84: Defuncting Shame to Step Into Power - an interview with Margaret Ames

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Welcome to Grief and Guts. I'm your host, Melissa Dugulecki. It is my honor and privilege to serve you by sharing stories, tools, interviews, and strategies that will help you transition from what do I do now? How do I get through this? Those feelings of overwhelm and uncertainty to truly standing in your power. From my grief journey in losing my daughter laden in 2014 that I learned, practiced, was exposed to all these tools, but they are not grief specific. In fact, they apply universally to all of our unique situations. You've already done the hard part by showing up, by opening up to something new. So without any further ado, let's get to the good stuff that's going to help you in your journey. Let's dive in.

All right, everybody, welcome back to Grief and Guts. I'm your host, Melissa Dublecki. I am so excited to be sharing this week of podcast episodes with you. Really focused on leveling up and to diversify the voices so you're not just hearing from me all the time. I'm honored and privileged for the very first time to share stories of people that I have worked with, of women that I've worked with, of their stories. And I think what's important about this is, you know, really holding space to widen our definition of grief beyond just loss of life. Now, having lost my daughter Laden, I can say, like, obviously it's a devastating loss, but the energy of grief manifests in so many ways in your day to day life. So many of you are experiencing it right now with COVID So many of you are experiencing it with the way that your jobs have changed or your relationships have changed. And one thing that allows me to really coach powerfully is taking the intense manifestation of grief and creating tools for people to apply that in their lives. And I have somebody coming on today that I am so excited to introduce you to, Margaret Ames. I began working with Margaret over a year ago and have had the absolute privilege of watching her blossom and step into her power, finding her voice more and her confidence. And so, without further ado, let's welcome Margaret, AKA Mar, to Grief and Guts. Margaret, thank you for being here.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah.

So I'm Margaret or Mar, and I've been working with Mel for a little bit over a year. I'm super excited to be here.

And before we get into, you know, the kickoff question I do want to ask. Did you ever think when we started working together that this moment right now would be happening?

No, not a chance. Like, one out of how many, like, negative Zero. Yeah. Negative. I don't know.

Yeah, I remember. It's funny, I, you know, had dawn on earlier this week and I said I remember exactly where I was when I talked to her about, like, you know, whether or not this is the.

Right fit for her.

I remember exactly where I was when I talked to you. And, you know, to see how you've grown from that moment, it's just. It's so inspiring. I can't wait for all the listeners to hear your story and soak in some inspiration from you. So thank you.

I'm excited for them to hear it as well.

So the thing everyone wants to know or might just be me, I don't know. Favorite taco, what do we got?

I think my favorite taco is probably a shrimp taco. And specifically the ones that my dad makes.

Ooh, okay. So do you like a little spice.

To it or a little spicy with coleslaw? Ooh, homemade coleslaw that we put on them and it's delicious.

Oh, that sounds really good. Sounds really good. All right, we know we're having dinner. So, you know, in all seriousness, we began working together. Before working with me, had you worked with, you know, a life coach or like a one on one personal development coach?

No, I had not. I had worked with a therapist previously, but not very successfully.

Yeah.

And I think later on, maybe we can talk about the difference between therapy and coaching. They're both important. Some people I work with do both at the same time. Some people, you know, will move from one to the other, but they're really different. They're really different.

I've definitely noticed a difference. I feel as though working with a life coach, I have tangible action steps that I can work towards as opposed to just kind of sharing all of my feelings and putting it out there. And for me, that's been huge. Knowing what to do to be able to make a change.

I love that. Yeah, we like our little lists, you.

Know, I love my lists.

So what? When we started working together, I believe you had reached out to me either through my website or Instagram. Do you remember?

I think through your website. I think I sent you an email.

I think so too. So let anyone listening, like, where were you at? What were you looking for? What got you to do that? Because that takes courage.

I was working full time in an elementary school and I thought that I wanted to leave education in that capacity. And I really wasn't sure where to go or what my next step would be. And after some suggestions from my family, I decided I would work With a life coach. I had taken a few of your yoga classes. I kind of knew a little bit about your background, and I really felt, I guess, connected to your energy. So I took the scary leap and sent you an email, and a year later, I wouldn't have changed a thing.

I love that. You know, I think anyone listening, whether or not you are in a position where you're debating working with a coach, or if you're a coach and you're debating, like, what to put out there, I can't emphasize enough to lean into what resonates energetically, not just the words we read, not just what the pictures look like. Like, what. How do we feel, what intuitively is calling to us, what aligns, what kind of feels like, oh, yeah, that feels like the energy I need to grow, because all the other stuff is surface level, but the energy underneath drives everything, right? And sometimes, I mean, myself, I've worked with coaches because they're a top coach, right? And I haven't really got much out of it. And then it's the people that I've worked with who really had that resonating feeling of, like, ooh, there's some synchronicity here that the growth takes off. So we reached out, we got on the phone. So what were your thoughts? What were your expectations, and what were, you know, your goals? When we started working together, my initial.

Goal was just to find a new job. I needed help getting clarity on that. I really wasn't sure what it would look like, and quite honestly, I thought that's all we would really work on initially. If later down the line it went somewhere else, that was fine. However, I quickly realized that the alignment check would be one of the first things we would do, and I guess that opened up a whole can of worms.

That damn alignment check, you know, so if you're like, what the hell is an alignment check? So, you know, very similarly. And I'm just going to make this parallel Marv to Dawn's interview because I think it's important to carry these themes. If someone. If you didn't hear it or if you did, I want to connect it is that when dawn joined, she was looking for something and then realized we had to go somewhere else. And, Mara, what we're going to share is, like, you were looking for that help in that career change, and you realized, like, shit, we got to go somewhere else right now. Neither with dawn or with you and with most people that I work with. In that initial conversation, did you say, this is where we have to go? You Told me the result you wanted and I'm like, okay, I'm going to figure out where we need to go to get there. It's very common. Most people don't and I think it's important for anyone to know who's thinking about doing this type of work. Most people don't get on a consult call and say these are the things I need to dig into. Because if they were totally aware of that or knew how to do that, they'd be doing it. So that's where it's really up to the coach to kind of guide the process. And so what I created was, is called an alignment check. So if you go do life coaching certification, you will learn about a life coaching wheel. I actually think the wheel itself is bullshit. So I created an alignment check because what can happen is someone might put a three in environment of the wheel and a coach could be like, oh my God, that's a three on a scale of one to ten. That's terrible. But if that person only wants a three because they're saving money living in their parents house or because they're waiting for a house to be redone or because they're saving up to go travel somewhere, the 3 is perfect, it's aligned. And so you did this alignment check. And we were looking through career and we're looking through all this stuff and what happened.

A boyfriend or significant other, there was a very large gap and I knew that in order to truthfully show up for the work that we were doing together that I needed to share about a previous trauma that had happened.

Yeah.

And that was not. That was probably about three or four weeks in. It wasn't like a media.

Right, right. And but we also hadn't been working together for that long.

No, exactly. And so, you know, if you're whatever, you're open to share, you know, for me I knew there was something that we had to hit deeper.

Right.

There was something more beyond that was holding you back that was playing into this energy dynamic that was showing up at the surface level in your work.

Right.

But there was something deeper there. It was like we were kind of hitting this thing and of course I don't know what it is.

Right.

I have on like blinders and I'm just, I'm trying to like lead you and you're the vision and you're like going to tell me what we can see or can't see. And so I'll never forget, I think you text me and said I sent you an email. Do you remember that?

Yes. I sent an email sharing a journal that I had written about how I had been sexually assaulted in college, freshman year at a party with some upperclassmen. It was not random, and I did not say anything to anybody until we started working together. So almost six years later.

And that's a lot of courage to open that up. That's a lot of pain, though. That was pushed down, you know.

Yes. Years.

Yeah.

And thank you for sharing that so bravely and vulnerably, because the statistics will show that a lot of people listening to this have also experienced sexual assault, likely with somebody that they know. And is there anything that you want to say to that person who might be listening, who's maybe stuffed it down for five, six years, maybe longer, maybe.

Less, Find somebody that you can talk to, because it won't just go away.

Yeah.

And so when you shared that, the first step, I mean, I was like, okay, here we go. We're getting to work now. But I was the first person that you had told, essentially shared it with. Is that correct?

Yes, you were the first person, and.

You did it in writing. And I also think that's important to know because one of the things we've really learned is, you know, we all have different styles of processing. And for you, writing has been a really great way of getting some stuff out, right?

Yes, absolutely. I can write a lot more than I can speak.

Well, you're doing great.

You're speaking.

Yeah. You're crushing it. And so from there, it was okay. So how do we make space and begin to break this down? And the job hunting was going to be. We still talked about it.

Right.

We worked on a week. But would you say that was secondary or kind of?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So take. Take people listening to this experience. So you've had this trauma six years ago. You put it down and push it down. Why do you think you pushed it down? I think that's important people to hear.

I think I was ashamed and embarrassed and that I felt as though it was my fault.

Which is so common in these types of traumas and these feelings of shame. And it's like, I want to defunct shame. Like, that's my mission right now. I think that's like, my mission is to help people defunct shame so that we can really get to work. Because it's a major blockage and realizing, like, you know, the role that you didn't play in it. Those first questions can be. Societal norms are like, well, what did you do?

Right.

And I think you felt maybe suffocated by those.

Yes. Absolutely. And then I think that as more time passed, it was almost like, well, why tell anybody now? I've handled it for this long by myself. There's no reason to share it. Boy, was I wrong.

Well, for the person who's listening thinking, yeah, I buried something, but I've gotten through, why share it now? What do you think that they might be missing out on?

The support you can get and the teammates you can lean on when you need them.

Yeah.

I also want to add to that, I think, like, the weightlessness and the relief of just getting it out. It's like the difference between putting a band aid on something and being like, it's fine and actually healing a wound.

Right, right, right. And being able to release a lot of it as well.

Yeah. So when you shared that you were kind of pulling back the band aid, and then we had to, like, kind of go in and do that wound, and. And it wasn't all immediate.

Right.

It was a process, and you really led that process of what the capacity was for how deep we went into the healing.

Right.

Yeah.

I think initially I definitely just wanted to hit it surface level.

Yeah.

That it had happened. And I. I remember wishing that there was something I could do to just make it go away. I think initially I thought if I shared it, everything would be fine. And then I learned that I needed to do the work.

Yeah.

Underneath. To get to that point.

Yeah.

I do want to note, simultaneously, you also did get a new job.

I did.

We tackled both. Right. We tackled both.

Right.

It was cool.

I remember setting action steps for, you know, interviews and reach outs, and then also setting action steps for journaling and making space for grief and, you know, really connecting what you went through to grief.

Right. Absolutely.

Do you remember anything about that process that was especially helpful? Healing, Challenging. You know, of doing the work, writing.

I found to be very, very helpful, especially in initially just getting my thoughts out. I also found trying to find different ways to actually release was helpful, specifically breath work. And I think also taking it as I was ready. So some weeks we've solely focused on career, and other weeks when I had the capacity to do so, we went deeper on this.

And I just want to say, like, I give you so much credit for your continued courage, because this is not easy. Margaret. And I always call you Mar, but I just did Margaret, but this isn't easy. But I also want to say you never were like, oh, breathwork, I can't wait. Like, you were like, shit, what is that? What's going to happen? What am I going to feel, remember?

Yes. Yes. I wanted to know. I wanted to be able to see it exactly laid out as to what would happen before I would do it.

And you kind of had to learn to let go of that control, right?

Absolutely. And just trust it. Trust the process.

Right.

And what did you find in doing that?

I definitely had to let go of the expectations or set more realistic expectations and completely let go of the control. Because there were many times where going through this process, I did not have control.

Right.

And based on the trauma that you went through, when we feel powerless, it's very hard for us to put ourselves in situations where we kind of surrender control.

Right.

Because that's scary. And so this is a huge part of your healing. It continues to be.

Right?

Yes. And learning where I can take control and focusing on those and letting go of the places that I can't take control, which I still need reminders for.

Yeah, we all do, though, right? We all do. All right. So we've been doing this work for a while. You've got a new job. You actually just got a new apartment. You, you know, have really worked through and stood in your power through this trauma.

Right.

But what would you say are kind of like the biggest wins or the biggest things you notice about yourself? Maybe the biggest things someone else notices about what this work has done for you? Because it's. You know, I always say, like, it's not like there's progress photos like you have when you're, you know, working on a fitness regime for a year, but there is measurements of progress. Like, you can feel and see it.

I absolutely notice a difference with my energy and how I show up to situations. I feel lighter, and I also feel more in control of my thoughts.

And I. From what you've shared, I think other people have noticed that for you, too.

Yes, absolutely. I know my family has. I know friends have. I've had people comment on the amount of growth they've seen over the past year, which is cool to hear.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because it. I mean, I say it all the time, but, like, it probably means more than you hear from other people.

Right.

You're like, all right, it's a wonderful thing. I think you guys listening? Like, we talk a lot about, like, doing this work, and this is what happens is we're digging and we're releasing and we're purging. And Margaret, you.

I don't know.

I'm calling you Margaret's Day. You've got, like, this lightness, and you've got this kind of more this ease Right. This ease. And when we have this lightness and this ease and this flow, relationships blossom, work blossoms, opportunity blossoms. And. And we really allow the things that we want. And it's funny is we let go of pursuing those things and we do the inner work, but then those things come. So of all the things that you've kind of, you know, all the tools and strategies, are there any that have been the most helpful for you or things that you'd recommend or share for other people to kind of learn more about or kind of like look into?

I definitely would say learning more about teammates, which I think you have previous podcasts on. Finding those people who you can lean on when you need them and leaning on them when you need them.

Yeah.

Has been huge.

Yeah.

I think that's huge for you. I mean, on my. From my end, I would say your awareness, which allows you. Has been huge the way you've developed your self awareness. So now, you know, your capacity, you know, you communicate really directly and proactively.

Right.

You know, when you need some self care. And you know that self care doesn't just mean like spa days. Right. And that awareness allows you to think of what kind of teammate you need.

Right? Absolutely. And I also think, like you mentioned, capacity has been huge. Recognizing when my capacity is reached, it's reached its limit and taking a step back and then in that moment, implementing some self care, which could be taking a nap or it could be going outside for a walk by myself.

Yeah.

I'm so damn proud of you.

Thank you.

All right, so looking back, you know, former version of Mar to current version of Mara, what are you the most proud of?

Honestly, I think owning this story and owning this truth and sharing it.

Yeah.

This is why I really do believe in the depths of my soul that doing the work is the most selfless thing you can do. Because not only are you in a way better, it's not a hierarchy, but are you in a more flow, healthy, aligned place? You're in a healthier, more aligned place for you, more confident place, more clear place. But you sharing this, which we said at the beginning you never thought you would have been able to do, I guarantee somebody listening is going to feel permission to go get support for a trauma that they've been through, maybe a sexual assault, and they're going to feel relief from some shame that you've helped lift.

I hope so. That would be the best possible case scenario, is if someone else realizes that they can share because I did.

And sharing can look different.

Right?

Right, Absolutely.

And I think Also, in addition to thinking about sharing, they can confront it.

Right?

Right.

And accept it and know that, you know, they've got the tools and the supports and the capacity to release it, to grow through it. Doesn't mean we excuse it.

Right.

It's no excusing. It's no dismissing. It's not saying, oh, it's fine.

Right.

We didn't do any of that.

I think the shit.

We sat with the shit. And that's important people to hear, though. It's not just like. Like, oh, it's fine. Like, we're gonna talk about it, and it's great. Like, it wasn't a Kumbaya.

Right.

It was like, are we working through this?

No. And I would say that it's still not. I would say I'm still working through it. I've grown, I've learned from it, and I've been able to release some of it. But I would absolutely say it's process.

1,000%. 1,000%. I always say there's no finish line to this stuff.

Right. Right.

I've got my own coaches. I've got my own. Because, you know, the only thing that we can always constantly do is evolve.

Right.

And. And evolve our own energy and align our own energy. And so, you know, that's. There's no finish to that. As long as we're alive, our energy is changing. So therefore, we can continually evolve and align. So the. Oh. I also think it's a really cool synchronicity, though. If you remember where you were when you decided that you were going to reach out to me.

I was at brunch with my family on Boylston street looking over the garden, specifically where Laden's tree is.

But you didn't know that was related.

And I did not know that was where her tree was.

It's one of my favorite restaurants. Give a little plug Bistro Doom D sponsor me, Sponsor us. But honestly, the reason I like it is that's where I go with my family every year. You know, we'll have a drink at the bar, and then we go to Layden's tree and we decorate it because that's, you know, what we do.

I love that.

Yeah. But that's a place where you and your family have gone. And that was kind of when you said to, you know, your family, like, hey, I'm going to move forward and do this.

Yes. All right. Home. I sent the email, and I feel.

Like that was like little Laden right there, you know?

Absolutely. Without a doubt.

Yeah.

So maybe both of us, you know, Just reminders of sharing your story and owning your truth. And just because believe me, when I started this podcast, you know, you were a student in my yoga classes when I was yoga instructing. It was never my thought or intention, like, okay, if I teach yoga or I have my podcast, then it will lead to this. It was more like, I feel called to teach yoga. I feel called to start a podcast and I'm going to see what it is.

Right, right.

And you kind of experience that you're like, okay, I feel called to work with somebody. You thought it was going to be around career, but there was a part of you that absolutely knew it was going to go deeper, even if at the surface level you didn't.

I 100% agree. I think deep down I knew it would be more than just a career change. Yeah.

A life change.

Yes.

Maro, thank you so much for being here. What advice do you have for somebody who is debating, who is thinking like, you know, is it possible to feel more clear should I work with someone? I think a lot of people put pressure on themselves of like, I should be able to figure this out on my own, you know, what would you say to anybody listening, thinking that I.

Would say that it is the best has been and will continue to be the best investment I've made for myself. Just the amount of personal growth. I look back on the version of me last year at this time and I almost don't even recognize that person. So I would highly recommend for anybody listening to absolutely work on personal growth and if you can, to do so with the support of a professional or life coach.

Yeah. So many different ways of doing it. I'm glad you said that.

Right.

Coach, counselor, podcast, masterminds, groups.

Right.

One on one. There are so many ways to grow. I think for me, my only non negotiable, for anyone who wants to get different results, my only non negotiable is to do something to get those different results.

Right.

Absolutely.

And proud of you and congratulations for doing just that, Mar. And inspiring so many others to own their truths to defunct shame.

Right.

To find out and see how strong they really are, to lean on their teammates and to keep growing. Because a year from now they could be a completely different version of themselves than they are now. And you are living proof that that's possible.

Thank you.

Thank you all so much for being here at Grief and Guts as Layden's mom. Being able to spread the stories, the strategies, the lessons I have learned through Layden and from Layden is the thing that means the most to me in this world and allowing my daughter's short life to have long and lasting impact.

By shining her light.

Truly, nothing means more if you align with and believe in the work that we're doing here in these messages. The best way to give back and to spread this out into the world is to rate and review on Spotify and on itunes. Thank you for taking just a moment to do that. Feel free to shoot me a message.

Let me know what you want to.

Hear more of, what you want to see more of. I am here to serve. I'm grateful to do so, and I'm cheering you on in your journeys.