Join me, LaTonya Wilkins, on the Leading Below the Surface podcast as I chat with Sabrina Creighton, a Change Coaches Coach partner, about navigating unexpected life changes, including divorce and personal growth. In this episode, we delve into the challenges of dealing with grief, managing transitions, and the importance of community support. We share personal stories, tools, and resources to help you thrive and find resilience, no matter what life throws your way.

In this episode, Sabrina and I discuss:

  • Dealing with loss and grief
  • Working through childhood traumas
  • The impact of divorce on personal identity
  • The importance of community and support systems
  • Redesignating your life after major shifts
  • Empathizing with yourself and practicing self-care
  • Pruning relationships and focusing on your roots

Quotes:

Sabrina Creighton: For me personally, it’s the first time that I haven’t had storms raging inside of me. There’s always going to be storms raging outside, but inside of me is a calm nervous system.

Context: Sabrina shares that she feels like she is living her best life because she has finally found inner peace, despite the chaos that may be happening around her.

Sabrina Creighton: I cannot take on all of the problems that are external and bring them into my personal space because I just can’t live like that. I can’t exist like that. There’s always the ability to recognize what is going right for you, to recognize that you have options even when it seems like you don’t have any. You’ve always got yourself.

Context: Sabrina emphasizes the importance of protecting one’s inner peace by not internalizing external problems and remembering the power of self-reliance.

Sabrina Creighton: My mother not one time in two years of being sick ever said, why me? She actually said the opposite. She said, why not me? Why can’t I be a blessing to other people through my illness, through my challenges?

Context: Sabrina shares her mother’s inspiring perspective during her illness, focusing on being a blessing to others rather than questioning her own suffering.

Sabrina Creighton: What divorce did for me was it gave me a clean blank slate with which to create a life that was filled with the things that I valued and the things that I wanted.

Context: Sabrina reframes her divorce as an opportunity to create a life aligned with her values and desires, rather than viewing it as a разрушение.

Sabrina Creighton: I had this room and I just started putting furniture in it with other people’s things on it… and then somebody came in and just knocked that whole bookshelf over. And then I realized that there was a door behind it.

Context: Sabrina uses the metaphor of a bookshelf to describe how she prioritized others’ needs and desires over her own, and how a разрушение (like her divorce) revealed new opportunities and possibilities.

Sabrina Creighton: Do not be afraid to lose the things that you cannot keep, to keep the things that you cannot afford to lose.

Context: Sabrina shares advice from her godfather about the importance of pruning away things that are not sustainable in order to protect what is truly essential.

Sabrina Creighton: Sometimes you have to prune your community… I can’t have people in my circle… that are killing my tree.

Context: Sabrina emphasizes the need to protect one’s well-being by removing toxic or negative influences from one’s community and relationships.

Sabrina Creighton: You remember who you are. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are Sabrina. You have so much to offer, and nobody is going to hold you back from that.

Context: Sabrina shares her mother’s empowering message about self-worth and potential, which she carries with her every day.

Resources mentioned:

  • Book: Necessary Endings by Henry Cloud
  • Book: Conscious Uncoupling by Katherine Woodward Thomas
  • Book: Let Them by Mel Robbins

Connect with Sabrina:

Connect with LaTonya and Change Coaches:

If you found this episode helpful, please share it with others and rate us on your favorite podcast app! Thank you for listening!

Transcript:

A: LaTonya Wilkins

B: Sabrina Creighton

00:00:01 – A Are you looking to get a head start on first quarter? Here at Change Coaches, we prepare people to lead in today’s workplace, offering leadership and organizational coaching, from one-on-one executive coaching to group coaching related to competencies for middle managers. We also offer keynotes based on the Leading Below the Surface book. Our most exciting offering is empathy-based sales training to develop and train your sales team, bring in more sales, and create more connections with customers. To learn more, visit changecoaches.io or email [email protected]

00:00:48 – A Hello everyone, and welcome to the Leading Below the Surface podcast. I’m your host, LaTonya Wilkins. Today, we’re digging into an episode that I think you’ll all love. You are probably going through life changes, expected or unexpected, chosen or not, and we’re going to be talking about those unexpected life changes.

00:01:20 – A Before I introduce my guest, let me talk about who this episode is for and what we will provide. We’re going to share stories about unexpected events in our lives and then get into some tools and resources. We’re not going to leave you hanging.

00:01:43 – A We’re not going to do that today. As you can see, my guest and I are laughing together on YouTube. Our guest today is Sabrina Creighton. I’m lucky to call her one of our change coaches and partner coaches.

00:02:00 – A I refer people to her quite a bit, especially those looking for a coach for the first time. She’s been amazing. People who don’t know what they want, I recommend Sabrina. It’s been great. She did some design your life training.

00:02:21 – A She runs coach communities and has a long background in corporate leadership development, learning, and development. Sabrina, I’m excited to have you here. What did I miss about you?

00:02:36 – B You didn’t miss anything, LaTonya. Actually, you made me sound a little bit better than I probably really written myself. But no, I’m just so excited to be here with you and just to talk to you again.

00:02:47 – A Congratulations on the Journal Company. I know we’ve talked about this a couple of times, and that’s the way to get it is to have something that’s out there and people can always discover it and discover you also helping people in the world. It’s funny because I was in a conversation with you the other day and you said that this is the best time of your life. Can you say more about that?

00:03:06 – A Because other people are like, I don’t hear that all the time. Especially again, we’re in a transition. I call it a transition period. We don’t know what’s on the other side of the transition.

00:03:19 – A What makes you say that about your life right now?

00:03:23 – B I love that. I think that’s a great question. Right now I’m working on a passion project that’s really close to my heart. I’m working on launching my Journal company, and this is really exciting to me because I feel like it’s a space where I can combine all of the things I’m good at at work, all of the things that I feel like I’m good at in my personal life, and then what I offer to my clients.

00:03:48 – B It’s all wrapped up in a little bundle in this project, and I’m just super excited about it. I have a lot of energy around it. I have a lot of positive emotions around it, and it just feels like it’s coming at a place where I am living my best life.

00:04:02 – B I don’t know how I got here, but it’s just giving me a lot of energy right now. I’m just trying to absorb all of the wonderful things coming at me.

00:04:12 – A Congratulations on the Journal Company. I know we’ve talked about this a couple of times, and that’s the way to get is to have something that’s out there and people can always discover it and discover you also helping people in the world. It’s funny because I was in a conversation with you the other day and you said that this is the best time of your life. Can you say more about that?

00:04:31 – A Because other people are like, I don’t hear that all the time. Especially again, we’re in a transition. I call it a transition period. We don’t know what’s on the other side of the transition, but what makes you say that about your life right now?

00:04:48 – B Yeah, it’s interesting because it feels odd to say this is the best time of my life, and then I look out the window and it’s terrible. The reason why this is the best time of my life is because, for me personally, it’s the first time that I haven’t had storms raging inside of me. There’s always going to be storms raging outside, but inside of me is a calm nervous system.

00:05:29 – B This is the first time that I’ve ever had this. It’s a very odd feeling, but it’s a very fulfilling feeling.

00:05:36 – A Look at you dropping these gems. You just come in here.

00:05:39 – B I didn’t.

00:05:40 – A I think I might have shared this on the podcast, but last year I went to a joy retreat. A coach I know was having that, and it was a first time doing it.

00:05:58 – A I remember before I left, I remembered this post. It wasn’t made by her, but it was made by someone in her network. I ended up connecting with her, but it was like, my joy is not external, it’s internal. And I was like, oh, yeah, right there, right there. That was just a gem.

00:06:13 – A It’s something to keep in mind that is where your joy is. Whatever’s going on around you, it’s about building that shield or building something protective, even if it’s a membrane, letting some things in, but being selective about what you let in so you can help other people. What do you think about how to navigate that?

00:06:42 – B That’s a really good analogy. The first thing that I thought of is my mother was a big Trekkie. She loves Star Trek. All I saw was a force field that you were explaining.

00:06:52 – B I think that’s super true, whether it is what I learned as a child growing up in church, or something that I learned in.

00:07:03 – B In the corporate workspace or just by being an adult and having mindful and sweet and caring friends, one of the things that I try to hold fast to is that I cannot take on all of the external problems and bring them into my personal space because I just can’t live like that. I can’t exist like that. I learned from my faith-based origins that there’s always the ability to recognize what is going right for you, to recognize that you have options even when it seems like you don’t have any. At the end of the day, you have you, and you can create that peace for yourself even if other people are not able to create a peaceful environment for you. You’ve always got yourself.

00:08:01 – B It took a long time for me to realize that I’m kind of.

00:08:04 – A In a similar place as. But it took. So I slip, I slip. I do, I do. And I have to, I have my practices to get back on track.

00:08:15 – A I love that you said Star Trek because we science fiction, we got some black girl nerds here into the science fiction. It’s one of the things that I see a lot of, and this is why I’ve really stopped using certain social media. Number one, it feels like a distraction, especially Facebook. Second, it’s the doom and gloom. People are like, oh my gosh, the world could end, or we’re not going to have another election, or this is going to happen. They go to the really extreme. It’s funny because I’m like, that could happen.

00:09:05 – A I think with Star Trek, people that have seen a lot should– I don’t know if I should be saying this, folks– hopefully it makes you laugh, but I’ve seen enough science fiction to start thinking about what if that does happen. I read about us being in an apocalypse, so what would you do in that apocalypse? If you had to accept that, and then our lives are going to change– and this is something we’re going to be talking about today– what role would you play? Just getting even more focused, what would you do if something happened? Even thinking about the LA fires and seeing how people stepped up for their neighbors instead of, “Oh my God, this is all,” people stepped up. What would you do in a disaster?

00:09:56 – A Asking yourself those questions, what would you do? Don’t spend too much time on that, but just have that in your head. Those are what we talk about as coaches, as values.

00:10:10 – B Right. It’s interesting that you bring it up, because my family and I, we have these conversations all the time, and I don’t know what I would do except for the same thing that I do now: gather my people.

00:10:21 – B Where are my people? Where are my loved ones? Making sure that they’re all safe. That’s just what I would do. I don’t know what else I would do other than that, but that’s the only thing that’s really important to me.

00:10:32 – A I’d love to hear about it. Let’s get into some stories and some shifts that have happened in our lives.

00:10:41 – A It’s funny, every time we talk, I’m like, did we grow up in parallel universes? But let’s get into some things in our lives that have been unexpected and how we navigated that. Maybe you could start with the first situation that you’d like to bring to the table.

00:11:05 – B These last five years, these things have made me shift completely as a person. My mother had stage four cancer. It was a surprise. She got sick in 2019. She passed away in 2020.

00:11:19 – B That was the greatest, most devastating experience that I’ve ever had, and I became a completely different person throughout that process. I look back and think about the time my mother got sick, we took care of her, and then she passed away. The person that came out on the other end was nowhere near the same person that went into it before.

00:11:49 – B That was the first time that, albeit devastating, unexpected, painful, and emotionally taxing, at the end of the day, the person that I came out of that with was a person that I really loved. When I looked in the mirror after all of that devastation, who I became through it was a person that I could highly value and feel really proud of, to the point where I couldn’t even remember how I thought, how I was, or what I did in certain situations before my mother became ill. It was a huge shift for me because it completely devastated and destroyed my life, and then on the other end of it, I still came out of it with joy.

00:12:40 – A Hmm.

00:12:41 – B It was surprising to me, albeit it shouldn’t have been unexpected, because my mother, the entire time that she was sick, was always so full of joy and gratitude. I think that’s what she left me with, the ability. My mother never once in two years of being sick ever said, why me? She actually said the opposite. She said, I was thinking about it, and I said, why not me?

00:13:14 – B Why can’t I be a blessing to other people through my illness, through my challenges? Maybe it was just watching that woman be joyous every single day to the last day. She left me with the ability to feel joy even in the most terrible times, and I’m so thankful for that. But I am not the same Sabrina that went into that situation.

00:13:41 – B It’s just very shocking what a change it caused in me.

00:13:47 – A I could just hear the spirit in your voice of your mom and the energy of your mother, feeling that. It’s interesting that you said you didn’t come out the same person. It’s almost like you’re a living version of your mother today.

00:14:10 – A She channeled that, and now I’m continuing that joy.

00:14:18 – B It does feel that way sometimes. By default, I look a little bit like her, and I sound a whole lot like her.

00:14:25 – A I look a lot like her.

00:14:27 – B I sound like her. Sometimes I imitate her, and it’s shocking. I’m like, wait a minute, that sounds like my mother. But she taught me so much. I never expected to learn all of the things that I did. When I came out of that, I was looking at the world differently. I looked at my job differently. I looked at the people around me differently.

00:14:49 – B I looked at the things I had cared about differently. Let’s not forget that was also during a pandemic. My mother died in a pandemic, so we were already in a place where we had to look at the world completely differently. In my bubble, in my house, though, we had joy, love, and laughter.

00:15:10 – B I could never regret going through that. The person I became needed different things, saw things differently, felt things differently, and I’m grateful for that experience.

00:15:27 – A I think it was about a year into knowing you, and I posted something on LinkedIn, and we realized we shared this. It’s a very small club, where people our age, when I lost my mom, I think I was younger.

00:15:53 – A I was a lot younger than you, but I was in my 30s. It was still before we were supposed to, but nobody understands. I still get, what do your parents do?

00:16:10 – A My parents have passed away. I stopped sharing because people project in. They’re like, oh, my God, what if that happened to me in my 30s? What would I do? That’s how they react. I’m at peace. Hold up.

00:16:39 – A Don’t put that on me. I stopped sharing because I lost my sister when I was in my late 20s, and I’m at peace with that. It took some time.

00:16:55 – A I think that gave me experience. When my mom was passing, she had heart disease, so I had time to get ready, even though you’re never 100% ready.

00:17:11 – A I just stopped sharing about that. I’ll just tell them what my parents were like. I still say I have four siblings, and I just move on. Then I’ll tell people later. How does that land with you when I say that?

00:17:30 – B No, it makes sense. What you said is true because when you mentioned your sister, I know that your sister passed, but when you mentioned it just now, I thought about my own sisters. I can completely… it was like, in my gut, I just… and I said, keep it together. I already knew that.

00:17:54 – B Yeah, it makes sense. Every time I tell someone that my mother passed, there’s a moment where somebody is giving me their condolences, and I appreciate that. At the same time, I am moving on from it in a way that I feel gratitude. When I bring it up, even though it’s devastating, it is also the catalyst for all of the other things that I’m doing in my life. That’s the energy with which I bring it up.

00:18:28 – B This thing happened to my mother, and she left me with resources so that I could go and be fantastic. All of the great things that are happening in my life are because my mother helped me get there. I understand how you stop wanting to share because other people are then going to feel those emotions, and they don’t know the place that you’re in with it unless they’ve been there with you.

00:18:53 – B Unless they’ve seen you go through it. My closest friends, when I say something about my mother passing, they’ve been through that journey with me, so they know where I am with it. Other people really feel sympathy for you, and sometimes it’s hard for them to hold that back.

00:19:10 – B So, yeah, it makes sense.

00:19:12 – A Yeah. I love that you admitted that because some of you are probably wondering, oh, my gosh, what should I say?

00:19:24 – A Maybe you’re listening, and you said that to me or other people. I think Sabrina’s response of, “Oh, my gosh, I can’t imagine. I have three sisters. I’m really close to you,” is appropriate.

00:19:40 – A How is that for you? Or how has your journey been through this loss? I think all of that’s appropriate. I think what’s not the sympathy response? We all know Brene Brown, and we often cite her on sympathy versus empathy, but it’s having empathy and a conversation that feels stronger, not weaker, because that’s even more triggering.

00:20:16 – A Before we get to the next story, with my losses, and I’ve talked about my story, I feel like the losses I’ve had have forced me to work through my childhood traumas, which I’m still doing. It’s been quite an incredible journey.

00:20:47 – A I know the word incredible doesn’t always mean I’m laying on a beach, like when I leave Chicago in February and go lay on a hot beach. But it’s all the things, like what you said, Sabrina, the things that were left open by my mom, others, and my ancestors, and the things created for me. I can close those things, finish those things, and just work through the traumas that still come up. It’s never all or nothing, even when we talk about our strategies to navigate the world.

00:21:37 – B Right, absolutely. I love that you said you can close those things, complete those things. A lot of times, you don’t think of it that way. They left things open, they’ve started things, and then we get to finish them. We get to change them into other things.

00:21:57 – B I see that a lot. Every time I create something, I think, “Oh, my mother would have loved that.” Those music notes are in my logo because my mother loved music and was a singer. I love these things because my mother loved those things, and now I can continue that on in a different way.

00:22:18 – B Even the fact that I’m creating journal companies is because I have 10 of my mother’s journals that I read through whenever I miss her.

00:22:24 – A Oh, wow.

00:22:25 – B It’s like continuing those things.

00:22:29 – A That’s so cool. You know, you’ve just inspired me to open my mother’s Bible with her notes again. The notes are because my mom and I had some issues, but I won’t get into that today.

00:22:52 – A There are things in there around how she felt about certain pieces of me. It’s beautiful to see her struggle of faith, what you think you’re supposed to do, what loving your kids really looks like, and what acceptance really looks like.

00:23:26 – A I’ve seen that in other relatives. It’s beautiful to see my grandma from the time that I knew I was different. My grandma always knew, and then everybody just comes along and they say things, and they’re like, wait, are you talking to me?

00:23:49 – B First of all, your grandma knows you, baby. Your grandmama knows you.

00:23:57 – A I don’t understand.

00:23:59 – B They just know it because they carry you in their heart. Even when you speak about your mom’s Bible, I’ve had the experience of looking through my mother’s journals and the things that she’s written, clarifying how much she loved us from the times that she’s thinking about us driving someplace and she’s journaling about that. My mother was who she said she was.

00:24:26 – B My mother walked through the world as something, and in her private moments in her journals, she was that same person. I found prayer lists of my friends’ names in my mother’s book. My mother’s journals have helped me to parent my adult child better because there is an understanding that I could get through reading what my mother wrote when she was my age and recognizing now at 48, that she was a human being.

00:25:06 – B You know, that time where you realize that your mom is a person. Everybody goes through that where they’re like, oh wait, she’s a person, a real human. That has allowed me to be more vulnerable with my child. My mother never told me, look, sis, I’m a human being.

00:25:24 – B I’m going through my own stuff. My mother never communicated that to me. Now reading that, I’m like, oh my God, my mother was this whole person. I think about all of the stuff I was doing. I’m looking at these dates, and I remember what I was.

00:25:38 – B I was out in the world shenanigating, and my mother was over here being a real human. I started parenting my adult child differently. I tell her about my humanity. I tell her when I’m struggling. I tell her that I can’t deal with what she’s offering me right now because I am going through something.

00:25:58 – B I want her to recognize when mom is a human too. I want her to experience the growth that I experienced, but I don’t want her to do it at 45, when I started reading my mother’s journals. I want her to do that at 25 because it’s been incredibly enlightening for me, and it’s helped me to be a more whole human by understanding who my mother was.

00:26:23 – A Yeah. When you’re growing up, you think your parents should be perfect. There’s a lot I’m doing with my father right now. I went back to my hometown recently again, and we had this group of people that were like our elders, and we call them cousins, aunts, and uncles, but they’re not for real, but they are.

00:26:45 – A As I meet with those relatives, a lot of those folks have grown old, and when I meet them, they still have so much wisdom. When I see them, I realize how hard their lives were and how human they are.

00:27:03 – A Like my dad working in a meat packing plant to support his children. This is where I’m at right now on this journey, now I’m on my dad and just understanding what that was like and what that looked like and just being able to talk to siblings.

00:27:21 – A But, yeah. So folks, if you.

00:27:24 – B Yeah.

00:27:24 – A If you last. I think to wrap this one up, Sabrina, I love what you’re saying about being human and reading journals and things that people have left behind. Is there anything else that you would say before we wrap up in this get to the next life situation?

00:27:45 – B No, just to plus one on what you said about your dad. I realized when you said that, that I’m doing the exact same thing with my father, and that’s just another blessing. So I’m glad that you brought that up to remind me that that’s what I’m doing.

00:27:59 – A It’s amazing how these doors are open. I guess the example I’ll give is when I was younger, the first time I ever saw a therapist, I was probably in my late 20s, and I remember I was going to go for one year.

00:28:24 – A Then all this stuff happened, and I ended up going back and back. But if you only go for one year, you’re just getting started.

00:28:35 – B People.

00:28:35 – A I would get mad at people when they’d say this to me because you have to get one step deeper to go ten steps deeper.

00:28:45 – A If you’re a programmer, you program computers, first you have to get to the basic language, and then it opens up a world of creating some product. That product is going to be deep, and that is so important. I used to get mad.

00:29:06 – A Can I tell you how mad I get at people when they’re like, I don’t think that’s enough time. You don’t know me.

00:29:13 – B No, you don’t know you.

00:29:16 – A I love that.

00:29:19 – B No, you don’t know you. The funny thing about therapy, too, is that you could be going to therapy and you think you solve the problem, and then you think you have another problem and you might go back to therapy. That’s the same problem.

00:29:35 – A Haven’t unraveled the whole thing.

00:29:38 – B I’ve been in therapy for five straight years, and I’m working on the same problem presenting itself as 20 different.

00:29:46 – A It’s just evolved into something else. So what’s another situation we could talk about today that people might be dealing with?

00:29:55 – B Yeah, in 2024, I had a surprise divorce. I know a lot of people are going through divorces, and this time last year, I never would have thought I’d be divorced. Just a year ago, I had no idea that I would be divorced. In 2024, I ended up finding out I was getting divorced, going through that divorce, and completing that divorce. That completely turned my life upside down in the best way.

00:30:25 – B This is a thought that I had throughout the process that I reframed, and I think that sums it up. Throughout this process of my divorce, I thought to myself, there are going to be a lot of things that are broken in my life that I’m gonna have to fix. I thought that I was going to rise from a phoenix, like a phoenix from the ashes, and fix all of these things. That was going to be the great thing about that.

00:30:52 – B I learned that I needed to reframe that because actually, what divorce did for me was it gave me a clean blank slate with which to create a life that was filled with the things that I valued and the things that I wanted. I realized that even though at the outset it seemed like a lot of things were being destroyed in my life, what I found actually going through them is that a lot of things were being created in my life. They were things that I cared about, things that were in alignment with my values, things that made my nervous system really calm, things that made me smile. At the beginning, I never would have thought that at the end this would actually be the best thing that could ever have happened to me at this stage in my life.

00:31:40 – A It’s interesting, those things that you’re talking about, like those doors opening. Do you think those were just latent when you were married? Or were they blocked by your marriage? What was that?

00:31:59 – A It sounds like almost like there was a release of. It’s like I’m thinking of my ice making machine. Sorry, folks, I’m telling you, this gets better. But in your fr, when you hear the ice break up, was it just?

00:32:19 – A Was there some sort of movements of maybe there was something clogged and it just broke up there.

00:32:26 – B I think it was. First of all, it’s a great metaphor, because I could hear it in my head. I think for me, I likened it to the bookshelf that’s behind you.

00:32:38 – B I had this room, and I started putting furniture in it with other people’s things. I had this big bookshelf, and I was putting little tchotchkys on it that were important to other people. I put all the books, things, and projects that were important to other people because I wanted to show them that I cared about those things. I created this amazing display up against the wall. Then somebody came in and knocked the whole bookshelf over, and I realized there was a door behind it. That’s how it feels.

00:33:23 – A Oh, my. Look at you.

00:33:25 – B You know what I’m saying? I just had this room, and I said, oh, this is a great room. Let me put all this really nice stuff in it.

00:33:32 – A We were kids.

00:33:33 – B Oh, I love. Yes, of course. You walk past, and there’s a whole other world.

00:33:40 – A There are doors everywhere.

00:33:41 – B Yes, that’s what it was like. I set up all of these really nice things for other people. I gave other people launch parties and vacations. Then, when they come through and knock everything down, when the dust settles, I realized there was something for me that I didn’t get or even pay attention to. I think that’s exactly what happened. I realized that although I thought I was growing, I was doing things for other people that stopped me from realizing my true potential because I was too busy worrying about how they would receive what I was doing for them.

00:34:30 – A I think your story has some nuances. Hearing your story, I hear this from so many people that have children and are married, and they’re like.

00:34:50 – A They are like, oh, my gosh, what do we do when the kids get older? Have I been taking care of myself? Because I know you’re probably the main parent, supporting your kids. You get to that point, and you’re like, wait, what’s important to me? I think maybe you were doing that, and some of you may be doing that, but I think it’s like, I love the door open. It’s almost like the door was cracked, but it was ripped open.

00:35:23 – A It was ripped off the hinges because you’re like, wait, let me get this.

00:35:26 – B Out of my way.

00:35:27 – A This is not working for me.

00:35:29 – B Right. Exactly. It’s so funny, LaTonya, I can tell you that every time I meet someone having a child or getting married, and they ask me for advice, the one thing I write is, don’t lose yourself. This is a wonderful time.

00:35:48 – B Do not lose you. Then I walked into a situation, and I lost myself. I didn’t realize I lost myself because I was doing things for myself. Sure, I got all these degrees. Sure, I got this great job. Sure, I started my coaching practice, but there was a whole other layer of me that wasn’t getting attention because I was giving that attention to other people. I’m not saying I regret giving attention to my children.

00:36:17 – B Absolutely. My child, my stepchildren, they’re a top priority. But there was a point at where I was just giving, to be liked, to be loved, just giving.

00:36:32 – B Then I’m sitting in the house alone, not giving to myself, because your children are going to leave. You are going to raise them, and they’re going to leave or not be there. What you have left are the things you’ve given to yourself. If your children are gone, your stepkids have gone home to their mom, and your daughter has moved out, and you’re sitting in an empty room, those are the things you prepared for yourself, and what I found was that it wasn’t much.

00:37:03 – A I love that. Don’t lose yourself because I see that a lot. I think about that a lot as a coach, when people are having children and they’re very skeptical. I see them doing all these amazing things, and they have a kid. I think you could do both.

00:37:30 – A It’s like what you said, make sure that you’re seeking out and balancing. I think for me, I had a situation last year where I went through an unexpected romantic separation. It wasn’t what I thought would happen. At the end of the day, it was just the difference in values, needs, and general energies.

00:38:06 – A It’s really hard to grapple with that. I won’t get too deep. I think Sabrina got deep enough for us. But what I’ll talk about is, Sabrina, we could end on this one, but I picked up, I’ve been having so many changes in my life with people, and this has been very challenging for me.

00:38:30 – A I don’t talk about this on Lean Below the Surface, the podcast a lot. So this is a personal episode, but it’s people that have been friends of mine. It’s people that have worked for change coaches. It’s people. You again.

00:38:45 – A My romantic relationship. I thought everything was crashing down. Then I read the book Necessary Endingss. I’ve done some other things, but let’s get into some resources, Sabrina.

00:38:57 – A I read that, and one of my former coaches encouraged it. I’ll let you know, folks, it is written from a male masculine perspective. A lot of the examples are older white men, which is fine.

00:39:12 – A It’s kind of, I don’t know when the book was written, but some of the examples are dated, but they’re good. I think last year, when you’re talking about seasons of relationships, one of my best friends sent me this because she knows I’ve been going through this, but she sent me this metaphor that people in your life are like trees. Some people are the roots, some of the branches.

00:39:43 – A And I think this is Tyler Perry originally, some of the branches and then some are leaves, and the leaves just fall off. The branches are kind of in the middle, but the roots are. Those are kind of your writer dies, right? And she was like, you’re a root. And it was so beautiful. It makes you really start to see that something’s end and their seasons.

00:40:05 – A I made a mistake in the early days of running my business because I came from a talent management background. In leadership development, retention was a big measure. I thought, am I not able to retain my employees? But that is not long. I even read Conscious Uncoupling.

00:40:32 – A I don’t know why we think this longevity is not. You’re gonna have some roots. He talks about rose bushes and you have to prune them. I have a table full of plants in the living room. Every day, maybe every week, I have to prune them and make sure they’re doing well. Otherwise, if I leave the dead pieces on, the whole plant will die, rot, or grow more slowly.

00:41:02 – A But if I make the decision to, one plant I had to get help with, and I had to cut half the plant, and it was a plant for my mom’s funeral, so I was really sensitive about it, and I had to get rid of most of the plant. But it’s thriving today. It was so sad to see it bare, but now it’s huge. So, yeah, that’s.

00:41:28 – A What do you think of that, Sabrina? Also any tools or resources that you would offer?

00:41:34 – B First of all, it’s a fantastic analogy. All I could think of when you were talking about it is if you don’t prune those things, your tree is going to get overwhelmed. Those things are going to kill your tree. If you don’t take care of the roots, if you don’t water the roots and make sure that the ground is right, your tree is going to die and it’s going to fall over. We have to really take care of the things that are going to sustain us.

00:42:04 – B And we cannot ignore those things at the risk of something that’s temporary.

00:42:10 – A Temporary.

00:42:11 – B My godfather says, and maybe he’ll watch this podcast because I’m going to send it to him. My godfather gave me some information that I carry: do not be afraid to lose the things that you cannot keep, to keep the things that you cannot afford to lose. That’s pruning. Sometimes you have to prune things, or else it will kill your tree.

00:42:41 – B I think that that’s a great metaphor. When I think about pruning, there’s a lot of different resources that I think about, and sometimes you have to prune your community.

00:42:54 – B I’m a big person on community and family, and sometimes you have to prune some pieces of that that are taking away from the greater good. In community, everybody can’t be with you forever.

00:43:14 – B What they say is a season, a reason, a lifetime, which goes along with that tree. Everybody can’t be a root.

00:43:21 – B When you realize everybody can’t be a root, everybody can’t be a branch, you have to prune things off of your tree before they destroy other stuff. That’s how I am with my community as well. I can’t have people in my circle or space that are killing my tree.

00:43:41 – B I just can’t have it. My community, my family primarily, but my community of people, including people like you, that’s the only way I’ve gotten through some of these things, to be able to see the joy on the other end.

00:43:57 – B When my mother passed away, I almost had a complete mental breakdown. My family lived in my house for about three weeks. My sisters, there were 10 people in my house, and I don’t know what I would have done if they weren’t there. When I got divorced last year, my entire community just loved on me.

00:44:17 – B In the times where it was super rough, they just loved on me. My sisters, my cousins, my colleagues, and from that love, I was able. It was like a bridge.

00:44:27 – B There’s devastation and sorrow, and then there’s the other end. Oh, my God, this is amazing. They were the bridge. My community is super important to me, to be able to see that this life is possible, to get to this point where I can say this is the most amazing part of my life.

00:44:46 – B It’s also therapy. I’ve been in therapy for five straight years. I’ve had two wonderful therapists.

00:44:54 – B One to get me through all of the stuff that came with my mother’s illness and her death and who I was on the other end. And I have a therapist that I’ve had since probably the last eight months that literally carried me through the first few weeks of my divorce, so that’s just super important. I specialize in life design with my clients.

00:45:18 – B I actually do that stuff. When my mother passed away, I redesigned my life. And now I’m in the process again of redesigning my life, because it’s all about empathizing with yourself and understanding who you are, where you are, what’s valuable, what you want is important to be able to move forward.

00:45:43 – B Using that process, I was able to see Sabrina and see what was valuable for Sabrina and then use that information to move forward and to try new things. I’m always empathizing with myself and trying to understand what’s going on for me. But I’m also in a big prototyping thing, I’m just trying stuff. I had dinner with strangers. I’m on a podcast. I’m starting a new, I’m doing things.

00:46:15 – B I’m going outside. It’s just prototyping a whole new existence. At the end of the day, what my mother would have said is, remember who you are. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are Sabrina. You have so much to offer, and nobody is going to hold you back from that.

00:46:34 – B I live in that every day because I’m really grateful to be here. I’m grateful that I’ve been through the things that I’ve been through, and I’m grateful that I can be some type of a light for somebody else that is going through something.

00:46:49 – A My heart is warm through everything you’re talking about there. I was chuckling because you used the design thinking, empathizing with myself. That’s important because again, it’s like.

00:46:59 – A It’s like a rinse and repeat. I gotta empathize with myself. Sometimes you go outside the lanes.

00:47:07 – A If you go off the rails, you got to come back by continuing to design. The roots of your life get you through. When you spend your time pruning and focus 80% of your time on your roots, your life really changes.

00:47:31 – A It’s hard to do because I felt guilty. When you focus on those roots, and the branches too, the branches are like, let’s go do this together, let’s go have an activity.

00:47:46 – A When you focus on those roots, some of my roots are way older than me, like really great wisdom from the 60s and 70s. I have young roots, younger roots, and older roots, and I learned so much from them.

00:48:00 – A I’m not usually into pop psychology, but I liked the book “Letting It Go.” I’m not a pop psychology kind of person.

00:48:16 – A I thought that book came at the right time when you’re pruning. I needed to hear “let it go.” When you prune someone, they could come back. There’s the great scattering of friends, let them be who they are, and then let the relationship evolve.

00:48:38 – A Sometimes they’ll come back, and sometimes they won’t. You’re always redesigning, and the universe is always shifting, so you never know.

00:48:46 – B You never know what some leave. We bonded over that book.

00:49:03 – B All the stuff we talk about with our colleagues is pop psychology, and it’s always super valuable.

00:49:12 – B It was pretty poppy. One of the things I recognize in empathizing with myself is just things that I can vibe with.

00:49:29 – B I read the Let Them theory book because I found myself listening to Mel Robbins’ podcast and talking out loud to myself in the car. I was thinking, “Wait a minute, that’s how I feel.”

00:49:48 – B I wish I could write this down. It was really resonant for me and left me thinking about those things and processing them further. Reading through that book has allowed me to incorporate some of those practices into how I talk to myself.

00:50:15 – B I just let them do that, and then I’m going to be over here, doing this for me. I’m thinking about how I feel about things and what belongs in my life and what doesn’t. It’s been the catalyst for me to ask myself different questions. That empathy for yourself isn’t just saying, “Oh, you deserve to, it’s okay that you feel bad.” It’s having that empathy to see the circumstances that you’re going through and where you can help to walk yourself out of them toward something valuable for you.

00:50:55 – A I listened to the book in my car quite a bit. I got stuck in Indiana for this event, so I listened to it, and it was really good. Hopefully, you really like this podcast, and if you heard something that resonated with you, please share it with other people. I think they’ll love it.

00:51:19 – A They’ll love that you shared that with them. Sabrina, how can people find you?

00:51:25 – B They can find me on LinkedIn, Sabrina Creighton, also Sabrina Creighton LLC, that’s my coaching company, and they’ll be able to find me at Pen and Purpose Journals in the next 30 days. I’m super excited about that launch, but you can go to sabrinaraon.com to know more about me or connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m super excited to help other people navigate different spaces and to share what I have to offer.

00:51:54 – A Thank you everyone for joining us today, and we will see you next time. If you love this episode, please share it with others and also rate us on your favorite podcast app.