Transcript
All Gifts Season 1. Episode 1. Finding the Gift Of Empowerment in Isolation
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Speakers:
Pandora Villasenor, Mikaela Clark
Pandora Villasenor 0:18
You are listening to the All Gifts Podcast where we unwrap some of life's most challenging and painful topics to help you find the hidden gifts within. here's your host, an MBA, entrepreneur, author and Coach Pandora Villasenor.
Pandora Villasenor 0:43
Welcome to Episode One of the all gifts podcast. I'm your host Pandora Villasenor Joining me today is my friend Mikaela Clark Say hi Mikaela. Hi. Do you mind telling us a little bit about yourself?
Mikaela 0:54
Absolutely. So, like you said, my name is Mikaela Clark. I am 24 years old. I work in human resources systems. So a lot of data transactions in HR systems. I support an HR team. I am originally from Seattle, Washington and I moved to LA six years ago now.
Pandora Villasenor 1:17
Ah, I'm originally from Ohio. I moved here in 2006, which is more years than I can count anymore. I don't even know. I don't know, I’m going into my 15th year or something like that. But I'm so interested in what you do because I would love to know how what you do is impacted by Coronavirus a little bit because today we are talking about the gift of isolation.
So here we are. At the time of this recording. We are 24 . . . 25 . . . almost 25 weeks into the COVID-19 lockdown here in the US. Yes, I can't even believe it. So we live in Los Angeles. Gyms are closed. So I haven't been to orange theory since March. Restaurants are closed and hair salons and nail salons are closed. I haven't had my eyelashes done literally since March. So sad. And we can laugh about it a little bit now.
But so, my job, I work with a sales team. I'm an outside sales manager for a pharmaceutical company. And I'm used to traveling and going to meetings and meeting with our customers basically driving around, flying and being in front of a bunch of people all the time. And I've been working from home since mid-March. What about you?
Mikaela 2:34
Crazy. So, I actually started my job the day that the quarantine started. Wow. So I got to go in that day. That was the day that the stay at home orders started in California. So I got to go in. They did like a mini orientation where we learned about benefits and stuff. And I got to get my laptop, meet my manager. And then they set me up to work from home and then sent me home and they were like we'll get in contact with you tomorrow.
Pandora 3:03
Never seen them again.
Mikaela 3:04
Yeah, I've met two of my colleagues in person. Yeah. My boss and then the boss of the group that I support. And that's it. Everybody else has been virtually. So, I onboarded. Virtually all of the training that I did was through screen sharing through Microsoft Teams. It was just
Pandora 3:26
I live on Microsoft Teams.
Mikaela 3:27
Yeah . . .
Pandora 3:28
Like I live in it like
Mikaela 3:29
Yeah . . .
Pandora 3:30
I have dreams in Microsoft Teams right now.
Mikaela 3:31
Where I spend all my time.
Pandora 3:33
And so who do you live with? Do you live alone? Do you have . . .
Mikaela 3:39
I have two roommates. Thank goodness, I have my own room. So my desk is set up in my room for the first few weeks. I worked from my kitchen table because that was all I had. But finally got a desk from Amazon before they were sold out. And have my own little space.
Pandora 3:50
That's nice.
Mikaela 3:52
It's great.
Pandora 3:59
Yeah, I have a home office and honestly, like I love my home office a lot. We're sitting in it right now.
Mikaela 4:00
So beautiful.
Pandora 4:00
It’s cute, I love it. But I don't like I wasn't used to living in it. Constantly. Right? So, I would work in my home office like once a week beforehand. If I was lucky, I would try to intentionally schedule one at home day. But to go from traveling at least four days a week to being in my home office. Every single workday was a huge adjustment for me.
Mikaela 4:31
Do you feel like you're going a little stir crazy?
Pandora 4:34
I do, especially now or six months in, you know, but I think it was I think I've gotten used to it. But it was really hard. In the beginning. I will say the isolation was real. I live with my husband and my son. We all work from home. But there's just that degree of like, I always thought of myself as an ambivert which is someone on the cusp of an introvert and extrovert but I didn't realize how extrovert I really am like, I missed people so much in the beginning like, right, it was bad.
Pandora 5:09
And for me, I think what made it worse is I just, I kept telling myself, it shouldn't be this hard for you. I kept saying, you know, I've been studying the spiritual practices of silence and solitude for the last couple of years. And here I was given this great opportunity to be at home and put those practices into practice. But I just couldn't bring myself to do it. In the beginning, I found that I was grieving. And until I allowed myself to do that, I really couldn't truly take advantage of the time.
Mikaela 5:44
Yeah, that makes sense. What did that look like for you? What did you feel like you were grieving?
Pandora 5:49
Yeah, it was a number of things. The first two that were immediately obvious was my son's college graduation ceremony. And our first major family vacation. I mean, those were the first two that hit me. And I thought, wow, this is unbelievable. Like, seriously, two things that I had looked forward to it felt like for my whole life.
So, family vacations, for example. I'll talk about that one first. They were things that up until this point, I'd only seen, you know, in movies or in magazines or heard coworkers talk about. As I got older, family vacations weren't things that my family did. We were poor, we were on welfare. I was raised by a single mom, my dad was mostly in prison while I was growing up, and I was the oldest of four kids. And yeah, we didn't go on vacation. So that was like a dream of mine.
And then even after I grew up, I had my kids young. I had my first child, my oldest when I was 15. By the time I had him I was 16. I was pregnant at 15. And then I was just like, working myself out of a hole for years, right? Raising kids on my own up until, you know, 10 years ago, I got married, but my oldest was already grown. And my youngest was a teenager. So, to me, this was like, you know, vacations are normal for a lot of people. But for me, this was a big deal. I sat down with my husband late last year and was like, “Alright, this is the year like, everything aside, you know, I'm going to do this, we're going to do this.” And so, we bought tickets for everybody for the holidays. So we, we booked the trip, we bought everybody tickets, my oldest son, his wife, his baby, as well as our younger son. And we were going to go the week after Evan, our youngest’s graduation. And so, everything was tied together. And so that was extremely painful to realize, as everything was coming, you know, shutting down, that we were probably not going to be able to have that.
Mikaela 7:55
So that is a huge accomplishment. That must have been so hard. What did grieving look like for you? What did you do in those moments?
Pandora 8:05
Oh, my gosh, um, okay. So I remember the day and you probably, I'd love to hear your story, the day you realized it was going down. Like, today, you're like, COVID is happening! And, this isn't just some joke, because we heard but you know, people started talking about it. And there was, you know, jokes being made. And you know, people were taking it seriously, people weren't taking it seriously.
But there's the day that you realized, like, this is it. And the day for me was March 11. And I went to go pick out Evans graduation gown, and you know, his whole package for his graduation, I met him at his college. So, we were there. And we picked out everything. We picked out this gorgeous, like African American like Kente cloth sash that he would wear against his black, you know, graduation robe. And we picked out a class ring. I had never even bought myself a class ring. And I've graduated three times, you know, but it was just something where nothing was going to hold me back from just truly celebrating that. So that day, we picked all that stuff out. It was super cool. We ordered everything. And then that night the NBA shut down.
And that was the night I started grieving. Because when the NBA shut down, and then you know, I started watching the news and hearing little bits and pieces on social media, I realized, “Oh, I don't think either of those things are going to happen.” And then I just went on this emotional rollercoaster. I mean, I was either completely melting down or I was completely numb. And I just kept kind of going back and forth with those two different extremes, if you will.
What about you? What were you doing when you realized that it was that this was it? We were shutting down?
Mikaela 9:50
Yeah, I think at first, I was like, this is gonna be a great opportunity. I thought that I was an ambivert as well. I have learned that I'm a huge introvert, I love being by myself, I have a really hard time when I'm spending a lot of time with a lot of people, when people are in my space for a long time I get really drained. So, at first I was like, this is great, I am gonna soak this up. And so, I decided with all of this time that I had, I was going to spend a lot of time working on healing. Because I have this complex or I feel like I need to be working on something. There's always more. I say complex, because my internal dialogue says that there's something wrong with me. So I need to like, there are things here that I need to fix. So, I decided I was going to spend a lot of time doing that.
There was one specific thing that I was working on. And that I ended up grieving as well. It was really hard. And I think that was when it hit me. Because like you were saying, I was like a puddle of tears, panic attacks, all of these things. And it hit me that this was real, because I couldn't do, I couldn't escape my home. I had to sit in my feelings all day. And so that was when it became real for me. It was pretty early on though. That had to be like, April. Um, yeah, it had to be like mid April, because I was really grieving.
My dad passed away when I was in high school. And so that was really the topic that I wanted to work around. I wanted to really work on healing those wounds. And so it was after his birthday was at the end of March. So it had to be like early April, okay, that I kind of was like, “Oh my gosh, like, I'm so sad, but I'm also stuck. I can't go anywhere.”
Yeah, that was really hard.
Pandora 12:01
And that was hard even for an introvert it sounds like, “I'm an introvert. But at some point, I want to come up out of this.”
Mikaela 12:08
Yeah, exactly.
Pandora 12:10
Yeah, I've always said, you know, I'm an ambivert. Because while I love being around people, I also really value my downtime and my alone time to get recharged, to recover. I was becoming so hard on myself, like, why can't you just enjoy? I had just had months of traveling for work. First quarter was packed with with travel, like conferences and sales meetings. And we had our national sales meeting, we had our national managers meeting, like we were all over the US, flying all over. I was like, why can't I just enjoy this?
But anyway, as the weeks went by, to speaking of grieving, I realized that our family wasn't completely together because our oldest son Jarelle, and his wife Heaven, and our grandbaby, who was just a year old, live in a separate house. And they decided for the first couple of months, that they really weren't sure what was going to happen with the virus, and they wanted to protect the baby. And so, I spent the first almost three months of the lockdown without seeing them. And I was so used to seeing, you know, them every single week. And being a new grandparent, I just really missed out on seeing those months, you know, like babies, they just grow so much over those months. So, anyway, that was hard.
And then, of course, how we met, our church. So, I went from going to the same church for over 14 years, you know, going at least twice a week serving, you know, leading groups being a part of groups. And, and then suddenly, we were just meeting online, you know, and over zoom, and, and that was what work looked like. So suddenly work and home and church, we're all blurred into one big video conference.
Mikaela 13:58
Yeah, right. Those are huge, huge things to grieve. And you were talking about how your internal monologue was you were being really hard on yourself. So can you tell me more about that? What did your internal monologue look like? All this downtime? You had to just wait?
Pandora 14:19
Lots of internal monologues. Lots of internal monologues, um, not so much, you know, dialogues with other people. Yeah, thanks for asking.
First of all, okay, if you remember, as we scrolled through social media, there was this whole narrative of like “staycation” right? You know what I’m saying? And yet here I was having to adapt an entire sales model that used to be in person to a virtual model, not just for myself, but for you know, my teammates, you know, because I lead a group of 10. So here we were all together trying to figure it out. And so, you know, I had, you know, super adaptations to make it work. And all the things that I shared with you before. The internal monologue was, “This is unfair. People are able to have staycations. And I am working my butt off.”
And what that triggers for me is this feeling that I consider myself a, I'm a Christian, that's what I identify with. And for me, in my worldview, I want to believe that, you know, God loves me and is taking care of me, but that some of those old wounds say, “you know, he's abandoned you. And you know, other people got better than you. And he's looking out for them, but he's not looking out for you.” So, all of those old wounds were kind of screaming in my mind that, that I was abandoned. I think people with their own isolation, kind of felt, for me, like they had abandoned me. And therefore, I felt like God had abandoned me. That's heavy.
And then on top of that, I was like, I should be doing better with all this, like, I should be further than this spiritually, emotionally, mentally. Because I've been working on these wounds for years I've been, I've gone to therapy, many times, I've done you know, things like grief recovery. I've done other types of recovery. I've journaled every day for 14 years. Like there's all these things that I do. And, and those are all good things. But I think when you're in one of those places, it can feel like “come on, like, I should be. . . I should be more stable.”
Mikaela 16:41
Yeah, definitely. Was there anything in the past few years that has molded the way that you're thinking or molded that like, I should be doing better than this? What's been the most impactful thing for you?
Pandora 16:57
Yeah. And I have to say, and I'm, I'm sharing, like, what I felt like in that moment, but these practices and these things I'm going to share with you, they were still so helpful during this time, it just didn't feel like it yet. You know, when you're in it, it's hard to see it, which is why I want to do this podcast. So, I could share, like, what were those things that I found real gifts in during this time of isolation.
And one of them is a book, and I'll put a link to this in the show notes, called An Unhurried Life by Alan Fadling. And, Alan, if you're not familiar with him, and also his wife, Gem, they've got a really great podcast called Unhurried Living as well. And I have been so impacted by them, and the resources that they share in their books and their podcast, and then they're in Southern California. So, I've also been able to, I've had the privilege of coming to many of their silence and solitude retreats. So yeah, I've learned so much about Christian contemplative practices, things like silence and solitude, and how you can really practice the presence of God through these practices. So, it was killing me that I had this gift of being at home. Yet with the blurred lines between work and home and all the things I was doing, I just was having a hard time practicing those things intentionally.
Mikaela 18:19
Yeah, it sounds like you were a little stuck. And that feeling is so frustrating.
Pandora 18:25
Yeah, I was stuck in my home office.
Mikaela 18:27
Literally, literally.
Pandora 18:31
I was and I didn't know what to do about it. And then I realized something. I started to kind of think about, well, first of all, I was just having a hard time with my normal spiritual practices like praying, you know, like, I actually had nothing to say. And when I wasn't emotional, I was so numb, I would show up to pray and to meditate, to journal to, you know, read the Bible, whatever it is.
I have read less books this year than I usually do. I usually have like a reading challenge. And I keep track of what I read. I didn't even have . . . I had no words. And I couldn't take in anybody else's words. I don't know how to describe it. I decided eventually, I gave up and I leaned into that. I couldn't do anything else. When I wasn't working. I sat there before God, with nothing to say. And all I could really say was things like, I love you. I believe in you. And I'm here.
Mikaela 19:43
Yeah, yeah. Was there a defining moment where you feel like you were finally To me, it kind of sounds like being in like this dark cave. You know, that's kind of what I'm envisioning. Like when I feel like I give up I am crawling into a dark cave. Like I give up and I'm staying here for the rest of my life.
Pandora 20:03
You know, some of these spiritual teachers teach it as a dark night of the soul. There's a lot of work. There's a lot of phrases that different Christian teachers have called it. But yeah, I was in it. I think what happened was, after weeks of that, and maybe even a couple of months, I finally got to a place where I surrendered, honestly.
And a couple things came to mind. One is I had to recognize that the present moment, even though it didn't feel like it, was a gift. And I had to get all the way down to that basic, like, I'm alive, I'm breathing. I believe in God. He's real quiet right now. So am I. But I'm just going to accept that it's true. And I'm going to trust it. And I'm going to be in it because there's nowhere else to go. It's like you said there was nowhere else to go.
Once I decided to do that, and I just leaned into the silence.
Honestly, what struck me is I started to think a lot about codependency, which I'm going to do an entire podcast on in the next couple of episodes. Because this is what bubbled to the surface was the sense that some of these old wounds where I've been very codependent with, like my family, and God had healed me of that, in many ways. And I had a lot of great boundaries in that area. What he brought to the surface was an opportunity to have more areas of my life where I needed to really look at why I was doing what I was doing. And if it was good for me. Does that make sense?
Mikaela 21:45
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that makes sense. Because we had so much time, so much time to think about our patterns and with you talking about codependency because we're not able to see people we're not able to go places. Because of this isolation, there was less opportunity even to be codependent, because we were so isolated.
Pandora 22:11
Exactly. And, what was happening was is with the little bit of time I had, because if you work full time, and you're at home right now, especially those with small children, my hat's off to you, I don't even know how they're doing it
Mikaela 22:25
I can’t even imagine . . .
Pandora 22:26
I can because when my kids were growing up, I was a single mom working from home. And so like Christmas breaks and summer break, like I remember that. But these poor people, it's like, a summer a Christmas break that never ends, you know, and it's hard. It's hard to maintain both.
But anyway, that's not my situation right now or my season. But any listeners out there who are in that season, I'm praying for you and know that you're not alone. And this will not last forever.
But you're absolutely right. I had very little margin, very little time. And what I found in the silence when I stopped judging myself, and I allowed myself to listen and receive that inner wisdom, what I saw was the little bit of things that people wanted me to do, or interactions with people, I began to sense in me an aversion to some and an openness to others.
What I mean is like, someone would reach out to me and I would feel an openness like, “Yes, I want to connect with you.” With this little bit of precious time that I have that's not, you know, occupied by a conference call or a web call or a zoom call or whatever.
And then other invitations would come and I would feel an aversion, I would feel a strong sense that I couldn't, you know, that phrase, like “I can't anymore.”
Pandora 23:53
I feel like I can't with you. You know? And I don't mean it, like in a bad way. Like they weren't bad invitations. They weren't for me, though. But I couldn't have noticed that pre COVID. Because pre COVID I was so busy. I think doing things out of obligation and duty and habit that I wasn't even aware.
I was kind of slightly aware of maybe some annoyance with certain people, places or things. But I wasn't allowing myself to truly check in and go, “I don't like this for myself anymore.”
But that was what happened. So that's what eventually happened when I allowed myself that time and space. I noticed the invitations, either to be open or to withdraw. And then you know what I did? I honored those invitations. When I felt open, I was like, “Yes.” And when I felt closed, I said “no.” And this was huge for me.
Mikaela 24:57
Yeah, that's huge.
Pandora 24:58
Huge. I mean, I grew, I think leaps and bounds in recovery from codependency because, again, this whole sense of doing what people want you to do, what you think they want you to do. To me that's codependency. I'm going to get into it more in another episode. But that's what that looked like for me.
Mikaela 25:20
Yeah. No, I think that that takes a huge amount of self-awareness. I think that's really cool.
Pandora 25:28
That's one of the gifts, right? The gift of isolation is greater self-awareness if you let it. So yeah, so that was a big gift.
And it reminded me of one of those spiritual teachers, I was referring to his name, he's a, he was a monk named Thomas Keating. And he talks about, people can develop what's called, he called it a false self, where you kind of compulsively go after certain things, power, affection, control, those are some of the three, like the three main things. And for me, basically, to kind of fill your wounds from childhood, you'll kind of go after these things.
For me, it was affection. You know, he calls them programs for happiness. But, basically, it's like a program that you kind of habitually fall into, for your happiness. And so I'll give an example, being raised the oldest of four, by my two parents that were substance abuse users. I was, you know, uber-responsible for everybody, all the time. And so, I developed a program for happiness, that said, you know, if I am responsible, I can make everybody happy. If I am responsible, I will be loved. If I take care of this, my mom will love me, if I take care of this, my dad will be proud of me. And so, I took on the responsibility of caring about other people's feelings. And that's, these are some of the things that came to me, there's so many of them. But these are just a few of the things that as I sat there alone, I really was able to start to, to heal, even deeper.
Mikaela 27:07
So, with all these big realizations, what did you do next? What's next after that?
Pandora 27:15
Honestly, this podcast, finishing my book, finding my voice and just being able to say, I think when you can say no, to things that aren't meant for you, you can say yes, to the things that really are. So like, some of the things I said no to were, you know, being a part of groups I was a part of. Leading things that I was leading. Or, you know, someone asked me to lead something and rather than, you know, having that knee jerk reaction of like, “yes!”
You know, I have a huge giving and serving heart. I feel like it's biblical, it's right for us to serve. But we don't always have to serve in every invitation that comes our way.
I think it's more important to sit with God and ask him, you know, how do you want me to serve? And sometimes those invitations come through people. God uses people, of course. But I was saying yes to a lot more probably than [I should] and I know a lot of listeners can relate to this. You know, when you over commit yourself, and you say yes, out of obligation, but you really don't feel like it's the right thing for you. But you don't want to make them mad. And you don't want them to think that you're not somebody who cares, and all those things.
And so I said yes to spending time with, if I was going to do zoom calls with somebody, it would be someone I really wanted to do it with. I spent time writing. I spent time just enjoying my close family and close friends. So yeah, I finished the book started this podcast.
Mikaela 28:52
I am a huge people pleaser. So I totally relate to like saying no is so painful. And I feel so worried. Like, what are people gonna think? And they're gonna think that I'm not willing or that I don't want to spend time with them. So, I totally relate to that and really respect that. It sounds like you chose yourself not in a selfish way. But in the way of like, “No, I'm gonna take this time to do some things for myself.”
Pandora 29:26
Yeah, yeah. And that felt so wrong to do before.
But I think that spending time alone, we get that sense of what that inner wisdom is telling us. What is God saying? Or if you don't, you know, if that's not your belief system, just get alone, get quiet. And what does that inner voice tell you? You know?
So, listeners, I want to really break this down for you. I want to kind of try to distill this a little bit.
So how did I see this as a gift? How did isolation turn into a gift for me?
If I had to break it down, I have four points. Okay, so first, lean into solitude. I feel like we can carry this with us anywhere, outside of COVID doesn't have to be COVID. But when you have that opportunity, lean into solitude, use it as a time to check in with your inner wisdom. Whatever that means for you.
As you're checking in, explore how you truly feel about things. How do you truly feel about, you know, the dynamics with people in your life, or certain situations you find yourself in, it could even be a job, it can be a career. And don't be afraid to look at that.
And then three, with this greater awareness, decide if there are areas or people or situations where you should move away? Or ones where you should move toward? Move away if there's that aversion. Or move toward if you feel and sense that openness.
Pandora 31:00
And then lastly, I think it's just good to detach ourselves always, from what other people expect, right? I mean, it's always good to have advisors in your life. I'm not saying don't get advice, but we really have to detach ourselves from what other people expect us to do, or what we think they expect is to do. I mean, we don't even really know sometimes, right? We just make it up. We really have to detach ourselves from what we think people will think, you know.
I think those are the four main points. What do you think?
Mikaela 31:40
Well, I was gonna say that, um, I think it sounds like these four steps, a huge part of it is checking in with yourself. And then when you do that, checking in, listening to what your body is telling you.
I think, for me, how can I see this as a gift? I think there are so many ways. But I think that this has allowed me to appreciate the relationships that I have. To appreciate the people around me and to lean into especially those relationships that are really good for me, the people that helped me grow, the people that helped me make realizations. And then I think the other thing is telling those people how much they mean to you. Yeah, it's really big.
Pandora 32:34
Yes, I agree. That's huge.
Well, loved ones listening. We think if you lean into the solitude and really think about these things, you too will find your voice.
That truer, deeper, authentic part of yourselves. And we hope that when you get into that, you will find the essence of your true self and not just who you are in relationship to other people. Then you can make time for the experiences that you are really meant to have.
Thank you for listening. Until next time, remember that everything is a gift.
Thank you for listening to The All Gifts podcast. I'm your host Pandora Villasenor. I have a passion for coaching people to overcome the challenges in their lives by helping them discover ways to transform those challenges into gifts, gifts of accomplishment, perseverance, strength, and resilience. But most of all, peace, and self-love. Loved ones go to www.allgiftsbook.com to join us for exciting updates on the launch of All Gifts the book and sign up for our free newsletter.