The Fearless Road

Part 1: Navigating Grief with Grace: Santou Carter's STEER Method and Path to Healing

• Michael D Devous Jr • Season 3 • Episode 13

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Entrepreneurs, are you equipped to handle the emotional turmoil that inevitably comes with the highs and lows of the journey? In this insightful episode of the Fearless Road Podcast, multi-award-winning therapist and international best-selling author Santou Carter provides invaluable tools for navigating grief and loss – challenges that extend beyond the personal and deeply affect the entrepreneurial spirit. Discover the STEER method – encompassing Spirituality and Religion, Tools and Techniques, Education, Emotions, and Relationships – and gain a profound understanding of how these elements contribute to holistic well-being, especially during times of immense stress.

Learn how to break down communication barriers, overcome isolating defense mechanisms, and foster genuine connections, vital skills for any entrepreneur leading a team. This episode provides a roadmap for self-compassion, guiding you to develop a resilient new identity and recognize the immense personal growth that emerges from navigating life's transitions. Santou's wisdom extends to the importance of open-mindedness in spiritual and religious practices, encouraging us to embrace the diverse expressions of faith that fuel our inner strength.

Key Highlights:

  • Introducing the STEER Method: Santou Carter shares her unique framework for coping with grief, encompassing spirituality, tools, education, emotions, and relationships.
  • The Power of Self-Compassion: Michael and Santou emphasize the importance of being kind to oneself during grief and learning to self-soothe.
  • Grief as a Catalyst for Change: They discuss how grief can lead to personal growth, expanded awareness, and increased compassion for others.
  • Cultural Sensitivity and Diverse Perspectives: Santou highlights the need to understand and respect individual expressions of spirituality and faith traditions.
  • Vulnerability as a Superpower: Michael shares his belief that vulnerability is a strength, not a weakness.

Quotes:

  • Santou Carter: "Self-compassion is really, really key. Learning to be gentle with yourself."
  • Michael Devous: "When I'm in grief mode, my autonomic system...begins before I even know I'm in that state."
  • Santou Carter: "The work really is about expansion and an expansion of perspective and awareness."
  • Michael Devous: "You must be aware that's your shifting and adapting cause all humans do, we're built to do it."

Takeaways:

  • Grief is a complex and multifaceted experience that impacts all areas of life.
  • Self-compassion is crucial for navigating grief and finding healing.
  • Grief can be a catalyst for personal growth and expanded awareness.
  • It's important to be open-minded and respectful of diverse perspectives on grief and spirituality.
  • Seeking support from others is essential during the grieving process.

Persons of Note Mentioned:

  • Santou Carter: Multi-award-winning therapist, international bestselling author, professional speaker, coach, and trainer.
  • Michael Devous: Host of the Fearless Road podcast.

Supporting Links:

  • Santou Carter's Website: griefsupport.co
  • Free Resources: griefsupport.co/freeresources
  • Contact Santou: griefsupport.co/contact

Important Links:

  • Santou Carter's Website: griefsupport.co
  • Fearless Road Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@TheFearlessRoad
Speaker 1:

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to the Fearless Road podcast, where we explore entrepreneurial insights, stories and advice on embracing fear, breaking boundaries and achieving goals on the road to success. I'm your host, michael DeVue, and after years of overcoming obstacles and tragedy, I began to wonder how does someone become fearless? Well, that's exactly what we're going to find out. In every episode, we dive into the lives of individuals who've learned to turn fear into fuel, face some incredible challenges and cultivate a fearless mindset while navigating their fearless road. So join me for in-depth interviews with some amazing people where we investigate more deeply the valleys on their road to success, because the valleys are where character is built, foundations are laid and where the fearless are born. Welcome to the Fearless Road Podcast.

Speaker 1:

So, hey, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Fearless Road Podcast. I'm your host, michael DeVue, and you know it's been a little bit of. We've had a bit of a summer break, which is fine Everybody deserves some time off, right, and we've got a special interview today that has been in the works for quite a while Now. She and I have known each other for some time, have been trying to get together to make this happen for you, really just sort of exploring the avenues and the ways we wanted to share our experiences, both together and individually. Very fascinating backgrounds, very interesting crossroads of experiences that I think could have a great impact and be interesting for you, the listeners. So, without further ado, the multi-award-winning therapist, as well as international best-selling author, professional speaker, coach and trainer, she supports families and community groups and has been a professional for over 25 years, through many of life's challenges of loss, health diagnosis such as cancer after death, grief and spiritual crisis across many of life's stages. Please welcome Sansu Carter.

Speaker 2:

Thank you very much, Michael. Pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1:

You're welcome. How are you?

Speaker 2:

I'm good, I'm all right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, are you ready? Are you ready to get into some of the interesting questions?

Speaker 2:

I am.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so when you and I were talking last time and, by the way, you probably know this about me my family had gone through a fire or whatever, and I was learning more about Santu's grief counseling and she was speaking to me and supporting me in that endeavor.

Speaker 1:

Now, on the Fearless Road, we talk about fear, at the intersection of fear and innovation. As entrepreneurs, fear is one of those areas that we are constantly being faced with, because we're asking for all kinds of challenges that come our way by stepping into these new versions of ourselves, right, that come our way by stepping into these new versions of ourselves, right, and some of us, most of us need help. We need someone to talk to, we need someone to support us and someone who specializes in grief counseling, as well as stress, stress, stress, anxiety, dealing with all of those different things. The way that we deal with it in our heads, emotionally, psychologically, can be a real advantage to ensuring that your mental well-being is front and center for you on your journey to success, because if you get there and you're unhappy and you're miserable, it's not worth the ride, right? Right absolutely.

Speaker 1:

So you have the STEER method, S-T-E-E-R STEER method, which is a very sort of unique holistic approach for mental and emotional well-being, specializing in fear and anxiety and trauma. So can you tell me, share with us a little bit about what the STEER method is, and that's something you came up with, Is that correct?

Speaker 2:

It is. It is Because I think loss and grief impacts us holistically. It doesn't just impact our emotions, but impacts us in so many ways. It impacts us physically as well, which people don't realize. You can feel very heavy. You could want to just be in bed all day. You don't have an appetite. It shuts down your brain in a sense and shuts down your appetite. So it affects people in many, many ways, and so I was considering how to help people holistically and that's how I came up with my STEER approach.

Speaker 2:

So the S stands for spirituality and religion. So that's an important part because people will often wonder either you know, if a cancer patient is dying and I've worked with them in the hospital setting they will often ask me like what's going to happen to me, you know, after I die? So the whole kind of aspect of the soul and spirituality and what happens after one dies is a big question before and after death. So that's the S. The S is for spirituality and religion. The T is for tools and techniques to help people cope. The E one of the E's, the first E, is education. So I use the psychoeducational approach to help people understand what they're going through, because that can really help them figure out strategies of how to do things differently. That's going to help them. The other E, of course, is looking at their emotions and how to process their emotions, how to release their emotions within the session. And how to process their emotions, how to release their emotions within the session. That's really important because sometimes, particularly men don't feel able to cry in public. For example, women sometimes don't feel able to cry in public or at work, so they'll run into the bathroom or even at home you might have a family member saying why are you still crying, right, can't you stop crying? You know that kind of thing. So, so at least I provide a safe, supportive space where they can really release any emotion, including anger and rage, if that's the emotion that they have and need to process that through. So that's the second E and then the.

Speaker 2:

The R is relationships.

Speaker 2:

So obviously, relationships are impacted when you're in grief, um, and the relationships I work with could be, uh, in the family units.

Speaker 2:

You know the fam, you know the, the, the married family unit. It could be the family of origin, so, like your, your parents, your siblings, and it could be extended family as well. So learning how to manage, oh, and friends and colleagues, of course as well, because some of us spend a lot of time at work and we need to learn how to ask for support from managers and work colleagues if we're grieving um, and and from family members, because they will all have a different approach, because we all have a different relationship with the person who has died right. So an aunt is not going to understand the intensity of your grief for, say, a mother or a father that you are really close to, so they're not going to have the same way of relating to you or communicating with you way of relating to you or communicating with you. So you will get many different responses from family members and it can be a challenge learning how to communicate effectively to communicate your needs.

Speaker 2:

And there's one, michael, there's one more thing, I want to say that sometimes that lack of ability to communicate effectively can cause conflict.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

And it can cause family estrangement as well. So deaths don't always bring families closer together. Sometimes it breaks them apart, and that's a really important point to make.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

If you know what I'm saying or have experienced yeah.

Speaker 1:

Well, yes, because it's interesting that you're talking about perspectives. There's a couple of things that came to mind, because we talk a lot about the entrepreneurial journey. When we deal with our strains and stresses whether that's grief or whether that's just a strain or stress based on a new endeavor, launching a product, business, what have you? What occurred to me was the coping skills and mechanisms that we currently use when we're facing the public world are not the same as the ones when we're in grief.

Speaker 1:

It's fascinating to me because I had some recent loss, which you're aware of, dear family and friend, as well as a few other things, and when I'm in grief mode, my autonomic system, my automatic system to protect me and deal with grief, begins before I even know I'm in that state.

Speaker 1:

So it's automatically, you know, filtering and doing things to keep me functioning in a specific way for everybody else, right that I've set up these relationships. People have expectations, I need to deliver, and it doesn't occur to me until I break, until I've had my emotional breakdown, that I haven't been caring for myself because I've put these automated systems that we use to cope. Just start going a conversation with somebody who doesn't understand you, you can't communicate because you're in grief mode and the temporary functions that your body uses to cope, that your mind uses to cope, that your heart uses to cope have run out and you're just left with you. And if that person doesn't understand where you're coming from, if we lack the perspectives and the understanding and the compassion to know when a person's hitting that particular wall, I can see easily how everyone can get their feelings hurt really quickly. People can be separated and not come together, you know, to heal.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and people don't often know how to have those reparative conversations in order to heal the relationship. And there's something that you said um, when you're talking about your, your I don't know if you were meaning your defenses come up or when you're talking about your autonomic reactions that happen, I was thinking about fear. So if you were meaning that somehow my defenses come up or I go into a kind of mode of survival mode, in a sense, it's stemming from fear. So you're trying to protect yourself from the other threats in your life because, in a sense, the death that you've experienced you know, if you've had a parent die or even a spouse die or anyone really that's significant to you. That is a threat, because you are now thinking how am I going to cope, how am I going to survive? Right, and then you see the other people who are still living it, but in your world, a potential threat as well, especially if they don't understand or offer empathy or compassion. It is a kind of threat.

Speaker 1:

I think I was thinking of the wound side of it. It is, you know, when you've got a visible wound, you know your coping mechanisms on how to deal with dress tend to the wound when it's an emotional damage that you can't see, especially the loss of a loved one, right. That process of them disappearing from the world is so difficult and so different every single time and it's very hard for the brain to wrap its brain around its mind around where they went, and each person deals with that sort of like where did they go? Thinking very differently. And it is a wound because that grief is painful. But when we don't address it openly, honestly, if we're not aware of it, what I'm talking about, the automatic system of protection starts protecting the wound from, as you say, those threats, perceived threats or otherwise, because it doesn't know anything else, it doesn't know how to deal with it. So it just starts putting up walls, it starts protecting you and creating distance, any number of different mechanisms.

Speaker 1:

If we're not familiar with our own coping skills or the lack thereof, we could wind up in a situation, two, three, four weeks down the road, where you're in the middle of a public event or something and you're just falling apart and you can't explain it and nobody knows what's going on, except you. You know, I found myself in a particular situation that a very dear person of mine was hosting an event and I had had a little too much to drink at that time, but I just broke down. It hit me like a ton of bricks in the middle of this thing and nobody were like, oh, what's wrong with him? And it just started pouring out. I just started releasing and releasing and before I knew it I was like what just happened and I wasn't even cognizant at the time. I was in a time-space continuum where my emotions were just live, but the rest of me was parked somewhere else, safe and sound, away from the spilling of emotions.

Speaker 2:

So you know that it's weird and fascinating to me, but it's also yeah, and it's kind of like, um, a boy or a buoy, I'm not quite sure how to pronounce it, but it's or even if you take like a big rubber ball and you put it, try and sink it under the water, eventually, as you keep pushing it down and pushing it down, trying to ignore it, you know say the ball is grief and you keep ignoring, you push it down, push down. Eventually it will snap out of your hands and go whoosh, right out of the water and that's and that's the spillage of the emotions coming up right so yeah, that's why

Speaker 2:

it's so important to process your, your emotions, on a regular basis with someone, rather than trying to push it down, letting it out a little bit and then trying to push it down again to function and release it just a little bit. Like, really give yourself enough space and time on a regular basis to really process, because there's a lot of emotions that will come up, but there's a lot of meaning to process as well, and when you can't process either of those the emotions or the meaning it can really leave you confused, devastated, angry, like it just creates a whirlwind uh, you know of chaos.

Speaker 1:

And now makes sense to me why certain things are harder to understand, that I'm not communicating very well or I'm not understanding things and it's like my brain is just not operating and functioning and I'm like what's wrong with me? Allow ourselves to have, because we just expect us to get back up and get moving, you know, because the world needs us, or you know, or we just, we simply just lack, like you know, the skills and the perspectives and the tools to deal with this kind of break in our body, in our minds and in our hearts.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and you've said something really important there self-compassion. I mean that is one of the key learnings I try and help my clients understand, because you're probably not going to get the level of compassion that you need from others. You could, and if you do, consider yourself very blessed and very lucky, because most of the time people don't know how to offer you the compassion that you need because they don't know how long you're going to be grieving. And sometimes you could be kind of, you know, progressing on your grief journey, and then you'll have a relapse. People won't know it because you'll try and hide it. So learning how to offer yourself that self-compassion is really really key, really key. Learning to be gentle with yourself.

Speaker 1:

I've dedicated yes, learning to be gentle with yourself. My mother God rest her soul was one of the most compassionate, loving individuals who used to just do that for me. I could be in the comfort of her presence and feel that from her. Finding that that tether again to this world um is. It is a long journey. It's hard to ever find that kind of love again.

Speaker 1:

Um, you know, mother's love is very different. It's very rare and when that person's no longer here it does feel like this sort of large gap that you're always wondering if it's ever going to get filled. She made me feel, but it is up to me to find resources, relationships, support, I suppose in some way that helps me navigate those leftover feelings, adapt to the new world without that tether. I always used to say and I never knew this, I didn't know that I was tethered to this planet by my mother until she was gone and I felt the physical disconnection from this earth, from the person who brought me here, and it was a very painful, weird sensation of feeling unmoored and just like a ship at sea just lost. You know, I finally found my bearings and got myself both some help but also some journal writing or whatever.

Speaker 1:

To get back to some sense of balance for myself, but I think it's important for us as entrepreneurs and business leaders and executives. And you know, if you're starting a business, there are two major parts of your life. There's your business that you're running and then your private life, and when something impacts you enough that it brings all of it to a stop, it's really important to know where those tethers are, the individuals in your life that you can. You can trust to be like help me walk this walk, because it's going to be hard and I need help, and I think a lot of us have a hard time asking for that. We don't want to lean too heavy on people.

Speaker 2:

We feel like we're a burden if we do yeah, because certainly in the Western culture we're trained to be individuals, you know, to be self-reliant. So, yeah, that's huge to kind of fight and resist. But there's a tip I want to give you, michael. From what I heard you saying, it might be helpful.

Speaker 2:

You may have thought of this already, may have thought of this already when your mother left and when we experience some major loss within our families, whether we realize it or not, we have to develop a new identity. And I don't know if you've done the work or have considered this, but when you were saying that, you felt untethered, part of your grief journey will be to absorb some of your mother's characteristics into your identity so you can self-soothe like your mother used to soothe you and also, kind of, you know, out of the two comes a greater you know sum of all the parts right. So you're creating almost like a new identity, a new you that's somewhat different but incorporates some aspects and characteristics of your mother. So I don't know if you've kind of explored that aspect of your grief journey in relation to your mother or not, but just something for you to think about.

Speaker 1:

It's interesting that you reference it that way. Almost all the other tragedies that I've dealt with in my life, I reinvented myself in order to adjust to that situation and it became a skill set that I didn't. I really was not aware that I was doing it. I just was naturally reinventing myself in order to come out the other side. And what's fascinating to me about that is, you know, one of the things I say is that you know, I was so adamant to never let fear impact my life and define who I was. That fear ultimately impacted my life and defined who I was. So it's like you can't help but be changed by life changing events. It's, it's, it's.

Speaker 1:

I love that you put this up front, because entrepreneurs, business leaders, executives, mentors we learn to adapt to so many different things, but I don't think we realize I think a lot of people don't realize when something happens tragic, difficult, challenging, you don't come out. Something happens tragic, difficult, challenging, you don't come out. The other side the same. You must be aware that you're shifting and adapting, because all humans do. We're built to do it. We are built to adapt and learn. That's what our bodies do. Millions and millions of cells every second do it naturally and we as humans also become something other than what we were before.

Speaker 1:

Right, and I don't know that we sometimes we don't give ourselves that recognition in that time to say, hey, a new me is ready or I need to step into a new version of myself. Who else is going to welcome me into this new world, right, when the individual that you used to do that is no longer with us and that space is gone, that energy is gone, the person that took up that space in your life is no longer there. You have to fill that space with something meaningful for yourself and redefine that attachment, or the detachment, if you will, as something new for yourself. I love that you said thank you for allowing me to see it differently this way, because it helps me understand some of the ways that I process my own grief.

Speaker 2:

And there's something else I want to add for your listeners who may not like the word change. Lots of people don't like the word change and they may not like the word new either.

Speaker 2:

So they might be thinking but I don't want a new identity. I like the old me, with the person that I love beside me. I don't want to change and I don't want to be new. I don't want to create a new identity. So I'm going to I'm going to add a different word for those that may not like the word new or new identity I'm going to use the word expanded. So as people grieve, they have an expanded understanding and an expanded awareness. And what I was suggesting about you incorporating your mom is you kind of expanding to be able to include her and bring her in, and when there's two of you living in your body, you're expanded. You have to make room. You're expanding.

Speaker 1:

Along with all the other personalities that are in here.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so that's. I'm not going to agree with that. That's up for you to decide. But that's another way of looking at it. The grief can expand us and one of the things that if we learn to offer ourselves self-compassion, we can then expand our understanding of compassion in general and we can then offer other people compassion if they're in grief. So the work work really is about expansion, and expansion of perspective and awareness.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that is. I mean, that's the journey we're on. I mean we're always expanding and if we understand that through every experience we gather more information, not only about ourselves but the world around us, we take that information, we use it to adapt and adopt to the world that we want, right, the world that we choose. Some of us put it out there to make things happen and some of us put it internally to use as a lens to look at the world and view the world through. Speaking of that, which I think is a nice segue of going into navigating the journey, as we were saying about cultural sensitivity, talking about not only the spiritual beliefs which you mentioned earlier with the S in STEER, which is spiritual and religious. There's so many different viewpoints on this people who approach the world, whether it's through a spiritual understanding of their own God, of their own choosing, or whether it's something else. How do you do that? How do you handle addressing the multitude of different perspectives and experiences? As a grief counselor, what does that look like for you?

Speaker 2:

Well, first I want to say, and help people understand, that culture is very much tied to religion, or rather the other way around Religion is tied to culture and religion can be expressed differently, like like, for example, the Orthodox church.

Speaker 2:

You've got the Greek Orthodox, the Russian Orthodox, the Ethiopian Orthodox, the Armenian Orthodox, and they all kind of express themselves differently based on the culture that they're in right, yes, religion and culture are very much tied together. How do I deal with the different religious perspectives and views and traditions? I personally went on an exploratory journey of all the different major denominations, really of Christianity in particular, but I also, when I was studying for my Master's of Divinity, I also got really interested in actually even before then, I got interested in other world religions as well and studied world religions in university and receptive to all different religions, because you're dealing with patients with no discrimination, so any patient- of any faith or tradition or spiritual or faith tradition could call upon you to be there for them and to be there in the way that they need or in the best way that you can offer your service.

Speaker 2:

So I've always been open-minded around religion and I've always, always had a fascinated. I had a fascination and have always studied it. So to me it doesn't faze me if someone from a different tradition comes to me and you know, and I just get them to explore what's meaningful for you. And let me tell you like individuals practice their faith and traditions in such a little different ways than other people. So there's never one cookie cutter way of doing things, like no human, no person will ever do faith in exactly the same way as someone else. So really the question is like what's meaningful for you around what you're saying about your faith, around your spirituality and I understand the word spirituality in a very broad way. To me, spirituality is around relationships and what gives you strength.

Speaker 2:

Exercise with some nurses in a hospital and I asked them to stand by different pictures of what spirituality meant for them and some of them stood by pets. For some people, pets they're, they're, they're dogs or cats is their form of spiritual connection. Some people went stood by nature, some people went by family, some people went stood near, like a religious institution, symbols and images. So different people will explore spirituality and faith in different ways and I'm here to then guide them, you know, to explore it further, to explore it in a way they may not have been able to in an institution. They may not have been able to kind of openly say what they're thinking, criticize, deconstruct and then reconstruct their theology or their faith. So I help them explore all that I love deconstructing religion and faith and traditions and get them to reconstruct it in a way that's going to be meaningful for them and a way that's effective and useful for them, because it has to be useful for you personally.

Speaker 1:

Well, it's interesting because, yes, well, and first of all, I love the. I just love that every human experiences life and expresses it differently, from all different angles, whether that's a spiritual angle or not, really would love us to remember that when we're dealing with the diversity and the divisiveness of today's thinking, where others would have us be separated, I think what we need to remember is that the world is built with colorful, beautiful diversity, and that's in all plants, animals, insects, you name it and that even includes us. We are allowed to be diverse in our thinking and our expression of who we are, and I think that's beautiful. What I love about this is that you know your practice of helping others and guiding them. Is it just your name, mean bridge?

Speaker 2:

Yes, it means stairway to heaven, so my name is in reference is in reference to Jacob's ladder, which is a bridge between heaven and earth, yeah, so, and that's what I do, right.

Speaker 1:

And you're at your. You're actively doing it. You are the embodiment and the expression of that through the work that you do. I think that's incredibly cool. Did you find that out when you were younger? Did you always know that was your expression? Did your mom tell you that?

Speaker 2:

Well, I knew what my name meant when I was young. Did your mom tell you that? Well, I knew what my name meant when I was young, but it was only recently, when I was thinking about my name, I think someone asked me what does your name mean? That I was able to make the connection that. Well, actually, what I'm doing is you know my name is the work that I'm doing. Yeah, so I made that connection.

Speaker 2:

I love it In the last sort of couple of years? I think Not as a child. It in the last sort of couple years?

Speaker 1:

I think not, not as a child, but well in the last few years there's so much I'd love to jump into. You know, we always talk about vulnerability because I think it's a power, I think that's a superpower. Vulnerability, um, there's a few of these hope and resilience and things like that. But before we get into those things, um which we may have to do in a number round two, if you will, because I want to talk to you further about some of these get into the other things. How can we find out more about you? If we want to hear more from you and what you're doing and we want to either work with you, get you as a coach and things like that, what can people? Where can they find you?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I do have a website and I would suggest that you go to either two particular pages on my website. So if you're wanting some free resources, I've got different PDF documents that help talk about the different types of losses and grief right, and I show that clearly on my website. So if you go to griefsupportco slash free resources, you'll see a page of at least six different types of resources, so one for before death, so health loss, there's one for divorce and then there's some for after death grief as well. I think I've got three different ones for different types of grief or different ways of coping with grief. So do go to that website, that webpage. I should say griefsupportco slash freeresources. All one word Download whatever you want from there, as many as you want from there.

Speaker 2:

But if you want to reach out to me, contact me. I do offer a free 30-minute consultation call just to see how I might be able to help you, to help for you to share what you're struggling with, what you want help with. So that would be griefsupportco slash contact and there's a contact form you can fill in and that will get an email to me and I'll send you a calendar link and we can then talk on the on zoom if you want, or on the phone, and, uh, just see how I can help you. And but to pinpoint precisely where you're struggling, what aspect of your life that you're struggling with, uh, because I I don't I'm not a typical therapist that will keep you in therapy for years and years and years.

Speaker 2:

I tend to work kind of short term to medium term, you know, for as long as you want really, but I can get results, I'd say, within two, three months, because I work with a lot of clients with grief, and I've been doing it for a long time time, so I've learned to work quickly to help people find relief from their pain.

Speaker 2:

So it so eight weeks to me is considered short, you know, by, you know by therapy standards, um, to you know, six months maybe. If you need more you can always extend that, but you know, within sort of half a year I'll get you stabilized for sure and help you find some meaning. And you know, if you want to go off and do your own kind of internal work and then if you want to come back to me later, that's fine too. So I'm quite flexible in the way that I work, but I want to see you having some relief because and quickly, because I suffered for a long time through my own different types of grief and it's not fun living in that kind of living in that state of grief.

Speaker 2:

So, and my first major grief was when I was in my 20s and I didn't think I needed help, and so I suppressed it, and so I don't want anyone to suffer unnecessarily.

Speaker 1:

That's what I'm here for to help relieve that the stress or the anxiety of something that I'm dealing with. You have a very soothing and calming spirit and I thank you for that. So, ladies and gentlemen, if you want a stairway to healthy you're living, to a healthy mindset, you should get in touch with San to check out her material and her work. We'll have her back on the show because we're going to in round two or chapter two, whatever you want to call it. We're going to take a little deeper dive into some of the background that got sent to on this journey. Think where the intersection of what she and I have both been through brought us closer together by sharing some of those experiences and wanting to navigate that and she's also, by the way, going to be interviewing me as well. So you're going to get a little more deeper. I'll be the one in the hot seat, so it's going to be more interesting to find out what those little journeys and hiccups along our road were. And, yeah, hopefully this will help you with your thinking and your everyday assessment and adapting to life. You know, as entrepreneurs and mentors and leaders, you are already inviting more challenges, more obstacles and more opportunity to grow every single day that you step out onto that road, and getting support and help from individuals like Santu is crucial to your mental well-being and your emotional well-being.

Speaker 1:

So please have compassion with yourself. Treat yourself to I don't know a 30-minute call. Get on that call. Find out whether or not you're blocking. If you need to open up a little bit, don't be nervous, it's all good, we're here for it. We're here for the health and the happy. So thank you, guys, for joining us today on the Fearless Road podcast, part one of our interview with Santu Carter. More will come later as we take a deeper dive into her background and her life. So thank you, santu, for sharing yourself and your journey with us today and really helping us understand more about grief, for sharing yourself and your journey with us today and really helping us understand more about grief.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, and I hope it was helpful, even in just a little way, for others. And if I may say one more thing, just because you've touched on it and I don't want to forget it in the next episode, so I want to say it now and you know we can repeat it later on as well the word growth. So I consider myself a growth leader because part of the grief journey is to grow. We do grow. This is where my thinking around we expand, we grow, and people might find it hard to believe that there can be growth from loss and from grief, but there absolutely can be.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and that's why I think we don't give ourselves that, I don't think we allow ourselves to see that when we notice it in other things in nature, we don't let ourselves have that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. And that does require kind of sometimes just sitting in silence meditation, if you want to call it that or just sitting and pondering all that we've accomplished, because if you've had a devastating loss, it could be challenging just to get out of bed, just to be able to cook a meal. Everything shuts down so every little thing can be considered an accomplishment and those little accomplishments will suddenly become like a blooming flower and you think, oh wow, I have accomplished a lot. And then there's the whole legacy work, the legacy that you can create for your loved one. That's a whole big project in itself. That's very growthful and expanding. So there can be a lot of growth from grief and you know, I help people understand that to recognize it, to market it.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's chapter two yes.

Speaker 1:

Grief and growth. Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to get into it on the next one. As we look a little bit further under the hood of what this experience is for us and why we approach it and the way that we do, I think it's important for us to understand that there's reasons why we approach grief and loss and growth the ways that we do, and by having a better understanding of that, perhaps we can grow into better humans and be there for others, especially when it's time to be compassionate. So thank you very much, santu, for your time today. We'll have you back again so that we can touch on grief and growth. Thanks everybody, have a wonderful day and we'll see you at the next episode. Bye, thank you, mike.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, Michael, thank you.