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6. Resilience and Grit!- With Kim Aliprantis
70 Plays5 years ago
Kim Aliprantis shares with us several life changing events in her life that caused her grief. An how the resilience and grit that she learned from her grandparents, who were Holocaust survivors, helped her in her grieving process when they passed away as well as her outlook in life.
Get in touch with Kim Aliprantis on IG @aliprantiskim and on FB Kim Aliprantis.
Music Composition by www.rinaldimusic.net
Get in touch Kendra Rinaldi: @griefgratitudepodcast on IG and FB
www.griefgratitudeandthegrayinbetween.com
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Transcript
Changing Thoughts on Grief
00:00:01
Speaker
You can never change the circumstance of what is happening before you, which is the passing of somebody that you so desperately love. But you can change your thoughts around it. So I mean, I could sit and keep talking about what I could have done, or the regrets I have, or maybe she needed this, or maybe she needed that. But at the end of the day, Kendra, those are just stories I'm telling myself
Introduction to Podcast
00:00:31
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray in Between podcast. 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.
00:00:55
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.
Meet the Guest: Kim Allaprantis
00:01:17
Speaker
All right, today you guys are in for a treat. We have my friend, an amazing human being, entrepreneur, and she has a whole bunch of different titles, labels I could add to her, but I want her to be able to share it with us. So we have Kim Allaprantis today on our episode of Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray in Between, and I'm just so happy to have you on. Welcome, Kim.
00:01:46
Speaker
Thanks, Kendra. You know how much I adore you. It's a privilege and a pleasure to be on your podcast this morning.
Pandemic Challenges: Work and Home
00:01:52
Speaker
I am so grateful that you took time to be on the podcast, because as we're recording this podcast, we're in the middle of the pandemic. We're all at home. I know there's a lot of hats we're all wearing at this moment. So you're wearing the hat of, how many hats are you wearing right now, Kim?
00:02:12
Speaker
Oh, probably just as many as you. Let's see. What are we? What are we these days? We're housekeepers. We're mothers. We're business owners and entrepreneurs. We are cooks. We're, I think I said, cleaners already. Yeah, we pretty much are doing it all.
00:02:30
Speaker
doing it all. And yes, this is the great thing part of it too, is that you are an entrepreneur. You normally actually work from home, right? Anyway, correct? But now you're adding to the fact that you're with the girls at home. So it's kind of shifted a little bit your dynamics in that, correct?
00:02:50
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. I have been working from home for probably almost five years now, but I certainly am not used to having
00:03:01
Speaker
two children with me 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And my children are ages nine and just turned 13. So if I want to make sure that they're enriched at this particular time, it certainly is pulling me in 1,000 different directions. And I know I'm not alone.
00:03:21
Speaker
Oh, no, definitely. I totally understand. I know I had to actually get my daughter's computer making sure it was working. It was not allowing her to log into her E thing. All that right before being able to log on to this call with you, to this recording with you. So I completely understand. Yeah, we're trying to do our best. And that's all we can do. So in today's conversation, we will be able to talk a little bit more also about what it is you do.
First Encounter with Grief: Samson
00:03:48
Speaker
But I want to start a little bit more of talking about the concept of grief, which is what this podcast is about. So what is your first recollection or memory of experiencing some major grief? And again, this could be anything, Kim. It could be from the death of someone you love, or it could be a major shift or change in your life, whether you change cities. What is a major
00:04:15
Speaker
Uh, yeah grief moment that you recall the first one that you can recall So, you know i've definitely dealt with The passing of relatives of mine a first cousin Uh grandfather and aunt but they lived in a different state and I wouldn't say although I was sort of a witness to it and I
00:04:41
Speaker
I wouldn't say that I had that monumental overtaking your body grief until my very first dog died at a little over 16 years old. And this is the dog that I grew up with. So he saw me through school.
00:05:02
Speaker
and college and law school and he even saw me through my beginning days working as an attorney and he was with me through 9-11, my wedding and he passed away in 2001 and it was kind of, that was the
00:05:24
Speaker
probably my very first experience with just all out grief, because I had never experienced it before. And yes, it was an animal, but it was my very first close experience with grief. Certainly not my last, but that was what sort of, and I did not handle it very well either, by the way.
00:05:46
Speaker
Was he also a Yorkie? And we can talk about because I know that was he also Yorkie? He was. Yes, he was. What was his name? Because I didn't I didn't know you prior to when you had his name. His name was Samson. Samson.
00:06:02
Speaker
Oh my gosh, so cute. Is there something with the S names in this family I'm seeing? Yes, there is. There is actually. We have Samson, then I had Spencer, who I had to sadly put down in October. And now we have another, my third Yorkie, and his name is Simba, and he's a puppy. Oh my gosh. Is this like coincidence, or do you guys purposefully pick an S name? Yeah, we did it on purpose.
00:06:31
Speaker
You did it on purpose. Is it also to honor? Is it also to honor the... Yes? Is it to honor the... It is. Okay. It is. It is. Oh, so the first one though, Samson, was he also on his name with an S? Was he to honor somebody or he's then the reason that you now named Spencer and Simba with S?
00:06:54
Speaker
Yeah, it was just, I don't even remember, quite frankly, how he came up with the name Samson at the time. I was in sixth grade when we got him, but he, yeah, it started the lineage of S Yorkie names in our, in my family, I should say. In your family.
00:07:15
Speaker
You mentioned so many major life-changing moments that you were able to experience with Samson in your life.
Grief During 9/11 and Family Illness
00:07:24
Speaker
You mentioned going... You said you have him since sixth grade. You had him sixth grade. You experienced going to college with him, getting married as well. Yeah? Yeah. It was getting married. Then you also experienced 9-11, all the comfort that comes from having
00:07:42
Speaker
this companion throughout your entire life. So when he passed away, you mentioned you didn't handle it well. So what were the circumstances at that time when he passed away?
00:08:00
Speaker
Well, I mean, it was right very shortly after 9-11. I think he actually I know he passed away in October of 2001. So, you know, we were living in New York City at the time and 9-11 happened.
00:08:15
Speaker
And then obviously living in New York right next to the morgue. It was a total disaster every day. People with, you know, pictures all over my apartment building grieving and
00:08:30
Speaker
asking if we've seen anybody and police officers everywhere. And I would go back to Long Island where I grew up. And that was where my very, very old Samson was. And it wasn't very long thereafter that he passed away. And my grandparents were starting to get sick at this time too. They were old and
00:08:55
Speaker
So it was a whole lot of stuff being thrown upon me right after getting married and kind of realizing my childhood was over. There was suddenly these catastrophic events that were happening.
00:09:09
Speaker
my dog and companion who I just was so close to died. And so I kind of fell apart, to be honest with you. I was drinking a lot at the time. I am a recovered alcoholic, very proud to say that one day at a time. Congratulations, my friend. Thank you. But at the time, it was bad. It was just so much so soon without having the proper tools
00:09:35
Speaker
and guidance in my life to really help me at that particular time. And so it was definitely very messy. There was a lot of drama around it. There was a lot of drinking. There was a lot of tears, tantrums I would even go into. And it wasn't just my dog dying at the time. It was just the compoundment of everything. Absolutely. So that was my very, very, very first experience in grief.
00:10:05
Speaker
And I'm proud to say that my handling of grief only gets better with time, which I thank God, because I know it could get worse, but it's gotten much better for me with time.
00:10:20
Speaker
So, yes. You know what, though? I actually, I think that when you just said that for you and that for some, maybe it gets worse. But I think in general, if we have experienced it in some way or another, it's kind of like you fall, you get up. You fall, you get up. And the next time you fall, you're like, oh, I'll wear knee pads next time. Or you know what I mean? If you're on a bike, you're like, oh, I'll wear knee pads. That way it won't hurt as much. Or next time when I fall and I scrape my knee, I'll put this. It's kind of like you
00:10:49
Speaker
learn different ways of being able to manage with this amount of pain that comes from grief. The pain still is the same or even greater, depending on the death that we experience or the life change. But it is the different little skills and tools, like you said, like the first time that when Samson died, you didn't have the tools to be able to learn
00:11:13
Speaker
how to be able to cope with this amount of pain. And again, it was not just his death. It was all these other things that you mentioned that were so big. It's the frailty of life was just like right before your eyes, you'd seen the towers, you know, come down and then suddenly a month later, he passes away. It's like just so much. It was.
00:11:34
Speaker
It was a lot. I mean, that takes a lot. And a lot of times people don't see all these other parts of us that we've had to overcome to be the people we are now. Like if somebody were to look at Kim now,
00:11:47
Speaker
Not many, unless somebody that's already been through your kind of process that knows that that grit that you have comes from all these other huge life lessons and all the pain. So I'm sure they've been kind of like those stepping stones to get you to where you are now. But yeah, go ahead.
00:12:12
Speaker
No i was just gonna say it's so true you know when you're going through such horrible times and you can't really see the next day in front of you you.
00:12:22
Speaker
will hopefully be on the other side of it looking back and there will be valuable lessons that you will have learned and it will have made you kind of shaped you into the person that you are now. All those challenges and all those losses, they really do build you and prepare you for being even better down the road.
00:12:43
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It's kind of like that muscle, right? You've got to break it down since we're in the health and wellness. The two of us are into that. You've got to break down that muscle in order for it to be able to grow. You've got to break it down, and that's what happens to us in life. So then after Spencer, you were mentioning... Sorry, Spencer. Now I'm confused with all
00:13:07
Speaker
After Samson passed away, then you mentioned your grandparents were also already starting to have some health issues. Would that be the next experience with grief that you had? Was it their passing or what
Gratitude and Loss: A Grandfather's Legacy
00:13:23
Speaker
happened? What happened between 2001 and then now 2020?
00:13:28
Speaker
Yeah, so in 2006, my grandfather passed away. My grandparents were Holocaust survivors, and probably were the biggest influence in my life. I had a very rocky relationship with my mother, and my father was working all the time. Wonderful father. And he's still healthy and doing well. But my grandparents, they were so, I mean, I went to NYU undergrad. They lived in Brooklyn. I saw them every weekend.
00:13:57
Speaker
Growing up, they would come out to my house every Sunday. I would see them on every school vacation and sleep there because my mother would help my father with his business, which would get crazy during the holidays. And being that they were Holocaust survivors, they were just such
00:14:16
Speaker
the resiliency and the strength and the love and the kindness and the zest for life that they actually had. And the grit, I mean, I can't say grit more than I could for my grandparents who, you know, came to this country, they weren't even necessarily supposed to come here. It was my grandparents newly married with my dad who was only
00:14:41
Speaker
two years old at the time, and imagine they come to a country, no English language, family who have been killed, no money, no family, no nothing, no ties, and just having to have to recreate themselves. And it just was...
00:15:02
Speaker
to be surrounded by those two people all my life just molded me into the woman that I am today. And so in 2006, when my grandfather, you know, he passed away, it was really difficult. It was also super difficult to hold my grandmother up.
00:15:24
Speaker
who had lost her husband and partner in all of life. And that kind of became my role when my grandfather passed away. There was relief behind his passing because he had been pretty sick and he kept saying over and over again that he was ready to die. So I didn't
A New Life and a Grandmother's Wish
00:15:44
Speaker
feel like
00:15:46
Speaker
It was something he did not want and he lived to be 80 something years old. And so there was a lot of gratitude for his life and his love. And I remember him being in the hospital and he kind of squeezed my hand and winked at me and I knew it was his way of saying goodbye to me. But it was my role to try to hold my grandmother up. And it was very difficult to do because
00:16:11
Speaker
She was very vocal at that point of saying, there are only three more things I want to live for. And it's to see your brother graduate dental school, your brother get married, and you to give birth to your first daughter, because interestingly enough. Were you expecting that?
00:16:35
Speaker
No, interestingly enough, Kendra, my husband and I had had a ton of fertility issues. And the month after my grand- Oh my gosh, that's a whole other layer of grief. That's a whole other layer of grief, Kim. Oh my gosh. It is. Oh my goodness. I could interview you for hours then on all these different layers. Yes, there is quite a bit of layers. But after my grandfather passed away the very next month, I became pregnant. Oh wow.
00:17:05
Speaker
So don't think I didn't. Yeah. So after, after years, Kendra, years of things not working out the very next month, I was pregnant after my grandfather passed away. And your, and your grandmother said that she wanted to live to see your next daughter for you to become a mom of a daughter. She said daughter, she didn't say child.
00:17:28
Speaker
No, she, well, actually she didn't really, I may have said that. I don't think she said daughter, but she did want to. I was like, oh, wow. She already felt it. She already felt it. No, I don't think so. But she did, I mean, I found out the second I could find out. So she knew I was having a girl for the majority of my pregnancy. And I was naming my daughter after her sister.
00:17:54
Speaker
who perished in the Holocaust. So those were the three things she wanted to live for and she was very clear on it, but it was really difficult. And so I did everything that I could to watch, you know, to help her, but it was tough. Like she deteriorated. Basically my grandfather passed away and without really knowing a diagnosis or what was happening, my grandmother sadly lost
00:18:19
Speaker
complete function of all of our limbs and eventually was unable to even speak. So she was pretty much just sitting in a in a almost like a catatonic position unable to speak for the last few months of her life with my dad and my uncle, her sons taking care of her.
00:18:41
Speaker
And it was horrible to watch. Absolutely horrible. It was almost like my grandfather passed away and she was just trying to die inside. And it was really a very horrible way to see her go from being such a vibrant, strong matriarch in my life to
00:19:01
Speaker
and having lived through the Holocaust and watching this deterioration. So when she finally passed away, there was a ton of relief around that. I mean, it was so rough some days to stay with her and to try to understand what she was trying to tell us. Like, did she have to go to the bathroom? Did she need something to eat? Did she have an itch? Like, for some reason, that haunted me after she died.
00:19:28
Speaker
that that idea that she sat there and couldn't move and couldn't speak and maybe she just had an itch and I couldn't scratch it um and that was like a huge it was horrible like that lived with me for a while I had to do a ton of work around that because
00:19:45
Speaker
You know, having her go through the childhood that she had to go through, having watched all her parents and all her sisters, her niece, who was a baby, all be killed in the Holocaust. She had two brothers that lived.
00:20:04
Speaker
And they were living in Australia because again, after the war, there was no, Oh, I would like to go here. No, it was like, you're going wherever you were sent. So her two brothers went to Australia and she went to
00:20:21
Speaker
the United States. So there was a lot around that too. Uh, I got to experience my grandmother one time having taken a trip with her to Australia right after I graduated law school and was able to watch her as a little sister, which was probably one of the greatest memories of my entire life. You know, you have your grandmother who's always the matriarch your whole life, and then you get to experience her as the baby sister.
00:20:49
Speaker
She had not seen them in how many years? How many years had it been with the distance? A lot. You had never seen that dynamic, so it was different for you to see her as the little sister of her brothers. You had never seen that for you? Not ever, no. To experience that, yeah.
00:21:08
Speaker
Yeah, I would say in her whole life. Yeah, in her whole lifetime, I would say she's only she was only able to see her brothers maybe four times, which is just such a, you know, that's that's horrible in and of itself. But yeah, I mean, not a day goes by Kendra that I don't think about my grandparents. Hmm. In fact, I'm staring at a picture of my grandmother right now, which is in my bedroom that my grandparents pictures are displayed all over my home.
00:21:39
Speaker
They're just, they're just your pillars, your pillars of strength. Anytime you feel like giving up, you look at that, their pictures and you know what they went through to get here and for you to be who you are now at, you would not be.
00:21:55
Speaker
here and you wouldn't exist if they had not been able to survive the Holocaust and be here and the grit that they had. That is amazing. I had chills all this moment that you were talking and what are their names? What are your grandparents' names? Sophie. Sophie and Albert. So my first daughter's name is Felizia Sophie. Okay.
00:22:22
Speaker
Yeah, Albert, which had I had a boy, which I did not, we would have named, we would have used his name for something. So yeah, yeah. Oh, well, that's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. And then how then, okay, so you saw her then that deterioration of basically her being a shell.
Coping and Finding Peace After Grandmother's Death
00:22:43
Speaker
You mentioned that when she passed away,
00:22:47
Speaker
You were kind of struggling with that aspect of so many things you could have done, that you didn't know whether she needed when she was in that state. And you mentioned working a lot on that. Can you share a little bit about that journey of your process then, of your grieving process after her passing? What were some of the things at this moment then in your life, five years after
00:23:10
Speaker
Samson had passed. Did you have more tools at that? Well, you also, you were, no, she passed. Oh, no, sorry. Yeah. That was 2006 was your, sorry. That was your grandfather. What year was her passing? Sorry. Um, I guess, let me think, uh, it may have been 2009. I think she, that she passed away.
00:23:36
Speaker
So your youngest was not born yet. You only had your oldest one. I only had Felicia. Felicia, well, she was born, yeah, it was 09 that my grandmother passed away. That she passed away. So then what were some of the tools that you use then for your grieving process, like then after your grandfather passed away, then seeing her deteriorate, your grandmother deteriorate, and then leading to her passing.
00:24:02
Speaker
what were some of the things you did at that moment that made it livable per se? Because I don't, it's still hard, but what were some of the, yeah. You have to just change your, I mean, it was all about the changing of your thoughts around it. I mean, you can never change the circumstance of what is happening before you, which is the passing of somebody that you so desperately love, but you can change your,
00:24:31
Speaker
thoughts around it. So I mean, I could sit and keep talking about what I could have done, or the regrets I have, or maybe she needed this, or maybe she needed that. But at the end of the day, Kendra, those are just stories I'm telling myself. I mean, I don't really know that any of that is true. I have no idea. For all I know, maybe she was trying to sing a song. Like, that is as equally possible as her asking that she had this crazy itch.
00:25:00
Speaker
And at some point, I just needed to find peace and to recognize that I was so darn lucky to have two of the most incredible human beings ever, in my opinion, that have ever been born to be a part of my life until I was 36 years old and to relish all the memories and all the pictures and
00:25:20
Speaker
I needed to find just that sense of gratitude because I always believe that if you're in a state of gratitude, you can't be miserable. You can't be angry. You can't be resentful. It's actually impossible to be feeling pure gratitude and also at the same time to be really angry. Those are two impossible emotions to have together. You can't do it.
00:25:47
Speaker
So if you can find that peace and gratitude for the relationship and the life that you had with the person that you just loved so much, and you're in that state of gratitude, you can heal. You can find peace. You can even find fulfillment and joy, even in their death.
00:26:07
Speaker
And it was paramount for me to get to that place. I had a baby. At that point, I had given up alcohol. It was absolutely imperative for me to get to that place so that the people that were still here with me were not going to suffer from my diseased head.
00:26:30
Speaker
That is huge because you had to step away from, and I'm gonna say this in a way that I know that alcoholism is a sickness too, but I'm gonna say in terms of the selfish component that you were in that aspect, step away from that in order to be present for those that were here with you now, your child, your spouse, the future you had ahead. So you had to let go of all that
00:26:59
Speaker
in order to be able to build what you needed to build and have the strength you needed to have. Does that sound all right? You can totally contradict what I'm just, I'm just picking up by what you're saying, but is that that I make the right observation based on what you just said? Absolutely. I mean, when you stop and think about
00:27:21
Speaker
you know, the people that leave you, that loved you, that you had that special relationship with, they would never want you to be in those feelings of anger, resentment, taking it out on the people that are still with you. And so it really can transcend all
00:27:41
Speaker
It transcends to the people, to yourself, to the people that are still with you, and even honoring the person whose life has been lost. And to really recognize that and understand it, you can find peace and gratitude and even move on. And for some people, it happens slower than others, but it's there and available for everybody if you tap into it. And for some people, like I said, it takes a lot of work to get there.
00:28:09
Speaker
Um, and you know for me it was years. I mean we're talking 2001 when you know a dog of mine died and now my grandparents passed away between 2006 and 2009, you know two of the very most important people in my life Who I always knew i'd have to say goodbye to at some point because they were my grandparents but it was it was a long it was a long journey and um
00:28:37
Speaker
The journey continues. Absolutely. It never ends. I wanted to say something because you said, even though you knew that you were going to have to say goodbye to them, that is something that we all know. We
Strength Through Grief
00:28:52
Speaker
all know that we're born and we all are going to die, yet it doesn't stop us from feeling those
00:28:59
Speaker
big, huge, sad emotions when somebody dies. It's absolutely human to feel that way. It's a human emotion and it's normal. The only thing that we can do is just strengthen ourselves in a way and have those tools and coping mechanisms to be able to
00:29:21
Speaker
deal with it a little bit with more ease, which is what you basically accomplished in that time after Samson died and so forth, all that growth that happened. With that growth, of course, also came the fact that you were a mom.
00:29:37
Speaker
Suddenly, having a child completely also shifts the way you even think about life also. So there was just so much there. Now, after your grandmother passed away, then more continued. So take us on into this journey.
00:29:57
Speaker
Yeah, so I had my second child and there was more fertility issues with that. I also was leaving, although I didn't realize it at the time, I was leaving my career as an attorney. I developed some pretty significant health issues that came out all of a sudden for me.
00:30:21
Speaker
And I realized very quickly that my life as a stressed out attorney could kill me. So eventually that career ended up sort of leaving me as well. And I found myself with a second child and
00:30:38
Speaker
sort of trying to figure out what my identity was going to be in the world and all the same time my mother, who I always had a very rocky relationship with, she ended up being diagnosed with lung cancer. She always said that I was the reason why she was always going to remain a smoker.
00:30:57
Speaker
which I can laugh at now, but yes, she said the stress of me to her is what made her be a smoker. That was like one of her signature lines, but she, yeah, so she was struck with lung cancer. She tried to do chemo and radiation, but when you take a very sick person who is an alcoholic and smokes and just,
00:31:26
Speaker
really let her health go. She was only 65 years old, but she really, once she was diagnosed, she almost became a 90 year old immediately. And so once she did the chemo and the tried chemo tried radiation, she sadly passed away at the age of 65. So I that was in 2010. No.
00:31:53
Speaker
2013, 2014, she passed away. 2014. So, yeah. And she's not your... It was your dad's grandparents that you're really close to, the ones that have passed away. Yes. And your parents were separated at this moment? Okay. Yeah. My parents got divorced when I went to college, so they had been separated for a very long time.
00:32:22
Speaker
Did that create grief for you or when you were in college, was it something that you were expecting when they divorced? Was it something that you kind of knew was coming or was that something, also a layer of grief that you developed from that divorce?
00:32:42
Speaker
Uh, no, I wouldn't say I had any grief whatsoever around my parents divorcing at all. I was actually more than happy to see them divorced. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So that was one of those relationships where you kind of knew. Yeah.
00:32:58
Speaker
Yeah, you saw it coming. Okay, so then when your mom passes away, she'd been telling you all her life that she smoked because of your stress, and then here you were also living a very stressful life that was creating a lot of
00:33:14
Speaker
debilitating health issues for you because of the type of work you did, was that a pivotal decision for you to leave your career or what was, aside from your, was it just the health? Not the just the, but the health scare and those components, did her death play a part in you making that huge life change of leaving your career?
00:33:41
Speaker
You know, looking back on it, probably, uh, you know, it was a very gradual thing where I developed a pretty serious complication. I had these health issues. And then when I had my second baby, just not really feeling as though I could take on going back to that life of being an attorney, be a good mom, show up the way I needed to take care of my health.
00:34:06
Speaker
So I think at the time in my mind, it was probably just taking a pause on my career. But I would say that with my mom's passing, it became pretty clear that my mission and my drive in sort of honoring my mother was to kind of live a life that was the complete opposite of my mother.
Lessons from Mother's Life
00:34:30
Speaker
So it was a very different kind of grief with my mom.
00:34:35
Speaker
I will always say that my mother is my biggest inspiration in my life. And then I will follow that statement by saying, she's the biggest inspiration in my life to live the complete opposite of the way she lived. She taught me lessons on how not to live. And I will always honor her and be grateful to her because she doesn't even know the valuable lessons that she instilled upon me. And again,
00:35:04
Speaker
It took a long time Kendra to come to that, to be able to say that statement. Yes, to be able to just now even say that statement out loud. It was years and years and years of writing down all the things I hate about my mother and all the things she did to make me feel horrible as a child and
00:35:23
Speaker
the things she said to me. And even when she was dying, I mean, I always wanted that closure with her where she would say, I'm sorry, I wasn't this. I'm like, I was always waiting for that. You know how much I love you and how proud and I never got it. And there was a lot of I mean, she was yelling at me from her deathbed, even up until
00:35:45
Speaker
Like the last time I saw her, she was still yelling at me. And I will never actually understand a lot of what was in her mind, except I do know that all I can say is that the woman did the best she could given
00:36:01
Speaker
what was inside of her body and her mind and whatever tools that had led her to that, which weren't many. She had a horrible, horrible family life. It was very tragic. I mean, you could interview me on that in like three more interviews. Wow. I was going to say, Chris, for somebody to say the statements that you mentioned before, even just the fact that I smoke because of you type of thing,
00:36:28
Speaker
It has to be that there has to be a huge history in her life to make her say those things, a lot of pain, a lot of pain to be able to say that to your child. So that make you also feel compassion for her after you kind of go into that aspect of knowing that she went through so much. Does that shift your focus into compassion?
00:36:54
Speaker
Absolutely. I mean, there's no other way again I'll go back to what I said with my, with my grandparents, you have to be able to be at peace with yourself. And, you know, I could go on and on about all the injustices that my mother committed against me.
00:37:10
Speaker
even leading up to her death. But at the end of the day, I really can, if I wasn't my mother's daughter and I was a complete and utter stranger that had the opportunity to kind of play the movie of my mother's life, I would, at the end of it, feel nothing but compassion and empathy toward that woman. So why, as her daughter,
00:37:36
Speaker
Who still loves her mother. I mean she was my mother right and being the mother of two girls. I know what that's what that feels like being the mother. So how could I feel any other way but loving compassionate and grateful.
00:37:53
Speaker
I mean, I'm actually, I can say with 1000% certainty that I feel so grateful that in all of her missteps in her life and the sadness and the kind of isolation, and she just did so many things kind of to bring her own downfall that somehow it was able to make me
00:38:19
Speaker
See all I was able to see where my life could be and to really look almost in a crystal ball and say this is not the crystal ball that I want from my life and then to God forbid pass down to my girls I'm done kind of just picking up that crystal ball and throwing it on a hard floor and letting it shatter everywhere and
00:38:43
Speaker
And I really do feel very empowered that I was able to do that, feel that, and also yet be so grateful that my mother was able to show me that crystal ball.
00:38:57
Speaker
Oof. Wow, Kim. That is huge. You had to make a choice. You had to make a choice because she made a choice to some extent too. Even though she had that hard growing up, she made a choice to make, keep that be her, being her crystal ball for her life, even with the upbringing she had. Now you also.
00:39:17
Speaker
had that crystal bar be part of your life because of how she had treated you, yet you had to then make a choice to shatter that one and create a new one. So that takes a lot and it takes a lot of growth and it takes a lot of personal growth and development for sure. And then that inner, again, grit comes again to play.
00:39:39
Speaker
into making those choices. Now, in that personal growth and development, what are some of the things that you did to get to that point of compassion and acceptance and gratitude towards her?
Recovery from Alcoholism and Personal Growth
00:39:57
Speaker
I mean, I think it was a combination of the work that I did in recovering from alcoholism, as well as the personal development work that I've been doing since I became an entrepreneur. I know we got to go into that. But they both go hand in hand with each other. When I was a newly
00:40:19
Speaker
recovering alcoholic, it was all about writing down all the people that you were resentful at. And believe me, I filled up notebooks of that, all the people that had been wronging me in some way. And I had to write down exactly what I was really mad about. And then I had to actually, I was forced to sit down with somebody. And lucky for me, that person already had a degree in
00:40:48
Speaker
Psychotherapy and i mean it just so happened that i was very lucky with the person i was i was able to sit across a table from with my notebooks and i had to ask myself what part did i play in all of it and i had to go person by person situation by situation and i really had to look at the part
00:41:07
Speaker
that I played in it because everybody plays a part in their situations. There is never, ever a situation where one person is completely wrong and one person is 100% right. And even though I was a kid,
00:41:26
Speaker
And even though obviously a mother is not supposed to say or do certain things, I still have choices as I grow up to behave and act and think my own way. That's my choice. And so those were the lessons I had to go into. And as I continued with personal development,
00:41:49
Speaker
and mindfulness work, again, it's always going to be, I mean, we could use this pandemic as that situation, right? I mean, we cannot change the circumstances that are before us. We cannot change the death of somebody that we love. We cannot change any circumstance because it's neutral, it's there. And so if we're going to have all the negative thoughts or the,
00:42:15
Speaker
anger or resentment. What we're really saying is that we want to change that circumstance. We're like fighting so hard against the circumstance, but that circumstance cannot be moved. It cannot be changed. It is there. So what are we able to control? We're able to control our thoughts around the circumstance always. And isn't that so freaking
00:42:39
Speaker
powerful, that we have the control over our thoughts. And, you know, this is not this is just studying reading books, practicing with phenomenal coaches. And it doesn't always work either. But I think generally, especially with handling grief and handling
00:43:00
Speaker
relationship issues, it certainly can help over time to recognize that we are in full control of our thoughts and feelings, and we can make those changes, even if we just move the needle little by little by little. Yes, yes. Yes, that's the thing. It's a lot of times people just want to see this overnight success, like it's not overnight success. It's not like right away, you're going to be
00:43:25
Speaker
Fine, no, it takes so much work. Look at all the things you mentioned. You would take notes of all these things. Sitting next to a psychotherapist, correct? Was that in front of being able to review all these things. Doing a lot of reading. The thing is that it also takes a lot of willpower. It has to come from within. To make that choice, you have to really want it.
00:43:53
Speaker
in order for it to come. So there's a lot of people that may read the same books you read, go to the same conferences you've gone to, same personal development events that you've gone to, this or that. And their results might be different because maybe their will to change is different.
00:44:10
Speaker
So that plays a big part in how we kind of navigate this life, I think, at least. Absolutely. So you've made a huge choice, a huge shift. You mentioned a little bit of your entrepreneurship. And somebody, again, and the reason I wanted to interview you is because, as I mentioned in the beginning,
00:44:32
Speaker
Seeing who you are, somebody would not know all the work that has gone through to get you to where you are now. And so you mentioned that shift of career even, letting go of being an attorney to now you are an entrepreneur and share a little bit about that and how all these life learnings have gotten you to where you are now.
00:44:59
Speaker
Yeah, I just think that you have to live in what lights you up and what your passion is, especially knowing how fragile life is right now, especially with everything happening around us
Entrepreneurship by Accident
00:45:12
Speaker
right now. There's really no time to waste. And for me, it was a real accidental kind of falling into being an entrepreneur, which is just, I think in my mind anyway, it's the best way because
00:45:27
Speaker
It was for me, because of my health issues, understanding that I needed to be there for my children and doing law, doing kids just was not going to be a good mix for my health. And kind of landing into a culture and community of incredible women like you, Kendra, that really are just all about bettering themselves,
00:45:56
Speaker
feeling your healthiest self in your body, in your mind, in your soul. And that was where I kind of landed in trying to heal my body, being naturally gravitating to the mind
00:46:13
Speaker
stuff, the mindfulness stuff that our community is all a part of. And so it was just a real natural transition. And of course, once that started to become evident and visible, it turned into other people sort of wanting to learn more about what I was doing. And that's kind of how it all
00:46:35
Speaker
accidentally started for entrepreneurship. Of course, now it's very much of a intentional business for me. But that's kind of the how it all evolved. And it's, you know, it really is just the circle of all of our life events that eventually leads us to where we're meant to land. So it's all the grief and loss in my life and the relationships and my own struggles with
00:47:04
Speaker
alcoholism and changing careers and my health issues that landed me in a hospital and it's just you kind of end up in looking at it all through a magnifying glass over time.
00:47:19
Speaker
I believe that you do end up landing where you're meant to. And hey, listen, even if you land somewhere and you're still not happy with it, go take out your magnifying glass and go look and go find somewhere else to land. That's the beautiful part of life, right?
00:47:36
Speaker
Yes, you get to choose, you get to choose. And if anything, even if you don't like where you're at at that moment, even choosing your state of mind in that particular place in your life where you're at, you still have a choice on that, of how you see,
00:47:52
Speaker
your life in that moment of where you're at. And by choosing to be grateful for the things that have happened and the little things, even just now, again, we're all having to choose gratitude right now. We're all having to choose gratitude that we have a roof over our heads that we get to be isolating ourselves in. We don't have to be living
00:48:14
Speaker
under a bridge at this moment with the circumstances and how they are. So there's little things in our life that we can be grateful for every single day, and it's a choice to choose gratitude over resentment, over what other things? My gosh, there's so many things that you could be feeling other than gratitude, and gratitude definitely changes everything.
00:48:38
Speaker
So I want to say that I am grateful to have had you on and for you to have shared all this journey with us of all the different stepping stones that got you to where you are right now, Kim. And I know that many more stepping stones that will take you to other places along the way.
00:48:57
Speaker
and you are now helping others get to higher places as well and using their stories as they're stepping stones themselves. Thank you so much, my dear, for being on today and for sharing all this journey. It was just a very candid and open journey. Thank you. If people want to know how to find you, if they feel inspired to connect with you in any way,
00:49:24
Speaker
would Instagram or Facebook, what's the best way that they could get to know a little bit more about Kim or even work with you? Oh, you're sweet. I certainly am on Facebook, Kim Aloprantis. You can find me on Instagram, Aloprantis Kim, so last name first, then my first name. Thank you.
00:49:47
Speaker
Yeah, and my email address is kimallaprantis at hotmail.com. It doesn't get any easier than that. But Kendra, thank you so much for having me on. I love your podcast. I'm so grateful. And I love you. I really do talk about a heart of gold.
00:50:05
Speaker
This is not about me. This is about you. Don't switch it around. I'm so grateful to have had you. Thank you so much, dear. Love you. Thank you. Bye bye, Kendra. Thank you. Bye, honey. Bye.
00:50:21
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.
00:50:50
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.