Sheila VanZile is the product of the first generation of career women that were gifted the ability to juggle “real” careers and family - the outcome of the original feminist movement of the 1960’s. Trailblazers who worked 2 full time jobs for decades, one outside the home, and the other managing the home.
She was by all accounts wildly successful in her business career, but not without a cost. As part of that generation, she neglected her own needs. At 60, she felt disconnected, dissatisfied and unfulfilled. After her mother’s death, she was also exhausted from caregiving and ready to collapse.
In this episode she talks about using her mothers death and the gift of time, to commit to herself and reshape her life. Listen in to discover how Sheila left behind the “shoulds” and discovering the woman she left behind decades before.
Sheila VanZile is the product of the first generation of career women that were gifted the ability to juggle “real” careers and family - the outcome of the original feminist movement of the 1960’s. Trailblazers who worked 2 full time jobs for decades, one outside the home, and the other managing the home.
She was by all accounts wildly successful in her business career, but not without a cost. As part of that generation, she neglected her own needs. At 60, she felt disconnected, dissatisfied and unfulfilled. After her mother’s death, she was also exhausted from caregiving and ready to collapse.
In this episode she talks about using her mothers death and the gift of time, to commit to herself and reshape her life. Listen in to discover how Sheila left behind the “shoulds” and discovering the woman she left behind decades before.
Deb Timmerman 0:01
You're listening to less stress in life. With hosts, Deb Timmerman and Barb Fletcher, we believe life with less stress and more energy is possible with the right tools, strategies and knowledge. So, we bring your real conversations around the stress of relationships, money, and the daily hassles of life with guests that will inspire, challenge, entertain, and motivate you to take action. Our guest today is Sheila VanZile. She joined the first generation of career women in the 1970s, as they emerged from their homes gifted with the ability to juggle real careers and families. She was a high level executive business owner, community volunteer and gracious hostess. The truth beneath her seemingly successful and satisfying life was a very different story. She was dissatisfied and unfulfilled and at age 60, having neglected her own needs for decades started out a different path. She has identified that she suffered from toxic relationships, and lived a journey that she hopes will spark a deliberate and fruitful search for your style of awakening. She's an author. Her book, My Waterfall of Awakening: How Loss Can Bring You Home to the Life You Want. The guided journal will be out in August of 2021. Sheila, Welcome to our podcast. So glad to have you!
Sheila VanZile 1:22
Thank you, Deb, I really appreciate it!
Barb Fletcher 1:25
Hi Sheila!
Sheila VanZile 1:26
And thank you Barb!
Deb Timmerman 1:28
What motivated you to write this book?
Sheila VanZile 1:30
Well, it started probably the journey to the book started about four years ago, my mother died in January of 2017. And I had been her caregiver primary daughter role for a number of years prior to that. And she spent her last six weeks in my living room. And I held her hand while she died. But the truth of that relationship was that she was a very distant love withholding woman. She certainly had her reasons for that. And I have done a lot of work to discover what those were. But when she died, I really didn't feel grief, I felt a form of guilty relief at the end of the day. And I also knew as part of that, that I had been gifted back a lot of time and not having her in my care any longer. I also didn't have that judgmental, disapproving daily dosage that had been that had been keeping me from moving forward. So I really realized I was unsettled and unhappy. And I was turning 60 and decided that I was going to use this time and in a really deliberate way that I have been getting back. And the next big thing that happened with that was that I took a retreat to the Oregon coast. I was born in Portland, Oregon, and I spent 12 days was originally eight and I extended it to really start looking at my life again, and how I wanted it to be redesigned. And I realized that I had been doing so much of what I should do that I was really defined by my shoulds from the time I was a child doing what I wanted was not an option, getting back to that whole mother thing. And so I ended up with a lifetime of decisions that really ended up in an unintended consequence. So I had been neglecting myself I'd had bad marriages, I had toxic friendships. I suffered some childhood trauma due to bullying. And my career were really at the end of the day was quite dry and unfulfilling as I looked upon it because I should. So the veneer started to crack a little bit as I was paying attention to all of this and my awareness started to expand. My explorations really began sort of a wonder sort of feel to them. I was doing a lot of spiritual work, and an opportunities began to present themselves. And that's where the book title comes, they began to present themselves like a waterfall, and I started to refer to these little spiritual things as breadcrumbs and croutons, and the occasional slice of bread that would come forward. And I began to see that I was closing the distance along this journey, to be able to look at something that felt like I was awakened, then lo and behold, I spontaneously bought a house in France that just sort of came out of all of this. So that was two years ago, and I really started to percolate after that, when my when I sold my business almost two years ago, I'm still working in that. I'm still I'm still involved in it, but my business owner role has been relinquished and that that felt really good. That felt like I was taking over my own story. I realized when I got through all of these things that other women had to be in the same place I was that there had to be a whole generation of women in their 60s who had been living lives of "shoulds" and and had really, issues With their mothers and had issues with trust and self love, then you know, and really identifying what they really want in life, because we're moving into this next chapter, where a lot of things have fallen away, and we're looking around going, what about me? So, I wrote the book as a guided journal to tell my story, and then to offer the reader the opportunity to do their own path of discovery, their own path of awakening, there's somewhere around 38 lessons, it's, you know, it moves around, but there's the lessons and meditations that are in there that are geared to offering the opportunity to meditate the opportunity to journal the opportunity to, to just chart your own path. And so that book started probably August, where I really began to write in sincerity, and, and then about a year later, it looks like we'll we'll actually be bringing it forward.
Deb Timmerman 5:59
That must feel really good to accomplish something you set out to do.
Sheila VanZile 6:04
It does. And and I think that for women of our generation, the other thing that goes along with that, is that we're not used to being (eh...), if anyone would have told me I would have written a book that was to help women, given my corporate experience with women, given the things that have happened in my, my lifetime with women. I said, That's not me, and look, look where I am, right. So it really can change, it really can change what what you what you find your calling to be.
Barb Fletcher 6:34
If you think about the "shoulds" that you had and where that line in the sand shifted, what would have been the first step that you would have taken where the "should" wouldn't have been a screen you applied?
Sheila VanZile 6:52
I think that's a great question. I think that the first thing I did was assess my friendships is that I had not really looked at friendships as like a give and take type of an idea. I you know, I'm I tend to be the counselor, but their crew, right, and those kinds of things. And I had some people in my life that really didn't belong in my life, and that negative energy was was really an issue for me. I went through a very deliberate exercise of putting people in, nurtures my soul neutral, neutral to my soul, and sucks the life out of me. And I have been deliberately shaping those friendships over time. I always laugh when I say that. And my friends are like, which one on my end?
You wrote a blog, right around Mother's Day that was very interesting, and it brought out a lot of feedback from other women, who had experienced things similar to your toxic relationship with their mom. Can you talk about that just a little bit, and that whole taboo subject of what we don't say about our mothers and how it influences who we become?
Yeah, and and it is, it's always such a raw topic. This is the second blog I've done on on my relationship with my mother, and the most common comment I get back on on those blogs, is I'm not alone. Oh, my God, I'm not alone. So this is a topic women just don't talk about, and, and feel guilty about, you know, having these emotions about, you know, who the person that gave birth to them, right? With all of that. And, and they want to tell their story, too. I mean, there's, you'll catch some that resonate almost exactly like where I am, and others that, you know, where they've they've had some mental health issues or, you know, there's there's so many things. And I think that's the hardest part about a forgiveness process. Because I think that there really, there does have to be a forgiveness process. And it starts with being compassionate with yourself, and then then going through the process of understanding why your mother is was the way she is or was and forgiving her for that. And then releasing that. And for me, that was a process of a good two to three years. I mean, that wasn't something that that happened, like overnight, you just don't snap your fingers because something rises up, you start to do something and you're like, Oh, yeah, no, I'm not doing that anymore.
Deb Timmerman 9:27
What did you learn about your mother's early life that influenced how she mothered and then influenced how you mothered?
Sheila VanZile 9:39
She, she was raised by probably one of the meanest women on the planet. And my grandmother had been orphaned when she was two years old, and was raised by an older brother, and my mother had an older brother and a younger sister. She was the middle child and my grandmother treated her horribly. I mean, I I saw it in my lifetime. I, you know, I knew, and she didn't treat the other children that way, and she adored her son. So it was mom was kind of put under that thumb of, you know, just not, not loved. And that was the model she had. And that's the model she brought in. To me, the whole self loathing component that comes through with this is generations and generations in the making. I mean, so you, you really do understand that when you feel like you have healed yourself from that particular from the fact that you're not worthy, or that you're not enough, or that you're not any of those things, that you're really healing multiple generations with, that you're really giving a gift across to the future and to the past. And, and so as a result of that, I feel like that I'm a better mother to my son. But I can see that I did some things when he was Yeah, he's 35. Now, so and we've had to work on some things as a result of me understanding what I might have done with him that was completely unintentional. And we're in a good place with it.
Deb Timmerman 11:03
Childhood trauma has an epigenetic component. We don't talk about that very much, and the science behind it and how we're passing that on to our future generations. So congratulations to you for being able to talk about this difficult topic, and realizing that you are healing multiple generations and breaking the cycle. I didn't know about childhood trauma until I was in my 50s. And understanding what a role it played in my life was tremendously. It was freeing for one. But it was like somebody took this missing puzzle piece, and found it after all these years, and I could understand. I actually had to go back to my kids and say, I'm really sorry, I did that. You know, at some point, we do do the best that we can, right? Because it's what we came into the world. And it's the skills we have. But when we know better, we can do better.
Sheila VanZile 11:57
I agree.
Barb Fletcher 11:58
What's the key message that you would like people to take away from your book, I've heard you talk about how it's a journal and people can work along with you and have their own discovery. But is there one message that you would like people to I guess, remember regardless,
Sheila VanZile 12:15
that to know that we're not alone, to know that this story is very possibly your story. And that you have an opportunity to create the life that you want. And for me, the trigger for that was my mother's death. For someone else that may be I don't know, a death of a spouse or a divorce or some some other significant life event that you realize you're unsettled, and you're unhappy and you just don't can't put a finger on it. And and to know that other people are going through that same journey and that that there is a path to light, there's a path to joy, there's a path to triumph.
Barb Fletcher 12:57
I love that we all have friends and perhaps even family who we know may have settled when presented with those events, and have been unable to make those shifts and it's so empowering for you to share this message that you've accomplished it and show others a pathway to find their own.
Sheila VanZile 13:21
Thank you
Deb Timmerman 13:22
What a wonderful message of hope and healing you share for our listeners your favorite stress tip or tool.
Sheila VanZile 13:31
Oh, yeah, I I call it my energy cleanse. As part of as part of the spiritual work I've been doing, I there's I've done some, some channeling. And I've done some meditation and I've done some some things like that. And I found that an energy cleanse is probably the simplest way to return yourself to feeling pretty darn solid and centered and good. And in my case, I use a I use a vortex and I bring that vortex in my crown, and I just let it sort of wander through my body and clean anything out that doesn't need to be that doesn't need to be there, and I opened my heels and it drains out of sand into and it's let go free. So it's kind of out there and it's kind of but it's very simple and it's very, I find it to be super effective because a lot of times we just don't pay attention to the little spots in our body that are holding negative energy that are holding stress that are doing those kinds of things.
Deb Timmerman 14:31
It's so do you do that in a guided visualization kind of way? Yes. visualize your different energy centers in your body opening up in
Sheila VanZile 14:41
and pushing all the negative stuff down into my as it moves through from head down to chose and and then I give give it the energy all back. So
Deb Timmerman 14:50
Oh, that sounds great visualization.
Barb Fletcher 14:53
I agree.
Deb Timmerman 14:54
Thank you so much for being our guest today and sharing such a powerful message.
Sheila VanZile 14:59
I'm so delighted that you asked me to do this. And I just am honored that I've had the opportunity to be with you here today.
Deb Timmerman 15:05
Best of luck with your book, can't wait to order it. if folks want to pre order your book, how do they do that?
Sheila VanZile 15:11
They can go to my website, which is at Sheila Van zeile.com sheilavanzil.com. And you can do presale there. You can also subscribe to my blog there as well, the Facebook page, SheilaVanZileauthor that you can, you can follow.
So we'll drop the link also in our promotion so that we can define over and check out your stuff. Perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you. less stress in life is possible. If you're new to this kind of thinking and would like to explore what's possible for you. We'd love to connect. You can reach us through our website at less stress in life.com less stress in life.com