Epissode 539: Why Moms Ignore Their Gut

No need to whine, it's whiny palooza.

Have some wine and join us on the whiny palooza podcast with Rebecca Greene.

Welcome to the whiny palooza podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca Greene. I'm a wife, mother of 3, and licensed clinical social worker. I also have 3 fur babies at home too. My passion has always been to help children and their families. I always dreamed of being a wife and a mother. Parents are always learning through their struggles, failures, and successes and joys. I am no stranger to this wild ride of parenting, and I know behind every great parent lies a team of supportive friends and family. I want to be part of your support system. I want you to know that you are not alone. We are in this parenting world together. Join me every week for insightful discussions with experts on parenting and marriage, as well as other parents who have found the secret to successes in parenthood. You'll learn tips and tricks to make life with your family better than ever. I hope you will follow along with me while we dive into what it takes to achieve a happy family.

Hello everyone, this is Rebecca Greene for the Whiny Palooza podcast, and I am so super excited today because I get to talk to the magnificent Kelly Sparta. Kelly, thank you so much for being here with me.

Thank you for having me. I, I was really surprised when you guys outreached to me to say, hey, do you want to be on the show? I was like, yeah, that sounds great.

Yes. Well, I mean, you are so fascinating. I just told Kelly, like, I'm gonna be nice, I'm gonna share all of this with all of you. I'm gonna ask questions for all of you, but I really wanted to keep Kelly for myself. So, so I will be nice and share her. But, um, you are super fascinating. I love the work that you're doing. But let me tell them so they know why I'm so excited today. So Kelly is a transformational shaman, psychic energy healer, and spiritual business strategist with more than 50 years of experience Experience. So now people are getting it a little bit. She helps people move through burnout, overwhelm, and personal transformation by blending spiritual wisdom with practical tools for everyday life. Kelly is also the host of two spiritual podcasts and the author of The Overachiever's Guide to Spiritual Awakening. So now everyone knows a little bit about you, but we need to know, when did you realize this was the work that you needed to be doing?

So it's very funny because people usually ask that question a little bit differently, which is, when did you start doing this? And my mother raised me in the New Age movement. She said I was talking to ghosts in my crib. And so she raised me in psychic development classes, personal growth and development. I was raised on Seth and Ram Dass and Abraham Hicks. And so basically, if I had been in a tribal context, I would have been apprenticed to a shaman from the very beginning, is really what it came down to, right?

And so you didn't get a choice. You didn't even get a choice.

I mean, if I told her I didn't want to do it, she would have said okay. But, you know, I thought it was cool too. So I kept going. But, you know, I've been doing this for so long. I literally, I have high school yearbook signatures that read like client testimonials. Yeah.

Oh my goodness. So you're in high school helping the people in high school with your gifts.

Pretty much. Yeah. So it's not what I do so much as who I am, right?

Oh, amazing. Okay, so we talked about the fact that it's mostly moms who are listening. Now, with your introduction, a lot of the moms are thinking right now, what does that mean? Can you explain what you do?

Yes, absolutely. What I do is I help people from the moment that they say there's got to be more to life than this, and they go looking and the spiritual world appeals to them. I work with them from that point all the way through until if they become practitioners. I work with them on developing their ability to facilitate and coach and do things like that, and then how to run their business. And I do the whole gamut from start to finish. And I've got coaches that work— I run the Spirit Guide School, and so I have coaches that work with me and run different parts of my programs and things like that.

Sounds amazing. So, so what about if— what about if we were to say, what would be a spiritual awakening for a busy mom? What would that look like?

Well, so it's very interesting because if you'd asked me this question 20 years ago, I would have said, you know, they're— the kids went to school and they suddenly actually had some free time and they woke up and went, wait, you know what? What about me, right? Where do I fit in my life, right? And then, they start to do a little self-discovery journey and they start looking at where in their relationship are they not happy, where in their life are they not happy, and then I work with them to help them figure out how to improve that, whether that's dealing with stuff from their childhood that makes them see the world in a really negative fashion or even in just a "I have to work all the time" fashion. Or, you know, whether it is, you know, a burgeoning sense of potentially something happening psychically for them. Now, that was 20 years ago. That's still true today for some people, but some people are showing up going, I have people in my bedroom at night talking to me. Yeah, I, I have a ghost that is messing with my kids who are psychic. I have, I have a situation where a guide that I thought was there to help me is, is sending me down paths that feel wrong, you know. I mean, weird stuff that people don't talk to each other about, right? I mean, yeah, it's, it's stuff that if you told a therapist, they would probably put you in the loony bin, right? You tell a shaman and we go, oh yeah, you know, I've had weirder things than that in my breakfast cereal. We're fine.

Right?

It's, it's so—

I love it.

I love this. And so I get a lot of that these days. It's like they're waking up, waking up much further along the path than they used to, which is very interesting and really disorienting for people who don't have a context for it. They're, they're just flipping out and they don't know who to go to. Right? I've got a poltergeist in my house. I get that from people too. You know, it's like, Amazing.

Yeah, people don't talk about this. I know that it's happening, but nobody really talks about it.

You know the funniest thing? I live in Panama now, but I moved from Boston to Virginia, to Richmond, Virginia, before I moved in Panama. And when I was in Virginia, it is the most haunted place I have ever been in my life, because every time I spoke to somebody— because I'm out of the spiritual closet, right? I'm like, this is who I am, right? They all told me these stories. Every single person had a ghost story in Virginia, and none of them talked to each other about it.

Oh gosh.

And I'm like, y'all need to start talking to each other because this is common here. Oh my God. Yeah.

And I know this is silly, but I feel like I've heard that about Virginia.

Yeah, well, it's near that 37.5 parallel, right? That's like the weird parallel that where all the weird stuff happens, right?

Interesting. So what exactly is a shaman?

Okay, so if you ask 100 shamans what a shaman is, they're going to give you 100 different answers. Okay, so I'm just gonna— I'm gonna tell you what a transformational shaman is, which is what I do.

Okay.

And so what it means is that I work with people on transformative processes using shamanic techniques, which are ritual-based or archetypally based. And things like that. I do mental-emotional work as well, but I also do the energetic side of it, which is where the shamanism comes into play.

Okay, that makes total sense. So, so you're given a mom who's totally burned out, where do they begin the reset?

So the reset starts with getting out of burnout. That, that is rule number one, right? So you'll know that you're out of burnout. So here's, here's, here's the thing about burnout, okay, is that Speaking as someone who has been there many, many times in my life, I am the queen of burnout, right? Because I love to get things done, right? And so, you know, the thing about burnout is that you start to feel better before you're actually better. And so you'll be like, oh, I can get something done now. Because before you were on the floor in a pile, crispy critter and crusty in the corner, right? But now you're like, oh, I can get up. I can actually go do something. I must be better. You are not better. Okay, you are not better when you can get up and do something. You are better when your creativity returns.

Oh, that's so good. Yeah, that's really good. Okay, I've never looked at it like that. That's great advice. Okay, we're all taking notes. So we all need more calm in our daily life. Routine because for some reason we think we need to go nonstop from morning to bedtime. So can you help us put more calm into our daily routine?

Yes. The first thing I'm going to say is think about how you behave and whether you want your kids to feel like you do because you are modeling for them what is expected of them. Yes. And so if you just went, oh, then you're probably in the right place. Right. So the, The thing you have to do is you have to look at what can I let go of, right? Because it doesn't— we all try to be perfect. We all try to make the perfect experience. And moms in particular have the worst deal, right? Women in general have the worst deal because we're not allowed to be a lot of things and we have to be a lot of things. And, you know, having the perfect You are not going to give your kids the perfect experience. Resign yourself to that right now. Perfection is an illusion, right? It is. So we live in a world that is constant change, and perfection is a state of stillness. And therefore, by definition, perfection can only exist for a moment in time. It is not something that is ongoing. And so If you're trying to make it perfect ongoing, then you're really striving for something that's impossible. And so give yourself a break. Let yourself be human. The best thing you can give your kids is the sense that they are loved and they are safe. And when we push ourselves to be perfect, we get overdone, overwrought, empty, and angry/cranky/not pleasant to be around. And that doesn't give your kids that sense of being loved and feeling safe. Kids who are loved and feel safe do infinitely better than kids who don't have those experiences. The average American child receives 437 negative messages to every 1 positive message they get.

Oh my gosh, are you serious?

I am serious. And so terrible data. It's awful, right? And so it is so important to add into your day times for you and your kids to appreciate each other and your partner, right? So to make sure that appreciations are shared, praise is shared, everything is not a you have to strive to earn love. That is the worst, right? You don't wanna have to earn your love. They should always have your love. And if you want to celebrate with them when they achieve, that's great. But you should also celebrate the effort when you know they worked hard, even if they didn't get there all the way, right? Because it's not about— I mean, yes, I'm Gen X. It is about the result. Let me be clear. I am Gen X. It is about the result. However, it is also about the effort and about being able to teach them resilience through looking at the situation and saying, you know, this didn't work out the way you wanted. Let's identify why. Let's see what happened. And I— so that you can learn from the experience. It's not just about experiencing failure, but to say, okay, this wasn't what I wanted as an outcome. Why didn't I get there? And how do I do better next time? Right? Which is a life lesson. Right? And so, you said more calm. So, more calm is about letting yourself off the hook. More Calm is about giving yourself space to exist without interruption. And so that means training your kids to leave you alone for periods of time. My favorite way of doing that for, for my clients, because I am not a parent, but I've worked with a lot of parents. My favorite way of doing that is to say, okay, I'm going to take a 20-minute nap. And when I get done, we're all going to get together and clean the house. You want to get them to leave you alone, tell them that they're going to have chores when you're done.

We'll never wake you up.

We'll never wake you up.

Mom, I don't want to clean the house. That's funny.

It works. It's very effective.

A good trick. I like that.

And then the other piece for you is stop listing everything that you haven't done yet.

Yes, right.

You need to start acknowledging what you accomplished. Now, the one place that it's useful to list what you haven't done yet is right before you go to bed, because the brain does not like an open cycle. And so if you have a hard time going to sleep— and this is the best way to get peace, is good rest, right? So you write down everything on your to-do list for the next day and put it off to the side, and then you'll be able to sleep better. Okay, now I also want to address the ladies in the room who are a little older and whose children are growing or grown. If you're hitting that menopause age, then if you're hitting that point where the night sweats are real, right, uh, 2 ounces of soy milk in your coffee in the morning will solve the night sweats and the hot splashes.

Goodness gracious. Really?

2 ounces of soy milk, because soy is an estrogen receptor, uh, mimicker. So it will take up the same spots that estrogen takes up in your system.

Okay, I'm going to buy some soy.

That's what I'm saying. I'm a big fan of hormone replacement, ladies, but you know, I, I will tell you, hormone replacement is the, the bomb.com. But, uh, though, if you don't want to do hormone replacement, soy will save your save you during this time.

Thank you for another excellent tip. So, okay, so we're feeling calm, we're letting things go, we're getting uninterrupted time.

Yes.

Then our kids are having big, huge emotions.

Yes.

So how do we as parents stay grounded for them?

Okay, so this is important. So on my website, there is a picture of a lady holding a crystal. And it's at kellysparta.com, spelled like you see it on the screen, and it's called Boundaries for Empaths. And so the reason that you're having such a hard time when your kids are having so many emotions is because you're mixing your energy field with your, your kid. And when you do that, you experience what they experience, whether you want to or not, and vice versa, by the way. Okay, so I would do this exercise with your children. I've had many of my clients do it do it. And they were like, oh my God, that made so much of a difference, right? So when you are mixing your energy field, it's because it's a, it's a defense mechanism, right? We learn to hold our energy fields out at the edges of the room or the building, or some people, poor people, the Earth. And then everybody is inside your energy field who's inside that space. And that means that you have no defense against them and you're sharing your energy with them. And that is not always optimal. Right? So when you pull your energy field back in, one, you are going to feel safer and more solid, sort of. I'll tell you why, sort of. But, and, and two is you'll feel more coherent, right? The sort of is because we use the, the shoving our energy field out to monitor everybody in the room. And so when you pull your energy field back, you won't have that active monitoring system. And so for some people, that makes them feel less safe. But when you can learn to test the energy of the other person without having to have them inside your field, and so that then doesn't remove that sense from you. It just makes it more of an active system than a passive system. And so all of that's covered in the free, free course.

So interesting. That makes a lot of sense.

Yeah.

Yeah, because it's contagious. I feel like it's contagious. Absolutely.

Yeah. And if you teach your kids to do that too, then they don't get as impacted by everything around them. So if mom's stressed out, the kid doesn't have to be. Right?

Yeah. Right. Because I was going to ask vice versa, our energy affecting our kids. So it goes both ways.

Absolutely.

So, okay, we're tying our worth to how we're doing.

Oh yeah.

So we're all overachievers. I, I would love to meet a non-overachiever. I'm just telling you, if you're listening to this and you're not an overachiever, please find me because I need you. So How do we stop tying our worth to what we're doing?

Well, so that's a, it's a complicated question because that's actually part of what I do in my, my coursework with people because it means that you have to internalize your sense of value. What's happened, the reason that you tie your worth to your work, partly one is because in the US that's what we're trained to do. We are trained to be little producers. Right?

Yes.

And your productivity is your worth. Um, I live in Latin America now, in Central America, and that— I can tell you definitively, this is not how they look at it. And in fact, it shows in customer service and stuff. They don't care if they get to you fast, you know. It's just not relevant in their world.

And it's not like they're—

it's not like they don't care about you, because they're lovely humans and they love to interact and they love to be interpersonal, but business is not their primary thing, right? Relationship before business, always, right? And so, we have to recognize that some of it's cultural, right? But the other side of it is that the way that we got approval in childhood, whether it's from our teachers or from our parents or whoever, right, was always about what we did, not who we were. Yeah, okay. And so you have to untrain that. You have to internalize your sense of value to say, I am valuable when I am doing nothing, which usually makes my clients go, what?

It, it did make me, it did make me twitch at first, I will admit that.

And that's the thing, is that you have to understand that your value is in who you are, not what you do. And so, you know, when— if you're gonna try and do this on your, on your own at home, one of the things that you may want to do is talk to your loved ones and say, what is it that you love about me? And their answers will help you with who you are piece.

That's helpful. I think we all need to do that today.

Yeah.

And I would love to do that around the table at dinner because because we should all be sharing that. When is the last time we've asked that question? I can't even tell you.

I used to teach a class for middle school students, and I told them every day that they came into class— it was 6 classes— they had to come in and give me 3 good things about themselves. And the— and I was writing it down so they couldn't repeat, right? And so every day they came in, the first time it was okay. They felt uncomfortable about it, but they did it. But the second day, third day, fourth day, they would start to repeat. And I'm like, "Nope, you've already told me that about yourself. I love that about you. What else?" And they would just be lost. And the fun thing was that the other students helped them. They were like, "Oh, you're this and you're that and you're that." I'm like, "Ah, fantastic." And at the end, I gave them all a list of all the things about themselves that were good so that they could keep hold of it. Right.

That is amazing.

And this is something you can do at home, right?

Yes. Yes. I'm stealing this. The soy milk, the list. I'm stealing it all. So we all want to shift our mindset. So let's take an overwhelmed parent and what is a mindset shift that they can do?

Okay. So when we're overwhelmed, what's happening is we are looking at all the things we haven't done, all the things that we feel not good enough about. About all the ways in which we are just over, you know, overdramatic in our lives, right? It's just like everything just blows up, right? So the first thing you can do is take a deep breath and be still and just be in the present moment. So there's something called a vagus nerve reset, and it brings your nervous system back to baseline. And the way that you do this, you can't be in a rush, you can't be running from one place to the next to do it. So it's not something that you do quickly, although after you get used to it, you can start to do it more, more efficiently. But the first thing you can do is you do your vagus nerve reset, which is look around the room very slowly, acknowledge that there is a roof over your head, there is food in your belly, there is money in your bank account, there is love in your home, and you're okay, right? And just come back to that point. And one of the things that you do physically is you turn your head all the way to the right, look all the way to the right over your shoulder, and hold that position until something in your body shifts. Either your shoulders soften or you take a deep breath or something. And then come back to the center, do Same thing on the left side and do that and hold it again until you have that shift again and then come back to center. Okay. And that will bring your nervous system back into a default state instead of in a hyper-aware state because overwhelm is all— is also often hypersensitivity. Right? So we're, we're just overdone by everything. And so that takes the nervous system down so that the overwhelm of the hypersensitivity goes away, right? And then it becomes, is there actually a need to do the things that I've got on my list? Because the average woman has a list of like 30 things that they think they're gonna get done in every day, and they get maybe 7 done. Okay? Stop doing that to yourself. Okay, what you're going to do is over the next week, you're going to look at that list, and that whole list that you've got on your, your plate, you're going to check off everything that got done at the end of the week. And then every day for a week, you're going to keep that list and you're going to look at how many things did I actually accomplish. And at the end of the week, you're only allowed to put that many things on average on your list. You can keep the other things aside as things that have to get done eventually. But the things on your to-do list are only allowed to be the things that you can actually accomplish in a day. That is how you avoid overwhelm in the first place. So you stop expecting yourself to overtask.

I mean, it's such good advice because I realized that I, my expectations for myself every day were completely unrealistic. Yeah. I was like, I only got 4 of my things done. And my husband's like, yeah, but those were 4 great things. I was like, but I got 4 more.

Right. And, and a good way to test this for yourself is just to look at it and say, if this were your friend saying this to you, would you be looking at her and smacking her upside the head and saying, no, never.

No, we're so much nicer to our friends.

Yes. So you need to start treating yourself as a friend, not as a whipping post.

Yes, yes, I hope everybody hears that. So, you know, you really gave us some of this, but we want— how do we model emotional resilience for our kids?

Okay, I have a— yeah, I have a good answer.

So awesome.

So emotional resilience is simply the act of being able to take in what's going on and respond, not react. Okay? And so, that is the necessary piece to that is to not see everything that comes in as a potential threat or a potential problem, right? And that surprises are not a problem, right? When we're in control mode in our lives, it's because we are feeling unsafe in some way. So, if you're trying to control, it's because you feel unsafe. And the key there is not to increase your control, it's to increase your safety. And so when something starts to trigger you, what you do is you go, okay, I'm feeling a little triggered. I'm going to take a break and I'm going to figure out what I'm upset about. And then I'm going to come back and we'll talk about it. But I'm not going to blow up all over you. And if they continue to come at you, you go, Okay, so this is unwise because I am already triggered. And if you continue to come at somebody who is already upset and not give them the space, then you're gonna get yelled at. And do you want to be yelled at right now? No. Well, I don't want to yell at you either, so you need to leave Mommy alone until I can figure this out. And when I can figure it out, I will come back and talk to you. And when they get triggered, you do the same thing to them. If they yell, you're like, "Are you supposed to be yelling or are you supposed to be going and figuring out how you feel right now?" And they go, "Oh, right." And if you're modeling it, they will do that in return.

So true. Yeah. And I think that I let go of this a long time ago. We have this plan for our day. Moms crack me up. I do it too. I mean, I'm guilty. We make this elaborate plan for our day and things don't go as planned and we get all flustered. But we have children and we have husbands and we have pets and things don't always go like we expect them to go.

Right. So, um, think of it more like surfing, right? You don't control the ocean, you only control the surfboard.

Yes.

And so, you know, you have a general idea of which direction you want to surf in, but you have to respond to the waves around you.

That's great. That's great. We're going to take that with us. So I think that moms get away from trusting their intuition. Oh, can you take us back to how do we start to trust the intuition side of us again?

Okay, so the first thing about intuition is that intuition does not exist in the mind. And the big problem is, is that we're so busy doing our, our emotional labor of structure and function and keeping track of everybody's everything that we're in our heads too much, right? And so you have to get out of your head and into your body. And the easiest path to doing that is to imagine getting on an elevator in your head and taking— press— pressing the button with the heart on it and going down into the heart and allowing yourself to be in that space. And that you can— that takes a minute to transition. Right? You just imagine going into your heart space, and then from there you ask your heart and your body, what is it that I need to know, right? Because when we're on mind on overdrive, which I haven't met a mother who isn't on mind on overdrive, um, the mind literally outscreams the intuition. And so you have to get back into your body so your body can talk to you because your gut feeling, that's an intuition, right? Your, I don't want to go there, that energy, that is your intuition. That is not burnout. That is your intuition. Okay.

Why do we shove that? I feel like we all shove that away.

Well, because we're taught to power through. And power through ignores everything else. Power through is an emergency response.

Oh gosh. We're doing, we're doing a lot right, and we've got a lot of things to work on.

Well, and that's okay. Clear that this isn't our fault. Okay. Yeah, it's, it's programmed into our culture. And it's programmed into our indoctrination as women. Right? And so none of it's your fault, but now that you know it exists, it's your responsibility to fix it.

Yes, I agree.

No need to beat yourself up. Beating yourself up for something that you didn't change yet is just a resistance to making the change now.

That's good. I have never thought about it that way. And we didn't know what we didn't know.

Exactly. So let it go. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm— let it go, let it go. Yes, every mother on the planet just went, ah, right.

I'm sorry, we need to remember that song every day. Oh, I mean, what do you think women and mothers are getting wrong about manifestation?

So I think it just depends upon what you're trying to manifest, for one. Because, you know, what I generally find as a challenge with manifestation is that the receiving side is where everybody goes south, right? So, you know, as an example, if some— and I did this, I started a retail store once and I was renovating the store and I was just like, oh my God, I don't want to redo these floors. And I just don't want to do it. I can figure it out, but I don't want to, right? And this random guy walks by my retail store with the glass windows and sticks his head in and goes, "Whatcha doing?" And I said, "I'm renovating the shop." And he said, "I'm a construction worker and I don't have any jobs right now. Would you like some help?" And I said, "Well, I don't have any money to pay you." He said, "That's okay." I said, "I can buy you lunch." He said, "Pizza would be great." And I'm like, "Okay." And he not only did he help me for 2 full days, no charge, but He got me the contractor rate on the sanding machine that saved me the cost of the pizza. And so, I mean, but I said yes. Now, how many people would have said no? I can't ask you to do that. You don't know me. Why would you want to do that? And I, I mean, I saw him maybe twice after that. You know, it's not like we formed a relationship or anything. We didn't.

I mean, that's amazing, right? How many people say yes? How many things show up and we don't realize that we manifested it?

Yes.

Yes. I'm going to look harder. I love that story. So there's high-functioning women and they look like they have it all together. They look like everything is great and inside they feel completely lost.

Yes. That's every client I've ever had. Yes.

Can we talk about why this is? Because I want you to know, I had a woman say to me, oh, I wish I could be like so-and-so, they have it all together. And so-and-so had just unloaded on me everything that was going on. So we, we are getting it wrong. They don't have it all together.

No. And you have to stop comparing your insides to other people's outsides because The, the difference between the two is vast, right?

Yes.

And yes, and every client, you know, I mean, it's just they come in and they have a plan and a backup plan and a backup plan for the backup plan. And, and, you know, they get more done in a day than most people get done in a week, and they're exhausted, overwhelmed, anxious. Their anxiety is through the roof.

Yes.

And they, they're just trying to hold it all together. And but they can't let anybody else know that this is going on because they have to look perfect. Okay? That is a function of having been in an environment in childhood where anything other than perfection was not appreciated. And there's one of two paths that people take when they come up in those spaces is they either go into learned helplessness, which is, "I'm not going to try to do anything. Just tell me what to do and I will do what you tell me and I will still probably not do it right. And so I'm not going to bother to do it very well." Right? Oh, and, and the other side of it is I'm going to do everything perfect. I'm going to be the perfect child, the golden child. I'll always get it right. It'll be everything. And then absolutely anything I make a mistake on will never be tolerated. And I'll get in trouble in a big way for it, not only from, you know, my whoever it is I'm trying to impress in childhood, but also from all my friends and from myself, because we train others how to treat us. And so, if you hold yourself to an impossible standard, then other people will hold you to that as well. And the worst part about operating in that space is that when you hold yourself to that ridiculous standard, you think a slightly less ridiculous standard is reasonable to hold other people to. And yet, it is still ridiculous. And then, you're like, "Why doesn't— why can't anybody live up? Why can't anybody get it done?" Wah-da-da-da. Because you are completely out of the realm of reason to begin with. Let's start with that. Right. You know, and I was this person, which is why I got it so right, so perfectly with these people, is because that's who I was.

Yeah.

I went through a divorce and like 2 people in my life knew about it and they were sworn to secrecy. No one else ever knew till like a year later. And they would be like, wait, we haven't seen him. And I'm like, oh yeah, I divorced him a year ago. And they're like, what? I'm like, I did not want to be the subject of gossip and I didn't want to be the person who everybody was worried about. And oh, where was you? I was like, no, no, no, I'm holding it together. Here by the skin of my teeth and I don't need you butting into my business, right? So trust me when I tell you I understand, right? But there's this need because the perfectionist route puts you in a position where your value is based on what you can do and contribute and how well you can hold things together. And the other evil side of it is that when you do something for somebody else, you consider it a 50-cent deposit into their emotional bank account of your relationship. Well, when you ask for something from them or they do something for you, it's a $50,000 withdrawal on your side of things. And so there's never a balance. There's never an easy thing. And so what happens is you end up surrounding yourself with takers because you can give to them and they make you feel good about yourself. But the moment you need something, they're gone because that's not your contract. Your contract is you do for them, they make you feel good about yourself. Right?

So really true.

It is. It is. It is a very slippery slope to be in that space. And it's a terrible place to be. It's so stressful and so overwhelming.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it, it's okay when you feel in a really good place. But when you need help, and they're not used to you asking for help, that's when it goes south.

Yeah. And, and the worst part is that when you ask for help, you wait too long to ask for help. And so you'll wait until you are absolutely desperate and there is no option for the person you're asking to say no, which is the worst kind of manipulation on the other person's part, right? To, to them, where they don't have the option to say no if it's not convenient for them. It doesn't matter, you've got to drop everything for me because I'm in Whereas if you just asked for a little bit of help all the time from a lot of people, you would never be in that position. And it would be easy for people to say yes to you, and it would be okay if they didn't say yes.

Okay, so speaking from experience and talking to so many moms, I can hear the moms in my ear saying, I'm not comfortable asking for help, right? Can you talk to them?

Yes. So, let me put this to you in a way that you'll understand. There is no such thing as it's better to give than to receive. It is a binary system. One cannot exist without the other. It's the most ridiculous thing in a— if you look at it logically. And so, the other piece to think about is that if you think about how good you feel when you are able to give to someone, why would you deny someone that opportunity? For you. You're, you're asking for help gives them the opportunity to pay you back. Otherwise, they start to feel way out of balance. And that's not fair.

I was just gonna tell you that. I think it makes them feel bad because it's so uneven.

Exactly. And if it doesn't, they're takers, right? Yes. Yes.

Yes. So, you know, I'm sure that there's mothers and women listening who just feel lost. They feel totally lost. Can you give them a little bit of guidance on finding themselves?

Yes. Okay, so when we're feeling lost and we're in a position of confusion, it is a resistance pattern. Okay, we are inherently tuned to know who we are if we will just go quiet enough to listen. Okay, when we're in the, uh, stage of I don't know which way to go, I don't know what to do, when we're in that state, what happens is that we are actually resisting an answer that we already know. And the answer may just be really inconvenient in your life, and you know that it's inconvenient, or you think it's impossible. And therefore you won't acknowledge it. And so you get stuck and lost and confused. And so the question isn't, which way should I go? The question is, what do I already know that I'm avoiding paying attention to?

It's a great question. Yeah. Well, I could talk to you all day. You know that I could talk to you all day. I want to hear the difference, like, how are you feeling living where you're living?

Oh, I love it. Oh my God. We moved here almost 4 years ago now. And part of the reason why we moved was because the energy was just so intense. I just, I had to get out of the energy. And we moved to now, I live in Boquete, Panama, which is up in the mountains on the far side of the country from the canal. So we're on the opposite end, right, right close to Costa Rica. And the energy here in the mountains has a name. The locals call it tranquilo because it makes you so calm and quiet. And the most stressful time in my life was getting ready for this move because we were moving from Virginia and we sold everything we owned. We arrived with 6 suitcases and the dog, and that was it.

Oh my gosh.

So now this was my third time getting rid of everything I owned in my life. So that wasn't horrible for me. But, you know, we owned a house, we owned a car, we, you know, we had a whole bunch of stuff that we had to get rid of. And so the, but, you know, and then we came in and we had COVID when we first arrived and all the stuff. Right. And yet when we moved into this house, there was something wrong with an appliance every other day. Only one appliance actually worked. And my husband kept looking at me like, okay, when's she going to go apoplectic? Right. Because he's like, you know, something, this, this thing went wrong. And he's looking at me like, are you about to go off? Because I was so stressed before the move that I was going off. I was just like, I just couldn't clear the stress. And because, you know, part of the reason we were moving was because of the energy. And so, and I just kept looking at him going, no, they'll fix it. It's fine. Stove doesn't work, we'll go out for dinner. Laundry doesn't work, we'll wear something else. It'll be fine.

Amazing.

And I was fine, right? Because the energy that was surrounding me was not in not assaulting me every day, right? And, you know, I, I have since— now, since I got out of it, I've since done the math on how to do the energetics differently that I can make it better. But I didn't think about it at the time because I was just so overdone, because between COVID and, and, you know, there was so much stuff going on back then. And, um, and so here I, I'm in love with this location. Because we have the community that we never found in Richmond. And if I can't find community, trust me when I tell you there is no community to be had. Okay? Because I am the queen of finding and creating community. But we didn't find it in Richmond. And when we got here, because it's an expat area, right? And so it's all immigrants here. And so much of it is— I do speak Spanish and I speak reasonable Spanish, but most of my day is done in English still because so many expats are in the area. And, um, and so, but everybody works together. It's like, you know, when things go south, like they used to close the roads here in protest to try and get the government to change things. And that you would be, you know, there'd be no gas, there'd be no propane, there'd be, you know, people would have a hard time finding their medications and people would just come out of the woodwork and say, what do you need? We'll find it. And, and, you know, like I have, I have my doctor's WhatsApp number so I can call my doctor or text my doctor and say, hey, I'm having this problem, should I come in or should I go to the hospital or should I do this or whatever, right? You know, I, I had surgery last year and I had my surgeon's number and I spoke to him daily for like 3 months, sent him pictures of my wound and everything, you know, 3 months, right? Crazy.

So good service there.

Yes. And the cost is, so I, you know, no insurance. I got a massive abdominal surgery, $4,000, no insurance.

How did you pick this place?

How did you make like, well, there's a company called Panama Relocation Tours and they have a bunch of videos online and we watched a ton of their videos and a friend of mine went on one of their tours just before we were moving. And she said, yeah, the only place you'd be happy is Boquete. And I was like, well, that's good. Cause that's where we were looking at. And, and we actually had never been here before we arrived and people were like, what do you mean you move someplace you've never been? I'm like, we have 6 suitcases and the dog. How hard could it be to move again if we hate it?

You know, like I'm really impressed. Yeah. I don't know that I would do that. I'm very impressed. Oh my goodness. Okay. So one more question and I'll let you go.

Yeah.

So do you do— like, do people come to you for psychic readings?

Sort of. So I, I do psychic readings, but I don't generally sell them as a separate service. What I do sell is a spiritual evolution energy review, which is, you know, how do you get from where you are to the next stage of evolution, since that's what I'm really focused on, right? I do those. I also do a Spiritual Business or Sacred Business Calibration, which is taking a look at your business both from a strategic business perspective, because I've been a business owner for 38 years and been selling online for 22, and, and from a spiritual perspective because I've been studying that for 50 years. And so, you know, I look at both sides of it, you know, sacred contracts, past life issues, ancestral line issues, curses, anything that might be impacting your business. And, you know, looking at that. And one of the— here's a weird thing, right? If you have a woman who owns a business and she doesn't have— and it hasn't really grown past like 4 or 5 employees, it is often still held within her own energy field, and she has to birth that business out of her body and into the world before it can grow past that point. Point without impacting her energy field and shredding it.

That makes sense.

Yeah, men don't build their businesses that way, but women do.

Interesting. Well, everybody now wants to find you, so tell everyone where they can find you.

Kelliesparta.com, like you see it on the screen. K-E-L-L-E, no, no Y, no I-E, no E-Y, just K-E-L-L-E. Yes, my mother was phonetically stupid, I can't help it. Kellysparta.com. Sparta like the Greek city-state.

How— where did she come up with that spelling?

She just liked it. And what's interesting, she was psychic too. So what's interesting is that I— about, I don't know, 15 years ago, I went and looked up everybody whose name was spelled my way on the internet, and everybody was in spiritual field. So she was clearly right.

Gosh. Well, it's so funny I had to ask you if I was pronouncing it right because I've never seen it spelled that way.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I know a lot, but yeah.

Well, yeah. And I was like, it could be something that I'm like, I'm just going to tell her I think it's Kelly. And if I'm wrong, she'll correct me.

Yeah, you got it right. It's all good.

So I knew I was going to love talking to you. I think you're amazing. And I truly love the work that you're doing.

Thank you.

So thank you for spending time with us.

I'm thrilled. Thank you for having me on the show.

This is Rebecca Greene, and I want to remind everyone to spend every day laughing, learning, and loving.

Thank you for tuning in to the Winey Palooza podcast. If you like what you heard, please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. While you are there, leave a review. I love to hear your feedback. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.

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