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54. Shifting The Narrative- With Andrea Freemyer
70 Plays4 years ago
Andrea Freemyer, PhD- Self Love Coach, Body Connection Guide , and Breathwork Facilitator. Deeply committed to helping people walk through their shadows and alchemize their pain so that they can embody their light and reclaim their power. She is a self-love coach, body connection guide and Breathwork facilitator.
In her own words “I spent many years of my life as a high-functioning perfectionist and over-achiever. I went through some very painful experiences and did everything I could to avoid feeling through those things. I threw myself into getting an advanced education. I numbed with drugs and alcohol. On the outside, it appeared I was doing all the “right” things, but I was hurting deeply inside. My waking moments were spent in the chaos of my thoughts with my ego as the star of the show. Many people that I loved dearly were also stuck in despair and suffering.
Then on September 16th of 2019, the very foundation of my life crumbled when I discovered my husband had taken his own life in our garage. I didn’t know how I would get through this- each minute, hour and day brought new challenges that I never expected I would face in a lifetime. My heart was literally ripped wide open, leaving me raw and exposed to my new reality. At a time that I could have easily averted back to my old ways of numbing and avoiding, I made the decision to keep my heart open and allow myself to feel through the pain of this trauma and loss. About a month after my husband’s death, Breathwork- an amazingly effective healing modality- found me right where I was when I needed it most. I embraced this work and made it a part of my daily practice. I walked through some of my darkest moments while also developing a deep connection with my body and began to regain self-trust. I felt called to journey much deeper. So, a few months later I decided to become trained as a Breathwork facilitator and I also enrolled in a 10-month 400-hour coaching certification. I wanted to share these amazing gifts with the world! Now I am grateful everyday to be guided by my soul’s calling to help people walk through their shadows and alchemize their pain so they can embody their light and step into their power.”
Listen to the podcast as we talk about all the tools she has used in her own grief journey as well as used them to help her young son as well.
Contact Andrea Freemyer: https://www.andreafreemyer.com/\
Contact Kendra Rinaldi to be a guest or for a coaching session: https://www.griefgratitudeandthegrayinbetween.com/
Music: https://rinaldisound.com/
Logo: https://pamelawinningham.com/
Production: Carlos Andres Londono
Recommended
Transcript
Andrea's Breathwork Journey Begins
00:00:01
Speaker
I found myself in those beginning stages of practicing breath work.
00:00:08
Speaker
just really, really releasing so, so much just in the form of, you know, I was really angry. I was really angry at first. And I just, I was able to allow a lot of those feelings to surface and to either scream or
00:00:32
Speaker
yell or cry or whatever it was I needed to do to release those those feelings so that they weren't because trauma gets trapped in our bodies.
Introduction of the Podcast
00:00:47
Speaker
Hello and welcome to grief, gratitude and the Gray in Between podcast.
00:00:54
Speaker
This podcast is about exploring the grief that occurs at different times in our lives in which we have had major changes and transitions that literally shake us to the core and make us experience grief.
00:01:11
Speaker
I created this podcast for people to feel a little less hopeless and alone in their own grief process as they hear the stories of others who have had similar journeys. I'm Kendra Rinaldi, your host. Now, let's dive right in to today's episode.
00:01:34
Speaker
Hello, hello, and thank you so much for tuning in today. Today, you will be listening to Andrea Feeneier's story and her journey. Andrea reached out to me via email that she wanted to be a guest and share her story and shared a little bit about what had happened in her life. And I was intrigued myself of her own journey. And I know that all of you listeners will be intrigued as well.
Maintaining Lightheartedness in Heavy Topics
00:02:01
Speaker
And so Andrea, welcome so much to the
00:02:04
Speaker
podcast. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I'm so glad you're here. And did I say welcome so much? Is that what I just said right before? Did I say welcome so much? I was telling Andrea, I'm like, usually where I'm like mess up the most is probably when I'm introducing people and I probably just messed up right there. I'm like, did I just say like welcome so much? Welcome so much works.
00:02:30
Speaker
You know, it's lots of welcome. Lots of welcome. And that's the thing, I try to make this be so lighthearted because a lot of times, of course, the subject of grief is so heavy that a lot of times we need to kind of, you know, include a little bit of that lightness to it.
00:02:50
Speaker
And humor and so forth too, for me at least. If not, I don't think I could be interviewing three to four people a week on the subject if I didn't add a little bit of that sense of humor as well in the process of lightness to it. But anyway, I'm so glad that you are here and we just chatted just briefly, like five minutes.
00:03:11
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right before we started recording. So I'm going to be finding out all these details pretty much with the listeners as well. So how about we start with just very basics?
Andrea's Background and Family Struggles
00:03:21
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Where do you live? I live in Kansas City, Kansas. So kind of right in the middle.
00:03:28
Speaker
I always ask that when people say Kansas City, Missouri or Kansas? Kansas City, Missouri or Kansas? Which one of the two? Yeah, it's so funny because I have lived on the Missouri side for so long and now I'm on the Kansas side, but I'm literally like three houses on the Kansas side. That's so funny. That divider line is very real around here.
00:03:50
Speaker
And it's, and do the, are people very much like, I've never been there. I've never been to Kansas city, but my husband has for work, but do you know, is it, is it like kind of like the West side, like West side story kind of thing? Like the West, you know what I mean? The sharks and the jets type of feeling. Are you from the Missouri side or the Kansas? Yeah, there's definitely people that get offended when you're like, Oh yeah, I've never been to Kansas. And they're like, no, actually I'm from Missouri. Thank you. I'm not really, it doesn't really matter to me.
00:04:20
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So that's where you live. Is that where you grew up as well? I have lived back and forth through from like Western Kansas to the Kansas City area, both Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri. So not all of my life, but I've been here for like the past 12 years. So I've been here for a while.
00:04:44
Speaker
Okay. So yeah, that's your home right now. You feel like that's going to be your home for a little while. You have a son we were just talking about and he is, again, how old? He's five. He's five. So now is that a big deal too, of choosing where you live based on like the school districts and all that as your child starts getting into that age of the schools? Does that make a big difference too in that area?
00:05:09
Speaker
Yes, yes. That's definitely something we're going to have to revisit when that time comes. So he should be starting kindergarten in August of this year, which is crazy to think about. But yeah, so that's definitely something that we need to figure out.
Life Changes and Personal Awakening
00:05:26
Speaker
Just trying to take it a day at a time, though. Yes. Now, did you go to school before? Before we go into what you're doing now, did you go to college, all that kind of stuff, and get a degree? What did you get your degree on when you went to school? Yes. So my undergraduate degree is in psychology. And I also have a PhD in neuroscience. So I have just kind of been spending, I spent a lot of years
00:05:53
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trying to understand better what what goes on in mental illness and kind of like what's the underlying things that are happening in the brain. So interesting because now I'm going to be asking you a lot of how that played a part then in your own journey then with grief because then you have the the academic component of
00:06:19
Speaker
everything and the psychology and neuroscience and this, and then suddenly something happens in your own life that then it's like, do you analyze things or do you feel them? So I'm so curious as to how that went. So take us then into what your grief journey is. Let's go into your life. So take us into your relationship and then we'll go from there.
00:06:48
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All right, so I'm just going to kind of start with just kind of how my growth, my own personal growth journey started. Love it. And my story through grief and through what happened will kind of leave in there. Perfect. I love it. So I have spent lots of years of my life as a high-functioning perfectionist and overachiever just needing to do all of the things.
00:07:18
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In my younger adult years, I went through some really painful experiences in my personal life with my family and really just did everything I could to avoid feeling the pain of those things.
00:07:33
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And that's when I really threw myself into getting this advanced education. My father struggled with anxiety and depression and it really disrupted everything that I knew to be the family dynamic that I had grown up in.
Tragic Loss: Coping with Husband's Suicide
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That's really why when I went to college, I chose psychology. I'm going to figure this out. How can I help him? What can I do? Why did he change? Just trying to understand things and out of that.
00:08:08
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So I threw myself into education and additionally, I numbed. I numbed the hurt. I numbed the pain with either just distracting and overworking and throwing myself into school or with drinking and some recreational drugs. But on the outside,
00:08:31
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I had it all together. It appeared like I was doing all of the right things, but inside I was hurting deeply. And most of my moments were spent really just caught up in the chaos of my mind with my ego. My ego was the star of the show. And then during my graduate training,
00:08:56
Speaker
My personal life went through a lot of transformations. So that is when I met who would become my husband. And we got married, we bought a house, and we had a baby all within the span of a year. And simultaneously, I was in graduate school.
00:09:16
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And so there was just a lot going on and throughout this whole process of me trying to avoid all the previous pain of the circumstances in my life, I had just kind of lost myself and becoming a mother.
00:09:34
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was really a pivotal moment in my life where I had started the process of what I call my awakening, where I really just knew things need to change. I need to do something here. And so that's when I really began the journey into personal and self-development. But again, I was consuming all the content, reading all the books. I started to commit to my health and wellness,
00:10:04
Speaker
and practicing meditation daily. And it became clear to me that I had really spent so much of my life running and avoiding myself, avoiding stillness, just really disconnected from my body. And so things had started to shift at that point, but I had a long road ahead of me.
00:10:28
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And then on September 16th of 2019 was when really just the very foundation of my life had crumbled. I had discovered my husband's lifeless body in our garage after he
Discovering Breathwork as Healing
00:10:53
Speaker
had taken his own life.
00:10:58
Speaker
So we had been together for seven years, married for five at this time, had a four-year-old son together. And our marriage was, for the last year of our marriage, it was really challenging, really difficult. And he struggled with anxiety and depression, had his own battles going on.
00:11:28
Speaker
And I really struggled with my previous wounds related to that of like not feeling like I could help my father. And then I was married to this person, not feeling like I could help him or reach him. And so when this became my reality, I was completely broken open. I was raw. I was exposed.
00:11:55
Speaker
And I really, in that moment in my life, was like, how am I going to move forward? How could I ever work through this and process this trauma? How can I exist in my new reality? And for me, in those early stages after it happened, I turned to nature. I anchored myself in nature.
00:12:24
Speaker
It's something I had always been really drawn to. I'd always had a deep connection, just felt at home and at peace when I was outside. But I really anchored onto this to be held, to ground, to this thing that was so much bigger than me.
00:12:44
Speaker
And then I had made the difficult decision to leave my son for a week. So this was just about a month after my husband's death. I had had previous plans to attend a conference in San Diego for completely different reasons than what I ended up getting out of it.
00:13:06
Speaker
Um, but that, so a month later that, that time had come and I was like, what should I go? Should I stay? Like what I was very much, um, like trying to figure that out. And, um, I ultimately, after much going back and forth decided to go and,
00:13:28
Speaker
I am so grateful that I did because that's where I was exposed to breath work. I was still in those like super early, still very much in shock from everything that had gone on. But when I was guided through this breath work session, I felt this deep connection with my body. And it was like nothing I could explain with words.
00:13:59
Speaker
And I really got to a point where I was doing the breathing exercise and I was like, I don't know if I can do this. This doesn't feel safe. I don't feel comfortable. Because again, I was so raw and so exposed and everything was so fresh. But I had just enough awareness to know like, I just need to go outside and ground myself. And so that's what I did.
00:14:22
Speaker
But what I got from that, just that sip of that feeling, that deep connection with my body, was that I knew that this was something that I had been craving for so long.
00:14:33
Speaker
I had the education, I had the understanding of like the academic understanding of like what happens when somebody struggles from a mental illness, what happens when we're just going through challenging times. But what I didn't have was this connection with my body. I was so in my head all of the time.
00:15:04
Speaker
trying to figure my way through things, trying to logically solve all the struggle and all the hurt that I saw all around me and even within my own life. And so from that day, I just really, really discovered that this is what I needed. I needed a deep, loving connection with myself
00:15:28
Speaker
and I had the realization as well that there was really nowhere else I could turn at this point in my life except for inward. Wow. Okay. I want to pause you. I want to pause you. Take a breath. That was a lot. Since you study breath work, let's take a breath. Yeah. Yes. Let's do that. Actually, guide me through that. Then I'm going to ask you some.
00:15:53
Speaker
So in through my nose and then exhale through my mouth, just like in yoga kind of? Yeah, yeah, we can do, that's what in my practice we call the side breath. So if you just want to take a deep breath in through your nose and just let it out, just like with a big sigh.
00:16:15
Speaker
It's just really kind of a way to gather all the stuck energy in our system and just let it all out.
00:16:32
Speaker
Yeah, we call these just like cleansing. These are just deep cleansing breaths. Yeah. So I want to pause you because I want to go back a little bit and ask you some things regarding how then, because you were feeling torn then in that month after his passing to go to this conference. Was a conference had to do with something with wellbeing as well? And that's where you found, was it like a vendors kind of conference of different types of practices of wellbeing?
00:17:02
Speaker
It was actually, I was thinking yoga, you know, thinking of like different types of things, but then you found this particular thing. So that's why I was wondering what kind of conference it was.
00:17:13
Speaker
Yeah, actually it was unrelated to wellness in the bigger picture. Oh, really? Yeah. I went, it was a marketing conference. And then how did you find breath work there? That's what, okay, so because I'm like, oh, maybe it's in the wellbeing space. And then one of the aspects of the conference was, no, oh my goodness. Yeah, and that's one of the reasons why it's so crazy that like,
00:17:39
Speaker
that I was going, because I was kind of in the process of transitioning out of academia. Just because I wanted to be home more, I didn't want, there were certain stressors that came along with that job that I just was like, this just isn't an alignment for me. And I was already kind of on that road transitioning out of that. And I was going to be like a fitness coach. I was very much into fitness and taking care, I said I had started to take care of myself. And so I'm like, maybe I can help people with this.
00:18:09
Speaker
And so I went to this conference to get some understanding of marketing and starting my own business and all of these things. And the person who was putting on the conference happened to be friends with this woman who I found breath work, who got up on stage and started talking. Her name's Samantha Scully. She got up on stage and started talking. And honestly, I knew she was going to be there, and I knew there was going to be this breath work.
00:18:36
Speaker
thing, but I was like, this is ridiculous. I know how to breathe. What are we even doing? I wasn't super excited about that part of it, but that's what I got from this trip. That's so interesting. I love it. I love it because it was, yeah, like you said, completely unrelated and yet here was this gift that then tied you back in, not only for your own
00:19:00
Speaker
journey then to be able to navigate your own grief then through breath and also help you in this journey as one of your tools, but then also now something that you do for others. So it's just beautiful. My question then also, and by the way, thank you for sharing that and it is a lot and it's very recent. It's only a little bit past a year since this happened as we're speaking.
00:19:27
Speaker
And it's a lot. Not only were you dealing with grief, but I'm assuming there was some trauma as well related to finding your husband. So did you in that moment seek for therapy or things like that at the beginning?
Post-Trauma Healing and Therapy
00:19:45
Speaker
What did you help yourself in that first month, again, before you discovered breathwork? What were some of the other tools that you used to help you with your trauma and your grief in that first, you know,
00:19:57
Speaker
few weeks of this traumatic event in your life. Yeah. So we had actually been in couples therapy prior to his death. And so I continued to see
00:20:12
Speaker
that therapist and also got my son into some play therapy with her as well. So I did that. And that was somewhat, you know, for all things considered, a comfortable transition just because she already knew me. She knew him. She knew our story. And so just to be able to go into that and just, you know, reach out to somebody that already knew
00:20:40
Speaker
Um, a little bit about our history was made it, made it a little bit easier. It wasn't easy by any means, but it just, um, the doors were already kind of open there. Yes. And what kind of language for yourself? Sorry, go ahead. Continue. Oh, and I was just going to say, and then the other things, like I said, I just, I, I spent a lot of time outside. I spent a lot of time just, um,
00:21:05
Speaker
just just being in nature and seeking the lessons that there are just all around us and seeking comfort and like a refuge in in that and also moving my body. I had this like morning routine that
00:21:25
Speaker
I really anchored to that in those first. I mean, there was a while in some days where I just didn't feel like I could get up and move at all. And then there were other days where I was like, I have to do this. I have to get up and move my body.
00:21:42
Speaker
And obviously being a mom and having my son who is still very much dependent on me being like, okay, I have to figure a way through this. I have to keep on taking care of myself because not only do I need to be here for me, but I need to continue to show up for him. He's already lost his father. He can't lose me.
00:22:11
Speaker
You're not the first widow that I hear say that that aspect of not losing your that your child not to lose their other parent as well in that process. That is something that
00:22:25
Speaker
I've heard more than once and it's amazing because it's true. It just makes you as a person just have to pull through. I haven't lived it myself, but I just from having experienced, you know, hearing other people that you just have to pull yourself through because again, it's not just about you. It's not just about you. So in that journey,
00:22:48
Speaker
Questions regarding how did you then talk to your son? What were the words at his age of four? What words did you choose to use for what had happened to his dad? And if it's not something you want to share, that's okay. But I think that sometimes it's important for parents to hear the type of maybe words. And sometimes maybe we go back and we're like, well, maybe I could have used something different.
00:23:16
Speaker
Maybe now thinking of it, I would have said it this way, but this is the best I had at that particular time of how I could explain what had happened. Was it you that explained it? Was it the therapist? Or what words were used to explain?
00:23:31
Speaker
Yeah, so it was me. I told him and I told him that it was the next day or like really it happened really early in the morning. So it was like that that day but hours later and I just I took him on a walk and I had talked to our therapist about it and kind of like what do I say because I had no idea and
00:24:01
Speaker
You know, she just said, just say it as plainly and as simply as possible. And if he asks questions, just answer his questions, but you don't need to give like any more information then, you know, to like over complicate it. So I just told him, you know, that daddy died. And I just kind of asked him, I'm like, do you know what that means? And he's like, well,
00:24:31
Speaker
Yeah, am I not going to see him again? And so I said, well, no, he's gone. And we just kind of kept it. And he just kind of looked at me and it was like he didn't really
00:24:55
Speaker
understand the enormity of it at that point. It was just kind of like, okay, well, mommy can- Like matter-of-factly, matter-of-factly kind of thing. And he just kind of, he gave me a hug and then he's just like, okay, can we keep walking?
00:25:13
Speaker
So I'm like, okay. And I love that you were walking. By the way, that is something that not only works with kids, sometimes of doing that they do better. And you're, okay, you're the psychologist, but as a mom and as a wife too, I'd say this actually works also when you're trying to have a conversation with
00:25:36
Speaker
a husband. If you have a husband in your life, it's a lot of times it works better to talk when they're doing something rather than just sitting at a table, you know, like at a table. So there's something different about that moving in that heart, you know, conversation. So that was really
00:25:57
Speaker
That was really smart of you to take him out on a walk as you shared the news. And like you said, being back in nature too. Is nature your spiritual, is that your spiritual practice? Is it more grounding yourself with nature? Is that kind of where you find, okay. Is that how you were brought up too? Or is that what you are now finding that that's where your soul is?
00:26:21
Speaker
I mean, I've kind of always felt that I just didn't really know that I didn't really like make that bigger connection. But, but yeah, you know, in my breath work practice and through through my own like self healing process, I have connected, you know, to just like source to my higher self to just this this I know that there's this thing bigger than me, you know, that there's this essence, there's,
00:26:51
Speaker
this bigness supporting me. The title itself is not what matters of what this bigness is for you. It's just the fact that you're aware of it and nature makes you be connected to that bigger power. I just wanted to understand, because a lot of times, too, in conversations, if it's people's religious backgrounds that have helped them, so with yours,
00:27:18
Speaker
the concept of nature, so I wanted to kind of just grasp that. Okay, so let's, since I made you stop there to go back there, we had talked that that's then when you discovered then breath work. You started then working on then you're creating then that for yourself using breath as your own therapy per se in your grief journey. And then what's happened then in the past year, it take us then on that journey.
00:27:48
Speaker
Yeah, so early on I used breath work to really what I now know was allowing me to release and heal through some of the trauma of the experience.
00:28:04
Speaker
Um, I actually, one of the, one of the breath patterns that, that I practice and I use with my clients is actually an activating pattern. It activates your sympathetic nervous system.
00:28:21
Speaker
And so it can actually put you into, what happens a lot of times with trauma is people get stuck in this like fight or flight. I'm not going to go into like a whole lot of the science behind it, but like your autonomic nervous system. Oh, I'm sure. You can totally go to it. I'm sure that if somebody wants to listen, because there's going to be probably people that like, if you want to.
00:28:43
Speaker
share anything that has any importance, please do. Because any guest that comes up, even my own life coach, when I interviewed her, she's also into neuropsychology. What is it? Neuro... Neuroscience. Neuroscience, yeah. And then just all the neuro patterns and all that kind of stuff and how you can switch that too, depending the pathways that you have, how you can kind of switch how they're designed to be. So please go wherever you want to go. This is your space, Andrea.
00:29:12
Speaker
All right. All right. So yeah, it just it is an activating it's an activating breath pattern that stimulates or activates the sympathetic nervous system. And this is
00:29:24
Speaker
the part of the autonomic nervous system that like kind of switches on that fight or flight response. And so a lot of times when people go through a traumatic experience, it's kind of like, there's many definitions of trauma and it depends on who you talk to about it. But people get stuck in this cycle of, you know, we have these mechanisms
00:29:50
Speaker
for survival, like that's the purpose is like, you know, if you're out in the woods and something starts chasing you. Yeah, it comes from that survival mode of when we were cavemen, cavewomen. Yes, exactly. And so these are really important mechanisms that we have and they can still be really helpful even now.
00:30:13
Speaker
If we're if our life is actually in danger, but what happens a lot of times with trauma is like we go through this experience that is it's like too much too soon too fast like for our systems to handle and so we have this fight or flight or freeze response and
00:30:34
Speaker
And then we can get stuck there. We get stuck in this. So what happens in a healthy nervous system is we go into this fight or flight or freeze response to survive. And then our system goes back to like kind of like homeostasis, where it's back, back at its baseline levels, everything's good, we realize we're not in danger. But with trauma, it can be so much
00:31:02
Speaker
on the system that we just get stuck there. So all of these stress hormones are being released all of the time and our fight or flight system, our sympathetic nervous system is just like constantly activated. So we think we're like detecting threat in our environment when we're not really under any threat.
00:31:24
Speaker
And so what the certain breathwork pattern does is it activates that part of the autonomic nervous system, that pathway, and stuff comes up. I found myself in those beginning stages of practicing breathwork
00:31:47
Speaker
just really, really releasing so, so much just in the form of, you know, I was really angry. I was really angry at first. And I just, I was able to allow a lot of those feelings to surface and to either scream or,
00:32:10
Speaker
yell or cry or whatever it was I needed to do to release those those feelings so that they weren't because trauma gets trapped in our bodies and It gets held in our bodies and when we don't allow those things to surface when we don't allow ourselves to express those feelings then we're just holding on to them and
00:32:36
Speaker
and we're pushing them down and that can lead to a lot of problems down the road. And so what I was able to do, and I truly, truly believe that this is what has helped me to get to the place where I am today. I am still healing. I'm still new on this journey for sure. And I also feel
00:33:02
Speaker
I'm also in a really good place. I'll just say that. And I know that going through this practice and using this practice and allowing these things to be released and not being afraid to feel those things in the early stages has really, really helped me on my journey.
Using Breathwork to Help Her Son
00:33:21
Speaker
And so there are, so that's, and I will say, so there are these more activating patterns that you can use when practicing breath work. And there are also patterns that are specifically more for like activating your parasympathetic nervous system, like the rest and digest, the ones that really put us into a deep state of relaxation and just kind of
00:33:46
Speaker
calm so with breath work there's there's really it's just a really valuable tool for anybody to use because we all breathe we all have access to our breath and so it's free it's free right now we don't have to pay for it for the breath for the oxygen we inhale
00:34:09
Speaker
Right. And so we can just, what breath work is though is it's like a conscious and intentional way of breathing. So you're essentially changing your breath patterns.
00:34:21
Speaker
to bring yourself to a certain state of being. So you can go from anxious to calm using your breath. You can go from being just really depleted and feeling lethargic to feeling energized. You can go from having a foggy, cloudy mind to having some clarity.
00:34:46
Speaker
Right now with that, you said the energized. I just thought of Tony Robbins. I was in one of his, like, well, he was in one of actually the events that I went to a conference also at that one. Actually, that one was also in San Diego. Was that one in San Diego? No, I'm trying to think. Maybe it was in Las Vegas. But anyhow, one of the conferences that I was in, which was a wellness company, a wellness conference, but he was on stage and he was teaching us the
00:35:09
Speaker
the one that you breathe really fast when you get up and you move your arms and that one's to energize yourself. So when you said that, I'm like, oh yeah. And then I do know, of course, when you're trying to calm yourself down, it was just the slowing down. And I remember we tell the kids, when I worked with children before, to stand kind of like in a
00:35:31
Speaker
like a star, you know, like a star, like stand like that and then just breathe, you know, when they were kind of getting nervous or anxious and stuff like that and just, you know, kind of focus again. So it's amazing. Yeah. What it can what it can do. Have you used that technique of breath work then as a parent with your child, with your son? Yeah. So I'm so glad that you asked that because as you as you started to talk about like using using different breath patterns with kids, my whole journey
00:36:01
Speaker
through all of this has, it's so crazy how things just like come together over time and like fall into place because that's been one, and I will get to answering your questions specifically. Oh, it's fine, go ahead and do it. Short answer, yes. The markets will remember where we go. I'm the same. I go into all these like, whoo, you know, love it. No, please go to where you need to go. There's just so much to talk about here.
00:36:28
Speaker
I know. I know. It's like, no. And especially, you can hear the passion in your voice about it. And so when you're passionate about something, you just want to share all the details about it. So I can hear that. It's so exciting. So I'm very excited learning from you. So go ahead.
00:36:45
Speaker
Awesome. Yeah, so the short answer to your question is yes, I have used breath work with my son. And longer answer is I have, he has really
00:36:59
Speaker
It comes back to this whole idea of we all process grief differently. We all go, it's really a very personal journey. And no matter even if you're grieving the same person and the same death loss and all of that, he's now five and I'm 36. So there's a very different, we have different life experiences and different skills and tools to process these things. And so,
00:37:29
Speaker
One of the biggest challenges for me as a single parent and a widow is being able to hold space for my son as he processes and goes through his own journey and his own experience through grief.
00:37:46
Speaker
And he has had a lot of, he has had a lot of anger, just a lot of big emotions. He is somebody who feels very, very big and he, and I have, it's amazing because through my own journey through all of this, the tools that I've learned
00:38:14
Speaker
to help myself has helped me, not just through my own healing, but to be able to show up for him.
00:38:22
Speaker
And so just to be able to hold space for him to feel his feelings in whatever way that needs to be. And so there's, we have times where we are just, we'll have screaming contests cause he just needs to release the anger. He just needs to release the feelings, the big feelings that he's having and he doesn't know how to do it. And so,
00:38:47
Speaker
Well, in the early stages especially, we would have, we would go in the car, go on walks and we would just scream at the top of our lungs and just like go
Balancing Grief and Joy
00:38:56
Speaker
back and forth. And by the end of it, we were laughing because it was just like this thing. He's like, mom, why are you screaming? Like this is weird. Like what's going on? But it just became like a fun thing for us almost. Like it would start out feeling really heavy and really
00:39:14
Speaker
And then by the end of it, we would get to this point where we're just like, ah, like we feel better. We feel better. We feel lighter. We released a lot.
00:39:23
Speaker
So we would do that. It sounds like, you know, that duality sometimes that happens when you start crying and then all of a sudden you start laughing within the same cry and you're like, you know, it's that duality of emotions all in one, like a release of different kinds. So right now as you're explaining, you guys screaming and then laughing, I just thought of that. That's pretty much like how I recognize it as more in the crying and laughter component of that duality. Yeah. Okay, go ahead.
00:39:53
Speaker
Certainly and and also we would just do things like you know punch a pillow or Just be able to just be able to release and be able to feel because that is something I am So dedicated to as a parent I have been ever since I've been a mom but I definitely am now after everything that has happened in our lives is like I
00:40:18
Speaker
my son gets to express himself. He gets to feel his emotions and I am gonna be here to support that 100% because I'm working with adults as an emotional wellness coach or self-love coach and through the breath work facilitation that I'm doing who don't feel safe to feel their feelings, who don't feel safe to express themselves. And so they're just holding all of this stuff in
00:40:47
Speaker
And I want him to know from a young age that that's what emotional resilience is. It's like we notice, we have awareness and we notice, okay, I'm feeling this thing in my body. This is anger. This is sadness. So this is whatever it is. And I
00:41:10
Speaker
get to allow myself to feel that thing and I get to release that thing. I think this is so interesting, but if I pause, especially when you started off saying that you used to be somebody that would run from your emotions and you would numb it in any way possible to not have to deal with how you felt, this whole 180 of
00:41:34
Speaker
who you are and who you became, especially from becoming a mom. Thank goodness that you had gone through that. I know. Can you imagine if you had not discovered that and then experienced what you did of the death of your husband and then having to then not only navigate your own emotions, but then helping your child when you didn't even know how to navigate
00:41:59
Speaker
your own, what a beautiful timing that you had in your life to discover that when you did. What a beautiful gift that you were able to have those tools prior to it because so many people don't and you didn't have them for a while either.
00:42:23
Speaker
And so anyway, sorry, I just got like, I just, I was just, I think it's just.
00:42:31
Speaker
I see the beauty in those little gifts in life. So as I'm listening to your story, so sorry. So back to how then, so helping your son with the emotional intelligence, emotional resilience, as you called it, expressing his emotions, just like you do with your own clients. So what are some of the techniques then, aside from screaming, what other things do you do with breath work with him?
00:42:59
Speaker
to help them navigate his emotions. Yeah, so we will definitely do like just the whole like pausing and just taking a deep breath before before we respond, which is something like developmentally like he's just kind of going through anyways, like regardless of of our history and the things that we've been through.
00:43:21
Speaker
Um, but just, I still have to learn that by the way, I still have to learn. I still have to learn the pause. I do not know where the pause button is. I'm like the feisty respond right away instead of give me a minute. And that's why then get into trouble because you say what you really did not intend. You say it based on emotion and not cause you breathe, breathe. Yeah. Like it's, it's reacting instead of responding. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
00:43:49
Speaker
Oh, of course. That's why I'm so grateful, though, because so many of these things that, like I said, I'm working with adults in my own self, not just my clients, but in my own journey of just being a human, really. I do these things myself, but it's different when we have the awareness, when we have the awareness of
00:44:14
Speaker
OK, I just totally freaked out about that thing instead of instead of allowing myself. I responded with my emotions instead of just taking a moment to just pause and breathe and then respond. And so these things that I'm. That's why it's beautiful, because these things that I'm using with clients and on myself, I get to teach my son at five years old and I get to model for him at five years old.
00:44:44
Speaker
Like this is what healthy emotionality looks like. This is what it means to take emotional responsibility. And I just, like you were saying a minute ago about the duality, like I remember the moment that I realized it's okay for me to feel gratitude for where my life is right now.
00:45:13
Speaker
and still grieve the loss of my husband. I get to feel both. It's not like I'm letting go of that thing or it's not like that thing is not part of me or my past, but it's like I get to feel the pain and the enormity of that loss and hold that while I simultaneously hold
00:45:40
Speaker
this gratitude and joy and like deep presence that I have for my life now as it is.
Managing Anxiety Through Breathwork
00:45:51
Speaker
That is so important that you say that because a lot of people sometimes are not willing to allow themselves to experience joy. You use the word joy. Experience joy because they feel guilty of having those kind of emotions when they've had somebody important in their life die.
00:46:12
Speaker
And it doesn't take, like you said very clearly, it doesn't take away from that. And I always ask this in my podcast, I'm like, what are you grateful for, for having gone through this experience again, not taking away from the fact that
00:46:28
Speaker
that was something hard and it's not trying to diminish that at all. It's just saying where we are and who we become and the growth we experience sometimes is based on all these different hardships that we go through. It's hard, but it's also beautiful at the same time. It's kind of like a seed
00:46:54
Speaker
kind of breaking through the shell and the earth and all that stuff. Here it is in this little comfort of it being just a seed and that little plant having to go through all that to then go through the earth and that to then come out and bloom and become this beautiful flower.
00:47:13
Speaker
It's just part of it. Even just with birth, right? It's a treacherous journey to then have a child come into this painful and yet beautiful. So it's okay to have those realities.
00:47:30
Speaker
Yeah, and it's also like, I actually just shared this in a group the other day that it's like, you, you, my message was like, don't let your pain steal your joy. Because it's like, like we, and I experienced this early on, you know, I've come, it is still not has not been very long ago that I that I went through this loss or that that happened. But
00:47:58
Speaker
I early on I remember feeling it was just a few months after my husband had passed. We were driving me and my son were driving down the road. It was a beautiful day outside like I was just like really I was I was feeling there was just all of these feelings and I felt so alive.
00:48:17
Speaker
in my body, I felt joy, I felt happiness for the first time since that terrible day. And immediately my ego was like, what are you doing? You don't get to feel happy.
00:48:33
Speaker
You don't get to be okay. Do you not remember what just happened? Do you not remember that now you're a single parent and all of these things, like how are you ever gonna do this? And this like my inner critic and the negative self talk just came in so fast. And I know that that day, and I anchored into my pain. I immediately, it was so quick and I just anchored back into my pain. And what I've learned,
00:49:02
Speaker
through this process and through everything that I've learned through going through the coaching certification and through going through the breathwork facilitation stuff and working with my own clients is
00:49:14
Speaker
we get to like we I pleaded a seed it planted a seed that day like when I felt those those feelings of joy when I felt hope in the midst of all of the pain there was a seed planted and over time I would experience I would allow myself to experience a little bit more and a little bit more
00:49:35
Speaker
And now I will allow myself to experience days, weeks, maybe even longer than that of just, if I feel joy, I'm gonna let it be there. Because like we had just said, just because we've been through something difficult, we're still here. We're still here. We still get to live our lives. We still get to experience joy. We still get to be happy.
00:50:03
Speaker
And like you said, it doesn't take away from
00:50:08
Speaker
the fact that we're still grieving the loss of somebody that we're still walking through that. Yeah. And it just it's reflecting differently, too. Like it might be coming out in a different way. Like even in that joy, you could still be grieving even within that joy, because you could be joyful yet at the same time, like being like, wow, you know, what was your husband's name? What's the way, Andrea?
00:50:35
Speaker
Brett, so wow, Brett, Brett, you would love this sunset. Oh my gosh, Brett, like, you know, like having even like, you know, gosh, Brett, like, you know, like those moments of remembering our loved ones, even in that joy and in connecting with nature, like what you just said about nature, I to find so much connection in nature, even just with
00:50:59
Speaker
when I think of my sister or my mom who are the two closest in my life that have passed away. I also had a miscarriage, but in terms of those aspects like that, I see in nature certain things that just remind me, and I just talk to them. It makes me think of them and brings me joy rather than sadness. So that is just beautiful. Now, when you start feeling
00:51:25
Speaker
that you're about to maybe spiral into anxiety. Do you have certain ways of catching yourself prior to it happening that you can switch it with your breath? Does that make sense what I'm saying? Are you already so in tune with your own patterns that you're able to start changing your breath
00:51:54
Speaker
prior to going through, you know, like, I don't know if anxiety attack or things like that, you know what I mean? Yeah, so actually,
00:52:06
Speaker
Yes and no. I mean, there's times, there are times where I will be able to, it's really just about awareness, you know, it's like, just noticing like when I'm feeling just kind of like overwhelmed, I'll start to notice just getting really like agitated and frustrated very easily and just having very little patience.
00:52:30
Speaker
And so I'll start to notice it. The difficult thing is that sometimes the breath is enough. It depends on what it is that's trying to come up. Sometimes I need to have a bigger release than that. So that might mean just allowing myself to cry for however long it takes.
00:52:54
Speaker
And it also it so it just depends. And so with being a single mother, sometimes sometimes I can ask for support from like my mom or other other people in my life that have
00:53:09
Speaker
helped me in different ways, like with my son, to be like, hey, can you take Oliver for a little bit? I need to have some time or some space or whatever. And when I can do that, when I have that help, then I'm able to kind of go through my process and allow that stuff to be released
00:53:32
Speaker
And then I will feel better. And it won't go into like a full blown panic attack or just like complete stress and overwhelm. It's just kind of like overtaking me. But then there's times where
00:53:50
Speaker
I don't have that. Or maybe I haven't been, I know when we were getting on the call today, you were talking about how important it is for you to have your routine, just because it impacts how you show up in your day. And I think that's true for everybody. And so if I'm not, if I've kind of been neglecting my self care,
00:54:09
Speaker
I haven't moved my body, I haven't done my breath work, I haven't been keeping up with my normal meditation practices and stuff, then sometimes I don't catch myself and I do go there. So it just really depends. It just depends, yeah. You said something so important and it was the aspect of also asking for help. Now let's talk about that a little bit too in your grief journey. Your family then lives, you have your mom then nearby.
00:54:38
Speaker
She was a big part of your support system than it has been in this journey? Yeah, so my mom's always been a big part of my support system and definitely, definitely has been since Brett died. She helps a lot. Me and my son, actually, I made a very difficult decision about five months after Brett died to sell our house.
00:55:07
Speaker
I was holding onto it. It was this thing that I was just holding onto because it felt like that last thing that I had that was keeping me safe almost. But ultimately, I decided to sell that house. So when I did that, me and my son moved in with my mom for just a little bit.
00:55:28
Speaker
And I needed that so much at that point in my life because I would have time I would have those moments that I talked about a minute ago where I would just like know I could feel it in my body like building up and building up and I'm like, I know I just need to go
00:55:43
Speaker
I just need to go on a run. I just need to go be by myself. Time out, time out. I used to get myself in the closet and my kids would still be knocking on my door. My kids are 15 months apart. And so they'd be little and I'd be like, no, leave me. Your mommy needs a time out. Because if I did not give myself a time out, it would end up affecting them. So I'm like, please. So I understand.
00:56:11
Speaker
So then she helped you during that time. And so she would be there. And so I could just say, hey, I need to go for an hour or whatever. And so I could just do that. And so that was really helpful.
00:56:27
Speaker
Now we have our own place, just me and Oliver, and it's beautiful and wonderful, and she helps out still. She'll pick him up from school, from his preschool sometimes. They have special Oliver grandma dates and things that they do together, and they just have a really beautiful relationship. That's wonderful.
00:56:49
Speaker
That's beautiful. I'm so glad that you have her. And again, that you are one of those people that have realized the importance of asking for help when needed. Now let's dive into your practice a little bit more. And then also how this aspect of also helping others has helped you in your journey. Yeah. Yeah. So as far as my practice, what were you
00:57:17
Speaker
With your breath work, with what you do, with what you do in terms of now being a breath work coach, your clients by helping others, how has that been an impact in your own healing journey? Yeah, so I think just being able to
00:57:40
Speaker
Just having come, you
Guiding Others in Breathwork
00:57:44
Speaker
know, kind of full circle like like we had talked about before it's like, I really started out very much from this like logical like I'm just gonna
00:57:54
Speaker
problem-solve and I'm just gonna fix things like just using my mind and using my head and I just kind of very much in like a- And the perfectionist mode where you're still in that recovery and perfectionist mode. And so just very much I came from that and to avoiding all of the things and not allowing myself to feel things to a place where
00:58:20
Speaker
I didn't feel like I could avoid things any longer. It was such a difficult thing to go through that I really, truly came to the point of there's nowhere else I can turn but inward. I can't run from these things anymore. And so me being able to go through that experience myself,
00:58:46
Speaker
It gives me this like very real like lived experience way that I can help or like relatability that I can help other people to be like, I do have a certification. However, I don't think, I mean, it's really my lived experience and me using the things that I've learned through the certification that's like, I'm doing this work alongside you.
00:59:15
Speaker
And that has just shown, has been proven to just be really powerful for the people that are attracted to me, for the people that reach out to me that want to work with me. It's like, man, something that you're doing is working. Like, what is this? Like, what are you doing? What are you, like, how are you doing this?
00:59:40
Speaker
And so I have had people reach out to me that have been through a similar trauma as mine, which has been
00:59:50
Speaker
really powerful for me to be able to help people that are farther along on their grief journey than I am, but they didn't have the tools that I have. And so for me to just kind of see that and also to be able to, it just further hits home the reality that like I'm not alone. Like there are other people, so many other people out there that have gone through the same thing or something similar
01:00:21
Speaker
to what I have gone through and they're having a hard time and I have these things that I can show them and guide them through so that they can do the work and get through the scene. So that has been really powerful and then just being able to see the impact of of breath work and how
01:00:42
Speaker
So often we just kind of like rush through our days and we walk around life living on autopilot and we're just not really being intentional about how we show up or how we're feeling or how we're taking care of ourselves. And so to witness
01:01:01
Speaker
somebody just lie down on their mat for an hour and breathe with intention. It is so impactful. And all they're doing is changing their breath. And it's just like just feeling going through the process of my own life and then witnessing the power of it and other people.
01:01:27
Speaker
It's, I just, I don't, there's not words for it. Like I have a hard time. So rewarding, so rewarding. Yeah. Yeah. Very rewarding. So now how would somebody be able to work with you? And I will put your website and your Instagram and the show notes, but how would somebody be able to work with you? And does it have to be in person? Of course, nowadays with everything being online or over the phone or whatever, what is the process?
01:01:57
Speaker
Yeah, so I have a website. So they could go to my website and just kind of see the different services that I offer. I have one-to-one coaching containers, one that is three months long, one that is six months long. I do, for coaching, like people to commit to at least three months just because we can't really get much done. It's a practice. It's a practice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a practice. You're not going to get it from one day.
01:02:25
Speaker
Right, so I have the three month container, six month container for coaching everything. I do have one client that is local that I meet with in person right now. But most of what I do is done over Zoom.
01:02:40
Speaker
So we're able to see each other and we're able to hear each other. And it has really worked out really worked out great that way. And then for breath work, I have, I will do one to one sessions, I can do group sessions, so I could do like partner sessions or families or really
01:03:00
Speaker
Really, just there's a lot of things that we can do with breath work. Okay. So the first one was the coaching component and this one is the breath work. Okay. So the three month and the six month are your coaching packages. And then the breath work, it just depends on the dynamics. It could be in a group setting or, okay, in individuals. That's wonderful. And again, I'll put that in the, uh, but you could just actually just go ahead and say your website, but I'll still put it in the, in the show notes.
01:03:30
Speaker
Okay, and it's actually AndreaFreemeyer.com. Okay. So super easy with that. That's awesome. And now, is there something I did not ask you that you still would want to share? Yeah, is there something I did not say? You know, like ask you that you're like, I'm really wanting to still share this with the audience because I don't want you to like hang up because of course it will still happen. But there's like, man, I didn't say about this part. And I didn't.
01:03:58
Speaker
So is there something else that that was missing or that you want to give as tips or or thoughts to the listeners? You know, I guess it would just be so there's a there's a quote that I love that I like to share. It's a trauma specialist said trauma creates change you don't choose. And healing is about creating change you do choose.
01:04:26
Speaker
And it was really truly like this shift, like making the decision really every day to not be a victim of my circumstances that has been so empowering for me. And like shifting the narrative to like, instead of like, why did this happen to me? What is, like, what am I gonna do? Like just that victim mindset to like, no, I get to choose.
01:04:54
Speaker
I get to feel and in doing so I get to heal. And I just think that there's just so much power in that. I think that there's just knowing that we truly do have a choice and we are co-creators of this life. And so even when really difficult, hard things have happened to us, we get to choose where we go. We get to choose what we make of that.
01:05:23
Speaker
and how we move forward. So, and then just like what I said before, don't steal, don't let your pain steal your joy.
01:05:33
Speaker
No, so many. I've written a few of those. I wrote that. I wrote Shifting the Narrative. So then I have some ideas as to what to put as a title of the podcast, which by the way is usually the hardest part of my whole process is choosing the title for the podcast.
01:05:56
Speaker
So you've given me a few options there as what you've said in your own words. And I'm just so grateful again, not only that you reached out, but also for everything you've taught us. I say us because I know there's more than just me listening afterwards after we've finished recording that you've taught us in this interview with the importance of breath work and the importance of
01:06:21
Speaker
Being able to be present with our emotions and again that we do get to choose what Happens next really in our life, even though we didn't get to choose what happened to us We get to choose how we react to it and I always tell that even to my kids You may not you don't have a choice as to house what somebody did to you But you do have a choice as to what you do
01:06:43
Speaker
you know, about it or things like that, you know, when they go through their own life, little things in school and this or that. And so so we always have a choice. So thank you once again, Andrea. And I look forward to continue getting to know you because it's only the beginning here with this with this podcast. So thank you once again. Beautiful. Thank you so much for having me.
01:07:11
Speaker
Thank you again so much for choosing to listen today. I hope that you can take away a few nuggets from today's episode that can bring you comfort in your times of grief. If so, it would mean so much to me if you would rate and comment on this episode. And if you feel inspired in some way to share it with someone who may need to hear this, please do so.
01:07:39
Speaker
Also, if you or someone you know has a story of grief and gratitude that should be shared so that others can be inspired as well, please reach out to me. And thanks once again for tuning into Grief Gratitude and the Gray in Between podcast. Have a beautiful day.