Supporting Yourself Through the Liminal Space: Reinvention as an Empath with Sarah St. John

Catherine A. Wood  04:02

Sarah, it’s so fun to have you on the podcast today, because when I and I don’t know if I shared this with you when we last chatted, but when I was looking at launching my podcast a couple years ago, your podcast was one of two, only two that I listened to for inspiration when I was getting ready to launch. So it was so cool when your team reached out to have you come join the show, because it felt, it felt very just meant to be so welcome,

Sarah St. John  05:46

thank you. And yeah, thank you for the love on the show as well. It was such a thing that I created from my heart as I’m sure you create your show and and facilitate conversations from this place of, like, really heart centered, grounded. Yeah, good place. It’s so fun to podcast, so I’m glad to be here.

Catherine A. Wood  06:06

Well, can I actually ask you, because I’m super curious, your your podcast, the uncensored Empath, it was super popular, and you totally let it go. What? What inspired that change,

Sarah St. John  06:23

honestly, motherhood was at least a huge part of it. So, yeah, I had this show for four or five years, hundreds of episodes, top 10% across the board, just consistently and hundreds of 1000s of 1000s of downloads. I actually popped in there because I have a new podcast now, and I popped into my red circle last week and clicked on the uncensored Empath, and I was like, Oh my gosh, people are still listening to this. There’s like, 3000 downloads a month without I haven’t published anything in two and a half years. So I was had just moved across the country from Colorado back to Michigan. My husband was living in Georgia for a work related training for eight months, and I had a six month old baby, and I was in over my head and energetically, like I really just wanted to focus my energy towards my daughter and that I had two dogs at home. We had literally closed on our house, and there were boxes everywhere, and my husband was gone. It was just me and my daughter and these two dogs. And as much as I loved to give through the podcast, and I also received through it in so many ways, to the guests that came on to my show. It just felt like a season of my life that was ready to retire, that I was ready to sort of graduate from, and I left it in a way that was sort of open ended, like maybe I’ll come back to this someday. But what I found in that process of then getting pregnant again and moving back to Colorado, and just so many life things, was that my focus just feels a little different now, and so I have a different show, different topic, but there’s still, like a really special place in my heart for the uncensored Empath and everything that I created on that show, and who knows, maybe it will have another life someday. But for now, it feels like just feels complete.

Catherine A. Wood  08:34

I love so much of what you just shared. We’re going to expand on that. But the piece that really stuck out was to you said you just felt like it was the right time to retire this season of life and your business. And I think as empaths and those of us who are so practiced in giving and often are super well received because our intentions are so genuine, it can be really hard to trust those signs and also make those changes. And I’m so, I guess I’m curious what, what was your process to know how and when to retire that chapter and and how do you, how do you make changes like that in an aligned and empowered way, versus from a place of breakdown or overwhelm or chaos?

Sarah St. John  09:27

Yeah, I like that question, because I will say it did feel like I made even though life felt a little chaotic at the time, I felt like that decision was not made from a place of chaos. It was made from a place of groundedness, and it was still really hard. I cried my way through like the last two episodes that I recorded Kelly Moore, who used to own the production company that produced my podcast. She’s recently sold it, but she interviewed me on one of my last episodes, and I just remember being like, oh my god, this is like, such an ending. And then I had my last solo episode, and again, there was just like, so much emotion, because I felt like, even though in podcasting, you can’t see the people across the phone or computer or headphones or whatever, I still felt really connected to that community. And there was grief, grief that came up and letting that go so it, it was hard. But I remember a moment when I my daughter, my oldest daughter, co slept like she, I don’t think she slept in her crib more than 10 minutes her whole life, she we just moved her basically from like on me to in our bed, co sleeping, to eventually in her own, like floor bed, like the kid had never slept in a crib, and that was a lot to be constantly touched and have not, not have another parent To like ever relieve that amount of like being touched out. And so we were with each other, 24/7 and she was I was breastfeeding her in her rocking chair for a nap one day and scrolling on my phone, because that’s like the only way I could get anything done trying to run a business at the same time. And I just had this moment in her nursery. And I don’t know how else to explain it, but it was just like, I am not Sarah small anymore, and I didn’t take my husband’s last name when we got married because of my business, because of, like, books I published and and the brand that I had built. And after I had my daughter again, this is like, maybe eight months into having Emerson, I was in that rocking chair, and I just had this moment of like, I’m Sarah st John, like that is who I am and who I have become. And Sarah small. I love her. I honor her. She is. She has been so driven, she has accomplished so much like I have so much gratitude to that version of me, but I just felt like a sort of that graduating energy again, where it was like and I’m just that’s not who I am anymore, and I can find grace and peace and acceptance with that in and being, yeah, This mother to my my baby, and then now another daughter, too. I just felt like my identity like, literally, my identity shifted. And so that identity shift was a huge part of making that decision and making it from a grounded place of like, unless we pause to reflect on like, who am I? Who am I becoming? What are my values? What are my priorities? What’s important to me? Then maybe we will make decisions from that more chaotic, frazzled, stressed place. But I think if we can get quiet and tune into our bodies enough, we can ask the empowering questions to maybe be able to make that decision, like in this case, letting go and retiring a podcast that was highly successful. I had dozens of sponsors. I was making money off the show. And even though that was a hard decision, it still felt like the right decision.

Catherine A. Wood  13:09

That’s gorgeous. I really hear like you literally became a different version of

Sarah St. John  13:15

yourself. You became

Catherine A. Wood  13:19

really the next the next chapter,

Sarah St. John  13:22

yeah. And then, to no surprise, I would It surprises me in some sense, as in, like, two years ago, I wouldn’t have thought this is where I’d be today. But I’m also like, oh yeah, duh, of course. Now my next show is called Mother grief, and it is for mothers and kind of for a different type of person, there’s definitely overlap in my my uncensored Empath community, but in some ways, it’s a different type of person that I’m speaking to these days. And the grief piece is something that, if I’m really honest with myself, and I go back to 2016 when this all started. It’s like grief is what made me start the uncensored Empath in the first place. And I denied that for so long. And people were like, You should work in the grief space. And I’m like, Heck no. Like I am not. I don’t want to be around grief all the time. And now I’m arrived at this place where I’m like, I haven’t named it, but grief has always been part of the mission. It’s always been at the table. It’s always been on the surface. It’s always been like, part of what has inspired me and driven my passion. And so, yeah, the grief piece is a big part of what I do now today, in the mother grief show,

Catherine A. Wood  14:40

isn’t it interesting how when as empaths, we allow ourselves to become truly uncensored, like truly authentic, truly self expressed, we continually get to peel back additional layers of our message and what there really is for us to say. Yeah,

Sarah St. John  15:00

you said that so beautifully. And I think that we all do have so many of those layers that only think about the empath like as a an archetype. Oftentimes, empaths are the people who’ve experienced a lot of depth in their life, usually trauma and so underneath that trauma healing, there’s so much to be discovered and like excavated and like brought to the surface. And I found that in my own journey, as I’ve continued to heal layers of trauma, heal my nervous system, get out of hyper vigilance, there’s these parts of myself that I and some of them, I just like, we’re always there, but maybe we’re masked, or I have forgotten, and other pieces are like new pieces of me I’m discovering when I have a regulated nervous system that weren’t there when my nervous system was dysregulated,

Catherine A. Wood  15:59

the the you said hyper vigilance and and I didn’t share this with you, but the last time we chatted, you mentioned that about the how the archetype of an empath, it always often stems from some trauma experience, and that has stuck with me since our first conversation. I’ve actually been noodling on that, and what that might have been for myself. And I think that for so many of us as empaths, we don’t know, like, I don’t know. I have no doubt there was something big T trauma or little T but, but I really, I really resonate with that. And whether it’s, you know, a hyper vigilance, or, for me, it was like, like a hyper responsibility, that archetype of just being the hyper responsible child and colleague and friend, I

Sarah St. John  16:49

often see that as the parent parentified child, the child who was parentified at a young age and had to take on so much responsibility and so much burden at a young age, and then I this is part of the history of my work, and how I got into working with Empath in the first place. Is this intersection of that childhood trauma, trauma of some kind, the hyper vigilance, the nervous system dysregulation, as like one bubble and then the other bubble being the empath archetype, and then the other bubble being autoimmune disease and chronic illness. And I think that there is a massive, massive overlap in those three bubbles, those three circles, and that’s what a lot of my work has circled around, is understanding how, how those things are intersected and interrelated. Yeah, and I have a my own ponderings and theories on how we all become empaths, and it’s not just one pathway. It’s not just trauma. I think there’s other pathways, or portals into becoming an empath in the first place, but I do think that there is a common thread of some dysregulation, hyper vigilance and trauma again, like whether you said it’s capital T or lower case t, and some people don’t even realize, or don’t have the language to realize that they have experienced trauma, because maybe their trauma is been a chronic, chronic underlying thing, like just never feeling heard by their parents, and that no big thing ever like happened that’s like a strong memory that’s held in your body and your nervous system, but your nervous system does remember that there was a constant feeling of just not being seen or heard or maybe not feeling important by these like subtle things that our caregivers did, or that other like grows or adult figures in our life perpetuated.

Catherine A. Wood  18:49

I think that’s really interesting about those three buckets. I think something I’ve seen a lot in my line of work is really elaborating on on you. Called it the was it the parentification of the child? I think that that experience of growing up in a dysfunctional family, or as a child, becoming a parent at a very young age, is something that has really been a theme in in my work, I think certainly in my own childhood too. Do you, do you include that in that, in that bucket, in that diverse, yeah,

Sarah St. John  19:31

yeah, because, and it’s, there’s a lot of nervous system dysregulation that comes along with having to take on that amount of responsibility or burden or stress at a young age, and I find that those young children or teenagers or pre teens, they’re kind of like skirting this line or threshold of like wanting to be seen. In there for as an adult, and then being like, No, I’m just a kid still like, why can’t I do kid shit? Like, why do I have to take on all these responsibilities and and be responsible for all these other people, maybe in family or friends, or whatever that you know manifests as it would like actually looked like in your life. But, yeah, I would put that in there, because I think that there’s so much stress that comes along with being parentified As a child, and I’ve had that lived experience, as well as the oldest of four and parents that got divorced and when we were all young and just feeling like I was the messenger, Peacekeeper, Channeler between households, made sure my siblings had dinner at the table when we were at my dad’s house, cooked dinner, made took them to school when I got my license. Like, just and at the time, you’re like, This is just what I this is what I do. And I care for my younger siblings, and I want to make sure that they’re well and that they’re taken care of. But then now, I just turned 37 this weekend, and I’m like, Oh my gosh, like, teenager Sarah took on way more than her capacity, what my nervous system like could actually carry and so then I found ways to cope with that, in order to keep functioning, to over function and to be motivated and a high achiever like I am in my life. And a lot of the ways that I coped with that was masking my sensitivity and staying busy.

Catherine A. Wood  21:44

I really resonate with that, and I really appreciate you sharing your version of that story. You know, there’s some layers of my story that I don’t talk about publicly, but one of them I talk about routinely is that my parents owned a bed and breakfast my entire childhood. So I’m the youngest of three, and I grew up in a bed and breakfast where I was constantly serving guests having a mask on, truly like always having a helpful Good morning. And how can I help you? And where would you like to make a reservation for your dinner tonight? And what do you need? And, man, that shit gets old real quick. Yeah,

Sarah St. John  22:23

yeah. Well, it’s like, one of those, um, kind of sneaky ones, right? Where it’s like, maybe you’re, you felt a lot of love from your parents. That may or may not be true, but like, and yet, there’s still this role that you played in your in your life, in your childhood, that had a deeper implication and, like profound effect that they may not have. You know, again, like I believe our parents are generally doing the best they can with the resources that they have, and like, you know, their own nervous system, but we can still see stuff like that then held in our children or our own bodies and ways that, yeah, maybe weren’t like intended or surprise you, but I think it’s important to still acknowledge those things and to validate that within ourself, around like, No, that was a lot for X age that you were at the Time to be doing and holding and handling and managing. Yeah,

Catherine A. Wood  23:24

I mean, absolutely. And I think something I appreciate about that journey is that it’s not like you ever shed it. You don’t. You don’t ever shed that way of being. And something I’ve appreciated in every new chapter of life as I retire different versions of myself and become new versions of myself, is that it’s like those, those echoes of people pleasing and wearing a mask, like they they appear again, and They’re so sneaky, and I’d actually love to maybe, maybe explore that a little with you. Like, as you, as you’ve retired old versions of yourself, as you entered motherhood, as you started the the new podcast, this new chapter, like, what has your experience been with those buckets reappearing, and how do you engage with them in this current chapter?

Sarah St. John  24:30

Yeah, so they definitely reappear. And for me, one of my stories, my habitual patterns, has been a chronic flight mode in my nervous system. And I work with a somatic therapist, and something that we’ve continued to go back to is teenage Sarah, who was. Literally running around, constantly trying to feel in control of life and things, and I exerted control around the things that, like school and sports, that felt more in my control because I I keep going back to this vision, this teenage version of me who was just literally on the go all the time, and that, to me, is like the symbol of the chronic flight that has been living in my body, in my nervous system Since like 1213, years old, and just yesterday, I noticed that version of me and that flight mode wanting to come, and it did. It came up to the surface, and I noticed that I pushed myself a little too hard, like we just had the Thanksgiving weekend, holiday weekend. It was the Monday after the holidays, and I felt really behind on life and work, and I just like, zoned into my computer and just like, went into flight, clean the house. Do this, do this. I was just and I could feel my nervous system sort of like this, like frazzled feeling that was like coming and bubbling up to the surface and bubbling up to the surface. And I know that somatic, like felt, sense experience in my body. Now, of some of those old identities, I’m just using the flight mode as an example. But as I’ve been able to identify, sort of what the sensation of those identities are in my body, I’m more readily, easily able to identify them when they come back up to the surface, and in some ways, parts of those identities still serve me and are good to pull out of the pocket and be like, yeah. Like, let’s use your over functioning, high achieving ability to, like, go, go, go in like, thinking of like last summer when I planned and like, coordinated my sister’s wedding, it was like, That was a good skill to have cool that served me in the moment yesterday, it did not serve me, and so I had to really, just like, take the moment to actually listen to what my body was telling me, versus bypass it, mask it, and push through, which I’m really freaking good at, But I’ve learned in chronic flight, how to slow down and be like, Oh, this is coming back to the surface. And so then I made a different choice, and made a different decision, and I still pushed myself too hard yesterday. I will fully admit that, but I was able to go outside. For me, it’s like, oftentimes, like, I need to, I need to get outside. Nature is so healing in my life right now. And yeah, like, honor that that’s a pattern that served me so many ways in the past, but I didn’t need it yesterday. And so how can I then choose a different a different way, even if it’s just like 10% different and not 100% different yet? So answer the question, 110%

Catherine A. Wood  28:02

good and something I so appreciate about what you shared is that we never we never outgrow our wounds like they’re always a part of us. And it’s really how we learn to be with those parts of ourselves and be more gentle and graceful and maybe notice them one step sooner or or sense or feel into them one step sooner than the last time. You know so many of my clients like they, they struggle with this idea of wanting to fix or correct or or change these parts of themselves, when in reality, the journey is about learning to become more human with ourselves and embrace our own humanity.

Sarah St. John  28:46

Yeah, yeah. You know, this might ruffle a little feathers, but Empath I think, as a community, we think about how or like we identify or label ourselves or people maybe label us as these big feelers, right? And in some ways, that’s true. In other ways, I don’t actually think that the empaths are feeling truthfully. I think a lot of empaths are actually just experiencing a lot of emotions and thoughts in in their head. And so that goes back to, like, the hyper vigilance, where it’s like, oh, is this part that you’re like, picking up on all these different like cues. And yes, you’re feeling it in your body, but that’s not your emotion, that’s other people’s energy, other people’s feeling, you’re feeling in your body. And we’re constantly like surveying and gathering so much information into our mind, into our mind, into our mind, processing it, processing it, processing it, trying to stay safe with the information that we have, trying to make the best decision, trying to follow our intuition by gathering all this information. And I think something that, and you know, maybe this. Isn’t true for some people, maybe, maybe it’s me projecting, but I think that oftentimes the empaths are not actually in their body, and it’s because of safety. Is because of survival mode and like we can honor that and can, we can respect our body’s divine intelligence to keep us safe and to protect us. But I just, I wonder what it would feel like if we as empaths, and this is, I think, kind of the journey from, like, wounded Empath, empowered Empath, actually learned how to be in our body and experience our own sensation, or our own neuroceptive cues. Those are the way the like, bottom up cues that our body is sending us, like when we have to pee, when we have to poop, and when we’re hungry, when we’re hot, when we’re cold, and like listening to in opening up the channel of communication to these neuroceptive cues in our body again, versus being so focused on the outside world and survival and safety and so yes, empaths absolutely have the capacity To have really big feeling, things to process deeply and to absorb big emotion from the world. But I don’t know that that’s like the main operating system for the majority of empaths. I think many empaths are still sort of trying to figure out how to get back into their body, and it’s a journey to figure out how to reconnect after whatever has happened that made us disconnect.

Catherine A. Wood  31:24

I completely resonate with that. Like, I think in my own experience, it became unsafe to share my feelings, right? Because people didn’t always know how to be with them or to hold them. There was that tendency to, you know, fix them. And I think there’s that’s still my experience. You know, people still feel this need to, need to do something with my feelings, versus just kind of honor and see them and hold them with me. And I think the difference is now when those closest to me are trying to fix my feelings, it’s because, you know, they they’re uncomfortable with my own feelings, like they can’t sit with them and sit with me in that place. And so now I have that awareness and I and I think that’s the difference, like now I can actually name that. Hey, wait. I just need to share my feelings with you. I just need to vent like you don’t need to do anything with them.

Sarah St. John  32:21

Yeah. Oh, I love talking about this in some of the mother circles I’ve been in, but it’s applicable to all humans. When somebody, whatever it is, whether it’s a stranger, a family member, a friend, an or an acquaintance, comes to you with something maybe like, emotionally charged or a problem or a challenge that they have to respond with. Do you want a solution, or do you just need to be witnessed in this? And I’ve found that for me to be the person asking that question provides so much more clarity on whether, like, how invested I need to get into this person’s share, and the more I share that with other people in my life, I’m noticing that they’re doing it back to me as well. It’s like, Hey, do you want to problem solve and figure this out? Like, because I’m on board to help you follow, solve the problem, to do the fixing, right? Or do you just need to be seen in like, the bigness and the heaviness or the or even just the joy and the happiness of that like, and I think that that provides some clarity in our relationships.

Catherine A. Wood  33:29

Yeah, the clarity and also deeper levels of connection. And this feels so appropriate because, you know, we’re entering the holiday season, and it’s a season of such big emotions, big feelings. And something I always share with clients, heading into heading into holidays, especially holidays where we typically go home to be with families, is like the idea of expecting and welcoming breakdowns. And I um, and I love that permission to just check in with others and also allow ourselves to be checked in with like, do we want help in solving our problem, or do we want to be witnessed? And I think it can be so permission giving both ways. You know, like, when I think back to my early days coaching, I used to get so stressed out with clients when they were in their own deep feelings, right? Like, I wanted every client call to end, you know, with a bow, happy, yeah, happy and wrapped with a bow, yeah. And now, like, I get really delighted when people get pissed off and upset, because for me, it’s a sign that we’re actually connecting with something, something deeper, like what’s actually there, versus how they learn to manage their current experience. Yeah,

Sarah St. John  34:58

that reminds me of the nerd. System work I do because we, I think, as like a society, we identify or like label, yeah, whether it’s like, oh, I’m feeling angry on this call, or like I’m crying on this call, or experiencing grief, which is the space I’m working in now, as like, this thing that’s like a back, you’re like, backtracking, or it’s bad, or it’s negative, but what we know about the nervous system is that those things only become accessible when you’ve reached a certain level of like safety and nervous system regulation. Therefore the ability to express those emotions, meaning you’re moving out of a more freeze numb state and more into a regulated state, is a sign of healing. So if, again, I’ll just use grief as an example that that’s more the focus of my work these days, but people who get, like, another wave of grief, let’s say it’s been five years since the their loved one passed, and all of a sudden there’s this big wave of grief that comes through. It’s like, we could see that very easily as something like, why the heck is this happening like? This doesn’t make sense, or this is a bad thing. I should be over this all like this in external sort of pressure and dialog and shooting, when really that’s a sign that your nervous system is now in a place of safety, so that it can actually feel those things that have been there all along, but you just have the capacity to feel them now. So I think the depth of those feelings are talking about on your client calls is, yeah, it’s such a beautiful thing. And excuse me, it’s not a thing to be fixed, but we as a as humans, in the way that our nervous systems are wired, we often talk about, and I’ve mentioned on this, on this interview, in our conversation already, several times, fight flight and freeze. Evolutionarily, we also have fawn now, and fawn is the one that we’re going to try first, and that is the please and appease reaction or response to any sort of stressor. So like, can I just fix them? Can I just please them? Can I appease them? And this probably wouldn’t happen so much on a coaching call, but then in a different stretch, stressful environment, environment or situation, if that font, if it’s like, Oh, this isn’t working, like the fawn response isn’t working, then, then we would move into fight, then flight, and then eventually freeze. So as we work our way back up out of those things and experience more emotions, yeah, such. It’s a thing that maybe is uncomfortable for people, but it’s actually really beautiful in the healing process that

Catherine A. Wood  37:40

feels like such a novel, just a novel idea like this, idea that as our nervous systems become more regulated and it becomes safer to feel more it’s not going to feel good, because we’ll be feeling things that we’ve been resisting or pushing it down for, oftentimes, a really, really long time. Yeah,

Sarah St. John  38:03

and but what I’ve found is that as uncomfortable as those emotions are usually some of your physical symptoms that you didn’t realize were related to your emotions, or the pushing down and bracing against and bypassing emotions, those physical symptoms often alleviate, lessen, soften, because now there’s an outlet for this energetic thing that you’ve been holding in your body, whether it’s anger, whether it’s resentment, Whether it’s shame, whether it’s guilt, whether it’s XYZ, typically, that’s going to show up in the body in some sort of physical way that we’re probably not going to draw a, you know, a connection to draw a line with. But as we find the outlet for emotional expression that has been withheld, oftentimes, those physical symptoms will start to dissipate, and that is really, really cool.

Catherine A. Wood  39:11

I’m I’m just like, struck by the like, the level of knowledge around this, and I’m imagining your lived experience with these topics has really inspired a lot of your expertise in them. I guess I’m curious what has been your lived experience with with this?

Sarah St. John  39:36

I I think I was born a little Empath, and I used to talk to the fairies and make fairy houses, and I was just really in tune with my intuition. And like I mentioned, something around the stress of parents getting divorced, which. That, like 50% of couples get divorced. So it’s not like I was alone in that experience, but the way that I internalized that experience was becoming a third parent and putting all this stress and pressure on myself. Within two years of that, I had my first autoimmune diagnosis, and, like could not function properly. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and no one gave me the tools or resources to and maybe it’s because they didn’t have them to know how to move through stress, to let like not take on so much, and to honor my sensitivity in healthy ways, with healthy expression and healthy outlets. Because I’ve also, I’ve always really cared for people in my life really, really deeply, and so I was just given pain pills. I was in constant, constant, chronic, mostly back pain. And I was given so many pain pills that I was at the homecoming parade in my junior year of high school, and I accidentally overdosed on narcotics, on pain pills, because that was the only thing I knew at the time to get rid of pain. And I think my pain was physical, physical manifestation of probably a lot of emotional stress. Fibromyalgia is one of those funky ones we don’t really know everything about. And I was okay. I mean, I passed out and puked, and my mom was like a mile down the road, because it was at the parade, and she took me home and but I remember feeling like in that moment, like, this is not the way, like just covering up my pain temporarily, like this band aid with these really strong narcotic narcotics, that even then, they didn’t feel like they were working that well, which is why I took so many. I just felt like there had to be a different way to live my life. And it took me many years to figure out what that actually was going to look like, and eventually like, you know, had a very imperfect journey through then other autoimmune diagnoses, other sexual trauma and family drama and trauma. And my brother Jordan, died from suicide nine years ago, and that was the year before I started my business. I was talking about how grief was like, actually the gateway into all this for me, seeing my brother die at 26 years old, it really makes you go like, if life can be taken that quickly, then how do I want to live mine? And so I noticed at that point that I had been doing all the physical things to try and heal and try to get better since high school, up until my brother Jordan died, and there was such a deep crack in my being after hearing that he died, that I realized that, like there was something, that there was like a missing piece to like my wholeness as a human being that I had not found yet. And it wasn’t just more supplements, and it wasn’t going to more hot yoga classes, which those things are supportive and they I think they were definitely like, what part of what kept me together during those years. But that was when I started to explore my emotions like it was, like undeniable, like there was I was so heartbroken that there was no way that I couldn’t address some of the things that I had been withholding or burying for, you know, a decade. And so that’s when emotional healing came into my life, when I realized I was an empath. What I realized what empaths like, all the different implications of that. And then the last nine years, basically, I’ve been unraveling and, like, kind of redefining in my own way. What does that actually mean? Like, what does it mean to be an empath? How do we get here? What are some of the patterns that we have as empaths, and how do we Yeah, how do we become them in the first place? And I then, subsequently, four years later, my other brother died from a accidental drug overdose. And I’ve just seen these, these experience these things in my life that. Have been, yeah, like, big shifters for me, and the way that I want to be, and how do I want to feel, and how I want to understand myself, and the pathway in which I want to heal, because I saw one brother, you know, deeply depressed, and didn’t feel like he had a way out, and another brother in a similar space where his way out was through drug use, and I didn’t want to choose that path for myself, as hard as life had been, and so it required me to tap into education and learning and filling my toolbox up so full in order to be able to choose a pathway that was hard but allowed me to, like, Come back home to myself and release lots and lots of trauma. And now I’ll wrap up here, but like, now I feel like I also, in that process, have the tools to help my children choose a different way and to mother in a way that is more regulated and grounded in my nervous system, even though I’ve had years of chronic anxiety and panic attacks, and I feel like I can actually be a powerful co regulator for them too.

Catherine A. Wood  46:33

Wow, yeah. Thank you for sharing all

Sarah St. John  46:36

that. I hope it made sense.

Catherine A. Wood  46:41

It was, No, it was really touching. I am. I have a colleague, a coaching colleague in my space, who died in the last month in her sleep, and she was a single mom of a three year old. And I often find myself looking at my three month year old these days like just like so struck right? Like so struck by life and how quickly it can be taken. And I think motherhood certainly has kind of called forth a new level of presence and surrender and like really embracing living in the here and now, because you know all the what ifs,

Sarah St. John  47:30

yeah, yeah, you know, I shared with you on our previous conversation that last year I went through a really, really challenging time with mold, illness, and I thought that I was going to die. I was in the hospital for five days. I was having three seizures a day, and had a six month old who was exclusively breastfed, who was being basically like, carted back and forth from the hospital into my room so I could feed her. Oh, my God. And a three year old at home who was like, very confused on why mommy wasn’t coming home. And, yeah, there was a moment in the hospital where I was just like, Well, number one, afraid I was gonna die, but then also, with every freaking ounce of my being, being like, I’m not gonna fucking die, like I’m going to get through this, it’s my children are my why. And I think that was another layer, going back to like, that identity, like death and rebirth, that mold was definitely been a mover for me, and something that has been immensely challenging and hard and financially just out of control, but every time I this is my third round of mold illness, but definitely The worst, and I left that hospital with no answers. They just told me I had postpartum depression, and yeah, I wasn’t willing to take that for an answer, because I knew that there was something deeper going on, and I felt like I’ve learned how to advocate for myself over the years, and I’m this is the time where I’m gonna have to step into that role and advocate for myself. And I advocated the fuck out of myself. And I am amazed that I am like, where I am today, but there’s like, this will and this drive and this motivation to be here, to be alive, to be well, to take care of myself, not just for me now, because, because I do have two daughters, but also for them. And yeah, I used to have a lot of intrusive thoughts during that period because I was. Struggling with postpartum anxiety and depression, I just knew that there was like more going on than those things, and when I would get some intrusive thoughts, I around not being here anymore, I my vision would immediately go to like, I want to create something beautiful with like, with and for my children, for my daughters, for the next generation that they like could tangibly, sort of remember their mother by and, yeah, it’s not easy to go into those kind of thoughts, Right? Like, we don’t as a society, we’re really uncomfortable talking about death and dying. But what it allowed me to do was get really clear on, like, how I want to live and like the legacy I want to leave behind. And I think a lot of empaths, because many are so heart centered and like, live with this really full, exposed, open heart, want to leave some sort of legacy, like, want to be healers on the planet. And that was true for me. It is true for me. And so I’ve noticed that what that looks like has also evolved and changed after sort of like, brushing up with the idea of death, and really figuring out, like, what was really important to me and how I want to be, like, the the example, the embodiment that I want to be showing my girls as well.

Catherine A. Wood  51:39

Well, I really appreciate this conversation, like, especially at your end, because, you know, when we think about, like, New year, new beginnings, right, we’re It’s so cheesy. But the idea of of who we want to be, right, and like, really owning the embodiment of that, and then looking at what we want to create and how we want to be remembered, and what the legacy we want to leave will be from that place, from really stepping into that embodiment conversation and that identity, that identity work like that feels like Something I’m taking with me from our conversation today and and I really appreciate how, how much it has served and supported you, right. Like, truly, from, not from a shoulding place, but from a like, like, who that? Who the fuck am I? What do I want to be like? What do I want to leave those in my wake? Like, really owning it?

Sarah St. John  52:46

Yeah, it reminds me of some of the work I’ve done in on liminality and being in the liminal space, and when we’re trying to answer those questions you just mentioned and like, figure that out. Is it? It’s like a very messy middle, murky water, liminal space between but I think which is uncomfortable for people, because we want to have control. We want to have it figured out. We want to want to, like, know what the end destination looks like. But I’ve been in a lot of liminal spaces lately. I think motherhood is one inherently in and of itself, and I find that those liminal spaces are ones in which there’s an opportunity to redefine things, to reprioritize, to reassess your values and what drives you. And there’s also like so much beauty to be drawn up from the depths of that marquee water. And I always see this visual of like being literally, like, whipped around at the ocean waves, and it’s just like, Oh my God, who am I? Where am I going? Like, what is all the meaning of this like and not knowing, but that the like, as the like water settles, you start to walk out of the water, like, step by step, towards the shore, and like, this water drips away from you, and you’re, you’re got like, snot rolling down your nose. Like, it’s not pretty, it’s not all pretty. But eventually you reach that shoreline and you’re like, okay, like, in somatically, in your felt sense experience, there’s a sensation of like, yeah, okay, this is it like, eventually you do arrive there eventually your feet do land on the shore. And some liminals are shorter and longer than others, but we all experience them in our lives like arguably, life is just one big liminal space from birth to death in the first place. But there’s, I think, a ways to sort of anchor ourselves and support our bodies, our minds, our spirits as we move through those big questions, so that we can find those glimmers in seasons of life that are dysregulating, chaotic unknown or just like hard I

Catherine A. Wood  54:58

mean, we all experience. Experience that that journey through liminal spaces, and I think the ways in which you’ve walked through that messy middle is really inspiring. So thank you for for your authenticity and being with me today, and I guess as we wrap I’d love to really just hear from you, like, what do you think has made the biggest difference in your ability, your capacity to embrace, embrace so many messy middles, so many liminal spaces, so many murky waters.

Sarah St. John  55:33

Yeah, somatic work would be my short answer, learning how to actually be with my felt sense experience and reconnecting to my body after those years of chronic flight I mentioned, and that includes slowing down enough to get out of hypervigilance and like actually feel my body’s cues and messages And a lot of the somatic work I’ve done, which To summarize, like, Soma is body it’s body based work has been through breath work, and that’s just been one portal, like one way to get into my body, but it’s one that’s worked really effectively for me and allowed years of trauma that has also really influenced my empathic experience, to soften and to come back into my window of tolerance. If people aren’t familiar with that term, it’s a polyvagal term, and think of it as like the space in which the boundaries in which you’re actually regulated. And so to come back in my window of tolerance, when I realized like I was chronically living outside of it. So reconnecting to the body, going inward, using bottom up methods, using breath work as a portal into the body, has been a really potent way for me to move through discomfort, through challenge, as a Empath entrepreneur, as an empath mama, as an empathic human, all these different roles and identities that I have in my life, and that’s Part of why I have Empath coach certification and give these tools to other people, because they’ve been so transformational in my life.

Catherine A. Wood  57:29

Beautiful. Totally resonates. Sarah, thank you so much. It was an absolute honor.

Sarah St. John  57:36

Yeah, thank you so much for having me appreciate it. Yeah.