Overcoming Grief to Reach a Spiritual Awakening
This week's guest is Nikki Lemon- a peer Certified Coach at The Life Coach School. Her story of a college abortion after a "Romeo and Juliet" love story, leading to years of self-hatred, guilt, shame, and grief, followed by her rise to freedom as a woman, and now a coach, is AH-MAZING.
Nikki’s Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/NikkiTheLifeCoach
Nikki’s email- nikkithelifecoach@gmail.com
Show Notes:
2:14 Nikki’s introduction- Raised in a Mormon household, had an abortion in college, buried her story for many years, eating disorders, toxic relationships, self-punishment, planned suicide, until “maybe this isn’t your only choice”... self-help, seminars
7:26 “I decided right then and there that I could find a way out of my own despair, and I was going to figure it out”
7:50 “… our thoughts are so powerful and we get to choose how we think and build on ourselves, and our journey, and our choices, and our decisions”
8:33 “It’s such a disenfranchised grief… it’s not publicly observed”
9:30 “It was actually the day after my 20th birthday when I drove myself to the abortion clinic… I didn’t start to heal and talk about the abortion until I was 40”
10:15 “She couldn’t get pregnant and I felt guilt that I had deliberately ended a pregnancy when that was all she wanted in the world”
11:47 “I convinced myself that it was my fault that he didn’t love me… I convinced myself that this man didn’t love me because he knew that I was a horrible horrible dead soul”
13:20 “I just wanted absolution of some sort. I wanted to feel clean, I wanted to clear, I wanted to feel worthy… I figured that if he could he could think of a punishment that would fulfill those needs”
14:23 “You are clean, you are free from all sin; speak of it no more, do not carry it anymore. I left that building believing that because this man over me had told me it was so”
(Nikki was later threatened and exposed)
15:53 “So I started to think, what happened to forgiveness; this man told me I was forgiven”
16:34 “What is true and who do I need to believe”
16:51 “No matter how hard I try or what I do, it’s really never gone”
17:22 “...and so I think I overshared for a few years… I talked to everyone”
17:48 “I don’t think I chose well, the people I shared with”
(narcissistic relationships) 18:28 “... one they trapped you they will use all of those things to throw back in your face”
19:23 “Every experience is teacher for us… we’re hard wired for struggle and hard wired for success”
20:07 “We’re not alone”
21:06 Biggest thing you’ve overcome “... learning how to find who I was spiritually”“I get to believe who my creator is… I am loved unconditionally”
23:07 How do you make the abortion decision with the belief that you will be damned by your religious community?
23:56 “There were years where I was living a double life”
25:24 “So I have all of this in me, ALL of this”
26:20 “I really believed I was saving this child heartache... I chose the least of the evils in my head”
27:26 These stories are so complex and when we try to minimize them to laws and religious beliefs and politics we are missing the mark on what it is to be human.
28:25 “Part of you is so relieved, this problem is over, but then there’s all this layering grief and depression…”
29:25 Pillow exercise- holding grief and love
32:24 “I know I have a purpose, and my choices don’t define me”
34:40 Nikki’s relationship with her children and her teaching and parenting around guilt and shame, and honesty
37:04 “You’re not alone, there’s someone out there who has experienced at least some part of what you have… you’re strong enough to handle whatever you need to”
Nikki’s email- nikkithelifecoach@gmail.com
