S2 E12: Transforming Pain into Purpose with Deb Driscoll of Big Life Magic
Dec 20, 2023
In the stirring season finale of "The Crazy Ex-Wives Club," host Erica Bennett and guest Deb Driscoll delve into the depths of heart healing post-divorce. Deb shares her transformative journey through grief after her son's death, introducing her "big life loss to big life magic" healing framework.
Join us as we explore the nuances of grief, the evolution of desires, and the power of self-trust.
Erica shores up the season with an invitation to The Crazy Ex-Wives Club Cohort," a personalized space for your post-divorce healing.
Uniting personal trials with profound insights, this episode promises to leave listeners with a beacon of hope and the courage to embrace their individual healing paths.
Full Transcripts Below
Learn More About This Week's Guest Deb at Big Life Magic
DEBRA DRISCOLL. Author, Spiritual Teacher, Energy Guide, and the founder of BIG LIFE MAGIC
Debra's work in spiritual development and healing practices spans over twenty-five years. She takes great delight in activating magic in others. The foundation of her work is HEART REPAIR, stitching together the threads of your ENERGETIC HEART and its relationship to your SOUL. Using intuitive guidance, spiritual practice, and storytelling Debra helps people tap into their magic so they can heal, transform, and expand. She invites people into their own Big Life MAGIC.
Debra is the author of A Series of Surrender ~ A Memoir of Grief. In 2023, Debra is crafting her first oracle deck, Surrendering to Magic.
Transforming Pain into Purpose with Deb Driscoll of Big Life Magic FULL TRANSCRIPTS
Erica Bennett [00:00:00]:
Hey, guys. Welcome to another great episode of The Crazy Ex-Wives Club. In fact, today it's the season finale of season two. I have an amazing guest with us today, Deb from Big Life. Magic is all about heart-healing. So what a way to round out season two, where we've been working on your energy management than to talk about the business of the heart. Let's get started.
Erica Bennett [00:00:28]:
Welcome to The Crazy Ex-Wife's Club, a podcast dedicated to helping women navigate the emotional journey that is divorce. I'm your host, Erica. And if you're trying to figure out life after the big D, welcome to the club. Whether you're contemplating divorce or dealing with the aftermath or any of the many phases in between, The Club has got you covered. Each week, you'll hear stories from women who have been in your shoes. This isn't about spilling tea on divorce details. This is about giving you the tools to take control of your own healing journey. Listen in weekly for advice, tips, and tools to help you move through each stage of the process.
Erica Bennett [00:01:08]:
Hello, Deborah. Welcome to The Crazy Ex-Wives Club. I'm super excited to have you on today. How are you doing?
Deb Driscoll [00:01:15]:
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I'm super pleased to be here. I'm well. Thank you.
Erica Bennett [00:01:20]:
Yeah. Well, you guys, I first stumbled across Deborah in her work just earlier this month. In fact, I had the opportunity to join a big summit for divorced people. But I was listening to all the experts, and I immediately fell in love with Deborah's content because she spoke so much about the importance of healing the heart. And on top of that, she also is another little woo woo, but also behavior-based expert over here who believes that you truly can create magic in your life. That magic absolutely shows up for you when you do the work to open the heart, to be ready to listen, to move through all those pieces. So I'm super excited to just be on here and chat about the heart today.
Deb Driscoll [00:01:59]:
I love that. I love when people go to the heart of the matter and they say, let's talk about the heart. I'm like, yes, please. I am all about that.
Erica Bennett [00:02:09]:
Right? I mean, the heart guides us in everything we do, and yet we are so quick to shut it down. We are so quick to not listen to it. I know for me, that was one of the big post-divorce healings I had to do was forgiving myself for not listening to my heart, for kind of kicking it to the curb a lot.
Deb Driscoll [00:02:27]:
Yeah. And I think our hearts have their own narrative, like, in our lives, and they're going to go through a whole heap of different chapters and have different stories to tell us and lessons to share and times when we're expanding, times when it's breaking. It's an amazingly beautiful narrative. And a time, like you describe, where you're on the other side of a big change in that heart story. I let people know this is a really amazing opportunity to reconnect with your heart. Like, figure out, what is that relationship? What do I want in my heart space? It kind of gives you this place of almost like a new moon. It's like, oh, I'm allowed to start again.
Erica Bennett [00:03:14]:
Yeah. How would somebody do that? I know how I did it. I just kept looking at. Every time it hurt, I kept looking at it, and I kept asking myself, why? Right? And I kept digging in deeper, and I kept saying, okay, heart, I get you're hurting right now, okay, but what do you want? Oh, I wanted to be chosen, or I wanted attention. And then I'd ask myself again and I'd say, but why do you want that? What's really the root behind it that you're trying to soothe or trying to have? What need are you trying to have met?
Deb Driscoll [00:03:43]:
I mean, this is a layered, wonderful landscape of our hearts, right? And I think what happens in our healing spaces and in our heart spaces, and definitely in the magic spaces, because I work in the magic realm as well as in grief and heart repair, is that we do end up with a whole series of questions and forever in the seeking of. And so I kind of like to support people in. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with the question. But what about if we find that rather than being a question we have to answer, it can be actually a curiosity that can open more space for us. And when I say you have this opportunity to create a new relationship with your heart, is, the answer is not going to be the same it was three chapters ago in your story. Because your heart evolves and it changes. Like I say, our hearts break, but our souls bounce.
Deb Driscoll [00:04:43]:
So our connection to our heart in our earthbound lives is the heart is like the seat of the soul. It's where our soul self is anchored in our earthbound self, in this amazing ride here, here we are, earthbound, and by design, our hearts will break. It's not an accident. It's not that you did something wrong. It's not that it's happening to me and not the other person. Your heart is designed to break, and it breaks on purpose. So we're given the opportunity to put it back together, to be in that intimate relationship with our heart. Not with another, not with the world, not with our greater purpose, but in a relationship with your heart.
Deb Driscoll [00:05:28]:
Full stop.
Erica Bennett [00:05:31]:
And that's the part that's so hard, right? We so often run from it. Something painful comes up, like a divorce, like a loss. You're grieving something. And we could go down the rabbit hole of grief has so many layers, but just even in the big concept that grief is loss, it just hurts. It sucks to sit in those places. And it sucks to sit.
Erica Bennett [00:05:55]:
I remember for me, when my heart was in those severely broken places. I would have done anything to not have to sit in the realization of that pain. I kind of equated it to like a little tasmanian devil would get kicked up, right? And this monster would do anything and everything to try and run from it. Instead of sit with it and stay busy and to just avoid it. Because it felt so big.
Deb Driscoll [00:06:25]:
And it is big. It's your heart. That's why I take issue with, you got to feel your feelings and you've got to go through it. Yes, you absolutely do. But the issue I have with it is, where's the guidebook? So am I supposed to just sit there and feel my feelings? Because that's really painful. And at what point, for what purpose? Which is why I created the Big Life Loss to Big Life Magic framework. Because this is a part of the work that I do. So, yes, my business is big life magic, which, know, this is what we all want.
Deb Driscoll [00:07:05]:
We all want to actually bring whatever magic is to you into your life, which is around relationships, the work we're doing, the families we're building, the places we see, the way our hearts will expand. Like that is your big life magic. And again, by design, soul design, we will meet big life loss. And I say there's four of them. Four Ds of big life loss. There's death, divorce, diagnosis, or the dream that doesn't come true. And if you're living a full life and your heart is beating, then you're going to meet at least one of those ds. I mean, I've met more than one.
Erica Bennett [00:07:44]:
I've met more than one.
Deb Driscoll [00:07:46]:
Yes. Most people I meet have met more than one. And when we do meet a big life loss, it is this opportunity to be in a chapter of our heart where it's like, yeah, sure, maybe I'm not feeling the best, but it is fertile ground for getting into this intimate understanding of our hearts. And it's tricky territory. It's tricky territory because we're not taught to be there. We're taught to be up in our head. And when a loss, like a divorce happens, there's a whole heap of other feelings there. It's not only heartbreak, there's the grief, there's the guilt, there's the anger, there's the resentment.
Deb Driscoll [00:08:29]:
There's a lot going on. Therefore, the Big Life Loss to Big Life Magic framework is literally the steps to take. Where do I begin? And you begin with the loss. And the framework is so simple, it's literally L-O-S-S. Build a bridge. M-A-G-I-C. Like, there's steps for each of the letters. And healing is not a straight line.
Deb Driscoll [00:08:55]:
You may start at the l, move to the o, and then suddenly you're like, I'm not ready for the first s. I've got to go back to the L. That's okay, because at least you have the roadmap how to work through the loss more than I've been told to sit and feel my feelings. Maybe, shall I light a candle or something? It's like, I don't know if that's going to work.
Erica Bennett [00:09:18]:
Yeah, because there's nothing worse than getting stuck in that phase. It's almost like you're in a dark room, you have no idea where the door is, and you're being told to figure it out. And most of the ways that we're told to figure it out is logically on the therapist couch, talking through it, talking about what happened to us instead of feeling our way through it and not getting stuck in it.
Deb Driscoll [00:09:44]:
And what about creativity? What about movement? What about activations? So for me, I work in the healing and the magic realm, but I'm also a creative artist. I'm also a storyteller. And so all of that gets woven into my work. And this is also work that I have done myself. As I shared, I've met more than one D, but my biggest life loss to date in this life, and I'm imagining it, is going to be my biggest life loss this life was the unexpected death of my son, Sage Joseph, ten years ago. He was one month shy of turning eleven. He was not ill or sick at all.
Deb Driscoll [00:10:28]:
One morning I woke and he didn't. During the night, his heart had stopped and his spirit took flight. And I shifted in that moment from a single parent to a grieving mother. And that's where I was like, I don't know how to do this. But I was curious because I had been working in the healing realm for almost 20 years at that point. So I was like, I know a few things. What's possible for me, if I take this curiosity and I start to apply it to myself and my own journey, what will I find? And that was the beginning of my Big Life Loss to Big Life Magic journey was literally walking at myself and figuring out what's actually making a difference, what's feeling like I am on the pathway and moving forward, even if sometimes, some days I'm going sideways or shimming back a little bit. That's part of the healing journey, but finding the way through, because I was really committed to going through it.
Deb Driscoll [00:11:33]:
I was like, if I am going to be who I am in this life, which is an energy guide and a spiritual teacher, then I meet this with full heart, deep curiosity and in the belief that healing can and is occurring right now for me.
Erica Bennett [00:11:52]:
Yeah. And I think it's so similar in that I love the self exploration, the self help. Right.
Erica Bennett [00:11:59]:
The growth. I'm always looking for the growth and the transformation. And even with all of that passion that I love to constantly be evaluating myself, how could I do things differently, better? What new thing can I learn to be better in where I'm at? It still some days felt like that journey to getting out of this dark room was never ending. And so then I think about the people who don't love self help. People who don't love looking at the things, and then a big pain like this comes along and it can really leave you feeling so frozen and so stuck and unsure of what to do.
Deb Driscoll [00:12:34]:
Yeah. And I think, also unrecognized.
Erica Bennett [00:12:36]:
Yes.
Deb Driscoll [00:12:37]:
This is something that occurs to me often. Women will connect to me and then they'll say, it's been a year, or it's been two years. Why am I not happy yet? Like, it was my choice, or, I know deep down this is the right thing for me, but why am I not feeling better, Deb? And it's because the energetic heart, like the heart that has broken open, we've either just put a band aid on it and wish for the best or buried it or denied it or not even focused on it. And then we start to think it's, oh, I'm getting really anxious, or am I depressed or all of these other kind of self diagnosis, or we start to give ourselves a hard time that, shouldn't we be feeling different by now? Yes. And it's actually about, like, stop, pause, breathe, and be with the healing of your heart and with each step of it. Because it's not a one hit wonder.
Erica Bennett [00:13:44]:
No. That definitely surprised me because I was the one that finally was like, okay, it's been two years. I'm ready to file. I think we're done. I think I'm now lined up to what you told me two years ago. My heart's lined up to it. I had done the work. I had done the visualizing, right? And for a long time, I talked about, like, I would visualize at night before going to bed, being on the edge of a cliff. And was I ready to take the leap forward and soar and join the Eagles that were flying? Or was I too scared yet? And I would sit back down and for years I would sit back down, and when I finally decided I was ready to take the leap, and your heart's flooded and everything feels so amazing, and then I go and I file, and the divorce is final.
Erica Bennett [00:14:23]:
And then my heart finally really broke. And so it had been cracked open those whole two years, but I had taped that little thing together so tightly just to survive, right? To be able to make it through that I had created. I had avoided a lot of healings that now needed to come out of my body. And I was shocked at why was I crying? Why was I so sad? Why was I on the couch for a week, unable to get up? I asked for this and I wanted this. And it really caught me by surprise.
Deb Driscoll [00:14:56]:
Yeah.
Erica Bennett [00:15:00]:
Hey, guys, it's Erica. I want to personally invite you to join The Crazy Ex-Wives Club Cohort. This is a small group coaching program that I am thrilled to be leading. If you're a woman navigating the rocky waters of divorce, I know how challenging it can be, and it's why I created this program. I truly believe it can make a difference in your journey. Each week we'll meet for 60 minutes and I'll be right there with you, guiding you through the healing transformation of the three phases. From those uncertain moments in your marriage to the overwhelming after world of divorce, we're going to conquer it together. You'll learn how to line up to what you want.
Erica Bennett [00:15:38]:
You'll find yourself and you'll get your feet underneath you to thrive in your new world. And the group isn't just about coaching, it's about community. You'll have the chance to connect with others who understand what you're going through, and I'll be there to provide expert guidance and answer all of your questions. So if you're tired of feeling alone on the path, if you're ready to experience guided development, support and the warmth of a community that truly gets it, this is your invitation. Don't hesitate. Check out the details at the www.crazyexwiseclub.com and take that first step towards healing and thriving. I can't wait to meet you and be a part of your journey towards a brighter future. The Crazy Ex-Wives Club Cohort is your path to empowerment.
Erica Bennett [00:16:21]:
So what are you waiting for? I promise you won't regret it. You guys go check it out. And I can't wait to see you in the group.
Deb Driscoll [00:16:30]:
There is also, you know, the divine timing and the stages of when your heart steps forward and says, actually, it's my turn now. Because, like, when my son died, I don't know how long the shock lasted, but it wasn't days, it wasn't weeks, it was actually months where I thought I was actively grieving and I wasn't. I was coping. I was coping and I was waiting for the shockwaves to settle underneath my feet. And I was still trying to figure out, who am I in this life now? Am I still a mother? I don't know. I had a whole heap of questions and I was doing the best that I could traveling through that. But it was actually months later that the true grief came, where I started to do the deeper work with my heart. I think that happens for a lot of us.
Deb Driscoll [00:17:23]:
Like you said, whether it's a divorce and you're going through the details, there's the financial arrangements. If you have children, what's happening there? What's happening with the property, what's happening with everything, with a diagnosis. There's trips to the hospital. There's treatment plans. Like there's after someone dies, there's the funeral. There's the time when the family's present, then there's the time when everyone leaves. It's that moment that you describe when you're on the couch, when you're like, I can't get off the couch. And actually, I don't want to.
Deb Driscoll [00:17:55]:
I just want to eat chocolate or drink rivers of wine or put that song on that makes me cry. For the fifth time today.
Erica Bennett [00:18:04]:
I'm really guilty of one song. Repeat, repeat and just cry it out to the song. And I like to remind people that when they're in, that it doesn't always have to stay that way, but you get to stay there as long as you want. And so feel the feels. And that was, for me, like, crying it out and it hurt and I'd be fine one minute and then insanely sad the next minute. And just each time it was. If you want to just sit in the frump of it and just, this sucks. You can.
Erica Bennett [00:18:35]:
And one day you're going to be like, I'm just kind of tired of being pissed about it, of being sad about it, and I want to move it somewhere else.
Deb Driscoll [00:18:44]:
Yeah. And also what I invite people in that place, like, if you are going to accept I'm in this place, what's possible then? If you add curiosity into that, what's possible? If you're like, I'm feeling this today, what does that actually mean to me? What is that? An example might be like, I'm feeling the heartbreak. I'm feeling the loss. What have I actually lost? And being not so much in terms of, like, I have to now do my journaling and write the list of the things. Not that, but actually adding in this curiosity, the observer of self, because that's where you begin to create this intimate relationship with your heart, where your heart says, oh, she's come to sit with me. Oh, thank you. Now we can get to work with threading some pieces back together. And when you're intentionally threading those pieces back together with curiosity and possibility, you can make different choices.
Deb Driscoll [00:19:46]:
Now, like, some of the people who I've worked with, whether it's post-diagnosis or post-divorce in particular, not so much in death, but in diagnosis and divorce, further down their lost a magic journey, they're realizing they want to make different changes and choices around their friendship group, what they do on the weekend, the type of maybe the next partner or the next lifestyle choice that they're going to choose. Like, suddenly the whole world starts to open up, which it doesn't feel like it in that moment on the couch, or like I would find myself in my situation was I had a chair in my back garden underneath a tree, and I could sit there for hours, and I did. Some days it felt like I was stuck there. But that's where I needed to be in that moment, to let the shockwave settle, to let my heart actually really break and not rush for the bandaid, not rush to bury. But I think in that feel your feelings place, what's possible if you add some curiosity, open up some possibility. And then the other thing that really supports in that feeling, the feelings, the very early stages of a lost, a magic journey, is you make a promise to yourself. So this is something that happened to me very early on in my journey. And what I promise to do is I promise to always wish the best for myself.
Deb Driscoll [00:21:23]:
And I returned to that promise for years, Erica, years. And my promise became my anchor. And it became my circuit breaker because my promise came out of my great fear was people are going to pity me?
Deb Driscoll [00:21:44]:
Poor Deborah. She lost her child. Now she's all alone, like, all of that. And to me, the type of woman that I am, that is a horror story. It's like, no. And I also didn't want to go into extreme ice queen pretending I'm okay so that people wouldn't pity me. I didn't want to go to that extreme. So what I decided to do was to wish the best for myself.
Deb Driscoll [00:22:09]:
And it helped me, particularly in the moments when I wasn't doing the best for myself. Like, if I was in denial of a chapter of my journey, or I was convincing myself that it was okay to drink the wine because you're allowed know, I would end up getting to this point where I would ask myself directly, Deborah, is this wishing the best for yourself? And if the answer was no, then that was a circuit breaker. That was the time to stop recenter and find a new way. And so I advise people, what's your promise? Because mine came out of my fear. My fear that I would be pitied or my fear that I would go back to my early 20s where I was so scared to feel anything or to be hurt, that I became a master at being the ice queen. I didn't want either one of those extremes. And so if you make a promise that actually means something to your heart, it means you will return to it. And the other thing about our beautiful, exquisite humanness is when we not only make a promise, but then keep that promise in turn, we build our confidence.
Deb Driscoll [00:23:25]:
If you keep a promise to yourself, you build confidence in self. I can do this. Actually, I am doing this. I've got my own back here. And so I advise people, make a promise that means something to you because it'll be your anchor.
Erica Bennett [00:23:44]:
I love that. It just gives somebody that direction. It's more than the mantra. It's more than the This is the saying I need today, or this is the mine was that I'll always give grace. So I will always come from a place of giving grace and giving love, because I understand that we all are working through some shit. And so when the ex did something that hurt, my first thing was, hold on. How can you extend grace in this situation? Because he's hurting, too.
Erica Bennett [00:24:12]:
And I'm not going to snap back. I'm a scorpio moon. I'm a real fire nature when it comes. I mean, I am, like, feisty, so when I get poked, I can't help it sometimes. But that was the commitment. And that doesn't mean that I overextend. It doesn't mean I don't have boundaries, but it means that I understand that we're all humans having a human experience, and it's fucking hard some days. So I don't know what's happening there. And that person just drove like an idiot, or that person cut me off, or that person was rude. I can walk away and not have it affect my heart or weigh heavy on my heart, because I can give them a little space and a little bit of grace.
Erica Bennett [00:24:55]:
And that did save me a lot of days by not doing an action that I would have later regretted.
Deb Driscoll [00:25:01]:
Yeah. And then in turn, I'm imagining that you got some of that grace for yourself. You gave yourself grace.
Erica Bennett [00:25:09]:
Took a little longer to give it to yourself and to work through that shame, the failure. I failed. I should have known better. I'm all about self help. How come I couldn't fix it? Or the big one is I'm all into manifesting. How come I couldn't manifest what I thought I wanted? And I would even say that one probably still gets me some days, right. Because I was dead set that I thought I knew that saving the marriage was the right idea. And I focused on that was my only option for a really long time.
Erica Bennett [00:25:41]:
And in that, I learned that it didn't meet the needs that I have. That it wasn't filling me up. That there were new experiences that I wanted and that was okay to let that chapter close. But I still work through some of that now that when I made that commitment, it's going to work. It's the right thing. Learning to trust myself again, to know that, hey, I can trust what my heart is leading me towards. I don't need to throw up. All of the nervous system, protective mechanisms of ego, of, oh, this isn't right, you should run away. Or that I can just sit with it, even if it's a little uncomfortable, until I find my feet, until I get steady again and knowing what I want and how I want to move forward.
Deb Driscoll [00:26:25]:
Yeah. And it's tricky. Those beliefs that we have and that we have developed through our lifetime, when they get challenged. Like in the early days after my son's death, I was like, okay, so how is this? The universe having my back? If I believe everything is always conspiring for my highest good. All right, then show me how that works, Universe. Because I'm interested in the answer to that. I had to be really present to my anger, and my anger was directed towards angels because I had decided the angels had taken my baby and it was their fault. And I got really angry. I spent days literally smashing stuff, and I wasn't angry at the world or the universe or God or Mother Mary or any other deity or God or goddess you want to talk about.
Deb Driscoll [00:27:24]:
In particular, I was angry at the angels. Those bitches took my kid. And it was, again, it was this interesting unraveling of, like, why them? And it was because I trusted them the most. And when I was angry with them, it separated me from that source. And then I started to really deeply miss them. So then a part of my journey is trying to figure out, how do I alchemize this anger, which is a part of what I did? And in turn, I get this deeper relationship with the angelic realm, which is a great delight in my life. But I think we just need to be really honest about those moments. There's also the other extreme of, like, the spiritual bypassing or what I call putting the sugar on top.
Deb Driscoll [00:28:16]:
It's like, there's no point in saying an affirmation unless you actually can feel it and believe it, because all you're doing is you're putting sugar on top. It's like if you are feeling really guilty after a divorce, well, then we need to be with the guilt. It's like the first S of loss. In the loss to magic framework, the first S is called sadness and screaming, because I believe we need to actually be with these emotions, and more than one emotion will come up in a big life loss. And what I invite people to do is to see the emotion as e-motion. Energy in motion. It's energy moving through your body.
Deb Driscoll [00:29:00]:
And what is that sharing and teaching you at this point? Because it's moving you in a direction. And we do want to move it through and out the body because we don't want to hold guilt or shame or anger or whatever in the body because it'll manifest to something else. But, yeah, again, how can we actually be creative and curious and see, like, for me, seeing the anger as energy in motion. What is this actually about? And I was angry at the angels because I was like, I trusted you, and I feel like you've broken my trust. And then when I go deeper into that relationship with angels, I hear from them. Nothing went wrong that day. Your son was supposed to die, and you were supposed to stay. In fact, you both designed it in soul time, and I knew that to be true. It just took me a long time to calm down, to be able to hear what the angels really wanted to say. They were like, we have always been on your side. We are here with you now.
Deb Driscoll [00:30:01]:
And nothing went wrong that day. It's what you're talking about with this manifesting. Like, I'm going to manifest that this marriage stays together. What if that's not the highest good? Then that won't manifest. It's not actually what you, deep in your heart and in your soul, really want.
Erica Bennett [00:30:22]:
Yeah. And what came out is that I just was too afraid to start over. It's scary to start over. It's really scary to have to go back out there again. But realizing that, I was like, oh, yeah, a lot of these pieces were missing. A lot of these pieces were never built. The foundation was never built. And learning how to do that.
Erica Bennett [00:30:46]:
But it only came from losing. It only came from grieving. The lost dreams. From grieving the lost. The reality. I remember one of the littlest ones that I had to grieve that I thought was just going to wreck me was who was I ever going to get to go to a concert again with me? How was I going to find somebody? Because my first wave of that was, how was I going to find somebody that likes exactly the same music as me so that we can go to the concerts, right? Because when we were married, we had gone to a few concerts and I'd found these new bands that I liked, and I was like, who's going to fill that gap? And as that evolved, and as I listened to what it was telling me, it's like, yes, I can have that same experience, but guess what? The bands are different.
Deb Driscoll [00:31:31]:
Yeah. And maybe someone will introduce you to some new music you hadn't heard before and love it more.
Erica Bennett [00:31:37]:
Right. And that's what happened. All of a sudden, we're at a new band I had never heard of that has now become a favorite band. That was a great concert. And so there was this grieving that I thought I was never going to have this specific thing again. But when I could acknowledge that, then I could allow the experience to show up that still felt the same. It still met the same need, but it looked a little different because I stopped trying to control the details and I turned it over.
Deb Driscoll [00:32:06]:
Yeah. And you allowed the evolution. Like, our hearts break on purpose because our souls bounce and our souls are helping us in putting our hearts back together so we can move further along that soul pathway, which means when we tend to the healing of our heart, we move along that pathway with this healed heart and it evolves and expands. I was the same. Like, after Sage died, I was one day struck by this knowing in this one particular day, I was like, oh, I don't get to be a grandmother. I really wanted to be a grandmother. I only had one son. He's now gone.
Deb Driscoll [00:32:53]:
I don't get to be a grandmother. So I suddenly made all these choices on this day around my life, and it was about, like, I was pissed off. I grieved it. It hurt. But what I didn't know then is that now there's so many ways the mother in me has turned up in the world. Like, there's a massive community where I am literally the stage mother, where people will call me mother. There's communities in Sri Lanka that I've done peace building work with. They call me mama.
Deb Driscoll [00:33:27]:
Here on the island of Tobago, where I'm now married to a rasta fisherman, we raise sheep. So I'm now a mother of sheep. There's all these different ways that my mother energy, which, in turn, will continue to evolve into that grandmother energy, has continued to show up. But all those years ago, on that day, when I was struck, I felt really upset that I didn't get what I wanted. I was like, I'd already put an order in with the universe. I'd already decided I was going to be a really cool grandma, and I couldn't wait. Things get redesigned.
Erica Bennett [00:34:11]:
Yes, there are so many ways we get redirected and redesigned, and it's that process of moving through from it happened to me to, oh, I can hear that this has a different purpose. This has a different reason. And I know for those of you guys listening, for us to sit here and if you're really hurting, you're in the deep throes of the hurting phase of grieving the loss. It doesn't help when somebody tells you that one day it all makes sense, and it doesn't help when they say, oh, one day, this won't hurt like this. You get to sit in the fields, and you get to choose what you want to do with this lesson and how you want to move through it, because there's no one way, there's lots of tools out there, but there's no one set way that we can give you that. If you go do these three things, you're going to fix your heart next week.
Deb Driscoll [00:35:02]:
And that's why I say it's a journey. Like, there's the Big Life Loss to Big Life Magic. It's a journey, and every single person is going to take it in their own way. Yes, you might work through the loss to magic framework or even a different way, and you'll go forward and backward and sideways. But what I do like to share with people is around this bigger picture of the energetic heart. Because it kind of, for me, when I discovered it in my own journey, it kind of gave me a little bit of, like, the why. Like the north star that I can be kind of directed towards. And so when we're working with the energetic heart, what happens? Our hearts break on purpose, which means the energetic heart literally tears apart or shatters or gets a big slice down the middle. However your heart feels, that's exactly how your heart feels.
Deb Driscoll [00:35:51]:
We all know those feelings, and one way we can look at the energetic heart is the same way that our muscles develop. So just for a second, we're going to take a side step to the left and think about your bicep muscle. So if you want a really well toned bicep muscle, you are going to make the commitment to do those bicep curls, maybe get some hand weights, like, you begin to work the muscle. If the day after working the muscle, your bicep is sore, you know, I've done the right thing. I'm working this muscle. It's getting stronger because there's the sore muscle, which then in a couple of days, isn't sore anymore. Repeat that, and over time, you get this well defined, sculpted bicep, which is what you wanted, noting in the process, it hurts. But what actually happens inside your muscle when you do that? You do that bicep curl.
Deb Driscoll [00:36:47]:
You push the muscle beyond its capacity, and the fibers in your bicep muscle tear. That's why it hurts the next day. And then our amazing human bodies work the magic to put those threads that have torn back together in the putting them back together, they strengthen them. You break, they come together, you get stronger, break, come together, get stronger. That's why we repeat the bicep curl. We can't do it once and then have the curl. You got to keep curling.
Erica Bennett [00:37:17]:
You got to keep at it.
Deb Driscoll [00:37:19]:
You got to keep at it. And exactly the same thing happens with our energetic heart. The heartbreak comes. We get the shattering. All of the threads get torn apart. When we're intentionally working on our healing of our heart, our heart repair, we are working in pulling those threads back together intentionally. And if we work on pulling those threads together intentionally and repeat, we are in turn strengthening our energetic heart muscle, which means on the other side of doing this heart repair, it's not only that it doesn't hurt anymore. Your heart is literally stronger, which means you have now created more capacity for compassion, joy, love, magic.
Deb Driscoll [00:38:11]:
That's the bit where you get to the magic part of the framework once you've tended to these threads. Whereas the tricky part here is if we don't tend to those threads, you may just stay a little bit broken, or there'll be some bandaids over the threads, but they won't actually ever strengthen. They'll always be in a healing process. They'll feel okay. They're tended to, but they don't get stronger. And I like to share that with people. In the broken moments, it's just like, well, this is actually a step in my journey. I can tend to these pieces.
Deb Driscoll [00:38:48]:
I can strengthen. Over time, I can continue to work this muscle, put these threads back together, the time that it takes, because, in turn, what I receive is a stronger heart.
Erica Bennett [00:39:03]:
I love that. Even when I was in the deepest places of pain, that analogy would be a light that would bring you forward. That you know, that yes, it hurts, but as you navigate through this, your ability to feel things increases, because my ability right now to feel the highest highs that I have never experienced before in my life came because I can also experience the deepest lows and because I can hold that space between the two. Otherwise, I really was living kind of a numbed out life. Nothing ever got really, it was fine, and it wasn't terrible, but it never moved past just being fine or slightly irritating or always just a problem. Right?
Deb Driscoll [00:39:50]:
Yeah.
Erica Bennett [00:39:51]:
And then doing the work, putting the heart back together. And again, guys, that's a journey. It was one step at a time. And sometimes I revisited the same lesson over and over and over again, just the way it goes, because I'd lost my dad to pancreatic cancer. So that was like, a three month turnaround that took a year of piecing that back together. Of all, like, a year into it. I'm randomly crying while doing the dishes, and there was no reason for it, but it was how the heart was healing and moving through it and then being able to hold that space, to have that understanding and to still find the connection.
Deb Driscoll [00:40:29]:
Yeah. Because when we minimize our experience of grief or pain or being able to sit without shame or blame, when we minimize that extreme of the heart, in turn, we minimize the love and the joy and the belly laugh. Like, you don't get to choose. It's like your heart has a vibration, and it will vibrate to the lowest low as well as the highest high, but only on that vibration. So if we minimize one, you minimize it all. Yeah.
Erica Bennett [00:41:06]:
Well, if you guys are interested in working on your heart, Deborah has a great, free resource to get you guys started in this journey so that you can be a little bit supported. You can be much more supported. As you know, you've heard Deborah talk a lot about her big life loss to big life magic program. We also have coaching options for you, but tell us about their free support tools that they can go get.
Deb Driscoll [00:41:32]:
Yeah, it's literally heart repair resources. So the first steps is just get into an okay space with being with your heart. And so there's a heart repair meditation, and there's some different journaling prompts. And some people I know will do the meditation a handful of times before they can even begin to write. Some people need to write for a while first before they can actually sit in meditation with their heart. It doesn't matter which order you do it in, there might only be one journaling prompt that you want to answer for the next two weeks. That's fine. It's your adventure.
Deb Driscoll [00:42:08]:
It's your heart. You get to decide. But beyond making that promise to yourself, what's next is start to create that relationship with your heart. And being able to sit and breathe with your heart and being able to explore that through creative writing, I find are two great ways into this relationship, this new knowing of your heart. And so the heart repair resources. It's the simple opt in. You get the meditation and the prompts at the same time. And then once you have them, you get to decide for your heart how you want to repair.
Erica Bennett [00:42:42]:
I love that. I love that because I think no matter where you are in your journey, we can always tune in to see if we can create a better connection with our heart and revisit it. We got different phases. You're always going to be going through different phases, right? There's never, until we're gone, there's never an end. You're always on this journey of learning how to flex between the great love and abundance and learning or healing through and repairing the pieces that are in between. So you guys go check out the resources. They are in the show notes. They're also in social.
Erica Bennett [00:43:18]:
We've tagged them there. Want you guys to make sure you have access to heal your heart, because I promise you that healing your heart, not running from it, opens you up to all sorts of magic in your life.
Deb Driscoll [00:43:31]:
Yes, it does.
Erica Bennett [00:43:32]:
It gets to be good, you guys. And it gets to be good when you learn how to listen to your heart. So thank you, Deborah, for joining us today to talk about all things heart healing and for you guys listening at home, this wraps up another amazing season of The Crazy Ex-Wives club. Check out the merch, check out the coaching programs. As always, check out all of the support options, and know that you are never alone. I will see you guys in a few weeks for season three. And until then, give yourself grace.
Erica Bennett [00:44:09]:
Give yourself some heart healing and allow yourself to move forward on your journey. Take care and we'll talk to you soon. And that's it. Another great episode of the Crazy Ex Wives Club, a podcast for women learning how to heal from their divorce. Tune in next week for more advice and tips to help you figure out life after divorce. And until then, give yourself grace. Do the best you can and know that this is all part of the process.
