Welcome to my quarterly Newsletter!

I will be sending out newsletters once each season to let you know what’s going on in my world as Soul Body Connect, Inc. takes shape and grows. It’s always busy and inspirational, and I am doing the best I can to keep up with it all. I know deep down that I am being lead by something much greater than I, for purposes I cannot even wrap my head around. I just have to keep showing up while asking, “OK God, where to next? Thank you. I see you. Help me take action.” (You may think I am kidding, but I actually use those words.) 

I recently watched Brene Brown’s new release on Netflix called “The Call to Courage.” I was hanging on every word, weren’t you? I’ve read some of her books and consider her one of my “Top 10 People I Would Love to Meet.” My body was completely still while watching this movie. So much of it resonated so deeply and I wonder if you felt that too. It felt like Brene was talking directly to me, even though she was in an auditorium filled with thousands of people. Maybe we all just need the same message that we are brave, that we have courage and compassion and those two things are major players when you are living an authentic and vulnerable life. Vulnerable does not mean weak. It takes some major guts and major strength to be vulnerable, or even to receive someone else’s vulnerable sharing. I’m better at it with some people, more than others. I’m certainly not perfect. It’s a life long practice and is a muscle that needs to be used and flexed in order to grow it strong. But my jaw totally dropped when she said, “Vulnerability is hard, and it’s scary, and it feels dangerous. But it’s not as hard, scary or dangerous as getting to the end of our lives and having to ask ourselves, “what if I would have shown up.”

Drop the mic. 

Goosebumps.

Here. I. Am.

I have been all over the place this Spring, speaking on stages of all kinds and LOVIN’ it! I have spoken to interest groups here in town. They were so much FUN to work with, and asked me to speak on fire safety. I brought some first responders with me and they had to leave suddenly because they were called to an emergency. I don’t even believe they stopped to take in the standing ovation they received from the 100-or-so people gathered as they were heading out the door with haste, of course!

 I spoke to an all boys boarding school near Charlottesville, VA, The Blue Ridge School, and it brought back my love of working with teenagers. They were a captive audience, and I really appreciated them trying new things with me. You see, the “talks” I give are rarely all “sit down and listen” kind of talks. I like to get people involved and moving! Some of the themes for that talk included - forgive yourself and others; be willing and have the courage to FEEL; shake off what doesn’t serve you; make friends with unexpected visitors like grief (it creates more compassion); know who you are, and where you Source from; and lastly, the words I hang on to - time and space is just an illusion.

I also had the honor to speak to a room full of first responders, firefighters, fire chiefs and public educators outside of Richmond, VA to update them on what’s been going on in our life since our house fire, and an equally important emphasis was also reach into their hearts to inspire them in BIG, HUGE ways - for serving their communities in such an essential capacity. Firefighters also need to be reminded the same things that teenage boys do. We all need to hear those things actually.

I spoke at a local church during their adult education hour about grief - how to navigate those awkward moments between you and a loved one who is grieving, simple things to do (and NOT do) that are helpful, and how to bring your whole body to the grieving experience instead of JUST our heads. Navigating grief with our minds will only take us so far, and we will end up in a sticky place if we do not include our whole selves in the process.

I co-facilitated a local retreat where one woman gathered 15 of her close friends who were each going through some heavy life events, and just needed some space to breathe, and an opportunity to look at those events with a different perspective. It was a powerful weekend in the home of a friend who loves her friends SO MUCH, that she created space for them to lean in together. It was beautiful, it was powerful, and those women walked away with new tools, new language, and new consciousness. I love my job! 

So… you may be wondering if I can come visit your church, your retreat, your conference or group of colleagues and co-workers, and the answer is YES! Yes, I can!  If your audience is ripe and ready to hear messages such as the ones I shared above, I would love to meet them and have the opportunity to influence them in transformational ways. Here is a link to my speaker kit that you can share with the decision makers for those groups and events. Please also let me know who you are sending the Speaker Kit to so I may follow up with them with additional information and take it from there. Just click on this link and fill out the contact information and I will follow up with you and with them! 

In the wake of navigating my own grief story, I can not even count the number of people who still privately message me to share about another friend of theirs who is suffering from loss and going through and incredibly challenging time, struggling to get their feet back on the ground and rebuild momentum - perhaps even find joy again. Ultimately, they want to introduce me to their friend and see if I might have some insight to offer.

Of course, I do.

Coaching has always been a part of my life - in college I was a gymnastics coach; in youth ministry I coached youth and their parents in their spiritual development; as a massage therapist and energy worker I coached people to work with their bodies and listen to them more deeply; as a childbirth doula, I coached women and their partners in their most raw, most exposed, most painful, most emotional, most transformational states - and guided them through that journey as each stage unfolded. Now, here I am again, literally forged in Fire and using my first hand experience to offer all I have learned to others for the taking.

Do you know anyone who is having trouble finding traction in their lives, well after the original impact of grief shifted their lives? They might say things like, “I’m exhausted from feeling this weight on my heart,” or “what the heck - why can I not get a break?” or “I still feel lost without my person, like the world has moved on without me,” or “I thought I would feel some kind of relief by now, but everything just seems hard,” or even, “I just want a sign. I just want to feel connected.”  

Through my coaching programs, workshops, and retreats, I offer a transformational process in the area of Living with Grief by helping clients integrate grief and find a new life purpose. They can move from a place of feeling empty, unmotivated, and disconnected from themselves, from others, and from their communities, into a place where they are making things happen in their lives, honoring the beauty of their lived experience as hard as it is, and finding a sense of freedom and joy again. I teach my clients how to anchor themselves inside the chaos, how to re-organize and prioritize their energy and attention, dive into self care practices as a necessary part of healing, enroll their community and loved ones for support and create deep, meaningful ways to honor what it is they are grieving. It’s all about loving even bigger than what you knew was possible.

I am sure you have a friend or two that might be interested in learning more about these coaching programs, and so I have included a “done for you” document that you can copy and paste into an email to introduce your friend to me directly! No hard work for you, just keep it simple, copy-paste-send, and feel good about making an introduction that could very well be a pivotal experience for them!

Click this link to learn more about these coaching packages, and feel free to reach out and book your own free Discovery Session on my calendar if you are feeling this pull for yourself! 

"Soul Sessions" Online Grief Membership Group 

I am SO excited about Soul Sessions!  We meet together on Zoom, an online video-conference room, on the 1st & 3rd Tuesday of every month from 7:30-8:30 pm EST. This is NOT a therapy group. This is a Tribe, a group of folks who are allowing their stories of grief to empower them in new ways. Our lives are forever changed when we lose someone we love. Moving forward is not the same as moving on. There is no clear path forward, no road map, no game plan. We get to decide how to navigate these losses. The journey is ours alone, but we are not alone on this path. 

On the 1st Tuesday of each month, these calls will be topic oriented and an open discussion. Topics may include how to communicate healthy boundaries; what is helpful, and not-so-helpful; how to create quiet space for yourself, and how to come out of those quiet spaces when we spend too long there; how to honor and celebrate loved ones lost without “getting stuck” there; helpful therapies and resources that have supported our grief process, etc…

The 3rd Tuesday of each month will feature a Guest Speaker - perhaps a First Responder, a hospice worker, a trauma therapist, a spiritual director, an author of an incredible book. Lindsay will interview our guest speakers and then the call will open for a Q&A session. All calls will be recorded for later reference and emailed to members who have signed up. Our guests in the first several months include: the crisis of consciousness - why bad things happen to good people, and where the hell is God, with The Rev. Dixon Kinser; the powerful influence of our stories - the ones we tell ourselves and others, with Storyteller, Valerie Tutson; and, how to locate our voices inside of circumstances that are less than ideal, with speech pathologist Amy Morris; using animals as a part of our healing process, with Carol Young from Healing Strides; how to protect our deep, internal spaces during Hallmark holidays, with Psychologist and Expressive Arts Therapist, Laura Farmer. 

To sign up for this amazing and supportive Group of folks, click the link and follow the prompts provided! Please feel free to share the link with friends and family who might also benefit from a supportive group such as this!

I have been asked about my book a lot recently, and want to let you know where I am with it. A little over a year ago I took time off and shut myself into a cabin and wrote, wrote, wrote all day long for weeks on end. It felt like a luxury to set that time aside and dive deep in my creative space and let it all flow out from me and onto the keys of my computer. Now I know it is not a luxury, but what one must do in order to be of service to what is wanting to come through to the page. And then - THEN, I came home and had a baby! My hands have been quite busy to say the least, and uninterrupted time alone to write has been scarce. Trinity Acadia recently turned one, and that book has literally been waking me up in the middle of the night! It’s as if it’s saying, “Hey Mom! MOM! Remember meeee? I was here first!” So I don’t get much sleep. My intention is to ride out this summer and enjoy these mommy moments with Trinity and all those first milestones (she is fully walking and is quite the wild one!), and then devote my mornings to finishing my book when Trinity goes to a Mother’s Morning Out program in the Fall. Then BOTH of my babies will be happy and getting all the attention they require!

It would be so helpful to me if you would take 3 simple actions. 

1. "Like" my Facebook page called Soul Body Connect  

2. "Follow" and "Heart" me on Instagram! 

3. Copy, paste, and send my done-for-you-email to a friend who is grieving

4. Share your stage with me…           

OK, so that was four things, but who is counting?

My Loves! I am getting a hand cramp! 

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all the love and support you share with me.

Thank you for being a part of this Tribe and for helping me to spread the love in this world that we are meant to LIVE. 

Always, and in All Ways, 

Lindsay McKinnon
Soul - Body - Connect
www.soulbodyconnect.com

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