Welcome. I am so glad that you’re here. I’m excited. I am excited that it’s spring. We just passed the equinox. We’re kind of getting into the second quarter of the year. We’re, yeah, how are things for you? I want to just check in. What are your wins? What’s been hard? Something I do a lot with my clients is just always check in to see.

What is happening for them? And These are so powerful these little check ins. So I’m gonna give you one right now. Just check in with yourself How have you been feeling? How’s your body? How’s your mind? How’s your heart? How is your grief? What’s new with you? Come on over Instagram if you want to chat and DM me As I cannot hear your answers, but I, what’s really important is that you hear your own answers and that you check in with yourself.

If you want someone to check in with you, if you want to be able to talk back and forth with me, You got to come sign up for coaching. Uh, if you go on my website, smoothstonescoaching. com, you will see a big get support button and it’s going to explain all the programs I have, and you can come to a connection call.

It’s really easy. And I say fun. I mean, we’re talking about grief. Sometimes we’re talking about life, but. It’s really an experience that you don’t want to miss because I’m just here to take care of you, help you feel comfortable and supported in a way that you may have never felt supported before.

Because I get it. And I’ve been doing this a long time and I’m just going to say it. I’m really good at it. So if you’ve been looking for expert support and if you’ve been resonating with this podcast, take it to the next level. Come and talk to me for coaching. I am really excited about today’s topic.

And when I was thinking about what I want to talk about, a lot of times I pull from my clients. I pull from my life. I pull from things I see just on social media, different struggles that people are having. And this one has really been something that I have been working on personally. For quite a while because Even taking the leap to go to coach training and to start a business That was a lot for me.

I’d always identified as a mother first and always like a mother a wife and I had these roles and I had these responsibilities and so Spending money on myself to get some training was a leap, um, spending time choosing to do something that, you know, felt a little out of character. I never thought I would be an entrepreneur, but here I am and I absolutely love it.

But I would say that I have been on this journey for, for a really long time. I think all of us are, and I was listening to someone speak and I wish I had their name, but it was just something I saw online. Um, but they were talking about parenting and they were talking about listening to your children.

And when they come to you with something that’s going on, that you would, Thank them for being there. Thank them for sharing with you. Right. Even if it’s in a big emotional way, um, that you would really validate their experience. And she had like these three things. And if, if I was on the ball, I would, I wanted to write them down.

But basically the, the idea was that so many times as children We basically get told that our feelings aren’t valid or we shouldn’t trust our own feelings. For example, if your kid comes up and is throwing a complete fit because, um, let’s see, let me pick one from my life recently. I think my boys were, were fighting over a video game, right?

And the one, one little boy was not doing what the other one wanted to. And so he’s screaming at the top of his lungs. Now, usually what we say is, hey, it’s not that big a deal. Like, calm down. You don’t need to react this way. Um, Basically, you shouldn’t be feeling anything this much. You shouldn’t be reacting this much.

And that’s not to say we should just let our kids behave however they want. Like, I need to address the yelling, or like if it gets physical, of course we’re going to address it. But notice how children, teenagers, even us as adults, a lot of times we would be told You don’t know yourself. You don’t know your own feelings.

You don’t understand and you’re wrong. And so we get that message as children. We get that message as young women. Um, we get the message that like, there’s something wrong with us. If we’re emotional, if we lead with our heart, right? That it’s better to lead with our heads. And. This is because we live in a patriarchal society, like the way men do it is the gold standard, the way women do it is, you know, a little suspect.

And so we have this kind of working against us when we want to follow our heart. Like, what does that even mean? A lot of us, we have to start in a place where it’s like, I don’t even know. how to listen to my heart. I don’t know how to follow my heart. Um, so it can feel really scary, right? It almost is anxiety inducing because our brain hates the unknown.

So if I say to you, hey friend, follow your heart. You’d be like, I don’t know what that means. I don’t know how to do that. That sounds scary. I don’t think I’m going to do that, right? I’m going to write a pros and cons list instead, which I’m a big fan of pros and cons lists. But they don’t always get us what we need.

And I’ve seen this so many times when people are stuck. So here’s my first question. Do you know how your heart speaks to you? And this is very individual. So here’s another obstacle that you might have. Maybe you hear stories and you see people and you’re inspired. You see someone who really follows their heart and goes for their dreams and follows their passion, right?

That’s the thing now, like follow your passion. Um, and you see it, but you’re like, I just, I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to listen to my heart. So, but think about it. And if you want to pause this or take a moment after we’re done talking about it and just give yourself some quiet or go get moving or turn on some music that isn’t like super distracting.

I love a little like background, that meditation music with the water, like a stream and forest birds chirping that helps me think. But, Answer the question, how does your heart speak to you? Think of any times in your life where this has happened. There should be at least one powerful moment where you can say, yes, this is when I know my heart was speaking to me.

Because a lot of times what happens is our head has an idea. Our head has all the, like the lists and the, and everything, right? All the facts and the data and our heart wants something different. Yeah. And it doesn’t make any sense, but we follow our heart. So what was that like for you? Uh, a lot of times we’re like, well, what is my heart?

Like it’s an organ, it’s in my chest. I don’t really know what, what it really means. Is it a part of my brain really? Is it the Holy Spirit? Like if you are religious, a lot of us feel like God speaks to us and that can feel really similar to following our heart and it can get a little bit murky. So what I think it is, is It’s really just the core of who you are when you strip away all of the noise and the fears and the the programming that we all have been given and it’s pure and it’s strong because I think our heart is strong, really, it doesn’t matter what we call it.

If we call it the Holy Ghost, if we call it our inner knowing, if we call it our heart. It’s just the core essence of who you are as a person. When it speaks, we can listen. And that is a beautiful, beautiful thing. Because a lot of times when we talk about hearts, it’s We’re also talking about love and love is like the best emotion.

It is our best guide because again, lots of times in life, we’re making decisions out of scarcity. We’re making decisions out of fear. We’re making decisions out of some childhood trauma that we’ve experienced. We’re making decisions. because we think we have to do things a certain way. But none of that is true.

It’s never true. We just believe it. And so we do it. And then when we don’t feel how we want to feel, we’re like, what’s wrong with me? Like, why is, why do I have all these things in my life? But inside something’s missing. It might be because you’re not coming from that place, and that’s okay. We want to give ourselves extra love because again, we have all these reasons we don’t listen to our heart.

It makes perfect sense. And at the same time, we do have the opportunity to start listening to our heart more. In the Bible, there’s a quote that a lot of people say, which is in John 4, 18, there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. And that’s true when we love ourselves, when we love the people around us, when we let love guide us, um, we don’t need to be afraid when we let that That deep core part of us guide us.

We don’t need to be afraid. And so if we were putting this into a self coaching model, if you’re not familiar with that, go way back to the beginning of the podcast. There’s an episode called how to coach yourself, where I explain the model, but basically we have circumstance, which is the things that happen in our lives.

We have our thoughts about them. Then we have our feelings. Our feelings. drive our actions and our actions create our results in our life. So if we are coming from a place of love, our actions are going to be different. Our results are going to be different, right? We are going to have a much nicer experience, um, in our lives.

And I think that’s really important. Again, I’m just going to be on my soapbox a little bit today. Okay. Especially for women who are listening, like we are so many times told that we should not listen to our heart, but that is who we are. That’s how, I’m not going to apologize. This, um, this is bringing up emotion for me because there’s been just a lot of things happening in my life right now, or like things around me.

Um, Where it’s like, there are so many powerful, strong women and we’re just told that the way we live our lives, the way we are, who we are, we want to lead with our heart. And it’s so amazing. And then we’re just told that we can’t and that we shouldn’t and that it’s bad. It’s not bad. It’s not wrong. And it’s safe.

It’s okay for you to lead that way. It’s okay for you to move through the world that way. And if nothing else, I would hope that you would give yourself a little bit of permission to listen and follow your own heart. Now, here’s a myth that I want to bust though, because sometimes there’s this other myth that goes along with this that says, If you follow your heart, it will never lead you astray.

Okay. That might be true, but let’s, let’s break it down a little bit more. Astray. It won’t lead you astray. In our minds, because we’ve been programmed that we’re supposed to be happy all the time and life is supposed to be good. And if you follow your heart, everything would be perfect, right? If you follow your passion, life will be easy.

If you, you know, like, This is also a story we have that actually doesn’t serve us because then sometimes, a lot of times, there is going to be pain. There are going to be challenges. There are going to be failures. So when we say, if you follow your heart, it will never lead you astray. What we’re really saying is, if you follow your heart, you’ll never have any of the negative emotions like the negative 50 percent of life that we know is

always going to be there. So yes, I believe the part your heart will never lead you astray, but I want you to just understand that astray doesn’t mean, um, like part of following your heart might be a lot of negative emotions and that is okay. If I keep using the example of starting a business, my gosh, I have.

Like it has taken a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of effort. I have had a lot of failures. I have had a lot of people say no to me. I have tried a lot of things and had them not work the way I thought they would. And all of that is part of it. That’s okay. That’s good. That’s what we want. Right? So expect that there’s always going to be challenge.

Even when you follow your heart. Um, so I wanted to talk about this. A few examples is, um, I don’t know if you watch the Taylor Swift concert movie. I wouldn’t say I’m a big fan. Big Swifty as in like way, way, way into it. Um, I mostly listened to her songs that are in the radio, but I have been around long enough that I have been watching her since she was very young.

My girls were fans and like, you know, we like Taylor Swift. We, we think she’s awesome and she’s smart and she’s kind. And she’s such a beautiful example of leading with your heart. And she has been so severely criticized for it. Right? Like. Who she picks to date, how long they stay together, how she treats her fans, how she, like, acts everywhere in her life, um, how she’s re recording all these tapes, you know, that was from her heart, that was her saying, like, I did this, I made this, and, I have put my heart and soul into this music and then for you to take it and sell it I’m not okay with it and and she just gets so much criticism And then she still does it though.

Like she still leads with her heart She still stays true to her core values and who she is deep down And she has such a good team around her who helps her to continue to do that and to be that person. And it, it doesn’t mean that she’s perfect. Right. But I just think it’s such a beautiful example. And I remember being in the theater.

Um, I took some of my, a couple of my daughters, um, the ones that wanted to go and we went to the theater and it wasn’t, it was quite a bit after it came out, so it wasn’t like packed with people and whatever, but I remember sitting in that theater. And just feeling like I try to be very in tune with the spirit, um, with my emotions.

And I just, I felt it was a spiritual experience because of love. And there’s people out there that honestly are like, Taylor Swift’s a witch. She’s, you know, made a deal with the devil. And, and it’s like, this is a reaction to strong, smart women leading with their heart. And I just, I saw all those people in there, uh, people who felt love, people who spent hours making friendship bracelets and costumes and came together it was like a beautiful stadium full of love and full of heart and full of acceptance and you could just be yourself there.

You could be safe there. You could just enjoy yourself fully for three and a half hours. And that is, I think, what keeps drawing people back. That is why people care so much. That’s why people are talking about it so much is because it’s like. She has taken her heart and expanded it to so many people. So I think it’s just such a beautiful thing to witness.

And even for my children to witness, they were kind of like, not huge Swifties, but when they got there, they’re like, Oh my goodness, this kind of is the soundtrack of my childhood. I do know all these songs and like, to just like, let go and sing. And just, again, it’s like, we don’t even. Sing along because people have told us, uh, that’s, you don’t want to do that.

That’s annoying. That’s not cool. That’s whatever. But it’s like to sit in a room where everyone could just sing and dance and be happy and enjoy it with no shame. It was so awesome. So she’s such a perfect example. And. I, I love her for that because this world needs that right now. There’s, there’s so many people who are not leading from their heart, who are making just horrible, painful decisions that affect so many people.

Um, I just think it’s such a little bright spot. And so, if you haven’t watched it, uh, it’s on Disney Go and get it.

Oh, but yeah, I’m going back to my notes while I get a little carried away here. Um, but yeah, she has followed her heart and it has not been without pain, failure, a criticism. But she does it anyway. That’s what I want for you. That’s what I want for all of us. And it’s the same with baby loss, right? If you follow your heart, maybe that leads you to trying again, and maybe that leads you to losing again.

And sometimes then we get really hard on ourselves. Like, I felt so strongly that I was supposed to be pregnant again, and I lost it again. And And it’s not fair. And why did I do that? Why did I do that? Why did I just put my heart out there just for it to be crushed again? I don’t know the answer to that question.

I don’t know that there’s going to ever be a good enough answer to that question, but don’t criticize yourself for following your heart. Don’t criticize yourself for putting it out there, right? It’s not weak. It’s strong. And it’s not easy. It’s hard sometimes. It’s, It’s hard because, again, we have all these obstacles to overcome to even listen to our heart.

If you have all these people around you saying you can’t do what your heart is saying after baby loss, I say you can do it. I know that someone is listening right now and they have something on their heart that they want and they’re afraid. Follow your heart. It will not be without pain. Or struggle or failure.

It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. It won’t be without criticism. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do it. You should do it. You should totally do it. I’m going to stop crying, but maybe not. Friends, check in with yourself. Um, yeah. Okay, so here’s what’s next. How do we do this? We want to know how.

Everyone wants to know how. Number one, you don’t have to know how. You just go for it. You figure it out along the way. But, if you want to know how, you have to practice. Listen. Anything you want to be good at, you have to practice. It’s not just a one and done. It’s going to be a lifelong practice because throughout our life and the seasons we go through and the ages we are and the circumstances, it’s going to be different how easy or hard or whatever it is to follow our heart.

Like I was talking about before, it’s easy to let your programming . Lead you remember all those messages we got as children as young women all of those things. They’re part of our brain they’re part of how we’ve developed and It’s the program that we’re running on default in the back of our minds.

So that’s easy And it’s fine. Like you can run on your default programming if you want to if you like it But if it conflicts with your heart Then you have some room to make some shifts. And this is the uncomfortable part. It’s like, you have to come up against what you believe about yourself, what you believe about your ability to follow your heart.

Maybe you have this dream and you’re like, but I don’t have enough money and I don’t have this and like my family doesn’t support me and I don’t have time, right? We have all these stories about why we can’t. Expect that to come up. Expect it to be uncomfortable. Expect that you’re going to have to push up against each one of these obstacles and overcome them.

But you can, you can, um, you have to believe in yourself. You have to believe that in this vast universe full of stars and moons and planets and beings like I totally believe there’s got to be like zillions of beings all around the universe. We are not alone, but you matter. Your heart matters. What your heart wants matters.

Your desires, they matter

truly, deeply. Believe me. Okay. Maybe you can’t see it yet for yourself, but that’s what I’m here for. That’s what I do. I want to show you that you absolutely matter so much.

What I want to say as I wrap up, Hopefully this pep talk that has got you going. I decided today I’m just going to have a few bullet points, a few notes, and just see where this takes me. Um, because I wanted to practice what I preach and just follow my heart. What’s on my heart right now is a whole lot of feminism.

And a whole lot of inspiration, you know, I, I think I’m going to do a whole nother episode on this, but I also just saw this sweetest little video that the Barbie movie produced and it’s about the dream gap. And it’s about how little girls are told from such a young age that they can’t really dream big, that even in 2024, like we still think.

That we can’t have what we want or we can’t be what we want to be because sometimes we don’t see it or we get all this messaging that tells us we can’t follow our hearts. Because there’s too many obstacles and we need to be realistic. But I don’t want that for you. I don’t want a dream gap and I don’t want the message because sometimes in the grief community we get this message that your baby died or your babies died or you are never gonna have living children and so you can’t really truly follow your heart because your heart wanted these babies and you can’t have them and so now you’re just stuck.

Forever until you die. I don’t want that for you. I don’t want there to be a baby loss dream gap for you. I want you to dream as big as you want to dream. I want you to dream and your dream could be anything. If your dream is to be a stay at home mom, do that and be confident in it. I have done that for a really long time and I love it.

And I love my reasons for doing it. So really it’s anything. It’s not about all of us needing to be president or go to Mars or whatever it is. Right? It’s really just about you feeling the freedom to follow your heart where it wants to lead you. And, and knowing that there’s going to be bumps and twists and turns all along the way.

And that doesn’t mean that anything has gone wrong. As I said before, you can call it whatever you want, whether it’s the spirit that’s speaking to you, whether it’s your inner knowing, whether it’s your heart, whether it’s some other, like whatever your belief system is, however you want to frame it, um, it doesn’t matter.

But when you let your heart lead, life is going to be a lot more enjoyable. Again, not because you’ll be happier, but because you’re going to be more you. more of your true self. You’re going to feel more grounded. You’re going to feel more confident. And honestly, I feel like because I have reached a certain age, um, I, I’ve, I’m in my early forties and I’ve gone through like my twenties, my thirties, I’ve had.

A lot of different seasons of my life. And right now I’m in a season where it’s like starting to feel really liberating to let go of a lot of the stories that have held me back. And my word of the year is speak. And I’m having a lot of fun with it. I’m having a lot of opportunities to speak. And so what I want to say to you as I wrap up is again, what you want matters.

And when you follow your heart. It’s just such a beautiful, powerful thing. Like imagine a world full of people who lead with their heart rather than with their fears or their default programming and really think of a world where the default programming becomes so much better, so much more loving, so much more supportive, so much more just like, let’s cheer for everyone.

There’s enough for everyone. We can all exist together in all our beautiful mosaic of differences and be happy. I mean, that is like heaven to me, right? That’s That’s What we’re trying to do and sometimes it’s really hard because we have these human brains and we have these fears and we have these challenges But let’s try to bring a bit more of heaven into our hearts so that we can create that world

That’s what I want to leave you with and I want to give you my love and I want you to know that My heart is here for all of you that the more People I meet The more stories I hear, the more my love grows. People ask a lot. How do you do it? Like, isn’t it just really draining to talk about baby loss all the time?

Isn’t it draining to talk about grief? And I always just say no, like, because I love it. And I love you. And I love hearing about your babies and your families and your dreams and your goals. And I love that. You know what? I’ve seen people in their deepest, deepest grief, and I’ve seen them just trudging along and trying so hard and being so crushed, and yet they keep going, and they keep going, and they keep learning, and they follow their heart, and they are just such an inspiration.

You are my inspiration. So, thank you for letting me, uh, put this all out there. And I just want to challenge you again, check in with yourself, listen to yourself. Take a moment. You deserve a moment. Isn’t it funny that we have to like convince ourselves to make a little bit of time to check in with ourselves, but do it.

Um, answer that question. How does my heart speak to me? Because it’s different for everyone. But once you know it, once you tune into that, Make a commitment to tune in a little bit more each day, just a little bit more, right, in small ways and in big ways. Little by little build that practice of tuning into your heart and trusting that it’s gonna be okay and trusting that if people push back that’s okay, too.

If people criticize you, if you fail, if it’s hard, All of that is okay. You still listen to your heart. You still be you. Be more of you because you are amazing and the world needs you. I love you. I’ll see you next time.