Trauma Psychologist Explores The Inner Meaning of Her Own Grief

Grief is not just one thing. Grief is not just I'm sad. It can be angry. It can be this very active, sort of forceful, dynamic experience. It's not like a video game where you advance from one level to another to another. Like, okay, I can check off denial and move forward to anger. It doesn't really work like that. It's much more parallel process of sadness with anger, with denial, with joy. And it's much more mixed in and sort of powerful and dynamic than maybe we would have acknowledged at an earlier time in the psychological conversation. Conversation. I was trained as a trauma psychologist, so I've really thought a lot about these edge state loss experiences. I've worked with a lot of what I would call brokenhearted people over the years. But a few years ago, I had, of course, this sort of undesired invitation to do a deep dive into these experiences myself. All of us are going to lose our parents at some point. Many of us will lose siblings. This process of deep grief is universal.

When I lost my grandfather 20 years ago, there was void. And I'm curious what you feel that void is for people and even in your own experience. Sheri, welcome to the podcast.

It is so good to be with you, Josh. Thanks for having me.

You know, whenever I have as many reschedules and interstitial tension as you and I have had, I always know that something beautiful wants to come in. And I was sharing with you and I'll share with all of us right now. I was reading your book Touching Two Worlds, if you're watching with us on YouTube. And I absolutely love the COVID by the way. The roots that go down and the tree that goes up. It reminds me of a phrase from Carl Jung where you can't know heaven unless your roots touch hell. And I was thinking about that in preparation for our conversation. And it's interesting because early on in your life, we're going to cover a lot about grief and. And how to actually have freedom and success and the teachings of grief and the clarity that comes from tough decisions and all your work, which we're going to go over today. But I'm curious how you feel about this. It took you three years to write the book, and there was a passage that you said that really touched me. You said, I grew up with a theology that rallied around the golden streets, pearly gates, and customized mansions that await the faithful followers as a decadent reward for a life of Christian service. Does that still resonate as equal truth as when you read it and when you wrote it?

Well, the rest of the thought is around the shift around my theology. So I grew up with this very externally focused theology, like heaven is coming as the reward.

Yeah.

And I, you know, I understand the value of that idea for folks. But I think in my current thinking and the sort of lessons of my life, there's so much more weight in the here and now as the. The known reward or the known joy that is offered to us for the way that we show up in our lives. So less like, hey, here's a mansion. Here's a mansion for you. Here's a mansion for you. Good job. And more of the power of presence in the moments that we have that are offered to us.

I find it interesting because I was raised in a very Christian upbringing, which I rebelled against. And Honestly, Sherry, for 20 years plus, I was pretty angry at God. I didn't enjoy the concept of God. I had a lot of wounding around God. And it wasn't until I went into my own spiritual journey, which, you know, we've heard many people say that you can't really know God unless you become a heretic, unless you actually have the experience to know God. And as I started to unravel my own trauma and my own loss and my own aspects of my life's journey that were coming, I realized that I had been faking it. I had been faking it because in my early life, I was honestly too boastful and too cocky to admit that I truly didn't know God. And so I'm curious how you feel about this. People that may have a anger towards the things that have happened for them in life, or people that might have an anger towards God. Let's start the conversation at this place. I mean, we're going to get right to it because I think this is in our collective right now. I think it's here, it's present. If somebody's listening or they've heard the introduction, they know who you are. They know that your book is of service to people who are making meaning and hope from this. This landscape of loss. Let's start the conversation there. What do you make of people that are angry at God in this current time in their life or just an anger towards a higher power in general?

Well, anger is such an interesting emotion because it implies hurt. And for there to be hurt, there's some kind of relational pull. If God was neutral, if you didn't care about an idea of God or a relationship with God or even just like the idea, the conceptualization of God, I don't think you'd Feel anger, I think you just be numb. It would be blank. But this idea that you're angry means that you're in a. You're in a tangle, right? You're in a push, pull. You're in a struggle with this entity that you're trying to understand. So I think anger is right alongside longing, right? We're angry when we have a need or desire that's unmet or that's snubbed. So the existence of anger to me signals this sort of longing for a return to spirituality or even, like a specific understanding of God. What is God? Who is God? How do we interact with God?

I remember I quote this a few times. So my audience is going to be like, dude, we've already heard this, but in the Terminator movie, he was talking and John Connor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he said, anger is more powerful than despair. And that really stuck with me. And I. And when I learned about Hawkins work and the frequency scale of emotions, I realized that, like. Like you said, anger is directing us back home to the knowing that our soul is guiding us to that. There's that desire there. Can you. Can you expand on that a little bit more? Because I think at first glance, most people would see anger as a, quote, negative emotion.

Oh, I think anger is a really powerful emotion because it's. It's a signal, and it's a really strong signal that there's something inside that is, like I said, longing to be expressed or corrected or restored. And anger is a. Is a passion emotion. It's kind of, you know, we are angry about things that we love. We get angry at people that we love. It's. It's sort of this parallel between passionate desire. When that's not available, anger replaces it. But it's not a cold emotion, right? It's hot, it's fiery, it's passionate. And it means there's something inside that's longing.

And so it's directing us. That heat, that fire. In other words, to quote Jordan Peterson, chaos seeking order. We're being directed from the emotion that we're experiencing, right? The energy in motion. And we know that energy cannot be created or destroyed, just transmuted. Like you and I can't generate new energy. We just harness the energy that we already have inside of us. What do you make of that? This. This paradox. It's really a spiritual paradox. This. This emotion that we feel when we go through loss. You know, maybe talk about the stages of grief that we experience. And what is. What does that even look like to. To begin.

Well, the stages of grief is a conversation that, you know, was started by Dr. Elizabeth Kubler Ross. And she actually started to think about the grief that people go through when they know that they are dying. So it's actually a different conversation that she started that was about people's own experience of confronting their own death. It's a little different than the experience of loving someone who is dying or has died. And one of the gifts of her work is to identify that grief is not just one thing. Grief is not just, I'm sad. It can be angry. It can be this bargaining. It can be this very active, sort of forceful, dynamic experience that before her, that we didn't have much of a framework for that in psychology. It was like somebody died, you're sad. Okay, good. So her work has really been a gift in that way. The idea of stages, though, I think is something that we no longer really hold to within the psychological world. It's not like a video game where you advance from one level to another to another. Like, okay, I can check off denial and move forward to anger. It doesn't really work like that. It's much more swirly. It's much more parallel process and of sadness with anger, with denial, with joy. And it's much more mixed in and sort of powerful and dynamic than maybe we would have acknowledged at an earlier time in the psychological conversation.

That makes sense because thinking of like a linear stage of even Hawkins work, you know, at the bottom of the scale there's apathy, then shame, then at the top there's nirvana. But we don't live in a linear way. We're kind of like roots in a forest where all the roots entangle in one another. And even in the COVID of your book, you know, there's roots, the roots of the worlds that we're all connected to. So how has that shifted from your early training as a clinical psychologist to now? In other words, you used to believe that maybe it was linear in the.

Beginning or that if you didn't move through to a certain feeling in a certain time, it meant pathology. Right? Something's wrong if you're not back at homeostasis in like six months. And that I absolutely do not believe anymore. And my own grief journey has been this, like, wonderful teacher in the non linearity of grief, and that it is something that operates outside of linear time and outside of like categories of emotion.

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Yeah. So my, my particular journey with this is I was trained as a trauma psychologist, so I've really thought a lot about these edge state loss experiences. I've worked with a lot of what I would call brokenhearted people over the years. But a few years ago I had, of course, this sort of undesired invitation to do a deep dive into these experiences myself. My dad was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and died about 18 months after his diagnosis. And of course in the interim was all manner of fighting and losing and chemo and progression. And then right alongside of his illness, my youngest brother, who was at the time 33, really took a deep dive into his own addiction with alcohol and his own depression. And they, they almost went on this parallel journey such that my brother died by suicide six months after my dad's death. So I got to, got to, I had to. I was in this phase of life of watching these people I love just implode and struggle and eventually fall apart and eventually die. And then of course, was left with all of the openness and the brokenness and the emptiness that comes when people that you love are no longer with you.

You said that the book is about how these losses, quote, reshaped me. And I wonder if you were to look back now with more clarity. You know, your initial training, like you had said in the trauma aspect of your work, how ironic and how so interesting and fascinating that you yourself then had to go through this wave, this, this understanding, this learning of something that you had started your studies in. Do you ever reflect on that with, with curiosity and wonder and just be like, that's so interesting. Why did that happen?

I, I do. And then I take a further step back and think about the human experience. And then I think, well, of course, because these experiences that I lived through there, they were close together. Two losses close together is somewhat unusual, but none of the rest of it is unusual. All of us are going to lose our parents at some point. Many of us will lose siblings. Like, this process of deep grief is universal. And I think that's the thing that I didn't quite grasp because the folk that came to me in my therapy practice, it felt like an extraordinary experience. And they were suffering and struggling and needed presence and support. But when I really think about the people around me, all the people of my life, this is a universal experience. So no amount of training makes me exempt from this kind of suffering or these kinds of painful moments.

Yeah, I, I, I, When I lost my grandfather 20 years ago, there was like a void. And I'm curious, like what you feel that void is for people and even in your own experience, because people come to your work now. Zenfounder.com is a, is a way that you serve people who are burned out or they're feeling like they're in isolation. Also high level entrepreneurs, just people that, that want to make meaning of this thing. You know, we want to live our best life, we want to do things well, wanna live well. And I think about like all the ways that it probably took you yourself to unpack your own life experience around grief and loss in order to lead and found Zen Founder. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Well, I will say that Zen Founder existed before these losses. And I will say that there's absolutely no requirement to have worked through all your shit before you're helpful to other people, thankfully. I mean, you should have your eyes open to it.

Right? I've heard the phrase, you don't have to be a, you don't have to be a black belt to teach a white belt, essentially.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah. So this work has always been my work in the world. It's always been my work to help people confront hard things. So the fact that I have now had to do this in this other way is no surprise at all. And I think it just humanizes all of us. I think it's been really interesting to write a book that's so vulnerable and have many of my clients or the people that hire me for consulting have read the book and so they're now seeing me as this brokenhearted daughter or as this frustrated, sad sister. And they're seeing me in these other ways. And so far I haven't seen that as a, as a detriment in any way. It's just been another way to be co journeyers in the hard things.

Do you ever find that energetically with your way of being that you have to let people know that you don't need their sorrow, you don't need their shoulder to cry on? In other words, have you ever had to energetically course correct when working with clients so that you actually receive reverence from them than unbridled empathy?

Yeah, I think I carry myself in a way that communicates that very intentionally. And that's, I mean, it's one of the gifts of the publication process as you go through this iteration of things that I've written about me for me to things that I've written that I want to share with other people. And by the time you're Ready to share them with other people. It's not that they're all processed and you're done healing and you're on the other side of everything, but it is that that experience has gone through enough of a process that you're no longer bleeding. Right. You're not bleeding on people. That there's a level of containment and a level of clarity around why I would share these stories that I think helps to alleviate the people around me. Right. It's. It's clear that I'm not like, and this horrible thing happened. Help me. You know, it's like, no, I'm inviting you into my journey.

Yes. The. There's a section in the book where you talk about. You may create moments that are uncomfortable for others when you speak of the dead. The air may leave the room in a moment as they freeze with fear and awkwardness. Their emotional uncertainty is not your work. And you're speaking about people that have left the world. You say, say their names often. I really like that. Where other people's emotional uncertainty or insecurity around even the topic or the awareness or the truth of death. I mean, death is such a powerful teacher. There's so much truth in it. What do you make of that? And how. How can people who have been through loss, like yourself, navigate situations where it's radically uncomfortable for others to be around it? There's a squirming, there's a wanting to get away, just even the topic.

I think it's okay to let it be painful for a moment, let there be pain in the room that matches. In a way, I think we are actually seeking emotional congruence a little bit more than we give ourselves credit for. So if I tell you a painful story and then suddenly rush to all that I learned about it, all the reasons that it's okay now, if I. If I sort of go right to the silver lining, I skip through that pain moment and I make it an incongruent experience. The emotional quality in the conversation has become relief instead of discomfort. I think it's okay to let it be uncomfortable for a while and let people hold that space. And if it makes you uncomfortable as the one who's grieving to let that space be in the air, then I think it's okay to transition into. But let me tell you a story about my brother when he was alive. So you're not alleviating the moment, but you're transitioning to, like, a celebration of the person which I think reveres, the one who's passed and doesn't completely eliminate the painfulness of the moment, but at least you can use that moment as a way of sort of corporate collective grief that might be a little bit more palatable to the folks you're talking to.

I enjoy this dialogue because it's really a maturation process for us as a society, even the concept of death. Like, we were very immature about death. We're very immature about birth, both of them. And that goes from the own experience I had, you know, supporting my partner and the birth of our son, and now she's pregnant again and how we're changing and how we're honoring the birth process. What are the ways that you think our society dishonors death?

Well, I just wanted echo of my agreement with you, Josh, about really these parallels between birth and death. Yeah, they are these edge states, right? They only happen a few times that we are going to either give birth, support someone in giving birth, or we're going to hold the hand of someone we love who's dying. They are these moments in our lives that don't happen very much, but they get to the depths of what it is to be human and what it is to be in love and what it is to show up for people in their most vulnerable moments. And I really felt that connection to birth in the last week of my dad's life when I was just helping him to be comfortable, listening for his breath, administering morphine when he needed. He died in our home. So there was a lot of intimacy to that experience. Was almost identical to those first days of having an infant when you're like, well, not the morphine, of course, but the sense of, like, are they breathing? Are they okay? What is the regulation of their body? So it's deep, deep intimacy. And in our culture, we've really sort of anesthetized both processes. Right. Birth happens in a hospital where it's a medicalized experience. There's a lot of intervention, and sometimes that's wonderful and life saving. And man, I'm really glad that we grow, that I'm growing up in a time and place where there's a lot of support for women who are birthing to be able to handle all kinds of medical emergencies. But it is a separate thing, right? In generations past, we would have been around lots of women giving birth. Our aunties, our. Our, you know, own mother may give birth in the room next to us, and we'd welcome our siblings right as they were coming out of the womb. And we don't have that familiarity anymore. Same with death. In past generations, we would have known lots of people who had died just by nature of living in extended family networks and having all of those events happen right in the confines of the home. And so we'd have a lot of practice with death and with grief, which we no longer have, which makes us really uncomfortable and scared of these experiences.

Uncomfortable and scared. What I hear is emotional dysregulation and inability to regulate or govern our energy in motion that we're experiencing. And I. And I'm, you know, in our BREATHE program. And lots of the work that I do where when I work with people, they usually say I am this or I am that. They're, like, attaching to the experience they're having as if it's their identity. Like, I'm an angry person, I'm a sad person. I'm this, I'm that. And even the. The. The meaning, the. The vibration of the words, I'm just. It's not true. Like, we experience grief, we experience sadness, like you say, healthy anger. We experience these things. Sometimes it ain't healthy, y'. All. Sometimes it's definitely not looking healthy.

Sometimes it's too much.

Sometimes it's like, way too much. But, but. But can you speak to that in your work in psychology, where someone might have a mental story or a construct that because they're experiencing an emotion, that that's who they actually are? And can you speak to the truth around that concept?

Because emotions are so powerful, and they do happen, like, from the bottom of our toes to the top of our head. And they can determine our thoughts. They determine the way that our body senses the world around it. They're really powerful parts of us that they can feel like a statement. I am. Whatever. Fill in the blank period. I really like to think about emotions with an ellipsis, right? Like, I'm angry, like pending future information or pending shift. And the more that we, you know, like, it's in motion, the more that we can see ourselves as beings in motion who are experiencing a variety of stimuli or a variety of experiences. We react to it, we're present to it, and then we can lean and shift and move into the next state. But when we get stuck, stuck in an emotion, stuck in a story, stuck in any piece of our experience is when we do ourselves a disservice and begin to see ourselves as sort of static entities instead of dynamic energies that are in motion. So I think having softness, having flexibility, having the ability to feel something, notice it, allow it, welcome it, but not attached to it, not feel like we have to live There forever is a powerful part of, like, having a good relationship with our emotional systems.

That is the work, as they say, to not attach. To have healthy detachment. You know, I'm. I'm reflecting back. And we'll link this along with all of your links. Dr. Waylon Myers, who we had on the show, he's a. He toured with Marshall Rosenberg for nonviolent communication. And he was saying that a lot of these words that we say, it's just because we're not educated in the way that we can say them, that actually disarms the situation. Most of the time, human beings will communicate to each other and they'll say, I'm pissed or I'm sad. But it's actually what a smarter way to do it by just experiencing what you said, which is the ellipsis, which is I'm feeling angry or I'm feeling. Because when I. When we say the word I'm feeling, there is a healthy detachment, there's a healthy separation, rather than I am sad. And I think our subconscious mind is listening to that at all times. What do you make of that?

I think that language is really important. I am in a state of. As opposed to. I have a trait of. One is, like, temporary by definition, and one is a descriptor that seems to get to the heart of us. I think the other thing that we often really get sort of wrong about emotion that has been really prominent for me in this grief work is the idea that two emotions can exist at one time. Two sometimes dualistically opposed emotions can be true. That we can live in joy and in grief at the same time, or that we can be most angry when we are most in love or in longing. And how we parse those emotions and the one that we choose to lean into has a lot to say about how we're seeking safety or longing for safety in a given moment. But I think it's really curious to identify an emotion, but then also to get underneath. Like, oh, what else is there? What are the ingredients of this particular emotional cocktail that I'm experiencing right now in this moment?

My partner always says, it's not always what's underneath. And I'm like, yeah, it is. It's never. It's never what you're saying. Like, it's never what's on the outside. It's always what's, like, at the bottom of the layer that I don't even know is at the bottom yet. Like, there's something in there. Can we all. And I've heard it be described as Programs, subconscious programs, tendencies, proclivities towards behavior. We can put all these words on it. But using your own language, your own experience, how. How do you make sense of your own emotional dysregulation as a therapist, as a coach, as a speaker? You know, how do you make sense of the way that you, your yourself experience emotional dysregulation? And what does that process look like for you?

Oh, I think it's. It is the most powerful tool is as a therapist in particular, is to be able to listen to those spaces within one's body that, that are tickled, that, that get triggered, that are talking and to be super curious about that in a moment. You know the whole language, the therapeutic language around transference and countertransference? I don't. Is that a framework that's familiar to you?

No. What is that, please?

Transference is the, the emotion that a client feels toward you as the clinician, that is a move, moving their emotion experience from some other person in their life onto you. So very simply, like I might remind a client of their mother or of their sister, and so they may relate to me from a framework of this other human. And then countertransference. Is the therapist sort of feelings about the client for the same kind of reason? Oh, this client reminds me of my son or of the boyfriend from high school. And so you begin this dance, this emotional dance that has nothing to do with the humans actually in the room, but has to do with these humans that are held as introjects or as imprints from past parts of our lives. And so some of the, like, superpower of a clinician who's well experienced is to be able to pay attention to where the body is reacting out of that old story and not out of the current clinical context, but is then, you know, fulfilling this old script. And it's usually our bodies that tell the story. So if we can notice, oh, I'm feeling like this like, disruption in my chest, or I'm, I'm hunched over, or hey, I'm kind of acting real flirty and like, you know, kicking my legs around, you know, like there's these things in the body. When we notice them and we can get curious about them, then we can sort of diagnose what they are and where they come from. And that helps us then lead back to a path of examination and regulation. So that's a real subtle sort of pathway for dysregulation. But I think dysregulation is such a helpful tool when we listen to it because it gives Us all this information about stories that are still active, places that were hurt, just things that are continuing to be our growth edges.

Have you ever had to check yourself with a client and realize that you were having that counter transference where you actually had to check your, yourself and your own energy field?

Oh, sure. The day that I stopped doing that is the day that I should retire, right? Oh sure. Because I'm a human in an interaction with another human, in a deep and intimate interaction with another human. And I'm not, I'm not a blank slate. I'm not an object. I am a human in that moment and so always paying attention to what's happening. For me, you know, the job of a therapist is to be really attentive to that work. Not to be above it or beyond it or have healed from all of it. Like pay attention and know what's going on and catch it quick.

Oh, that's so honest. I love that. And really that's. People can trust that so much more because the archetype of the wounded healer is actually inside of all of us. It's just that sometimes people don't, don't embrace it or sometimes people bypass it and they get triple board certified PhD and they get all the trappings of academia, but they themselves have not integrated their wounding. And they're actually doing a disservice, in my opinion, to a lot of people that they might see. Have you seen that in your industry? And how do we even be aware of that? Is there an internal faculty that we can intuitively feel? In other words, how do we feel if a therapist or a coach or a trainer of any kind of is integrated? Is it just the knowing inside of us or are there certain behaviors to look for within them?

It's a wonderful question and it, it's a complicated question because there certainly are a handful of folk who are probably like, probably should be benched, like injured reserve list, like you're not probably well enough to be in the game. And then there's a bunch of folk who are working through their wounding in a way that's going to be counterproductive with your wounding, right? If their wounding lands with your wounding in a particular way, then that's a system that's going to be really just pathological. So some of it is noticing what's happening in you, right? As someone who's maybe seeking a relationship with a coach or with a clinician is noticing what parts of you come to the forefront. Are you feeling pulled to take care of them? Are you feeling pulled to give extra money? Are you feeling pulled to behave in ways that feel maybe not the healthiest or most optimal? One of the quickest ways to spot this is in the container of the relationship. So the containers around time, around money, around the structure of the setup. And that sounds, I don't know, like, it sounds not sexy or just not helpful that it's the container, it's the structure that sounds very helpful in. It is in those, like, gray spaces around boundaries that I think most of our wounding shows up in this particular type of coaching or therapeutic relationship where there is one person who is designated as the helper and one person is designated as the like, hey, I need your help. The boundary holds this, like, the sanctity or the safety of that. And a wounding comes out when or wounding sort of plays in the spaces where those boundaries get broken or turn gray or get violated.

I've experienced that myself, where we were working with a therapist at one point, and she had told us a certain price on a different day, and then it was a different price on another day. And then the time, it was 50 minutes one day, and then it was 75 the next day. Like, and there was a part of me where I was like, huh, why am I experiencing some constriction in my nervous system? You know? And this person was great. I mean, you know, she gave us incredible guidance, and it was awesome. But there was always that something in the back of my mind when you speak about the container where the price, the time wasn't set properly. And here's the key. It wasn't nurtured and it wasn't consistent. So are there any other parts of the container when anybody works with anybody? By the way, it could be in a business coaching relationship. You know, besides money and time, what are the other ways? Money, time, and like you said, paying attention to the experience we're having in ourselves. Is there anything else we can look for when trusting a coach or a therapist of any kind?

I think the other thing that is maybe a little bit more nuanced to pick up on, but is to sort of read whether there's something that might be what we call secondary gain, like whether it feeds this person person's ego to be working with you, or whether you are providing some kind of comfort to them by your way of being with them. You know, it's not that. Again, we are human, and those human dynamics come out in our relationships. But I think you want to be really cautious of places where it feels like your energy is being expended for the well being of the other person in a way that feels out of sync with the nature of the role.

Yeah, that's a palpable understanding as to what you just said. So I just want to provide like a little more clarity before we go into the next part of your work. That what I was, what I was experiencing when you were talking, there was different coaches and therapists. I was almost doing like a Minority Report, you know, where he's on the glass and he's like going through all the different memories. I was thinking about all the people that I've worked with. And now only through experience and time can I look back with 2020 vision and say, oh, okay, I, I actually allowed myself to be in that situation with the coach that was getting their ego fed or with the therapist that was getting that, that secondary gain. But I had to go through it to know what that feels like. Sometimes we just have to go through. And that's just for relationships that are intimate or business or psychological. We just sometimes have to go through the experience of learning by fire, trial by fire. Because those lessons just stick, Sheri. They just stick.

Yeah, and it's a little bit weird in the coaching world. So as I've essentially function as a coach, but my training and sort of ethical conduct is as a therapist. And as a therapist, I almost never disclose who my clients are. Like, I just don't do it as a coach. It'd be really nice to list like all of my like clients on my site as like, hey, I've worked with this person and that person, this person and that person. But I think that's a really interesting sort of question that comes up around working with folk and their attachment to working with you. It should be perfectly okay for you to say like, hey, I just don't want you to tell anybody. Like, I just want this to be pure. This is just between you and me. Don't, don't put me on your marketing site.

Let's transition because we all go, we all go through really big stuff as far as losing a job, losing a relationship, or like in your case and in millions of people's case, like you said, we will all at some point experience loss. It's just part of life. We cannot. I remember I was hearing someone speak about this and somebody's going to type in the comments right now, this is who it was. But I forgot who it was. But he was saying that when the body doesn't die properly, that's actually what creates cancer. So there's autophagy in our cells, there's certain cleanup processes. In other words, we're supposed to die with sacredness slowly throughout life, and then the sine wave or the curve as we leave the planet. It can be so much easier for us. But here's the key. We have to know how to do it. We have to have the understanding and the awareness of how to live our lives well, which is essentially why I do this podcast. That's the core question of the podcast since 2015. How do I live my life well? Which includes how do I die well as well. So in your work, one thing that you deal with is navigating people through the transition and the loss. But I'm curious for the people, or even yourself, who are navigating transition and loss while in an intimate relationship. This is really interesting because intimate relationship brings out our death and rebirth brings out our shadows and all of our stuff. So to stack loss and grieving on top of that, what is the framework, or even is there a framework to do both of those at the same time?

Yeah, the book is called Touching Two Worlds to really try to get at that very dynamic of what it felt like for me as one human and one body, to move between the world of the dead, like the falling apart, getting sick and dying, and then also to be in a world of raising children, being in love, being a builder of things, and, you know, this sort of duality between the world of aliveness and the world of the dead. And I do think that many of us will at times in our lives be called to move back and forth between those energies. I think in many ways, that's the sort of challenge of middle adulthood. Right. You're in support and in connection to parents, elders, who are further along that journey of death. And then you're in support of young ones who are just beginning life. And so you are a bridge between the world of becoming and the world of ending. And it's a lot of energy to hold, but it also feels like a very worthy task to try to figure out how to do those shifts and be present to both at once.

Is there anything that you were feeling or that you're experiencing when I asked that question in this moment? I'm sure that changes all the time, but was there a memory or was there a sensation or feeling that you were experiencing when I asked you about the two worlds?

It's actually a question that creates a lot of aliveness for me because I feel really a lot of energy around the privilege and the power of being able to shift between both and I have these visceral memories of like, sitting with my dad while he's getting chemo and just watching, just being my body next to his body. That's, that's imploding, that's much smaller, that's sort of decaying in front of me. And then 10 minutes later being in my own home holding my little son, who's eight. And so my body has this big reaction to that transition of going back and forth between those states in a way that feels super meaningful and important to me.

Yeah, talk about bandwidth. I mean, that's the ultimate bandwidth of, of life. And I, I'm thinking about when my son was born. It was almost like I went through a portal. Like I was one person. And then when I was with him, literally a second later, I was totally different. And I could feel it. And, and look, you could either be scientific or spiritual if you've brought a life into the world. If you're a mother or father, you can only feel what I'm about to say through experience. And I want to know how you feel about this too. When you birthed your, your first child and you really experience life that you know inside of you, you were a big part of. You were the genesis of that life coming into the world. There is some kind of death process inside of us as parents, as human beings, like, and that death process I'm getting a chill just talking to you about right now. Like, my, my hair and my arms are standing up because the old way of being where I was like more hedonistic and caring about things that were very self serving and not really under. Having, having a robust understanding of caring for another person, caring for a woman who's going through postpartum like, it is the ultimate maturation process. And how fitting is it that that mature maturation process has this element of something dying inside of the parent, he or himself.

I think you, you never again exist as an autonomous organism. So of course my body is separate from the bodies of my children. Like, they're not literally attached to me anymore, but spiritually, my organism rises and falls with them to some extent. There's autonomy, psychology, blah, blah, blah. But I will never again be a separate, never again a separate entity.

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And I think in a way that's the, the beauty of dying. Well, I mean my dad died surrounded by his children and his partner of 40 years and that was an incredibly sacred experience because it felt like for me, I don't know how he, I don't know his review of the experience, but like it felt like this coming full circle of the life that he had brought about into the world was present for him as it ushered him to the other side. And so I think that's again where this, this birth and death play is extraordinarily important in the what it does to us spiritually, what it makes alive in us and what we die, how we die in both of those moments.

When was the book actually published? I was trying to find. So it was 2022 that the book was published?

Yeah, it just came out in July.

And so since it came out, it took you three years to write it. Their time has passed. You know, time has passed. In your experience of working with clients and, and on yourself, which is like this continuous process, is there anything that you put in the book that you can reflect upon now and say, wow, I actually. I actually feel a little bit different about what I wrote three years later or when the book had come out. Is there anything at all that might feel or that you might experience or teach differently? That when you wrote the book was just completely, not maybe not even completely, just a little bit different than how you feel now?

You know, nothing actually comes to mind. And I. I think the book is really, is written from a very raw place. It doesn't mean that I'm in that same level of rawness, but I fully support that version of me that two years ago was putting these words together from the depth of her feeling. So I think if I were to reflect back on that part of me that. That wrote those words, like I'm in absolute support of her, and I believe what her reality was in that moment. It's also not that different. You know, like my. My reactivity, the. The number of times I cry in a week has diminished, has gone down from, you know, the year after that. My brother and dad died. But that still happens. And it's still a very sort of beautiful, touching moment to be able to connect to the depth of some of that emotion and to have a moment of grief. And I hold that space for them. So while again, it's shifted in frequency and maybe intensity, the sacredness of it and the importance of it hasn't changed for me.

How have psychedelics or altered states been a support for you in the process in the past three years?

I love this question, and this is like sort of the area of a lot of passion for me. I think psychedelics are a great use case for grief because they do help us transcend physical body into sort of the spiritual realm. And so I was able to do some work both with MDMA and with psilocybin around these two deaths. And in both cases really helped me to come to a new way of integrating my thoughts, memories, my feelings, and my body's regulation or state around these experiences. So just one quick example. When my dad died, as I mentioned, I was with him. I was present, was beside him in bed. And when that happened, I was very, very attuned to his comfort. Like, that was my job. I'm the oldest daughter. My job is to sor. Of make sure everybody is okay. I have two younger brothers, my mom, we were all there. And my in the moment was very like, okay, this is happening. How are you? How are you? How are you?

I'm.

I'm just doing a lot of this Checking in. It wasn't until I was able to reenter that memory with the support of MDMA that I really felt this like deep softness and tenderness towards me as a daughter losing her daddy. And I sort of like, you know, hovered above in this moment as watching it unfold and just felt so differently, so free from the to do's and the checking in and the monitoring and just in this tender love for this woman who's saying goodbye to her daddy. And that I think it was an important grief bridge that was the, the essence of grief, the essence and the purity of that emotion state. And to be able to welcome that in and hold it and sit with it, it didn't change the memory. Of course, the way that I operated in real life when it really happened is the way that I operated, but it added another layer which is also a reality. And so the integration of that feeling with that experience felt like a very healing platform from which to continue in my sort of journey with grief.

Wow. I. A lot came up for me there. We're about to do a training for NLP as a couple. And one of the aspects in NLP is timeline therapy where you go back and you actually reassociate like with what you did with little Sherry, you know, like hugging her, holding her, being there for her to where she doesn't have to be the, the big sister that takes care of everyone and everything and just giving her a moment to release the charge or release the energy in motion, the emotion. Have you studied nlp? Have you done anything with timeline therapy? What are your thoughts on that?

So timelines are a big part of trauma therapy and timelines are a big part of psychedelic supported therapy. I've, I'm familiar with nlp, but I haven't done a lot of training in it myself. So I think it's a really lovely way to. I mean, I really think a lot about mental health is really the capacity to time travel. Well, we want to be able to move into our past with intention and fluidity. We want to be able to go there, to linger there, to heal there, and then to move very present and to be able to be fully in the present moment and then also to be in our future self, to sort of set that person up for success and to be able to go back and forth between these parts of us with ease and intention isn't is just really probably how I would define what it is to be mentally well or mentally healthy.

Boom. I mean, like the ultimate bomb drop. I have literally never heard that in almost 600 conversations plus on this podcast. And I love it because I almost, I was, I was visualizing a little spaceship, like a little time machine. And on the top of it it said mental health. And somebody, somebody was traveling back to their experiences they had or even by the way, anxiety, traveling in the future. So I'm either ruminating in the past or I'm. Or I'm in the future. That's what takes me out of the present. How would you design that type of spaceship? In other words, like, what. Where would you go if you, if you started the journey of time traveling for mental health? What's the first place that someone might go to? Facilitated, of course, I mean, or, or, or not. I don't know. I mean, maybe sometimes people take the right psychedelic journey or the right breathwork journey and, and they're able to take themselves there without any help or I.

Think just the right, like reflection journey, you know, get your journal out. One of the starting places I really love is to try to find your early memories of joy. I think it's easy. You know, it's not easy, but we are oriented towards sniffing out the pain, which should be done and is important. But really anchoring to our first experiences of joy gives us a really interesting map of how to get back there. And usually there's a through line. So for me, those early memories of joy were all running and running with my dog and climbing trees and being outside in a very active body. And sometimes if I've forgotten that, how do I re anchor to that kind of experience in my here and now, my present body, my present life? So returning to early joy, I think gives us a cool roadmap for how to get back there at these different seasons of our lives. So, yeah, that's one starting place. There's lots of places to go, but.

Yeah, no, that's a beautiful place. I was actually, I was. When you were speaking, I was visualizing myself on a bike going to like the old Thrift. Thrifty. You remember Thrifties? I don't know if you. West coast thrifties with ice cream.

That was like the cylinder.

Yeah. And I would get the magazines and the baseball cards and, and having these, this, this recall of the joy, like you said, that that might be a really beautiful place for all of us to start in, in the mental health time machine. A lot of what we've talked about today, you know, this, this concept of touching two worlds. I've heard, I've heard Joe Dispenza in a couple of his talks say that the term hope or the word hope is for. And I'm curious how you feel about that. You know, the etymology of the word hope, the vibration of the word hope. What does hope actually mean? You know, your. Your title is a guide for Finding hope in the Landscape of Loss. I'm not saying that Joe is right. There's not a right or wrong conversation. It's more just like, what does hope actually mean to you?

I think hope is like being in a dark room, and there's a cracked window, and you can see the light into this other side in a way that is activating, makes you feel like you won't be stuck in that dark room forever. So hope is a. Is a relationship with our future self, this perspective that you'll be able to meet them at some point. So I don't know what Joe's thinking when he talks about it for beggars, but. But I still like the word.

Yes.

I think it's. I think it's a nice counterbalance to the stuckness that drives so much of our pathology and our pain.

Yeah. A lot of what I've been feeling during this entire conversation was this underwhelm on, oh, this overwhelming container of gratitude, because the fact that you and I even get to be here and talk about this, the fact that you got to be able to be next to your dad, the fact that you're able to do what you do with Zen founder and all the business work that you do, and the fact that I even get to hold my son, be with my partner, eat food, have this incredible podcast where we talk about things that actually matter, that actually lead people in a direction where they can live their life well. Like, that's the juice. That's. That's what we're doing here on planet Earth. And all of these different challenges that we experience and these hurdles that we experience, hopefully they bring us to this container, this overwhelming container of gratitude, because if they don't, what's the alternative? What's on the other side?

I certainly don't want to live in a life where I resent my moments, and I think gratitude is the opposite of that. It's like, oh, it's here. It's precious. I'll take it. I want to luxuriate in it. I want to marinate in it. That's the life I want. So that's the work we do.

I like the word luxuriate. I've never heard that. And I'm an etymology person, so I will definitely look at the roots of that. So it's been incredible to talk about the roots with you of these two worlds. And, you know, look, you're a podcaster. You've done a lot of interviews. What's something that people haven't asked you about the book or people haven't asked you about your work that you've been wanting to express lately?

I think people aren't sure how to ask about suicide and how to, like, bring that up in part of a conversation. Not that people are afraid of it. We just didn't, like, travel there in this particular conversation. But I think. I think that form of death has some interesting things to teach about what makes a meaningful life. But it feels like a weird question, right? Like, so, suicide, huh? What did you learn about life from losing your brother in this way?

How does it. How does it add to the meaning or how does it make. Make the meaning more special? I'm curious about that.

It helps us to see the ingredients for what drives someone to want to stay really present in their life. And when those ingredients go away, where suicide becomes almost a natural byproduct of that kind of, like, atrophy of joy. And so, you know, for my brother, this loss of sense of connection to our dad as he was dying, and I think this sense of being untethered from his family was part of, like, what broke down for him. There's, of course, all of the physiological pieces that happen when your body is marinating in alcohol for a long period of time. But I think suicide is its own teacher, which is a sort of weird, tricky thing to talk about in some ways.

Yeah. Yeah. I almost feel like there's another podcast there.

I was like, it's a bigger conversation. I just dropped it right at the end.

But we'll leave people a resource for the book because I know you talk about it in length in the book, and the. The website for the book is touching2worlds.com. You can also go to sherrywalling.com and of course, these will all be on the podcast page for y', all, so you can just click. We build beautiful show notes every single week. And as we say goodbye, it's the signature question that started the show in 2015 for me and that I love to end every conversation with. And it is in the center of everything we've discussed, which is essentially mental, physical, emotional, spiritual. And somehow this all relates to financial as well. It's the house, it's the five sides of the wellness pentagon that I teach and that I believe in, in the center of all that is you and in the center of you is wholeness and in the center of that wholeness is wellness. So how do you define wellness? How does Sheri define a life lived well? Are you often overwhelmed by lengthy to do lists and tons of tasks on your mind or find yourself more anxious than than you'd like? With Cure Raw Daily Full Spectrum CBD oil, you are just one dose away from a less stressed life. This full spectrum formula has a complete profile of all the nourishing plant compounds including cannabinoids, terpenes, flavonoids. These are the things that actually offer functional support in your enteric nervous system, in your gut, in your entire nervous system to better deal with stress, get better better sleep and support less inflammation to help your body and mind return to homeostasis. Look, the cannabinoid and CBD market, it's like the wild wild west. It can be really challenging to find a truly quality product because everybody says their product is the best. Well, from two plus years of research, I only recommend Cured. Period, end of story. From my own use these past four years to even using it with my family, it is the absolute, absolute best CBD I've ever come across. I won't use anything else from minor anxiety to even full blown panic attacks to just simply needing to relax or even pairing it with breath work. The full strength CBD tincture is what I use to support my life in ways that I really can't even describe here to you on this podcast with words. It's my nighttime go to supplement above all else. I think you're gonna love it. I know you're gonna love it. Head over to JoshTrent.com cured use the code Wellness Force. That's one word. Wellness Force to save 20% off all the products your entire cart over at JoshTrent.com cured make sure you use the code WellnessForce to save 20% off my.

Ingredients for a life lived well involve a lot of play, a lot of rest, a lot of connection and laughter and a lot of moments of courage when there's the opportunity to have your breath taken away. So this sort of rising to big.

Moments, what do you mean by the opportunity to have your breath taken away?

I think that can feel like lots of things like giving a big talk, testing yourself with a challenging activity. For me, it's like the flying trapeze. Like there are these things that are part of my life where every time, right before I do it, I have to suck my breath in, I have to regulate and I have to be willing to have that moment of like go, go. I love those moments. They feel really core to a well life, A good life for me.

Yes. Oh my gosh. Great, great podcast today and tell people about your podcast, by the way.

Yeah, I podcast over at Zen Founder and talk about all things related to mental well being, wellness, mental health and entrepreneurship.

Amazing. And at some point in the future, I will be on your show, which is amazing. And I, I, I love this concept of like, what does it really mean to be an entrepreneur, Like a truly embodied entrepreneur where we are imbued with these qualities that people talk about, but they're so rarely integrated. That's my journey. That's what I'm excited about to talk about on your show. So y' all come over and and listen to Sheri and I on her podcast. So, Sheri, thank you. From my heart to yours, this has been an incredible conversation, lots of wisdom, and I really enjoyed your definition of wellness. So thank you for being here with us.

Thanks, Josh. Be well.

All right, you guys, until we see you again on another podcast, I'm wishing you love and wellness. We'll talk to you soon. Hey, thanks for watching this video. If you love this video, hit subscribe. That way you'll be automatically notified when new videos come out, new episodes. And also share this video with a friend. If you loved it, they're gonna love it too. Check out some of the videos that on this screen that are perfectly curated based on the video you just saw. Make sure you follow me and I'll see you in the next video.