The Menstruality Podcast - 151. Cyclical Wisdom for Heartbreak, Devastation and Rebirth (Sara Avant Stover)

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

In February 2016 our guest today, author and teacher Sara Avant Stover was coming out of a season of intense creativity and output and was preparing to enter into a cycle of rest and recovery, when one evening she received shattering news. Her former fiance came home one evening and confessed that he had been cheating on her, with many people, for many years. This turned out to be the first of many serial heartbreaks that Sara experienced over the coming five years. Ironically she had just published a book about the heroine’s journey, which described the necessity of cycles of death and rebirth when we enter the underworld, just as she was personally thrown into this great descent. Sara’s work integrates Buddhism, embodiment, and psychology and has uplifted the lives of countless women worldwide. She has transmuted her heartbreak into her new book, Handbook for the Heartbroken: A Woman's Path from Devastation to Rebirth, which we explore today.We explore:Sara’s heartbreak stories; including abortion, relationship breakdown and a financial crash and how they have prepared her for what we have experienced collectively over the past four years, and particularly the pandemic.The core action that Sara took to heal from the gas-lighting experience of long-term infidelity. Guidance for you if you’re currently negotiating heartbreak, or are still healing heartbreaks of the past.---Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardySara Avant Stover: @saraavantstover - https://www.instagram.com/saraavantstover/

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hi, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for tuning in. I was so touched by the conversation that I'm sharing today. It's a good one for you if you're feeling heartbroken at the moment

or would like to heal past heartbreak. In February 2016, our guest today, author and teacher Sarah Avant-Stover, was coming out of a season of intense creativity and output, and she was preparing to enter into a cycle of rest and recovery, when one evening she received shattering news. Her former fiancé came home and confessed that he had been cheating on her with many people for many years and this actually turned out to be the first of many what she calls serial heartbreaks that Sarah experienced over the coming five years. Ironically back then she had just published a book about the heroine's journey which described the necessity of cycles of death and rebirth as we enter the underworld of initiatory processes in our lives, just as she

was personally thrown into this great descent. So Sarah's work integrates Buddhism, embodiment, psychology, and she's uplifted the lives of countless women worldwide. She's transmuted her experience of heartbreak into her new book, Handbook for the Heartbroken, A Woman's Path from Devastation to Rebirth, which is what we're getting into today. transmuted her experience of heartbreak into her new book, Handbook for the Heartbroken, A Woman's Path from Devastation to Rebirth, which is what we're getting into today. I share my own personal process with healing the heartbreak of infertility and we also touch on the topic of abortion. So if it isn't a great time to be around either of these topics, just please take care of yourself. Okay, let's get started with this warm and tender and wise conversation with Sarah of Hanstover

so Sarah thank you so so much for joining us on the menstruality podcast it's wonderful to have you thanks for making the time today oh thanks so much for having me. Could we start with a menstrual cycle check-in? I'd love to hear where you're at in your cycle and how it's influencing you today, how it's impacting you today. Sure. I, my menstruation starts in about a week. So I just entered into my premenstrual window and it's actually good to talk about this because it just presence presence is more like a reminder. Oh yeah. I'm entering my premenstrual window. I'm grateful that my cycles are very easy, that they have, they have been easy throughout my life. Not I'm going to knock on wood because I'm entering, you know, I'm in the window where

I could be shifting into perimenopause. So who knows what that will bring. And so during this week, I just have just a heightened awareness to give myself some extra TLC, start slowing down a little bit and just to be aware of agitation that may come up and to pay attention to what that's about. Yes, absolutely. I'm on the other end. I'm day seven seven so I've just come out of my bleed okay I was just noticing today as I was walking a kind of uprightness to my energy like a real physical manifestation of this rising energy that can come for me now like my spine was sort of holding itself up by itself it was an interesting feeling and I do feel yeah a lot of rising energy but also

the extra sensitivity that I can tend to have now in my 40s in this like inner spring window particularly having spent a lot of today with your book which is like it's a tenderizing book so we're going to talk about it a lot today but you know for anyone who does go and pick it up and I recommend that you do yeah it's it's a big heart opener isn't it big time so yeah yeah I'm so grateful to you for it just before we start talking about the book I wanted to ask a couple of questions one of them really being that you know I've been aware of you for a long time and I was just looking that you actually have been teaching about the cycle for a really long time you know it's quite popular in the world now which is great so fantastic but I was looking it was like back in 2013 you were teaching women about how to track their cycles

and how to live in accordance with their cycles and it just made me curious to hear like all these years on what your connection to your cycle is like in your life now and how you work with your cycle now. Yeah. Well, before we started recording, we were talking about how we both have spent time in Chiang Mai, Thailand. And it was there that I first started working with my cycle because I had, and actually I just said,

I just said that I'm, that I've had pretty easy cycles my whole life, but that's not totally true. It's, it was so long ago that it's can forget about it. But in my twenties, I, I stopped menstruating for period of time because of just years of eating disorders in my teens. And so it was in living in Thailand that I started to study about cycles and begin to heal them. And I first started really teaching and writing about it in my first book that came out in 2011. And these days actually for a while, for some years now, it hasn't been the most prominent thing in my life. And it's something that I feel like I've just really integrated and maybe other things have just taken more of a, more of a center stage, other points of focus, other things that I've been working on integrating. And that's just kind of running in the

background as just one of my ways of relating to myself and operating in the world. So it's still important to me, So it's still important to me, but it's kind of just like eating healthy or drinking water. It's just something that I do and don't really need to think about that much anymore. I feel like we're part of a grand experiment at the moment where women and people who menstruate who have been tracking their cycles for a long time and have reached this point of integration it's going to be interesting to see how menopause goes because one of the wonderful things about cycle awareness is how it can prepare us for menopause so maybe we can have a conversation in I don't know five six yes to be determined definitely a new frontier but I will say that you know and I'm

open to being humbled by my menopause experience, but some of my mentors who have passed through that initiation have just advised me to set up my life as much as possible for more simplicity during that time. And so even in my work, one of my intentions has been to create containers or to create systems that can afford me more space and time when I reach that window, which it seems like just from my family line would be in my early to mid fifties. So I'm 46 and a half now. So I still have some years and I've definitely been in a big building phase in my work these past few years. And will be for another few years so I'm just also working just to create a life that will be conducive to me taking more space when that time

comes so beautiful and so wise and I just really long for a world where all women and people who menstruate can can be can be thinking in this way where the world thinks in this way ah she's heading towards that how can we support her right now? That world is coming. But to your book, Sarah, I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you for writing this and for your courage to be so generous in sharing your heartbreak stories. Like it's an immensely generous act and having been through my own heartbreaks we've all been through them on whatever level I felt so seen and so um yeah acknowledged and just given permission to feel whatever I'm feeling still around my heartbreaks and it's I just think this I think it's gonna be a gift that just this book keeps giving to people so thank you from my heartbreaks and it's I just think this I think it's going to be a gift that just this book keeps giving to people so thank you from my heart I'm curious you know having tracked your

work for a while in terms of your calling how you understand like the unfolding of your work and your destiny how do you see this heartbreak piece like playing a role there I heard you in an interview speak about how telling your stories of heartbreak is part of helping to heal the feminine wounds in the world for you. And I just would love to hear you speak a bit more to that. You know, it's actually something that I haven't really, this might sound strange, but I haven't really thought that much about like how it fits, how this book fits into my evolution of my work. It's kind of like my books, especially just feel like divine assignments. Like they, they just come to me and like a divine download. I get, I get the name of

the title and it's like, and then I'm given like a whole plethora of life experiences. And then I go through my own journey of following the breadcrumbs and seeing what teachings and what practices and what resources helped me to get through it. And I see what I learned about it and then I write about it. So it's not something that's like, that's premeditated, I could say, but in hindsight, it seems like, you know, my experience of going through all these heartbreaks that I write about is that I feel like it helped prepare me for the world right now. And I'll give you an example of this. So these serial heartbreaks that spanned from 2016 to 2020, they started tapering off right as the pandemic struck. And pretty much everyone in my life was really freaking out about the pandemic and was really

rattled by it. I was not that rattled by it. And it's not to say that it wasn't bad for a lot of people. It absolutely was. But just for me with what I had been going through the previous several years, it was kind of like, okay, more of the same. Like I know how to do this. I've got this in some ways. In some ways it felt easier because then everyone around me was going through something too. And I didn't feel so estranged from day-to-day life. I didn't feel so pushed to the outskirts of normal reality. I felt like we're all in this together.

So it allowed me to be a resource for people. And now all those things that I experienced continues to allow me to be a resource to other people in a way. And I always have been in different ways, but at a much deeper level now, because I have just gone to some really, really deep, dark places inside myself and inside my life. And there is a lot more of a reservoir of compassion and just resonance that I can draw on with people. And I think that with all that we're facing right now and who knows what's to come, we need more of us who have this, this deep compassion and not trying to fix people, not, not trying to give advice, not trying to be prescriptive, just giving full permission for us to all have whatever experience we're having.

Yes. Yeah. Maybe we'll talk about it in this conversation, but the main heartbreak that I've had in the past years was was four years of trying to conceive and the loneliest bit of it was the fixing from people and I just was in agony and I just needed to be with people who would say so far this is so hard and I love you. And it's just so hard. That's really all I needed. And there were some people that could say that. And I just had these little sanctuaries of safety with them. And then the rest of the time I felt I had to armor up to protect myself. And it was so shit, so shit. But what it's given me is when I'm with someone now who is suffering I can go god this is so hard and I can just breathe and it's it's not easy it's it's still hard to be with someone who is in the depths of despair but I don't there isn't this movement in me to try and somehow

make it better because I just know I can't yeah Yeah. And it goes back to that, that practice of attunement that we all need as babies with our primary caregivers, them to be with us with, for, for crying, if we're happy, if we're sick and just be noticing what we're experiencing and to just be present with us in that. And there is something just about us as human beings. And I would say even, even my dog, Sadie, it's like, she needs, she needs attunement too. I think it's just something that we as living creatures need. And I think we've in in a lot of ways, lost touch with how to do that as human beings, because we're, we're so busy. And we're so scared of when things are hard for ourselves or for other people, we're not taught how how to be during those times. And that was one of the reasons why I wrote this book. It's like, we don't have we don't have education about this yeah yeah I think one of the words you used was we live in a heartbreak illiterate world yeah it's definitely been my experience yeah would you mind walking us into the first heartbreak story in the book so that we can understand a bit of

the context yeah what happened for you in February 2016? Sure. It was a few months after my second book came out and I had been in a long stretch of exertion. And I'm even thinking about my life right now, like coming out of a book launch and moving into a program launch and just how it is such a season of output and how, you know, talking about seasons and cycles as necessary rhythm after those times of a lot of output is rest and recovery. And I was preparing like that night in February, 2016, I was preparing to enter into a cycle of rest and recovery after this long period of exertion. And my former fiance came home that night as I was making dinner and sat me down at the kitchen table. The food was getting cold on the kitchen counter and told me that he had

been cheating on me. And it wasn't just once it wasn't just with one person, but it was with many people over many years. And even though I've told this story so many times, I'm not even, I don't even know what words to say after that point. It just, it shattered me. It shattered me and it shattered my trust in myself, my trust in what I thought my life was, trust in him. And it sent huge ripples through every area of my life and changed everything irrevocably. And it was in the book, you speak of it as a sort of domino experience because it was the first heartbreak that then, and then a series, what you speak of it as a sort of domino experience because it was the first heartbreak that then and then a series what you've called like serial heartbreaks that

followed over the next four years um I wanted to ask you about well I what I found myself being curious about when I was reading was your knowledge of cyclicity you know your experience with the deep feminine um if it if that somehow held you through this process and and i was really thinking about how um when we can sort of befriend the pre-menstrual phase of the menstrual cycle that dissolution that happens that breaking down that humbling where so often we're forced to face our shadows and our griefs and our rage or they just explode out of us um how that can help us to kind of build a kind of resilience or for me anyway that's been a big part of me being able to roll with life's punches is kind of getting to know my pre-menstruum over the last 13 years or so.

So I was curious about how your knowledge of cyclicity might have held you somehow through these grieving times, these heartbreak times. Well, the book that I had just written at that time is called The Book of She, and it was about the heroine's journey which is also very much about cycles you know there's times when we go to the underworld and times when we come back to to our lives and in one way it really confused me because I thought that I was coming out of the underworld yes and instead I was hurled deeper down into it. Why did I write a book about the heroine's journey? Exactly. It's like, all right, now it's time to really master this.

Yeah. So there's that. And there was also a deep trust in cycles. And one of the opening line sentences or quotes in my new book is this too shall pass. And it's remembering, you know, spring always comes after winter. The dawn always comes after the darkest time of the night. Those are natural laws. And I am part of nature. And so I knew that my dawn would come. I didn't know when, I didn't know what it would look like.

And it actually took a lot longer than I ever thought it would or ever wanted it to. Way longer. But I had the faith that it would come and it did, it has. Yeah. I'd love to speak to you about some of the things that held you through this very long phase. I mean, I relate because it was four years of trying to get pregnant. I was so lucky and got pregnant on my first round of IVF and became a mother to my son. And it's, he's three and a half and it's only now that I feel like I'm reconciling with those four years of, and I've huge guilty parts that go, but you've got a child. Why are you grieving that time? That's over. But there's

something about your book it you know it gives such permission to grieve whatever you're grieving that all heartbreaks are valid if they feel like heartbreak yeah and um it was a long time you you were you were going through heartbreak for a long time so I'd love to speak to you about some of the things that helped you recognizing that many of our listeners are probably going through their own heartbreaks right now or are healing heartbreaks from the past. And one of them is IFS, so internal family systems, which really feels like a golden thread throughout the book. And I feel lucky because one of my best friends teaches parts work through a different modality. It's voice dialogue.

But, you know, we've been in a multi-year journey together with our own inner families, our own inner villages, exploring all our different parts together. And it's a big question, but I wonder if you could speak to how IFS, Internal Family Systems, has helped you through these heartbreaks. Sure. Well, first I want to say congratulations on your son and also to validate that. Yes. It sounds like there is still healing to do or attention that's, that's being called for, for, for the heartbreak of the years that preceded that. And that sounds like maybe you didn't have time to do that because you got

pregnant and, and how, just how normal and natural that is that we all experience heartbreaks that we don't have time to process them when they're happening or right after that. And one of the, one of the reasons why I wrote this book is to help us to go back and, and take space for those. And so with IFS, I was grateful to have come across it right before all of these heartbreaks came. And I spoke with my mentor who introduced me to IFS. I spoke with her within days after my former fiance shared this news. And she really challenged me to make IFS a central part of my life and to really do at bare minimum weekly one-on-one sessions to delve deep into what led me to be in that relationship in the first place and everything that it was bringing up in me as a result of it. And I, I knew that she was right. And I, I took her up on that challenge because I knew that I didn't want those what felt like younger parts of me that all of my previous years of spiritual

practice and psychotherapeutic work, and I'd been doing voice dialogue as well since my early 20s with one of my mentors, but none of it helped me to get to those deeper regions of myself that were sometimes steering the bus of my life without me realizing it or without me wanting that to happen. And so I was really grateful to, to get the support to, to do the work. And I left those several years just completely transformed and feeling a much deeper level of wholeness or just feeling wholeness in general that I never felt before, despite everything that I was trying. I think it was the heartbreak itself that enabled you to reach those parts of yourself that you otherwise weren't reaching. I think so.

I think so. And also just reaching a rock bottom where, because one of the reasons why my mentor challenged me in that way is because I think other things kept taking the first priority in my life, whether it was writing a book or my relationship or whatever it was, but it was like, no, like for you to really heal this, like this needs to be the number one thing. That's significant, you know, like to make something our number one priority in our lives. Yes. And so I needed, I needed things to get that dire to, to be willing to do that.

And that I was in my late thirties at the time. And I was like, I just, I want to have a fulfilling relationship. I want, I want to have a fulfilling life. I want to have the kind of life that I want to have. And like the clock is ticking. I need, I need like that you know it's like that once we get older the stakes are just so much higher than when we're in our 20s or even in our early 30s yeah like I know that I need to get this I need to get this now yeah I feel that we don't talk about this enough um I know you had a conversation with Jodie Day and I also have about childlessness

and how there are conversations that we really need to be having as women around the clock ticking. There's a reality that I feel like we don't speak about. And I heard it in your story when you talked about the next relationship you had after your ex-fiance, where there was something in you going, I want to have a family. And there's a kind of speeding up process that happens that might make

us make different decisions that we wouldn't have otherwise made. And that feels like a sort of important catalyst in your next heartbreak experience. Absolutely. Yeah. So one of the things that my former fiance and I were in dialogue with for some years was whether or not to have a child together. And right before everything blew up, he shared with me that he had decided that he was a no to having a child. And I got clear that I was pretty much a yes, but I was really praying to get that divine guidance of whether or not to actually leave the relationship and seek out to do that, because that felt scary. And I didn't know if it would even happen. And my prayer was answered

because within like just within a week or something, this news came forward and it was just clear as day what I needed to do. But I, I was in, I was in my late thirties, I was single and I was panicking and I was angry. I was angry that, that he hadn't told me that five years ago, four years ago, even one year ago. So I could have had more time. And so I left that relationship really determined to heal. And there, there's another dynamic in there. And that I found out that he was on the narcissistic spectrum. And that's like a whole other category of healing that I wasn't aware needed to happen

because I had experienced breakups before. And I was just kind of thinking this was like a usual breakup, but the damage that was done by being in relationship with a narcissist went much deeper than I understood, which it took me some time to figure that out. It actually took several years to heal from that. So that was happening as well. And, and I really wanted to have a child. I was calling on all of my kind of like sorceress powers to, to bring it into being literally doing magical spells. And I met someone and got pregnant without planning to, and that had never happened to me before.

And I was like, Oh my God, like these spell, like these spells are working. Like I didn't, you know, I didn't expect it to happen within that kind of a context. And so that, that set me up for another heartbreak and realizing that, you know, he was a rebound relationship. It wasn't the kind of person to build a life with, to have a child with. And I ended up having an abortion there. And yes, like that was all absolutely clouded judgment because I felt like I was running out of time. And I agree with you. It's not something that we talk about that much because of course we don't want to limit women who of course are having babies in their, in their forties. And I wish that someone had kind of spoken to me more sternly sooner. And actually there was one, there was one astrologer actually, who after my former fiance and I separated, she was really encouraging me to freeze my eggs.

And that wasn't really, that wasn't happening that much at that time. Now I think it's much more common, but I was like, wow, that just seems like a huge undertaking. And that I, it's like, I want to explore the natural route, but in retrospect, it was like, yeah, that would have been a smart thing to do. And now when I'm mentoring women and they're in similar situations, I am much more stern with them and just really talk straight. Like it's much harder to have a child in your forties generally speaking. And if you want to give, set yourself up for the best possible chance of success, take action as soon as you can. Cause there's no guarantees. Nope. Nope. Yeah. I mean, my current heartbreak is I would love another child and I'm 42. And it's small compared to the heartbreak of desperately, desperately wanting my son.

But it's there, it's with me and it's haunting. Yeah, so I'll be working with your book. Thank you, Sarah. so I'm just going to take a moment to pause this chat with Sarah to share an invitation with you for something that's actually beginning tomorrow it's our new red school course cycle power with Alexandra and Shani who are the co-founders of red school and it's for you if you're looking to step into the next level of power in your life which looks totally different for each of us. For you it could be a longing that you have to take up more space, to claim your wild and weird nature, to free up your

voice to express yourself more fully. For others it could mean reclaiming your power within a relationship, in your workplace, or feeling more undeniably potent as a homecoming to our own cyclical nature. And in this patriarchal culture, which denies and actually uproots us from our cyclicity, it is so much more than time to rest back into the cyclical power that is our birthright. And that's what this course is all about. You can find out more and take your seat at redschool.net forward slash cycle power and this is actually the one and only time that Alexandra will be teaching this course live so if you're feeling called check out the course and now is a good time to step in. Redschool.net forward slash cycle power. We start on Friday the 21st of June.

There was another thing that touched me in the book in terms of what supported your process, which is around a grief ritual that you did. Because like I said earlier, you speak about how we live in a heartbreak, illiterate world. So you have this great quote, we live in a heartbreak, illiterate world that's obsessed with success, shackled with isolation

and ignorant of how valuable our suffering can be for our growth and evolution, not only as individuals, but as species. And you speak about this grief ritual you did after the abortion, I think, led by a student of the brilliant late grief teacher, Sabont Fusome from Burkina Faso, where you were held by a group, by a community to grieve. And I wondered if you could speak about that process

of letting the grief move physically through our bodies and community and the importance of that. Just as you were speaking about that and I was feeling into that ritual, I actually got goosebumps because it was so powerful. And I really wish that we all had access to these on a regular basis. I went to that ritual that day through the advice of one of my therapists at the time who was well-versed in grief rituals. And I was just going on faith of her sharing how profound it was. I didn't really, that particular day, I didn't really feel that much grief present. I actually felt pretty good. So I had a lot of resistance to going, you know, and talking about IFS, like a part of me was kind of like rolling her eyes, like, Oh God, okay, we'll go. But what's, I don't think it's really

going to help. And the ritual started and it starts with the playing of the drums, the djembe drums. And there's certain stations that, that you move through. And one of those, there's an ancestral shrine, there's a grief shrine, and you kind of cycle through, you just kind of listen to your inner guidance, which one you feel called to go to. When you go to the grief shrine, you're meant to kind of kneel down, kind of like a child's position in yoga. And there's someone who's always standing behind you and you can ask them to either just stand behind you or to put their hand on your back. But so that when you you're in the grief space, that you're not there by yourself. And when I got down on my knees, it was just like this

huge river of grief, just instantaneously moved through me. I was taken over and I, I was really surprised by the power of it that didn't feel like it was going to tear me apart. Like sometimes we're afraid grief will do because I wasn't alone. I had someone standing by behind me. So I knew that they literally had my back and I knew I was held in this container and that people there weren't going to let anything happen to me. And that's something powerful had opened up to allow me to experience more grief than I could if I was by myself. And so by the time that I left, this was about maybe a three hour experience or so.

I felt like I often do like when I leave a week long meditation retreat or after I do a cleanse of some sort, I just felt clear and just the world seemed to have more of a sparkle again. Yeah. There's a huge link between grief and joy and grief and awe, isn't there? Or the capacity to allow the energy of grief to flow that then allows the energy of joy and all, and the other quote unquote, beautiful emotions to, to move through us through us I've I've been blessed to have a similar experience with a group of women where I was just yeah I was able to howl and let it roar through me and it makes me think of I haven't really learned much about this but this this practice of keening which is from from these lands uh that yeah I just wish we were all

able to do that you know our our funerals or in our you know grief moments that we could all let it move through our bodies it's so healthy I also wanted to speak to you about rage because it's a huge part of heartbreak isn't it and it's a kind of less palatable part just like the premenstrual phases is the less palatable part, just like the premenstrual phases is the less palatable part. And the rage that women feel and people feel in menopause is, you know, belittled and mocked in our world when it's so valid and so important. And yeah, there's this quote in the book where you said, during a virtual IFS session with my therapist i told her about the near blinding rage i was feeling i shared my fantasies of shooting stabbing punching people

and your therapist suggested that you let yourself imagine doing that which was so great and then you said that off the charts level of rage stayed pretty constant for a few months sometimes it was so strong i wasn't it wasn't wise to leave the house I might blow up at someone and again like the permission that your book gives it just it made me feel so validated on those days where I always remember being furious at the lambs in the fields in spring how dare you mother sheep be so fucking fertile and I'm not you know there was just so much rage pouring through me and in in your book you speak about this practice of giving your anger somewhere to go and I wonder if you could walk us through that maybe for the premenstrual listeners for the menopausal rage listeners like what what can we do with this anger that can pour through us in heartbreak

one of the things is actually a practice that I took out of the book when I was shaving things to make it shorter and more streamlined. It's a practice that one of my therapists who incorporated a lot of art therapy recommended, and it's getting these, it's like acrylic paint crayons. They're thick. They're really sturdy and getting a big piece of paper and just like scribbling, madly scribbling with a lot of intensity or with whatever level of intensity feels good for you and just going after the colors that feel right. And that was really therapeutic for me. And I just did layer after layer after layer of these scribbles in different colors. And then at one point I think it took a knife and just scribbles with a knife.

And so just really finding avenues to, to express it through our bodies. So that's one way, um, an example that I also shared that I had done some years prior in a transformational retreat program called the Hoffman process was getting a plastic, you know, wiffle bat or baseball, plastic baseball bat, and just beating cushion. I remember I used to have keep one of those in my practice space and I would have a yoga bolster and I would just beat the bolster or punching pillows slapping a dish rag against the wall screaming in the car was something I did quite a bit during those years oftentimes until I was hoarse just finding ways finding ways to just move it yeah yeah it's just got to move it's got to move hasn't it because it gets it's so toxic when it stays inside us I mean the rage isn't toxic but the holding the having to hold it in because our world can't

help us to process it is toxic and for women it's taboo. And that's why I think one of the reasons why as women, we often have jaw stuff, just tension in the jaw, TMJ, neck and shoulder tension, because we just, we get jammed up and not expressing because it hasn't been safe for us to express our anger. Yes. Or to express period, but especially our anger. Yes. Yes. I listened to this, the lovely conversation you had with your friend Krista before the book came out. She's great. She's a great she is great and she was speaking about she asked you about the process of re-healing your inner knowing um because particularly after the infidelity when for five years you thought you were having a certain relationship but it was a different relationship um i also had an experience

of of infidelity and it's that gaslighting experience is so like you said about the healing from the narcissism it's like how do we trust ourselves again when we've kind of quote been so wrong for all that time um for me menstrual cycle awareness is definitely I just recognize that it's definitely helped me grow my muscles up okay this is my experience this is what is happening for me I'm feeling like this today you know and then the next day I'm feeling like this today and just that's been helpful for me in piecing reconnecting me with my with my inner truth my inner voice and I wanted to hear about yeah your journey with that because I know it's it's been a big part of your work always is being able to listen to our inner voice right yeah so again this has been like a

I've been on the mastery path with this one because I think since I first started in my early 20s, my core message has always been listen to that still small voice inside. And so after that relationship, it felt like a wire was cut. Just completely cut that connected. You could say my gut instinct with my mental faculties and my rational awareness. They were just completely disconnected. And I knew that I needed to set out to heal it. all of us really, it's like, I've always been very intuitive and sensitive, but not taught how to listen to that or even just having it be constantly invalidated. And so I set out on a path to heal it. And one of the first things I did was I went on an advice fast and for years I didn't work with

an astrologer. I didn't work with any intuitives. I didn't work with anyone who would kind of give me guidance about my life. One, because that got me in a lot of trouble. I was leaning on that too much. And that's one of the things that led me to, to my situation with my abortion. And in my own atonement of that, I realized I can't give my power away to, to anyone about these types of things. Like I need to be the ultimate authority of my life. I need to reclaim my own spiritual authority. And so with that, of having that abstinence of advice and doing the IFS work and life was putting me in a curriculum where it was like, I was constantly driving in a dark night in the fog and I could only see just steps in front of me. Yeah. And so it's like, I needed to

literally feel my way through the dark for a number of those years and just to feel like, what is my next right step? What is my next right step? And that really honed something in me so that now it's like, I am so rooted in my gut instincts. I feel so much access and so much trust to my intuition. There's no question anymore. And if it's like a busy day and my mind is cloudy and I've been interacting with a lot of people, then it's like, I know I just need to sleep on it and wake up and do my meditation, do my journaling. And I'm going to know the answer. I'm going to be reconnected to my inner voice. And so now I'm grateful that I went through all of that because there's just a much deeper,

kind of rock solid connection to myself that wouldn't be here without that such a paradox isn't it because we wouldn't wish these experiences on anybody and then it turns out that they craft the best things in us it's like the universe is a comedian for sure that's also you know like one of the one of the the lessons in this book is reframing heartbreak and you could even say like success and failure it's all information these are just these are just life experiences and we learn from them they give us information whether they're so-called positive or negative, but from the view of the divine, there's no positive and negative. There's just experiences. That really feels like wisdom to me. Yeah. And it's just not something that we see out there a

lot out there as in, in the media messages we receive out there on Instagram is it's so shiny still. And I've just been really just really appreciating you and the book and your transparency and how it cuts through the the surface level bullshit out there that's tries to pretend that life is shiny when it's not and we and we can kind of smell the bullshit in it but we just something in this gets lured into it anyway and it's like I just I appreciate the like the breath of fresh air of of you in this book just going just cutting through all of the bullshit yeah yeah so having explored this what would you say to someone who isn't

currently living in the experience of feeling that they may have feel like they betrayed themselves or that they didn't listen to their inner knowing and now they feel cut off from it to recreate that relationship between the gut knowing and their head so that they can find that stability in themselves again. I'd say the first thing is to kind of like go back to those moments where you notice that you abandon yourself or you notice that you betrayed yourself and really take an inventory and maybe that's in your journal just really looking back at all those moments and seeing or just bringing more consciousness to it, shining the light on it. Because at some level you were conscious and at some level you were unconscious or part parts of you were aware it was happening in parts of you were falling asleep at the wheel

or maybe all the way in the backseat and not paying attention. So in retrospect, going back to those moments and just taking an inventory without judgment as much as possible and really questioning what, what was going on there? What made me, what part of me was leading the way that made me betray myself and put someone else's truth above my own or someone else's needs above my own. And normally what we'll see it's that these are young parts of us that maybe for me, it was parts that were afraid of being abandoned or parts that felt unworthy and felt like, well, he, he knows more than I do. And seeing like where,

where that came from, because it always goes back to our younger years and some sort of survival pattern or protective pattern that we needed to put in place that we had very good reasons for putting into place, but that now as adult women are causing a lot of damage. So bringing that light of awareness and just really, really honest, honest looking, honest reflection. Would you be able to give an example of that from your experience, like in your healing of like the initial infidelity with your ex-fiance, what was it that, did you track the younger parts of you and how they were? Yeah. So I looked when I found out the truth and when I saw that, and I realized that I had been living for years in a web of lies and manipulation and deception. And one of the things that I did

at night, I had a hard time sleeping because I would just have this rumination, this obsessive thinking, which I write about in my book is normal. It's a part of the herpic process for many people. It's like where our minds are just trying to make sense of everything. And so I would look back and I would see, like, I remember, I remember one night I had a, I had a really intense nightmare and it was that he and the primary woman that he was sleeping with, the nightmare was that they were sleeping together. So a part of me knew, and I woke up in the morning and I told him about this dream and he just flat out denied it and was trying to like console me about the dream. But me looking back at that moment and seeing ways that my father was always right. My father was always the one, I love my father, you know, but it's like, there's a certain dynamic

in our household where, you know, he, he was in charge. He, he had the power. knew more than i did and just seeing the ways that then that translated to my present life as an adult woman and the damage that that was doing when i wasn't standing in my own power yeah and putting my truth above anyone else's yeah and we can see why this happens inside of patriarchy too right completely schooled in it completely yeah these are deep you know going back to what we're saying the beginning like these are deep wounds of the feminine yeah yeah there's a bigger question too I have around this, around betrayal really. And there's healing our own connection to ourselves and our inner voice, but then there's been something for me about healing my connection to life itself and feeling betrayed by life itself. And I don't know if it was in the book or the conversation I listened to where I think he said

something like what kind of God would put me through this heartbreak which feels like a really brilliant sort of koan to sit with you know that's an unanswerable question um but yeah I'd love to hear you speak about your process of yeah your relationship with life or just trusting life again. You know, using life there in place of the word God or goddess or whatever, you know, word people have for that, which is bigger than us. is zooming out and getting a broader perspective because we our perspective is so small and so limited and when we look at when we can see from more of like the perspective of eternity and the soul's journey who knows yeah who knows and so we can have this idea like in this, you know, in Sarah, in her life, it should look this way, but it's like in the perspective of my soul's journey. Like, I feel like that's so much bigger than this one lifetime that I'm in.

It's like just a much broader canvas to paint on. And so one of the things that helped me with that, and I share a story in the book about doing an MDMA therapeutic session, I think something like that, like a therapeutic psychedelic session, one of the things that is so powerful about that is it just helps us to see the bigger picture. And when we're in trauma, when we're in heartbreak, things get so small. That's one of the things that we need for survival. And when we're in the fight or flight response, our senses are very focused just on the present moment. And we, we lose perspective of the larger environment. And so something like psychedelics, when they're done in a safe, supported space

can help us to see the bigger picture. And for me, that's what helps me to trust again. And just to see like, oh yeah, this is, this is part of my soul's journey. And these are things that are helping me to evolve and that are ultimately aligned with my Sarah's values. Like I want to be more whole. I want to be more compassionate. I want to be of service to people. I want to be of service, more of service to people. I want to be more present. And I can see that all of these things, all of these experiences are helping me to do that. And it's a very personalized curriculum for my unique unfolding. When I can get out of the judgment, like this shouldn't be happening.

I did something wrong yes yeah I must have really messed up if this is what my life looks like yeah the shame the shame that can crowd in yeah and the self-hatred yeah and then like it does get very small when we're cramped up with those emotions yeah yeah there was a sentence I loved in the book which was reframing your darkest hours as sacred doorways which feels like a really deep and beautiful antidote to like there's always a silver lining that's not what you're saying really it's that yeah there's a sacredness to this experience and it's something that alexandra talks about who's one of the co-founders of red school alexandra and shani in their book they speak about menopause well the whole menstrual cycle too but menopause as a sacred spiritual initiation into our fullest selves but it's a death and rebirth process and the death part of a death

and rebirth process feels like death you're not inside the death, the dying, going, oh, this is fine because I know I'll be reborn again. You're not. You're not. You're inside the dying. And it's necessary and it's sacred. And the honoring of that sacred shit is vital. The dignifying of it instead of the brushing it away numbing it trying to fix it it's the honoring of it is what can support the us to transmute it and find the gold right yeah and it you know it happens incrementally if we're not gonna we're not gonna feel that when we're dying you know or like when we're really in

the intensity of it but like it happens over time the more space that we have from it and the more we get on solid ground again then we can kind of reflect back and make meaning from it and just again like start to see things from a bigger perspective because we have that support of hindsight. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Sarah.

Well, what are you up to now? And how can our listeners connect with you and connect with the book? And yeah. Sure. Well, the best way to connect with me is through my website, which is my name sarah von stover.com and there there's links to the book the book can be ordered just anywhere that

books are sold i also have a podcast called herself and a good place to connect with me is on instagram at sarah von stover and i am in the early stages of bringing a new body of work forward into the world around the sorceress. And I feel like it's an archetype that we need for these times of really drawing together masculine and feminine, human and divine, and exploring a fuller spectrum of our power as women here on the planet at this time. And so I work primarily now with spiritual women entrepreneurs, like healers, coaches, therapists, creatives, and helping to embody this archetype and doing the inner alchemy and also the outer tactical things needed to bring our gifts and brilliance into the world.

Very exciting. Very exciting. Good luck with all of that. And thank you again. Thank you again for your generosity and your, yeah, for this gift that you've given to us all with this book. Thank you so much. It's my pleasure and my honor. And thank you for having me us today thank you for giving a precious hour of your life to this conversation i hope it supports you to see your own darkest hours of your life as sacred doorways as always i'd love to hear how this landed for you you can write to me at sophie at red school.net please share anyone that you'd love us to be talking with, to be interviewing.

And if there's someone that you know who's currently experiencing negotiating heartbreak of any kind, please do forward this conversation to them. Okay, that's it for this week. Again, thank you for being with me and I'll be with you again next week. Until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm. week again thank you for being with me and i'll be with you again next week until then

keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm