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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: If addiction, loss, or trauma has cast a shadow over your life or someone you love. This episode is a lifeline tune in as we explore how one healer helps. Clients find peace, reclaim joy and rebuild relationships through intuitive, soul-centered support. Hi and welcome to the you world order showcase podcast where we feature life, health, transformational coaches, and spiritual entrepreneurs stepping up to be the change they seek in the world. I'm your host, Jill Hart.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: the coaches alchemist on a mission to help coaches and entrepreneurs amplify their voice, monetize their mission and get visible leveraging podcasts and substack.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Today we are chatting with Sally Mcquillan. She is a psychotherapist and private practice, specializing in addiction, grief, and trauma recovery. She provides ongoing support for addiction, recovery as well as support for those recovering from the impact of a loved one's addiction, and she's also the author of reaching for beautiful welcome to the show, Sally, it's great to have you here.

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Sally McQuillen: So pleased to be here with you, Jill. Thank you for having me.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So I'm gonna ask you the big question, are you ready.

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Sally McQuillen: I'm ready.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I like everybody to brace themselves first.st

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: What's the most significant thing in your opinion, as individuals, we can do to make an impact on how the world is going.

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Sally McQuillen: My 1st instinct is to say, to let go of fear.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I love that.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yes.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: fear is that thing that like stops us dead in our tracks and and holds on to us, and and we never make any forward progress right.

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Sally McQuillen: It's it's definitely been is the. I don't know if this is the right word, but like a harbinger, you know, it's sort of been a thorn in my side, and and I know it's so commonplace, and so many of the people that I see and work with and know, are

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Sally McQuillen: consciously or unconsciously fearful, and driven by it.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I can feel that even in our conversation that we're going to have, because we're going to talk about your story a little bit, and I know that you've you lost a son to addiction, and I have a son that I live in fear of that happening to. He just is like.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's larger than life, and people who are larger than life sometimes make bad decisions. And I

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I admit freely, I that is the thing that I fear most is losing a child.

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Sally McQuillen: Of course you would, and there are certain children who.

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Sally McQuillen: like my Christopher, who from the get-go, had me out over the edges of my skis, who was

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Sally McQuillen: impulsive and very much living in the moment that he was in. They give us reason to to develop a little bit of anxiety, anyway, about what might happen to them. And so, for good reason, we come by this pretty naturally. And then

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Sally McQuillen: for me, I think I also came by it. There was already this free, floating anxiety that has just been a part of my chemistry since I was a little girl, and it played out in my parenting, and I think this simultaneous legacy of addiction, whenever we have a loved one who's struggling with addiction.

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Sally McQuillen: we so so my father did, and so, being the daughter of a volatile alcoholic, and we didn't have the words for it then. I just knew that.

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Sally McQuillen: Yeah, his behavior was fear inducing for me, and because I didn't know what to expect. And so that sort of began. You know, I already had this base of fear even before having my children. And then, when I ended up with a firstborn like Christopher, who was

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Sally McQuillen: and still is, such a bright, large spirit. It, you know my nervous system was primed.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, I I have a similar background. You know my

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: my parents were alcoholics. My, my dad

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: probably still is. But you know, at 89. Who cares?

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You know? And I do love him. I it's just that's the way the environment that I grew up in and alcohol was. Really.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: it wasn't something that people thought about. Really, you just drank a lot. And it during that time period from about this fifties, sixties, seventies. You see, old movies, and everybody had a cigarette and a drink in their hand, and you know we got away from the smoking part. But it's just now really getting to be

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: socially acceptable, to not to choose, not to consume alcohol in in a social setting.

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Sally McQuillen: I'm loving that this this generation of very health, conscious creatives are coming up with all sorts of alternatives, but

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Sally McQuillen: for me, and certainly for my parents. It was part and parcel of every social.

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Sally McQuillen: and even, I think my father started out in advertising. That was part of the protocol, and I don't know how much I have certain clients that have spoken to that if they're in sales, that's part of it, and it continues to be. But we do have this great opportunity now to normalize and make room for an alternative. Lifestyle.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I watched my daughter turn 21. She's my youngest, and and my other daughter is 43. So

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: the older daughter invited the younger daughter out for her 21st birthday, and the younger daughter, you know alcohol has not been something that we

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: said. You have to wait till you're 21 to try it sort of things. My kids all graduated when they were like 16. So they were well into adulthood. But by the time they hit 21, and so alcohol was always something that was available to them. And she's just not a drinker, and I think the older daughter was just like. I don't get it. She didn't really want to drink.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Okay.

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Sally McQuillen: Love.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: 2 margaritas, and she's plastered, I'm like, well, you know, she just doesn't drink.

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Sally McQuillen: Right.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: To doesn't feel the need for that which is, it's it's really pretty amazing. And it's.

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Sally McQuillen: It is refreshing. And you know, there's so many contributing factors to

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Sally McQuillen: developing addiction. And obviously genes are far more powerful than we've ever known, and I did recently look up the statistic which suggested that for my husband and I, both of us having gotten sober in our twenties, we didn't know this at the time, but the odds were heavily stacked against us. Each of our children had.

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Sally McQuillen: you know, up to 8 times greater likelihood of developing it, too. And then, you know, when there's also the coexistence of genetic material, like anxiety and depression and attention deficit, then your your odds go up even higher. So we were naive to that. I certainly.

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Sally McQuillen: as I talk about in reaching for Beautiful, I was doing a lot of

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Sally McQuillen: whatever I could to prevent various outcomes without appreciating how, against the odds it was.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And there's you can't make somebody do anything.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: There's.

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Sally McQuillen: Punk.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You have to allow them the space to explore whatever they're going to explore, and the whole idea in society where you know you hit these milestones where it's like, okay. So the floodgates are open. Now, you can do whatever you want to whatever extent you want without being able to like if there weren't. If there weren't that barrier at 21, I think kids would just be like.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: you know, no big deal. I don't care.

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Sally McQuillen: Right? Right? No, that's that's an interesting point that you make, because what I'm noticing, and and certainly what was true for me as a parent was that

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Sally McQuillen: I

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Sally McQuillen: kind of over parented, and then it was like, Oh! As they got old enough, it was time to do this, you know rash letting go instead of gradually, developmentally, appropriately kind of having instilled values. And

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Sally McQuillen: you know some structure, and then over time, let them have their, you know wings from their roots. I didn't do it in a gradual way, and it sounds like, even when you talk about your

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Sally McQuillen: 21 year old daughter. You know she was already introduced to the idea of drinking, and hadn't really taken to it well, before she even hit 21, and

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Sally McQuillen: I remember when I 1st got to college, how you know the rebellion just completely kicked in because it was I was just breaking free. And and so maybe that's an added, you know component of this is, but it's certainly a piece of this

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Sally McQuillen: whole fearfulness.

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Sally McQuillen: because fear had me holding more tightly and trying to control the things I couldn't as opposed to appreciating as I do. You know now Christopher's taught me so much

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Sally McQuillen: as he was here, and and since he went to heaven about.

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Sally McQuillen: Oh, wait a minute. That was never really my purview, you know it was is sort of about honoring the path that each of you are going to take and loving you along the way.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, that that piece about just

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: being able to step back and let your children

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: be the people they're here to be. We're

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: our. Our job is is not to to make them anything.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They they come here with all of that stuff which it took me a long time to figure this out.

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Sally McQuillen: I suppose it does. Sometimes I forget. I'm hard on myself so naturally that I think that I was supposed to have known better, and we only. And again, I think, certainly for my children and for me. The hard way has felt like the best way to really integrate lessons in a powerful way.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I think we come here with with.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: We have come here with a job. This is like, I believe in soul contracts. I'm not sure if you do or not, but I believe we come here knowing why we're here. We forget

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: immediately upon arriving, and then we're we. We come to parents who, like, you know, my parents were who they were. My dad's still around, but my mom was who she was, and

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I used to be like

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: oh, it was terrible! I was such a victim! But now it's like, Hey! I signed up for this.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and I look at my kids the same way when they come at me. And they're like, you know, your failure at this and that. And I'm like, Yeah, that's true. You signed up for it.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's not that I don't take responsibility, for you know their upbringing, but to some extent I think we're all. We're all part of this one big

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: thing called we call God. But we're all part of it, and we're all love. And we all have different roles to play. So it's not really about blaming people for things.

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Sally McQuillen: I agree, I agree I've come to very much make meaning of my experience in that way. When we 1st were endeavoring to connect with Christopher through mediums. They mentioned this idea of soul contracts which I hadn't ever had any reason to

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Sally McQuillen: formerly understand, and it it ultimately, even though

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Sally McQuillen: it accounts for my son not having any more than his 21 years here on earth.

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Sally McQuillen: It helps me understand it like he had a path, a destiny, a purpose and

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Sally McQuillen: And I remember resenting the idea at 1st that maybe he was sacrificing himself in some way as to

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Sally McQuillen: better evolve everyone still here. I didn't I? I would have preferred frankly, Jill, to have sacrificed myself in lieu of him going.

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Sally McQuillen: and

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Sally McQuillen: pleaded accordingly. But it it was not to be, and I don't remember signing any sort of contract, but I do know

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Sally McQuillen: it feels like it's it is as it's written.

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Sally McQuillen: you know. I've kind of come to that, and of course I think it. It's such a process as is any grief healing. We just get to find a way to make our own meaning of our own pain, and then try to grow from it and rise above and find the light in it.

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Sally McQuillen: There's something really comforting about it. Oh, wait a minute. There might be plenty of lifetimes. Who knows.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I like to believe that whether it's true or not, I just it's like it feels right to me, and

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and it helps me feel like, you know. I have a purpose here, and I'll have a purpose later. If I don't have a purpose later, I'll never know. So what harm is it for me to believe that now.

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Sally McQuillen: So true, and I think it helps me as well

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Sally McQuillen: in the acute grief over the loss of a child. There is the trauma of it happening.

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Sally McQuillen: you know, out of what we think of as as time and then there's also

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Sally McQuillen: this is a part of my identity as a as a mother, a part of my job. A part of my

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Sally McQuillen: purpose was to

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Sally McQuillen: at least I thought that the assignment was to keep my child alive, and but it was certainly, you know, to devote myself to loving my children. And so, when he 1st passed, I had to kind of reconcile and and

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Sally McQuillen: return to coming to this question of why am I here, and what is my purpose and sort of

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Sally McQuillen: embody him so that I could make the most of

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Sally McQuillen: the rest of my time here with, you know.

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Sally McQuillen: That's been. It's taken me. It's taken some time, and some, and certainly a lot of tears and but writing, reaching for beautiful was part of that process of of finding my way, you know.

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Sally McQuillen: Realizing that Christopher was going to become a part of me, and that all of the objectives that I kind of already had to try to be someone whose experience could benefit others would hopefully be sort of enlightened by carrying Chris with me as I do my work as a therapist.

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Sally McQuillen: and and if this book gets into the hands of someone that it helps feel less alone. Then I'm carrying out my purpose.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I love that. And I love that. You're you're actually helping people who are struggling with

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: with people who are in addiction, or who who have family members who are in addiction, because really it's the person in addiction isn't often they're already numbing themselves. It's the people around them that are are the problem, and when addiction touches your family in in your way it was horrific. But it's

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: if you don't let you don't have to let yourself like sink down into

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: having 2 deaths, because it's easy for you to die too, at the same time as you, as losing.

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Sally McQuillen: Yeah.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But then you're not there for your other 3 children. And and so

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: then their lives are impacted too. So it's really very admirable of you to have

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: not only processed your own grief and trauma through this, but to also be out, being lending a hand to to those out there who are struggling with it too.

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Sally McQuillen: I mean, I want to be really honest about the fact that in helping others it does help me to survive and and and you're right. I think I am very quick to understand how

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Sally McQuillen: all sorts of things happen like marriages fall apart after the loss of a child or or plenty of parents can't survive the loss of their child. You know this idea that people could literally die of a broken heart. I wouldn't have believed it until my heart was broken. And so there is like, what can we

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Sally McQuillen: tether ourselves to in order to survive and and live our lives? I think the way that of course it helps me, too, because if I'm honoring my son, I'm

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Sally McQuillen: I'm living like he wants me to to live the best possible life that I can. I think some parents do find that they feel

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Sally McQuillen: well any number of different things to accompany their grief. But for me, I speak about it in the book, the the guilt, the inevitable guilt, the inevitable blame, self, pity. There are different things that can keep us stuck and make it hard to survive, and one of them is even the feeling of disloyalty you know of like, oh, if I actually do

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Sally McQuillen: make some room for joy, then is that a betrayal of of

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Sally McQuillen: the child I've lost, and I don't, and I've come to feel that absolutely. Not that he would want nothing more than my happiness?

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Sally McQuillen: Will I grieve him for the rest of my life. Yes, will there be moments where I feel the same kind of desperation and ache?

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Sally McQuillen: Yes, but I also feel like something has happened where I've recalibrated, and it took a long time. It was a process. But I do want to offer hope and light to people who lose anyone and feel like they're not going to be able to

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Sally McQuillen: live through it.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, it.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's 1 of the most traumatic things, in my opinion. I mean, we we all lose people. What the older you get, the more people you lose

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: this, you know, none of us gets out of here a lot.

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Sally McQuillen: Right. That's right. We do die. Yes.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: That we always we always want it to be like in succession, like our parents will go first, st and then we go, and then our children go, and when it gets jumbled up it starts.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: There's there's something about us that we're just like. This isn't right. This isn't right. We've got to make it right, instead of just being able to to find peace with it, and to find the the joy and and the beauty, and and what has

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: shaped their lives the lives of the children who aren't with us anymore. I've talked to other people who have lost children in a variety of different ways. Some have gone through like horrendous medical

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: issues, and it was long and slow, and some knew that their kids weren't going to live too old age. They just.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They were born with

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: imperfections in their body, and it just wasn't going to be, but they were able to really appreciate the soul that was there for the time that was there, and.

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Sally McQuillen: Yeah.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Since.

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Sally McQuillen: Yes, there are, unfortunately, all too many of us, and

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Sally McQuillen: whether, like me, I mean, certainly had my son and some of his friends not been under the influence of alcohol and drugs, they wouldn't have died in this accident in the wintertime.

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Sally McQuillen: There's so many friends I have who've lost children to accidents, to overdose, to suicide, to, you know, going through this medical, that's a whole nother. I can't speak to that. That's a whole different kind of

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Sally McQuillen: challenging

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Sally McQuillen: chapter. And but I can speak to the fact that we're not all meant to stay, for, you know, 80, 90, a hundred years. But I can also speak to the gratitude for

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Sally McQuillen: getting to be Christopher's mom, and I have really come to

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Sally McQuillen: digest and believe that he's still with me. And that's part of what also helps me. He's he's here, you know. I I feel him

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Sally McQuillen: and I think if I didn't, I don't know how I could go on.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: My experience with people who are close to other people who have passed is that those people stick around.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So eventually they do recycle, and they come back as as somebody else.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And sometimes I've I've met people who are pretty sure that some of their this one woman she lost.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: She lost 3 or 4 kids.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: She still has a couple kids left, and they didn't all die at the same time. But one of them, she is really convinced was the reincarnated soul of the one that was miscarried, which was, he wasn't miscarried, but he he died stillborn.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Which was, you know, I I really see that happening in at times. My my father.

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Sally McQuillen: I'm open to that possibility. Absolutely. We do. We feel like you know, my husband and I laugh. But even with our our daughter's French bulldog. Who's you know, our grand dog? We chuckle about the fact that she seems to have Lovey seems to have inherited our chemistry as well, and she's

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Sally McQuillen: pretty spunky and willful and and she's a beauty, and she's got these big eyes that almost make us feel like a little part of Christopher's soul is shining through them so that she can. He can be there with Caroline, you know. So who knows whatever? Honestly, whatever makes you feel good and really

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Sally McQuillen: at the heart of Christopher's message, and and I think the heart of reaching for beautiful this memoir about what it was like to raise him. And you know his whole life.

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Sally McQuillen: and what it was like to grieve him.

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Sally McQuillen: The messaging is this perspective of seizing every opportunity you can to love

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Sally McQuillen: to, you know, just to love and to keep it that simple, and when we are in fear it interferes with our ability to be present in love. But in those moments where love is its most powerful in my life, where I just feel it radiating.

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Sally McQuillen: Chris is there. So it's a gift.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It is a gift, and it's so beautiful that you can.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You can hold it out in that way. I I really appreciate that.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Do you? Do you do coaching as well as having your psycho.

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Sally McQuillen: I am a psychotherapist in private practice, and so I'm less coach, although I feel like that's 1 of my roles as a therapist. I am

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Sally McQuillen: embarking on more presentations on the subject of grief. So that kind of puts me in a little bit more of a coaching position. I did get a certification in grief education. I wanted to do that so that I could feel better equipped to help grieving clients and guess what it turns out. We all are

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Sally McQuillen: grieving in some way, shape or form. And so it helps to really appreciate that that part of what all of us undergo in this thing called life.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So do you do you work with people online as a psychotherapist? Are you like restricted to certain communities states.

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Sally McQuillen: I am actually well, I am licensed in Illinois. I do work. I'm also licensed, somehow or another in Florida. I do have some clients there and and then. It's purely telehealth right now for me, and that really

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Sally McQuillen: has pleasantly surprised me since the time of Covid, that it is possible to connect quite well this way, and it affords me more time to see more people.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: No, I love that. I love the way that we're as a society coming up with new innovative ways for us to connect on a on kind of a deeper level, and being able to have more choices in terms of who is providing a service for us some just to be, you know.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: really, just like 5 or 6 years ago, that you had to like find a local somebody to help you with your mental health problems. And you know, depending on how good they were.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: you were. Gonna get help, or you weren't.

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Sally McQuillen: Right, I mean, granted, some people really prefer the in person experience, but

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Sally McQuillen: some, and they can find that. But some people that I see especially busy parents. You know they appreciate being able to even walk and talk, or just sort of hole up in their car so that they can get a little bit of space and time, or any which way I want to be able to to be there for them.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So how do? How do people find you? And how do people find your your book.

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Sally McQuillen: The best thing to do is to go to my website. And it's a website for my practice as well as a way to purchase the book in any number of different, you know, from any number of different distributors.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Awesome, and you're also a contributor over on substack.

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Sally McQuillen: I am, and that's been a newer venture for me. I didn't know what I was going to do once I finished actually writing this memoir because I'd grown to love the craft of writing, and also grown to love

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Sally McQuillen: the healing that is possible through writing and connecting with fellow writers and readers, and so I'm now doing, you know, depending as of late it hasn't been weekly, but but regular newsletters that are usually on the subject of grief and love.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I love that. I love substag, too. It's just like it's such a great place to be. Authentically. You and people are nice there. It's like.

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Sally McQuillen: Holy they are.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Want to lift you up.

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Sally McQuillen: It's it's a warm hug of an environment. And and I have. I've met fellow bereaved parents that way, and it's just been such a such a joy! There have been so many unanticipated gifts of of becoming someone who writes. It's really fun.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I. Yeah, I love it, too. And I every time I go through the notes section or I read somebody's writing, I'm just like

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I'm a in awe. A lot of some of these writers over there, just like they.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They're like a master painter with words. They just create a picture. I read this one note the other day.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It was short. It was. Maybe I don't know a paragraph about an encounter with a swan and a person on a bridge.

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Sally McQuillen: Hmm.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They called it The Interlude, and it was just like paint it as a picture.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Let us have a moment with them.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and then then on, but it was

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: it stuck with me, I mean, I'm talking about this days later, after.

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Sally McQuillen: I love it. It's to me it's it's exactly what reaching for beautiful is about is ultimately looking in our lives to moments where we find joy and awe and peace. And

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Sally McQuillen: Christopher, a month before he died, put a tweet into the world, and it was life is honestly so beautiful as long as you allow it to be, which is my tagline for my sub stack, because it sort of is about pushing pause, and taking time to reflect on what is good.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And sharing it with others.

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Sally McQuillen: Yes.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Just to put that out there. And

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: you know those those words will live on for years and years and years.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It just like, yeah.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Such a great place.

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Sally McQuillen: I really encourage people to yeah, to to play around because it is. It's it's a nice environment.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I really appreciate you coming on and and chatting with us today, Sally, this has been an amazing conversation.

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Sally McQuillen: So good to be with you, Jill. It's been my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: To learn more about Sally and her story. Please visit her, sub stack@sallymcquillan.substack, dot com, and please consider subscribing to her substack

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: publication. Slash Newsletter, we'll be sure to put those notes in the show notes below. Thank you for tuning in with us today. If you have a podcast, or you're interested in starting one, be sure to reach out to us at support@heartlifecoach.com. We love to help spiritual entrepreneurs and coaches, amplify their voice, and monetize their mission, and offer a variety of ways to do this on substack.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: join us for our next episode, as we share what others are doing to be to raise the global frequency. And remember, change begins with you. You have all the power to change the world, start today and get visible.