Rediscovering Joy Amidst Life's Challenges - episode 116

Can grief and joy coexist? Join us on Lift One Self as we navigate this profound question through the inspiring story of Allyson Hawkins Ward. We begin with a soothing guided meditation, grounding ourselves in mindfulness before diving into Allyson's transformative journey. From her challenging days as a newly divorced mother to rediscovering love and purpose, Allyson shares her evolution and career triumphs at IBM, shedding light on how she now guides others on their personal paths. The conversation takes an emotional turn as Alison opens up about the recent loss of her father and how she balances grief with daily joys, preserving his memory in meaningful ways.

Explore the emotional resilience required to honour loved ones while facing life's hardships. Allyson’s heartfelt anecdotes, like moments shared at football games with her father, underscore the significance of family legacy and the intricate dance between grief and celebration. Through personal stories, we reflect on the strength needed to navigate loss and the solace found in remembering shared experiences. This chapter promises a sincere look into coping mechanisms and the ways we can cherish the lives of those who have passed.

Finally, we tackle the delicate subject of caring for aging parents and the inevitable role reversal it brings. Hear firsthand about the challenges of maintaining their dignity while handling their resistance to dependence. I share my own journey of returning to the corporate world amidst personal losses and unexpected disappointments, emphasizing resilience and gratitude. Allyson offers invaluable advice on processing emotions, the necessity of radical honesty, and practical healing tools like energy healing and nervous system regulation. We conclude with a reflective exercise, encouraging you to trust the healing process. Don’t miss this empowering episode packed with insights and emotional growth.

Connecting with Allyson here:
allysonward.com

Remember, the strongest thing you can do for yourself is to ask for help.
Please help us grow by subscribing to and sharing the Lift OneSelf podcast with others.
The podcast intends to dissolve the stigmas around Mental Health and create healing spaces.
I appreciate you, the listener, for tuning in and my guest for sharing.

Our website
Https://.LiftOneself.com

Find more conversations on our Social Media pages
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Music by prazkhanal

Remember to be kind to yourself.

Always do your own research before taking action.

Remember, the strongest thing you can do for yourself is to ask for help.
Please help us grow by subscribing to and sharing the Lift OneSelf podcast with others.
The podcast intends to dissolve the stigmas around Mental Health and create healing spaces.
I appreciate you, the listener, for tuning in and my guest for sharing.

Our website
LiftOneself.com

Find more conversations on our Social Media pages
www.facebook.com/liftoneself
www.instagram.com/liftoneself

Music by prazkhanal

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Lift One Self podcast, where we break mental health stigmas through conversations. I'm your host, nat Nat, and we dive into topics about trauma and how it impacts the nervous system. Yet we don't just leave you there. We share insights and tools of self-care, meditation and growth that help you be curious about your own biology. Your presence matters. Please like and subscribe to our podcast. Help our community grow. Let's get into this. Oh, and please remember to be kind to yourself.

Speaker 2: 0:36

Welcome to the Lift One Self podcast. Alison, I'm so thankful you're here with me.

Speaker 2: 0:41

Likewise, I'm glad we found each other today. Yes, I know we're going to get into a deep dive and I'm looking forward to it Beforehand. Are you willing to come into a guided meditation with me? Yes, absolutely. And for the listeners, many of you listen to this while driving or using your visual, so please do not close your eyes. I want you to be safe and those around you to be safe.

Speaker 2: 1:07

Yet the other prompts that I bring Allison and myself into you're able to follow. So, allison, I'll ask you to get comfortable in your seating and you're going to gently close your eyes and you're going to begin breathing in and out through your nose and you're going to bring your awareness to watching your breath go in and out through your nose. You're not going to try and control your breath, you're just going to be aware of its rhythm. While staying focused with watching your breath go in and out, there may be some sensations or feelings that are coming up in the body. Allow them to come up. You're safe to feel. You're safe to let go. Surrender the need to control, release the need to resist and just be. Be with your breath, drop into your body, keep your awareness on your breath and at your own time and at your own pace, you're going to gently open your eyes while still staying with your breath. How's?

Speaker 3: 3:28

your heart doing it's good it feels reminds me I should meditate more, because it's just such a calming, centering experience.

Speaker 2: 3:36

That's why I bring it into the podcast, because I want to be more intentional with walking the walk with the listeners and not just giving advice of you should meditate, you should meditate. It's like come, let's, let's do it all together as a collective. Can you let the listeners know who Allison is?

Speaker 3: 4:01

well, I'm still trying to figure that out now. So I'm someone who's evolving. I I started life out or many years ago, um with as a newly divorced mom, you know, raising my two kids. Just recently lost my mom. Prior to that, and at that point in my life I got to a point where things were good, were not for great. That caused me to start thinking there's got to be more in life and wanting to show up as the so that they could have amazing lives, and that was my driver and everything which really caused me to start going on a journey of self-development, personal development, to figure out how to get to that space so I could show up that way. And so now, 20-some-odd years later, my girls are both grown up and are graduating university and around the world following their dreams.

Speaker 3: 5:08

And I met and married the love of my life. So I had a starter husband and I have a real husband. You know, I spent most of my career at IBM, leading large teams, and what I developed over the time with my skills is helping other people to kind of follow along the journey that I did. I'm a person who has many, many interests and I'm a generalist, so I'm good at a lot of things and I enjoy a lot of things, which is great and can sometimes be a challenge because I tend to dabble in a lot of things. But the things that I'm I'm really into, I'm very passionate about and I and I do dive deep into.

Speaker 2: 5:51

So I, if I don't know it's kind of hard to summarize myself sometimes- I think you did a really good job at it and, like you said, we're always evolving. So this is a version that you have right now. Come tomorrow there may be another version, and I think that's where, if we can be in that space of not just being static and we can allow ourselves to move and, you know, change the narrative every so often, change the story. What wakes you up in the morning?

Speaker 3: 6:23

What wakes me up? You know what? I'm one of those people I love the morning. I love the quiet and the solitude. I very rarely use the alarm, so I wake up in the morning, you know, just really happy to greet the day. That quiet me and my dog. You know, having a little time before my husband gets up, you know having a little time before my husband gets up, but really just kind of a joie de vivre, right, just kind of this joy for living. But I do, I love, I love that that time in the morning to myself and it's quiet and just getting centered for the day.

Speaker 2: 6:59

Yeah, Before we started recording the podcast, you had shared with me that your father transitioned just recently. Are you willing to share who your father was to you and what that process looked like and how you're navigating with grief? I know it's a very loaded question with different parts, yet it's a bit of a storytelling where I'm sure some of the listeners will be able to relate to it and want to hear what your journey looks like.

Speaker 3: 7:30

Yeah, now I'm happy to. So I mentioned before that my mom passed away more than 20 years ago and she and I were uber, uber close and my parents were divorced and I was fortunate enough to have a great relationship with both my parents, but with my mom not gone. Of course, that made an even closer relationship with my dad, because he was the only parent that I had and we talked every day. I mean, from the time I went to college, my father and I talked on the phone. Really, when I say every day, I mean of course we miss some days, but I would say largely, we talked every day and just about life, politics, movies. We enjoyed, whatever it was and about in June of 2022, I was at an event and in this event, the habit is to go around and say what's great and what could you need assistance with. I hadn't thought about what did I need assistance with and it occurred to me my father was showing up differently and I burst into tears, which I'm not a big crier but what I shared with the group was this is the beginning of the end and it could be 10 years, but I could see him showing up differently. You know, little memory losses little, just things where temper that I have never seen before Frustration, I think, is what it was and I made the decision really right then and there, to drop out of a lot of things that I do in my life that are kind of nice to have. So not my kind of day job, if you will, but any kind of extracurricular things I work for Tony Robbins, like at events, and I decided I'm not going to do any events, I'm just going to take that time off so I could spend time with my dad. He had a stroke a month later and fortunately he recovered from that largely. But it just was like you know what you were absolutely right with, what you were sensing right, because I am somebody who is really in tune and one of the things that I've learned that over my life is the relationships that are most important to me is putting emphasis on those right. I learned that a long time ago. You know people always say, oh, I didn't tell them. I love them, I didn't tell them. That's not my experience. I really emphasize and put my time and attention on those people, spend my resources with those people.

Speaker 3: 10:02

So over the next six months, you know, the calls became more frequent. Instead of a 30-minute call, we'd be on the phone for two hours. Sometimes, you know, we didn't live near, we'd live about four hours apart, but we did have more opportunities to see one another. I created those opportunities. I saw him every four to six weeks, those opportunities. I saw him every four to six weeks and the day that he actually, you know, had a second stroke, we had been on the phone in the morning, just, you know, it was like a week before Christmas and just chit-chatting about life and what movie we had seen, and you know, I was wrapping gifts and we were still making our Christmas plans, and a couple hours later my stepmom called to say that she came home, she just went out for an errand and they did have a massive stroke.

Speaker 3: 10:54

And one thing about me is that and this is not for everybody, but for me I like to be with the most important people in my life when they pass away, like I want to be in the room with them. I just feel that people shouldn't die by themselves and I had the incredible gift of being there when my mom passed away. I had a younger brother to pass away and the thing that first came to me was again, I didn't have any like oh, we didn't say this, we didn't know how I felt. He knew exactly, it was none of that. But I'm like I'm not going to be able to be there Because she says like it's imminent. So I, you know he's four hours away. But then she called me later to say well, we moved to a room, like moved to a room. I thought that he was, you know, essentially gone. So I like call my sister, we jump in the car, drive up the highway to go and spend that time with him. And it's funny how it worked out. I was the only person in the room with him when he passed away, because it was really for me that was really important.

Speaker 3: 11:56

So how I've dealt with the grief is, you know, it's it's, it's. The sorrow that I have is largely I dismiss him. You know I regularly am like, oh, I got to tell my dad this. Or oh, he would think this was so funny. Or those memories come up on your phone, right, the photograph that come up, and it's like, oh, man, remember we did this. But I have to say too, well, it's not that I'm not grieving, I am grieving because I miss him. He was a safety net in my life, like I didn't really need him to be there, but you kind of you always know your dad's there and like now he's not there, that I think that has been one of the hardest things, next to just missing his companionship at our conference, in our daily conversations. But I think again, because I was so, because I'm so intentional about how I invest my time, that I didn't have any of those kinds of regrets.

Speaker 2: 12:57

Do you feel his presence now?

Speaker 3: 13:02

Okay, so I do, because I always feel he's with me. The reason I laughed is that yesterday so I recently moved and I was talking to my sister on the phone and I was telling my sister we were in our family, there was nothing off limits, like everything is funny, you know, anything is funny and if somebody else heard it they'd be like you're wildly inappropriate. Okay, but I'm talking to my sister and at the time I was getting my hair together. I was getting my driver's license yesterday, so of course, I'm like getting my makeup in my hair, cause you want your picture to be perfect on your driver's license, right. So I'm doing that, having a conversation with my sister, and I made a comment which I won't share here. But I made a comment with my sister that I was like, oh, my father would not be happy about that and it was like a funny thing, right. So my sister and I were kind of like, yeah, dad's going to get you, you know, whatever, whatever. Because I have another thing where we were talking about my brother before and when my brother passed away, like a week later, I fell down the stairs and to this day I will tell you my brother pushed me down the stairs, right, just because it would be a funny, not to really hurt me, but you know, it was just kind of like how we would interact with one another.

Speaker 3: 14:12

So I say that and then I leave to go to the MVA to get my you know, my license and my car registered. And when I tell you, the heavens opened and it poured rain like torrential downpour, so I throw on my Michigan cap, I throw my coat on, I go over there, I get to the appointment, I sit down and it's now time to take my picture. And when I tell you this picture was unbelievably bad. I look like a heroin addict. I mean it was like like you know, hairs like this. And it was not. I mean not, not that it was so, it was, it was, it was just called it was so bad. And I'm like, see right there, see, okay, playing games dad. You know I'm like so, so anyway, so I do, uh, unfortunately.

Speaker 3: 15:09

Actually I should finish that story, unfortunately, and say that the woman took pity on me because it was just like we. You know, people always talk about how bad your picture is at the right. This was really, this had to be in, like the, the top worst pictures she could ever see. And she said I'm gonna let you do one more picture, as I'm, you know, kind of smoothing down my hair with my hands, finger combing and trying to get it together. But anyway, I do Usually not in that way, but you know it's like he. He lives in my children. He lives in me in the way I approach finances or the way, just the way, I think about things. I know that.

Speaker 2: 15:46

You know I'm absolutely his legacy, or the way, just the way I think about things. I know that. You know I'm absolutely his legacy. Yeah, thank you for sharing that story and the laughter and having him in this conversation so that you're sharing him with us and he could be in the energy field of that storytelling and really understanding his character and how the relationship was. You know, grief is um. At first it's very prickly, yet the edge comes off, but it still has its dense moments and it's prickly moments, um, to navigate through. And, as you said, you know, your mother transitions, uh, two decades before, and then your little brother. So you've been navigating with grief. I just want to hold space for that and say thank you for being vulnerable and sharing that, because I'm sure some listener can relate to it and it brings them some solace that oh okay, it's not only me and you know, find the ways that you can still find the glimmer of joy in the loss.

Speaker 3: 16:49

Yeah, absolutely, and you're welcome. Yeah, no, it's, it's um. You know, my belief is that nothing has any meaning except the meaning you kept it and, um, I have trained myself over time to really look for what's great about it. And I will say this about my dad. You know, of course I would much prefer he'd be here with me today and at the same time, he was never so sick that he was suffering. You know, he became more limited before he passed away, but he never suffered. He was never in a state of not being in control of his body or not being in control of his mind, and I feel really grateful for that.

Speaker 2: 17:31

Yeah, yeah, that's a very I think it's a beautiful way to transition, because when you have illnesses and you're not having access to your function, and then that sense of helplessness and having to depend and especially for a man, that really takes away from their pride and their dignity as a human being, it's, it's, it's a real sense of helplessness.

Speaker 3: 17:59

Actually I just want to share something, cause when you said that you made me thought, you made me think of something else. About a year and a half before he passed away, we met at the university of pennsylvania to go watch a football game that my niece's boyfriend was playing in, and he came late and uh, because we know we came from different places and we that's kind of in the middle for us, and uh, when he came in, I kind of jumped up to run down to say you know, here, we're sitting over here. And as we walked up, I was walking in front of my dad but going up the stairs because at this point he was still a little shaky on the stairs and I was going to let him go before me. And he's like no, allison, you go. And so we did that. I sat down and I came back down because he wanted something to eat or drink or something.

Speaker 3: 18:53

And as I was going down, the fellow who was like the ticket taker, security guy's, older fellow and he says now, you know you should let your father walk ahead of you, because he could see he was a little unsteady and I was like you think that he was going to let me walk behind him. He takes care of me like he would never have allowed that. So when you said that, I was just thinking about that experience and there's no way he would have allowed me to walk behind him, as if he needed me Right To care for him. Absolutely not, right. Yeah, you just reminded me about. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 19:29

And those are the things that you know. Know it can be very challenging because when our parents get older, it's like, okay, well, it's almost like the reverse has to come, that we're to take care of them, but it can be really challenging and they get very irritated and angry because they're like I don't want to lose my independence and I don't like this has been my responsibility the whole time. I don't know how to surrender to allow somebody else to take care of me and it's it's difficult to navigate through all that. Yeah, and still want to respect and honor them of their dignity. You shared another thing with me that is actually in live time right now and that's, you know, having to navigate through disappointment. Are you willing to share with the listeners what this is right now for you and how you're pivoting and the power of choice, how you're choosing to show up in the moment?

Speaker 3: 20:24

Yeah, no, absolutely, and I hope that it does help somebody else. So I mentioned before I'm in transition and when my dad became ill, I, you know, pulled out of everything. So, as a result, my kind of corporate side of my business, where I go in and serve in leadership groups and facilitation and and those type of things strategy development, all that Really, I stopped doing any business development. I only serviced the current work that I had. So, of course, a year later right, my business is off, and so it really was great about that is that I started to really evaluate what is most important to me. What do I want to do? Right, I know the work that I do with women I love and that's separate and I love that. It's not my full-time gig, though. So what's my full-time thing in terms of this kind of corporate work I've been doing? And, as I really thought about it, I came up with something and I'm going to share with you kind of, when I have a process I do in the morning and I review all the things, what are the choices that I'm consciously making in life, and one of them is working in a mission-based organization, bringing my unique genius to a confident, collaborative team creating magical solutions, and when I wrote that, I didn't really know what it meant, but a couple of people I know I've kind of shared that with and, kind of out of the blue, someone says to me hey, I know about this job opportunity so I think you'd really be great for and you know, I left IBM seven years ago after spending 20 years there, and I wasn't necessarily certain that I was going to go back and get a job, but that certainly is an option versus building up my business.

Speaker 3: 22:04

Again, I looked at the organization and I saw their mission, which I felt very tied to, which is helping people to improve their income. You know, through some additional, you know work people who haven't been to college, and I was like, wow, that really aligns with me. And so I decided okay, I'm going to write my resume and cover letter and apply for the job. I went to look, noticed that I had a friend who is, you know, in LinkedIn, who knew somebody there, and so I got her engaged. Turns out, she knew a lot about the organization and I was incredibly pleasantly surprised and truly grateful because over the last two days, she really invested a lot of time and energy in helping me to get a great resume and really great cover letter, and the one thing about having worked at IBM for 20 years is that, while I have a ton of experience, I haven't interviewed for a job in forever and my my resume demonstrated that like I didn't know what I was doing right. So we worked together and she really, really helped me and I really I remember crawling into bed last night and saying to my husband like I am truly grateful because I didn't expect her to expend this much time and energy with me.

Speaker 3: 23:27

It's something that I do a lot, particularly in my work with Tony Robbins and with events. I'm helping people all the time and that's what I do, but I don't have people show up in my life. I don't think most people have people to show up in their lives, frankly, and I have a lot of great friends who help me, but someone who is not like my best friend right, just somebody who I know more casually, and I just I did. I really was kind of almost moved to tears that I felt that this is really such a gift that she had given me. So I get up this morning early in the morning, I integrate all of the feedback she's given me, send it back to her for another quick round. She's got some other great distinctions and I'm like, oh great, I incorporate all of them.

Speaker 3: 24:05

I sit down today at like about one o'clock to now do my formal application and the job is gone and I was like what, oh my gosh? I went from kind of first like shock to upset to you know, like just thinking like what am I going to make this mean Right? What am I going to say like I mean 100% frustrated, no question about it, because here I had invested all this time and energy and really crafting what was great and also thinking this is a really great fit for me. There are so many things that aligned skills that I have, also with the passion for something. It's just really I thought this is the job for me. If I'm going to take a job, this is the job Right. This is the job for me If I'm going to take a job, this is the job right.

Speaker 3: 25:11

So, but what I realized too, kind of what I'm grateful for now, is that it wasn't the deep depth of despair, it wasn't that I didn't go there you know I'm still in my emotions about it because I really was like thinking this is the right fit. But I am grateful too because I really was like thinking this is the right fit. But I am grateful too because I know how much work I've done on myself. So it's not that like, let me get the Haagen-Dazs out and drown my sorrows in Haagen-Dazs or, you know, a bottle of wine or whatever it is and I'm not saying people should need ice cream or drink wine, that's not my point. But you know we don't want to get kind of get stuck in that place and feeling that's our only respite, um, and so I really, um, I. There's another opportunity for me to be grateful, to say I've done so much work on myself that I can see that I'm not in that place even though I'm still feeling.

Speaker 3: 25:56

I'm still allowing myself the grace of feeling frustrated and disappointment um disappointment and surprise.

Speaker 2: 26:04

And you're here on a podcast with a complete stranger being vulnerable and sharing and offering you know tools to other listeners. So it shows your character and your integrity and your commitment to yourself. Thank you for that, because the energy that you're bringing into this conversation if I wouldn't have brought it up, I'm sure many of the listeners would have no idea. Thank you for that simultaneously within us and it's not ignoring any of them, it's keeping a wholeness with the w and just okay, how are we going to move with this? And, like you said, what meaning are you going to give it? Um, I did a podcast, um, I think it was like two days ago, and I had said, like you know, some things don't have meaning in life.

Speaker 2: 26:59

Like I, I know, you know spirituality and positivity want to say like everything has a meaning and I'm like my friend whose son was murdered. I'm going to tell her that there's meaning in that. I was like you know how harmful and cruel that is. It's like you know, or somebody that a child that was sexually molested, or you know that there was meaning in that. So it's like, no, you have this shit that you have to process and then you make the decision what am I going to show up as? What am I going to do with what I have right now? And that's the alchemy. Yet it's not meaning, and it's you make your own meaning. Yet the outside world, I think, at times wants to put meaning because they don't know how to hold space for those big emotions, I agree, and those dense emotions.

Speaker 3: 27:50

I agree. Anyway, I think I think the two examples you gave are really such great examples, not because it's not, it's not that bad things don't happen. They do happen, happen and you know, um, those are two horrible examples that you gave, but we all have things that happen to us, often on a daily basis, and I think the you know, the, the, the maturation or the gift or the thing opportunity we have to grow and step into is figuring out how we're going to let that affect us and is it going to be our story for the rest of our lives of this horrible thing that happened. And I think that's the, the opportunity that that people have yeah, of the power of choice.

Speaker 2: 28:38

Yet it takes a lot of personal development to be able to face yourself and recognize you always have choices. How are you going to choose to show up? Are you going to allow yourself to process these emotions and then get back up and pivot yourself? Yet that takes being able to understand your biology, understand your nervous system, understand that there's big emotions that you have to allow yourself to interact with so that they don't keep you stuck. And it's you know, like you said, it's, it's not.

Speaker 2: 29:11

I always want to be sure that when I'm speaking to the listeners, especially if this is a beginner person, just because we have developed tools, it's like I was there at one time and I still could falter and end up. If some big life event like I have children, if any of them pass away before me, I don't know how I'm going to show up. I know all the tools, yet we don't know until there's life experiences and, like you said, I get to reflect of seeing my growth, like I could choose all these other coping mechanisms to kind of numb what I'm feeling. But I'm actually facing it head on and still facing the pain and going through it and going through it, because I know that there's resilience and there's learning in this and it's for my better good, even though, it, you know, everybody wants this resilience where it's like, well, you got to go through the pain. Even though, it, you know, everybody wants this resilience where it's like, well, you got to go through the pain, Right.

Speaker 3: 30:04

Everybody wants to resilience without going through the pain. Like can I just get this thing?

Speaker 2: 30:11

It doesn't work like that and I'm like, and what people also do which I did and now I can give language is that I would avoid the pain, gather all kinds of suffering, end up at the same place, that you have to go through the pain, but then you have all this suffering trying to go through this door and it's just really difficult to get through it now.

Speaker 2: 30:31

Yet you still have to go through it to be able to gather the experience and the knowledge and again keep yourself as a whole, as a W, and it takes, like I you know the work that I do with energy healing and helping people understand their biology, regulate their nervous system, and you need safety for that. And the other part of healing is radical honesty. Be honest with yourself and the way you did that process, you, you know, went through the roller coaster of all kinds of different emotions and then faced yourself and said like, okay, what are we going to do with this? Like I validate this, yet how are we going to pivot and what is the choice that we're going to make? So I think you know thank you for that real-time lesson that it's like raw and here you are, a live event, but you can hear it in your relatability and your frequency.

Speaker 3: 31:23

Yeah, thank you. You know. It's funny. Actually, when you just said something, it made me think of one other thing I wanted to share when I remember some time ago, somebody said to me oh you know, Alison, I have these problems. You just don't have these things. You just don't Like it's like it's not the same for you have these things. You just don't like it's like it's not the same for you.

Speaker 3: 31:48

And what she didn't know, I had two really horrible things like had just gone through, one of them being my cousin. Like a cousin of mine was murdered. Okay, like big, major things. These were not small things. I had another, you know, having to do with my girls and their. But it's not that I don't go through those things. I do have those horrible experiences and I have done the work right to figure out a way for me to process those things and not kind of bring that everywhere, not to stay in that suffering state. I'm bringing that everywhere I go. That's the difference. It's not that I don't have them, it's not that you don't have them. You've just developed a set of tools that allows you to process the information differently and your grief and you know, whatever it is, you're feeling very differently than most people do, and it's such a gift, because now you can help other people and, uh, and you can also not be in that place of sorrow and suffering indefinitely I want to.

Speaker 2: 32:56

I want to bring you into a reflective question. I want to ask you to bring this awareness right now and to go back to your 18 year old self. Okay, and you have three words to tell your 18 year old self, to carry you to the journey of right now. What would those three words be?

Speaker 3: 33:16

Trust, Trust in yourself, trust the process. I think that's what I think that's what we just just trust the process right or everything's going to be okay. Yeah, Trust the process.

Speaker 2: 33:39

Well, now I know the listeners. After hearing all of this they're going to be like where can I find?

Speaker 3: 33:53

Alison and what does she have and what are the services? So could you let the listeners know more about what you have to offer and where they can find you is? I'm very active on Instagram and, in addition to dispensing all types of you know, ideas and help for people, I dance there with my daughter, so you can come over and see me dance, and it's just my name, alison Ward, on Instagram A-L-L-Y-S-O-N. Ward and when you see a big dance video then you'll know you're in the right place. But no, really, what's really? There is a lot of ideas and strategies that people can use for empowerment, right? So I would say that's the first thing, and then the other thing I would say is kind of in line with what we were talking about today.

Speaker 3: 34:37

I developed after working with a bunch of for myself, developed myself and I'm working with a bunch of my clients. I have a kind of planning the next 12 months, planning your ideal year program that I created, and what's great about it is it's a little bit different than maybe other planning programs people have done, and it doesn't matter if you're hearing this in January or February or April, it doesn't matter when. You can still decide to choose and be intentional about your next 12 months, and what makes it a little bit different is part of kind of some of these things you've heard before, but what makes it different is one of the things I talk about is how you invest your time and with whom you invest your time. It's the last step of the process and I know how much that's helped me because, again, I don't have to while I miss my dad. I don't have any of the like oh man, I should have done this Because when you go through this process and you really start to focus in on how you're going to spend your time and with whom you're going to spend your time, it makes all the difference.

Speaker 3: 35:38

And I do have a, so it's not expensive. It's like I don't know, like a hundred bucks. It's not expensive. But I also have a discount code for your listeners and if they just type in the word podcast when they go to pay, they can get $20 off of the of the program. But that's that's been very impactful from from what I hear other people do who've done the program. So that's the kind of the best way and that's on my website at allisonwardcom A-L-L-Y-S-O-N? Ward, w-a-r-dcom, and just work with Allison and I have coaching and other things there as well. But that program based upon what we've been talking, I think is most in line what we've been talking about now.

Speaker 2: 36:16

Yeah, and for the listeners, I'll have all of the links in the show notes, so she's going to be very clickable and very reachable and I will put that code in there too. As you heard from her own personal story, she's one that walks her talk. Know, push away all the things that she had lined up, like working with Tony Robinson, like doing these events and then choosing no, I'm going to choose to be with my father. You actually are a lived experience of it, not just in theory or telling people what is really good like. You have the lived practice of it and you also know the difficulty of making those decisions also. Yet you understand the benefit of it, of that, what you are living with and being more intentional.

Speaker 2: 37:10

So this course comes from practicality and lived experience, being able to relate to the student that is taking it. So I highly recommend that, if anything in this podcast gave you any insights or aha moments, please reach out to Alison and gather the information. She's done a lot of alchemy, she's taken those impurities and she's turned it into gold to share with other people. And you heard the vulnerability in this conversation today and actually a live experience that she's just is processing right now in real time. So we got to be, you know, sitting there with her and her allowing us to be in that vulnerability with her. You don't get many people that are that authentic and transparent in life. So thank you so much for this enriching conversation, alison. I greatly appreciate it.

Speaker 3: 38:08

Thank you, nat. Nat, I've enjoyed the conversation and I appreciate you creating this space to do that.

Speaker 2: 38:15

Please remember to be kind to yourself. Always good advice. Hey, you made it all the way here. Always good advice. It possibly may not be them that will benefit.

Speaker 1: 38:41

It's that they know somebody that will benefit from listening to this conversation. So please take action and share out the podcast.

Speaker 2: 38:50

You can find us on social media, on Facebook.

Speaker 1: 38:54

Instagram and TikTok under Lift One Self.

Speaker 2: 38:58

And if you want to inquire about the work that I do and the services that I provide to people come over on my website, come into a discovery, call liftoneselfcom.

Speaker 1: 39:11

Until next time, please remember to be kind and gentle with yourself. You matter.