt present, I tried to put my focus elsewhere and “just be happy, live in the moment”. But the suppressed emotions found their own way out - oozing through my skin as stress rashes on my eyelids and neck, appearing as sore throats and mystery illnesses, and sometimes even causing nausea that kept me from eating for a few days.

I pumped myself with caffeine hoping to feel something again and to find the energy to power through. I found a million things to distract myself with, from fitness classes to my business to going to Barnes and Nobel to buy more personal development books I’d never finish. Anything that would save me from what I was feeling inside.

I remember so many days trying to ‘just be normal’, trying to take the steps it seemed I should be taking, but I when I allowed myself to get still and just be,  tears welled in my eyes and it all felt shallow and hallow. What I really felt was despair. Hopelessness. Lost. Exhausted. Alone. 

I really wanted to do was lie on the floor or in my bed for hours, hoping the day would pass and tomorrow would feel different.

When my mom died, the loneliness hit another level.  To know that no one else in the world knew my exact pain meant that I wouldn’t likely hear the perfect words I yearned to hear from anyone else, which was devastating to realize.

No one else would be able to console me fully. 

No one else would know what I needed and how to perfectly take care of me.  

I would have to learn how to meet myself in this loneliness and console myself. 

That alone made me so angry.

In every moment of my early grief journey, I craved to be understood. Even though I was terrified to let anyone see what a mess I was inside, all I wanted was to be fully known in the pain of everything I had lost (even my before my mom died) as it felt like it was swallowing me whole.

I yearned to feel someone’s hand reach through the darkness to grab mine, offering me something to hold on to, to know where ‘up’ was so I could find my feet under me again amid the whirlwind of tears, anger, and inability to imagine how I would ever be ok again.  

Gratefully, those hands lovingly appeared when I got vulnerable enough to share how I really felt and asked for help. No one tried to save me because they knew the importance of what I was living. But they sat with me and guided me in finding my center again, in feeling and releasing the buildup of emotions I was so masterful at holding in, often unknowingly. And most importantly, they saw me and loved me in my brokenness, in my cracked-openness.

They listened not only through the tears and confusion, they listened to the pain, growth and guidance that were alive deep within me. They witnessed me in heartache without rushing me or diminishing my current experience, while also holding a higher vision for my life and who I would still become, despite it all. 

Some of these hands were of dear friends. Others of family members. Others of therapists, coaches and mentors.

As each reached a hand out to meet me, I stepped forward a little more to meet myself. And little by little the gaping whole of loneliness felt less suffocating. 

Instead of walking up each morning feeling paralyzed by the monumental task of walking through another day knowing I was ultimately alone in my experience, I began to feel stable enough to make a home within myself, where my wellbeing didn’t depend on if others got it, understood, or met me. I was able to sit up on my bed each morning, put a hand to my heart and say,

“I know this is soo scary and lonely. I know you crave to hear someone tell you you will be ok, that you will LIVE fully again, that life will be good again. I know it would be so much easier to stay in bed, and I also know you are resilient and stronger than you realize. I know you haven’t actually died with your mom, even though it feels like you did. And I know there is something available here for you today because you are still alive. You don’t need to go fast, you can go at your own pace. Just one step, one moment, at a time.”

I learned how to listen to myself - to my grief and my soul. I learned how to speak those perfect words to the parts of me that needed consoling. I began to sense, feel, and welcome in the woman I would become through this experience even though I had no idea what she would be like, and I regained enough strength and hope to take little steps toward being her. 

Slowly, I had the energy to begin to put my new website together and to dream about my business again, to work with new clients, to travel and to begin family therapy with my dad and sister.

I still needed others of course, I still needed loved ones to open and meet me as I had opened and met myself. Because I was no longer needing the impossible - for them to say or do the perfect thing - I was able to receive the love and company that they could offer.  I began to see the imperfect beauty of each person in my life with more awe and gratitude, accepting them as they were and laughing and crying with them about life more freely.

I was met with sweet softness and companionship from my husband, holding me and listening as I vulnerably shared my fears and longings. I received little gifts in the mail and unexpected phone calls and texts from friends that brought me to tears and evoked big belly laughs.

Years have since passed, but through it all, a devotion brewed in my heart: to become the one that can see through the dark and offer a loving hand when nothing else can be seen or determined, when the unknown feels as lonely, stifling and terrifying as a pitch black endless maze.

To become the one whose very presence offers you safety and space to take a breath, open, feel, and listen to your inner needs and knowings.

To become the one that lovingly witnesses you in your pain, through the brokenness of your heart, knowing that with time, your pain will not define you like it does now, and you are becoming someone greater than you could ever imagine as you embrace your path.

Today, I am humbled and honored to embody this devotion everyday, to be able to offer my hand to you in the loneliest moments you could ever walk, as a lantern of hope, warmth, healing, and support when you fear this will be how life feels forever.

I offer my hand and guidance as you find your way out of the dark so you have the energy and support to:

> Travel to see your friends and family without feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, or afraid of how they will see or respond to who you are now;

> Bravely share that piece of writing you’ve been wanting to put on Substack and begin to build connection and community there;

> Speak up and share your heart with loved ones from a grounded energy of self-love and respect;

> Get on the apps again or walk up to that cute human making eyes at you at the park and ask for their number;

> Try to get pregnant [again];

> Leave your job, start your own company, and land your first clients;

> Go back to school and begin your dream career…

What's on your heart? What have you needed to push to the sidelines due to grief and loss that you crave to have the energy and support in your life to reclaim?

I offer you my hand. 

Are you ready to take it?

Book your first 1:1 session here.

Join The Sanctuary Membership here.

 Listen to the Transformed By Grief Podcast

Join the next community grief event.

Join my newsletter
Find me on instagram

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Ep #27. Understanding Needs and Finding Peace in Uncertainty {Podcast}

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Listen on Amazon Music RSS Feed Listen on Google Podcasts Listen on iHeartRadio

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Full Episode Show Notes

Grief is a powerful teacher, and understanding our deepest needs can transform this journey into one of personal growth and healing. This episode invites you to contemplate the profound connection between grief and your human needs, exploring how recognizing and voicing our needs can lead to living more authentically and embracing the unknown with courage.

I guide you through a reflective process, encouraging you to identify your needs and understand the physical and emotional expressions of unmet needs. By considering whether these needs can be fulfilled independently or require external support, we cultivate acceptance and compassion for ourselves. This exploration opens up a dialogue with a larger spiritual or universal presence, inviting peace and understanding beyond our immediate human experience. The process is both empowering and humbling, acknowledging that some needs may remain unmet, and that’s okay.

Throughout the episode, we’ll explore the art of surrendering to the unknown, creating a sacred space for transformation and inviting loved ones into this dialogue.

If you are ready to dive deeper: 

 Book Your First 1:1 Session here

Join The Sanctuary Membership here.

Join the next community grief event.

Join my newsletter
Find me on instagram

I would love to hear what arises for you as you listen, and anything specific you'd like to hear on the show. Shoot me a note via email (hello@ellieflow.com), or respond to the episode directly via the feature on your podcast app. 

Transcript

Ellie: 0:03

Welcome to Transformed by Grief. My name is Ellie Thomas and I am here to guide you on your transformational grief journey From feeling lost, raw and brokenhearted, questioning everything in you and around you, to reconnecting to the truth of who you are and the beauty, fulfillment and vibrancy of life that is still available in you and through you. On this podcast, we explore the depths of what it means to say yes to life again after you've been broken open by pain and grief. We will explore what it means to create a deep, loving and reverent relationship to yourself, to grief and to life in a way that allows you to begin to rebuild from the inside out and to create a powerful foundation for a joy-filled, alive feeling and fulfilling life you love. Welcome back to Transformed by Grief. I'm so glad to bring you today's episode because we're getting into a really important and not talked about that often conversation.

Ellie: 1:19

Subject all about needs. Our human needs are the basis of our vulnerability, our neediness, our humanness. That can very much come alive in any grief journey, in any broken open moment. We've been talking a lot about this in the sanctuary in the past couple months because beginning to have a deep relationship, awareness, connection, honoring of our needs, even when we can't perfectly fulfill them, or even when we need things that go beyond the power of our humanness, is the basis of any transformational journey, is the basis of any transformational journey Beginning to really understand ourselves, the parts of ourselves that have been molded by our past and left scars and holes that need tending to and that help create our wholeness, actually, when we connect with those kind of gaps in where we have been tended to, where we are still in need of love, where we are still in need of connection, where we are still in need of nurturing and support, and it goes on and on. But this is truly the basis of all transformational work, whether it be specific transformational grief work.

Ellie: 2:52

In my experience, grief arises in every single transformational journey. Most people just don't realize that grief is there when they embark on it. Grief has so many different textures and flavors and ways of arising in our system and as a society, we have come to understand grief in a very tangible way. I lost something. Therefore, I have grief, but it's so much bigger than that. And so this place of connecting to ourselves on this human level, it requires coming back to the body, it requires coming back to deep relationship with our humanness, our imperfection, the parts of us that we have probably tried to hide and override for years and years and years. If we are operating in the world that we're operating in especially if you are a woman and this place of beginning to connect with my needs.

Ellie: 4:00

I remember beginning my work with my coach in oh, let's see, it was a long time ago, maybe six years ago now, five or six years ago. Beginning to open up to the work of grief required that I come into deeper relationship with, and not even the work of grief. Beginning to open up to my own relationship with grief and beginning to allow and create the foundation for which I could move with my grief and release years of of Harvard grief and where I could begin to allow the built up inner pressure of suppressed emotion to escape so that I could feel myself again. All of this started with beginning to acknowledge my needs and beginning to own them with love and beginning to advocate for myself in these ways, and beginning to have a conversation with myself about where I had been pretending to not have needs or just simply subconsciously overlooking because I didn't feel safe to acknowledge them, or like they could be acknowledged, like it was okay for me to be in my imperfect humanness. So there is so much here. I feel like I could do an entire masterclass on this and maybe we will. If you want that, let me know, because this is like the before you even lay the concrete or the bricks of the foundation of a house you're building like. This is the I'm thinking of the word in Spanish bigas. This is like the really strong iron or steel rods that go into the ground that holds your structure together and that ground your structure to the earth. And needs are exactly that, or let me say that better are relationship to our needs and having and developing a relationship to our needs and beginning to understand the many different aspects and where they come from and how they relate to what we're feeling and what we're processing. That is like these, you know, huge pillars of support and huge pillars of grounding that ground us into the experience of transformation and ground us, bring us back to our humanness so that through that, we can open to divinity, so that we can open to wholeness, so that we can open to these greater parts of ourselves. It's interesting A lot of times when we're working with this and we're working with these kind of cracks in ourselves or these I've been using a little bit the analogy of Swiss cheese and the sanctuary like the holes in our Swiss cheese, those are actually the holes through which, as we tend to them and allow energy to flow through them.

Ellie: 6:58

Again, a lot of the times we've been trying to patch them up and keep them on the down low and to like pretend that they're not there. But actually, when we come into relationship, to patch them up and to keep them on the down low and to like pretend that they're not there, but actually when we come into relationship to them, that's where so many of our gifts and so much of our like divine essence, your soul, begins to flow through and that is where we end up connecting to ourselves. So this is like really humble, nitty-gritty feeling work at the beginning of being in our humanness and acknowledging the things that we didn't get, that we really needed when we were younger, the things that we still are needing now, coming into relationship to that now, grounding ourselves in the imperfection of humanness, and through that journey we rediscover and come into so much more of ourselves and have the invitation to allow this greater energy to express through us. So today I am sharing for the rest of the show this kind of opening talk around needs that I gave in the sanctuary. It's about half an hour long and there's also a practice at the end that leads you into relationship, kind of connective relationship with what's there. It talks about how we can meet our needs and how sometimes we can't, and what to do there and how to be in the gap of that when we feel grief and emotion there, and I guide you through that the whole time. This is a very kind of open-hearted, grounded conversation and so it doesn't move really quickly, but that's part of the invitation to allow yourself to just let the words and the concepts and the ideas and the exploration sink in and then at the end I'll lead you through a practice of just acknowledging and coming into connection with the needs that are present in your life and what that might be bringing up now. So, as always, if you would love to explore this more and work with me and a beautiful community around this more and develop all these different layers of your transformation, the sanctuary is always open.

Ellie: 9:02

Join us. We meet generally on Wednesdays. The timing varies a little bit because we've got people in all different time zones, but there are such special calls. Every call has just been so incredibly life-giving and we're really moving into a season of uncovering more. I can feel that happening in the people that are present, and I'm excited to see what that looks like and feels like. So if you are ready to join us, if you're ready to be met in your Born Through Grief journey, you know where to find me for one-on-one work and for the sanctuary. And, without further ado, here's a further exploration around needs. Oh, and one last thing when this episode ends, it ends in an extended moment of silence, letting you process and connect with whatever's coming up through the practice that I lead you through, through the reflection that I lead you through. This is the time, in the sanctuary, where we start to move into mentorship. This is the time in the sanctuary where we start to move into mentorship, and so just note that this will end with an extended time of silence, and then the music will kick in when the episode is over.

Ellie: 10:14

Okay, now here you go. So let's just do some internal sacred tending. You can follow along and just kind of be with yourself in it, taking a moment in your chair, eyes open or closed, to feel your butt and feel yourself arriving to the end of your day, taking a few conscious breaths in and really allowing them to begin to slowly bring you into your body, maybe even bringing your attention to any energy moving in your head space and just with each breath kind of breathing that down your face into your heart and then slowly into your belly on the exhales. Take a couple of those on your own, just taking a tender, precious moment with yourself here of acknowledgement of whatever you're feeling. If it feels good to place a hand on any part of your body, you can do that and I'm just closing my eyes to tune into things, but you can for sure have them open and just let a sense of connection with yourself be made, like I'm coming back to beautiful connection with myself after a long day, welcoming in awareness, awareness of what you're feeling, awareness of what you're needing, awareness of your energy level, of any exhaustion and and of anything else.

Ellie: 13:13

Just as you sink back into yourself with your breath, as you kind of feel yourself, maybe even lean back in your chair a tiny bit, what do you become aware of? What's asking for awareness and then inviting in a sense of acknowledgement and just acknowledging each of those things that came up, acknowledging yeah, I see you and I hear you to every part of yourself. Just kind of acknowledgement to your body, acknowledgement to your emotional self of like, yeah, that's real. Acknowledgement of your energy level. Yeah, acknowledgement of your needs and desires right now that may or may not feel met or that they are going to be met. And when we're beyond the kind of self-check-in state, I'll talk about two things that are coming up right now to talk about. That you can revisit or respond to later on. But just being with needs and desires is so important and yet being in the acknowledgement of them is even more important, without the attachment of needing them to be met Because we may not be able to meet them or they may not needing them to be met because we may not be able to meet them or they may not be able to be met externally right now. And as you continue to breathe here, just inviting in a invitation of acceptance, not needing to force acceptance, not even needing to try to accept anything, just inviting acceptance in and seeing how it might appear today, like, okay, I'm willing to play with you, acceptance, I'm willing to consider you. This is I breathe, what happens as we make space for acceptance, as we make space for acceptance of who you are right now, of where you are right now, of your needs, of your energy levels and more, not even trying to accept them, like I already said, just welcoming the potential of acceptance in and seeing what happens as we take a breath or two, thank you. So before we move on, just taking a breath or two so Noticing where you're landing internally.

Ellie: 17:59

So I was having a conversation with a friend today who lost a parent recently and we were talking about the journey of having a deeply connected experience with grief and feeling the call. Often that is not from our anything physical is not from our mind. It's like some call from our soul to have an intimacy with grief, basically an inner requirement to have intimacy with grief in a way that the world often doesn't or doesn't understand, and how strange that can be to process it with people that are living it in a different way or aren't grieving the same things. And one thing that really arose, as I was just kind of listening to where she was at, was something was again this very, very important part around the kind of prerequisite that we have to walk through or to move through in order to step into relationship with grief in a more fluid way, which is growing in our relationship to ourself and the yeah, there's kind of a prerequisite to being able to connect with grief on these deeper levels and that is through, in my experience, being able to connect with grief on these deeper levels and that is through, in my experience, being able to connect with ourselves in that way, which is ultimately like the overarching theme of all of our work and all of my work is and anybody that's ever worked with me is cultivating deep, deep relationship with self. And as we do that, we are meeting all of these parts of ourselves and all of these emotions and all of these experiences with deep connection as well, from the basis of that relationship. So, if you're here, you've already been working on that in your life because you're here. Nobody that's not open to that, nobody, that yeah, nobody would work with me if they're not open to that.

Ellie: 20:19

And a huge piece of that which is often really confusing is connecting with our needs and connecting with our desires from a clear place as a deep relationship with ourselves, and it's mainly confusing from the place of needs, especially for women in our society where needs have not all often been considered important or we have not been given the space to voice them, and beginning to come into relationship with our needs is kind of a huge, foundational piece of our ongoing grief journey. However, a lot of the times this can be taught or looked at or addressed from a place of well, if I look into my needs, then I must figure out how they are going to be met, and it can come from a place of control. And while I totally get that because usually that is just trying to patch pain and prevent us from pain, it is just a really, really important safety mechanism. The truth of needs often brings us to the truth of the pain, of them not having been met by us, by others, by God or however you relate to the beyond or however you relate to the beyond. And it's a very courageous act in my experience to begin to claim our needs in past versions of ourselves and in present versions of ourselves from a place of I really needed or I really need this If it wasn't met in the past, grieving that need not having been met. There's often anger here, there's often a whole slew of an experience here and then in the present. Also, I'm claiming this need, just stating I really need this and I don't know if it's going to be met.

Ellie: 22:51

And when we talk about that, there's a gap of grief and fear and relationship with the unknown that's created when we have the bravery to state that and step into. Basically, by stating it and not knowing how it's going to be met, we are stepping into a new relationship with the unknown. We're allowing ourselves to be fully seen, stated, claimed and for the unknown to meet us in that or not meet us in that. The unknown, in my experience, in my sense of it, always meets us, but it may not be an active sense of meeting our needs us, but it may not be an active sense of meeting our needs. And so when I bring up the awareness of our needs today, oftentimes when I explore this with one-on-one clients, we go into this a lot and it can be really scary just to claim like I need rest, I need this, I need that, I need money, maybe I need you know there's a million things we could need, but ultimately I think it usually comes down to like space connection, obviously having our basic needs met and claiming that or stating that.

Ellie: 24:28

And then, once we do that, we are invited into three potentials. One is that this need is potentially meetable by ourselves and we can offer that witnessing and that healing and support to ourselves by stating, oh, I really need sleep. Okay, I am going to go to sleep, I'm just using an example. Or, oh, I'm really needing to eat, even though nobody else is hungry. I need to go find myself some good food or make myself something. Or I really need to go to the bathroom and even though this isn't a potentially appropriate time to go to the bathroom in the sense of society, like I need to honor my body's need to go to the bathroom right now. So we're invited into the potential of turning towards that need and seeing can I meet this right now?

Ellie: 25:30

And exploring that if we can we may not always be able to, oftentimes we can't we're also invited into a place where we have a need and somebody else could potentially support us in that, and this is usually a really vulnerable place to share our needs with other people and to say I'm really needing support, or I'm really needing to know that you'll be there, or I'm really needing a hug, or I'm really needing to not make dinner tonight. Can you please, or you know, there's a million different iterations of this. I'm really needing to go on an adventure, will you join me? And so we're also invited into. Like, the first level is ourselves stating our needs, letting them kind of just exist in the abyss and letting ourselves sit with what is often the discomfort of really stating and claiming our needs in a place where we have indirectly or directly likely been told that we should be needless. And then we get to kind of explore that need and our potential ability to support ourselves in it, and in many ways this might be healing and at the same time we might not be able to. And then we get invited into the next layer, which is other people. And is this a need that I feel like I can express? And if I do express it, are others able to meet me in it? And I may express it and they may not be able to meet me in it.

Ellie: 27:31

Every time we step out from the self a little bit further, we're surrendering a little bit more control. We're surrendering a little bit more control. We're surrendering to the potential of the unknown. We're surrendering to the potential that we may not be met and yet it is worth it simply when it's in our capacity to do so, simply to explore, because oftentimes needs simply need. Needs simply need awareness and recognition. Yes, of course they need to be met. There are very basic needs that need to be met we need a house, we need food, we need water, we need sleep, we need income to be able to support these parts of our lives, et cetera, and beyond that.

Ellie: 28:24

Many times, on an emotional level, on a spiritual level, those needs can be there, but what they most need is witnessing. And so, as we witness ourselves, as we potentially explore being witnessed by others in our need, which can be extremely vulnerable, especially when we don't know if they're capable of meeting us in it or meeting it, we also have the awareness that it may not be meetable by a human or we may not be able to control it. And so is God, the divine universe, able to meet us in it? And oftentimes, when we're not able to meet ourselves and we don't feel either in a space to bring it to others or just others can't meet us in it, my prayer is just to lift up my need, like I don't know how this can be met, but I gotta lift it up to you because I don't have any way of meeting it myself.

Ellie: 29:24

There's a very deep place of vulnerability of simply acknowledging, layer after layer as we go deeper into our journeys, with grief and not with grief this I came into this from a grief angle, but it is a prerequisite to really being able to do this in grief anyways, to be in a place where we can say and claim what our needs are without the expectation that they will always be met. It's a very, very, very vulnerable thing always be met. It's a very, very, very vulnerable thing For me when I was exploring this, the first time I kind of stepped into my need exploration was about seven years ago and I was terrified terrified to even consider that I had needs like terrified and to even consider that I had all of these needs from the past that had never been met and that I had just skimmed over the top of or that I had needed to find a way through because they hadn't been met. And I usually just found it by squashing them down and trying to be somebody that didn't need anything from anybody else.

Ellie: 30:44

And oftentimes grief or broken open moments or whatever it is that brings you into deeper relationship with yourself, requires us to go through a gentle or not gentle version of reclamation, reclaiming each of these things, reclaiming the foundation of our humanness, which is neediness. So just take a second now it looks like Allison already did this, but if you're watching the replay, just take a second now and let's come back to that question of awareness and awareness of what needs might be present right now, and then let's just step into acknowledgement, like that is a real need, that is a real need. I see that this is valid, this is real, this is legit, and I'm so sorry if this hasn't been met in the past. I'm so sorry that it has not been met. And standing here now, in relationship to that need, we can ask is this a need I am able to meet? And if it's a no, that's okay. Is this a need other people are able to meet? And, as you sit with it, it might be a no too. And if it's a no-two, that's okay.

Ellie: 32:31

And any needs that are unmeetable in our humanness, just lifting them up to the unknown, lifting them up to the mystery, to God. I know every person in here has their own relationship with the divine and or is in their exploration of their relationship to the divine, and so sometimes just saying like I don't know, I'm just lifting this up to whatever's there because I don't know how to meet this, but then just taking the moment to sit with, what is it like to really sit with this need, to recognize it, to affirm it and then to be open to the potentials that it's not meetable, but to be aware of that? And just in that act, in my experience, we begin to disconnect a little bit more or decouple that's a better word, decouple, uncouple from the solving brain, because a lot of the times when needs arise and when needs come up, we are spurred into our I don't know, I'm number one here Intellect, one here, intellect, my intellect goes crazy trying to solve it and figure it out. And so when we go through this process of can I meet this personally? Are others going to be able to meet it? Is there actually somebody that would help me with this? And then, if there's a no to all of these things, can I just lift this up?

Ellie: 34:01

And as we go through the act of that and kind of the surrender of it, while still being in relationship to the need, in my experience we begin to create space to experience the need on a deeper level, in a different way, potentially on an emotional level, potentially from a place of spiritual, inner wisdom, because our mind has no longer hijacked it as its project that it is trying to solve. And so what is it like for you to simply sit with that, to sit with that process right now? I'll walk you through it again. What needs are present right now, what needs are asking to be seen and known and acknowledged, and just really feeling that need and feeling where it might be located in your body, how it's speaking to you, what it feels like. Then, give space for anything that might be swelling up with it. Are there images from the past, or memories from the past, or emotions from the past? Or sometimes even in my experience, as I simply recognized my needs, I ended up realizing how long they had been there without being acknowledged and I just felt so much immense inner grief and sadness that it had been there the whole time.

Ellie: 36:15

So just giving space to what the experience of actually seeing and being in relationship with your needs is and letting any emotion be there and then, parallel to that, just letting the emotion stay We'll come back to it in a moment and checking in with is this a need that I can meet right now? Is there any way I can turn towards this part of myself and step in and step in If there is, explore that lean into that. How can you do that? And if not, just take a moment to sit with the reality of the no. What does it feel like to not be able to meet your own needs? It might feel helpless or hopeless. Maybe there's peace here, maybe it's okay. There's a whole range of things that might exist here.

Ellie: 38:04

And then taking a breath and asking is this a need that anybody else can meet? Is there anyone in my life that is able to potentially meet this need? If I were to voice it to them and to share it with them from a really like open place and see if somebody comes up and if there is somebody, take a moment to explore. And if there is somebody, take a moment to explore. Oh, what would it be like to step out and vulnerably state this need to them From a really a place of love for myself and love for them? What would it be like to advocate for myself in this way? And if the answer is no, there's nobody that can meet this need, let's sit with that that can be big.

Ellie: 39:37

Sometimes these needs are like I need this to happen or I need this to change now because I don't feel like I have the capacity to keep going like this or whatever it is, and sometimes, as we just state the need, we realize it's unmeetable by other humans. There's nothing anybody can tangibly do in this moment to satisfy this and to to not even satisfy, fulfill this need. There can be just a cavern of emotion in this and there could be peace too. It could feel devastating and really scary to just hold this in yourself in your heart, scary to just hold this in yourself in your heart, something that nor you nor any other human can change in this moment or fulfill or meet in this moment. And also there can be this deep connection to the greater part of us in this space, to the greater part of us in this space, to the vast non-humanness, while we are very clearly in a human moment, and then taking a breath and lifting any unmet needs, unmet pieces, up to the divine, up to the heavens, out to the universe, up to God, however, and out to God.

Ellie: 41:29

However you want to do this, just surrendering it to the unknown. I'm just going to give a moment of silence for you to experience this and to see what comes as you do this, thank you. Thank you for listening to transformed by grief. Please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe to the show and to share it with a loved one that needs this medicine today. If you are ready to deepen into your own Transformed by Grief process, you can join the sanctuary membership or work with me one-on-one at eliflocom. See you soon.

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Episode Music credit:
Embrace by Sappheiros | https://soundcloud.com/sappheirosmusic
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Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Ep #26. Embracing the Void: Healing, Rejuvenation, and New Beginnings {Podcast}

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Full Episode Show Notes

Unlock the transformative power of grief with me as we journey through the three major energies that shape our healing process after profound loss. This episode of Transformed by Grief guides you in rebuilding a vibrant and joyful life, even after being shattered by pain. You'll gain insights into embracing life's inevitable voids and transitions, fostering a loving relationship with yourself and your grief, and finding your footing amid uncertainty. Experience the shift from release to rejuvenation, and discover how to embrace new beginnings with consciousness and intention.

On this episode, I explore: 

• The non-linear path of healing

• The energies that guide us into stillness, rejuvenation, and stepping into new opportunities

• How our first encounters with deep voids can redefine our approach to future challenges

• The art of orienting to new beginnings, unraveling survival modes, and embracing a state of openness

The conscious reorientation this episode introduces is an ongoing journey of healing and transformation, allowing you to welcome life's possibilities with renewed excitement and faith with time.

If you want to dive into the dynamics of transformation even more, go back and listen to episode #6. If you want to learn more about the power of energetic and emotional release, go back and listen to episode #5.

I would love to hear what arises for you as you listen, and anything specific you'd like to hear on the show. Shoot me a note via email (hello@ellieflow.com), or respond to the episode directly via the feature on your podcast app. 

 Ready for deep, intimate 1:1 support? Begin here.

Join The Sanctuary Membership here.

 Moving through an inner or outer shift or transition? Access the Make Space for the New Workshop for immediate support.

 Tap into more medicinal nuggets on the podcast: Listen Now.

Begin Your free ‘Awaken Your Flow’ Journey

Move through the latest Grief Flow on your own time here.

Join my newsletter
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Episode Music credit:
Embrace by Sappheiros | https://soundcloud.com/sappheirosmusic
Music promoted on https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Presence: An Exploration + Meditation to Drop into Your Body and Heart {Podcast}

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Full Episode Show Notes

This bonus episode shares the audio from a recent IG live I led on presence, how it is our gateway to life, its connection with the heart  and its role in moving through seasons filled with deep emotion, the reasons the mind/intellect can keep us distracted instead of present, and how to begin to work with yourself to invite presence in.

The first 15 minutes are a short teaching and exploration, and the meditation begins at 16:20 minutes. 

I would love to hear what arises for you as you listen, and anything specific you'd like to hear on the show. Shoot me a note via email (hello@ellieflow.com), or respond to the episode directly via the feature on your podcast app. 

 Ready for deep, intimate 1:1 support? Begin here.

Join The Sanctuary Membership here.

 Moving through an inner or outer shift or transition? Access the Make Space for the New Workshop for immediate support.

 Tap into more medicinal nuggets on the podcast: Listen Now.

Begin Your free ‘Awaken Your Flow’ Journey

Move through the latest Grief Flow on your own time here.

Join my newsletter
Find me on instagram

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Episode Music credit:
Embrace by Sappheiros | https://soundcloud.com/sappheirosmusic
Music promoted on https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Ep #25. The podcast has a new name, welcome to Transformed by Grief {Podcast}

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Full Episode Show Notes

It's episode 25 and the show is taking a new step as a guiding light and leader in Transformational Grief Work. Tune in to hear about this evolution, what being Transformed by Grief means, and what you can expect.

All my love, thank you for being here!

I would love to hear what arises for you as you listen, and anything specific you'd like to hear on the show. Shoot me a note via email (hello@ellieflow.com), or respond to the episode directly via the feature on your podcast app. 

 Ready for deep, intimate 1:1 support? Begin here.

Join The Sanctuary Membership here.

 Moving through an inner or outer shift or transition? Access the Make Space for the New Workshop for immediate support.

 Tap into more medicinal nuggets on the podcast: Listen Now.

Begin Your free ‘Awaken Your Flow’ Journey

Move through the latest Grief Flow on your own time here.

Join my newsletter
Find me on instagram

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Episode Music credit:
Embrace by Sappheiros | https://soundcloud.com/sappheirosmusic
Music promoted on https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/