Mandy Capehart | The Integration of Grief and Restoration of Self

In this week's heartfelt episode, we dive into the complexities of grief with my special guest, Mandy Capehart – a trauma-informed certified grief educator and somatic embodiment life coach.

Mandy shares her journey through grief, which led her to establish the Restorative Grief Project, an online community dedicated to supporting grievers and those who stand by them. Her book, "Restorative Grief: Embracing Our Losses Without Losing Ourselves," is a blend of memoir and practical guidebook that offers insight into managing loss.

We touch on topics like:

• The universality of experiencing loss
• Moving beyond minimizing pain
• Navigating uncertainty in times of sorrow
• How our upbringing shapes our understanding of grief

Mandy also delves into how COVID-19 has highlighted the need for greater 'grief literacy' – acknowledging that you don't need death as a reason to grieve. She emphasizes validating experiences rather than dismissing them and discusses how she uses storytelling as a tool for connection and healing.

Moreover, Mandy opens up about personal losses such as miscarriages, providing raw insights into the emotional turmoil they entail while calling out common misconceptions surrounding them.

This episode is not just about dealing with grief but learning from it, embracing vulnerability, and engaging in deeper conversations instead of hiding behind social niceties or sugarcoated interactions.

This conversation provides solace and guidance for anyone grappling with loss or seeking ways to support others in their grieving process.

Key Takeaway:
Grief isn't solely triggered by death; it encompasses various forms of personal loss and change. The conversation challenges us to confront cultural tendencies that often minimize these experiences or avoid deep discussions.

Mandy’s insights remind us that grieving is not just an emotional process but one that touches every fiber of our being - physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Your story matters. Your pain deserves recognition. And together, we can find pathways toward restoration.

RESOURCES:

• Restorative Grief Project on Facebook
• Michelle Obama's Book
• Enneagram E-Book | Pop-Up Opt-In on Website

CONNECT:

• Website
• Instagram
• LinkedIn

Episode Sponsor: Magic Mind | Use the code "GRIEVINGVOICES" to receive one month free with a 3-month subscription. This special promotion is only for January!

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NEED HELP?

• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
• Crisis

Transcript

Victoria Volk
00:00:00 - 00:00:16
Thank you for tuning in to grieving voices., If this is your first time listening, welcome., And if you are returning and listening again, thank you for coming back. Today, my guest is Mandy Capehart. She is a trauma-informed certified grief educator and somatic embodiment life coach.

Victoria Volk
00:00:17 - 00:00:47
She's an author, speaker, and master mindset coach located in the Pacific Northwest. She is the founder of the Restorative Grief Project, an online community of grievers and grief supporters looking for movement while they heal. Her own experience with grief left her searching for resources while offering empathetic long term support without minimizing the pain of the moment. When she found nothing, she created it for herself and for you. Her first book is Titled Restorative Grief, Embracing Our Losses Without Losing Ourselves was released in 2021.

Victoria Volk
00:00:48 - 00:01:19
And this is a memoir and a 31-day guidebook for managing grief and growth in the aftermath of loss, no matter how long it lasts. You can hear more about her work on her podcast, Restorative Grief with Mandy Capehart, or consider working with her 1 on 1 on her website. She has all the resources and I will put those links in the show notes. And she's a storyteller through and through and always in pursuit of adventure, grace, and opportunities to express gratitude. No matter the medium, her work revolves around learning how to honor our process of becoming.

Victoria Volk
00:01:19 - 00:01:29
She currently lives in Southern Oregon with her husband, daughter, Border Collie Rescue Pup and way too many houseplants. Thank you so much for being here. I too have way too many houseplants. I am told.

Mandy Capehart
00:01:29 - 00:01:43
I know., Right. I mean, I loved houseplants before the pandemic, but it was an easy hobby for me. I think I was up to, like, 95 at one point before I just said, this is a problem. I don't wanna just let these die, but I also don't know what to do.

Mandy Capehart
00:01:43 - 00:01:51
And so we're down to probably a solid 40 now. We've recovered. They didn't die. They were lovingly rehomed, but yeah, 

Victoria Volk
00:01:51 - 00:02:05
I have not counted mine, but I know it's not 40, but I went from like 0 to just kind of like an obsession. I just kept buying and kept buying. Oh, I need another plant. I need another plant.

Mandy Capehart
00:02:05 - 00:02:24
Well, we needed the dopamine. We needed the immediate gratification of something beautiful in our home. We can justify it because plants clarify the air and there are so many collect. It's like, you know, us elder millennials are, like, barely on the cusp of when Pokemon was, like, practically Introduced. We gotta catch them all.

Mandy Capehart
00:02:24 - 00:02:31
We have to collect every variety of Echeveria that exists. And until then, I will not be satisfied.

Victoria Volk
00:02:32 - 00:02:35
I know it's like people walk in, welcome to the jungle.

Mandy Capehart
00:02:35 - 00:02:39
Yeah, exactly. It was very, humid in our home for a while.

Victoria Volk
00:02:40 - 00:02:53
I bet. But you know what?, Like you said, it puts oxygen in the air. And when especially living in, like, a rainy climate like yourself or like a snowy cold climate like I where I live and dry. I need all the nature inside.

Mandy Capehart
00:02:53 - 00:02:56
I can get everything I can. Yes. That's right.

Victoria Volk
00:02:57 - 00:03:18
So we're not talking about houseplants today. But if we were I'm sure there's a podcast for that there's a podcast for everything. That's right. But today we're talking about grief, which fortunately for you and I is becoming much more talked about and the work that we were doing. And I think COVID but a huge spotlight on that for everybody.

Victoria Volk
00:03:19 - 00:03:44
Like, hey, nobody has to die for you to grieve. Right? And so I guess let's, I really want to start out with  kind of your origin story as to what led you into the work that you're doing today, because I know firsthand for myself and everyone that I've talked to on this podcast for every guest I've had, their work is really born out of their story. So where would you like to begin?

Mandy Capehart
00:03:45 - 00:04:35
Yeah, we've got this legacy as wounded healers. And when we get to that 
point of recognizing where the needle moved for us, we can start to develop a way to, offer it to others. And so for me, I don't remember a time in my life that I didn't have some form of grief event, whether it was a person dying, a person moving away, divorce, relationship loss, illness. There was always something or someone leaving my world, my circle of influence. And so I, as a young person, did what we all do and stuffed it down and became very outwardly loud and big and vivacious and tried to live a very happy, playful life because I didn't have the tools to navigate the loss I was experiencing.

Mandy Capehart
00:04:35 - 00:05:08
And that's not to say that my parents didn't know what they were doing because in a lot of ways they did, but at the same time, they were also very young when they had me. And so as we all experienced these losses together, including their, divorce when I was pretty young, I think I was 9. It doesn't It just didn't translate until I was older. And so, instead of giving you a list all the people I've lost in stories, I'm just gonna jump ahead because when my mom died in 2016, this month, it'll be 7 years, I think. That right?

Mandy Capehart
00:05:08 - 00:05:30
Good math. It was pretty sudden. It was after after a few months of cancer treatment and unexpected, illness on top of that. And so I spent the next 4 years quitting everything I knew. I stepped down from being a worship leader of 16 years at my church.

Mandy Capehart
00:05:30 - 00:06:15
I pulled away from the career, I almost became a youth pastor so that I could move closer to being near her. It would have been the absolute worst position for me and all the children would have like perished under my anger because I was in so much pain, but I was willing to do anything to try and get close to her while she was going through, treatment. And I'm very grateful that didn't happen. But I realized in 2020 when January started, I was starting the year with a miscarriage with the anniversary of losing my mom with a job loss and with a former employer, spreading gossip about me. And so I was in, like, trauma city all by myself.

Mandy Capehart
00:06:15 - 00:06:32
And then I'm starting to hear on the news about COVID and pandemics, and I became really guarded and angry about it. Like, hey, guys. 2020 is my year to have a mess. Everybody get it together. And in March, when our school shut down and I lost another job, I realized this is not the world I can live in.

Mandy Capehart
00:06:32 - 00:07:17
I cannot live in a world where there are going to be generations of untended grief and a complete lack of understanding and brief literacy. So I started writing my story down. That was where the book came from, over the course of a couple months, I just went through everything that I had experienced that was encouraging and positive to me, both within the of my faith and without it looking for pathways forward that were relatable to others, that could be relatable. Not just like this is what worked for me. So it will work for you, but creating more of an invitation into exploring what might be possible through these different methods of approaching our grief and ourselves differently.

Mandy Capehart
00:07:17 - 00:08:02
And as the book was finished, there was a wildfire in our town that destroyed 25100 homes. So I got firsthand an opportunity to not only share this work of my heart and to connect with people I knew who lost their homes and were now survivors of this wildfire. There were 3 people who died as well, but I also took that into this idea of what if I became a coach around the idea of what it means to grieve and to survive. And so I took my my personal background, my educational background, and poured it all into this, practice that I've built. And it just has transformed everything I expected my life to become.

Mandy Capehart
00:08:02 - 00:08:09
I always knew I'd be a writer. Right? We always have those threads. I always knew I'd be a writer.  I'm very, people driven.

Mandy Capehart
00:08:09 - 00:08:29
So I always knew I'd be working with people. I never expected that I'd be working as a grief and trauma educator, showing up for people in their worst moments and sitting with them through the enormity of it. So that's my quickest way to describe why I decided grief and death were the things I wanted to talk about all day long.

Victoria Volk
00:08:30 - 00:08:38
Kind of similar to my story. Started very young. How old were you when you had your first loss that you can recall?

Mandy Capehart
00:08:42 - 00:08:58
I mean, I was probably that I can recall would be my great grandmother. My grandparents are all I mean, every generation is at 10, 20 years, 19 to 20 years of each other. So I knew all of my great grandparents., Wow. And a couple of my great great grandparents.

Mandy Capehart
00:09:00 - 00:09:16
Wow. I'm sorry. It was my great great grandmother, Selma, who died when I was 3. And I have memories of sitting in her kitchen and being with her and having her read to me. And that I would say that would probably be the earliest loss I can recall.

Mandy Capehart
00:09:16 - 00:09:23
And at that age, what do you know? You're 3 and great grandma great great grandma's almost just not around anymore. We don't have framework for it. But,

Victoria Volk
00:09:25 - 00:09:37
Yeah. Do you know what's fascinating though? By age 3, we have learned 75% of our of our awarenesses of how to respond to life.

Mandy Capehart
00:09:37 - 00:09:40
Right? It's wild. Like it's in there's

Victoria Volk
00:09:40 - 00:09:53
no conscious, conscious recollection and hindsight about that. But yeah. By that, we're sponges. So how young were your parents when they had you? 

Mandy Capehart
00:09:53 - 00:10:00
I think my mom was 20, 21. My dad was 24. Sounds right.

Victoria Volk
00:10:01 - 00:10:06
And you knew your great, great grandparents? Yeah. Wow. That's fascinating. Yeah.

Victoria Volk
00:10:06 - 00:10:07
Incredible, really.

Mandy Capehart
00:10:07 - 00:10:24
Yeah, I mean, my grandmother is in her eighties now and consistent. Like we've stopped correcting people. That is my mom. We just don't correct anyone because people assume it is my mom because the age range makes sense.

Mandy Capehart
00:10:24 - 00:10:31
Right? And with my aunts, people assume that we're sisters and I'm just like, you can have it. Take it. Like, sure. We're sisters.

Mandy Capehart
00:10:31 - 00:10:41
It doesn't bother me. It's who cares? But it's interesting the way that we perceive age gaps. That's a whole other conversation, but anyway. Yeah.

Mandy Capehart
00:10:41 - 00:10:42
Young family.

Victoria Volk
00:10:42 - 00:10:58
What did you find yourself saying the most during COVID, to others? What was the story that was playing in your head over and over as you were kind of reflecting on your losses, as you're writing your book, as you were working with other grievers and talking to other grievers.

Mandy Capehart
00:10:59 - 00:11:55
Yeah. I think a lot of what I experienced personally and also in the stories of others was this pain around being minimized and dismissed. So in my immediate family, I have an immune disorder in our family. And so we were really guarded and absolutely afraid of the unknown and the uncertainty of this pandemic and what would be happening. And we did lose people that we knew and where I would support others and be working with people around the fear of that was invalidating was through validating the stories that they were telling as well and through validating their experiences and helping them to validate and not minimize the enormity of their experiences, their emotions, their sensations in their body, like we as a people, and maybe just this is western culture.

Mandy Capehart
00:11:55 - 00:12:39
I don't know. Became so quick to justify and minimize our responses for survival so 
we could socially still belong or mentally not cave under the pressure of choosing all of these black and white dichotomous opportunities that were handed to us. I feel like there was so much of you're either with me or you're against me and, and that in and of itself is a distorted way of thinking, but it's also such an eliminator of that gray space, that grief exists within. Right? We cannot navigate grief without recognizing it is all gray space.

Mandy Capehart
00:12:39 - 00:13:13
There really is no black and white. And so when I would come up against those black and white thinking patterns in clients and in friends and family members. It was an exercise in, do I wanna do this for a long period of time or is this just the COVID reaction to losing my job and having to pivot and having zero certainty for the foreseeable future. And so it really transformed into this understanding of, oh, no, certainty is the lie. Certainty is the addiction.

Mandy Capehart
00:13:13 - 00:13:32
What does that look like then as a griever and even as a grief professional to help individuals not minimize their fear of certainty or their fear of a lack of certainty, and come to embrace uncertainty and all of its beauty and all of its gray space and all of its opportunity, to find healing.

Victoria Volk
00:13:33 - 00:13:51
What were the lessons that you were taught about grief as you grew up within your family? Like, how did how did that because you had a lot of grief in your life growing up. Yeah. How was that shaped your belief before you knew now what you know. Right?

Victoria Volk
00:13:53 - 00:13:57
Like, what were you taught about grief and how to grieve?

Mandy Capehart
00:13:57 - 00:14:09
You know, not a lot. I think and keeping in mind, like, this is the early nineties. Right? Late eighties, early nineties. We, weren't necessarily stiff upper lip people.

Mandy Capehart
00:14:10 - 00:14:21
We were very strong back. We can do this, push through it. There's always a solution. You'll figure it out. Just keep going kind of people.

Mandy Capehart
00:14:21 - 00:15:05
My dad still to this day says work smart, not hard. And so as a young griever, I can I translated that to It's hard to grieve, so I will work smart by not grieving and just truly minimize my own experience so that I can do the task in front of me? And I think that that's a pretty, pretty expected and universal response to grieve as a child, I also think I was watching my parents grieve. And when I was a teenager, I remember having a distinct moment of deciding, oh, my parents are human. So I'm sitting back here angry with them, grieving everything that they've gone through, that they've put us through trying to survive this ongoing grief experiences that we're having.

Mandy Capehart
00:15:05 - 00:15:31
And yet I have failed to see them as people as well who are at that time 30. And I think now to when I was 30 and realizing, oh my God, I was no one knew what they were doing. I was a mess at 30. Even for as much as I had figured out, I was a immature trying to just prove that I knew what I was doing and I was valuable in the world. What if my parents were in similar boats?

Mandy Capehart
00:15:31 - 00:16:14
And so I think even grandparents and extended family members had their own opinions about grief. And there were some very strong, religious influences on part of our family, which was, of course, a different layer to how people wanted to navigate grief or not navigated at all., But I feel like it just wasn't really a conversation to the degree that when my mom died, that following she died right after Christmas, not following Christmas. I went back home for the holidays and remember thinking this is gonna be either a mess or the most restorative experience we could ever have together. Like this is a definitive Christmas gathering.

Mandy Capehart
00:16:14 - 00:16:28
What do I wanna do about it? What do I wanna bring to this family? So the first night I brought bourbon and I got everyone really sick and hungover the next day. And we all pretended we weren't hungover, which was in retrospect, my favorite thing. We were just like, wow, I don't feel good.

Mandy Capehart
00:16:28 - 00:16:40
What did we eat yesterday? And I was like, guys, we drank too much bourbon. I don't know why that's unclear. Why aren't we admitting? But that was such a perfect example of like, oh, we're all grieving as well, and we're not admitting it.

Mandy Capehart
00:16:40 - 00:16:54
Okay, It opened it up so that I was able to say, hey, this whole denial thing is not serving us. We've tried for a year to survive on our own. It does not work. And so now I'm going to start asking you guys some really vulnerable questions.

Mandy Capehart
00:16:55 - 00:17:10
And even if it's just for me, if you need to believe that you're answering those questions so that I can heal. That's fine. But don't shut down. Don't pull back. And so it's really become this family that I mean, still still grieving.

Mandy Capehart
00:17:10 - 00:17:31
Like I said off air, I have an aunt who's in the hospital right now for cancer and her daughter is in the hospital as well for some medical crisis, that she's been navigating. And these are not simple, small things. These are not I had a wart removed operations. Right? It's still a family unit where we can say, this is horrible.

Mandy Capehart
00:17:31 - 00:18:13
How do we survive this? How do we hold each other In the midst of the uncertainty of if we'll survive it or not, if our family members will be okay. So I think that, lack of grief literacy kind of articulated in my childhood is a big part of why now, despite the discomfort, despite the, pushback I get when I bring it up in certain situations when people just wanna have a good time. I don't care. I've seen the benefit of pushing into those uncomfortable places and teaching both myself and my nervous system, how to remain aligned and resting even amid what feels like a threat to my health and my mental stability.

Mandy Capehart
00:18:13 - 00:18:21
Grief can disrupt all of that. And yet it can also be the doorway into like binding restoration in that area as well.

Victoria Volk
00:18:21 - 00:19:02
The thing I heard you say in I'll say it how I heard it is that there's this deep desire to have deeper conversations instead of all that surface level stuff. And, I've even found myself, I'll be out and about mingling in the bar or whatever with friends and I'll say something and they'll look at me like, okay. Yeah. That's, that's too depressing. They're kind of like, to be not to be the Debbie downer, but it's like, let's, I have friends too where it's like, I don't I don't even know what their dreams are.

Victoria Volk
00:19:02 - 00:19:08
Yeah. But I know if I ask them, it's like, why are you asking me that? Like, they don't want to talk about it. Like,

Mandy Capehart
00:19:08 - 00:19:33
Sure. You know, I think often whether they wanna talk about it or they don't have an answer or they haven't gotten through the the layer of, but what if it doesn't workout. But what if I can't the uncertainty. Right? They their relationship to uncertainty is directly impacted by their desire to control the outcome and control their experiences.

Mandy Capehart
00:19:33 - 00:19:57
And I think those uncomfortable conversations, those deeper conversations are sacred ground. We're asking someone to step forward and be seen and be known and to not have the answers. And certainly, it's a collective approach. Right? It's collective healing that I'm inviting people into when I say, share your deepest, darkest moments with me.

Mandy Capehart
00:19:57 - 00:20:14
Tell me what you're afraid of, because guess what? You're not only totally valid and being afraid of that. I'm afraid of that too. But now what do we perceive each other to be less than or weak or an trustworthy? Like, I don't know.

Mandy Capehart
00:20:14 - 00:20:50
I see that depth and that willingness to be seen as such a a flag of safety. My aunt the other day, a different aunt was telling me how this family member in the hospital is the strongest person that she knows and gave all this evidence. And I responded, it takes one to know one. And I say that because you lost my mom, your sister, you've experienced heartache after heartache. And here you are In person, caring for our family members that are in the hospital all by yourself.

Mandy Capehart
00:20:50 - 00:21:13
And while I would, if I could drop everything and come to you, our lives are very different and she has that ability. What does that what does it look like to be supported by me right now? Like, you don't have to be so strong all the time too. And I think when we can finally tell people that you don't have to be strong, like you don't have to keep being strong. I personally hate it when someone's like, oh my gosh, you're so strong.

Mandy Capehart
00:21:13 - 00:21:32
And I was like, no. What you see, because you're not safe for me to not be strong, is the strength. You see the backbone. The soft tender side of me is available to people who aren't going to disrespect or diminish me. And to be honest, I show that side to a lot of people now, but when I was younger, not so much.

Mandy Capehart
00:21:32 - 00:21:59
And I think being able to just call that tenderness out in people toward themselves, right? Show yourself your tender side. Be honest with how much you're carrying and let's see if we can't offload some of that weight simply by Identifying and addressing it and letting it move through our life and our story and our experiences. So it's not Debbie Downer to me to bring up like deepest, darkest fears in the bar. That is the moment of vulnerability that I can say, hey.

Mandy Capehart
00:21:59 - 00:22:14
Your walls are down and you're with safe people, If I'm not a safe person, probably don't invite me to drinks again, because alcohol is gonna make you say and do things you don't want me to remind you of the next day. Otherwise, I must be a safe person because I'm here. So let's just be real. K?

Mandy Capehart
00:22:14 - 00:22:28
Because we've got limited time. We don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. Tell me what should tell me what hurts. Let's talk through it and just bear witness to each other in a way that we've been discouraged from doing.

Victoria Volk
00:22:29 - 00:22:38
Yeah. I made sugar cookies recently and I was just thinking, yep. Just like sugarcoating. Just it's it's that. I mean, it's a terrible Yeah.

Victoria Volk
00:22:38 - 00:22:46
Literal sugar coating. That's what we do. Right. And yeah, like you said, just to get real. Let's get real.

Victoria Volk
00:22:47 - 00:23:03
I don't want to gloss over something you said because, I feel like it's an important lost to talk about because there's not just you, it's also your partner involved. But you had, shared that you had lost had a miscarriage.

Mandy Capehart
00:23:04 - 00:23:19
Oh, yeah. I actually don't know how many miscarriages I've had. We got married pretty I was early twenties and our daughter was born when I was 30. And so we had years of infertility. We weren't trying right away.

Mandy Capehart
00:23:19 - 00:23:51
But when we did start, just years of infertility and the undeniable pain that goes with that is when they come on and say like, oh, we're not sure why everything about you is normal. I'm like, cool. Except that my body can't do the one thing that like It was created to do okay. Like all of the uncertainty, every question and, anybody who's ever experienced infertility knows immediately the question is like, what did I do wrong? What am I doing wrong?

Mandy Capehart
00:23:51 - 00:24:14
Is it because I did x y z. If there's religious trauma on top of it, there's all of that blame that comes along from a spiritual side as well. There was so much, built in. And then we so our daughter was born in, 2014 as a miracle. Like she was a surprise and I was terrified the entire pregnancy.

Mandy Capehart
00:24:15 - 00:24:25
And then a few years later, of course, in 2020, on New Year's Eve, I knew I was pregnant. I looked at my husband. I'm like, I'm pregnant. And he's like, really? Did you take a test?

Mandy Capehart
00:24:25 - 00:24:41
Are you kidding? That doesn't make sense. How how do you know? And I was like, no, I just, I have a feeling. And I tested positive a couple of days later and started bleeding a couple of days after that and just sat with it because it was the one I knew about.

Mandy Capehart
00:24:41 - 00:25:23
It was the one I had a test, a positive, Oh my God. Is this really happening? Experience, especially 4 years after losing mom and realizing, like, the hope I had placed in that little pregnancy, it was interesting because I remember feeling very much, and this is similar to how I felt in the week after my mom died, feeling very much that, okay, I can safeguard and bear in mind. This is before I wrote my book or any of the like, started doing any of this work really professionally. I've been speaking publicly and leading a small, church in a bar for years up until then.

Mandy Capehart
00:25:23 - 00:26:28
But, and so I talked about loss and grief plenty of times, but this was really a moment where I again decided, okay, I can choose to numb myself and step away from the hope of ever having another baby from the fullness of what this means and what it doesn't mean, or I can choose to really lean in to both the grief I'm going to experience from this and the stillness I need to heal because it is not a the misunderstanding of what a miscarriage does to a human body is so offensive is the best way I can put it. Like the lack of understanding people have about what actually happens and what you're experiencing. I had to give myself a lot of permission to be tender and still, and unproductive. I'm extremely busy and productive when you were listing all the things in my bio was like, jeez, I have done so many things. Maybe it's time to calm down a bit.

Mandy Capehart
00:26:28 - 00:26:44
But, anyway, the sensation even of having the pregnancy and knowing, oh, I've got untold number of miscarriages in my past. What do I do? Do I Dream. Do I hope? Do I pretend I'm not pregnant?

Mandy Capehart
00:26:45 - 00:27:02
Do I wait? Do I tell anyone? Do I panic? I chose hope I chose to lean in fully and say, I'm going to imagine our life with another baby. I'm going to lean fully in and completely invest.

Mandy Capehart
00:27:02 - 00:27:26
And so when, the miscarriage began, I had to tell my husband. Yep.  I'm going to lean fully into the loss here too. And not just for me, although I will say his ability to support me has often been at the expense of him supporting himself. And that's a, that's a whole nother topic of how to help your grieving partner.

Mandy Capehart
00:27:26 - 00:27:43
Right. But it's been a very healing journey for us to come back together and really talk About what that meant and what it means ongoing.  And yeah, miscarriage is a very, very nuanced experience of loss.

Victoria Volk
00:27:43 - 00:27:54
What would you like to say and clarify for people about what you said, how the misconception about miscarriage and what it does to them.

Mandy Capehart
00:27:55 - 00:28:07
Yeah, it's a good question. I think It comes back to that recognition that we are holistic beings. We are heart, mind, body, spirit.  We are not just a body. We are not just a mind.

Mandy Capehart
00:28:07 - 00:28:54
We are not just the emotions that we feel. And when we approach ourselves from a disjointed perspective trying to heal, trying to experience grief. We dismiss the wisdom that we have carried from all of our other experiences into this moment where we could integrate them together and actually experience healing. And so I say that in regards to miscarriage because the emotional impact, the true emotions, the things I'm feeling in my heart, the thoughts I'm thinking about the miscarriage itself, about the loss of my future, about the rationale behind what happened and why about the debate internally. Is it a baby?

Mandy Capehart
00:28:54 - 00:29:03
Is it a fetus? Is it viable? Is it not? What will people say? What will people think like the mental fireworks that are just exploding left and right?

Mandy Capehart
00:29:03 - 00:29:25
And then that piritual side. And, in my framework, there's sort of grief framework. Spirit refers to that connection to self, to others, relationally to the world, at large. And then if there is a spiritual practice to our sense of higher power. But all of those pieces have to be included, honored, and addressed when we're healing.

Mandy Capehart
00:29:25 - 00:29:38
And I think with miscarriages, because there have been such again, black and white perspectives discerning. Okay. It's just a scientific process. I don't know if you've read Becoming Michelle Obama's first book. It's beautiful.

Mandy Capehart
00:29:39 - 00:29:50
She tells the story of her miscarriage and she's very practical. She's like, it it was just a clump of cells to me. And so and that's how she moves through it in the book. And I sat with it for a long time because to some degree. Yeah.

Mandy Capehart
00:29:50 - 00:30:19
Totally. Just like not viable outside of me, scientific process. And like I said, I don't know how many I've had.  I had such irregular cycles that I've probably had multiple. And yet here I am choosing hope on the front of that and saying, if I don't lean fully in with my emotions, with my mind and with my sense of connection to this little clump of cells, then I may miss out on the fullness of what this experience can be.

Mandy Capehart
00:30:19 - 00:30:57
I think when we discredit people who have babies and who can carry life and put them into this well, and you see this in legislation right now, everywhere. We've minimized their personhood as autonomous individuals. We've minimized their ability to advocate for themselves, which is because we don't think it's important. We don't see the enormity of what life and giving life and going through all of the steps of that can be. So I think that the misconception of like, oh my gosh, you've had a miscarriage.

Mandy Capehart
00:30:57 - 00:31:13
I've had some too. That immediate centering of yourself in someone else's experience when they share with you. Right. When they are real and vulnerable and honest is a reflection of that other person's discomfort. Like, I'm not comfortable with you telling me that you're hurting.

Mandy Capehart
00:31:13 - 00:31:25
So I'll just say I've been there. We don't have to talk about it. I've been there too. And that goes to all grief experiences. People center themselves and minimize pain easily.

Mandy Capehart
00:31:25 - 00:32:12
But I think, at the crux of it would be recognizing the individual experience of a miscarriage or infertility or pregnancy loss or child loss. They're so complicated and nuanced because there's every day a reminder that you've experienced this loss where I can say, oh, man, my memories of my mom come back probably every day in some way or another, or my grandfather or any of these people that I've lost. Those come up so differently than the miscarriages do because I have a little girl who's constantly, she's backed off now, but begged for a sibling for years every day. And how do you explain to a little girl? Well, mommy can't.

Mandy Capehart
00:32:12 - 00:32:17
Mommy's tried. You had one. Kind of. Maybe. I don't know.

Mandy Capehart
00:32:17 - 00:32:35
And then you spiral again right down that same mental explosion of, I don't even know how to think about this without hearing the input from judgmental voices and critical voices Oliver. It's a long way to answer that question, but there's a lot about it on my mind.

Victoria Volk
00:32:36 - 00:32:45
And you bring up a very good point in that for your daughter. That's a grieving experience too of not having a sibling. Right? Yep. Maybe that's a book you could write.

Mandy Capehart
00:32:45 - 00:32:58
Oh, man. The other day she, well, I guess it was a couple of years ago. I found a piece of paper she'd written on that said reminder, biggest reminder of your life. She was probably 6 or 7. Mom is willing to adopt a baby sister.

Mandy Capehart
00:32:58 - 00:33:13
And I was like, oh, child. Again, like, immune disorder, constant treatment happening in our house. So our lives are not simple. Adoption would not not that that's simple, but no easy path forward on it. It was pretty hard to read that.

Mandy Capehart
00:33:13 - 00:33:37
And then fast forward a couple of years the other day, she was saying to a friend, hey, guess what? I'm an only child, so you should come to my house because we can do anything and there's no one taking our toys. We don't have to include any siblings. And I just thought, thank God she's embracing the positive because I was not an only child and yet we were years apart. And so it felt a lot like I had both the best of both worlds, I think.

Mandy Capehart
00:33:37 - 00:33:41
So it's interesting. Yeah, that would be, that would be quite a book.

Victoria Volk
00:33:43 - 00:34:00
And I think, in grief recovery, we talk about replacing the loss. Right. And so as children, one of our first losses is usually an animal or a pet, or let's say a dog, and then the parents say, well, that's okay, Sally. We can just go to the pet store and get a new dog tomorrow. You know, like, right?

Victoria Volk
00:34:00 - 00:34:24
And so I was just thinking about that, like, when she asked for a sibling, it's like, well, maybe we can start with a puppy, but then at the same time, it's, it's minimizing, right? The loss of hope, dreams and expectations that she had for her life, sharing it with the sibling. Right? And that's gonna be a grief story she'll grow into tube. And like you said, it's I think that would be a very important book.

Mandy Capehart
00:34:25 - 00:34:38
We have to move into that space of both and. Right? We can both grieve the loss of a sibling and celebrate the life we have. They don't cancel each other out. They don't negate.

Mandy Capehart
00:34:38 - 00:35:04
When we were, let's see. I was probably 14 when my stepmom's dog died, and we loved Riley. She was the sweetest black lab, and she was full of energy, and she ran in front of a vehicle and didn't survive. And it was probably 6 months later and that my we were grieving and my stepmom was really like, I miss Riley so much. I want another pet, but I don't know if I'm ready.

Mandy Capehart
00:35:04 - 00:35:30
I had found golden retriever puppies for sale in the newspaper like that weekend. And we were on the way to go. Like our weekend plans were, do we go get this puppy or do we go see this musician at the park? This musician that I loved and I was convinced if I just met him at 14, he would want to marry me and we would just have to have a long courtship because I was a child. I did not marry that musician, but I did marry a musician.

Mandy Capehart
00:35:30 - 00:36:00
But anyway, I, like, remember my stepmom saying, I'm not sure if I'm ready, but I guess we can go meet these dogs. And when we got there, they were in squalor. Like my dad got in this guy's face and said, if you don't just hand me this puppy at this price point That I'm saying, because the guy wanted 1,000 of dollars for these dogs that were being abused. He said, I'm gonna report you to the city for illegally, breeding these dogs and keeping them, abusing them. And of course we reported them anyway, but we took home this, the runt of the litter that was covered in its own filth.

Mandy Capehart
00:36:00 - 00:36:30
And, and my stepmom realized I was ready not to replace Riley, but to invite an opportunity to love another little Cue another little creature and an experience that reciprocated affection. Right. And so tucker moved in with us and was amazing until he died as well. But, it's, it's remarkable. We, I know that story is so different.

Mandy Capehart
00:36:30 - 00:36:49
I know most people who would have partners can tell you stories of their partners who've just brought home another pet or something like that and said, don't worry. Now you don't have to be sad anymore. And again, it's that minimizing of our experiences. Instead of recognizing we can integrate the experiences together for a more holistic and restorative and healing experience.

Victoria Volk
00:36:50 - 00:36:52
I look forward to that book you write.

Mandy Capehart
00:36:54 - 00:36:55
Both hands. Got it. Okay.

Victoria Volk
00:36:56 - 00:37:07
Well, and I think I think your daughter would be a beautiful you know, she could almost see herself as the character in that book. Right. And probably help you write it. Yeah., She's a brilliant little writer.

Victoria Volk
00:37:07 - 00:37:07
She,

Mandy Capehart
00:37:09 - 00:37:24
She could write it herself. I think that that's part of it is recognizing too, like, that is also her story, and that is something that she deserves to be the one the authority of. And as parents, it's easy for us to say like, hey, we've got the perspective. We've got the age. We've got the experience.

Mandy Capehart
00:37:24 - 00:37:55
We know better. And that's one thing with our kiddo that we're trying to raise her with is a sense of autonomy where she can push back on us. She can ask questions that are really hard when they come to mind and that she can walk away from conversations with unsatisfying answers and not not to the degree where mom and dad said so, and that's why. But this, like, that didn't clarify or that didn't answer anything because mom and dad don't have the answer. They don't act they're not actually infallible.

Mandy Capehart
00:37:55 - 00:38:23
Okay. What does that mean for me? And at the same time, she's like, she's 9. We're trying very hard to protect her from the enormity of all the things and keep her young and keep her innocent as much as possible as in this stage, but, but giving her a chance to just have a childhood. Like, she experienced losing her nana, when she was 1a half, and my mom had moved across the state to help care for her when I needed to go back to work.

Mandy Capehart
00:38:23 - 00:39:18
And so we had a very special relationship that my daughter doesn't remember. And I think she deserves to experience what that mean what she has carried with her from that loss in her body and how it shows up for her. I mean, anxious kids are a dime a dozen these days with how life happens around us, but it's a very special opportunity for us to teach them differently than we were taught and to help them understand how to move through anxiety and stress and fear of loss In ways that we really needed when we were young. And that means getting really uncomfortable and not being able to just fix it or answer it away or explain it away. There's a lot of when you're older, I'll go more in-depth, but for now, please take this information and hold onto it as fact and trust me that, I'll share more later, but

Victoria Volk
00:39:19 - 00:39:50
So far, Mandy has shared some beautiful bits of wisdom with us all, and she's going to continue in a few moments with some practical tips. But first, I just wanted to share a word from my sponsor, MagicMind. Consistently creating new content isn't easy, and it does require a lot of focus and energy. And it can be hard to balance them. Either you have too much energy and you feel amped up and, like, you're ready to bounce off the walls instead of feeling dialed in.

Victoria Volk
00:39:50 - 00:40:28
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Victoria Volk
00:40:28 - 00:40:58
The wonderful people at Magic Mind have offered a wonderful offer for my Grieving Voices listeners, just for the month of January, you get 1 month for free when subscribing for 3 months. If you go to magicmind.com/jangrievingvoices. And with my code, grieving voices, it's an extra 20% off, which actually gets you a 75% off, and this only lasts until the end of January. So hurry up before it goes away. All right.

Victoria Volk
00:40:58 - 00:41:19
Let's get back to the episode so Mandy can share some more of her wonderful wisdom with us. That's a great lead to, into my next question in people listening, who are just really walking through a really difficult time. What, what is, what are some practical things that you can suggest to those people.

Mandy Capehart
00:41:19 - 00:41:43
Yeah. Well, absolutely. As a somatic practitioner, I am very, very hopeful when people are willing to pay attention to the sensations that are happening in their body. Like, we're really quick to disconnect, like I said, our heart and our mind and our body and our spirit because we think we can think our way through a problem. If that were the case, we would have no more problems.

Mandy Capehart
00:41:43 - 00:41:52
So, like, that's an easy dismissal. No, girl. You can't think through that problem. No arguments against, like, the mental exercises., I get it.

Mandy Capehart
00:41:52 - 00:42:31
There's value in them sometimes, but, ruminating takes it too far. So I think that keeping ourselves humble enough to say, maybe there's something in my body that I can sense that will bring me some wisdom. There are a lot of somatic practices that I share, on my Instagram page and through my podcast and the work that I do, because I want these practical Habits to become the things that we go to first. Right? So in our neuroplasticity world, we know our brain can be we know that even just imagining a thing can cause our nervous system to react.

Mandy Capehart
00:42:32 - 00:43:16
And so if that is true, then the inverse is true of the way that we heal and the way that we can experience positive things as well. So if I imagine a bear is standing in front of me threatening my family, my nervous system is going to say, hey, holy crap. You should probably strategize and run away. And so the same is true of peaceful experiences and moving through loss and even restoring relationship with people that we've lost. And so engaging the somatic, the body, the nervous system in ways that, might feel a little a little, uncomfortable or maybe a little have some skepticism attached to it is one of my favorite ways to bring people in because the the Feel Your Feelings crowd, which we've all done that.

Mandy Capehart
00:43:17 - 00:43:42
And it was very popular for a while. It, for me, I witnessed it transform into good vibes only, which is probably like the one phrase that I would eradicate from the common collective, if I could. I hear good vibes only. And I see I what I actually hear is my neutral vibes aren't welcome. My human existence isn't welcome here.

Mandy Capehart
00:43:44 - 00:44:11
So, yeah, I would say start with recognizing going beyond just trying to think your way through a problem or let me just feel this and then I'll feel better. That's not true, but Your body is in internalizing and holding all of the things that you've experienced and to invite those things gently and very carefully with guidance to the surface and to get some wisdom and just some compassion for the things you've carried is really important.

Victoria Volk
00:44:12 - 00:44:21
I wanna ask something. You just mentioned it. You said restoring of the relationship with someone you've lost. Can you elaborate on that?

Mandy Capehart
00:44:21 - 00:44:42
Yes I can., Okay. So this is going to, might be slightly activating for people who have been In situations and I'll say this just spiritually or even like religious situations where we talk about prayer or we talk about, afterlife. So bear with me. That framework is where I come from.

Mandy Capehart
00:44:42 - 00:45:20
Right? I have a strong background in different Flavors of Western Christianity. But where I'm going with that is this idea that If a person is removed from us often, whether through divorce breakup, literally moving away, or death, we often think, okay, I have to find closure and it's going to look like whatever Hollywood tells me it looks like. So we get this idea in our head about what closure is, and we pursue that. And when it doesn't work, because it typically does not work, we give up.

Mandy Capehart
00:45:20 - 00:45:55
We just think, okay, I guess that's it. The truth is, if I can imagine a scenario where my nervous system will literally calm back down from a bear in front of me, then does it not stand a reason that I can imagine a connection to the person I've lost, a conversation with the person I've lost, not to deify them, not to put them on a pedestal and say they were perfect and did no wrong, and I'm the problem. And now I'm having better thoughts about myself. That's not it. But to the degree where we can say, I'm gonna confront.

Mandy Capehart
00:45:55 - 00:46:16
Here's an example. My mom with all of her heart led a very private life. There were things after she died that I learned about. There were things as she, as a teenager that I learned about that I could never about or ask about. At one point I was wrestling with something and realized, oh, this is connected to that story.

Mandy Capehart
00:46:16 - 00:46:41
I know about my mom's life, But I'm not in a place where I can call my grandmother or my aunt or my dad. I don't have capacity to have a conversation and have them worry about protecting her reputation or her experience. Right. She told me what she told me because she needed that was what I was welcome to be prepared YouTube. But what I knew had affected me and I was carrying it and I needed to process.

Mandy Capehart
00:46:41 - 00:47:19
And so I sat down and started to write a letter about I'm pissed off at you for not sharing and being honest, or I'm hurt that you didn't share this, or I see that you're human, but, like, why couldn't you trust me? Whatever whatever the feelings were. What I ended with was this experience that ended up being verbal. I didn't write it all down, but I was crying and feeling seen and held by my mom unable to respond. I wasn't imagining what I ended with wasn't this experience of, like high spirituality where I would say, oh my gosh.

Mandy Capehart
00:47:19 - 00:47:51
I'm healed from that wound with my mom just not disclosing something. I ended this cathartic expression of just not being able to be honest about what I've been carrying. All of the emotion of feeling untrusted and feeling unseen or feeling unworthy of hearing this hard thing in my mom's life. Even the losses connected to it because, you know, I learn a piece of information and my brain goes to, well, what did that mean for me if that had happened? If it hadn't happened now in the in between, what does it mean for me?

Mandy Capehart
00:47:51 - 00:48:10
All of those pieces that felt so open ended didn't necessarily feel like closure. They felt like integrated. It felt like I could ask those questions and not fall to pieces. It felt like I could approach it with a sense of clarity but, yeah, there are still uncertainties attached. I'm not gonna have an answer that's satisfying.

Mandy Capehart
00:48:11 - 00:48:33
I'm not going to resolve it. I, however, notice this piece of my mom's relationship with me has lightened. When I think of that moment. When I think of that memory with my mom, that information withheld, I'm not having this sharp pressure. So part of somatic work is about learning to notice the sensations in your body.

Mandy Capehart
00:48:33 - 00:49:16
And sometimes it's really hard to describe them, which honestly means that people are usually onto something there. And even now as I'm like talking about this, I can feel this like finger pressure, amount of pressure, like right behind my sternum, right around my heart. And it's still less now than it was when I think about how I felt, what, 16 learning this piece of information and feeling trapped and not feeling Able to even talk about like, even as I'm thinking 16, my throat is starting to like get tight and want to close-up because I couldn't talk about it. And I didn't have that freedom to come into a place where it was a safe thing to converse about. So, yes, I have lost my mom and no, we never talked about it.

Mandy Capehart
00:49:16 - 00:49:59
And yet here I am talking about it in a way that I don't actually need to imagine that she's sitting there with me. You know, there's this, practice called the empty chair in therapeutic Modalities where we invite the person to that chair, or we talk to the chair as if the person is with us. It doesn't have to even be that activating because that is a hard Practice., It can be as simple as just letting myself be really honest and vulnerable with how what I've experienced is true and there were ugly parts of it. And I'm going to for me, vulnerability is accepting but those ugly painful parts are true and present and not trying to minimize or push them away.

Mandy Capehart
00:50:01 - 00:50:18
And I think You know, it's a really difficult place to get to, but we don't have to start with doing it in our own internal work. Right. We can start with an external relationship where we're looking for a little bit of understanding or integration 
when we know we're not going to get answers at the end of it.

Victoria Volk
00:50:20 - 00:50:52
In grief recovery, we talk about and that really just reminds me there's an exercise that we do where you do just that really. It, and, and it's because you can have all these feelings and not get the closure. Right. And you're stuck in emotional jail. But if you can get to that place through the way, the way you described, the somatic work that you do with people or through the grief recovery work with me, that's that it's possible, Right?

Victoria Volk
00:50:52 - 00:51:12
That is possible that that emotional energy, because emotions have energy, right? Can be lessened, enlightened, and worked through and filled with a fresh, newer perspective and maybe a whole lot of compassion yourself and the other person.

Mandy Capehart
00:51:12 - 00:51:35
Absolutely., I mean, emotions are energy in motion. They are literally little tiny vibrations that we're sensing in our body that our brain is making a thought about, is making sense of, and then we spit it out and we call it a feeling, but it's not. It's you know, the feeling is the physical part. And the more we can allow ourselves to like, oh, maybe I misunderstand human emotion.

Mandy Capehart
00:51:35 - 00:51:53
Maybe I don't know myself as well as I think. Maybe I've really protected myself from having to get into those vulnerable, uncomfortable feelings. Even this morning, I was talking with my husband, in response to 2 conversations yesterday about people who say, well, I'm not angry. I'm not angry. I don't have a right to be angry.

Mandy Capehart
00:51:53 - 00:52:13
I have nothing to be angry about. I'm like, oh, but you do. You do have a right to be angry. You deserve to be angry, but also your relationship to anger might need to shift because if you've minimized it and disqualified yourself, you're missing the fact that anger is a secondary emotion. And it's really protecting you from those more risky emotions.

Mandy Capehart
00:52:13 - 00:52:41
There's more vulnerable emotions behind it that maybe pointing to the fact that you've been invalidated or treated unjustly., Right? Our relationship to our emotions, but specifically, the uncomfortable emotions, is often so muted when we grieve that we don't even notice we're muting our access to the comfortable positive emotions at the same time. Right? We just we feel numb, and then we say, well, I don't have emotions when No numb is an emotion too.

Mandy Capehart
00:52:41 - 00:52:57
Numbness is a feeling that has information for us. And we just get to a point where we're willing to say, okay, well, what are you trying to teach me?, That then The floodgates open and it feels cathartic instead of just a fear driven. I'm never going to stop crying if I start. So I just won't start.

Victoria Volk
00:52:58 - 00:53:25
I'm in a Voxer group with some, some friends, from all over the world. And I happen to have listened to one of my friends. She called it a rant and she was very she was angry about something and I heard it. And after I heard it, she had recalled it and I called her out on it and she's like, I, you know, I just recalled it because you know, it, it doesn't serve anybody. It doesn't, it's not helpful.

Victoria Volk
00:53:25 - 00:53:43
And I said, oh, wait a minute, I said, you have every right to be angry. Anger is a valid emotion. And it needs to come up and out. And unless you're ruminating on it, and you're telling every Tom, Dick and Harry the same story and you ruminating on it. Right?

Victoria Volk
00:53:43 - 00:53:54
Like, that's not helpful. Like that doesn't serve you. But to get it up and out and like, like, let that emotional charge go. Yeah. That's helpful.

Victoria Volk
00:53:54 - 00:53:57
That's serving you. Don't minimize that. Right?

Mandy Capehart
00:53:57 - 00:53:58
Yeah. It's like,

Victoria Volk
00:53:58 - 00:54:02
She didn't mean she didn't mean my permission. Obviously. Right. Right.

Mandy Capehart
00:54:03 - 00:54:29
Giving you having your permission to be a witness is a big deal, and I think we, you know, every time I hear someone say, oh, well, that's not a helpful thing. Actually, it is. It's helpful because it allows you to be honest. It allows you to be seen and known. And if you are translating that it is not helpful for you to be seen and known, then there's a lot more work for you to do, not with any judgment attached, but just, hey, that sounds like a pretty painful belief that you've carried.

Mandy Capehart
00:54:30 - 00:55:11
What's possible if it's not true? What's possible if the inverse is true that you are worth known being known and being seen, and your anger is worth expressing what's possible for you. I can't tell you how many grief clients I have that conversation becomes the focus for months because there's so much to unwind around how we have minimized and invalidated our personhood and our humanity just to belong and survive in places where we're not going to belong. This goes back to my community loss. I was telling you about like realizing that I only belonged in this large community because I made myself fit.

Mandy Capehart
00:55:11 - 00:55:25
I made myself take on the shape that was acceptable is why when I said I'm no longer going to look sound and act like you guys, do I still belong? They said, absolutely not. No. You don't. Okay.

Mandy Capehart
00:55:25 - 00:55:39
Does that mean all that we shared was meaningless? No. But it does help me recognize pieces of myself that I sacrificed and decide, was it worth it? Ultimately, no. No.

Victoria Volk
00:55:41 - 00:55:44
But there is no failure in learning either. 

Mandy Capehart
00:55:45 - 00:55:45
No. There's like a failing.

Victoria Volk
00:55:48 - 00:56:08
Our best lessons come in failure, right? That's why it's not failure. I was at a wrestling term that my when my son wrestled me was just a young squirt. And on the back of the t-shirts for the wrestling team, this other team, they had, I can't remember exactly how it was written, but something to the effect of failure is only learning. Yeah, absolutely.

Victoria Volk
00:56:08 - 00:56:11
That's Yeah. I've never forgotten it.

Mandy Capehart
00:56:11 - 00:56:14
Just education. Just information., Yep. This information.

Victoria Volk
00:56:15 - 00:56:22
Is there anything else that you would like to share today. I feel like we could talk even longer, but I want to be respectful of your time.

Mandy Capehart
00:56:24 - 00:56:44
Let's see. I think the last thing I would invite people into is just giving themselves permission to take up space, might look different than you think. It's not saying, oh, I need a weekend away. I need to go to the spa. Giving ourselves permission to take up space means learning that self-care is simple.

Mandy Capehart
00:56:44 - 00:56:58
It's accessible to everyone. Often I say the first step of self-care is a glass of water, right? You take for granted the fact that you can access clean water. So for the moment, you're probably dehydrated. If you've cried today, you're probably dehydrated.

Mandy Capehart
00:56:58 - 00:57:53
If you've pretended you haven't cried today, or you're not sad, you're probably dehydrated. Just go give your skin some love, take a drink of water, a big glass, and start with this baseline understanding that the simple approach to who you are as a human, as my husband so eloquently puts it as a meat bag, as a body, go restore a little piece of that and see if it doesn't change how you're feeling because we, were, I think we complicate self-care and, and honoring the simplicity of our personhood because we're mental creatures. We overthink things. We create robots and incredibly complex Mathematical systems to try and solve all the world's problems when really, maybe we just need some clean water and a nap. I'm a I'm a big fan of that.

Mandy Capehart
00:57:53 - 00:58:03
So if you're feeling a little like too muchness, clean water, a glass of water, and a nap is really, for me, a smart place to start.

Victoria Volk
00:58:05 - 00:58:14
I am gonna circle this conversation back to houseplants. Okay. Because this is the best., I don't know. What what's the word?

Victoria Volk
00:58:15 - 00:58:21
Segue. Segway. Thank you. And to bringing the conversation back to houseplants, because what do houseplants need?

Mandy Capehart
00:58:21 - 00:58:29
Water, sunlight, and something's good. Absolutely. Yes. I love that saying that you're basically a houseplant with emotions. Yes.

Mandy Capehart
00:58:29 - 00:58:45
Get some sunlight, get some water, get a little food occasionally, clear the cobwebs. Do you have fungus gnats? Alright. There's a there's a medicine for that. There's a combination of care and, and lendliness and things you can do, and you're going to lose some leaves.

Mandy Capehart
00:58:45 - 00:58:50
Yep. That's a good metaphor. And it's okay. 

Victoria Volk
00:58:50 - 00:58:56
And if they start to turn and if they start to turn yellow, yeah. Check the soil, right? Yeah. I'm looking

Mandy Capehart
00:58:56 - 00:59:11
at the plants in this office right now. There's probably let's see. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. There are 14 houseplants in my office right now. Half of them are happy and thriving.

Mandy Capehart
00:59:11 - 00:59:26
One of them is my oldest houseplant ever. It's like 20 years old, and it has brown spots and it loses leaves all the time. And this year after like 20 years of owning it. It started a second sprout for the first time ever. I started asking myself, what am I doing differently?

Mandy Capehart
00:59:27 - 00:59:39
Because this is this is wild. It's never done that. It's just gone straight up and lost some leaves and had some leaves at the top. It looks like a weird palm tree. I can't even remember what Parietal it is.

Mandy Capehart
00:59:39 - 00:59:58
And I realized, oh, I just started giving it more attention on a consistent basis. Not just the oh, God. I forgot to water. Because for all intents and purposes, as much as I wish I was, I'm a very My ADHD comes in strong. It's probably why I had so many houseplants at the one point.

Mandy Capehart
00:59:59 - 01:00:20
I just don't I'm not consistent with them. But when I realized I've just been consistent with this one recently and it's beginning to thrive and new things are growing in it. I thought that, yes. That'll preach. That is a metaphor right there that if we can attend to ourselves in a consistent and loving and simple manner, something new just might take root.

Victoria Volk
01:00:22 - 01:00:28
That's a beautiful way to end this podcast. I knew this podcast could be about houseplants.

Mandy Capehart
01:00:29 - 01:00:31
You were right. You were a 100% right.

Victoria Volk
01:00:33 - 01:00:53
Oh, I trust that everything that came out to be shared was shared and I would love to have you back. I think we discussed this before we started to record about having you back on to talk about Enneagram and how that relates to grief and the different Enneagram types. And so I would love to explore that with you in a future episode.

Mandy Capehart
01:00:53 - 01:01:03
Absolutely. I love that topic. I think Enneagram work is so easily aligned with grief work and recovery and integration. So absolutely.

Victoria Volk
01:01:04 - 01:01:36
And I'm like I shared with you too, I'm deep diving into human design. And that's, you know, comes down to your birth time and place and where, where the, where the stars were and all of that at the, at the time of your birth. And, it's been a huge, I had a lot of shifts in my perspective towards relationships, just in exploring my own design. And, so it's information. It's another tool in discovering who we are and learning about ourselves, and how we show up in our grief.

Victoria Volk
01:01:37 - 01:01:38
Yeah. And otherwise.

Mandy Capehart
01:01:38 - 01:02:11
And also too, I just remembered as you were talking, I will tell you that anybody who wants to get like a head start on what grief and Enneagram work together can look like, I've seen the benefit of pushing into those uncomfortable places and teaching both myself and my nervous system, how to remain aligned and resting even amid what feels like a threat to my health and my mental stability. Grief can disrupt all of that. And yet it can also be the doorway into like binding restoration in that area as well.

Victoria Volk
01:02:11 - 01:02:15
And where can people reach out to you if they want to learn more?

Mandy Capehart
01:02:15 - 01:02:34
Yeah. So good. So everything is at Mandy Capehart. So my website, mandycapehart.com Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Pinterest, TikTok, but barely all the things, at Mandy Capehart. And then The Restorative Grief Project is my free online coaching group that is posted, excuse me, hosted on Facebook.

Mandy Capehart
01:02:35 - 01:03:18
And it's just an environment where we can practice grieving together and practice supporting one another and learn how to respond when people hit us platitudes and and learn how to invite our beloved people into the world of grief support without criticizing how they've shown up or not shown up in the past. Like, this is an environment and a place where we just hold space for each other and learn what that means to practice breathing with intention. So, Yeah. I love getting messages and DMs and new connections online about these really uncomfortable conversations because they deserve. It turns out every single one of us deserves to have space to fall apart.

Mandy Capehart
01:03:19 - 01:03:21
So that's the aim of all of it.

Victoria Volk
01:03:22 - 01:03:28
I love that. And I will link to all that in the show notes. Awesome. And thank you so much for your time today, Mandy.

Mandy Capehart
01:03:28 - 01:03:32
Yeah, absolutely. Victoria, thank you for having me. It's been my pleasure.

Victoria Volk
01:03:32 - 01:03:37
And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.