Episode 4.10
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Kathryn White: [00:00:00] Welcome to episode 4. 10 of the Living to Thrive with Cancer podcast. In today's episode, I am talking with Brenda Statt- Tomlinson. Brenda is a passionate, holistic healer, dedicated to guiding individuals on their profound journeys of self discovery, healing, personal growth, and the gentle embrace of life's inevitable transitions, including grief.
Her mission is to empower you to awaken your innate wisdom, heal your mind, Nourish your body and nurture your soul, even in the face of life's most profound challenges. Now, if you are a [00:01:00] new listener, I want to welcome you to the podcast. I'm Kathryn White, a cancer thriver using my stories and experience with stage four colon cancer to guide you through your walk with cancer.
As a holistic cancer coach, I want to help support you through creating a health building lifestyle. Thank you. Managing your stress and helping you to navigate the day in and day out stuff that comes up when you have cancer. If you find what you learned here today with myself and Brenda to be helpful, please share it with other people you know that could benefit from this episode.
Sharing helps me to support more people living with cancer and to help them move from survivor to thriver. And so you can go ahead and subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening. Follow it on YouTube and I would love for you to head to the show notes, get your name on my weekly email list. So you can follow my path to thriving with cancer and how I am using what I've learned to support you in your walk towards your goal of becoming a cancer thriver too.
And when you sign up, you'll get a free download gift that I will send to you and you will get to also [00:02:00] see Brenda's information in the show notes so that you can connect with her. So welcome Brenda. I am Super, super excited to have you here today. Thank you for
being
here.
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: Thank you, Kathryn. Thank you for inviting me to come and be a guest.
This is a new spot for me. So thank you very much for the invitation.
Kathryn White (2): That's amazing. I love this because you and I actually connected on your podcast, which we'll talk about in a minute. You had me as a guest on your podcast and we talked about this energy and how it just felt like so good, so right to have the conversation.
So I knew that you needed to be here when you were ready to just share your, insights and expertise with my, listeners who are people who are. living with cancer. So let's get started. What I'd love for you to do is actually to give us a little bit of insight [00:03:00] into who you are and how you came to be a holistic healer, particularly around grief.
Sure.
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: So I probably start by saying I was unaware 48 years of my life. unaware, living the conditioned life, the program life, the, you go to school, go to college, you get married, have kids, go to job. And I was living that life, but I was surviving and I was not thriving. And what led me into the holistic healing was literally my teenager, my teenagers in my home.
And an argument one night in the fall, another door slam, another argument. And I was just like, I can no longer live like this. I can't live like this. Something has to change. And I knew enough at the time that [00:04:00] only I could change myself. I couldn't change my teenager that I was fighting with. Couldn't change the other teenagers in my home.
I could only change So I started seeking and I knew that talk therapy wasn't going to work for me because I had been there done that. And it just this time, it was bigger, it was a bigger deal. And I couldn't do what I had done before. So I went seeking and ended up finding some alternative healing methods in energy work, different things like that, that I picked up on.
And as I started healing myself, I realized I have the gifts and the abilities and the skill set that I can actually help others do the same thing. And so as I was healing myself, my relationship with my teenager, my ex husband, my parents, like all the things I started helping clients with the same, the same way that I was healing myself.
I [00:05:00] started working with clients and helping them heal the things that were in their life that they couldn't seem to
want to say, get over, get past, unravel, couldn't get through. So I started, that's, That's the short version.
Kathryn White (2): It's beautiful though, and I was just making a note, like, that concept of heal yourself first.
Mmm.
Kathryn White (2): That you kind of have to do the work on yourself before you can gift that work to other people, yeah?
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I, another thing too, is I had a lot of, parents come to me to help them to help them with their child. So their child was behaving, acting out in school, ADHD, just a lot, ODG, a lot of different things. And as I was working with [00:06:00] their, Child, I would, I would say to all the parents now, I've been working with them for a while or her for a while, it would be really good to get to have some sessions for yourself, because your child is changing, your child is healing.
And if you're playing the same game and reacting in the same pattern, how is that helping them? So, yeah. Yes. So, yes, we want to help our children live the best life ever. We want them to thrive. But we also have to be willing to do the work and change so that as they are healing and as they are being able to stop in that nanosecond and make a different choice than arguing, you need to be able to do that same thing.
So it is so important that we do begin the healing work on ourselves. Yeah,
Kathryn White (2): I love this. In our house, you know, with my walk with cancer, I have done the inner [00:07:00] healing work to help my body and my mind and my spirit to heal. But it's been interesting to watch the ripple effect in the house and how, you know, my husband as the caregiver.
has been processing his trauma around this, his grief. We, we, I just did an episode of an, on happy feeling grief, like good grief, that the moment where grief comes through and it just feel like you feel so joyful and then so sad and then so joyful. And it's this rollercoaster of emotion. And then we're seeing that sort of transfer into our children also, but yeah, it, the healing has to start on the, on with the person, I guess, that, yes.
Yeah, it may not even realize they need the healing.
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: Right, right. And then too, as you're healing and changing, there needs to be a lot of grace for those in your family around you because they're on their own path, they're on their own journey. And I [00:08:00] kind of coined it as you're, you're changing the game of how you've played.
Because now you're, you're doing it differently because you're not that nanosecond you have the choice or you're not triggered or you're not letting the old wounds and the old stories rule, play the game for you. So there needs to be a lot of grace and compassion because your family members, especially if they're not doing healing, they need time to figure out what to do.
Well, the game's changed. Mom's not acting the same. Oh, what, what am I supposed to do now? Right? And so there has to be an allowance for that process. And that's where that grace and compassion needs to be part of that process in order to allow them, your family, your loved ones to work, work it through.
And on their journey in their time, it's hard. It's a very complex process.
Kathryn White (2): Yes. [00:09:00] Yeah. Necessary like for the person who is trying to do the work or, you know, as a guide for in your case, when you were working with teenagers to support them in doing the work, like there's this. Interesting. I think like this responsibility to be graceful and kind and compassionate because not everybody's on the same path.
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: Right. And that could be your first awareness, right? Like that could be the first awareness of someone who's stepping into a healing journey is, Oh, we're all on different paths. Oh, they're not, they may not ever. get at the point I'm at right now. And so it's this, this is what I had to do with my teenager is, okay, how do I, I don't like the choices.
I don't like the behavior. You're my son, my child. I love you. How do I love you well and accept you as you are? When I don't love and, and I don't want to accept these behaviors, like it is [00:10:00] really a, it's like walking on a tightrope and that's this balance and how do I do that? Like, how do I love you well
and accept you where you are when I know there could be so much more? And I guess too, I'm gapping, but when I can also see the potential in you, I can see all that you can do. I can see all that's for you and you can't, like, it's, it's, Because in relationships like this. We love them. And we, you know, you're a family of family unit, you've chosen to be here together.
And how do you let love win? That's kind of been the question that has come to me in a, in a specific situation in the past few months, love wins. Okay. All right. So I know the answer. So how do I get out there? So how do I work through all that's coming up for me around it? And how do I just get to this love [00:11:00] wins?
Like, wow, that's, that's, that's, That's, that's doing the inner work, right? That is
Kathryn White (2): huge. How, oh, how do we let love win?
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: Yeah.
Kathryn White (2): And that's so hard, I think, for the people who are the observers of the healing process to understand that, that the healing, I think, comes from a place of love, self love, but also love for the family.
And I know I have some caregivers in my practice that get frustrated because they can see what the steps are of, of what they want for their person from so much love of wanting them to be well, but the person has to be ready to do the work.
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: Yes.
Kathryn White (2): And, and so, You know, and sometimes in, in my case of, of my clients, the, the patient is watching the caregiver and the caregiver is trying to do the work.
And then in other cases, it's the patient who's trying to do the work and the caregiver is trying to stay caught up, but there's just, there's just so much around life in general, [00:12:00] right? And throw exceptional circumstances in and it just is that much more of a challenging situation, I think. Totally agree.
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: love. Yes. And there's a lot of work that you've got to do to get to that place. You know, the theme of, of, for me, the theme of judgment, the theme of what will people think the theme of how does this look like, that was so ingrained, that was so ingrained generations of that ingrained in, in my DNA, and And it's.
simply working through it every time it comes up. So in this particular instance, those were the exact thoughts that came up. Like, how do I handle this? Like, if this is true, the judgment, what's the world going to say? The world is cruel, just different things. And all of a sudden it was like, my spirit team was Right on top of me and love wins.
[00:13:00] Ah, all right. That's just the place I need to. That's just the place that I need to get to. And interestingly enough, I thought that I would have to work through all those lines of judgment that came up in the world and all that stuff that was within me that was the negative energy that was within me that was bringing that up,
that I'd
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: have to work through that.
And I kind of was like, begrudgingly, like, just got a whole nother list of stuff to work through and, you know, energetically clear. And it was, it was within a few days. I was like, I don't have to work through any of that because that one message of love winds took everything that I felt and was brewing within me and gone.
It was amazing. It's amazing. I love that. It doesn't always happen that way, but I love it when it does.
Kathryn White (2): Yeah. And so cleansing, right? And, and really like so simple at its root, like love wins when you can love yourself [00:14:00] enough to want to make a change. enough to, you know, again, in the case of my clients, to take care of themselves, to change how they eat, to reframe how they think.
And I know I've listened to a number of your episodes and so many of the people that come to your podcast are like, let's, switch tack here and talk about that. The, the mind, body, soul mastery podcast, really share powerful stories of healing, really, really powerful and beautiful stories. And so obviously to come to the podcast, they feel safe and they feel ready to share.
the work that they've been doing. So can you tell us a little bit more about your podcast? Because I really do love it. And I hope that that, you know, the people that are listening to this podcast will listen to yours just because there's such a variety of people coming to the table, so many different experiences and how they have moved through that.
So like, why did you even start the [00:15:00] podcast?
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: Well, so mind, body, soul healing has been a part of the work that I've done. do since I started my business five years ago. And within the last year, mind, body, soul, I just, I don't know. I was, I needed to do something different. I was missing deep and meaningful conversations.
I was, I love, yeah. So hence the podcast. was launched mind, body, soul mastery. And as you know, being a guest, I struggled with that word mastery, because it's like, I'm nowhere near a master whatsoever. But as I sat with it, and as my guides, my team sat with it, it became very clear. My belief is that mind, body, soul mastery is what every human here on earth, that is what we are here to look at.
To delve [00:16:00] into and to learn to have the three work together because it's when the three work together when we can work when it can work in alignment and partnership when the mind and the body and the body is. not only just the complex systems that it runs, our body is a system, right? Automatic system, our digestion, our breathing, our heartbeat, like there's that part of it.
But our body is also the place where intuition lies. Our body is the place where we feel emotions. And that is what makes our souls human is this feeling these experiences and the feelings that we have. And so When we can align the mind and remove the lies and the, the mistruths, the misinformation, the, the, the, the lies that we [00:17:00] believe that are not true.
We can align our body to open up our intuition to allow us to to choose to allow our bodies to feel every emotion instead of stuffing and denying. And then we can lean in and tune in to what is our soul? What is our soul? What is its purpose? What are we here for? Because it's not to make, it's not just to make money.
It's not just to live that program life of school, college, the white picket fence, two dogs, four kids, you know, that that's not, we're here for more than that. And every single one of us has. a purpose. My purpose, I scoffed at, that's, that's a story in and of itself. But my purpose is really all around loving ourselves, loving myself, loving this vessel that I chose, even when I'm not happy with it, learning to really [00:18:00] love this vessel that I chose, this body that I'm here in, and to follow my body's nudges.
Hmm. What is? What is my, what is my body telling me to do? Where is my body nudging me? Oh, I shouldn't eat that food because it tickles the back of my throat. Okay, got it. Oh, oh, oh, so so and so comes to mind. I just need to reach out to her today and just check in and just say, hey, you came to mind.
Following the body's nudges, right? That's my intuition, the feelings, even the, even the stuff that comes up. I mentioned before like those threads of judgment or what will people think. leaning into, okay, why is this got such a hold on me?
Yes.
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: Where's this coming from? And allowing my body because my body, my physical body holds the [00:19:00] score.
I've read the
Kathryn White (2): body holds the score.
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: That's a good book.
Kathryn White (2): Oh my gosh. That's a good book. Highly recommend.
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: Yes, and the many of the aches and the pains and the dis ease that I have can all be rooted in the emotional toll that I was not able to process and let go of. And so that is really the crux of my work, too, this really getting ourselves to release the negative energy that our body's holding in order so that we can heal thyself.
So it becomes this matter of do I have to know thyself to heal thyself or do I have to heal thyself to know thyself like to me, they go both ways, but it's when we lean in to to do the work when we lean in to do the inner work, and those things that are coming up and finding the threads and looking back and then the introspection and self reflection of, is this true?
Is this true of me? Is this for me? Because a lot of [00:20:00] things of what I'm holding, what my body's been holding, and I'd say this for everyone, a lot of it isn't true. And we couldn't process it. We couldn't handle it in the moment. And our bodies held on to that. And when we can get to this place of leaning into, look at those things, truly see them, acknowledge them.
And it really is simple as acknowledge. I know that time when I was six years old. I remember that. I remember how she felt. Thanks for letting me see it. I, I acknowledge it. That happened. It hurt.
And
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: now thank you for letting it go. It is really. as simple as that, but it is over and over and over again.
Yeah. Every time it comes up. Right. So this is, and then, yeah. So mind, body, soul, we were talking about my podcast, mind, body, soul mastery is all of that together. Like it's all that I just talked about and living in alignment because [00:21:00] when we can get the three working together to live in alignment, that's where I believe.
we really begin to thrive in this life.
Yeah.
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: And it's also where that point of where possibilities and opportunities to curate what we want, which, which, which mean might not have ever been able to see, but now we can, that's when that all begins to open up and when it's all possible.
Kathryn White (2): Wow, that is hugely profound and yet so simple really like it's so it's such a big thought and yet it's just so simple.
And if I can add, I think it is the opportunity that that we have when we start to invest. acknowledge six year old me, and why was I feeling that way as a child, and how is that impacting me now? But the, like, the next piece is how can I heal that wound so [00:22:00] that I can break the cycle in my family, in the world?
How can we break that cycle by stepping out of what we were conditioned to believe? I have to tell you this story because it's the cutest thing and so relevant. I was at the grocery store the other day and there was this lovely lady, probably in her 70s, and she had the cutest little hat on and I was just like, Hey, I just really love your hat.
It's so cute. And she's like, well, thank you. I got it on Timu. She was very proud of herself. And, and she said, but I have to tell you I would never have gone out dressed like this before like she was super casual like I didn't think anything of it but she said oh my mother would be beside herself if she saw me dressed like this at the grocery store and then she went on to talk about her experience of being a child and a young woman and becoming a mother and how her mother was like no we don't go out looking like that we must be dressed up we always have to be on our game And it just felt like [00:23:00] what you were saying is like, how do you love yourself when you've been conditioned to behave the way somebody else wants you to behave.
And that's the stuff I think, and you are certainly welcome to disagree, but I think that's the stuff that's making us ill is we're holding on to the stories. The body keeps the score on a cellular level. We're not allowing that free flow of energy. which allows us to have free flow of thoughts that allows us to listen to the sensations, the intuition that lets us move forward.
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: I 100 percent agree. 100 percent agree. And the key is really learning to tune into those bodies nudges, the subtle things, right? And My mind wants me to go. So I know for me, those that decade or so since, since the time that my husband left, I was single [00:24:00] mom raising my kids and I was just surviving. There was no thriving.
And a lot of it was so much was because I wasn't living. How I was, I meant to live, I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing, going do the nine to the five. Yes, I'm in a, I have a day job that I'm really good at, but it doesn't fill my soul. And so I had to follow the body's nudges to find to do that thing or add into my life.
What fills my soul. Now adding the podcast, having deep and meaningful conversations with people who are have gone through the messy and challenging because there's everything in life can be messy and challenging.
And
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: some people just have messy and challenging over and over and over again. And so part of the podcast of bringing that to life was number one, let's talk about the messy and challenging.
Let's, let's [00:25:00] stop pretending it doesn't exist. Let's start talking about grief. I want to normalize grief. I want to embrace grief because it impacts us and we are, we're just not even conscious of how much it's impacting us. And so what I've discovered for myself is that when I talk about it and share about it, there's a little less burden.
There's a little less weight. I started realizing and recognizing, Oh, I'm not alone. There are other people who feel like me. So sometimes when we keep it to ourselves and we don't, we don't share, we think, Oh, it's just me. I'm look at everyone else is having this perfect, beautiful life. Look at that family.
They look great together. You know what? They're not 24 seven. We don't know what's going on behind closed doors. And if I'm not sharing how I'm feeling or share what I'd like to say, share my shit, because that gets it out. People don't realize I'm not [00:26:00] alone. There are other people who feel this way. And Sharing is a part of healing, talking about it, getting it out, especially you have to find safe people, obviously.
But when you do, it is a it's a path of healing that is very underutilized. and unrecognized in many ways, because who likes to ugly cry, but sometimes that's what's needed to happen
when
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: you're sharing to get it out. And that's its own sort of release. So for me,
that podcast became that place of, we can talk about the messy and challenging, but we're also talking about, so what did they do? Cause they didn't, Everyone of my guests didn't sit in the messy and challenging. They, like me, just like I did, they went seeking. They [00:27:00] found the things, they found tools, they found coaches, they found mentors.
They found ways that helped them heal and move through their messy and challenging. Empowering themselves. Finding their voice. Finding their strength. Finding their resilience. Where they may not have had any of that before.
Yeah. And
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: to me, that is hope and inspiring. So, so right now my podcast is fun. I, it fills my soul every conversation I have because I'm talking with people who have done it, who've walked it just like I have.
And that creates this, to me, it's just this soul connection that I can't even begin to explain.
Kathryn White (2): So beautiful. That is so beautiful. And I think that it's an invitation for people to not feel shame. Around their feelings and around their stories and [00:28:00] in my work, we talk about exceptional healing patients.
And if you read, radical remission or radical hope, they talk about the people who heal are the people who there are certain qualities and one of them is doing the inner work and releasing the shame. Releasing those stories of the lady who's embarrassed to be out at the grocery store, not dressed like her mother wanted her to be.
There's so much shame around, you know, not, not following what we're supposed to be doing. Or, or in my case, you know, with my clients, the shame around getting ill and, and the shame of, of, Of, you know, what didn't I do? But it's such an opportunity when we have these conversations to say, it's not about what you didn't do.
It's about what you can do moving forward from here. Yes. Yes. Healing from a place of love. Absolutely. Amazing. I really do hope people will go and listen to your podcast [00:29:00] because there's some really, there are some exceptional healing people in, in your healing space. So, oh, that gives me goosebumps. So I did say, you know, That we've talked, we've referenced grief a few times, and I just wondered about, you know, the power of grief.
Like, we've sort of touched on it, but how it can hold on to us, and, like, do you have a particular way or, or that you talk about with people of, or even for yourself, like, how you move that grief through and out?
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: Yes. And I'm going to say too, I just want to caveat by saying my perspective of grief is very unique simply because of the journey that I'm on and the people that are in my world, the healers and the, the channelers and the mediums that are in my world really helped me.
I'm going to refer back to that teenager that [00:30:00] I talked about earlier in my story, that teenager, the door slam and another argument. And it was like a war zone in my home. And that's the child who put me on the healing journey. And that is also the child who two years ago, I got the call that he had died from cocaine, lace to fentanyl.
So his relapse had cost him his life. And I never expected that. I. I knew he was an addict. I mean, we all did. And we all knew that, his dad and stepmom, myself, like we all knew that. we couldn't change him until he was ready to change, right? So again, it goes back to that. I don't like your choices and behaviors, but I love you.
So how do I love you and stay in relationship with you when these are the choices and the things that you're doing? It was hard. It was hard times. And we were on a, he and I were on a path of [00:31:00] rebuilding a bridge, like rebuilding this relationship because, Yeah, there's just a lot in there. And so to get that call was number one, shocking, like shocking.
And Because of the world that I'm in, the people that are around me, I had a friend reach out who was able to connect with his source energy and receive a channeled message of my questions that he answered and everything. And so all this, it was that moment in listening to her recording. And hearing his humor come through the things that he would said that only I would get and understand.
It was so clear to me that it was him. There was no doubt in my mind. Like she, yeah, I understood his [00:32:00] soul's purpose. I understood what he came to do on this earth. And it was true. to feel that high again, to feel that high vibration of eternity, soul, you know, coming from heaven, whatever, whatever it is, you call it.
He came to chase that. I didn't know that. Obviously, I didn't know that. But I understood it when it when the message came down. And It became very clear to me. I came to chase the high. I didn't know I didn't have to do it through drugs. There are other ways I see now, but that's what I chose. And so it became very clear to me like his human experience ended.
He died. His physical body died. His human experience ended, but his soul continues. And that is where I have my. [00:33:00] heart. That is what I focus on, is that his soul is now free to come have another human experience, if that's what you believe, or his soul that is in eternity in heaven forever, if that's what you believe.
What I've come to Understand and accept in my spiritual journey and my healing journey is what may may be true for me may not be true for you. Right. And so my dad just passed away a couple of weeks ago. And my family is of the belief of heaven and hell in one life to live. And so I have to honor that.
And so that, so, so now we, we refer to my dad in heaven. I see it differently. I see my son and his soul and my dad's energy flying around together. They come talk to me, they visit me. So that is how I [00:34:00] have been able to, what I call quantum shift my grief. I didn't sit in the suffering. I didn't sit in the, what I've lost.
Because I knew what he came for. I knew that what he came to do it, it was he, it ended it, his experience ended. And now I miss him. My grief is more missing him. My grief is more getting the teary eyed when the thoughts come or sometimes in it, it hits me at different times. Like, I will be with all my, you know, My the rest of my family and my other living children and I will watch them muck around and laugh and joke and then I will get teary eyed and was like, Ian would be right in there with them if he was here today, like, that's how grief hits me now it's in missing those moments that Oh, he right there too, but he's not.
So, [00:35:00] but I allow that feeling to come, I allow myself to sit in those tears in that moment. And. This is the other thing too I wish that all grievers could could accept is that there can be joy and grief at the same time.
When
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: I'm sitting and watching my children muck around and joke and, you know, have fun together and laugh, that is joy to me.
And that missing, that Ian's not part of it, there's the grief for me, it happens at the same time,
and it
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: is okay, and I allow it to be, and that's how I have, that's how I have helped myself to move with my grief, to carry my grief, it always runs as a background in the back of my programming, it's always there.
Kathryn White (2): We call that good grief at our house. It's that moment of, of that mixture of joy [00:36:00] and sorrow at the same time, or it's even, I did an episode on it around the idea of almost mourning what you are doing right now that you might not have had. Yes. It's like, oh, if things had gone differently, This wouldn't be happening right now, and so I'm really happy that it's happening right now, but I'm grieving the moment that I thought that maybe I would never have this.
Like, it's a whole, it's a really interesting concept of seeing where you are, and watching, and enjoying your children, and knowing that, that there is, there's a piece that's not there, but it is. Right, right. And
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: in his freedom as a soul, I do believe he's around. He's always accessible. He's right. He's with me. He sees it too. And that in itself brings its own level of comfort in that I don't feel that he's missing [00:37:00] out. I'm more like, I'm more, man, now you and my dad are together. And now you all know, like, you see the whole thing.
It's all been revealed. You now know, like, I'm like, I really want to be there with you. Yeah, I want to be experiencing that and be in that place. So, again, a very unique perspective of grief, simply because of the experiences that I've had. Yeah. Yet. Anyone and everyone can get to that unique perspective themselves, too, if they choose it.
Right.
Kathryn White (2): And it is a unique path for everyone to pink has a song, I think that was for her dad about, you know, where she sings there's, is there a bar up there where you have a favorite chair, you know, do you sit around and talk about the weather and I lost my brother in early 2020 he chose to end his walk on the earth.
And I've really been moving [00:38:00] through that grieving process of my own grief around my own health and then the grief around him Yeah, and and just really learning that There are opportunities and this won't resonate with everyone and that's okay They got I've gone through Reiki healing with my Reiki masters outstanding and I have had conversations With my brother and been able to, to have those experiences that really are very healing.
And that's not as they said, going to resonate for everyone, because it is, it's just such a unique process. But I do think, you know, that that, you know, some people believe in signs, like, right. My brother is is a baby seal. When I see a baby seal for a long convoluted story, I know that he is present.
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: Yes.
Kathryn White (2): And that can bring me joy in that loss.
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: Absolutely. Absolutely. I just want to add a little bit more about grief and what I've learned is that, yes, I have [00:39:00] experienced grief as the loss of a child. And it was in. After losing him, and in that process of grieving, mourning, I realized This is a familiar feeling.
I felt this way a lot, but I didn't lose anyone so close to me before. And as I just sat with it, and I began to realize, you know what, for me, a lot of the grief and the sadness that was familiar to me was around unmet expectations that I was never able to reconcile. And so grief is more than the loss of someone.
And I think this is what we also failed to talk about. enough. It can be the loss of an illusion. My marriage ended. My partner chose to walk away. There was a lot of grief, not over him, but over the loss of the illusion. I, I expected to be [00:40:00] married for life. I expected that partnership for life. And that didn't happen.
So there's been a lot of grief around this loss of the illusion around the marriage. If you have a career that you got fired from or whatever, like grief is around that. If you had hopes of being an NFL player and you busted your knee in high school, those dreams are gone. That could be grief, right? So loss of property, bankruptcy, like grief can hit us over so much.
And Again, it's this emotional part of being human. If we don't allow ourselves to accept it, acknowledge it, feel it, right, our body holds onto it. And we then just can be under this veil of grief and sadness, more as a heavyweight, heavy blanket all the time. And it'd be the makes it harder to see those glimmers of [00:41:00] joy and sadness at the seeing those, those good things in life.
So grief is just It's just extremely complex, and it's bigger than what we realize and what we notice.
Kathryn White (2): Yes, I really love that you added that piece because, you know, there's, there is grief, grief, and again, and the people that are listening to this podcast, grief around getting ill, grief around the changes to the body, grief around, you know, what for myself, like what I've done to my family, what my, what my loved ones have gone through, but on the flip side of it, and this has been my work is taking that grief and saying, but what good has come from this?
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: Yes.
Kathryn White (2): And I have a much more beautiful relationship with my sons because we can have honest conversations and my husband and I are super close. And, you know, I don't [00:42:00] grieve not having a full career as a teacher because it led me to find something else that brings me so much joy. So I love that. Yeah. Like grief can be around losing a person, but it can also be around lost expectations, lost dreams, lost hopes, but then What are you going to do with that?
Once you recognize it, what are you going to do with that? Because really, there's only two choices, you sit in it, or you find a way to move through it. A hundred percent. A third choice. And get beyond it. Right. Acknowledge, do the work, and then move forward. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you for that very personal share.
That's, it's, you know, we, sometimes we don't always want to share those deeper things because we feel like it might embarrass people or make them uncomfortable or it's too personal, but it's what you were talking about with your podcast, like when, when you can say the things that might make [00:43:00] other people uncomfortable, when we can stop living the narrative that we've been conditioned to walk and talk, that's where the healing starts.
Absolutely. So beautiful. So, so beautiful. So can you just share, like, do you work privately with people or is your message solely delivered through your podcast? How can people find you? A podcast
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: is a great, is a great place to start just to hear me. And to, hear the stories I do, you can find me to my, I have a website, brenda.
tomlinson. com and I do work one on one right now. My work is only one on one with clients simply because it's, personal. And my goal and intention is to help you lean in. to discover your truth, to discover your to heal and discover your truth and what's true for you. And let's unwind and unravel the [00:44:00] stories and the things that are holding you back or that's contributing to not getting whatever it is.
Right. So it's really finding going within to find what is true for you? What's where's the healing? What do we need? So it's very personal and curated. Beautiful.
Kathryn White (2): Yeah. Not so not prescribed. It's a very individualized process, which healing is a very individualized process. Yeah. So I will make sure to put your information, to your website and to your podcast in the show notes so that people can find you.
Cause I think, you know, this is the gift of, of having this voice on a podcast is be able to share other people and what they can bring because it's, you know, we can have multiple healing modalities in our life and multiple healers in our lives to support us as we move through whatever our things are.
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: Absolutely. And it's seeking the one that's right for you in that moment. I mean, I've [00:45:00] hired. dozens of healers in my five years, and there's only a few that I've gone back to time and time again. And then, but everyone, the, the teacher comes, the mentor comes when the student is ready. Or when, you know, the person is ready.
And so again, it's that following your body, who's, who's calling you, who's drawing you and you know, following that. And again, listening. Yeah. Yes. And as we follow who we're drawn to or different things like that's that mind, body, soul mastery, that alignment that I'm talking about when we, when we get the nudge and we follow on that action helps bring that alignment into.
Kathryn White (2): Yeah. One of the, I don't want to say best, one of the most, profound healers, I think other than like my Reiki master that, that I [00:46:00] still see, person who helped me the most initially, I think was a coach that I didn't even know that coaching was a thing. And then I. I met this girl and she ended up, I did two rounds of coaching with her.
And, but what I want to say about her is like, she challenged me. She didn't just let me wallow in my stories and tell them over and over, which is what coaching is about, right? We don't just sit and say, tell me all about that all over again. She would challenge me like to the point where I was in tears a few times, not because I was sad for what I was saying, but because she was just like, no, I'm not accepting that answer.
Like, try again. Let's do this again. And just like forced me in a very loving and safe container. To acknowledge, oh, that's where that's coming from. And once it was like, oh, that's where that's coming from. Like bursting open. And just being able to, okay, now we can move forward. So, it is like the, the mentor will come to the student, to [00:47:00] the client, to the human.
In a way, when they are ready, and it might not feel like the right person right away, but sometimes even that little edginess is exactly what you need instead of the person who's going to like pat your back and say, you're going to be just fine as a person. Like, no, actually, let's go, let's do this.
Healing
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: isn't easy. It isn't easy. This work isn't easy. And If you're looking for easy, then you probably don't want to start the journey. If you're not willing to lean into the uncomfortable to find your truths, to find your soul's purpose, then don't go seeking it. I mean it. And yet I say that. And yet I know for me, it's been the best thing I've ever done.
And I am so grateful. And so thankful, even as the things come up, like I just said, I'm, you know, I've lost my, my, I just lost my dad. There's still some things that I've got to work through in that [00:48:00] relationship. Now that he's. here, I still have to, to work through that relationship. There's still some things that I, because it's for me, it's not my healing and working on the relationship was not for this physical thing between him and I, it's working on this relationship and healing the things that I'm still holding onto because it's for me, it helps me to live my fullest expression and live that life where.
I am thriving.
Kathryn White (2): Oh, beautiful. That leads me so beautifully into the last question I wanted to ask you. What does living to thrive mean to you?
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: For me, it is all that I've been talking about. This mind, body, soul mastery. It's this living in alignment, recognize. So thriving to me is recognizing the lies, acknowledging the, those areas that, Oh, I still have to [00:49:00] do some work there.
And then choosing to lean into and do that inner work, allow my body to reveal what it's holding, allow myself to feel my emotions. allow myself to follow my nudges, even when I don't want to, even when I'm tired and I don't want to, but I want to thrive. And I want this vessel that I've chosen to be the healthiest that it can be.
So that does mean, I think you probably talk about this with your clients doing and changing some things that you don't really want to, but you know, it's for you, it's better for you. And then too, always tuning in with my soul. And yep, is this Is this for me? Is this what I'm supposed to be doing and allowing my soul to guide and allowing my spirit team to guide me and I have to be willing to follow what [00:50:00] comes even if it's uncomfortable.
So to me, that's thriving. I live, I live a very, quiet life, very slow, probably not so much engaged with the outside world other than an online world. And I love it. I love it. And I'm thriving, my soul is happy, my human is content. And to me, like, to me, that's thriving, because that's vastly different than the person, you know, for deck for four decades that tried to conform with all these expectations and what the world expected of me, and I was miserable.
So Beautiful. That's how I'd answer that.
Kathryn White (2): Beautiful. In alignment with yourself, your higher good, knowing what is in your own best interest. Yeah. And wouldn't it be beautiful? [00:51:00]
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: Yeah. And that's where it's hard. I've learned some caveat. I've learned some things about my genetics and my body that go against the grain of culture.
And so I've had to just accept that. And then I don't talk about it because it does go against the grain of culture. It's against what every guru will tell you to do to get healthier. And it's like, genetically, that is like, directly opposite of my, what my body needs, my genetic tells me. So who am I following?
What? Oh, I'm going to follow my own innate body intelligence because it knows, it knows,
Kathryn White (2): it does. That's what I'm going to follow. Oh, I love that. That is so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. That's really important. You know, in the whole, There's so much noise of what we should be doing and we wear so much on our shoulders, our shoulds, right?
But when you can get [00:52:00] quiet and come back to your true self, who you are innately and listen to the, to the whispers.
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: And again, what's true for me may not be true for you, right? It's accepting that like, and that one is a big one that it's not everything is a black and white truth. Yes. May be true for me, may not be true for you, and that's okay.
Yes. That's okay.
Kathryn White (2): Yes. Oh my gosh. We could talk for hours. I know. I remember this same
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: feeling when we were on
Kathryn White (2): the podcast. We could talk for hours, yes, because there's just so many like tangents that we could go off on about all of this, but I know we've been like almost an hour of enjoying this conversation.
I very, very much appreciate you taking the time to be here today and to share. You did some very personal sharing and thank you for, for being able to do that. for that. And. for allowing me to hold that space for you and for the listeners to hold that space for you. [00:53:00] It's just another piece in the healing, isn't it?
Brenda Staat-Tomlinson: It is. Thank you. It was an honor to be here. Thank you.
Kathryn White (2): You are very, very welcome. And I have no doubt that we will connect again. So, I just for the listeners, Brenda's message today, like, there's just, like I said, so much in there, but about healing that mind and body and soul. And it's such inspiring work for all of us to be able to start thinking about it gets it's a process to start thinking, but it's a great reminder that when you're ready and you're willing to do the work, you know, in the case of my listeners, you can do more than just survive.
And really that's it. What that, what, what Brenda has shared is you can do more than just survive in your life. You can thrive in your life when you have mentors and tools and the healing starts in the love starts from within. Well, this takes us to the end of our episode. So I just want to invite the listeners if they have enjoyed [00:54:00] this episode or other episodes to leave a review and to share you So that other people can hear the beautiful message that Brenda has shared with us today.
I just want to thank you again, Brenda, for being here. Thank you to the listeners for being here. And, I think that we'll just leave with a lot of beautiful messages to consider as we move forward in our thriving lives. Thank you. Thanks everyone for being here. Have a great rest of the day.
