Welcome to See'rs, Be-ers, Knowers and Doers, a podcast about intuition. Do you know what that is? Intuition to me is that inner sense for knowing that something is true and yet I have no proof, but there's so many definitions and there's so many ways it can come and go . Even to bring together and share with you some amazing guests, you have some amazing life stories and also some insights into how intuition can come and I'm looking to gather those crows in the trees. I hope you're one of them.
I hope that this podcast inspires you to be more connected to your intuition and I hope that by doing that we make the world a better place. Thanks for coming on this journey with me. Before we get started today, I would love to share some tools with you to help with stress and feeling overwhelmed, especially for the energetically sensitive person. Feel free to go to my store on my website@ www.healingvitality.ca. Thanks so much for coming on this journey with me.
Very excited today to have with me Vera Mylan Gervais and we're going to see where this goes, which I always love doing. So thank you again Vera for joining me today.
Thank you. I'm looking forward to this.
We met at an event probably just right before Covid hit. I think it was the last thing I did in public was go to that event and you were a speaker and it, it hit me like, Oh, she needs to be on my podcast. There's some stories there. I know that intuition played out, so thank you again. So tell us a little bit about yourself Vera.We'd love to get to know you better.
Well , um , I call myself an adventurous introvert. I'm an incredibly creative and curious person, and I have this compelling need to learn. It's kind of baked into me. Like I'm constantly noodling things in my head and it's one absorb things and grow. So the introvert part is innate. The adventure part is something that I've learned, and I guess I'll explain that as we go along. But I was born and raised in Calgary, so I grew up in the mountain and I consider myself a mountain soul.
It's probably the place where I'm the most grounded. You feel both part of something and totally humbled and small in the universe there. And I find that really inspiring because when you know that, you know the little mistakes you make aren't really big in the scheme of things, it kind of frees you up to make those mistakes and to kind of grow. So I think that's kind of one of the reasons why I like being in nature. I'm a wife and a mother. I have two freaking amazing kids.
Kalen and Abe, they're 31 and 28 I love them to bits. My husband Marcel , we've been married for 31 years. He's an Edmontonian and I'm Calgary, so that's not supposed to be a good match. But we met in Toronto. Okay . So that was, okay. So Alberta was our connection and we were allowed to, we were allowed to get together because of that.
Exactly, yeah. Those are fighting cities.
Yeah , definitely. Definitely. We had worked together for a number of years just in business and then ultimately did end up together. We started our business Health Connect I think three years into, yeah, three years into our marriage because we both ended up without a paycheck the same week. Wow. So we've been talking about starting a business for a while , but you want security. We had a young son, we just built a house. We like, Oh , this isn't the right time to do this.
And then life kind of intervened and said, yep, you're going to do it. So we started the business as a project management company and we've just pivoted it ever since, like for 28 years. And interestingly enough, for the most part of that 28 years we've worked in the same four walls with our desks facing one another.
Really? Okay.
So that's , that's quite telling about how well we can get along.
Yes, absolutely. I think there's marriage counseling in there somewhere.
I think it's respect for one another and knowing that you're both going to change and you have to embrace that change and embrace the fact that it's going to be uncomfortable from time to time and you're not going to feel totally secure and safe. But that's kinda like going back to the mountains analogy is like this times when you're out there, whether it's mountains or hiking trail or bike path or whatever, there's times when it's going to be slippery and it's going to be money.
But the only way you're going to get to the other side is to go on through it. And marriage is , is kind of like that too. And I think the fact that it was the second marriage for both of us, so that kind of gave us more incentive to make it worth and the kids, I mean we both adore our kids and they're the center of our life. And I would say family actually took priority over the business.
We traveled a lot in our business, especially after we moved it to Moncton cause we started it in Toronto and then moved to Moncton in 1995 and that was partially because we were working on a project that we wanted to do on internet and , and New Brunswick had fiber optics at the time. We thought that'd be great. And partially because Marcel, Marcel, Anthony, Jean Paul, they each have a little bit French. He wanted the kids to grow up bilingual. So Moncton was the ideal spot for us to do that.
But our business is, we outsourced to the pharmaceutical industry, so that's mainly in Toronto and Montreal. So one or both of us was on the road an awful when the kids were going out. And that meant the kids, we used to say they were single parents, that they just didn't know which parent they have. But we promised them when we started to do that, that we would take the air miles and we would use those air miles to travel with them.
And so when they were, I think the first trip we took was to Thailand when our daughter was seven and our son was 10 and we spent a month over there. I had a sister there, so we visited over there for a month. And after that we had enough air miles points to travel every other year. And our son picked New Zealand the following year. And then our daughter's the one who said, let's do all seven continents. So she picked Africa. Wow . And we went to Africa.
And then a couple of years later we were our , I think it was the year our son graduated. We ended up over in Wales and Scotland and we did other equities and everything. And then , um , Christmas of 2018 we did our last continent with the kids. We went to Antarctica. Did you really? Yes, we did. Oh, it was like the most amazing trip. We, we actually slept outside on the ice with sleeping bags. No tents, honestly, honestly. Oh, the stars.
I can't even imagine the stars where there weren't because well, because it was summertime. So it really, the sun didn't really set fair enough. Summertime, what was I thinking? I wasn't using my logic brain. I was thinking my excited little kid brain . No , I know. I said the same thing. I said, I want to see their Aurora Borealis and they go, no, no, it's true. It would have been too damn cold to sleep outside in the winter time .
Yeah. It was warmer down there than it was in Moncton at the time. I mean, it was still cold. Um, you know, just about zero. But it was, it was certainly doable. And as Canadians, as soon as it was like eight degrees, everybody else has got all their partners and scarves and mitts and we're peeling off layers. Wow. Would you go back? Yeah , I'd go back to almost anywhere we travel . It's, but , but there's so many other places .
I mean, we've done like 40 countries and people keep saying, which is your favorite in there ? They're all favorites for different reasons. Absolutely. Yeah . Right. Cool. I think for me it's just the fact that we have the capability and the opportunity to, to travel and, and that adventurous side of us, you know, cause we don't stay in four star hotels or even chains or anything. Like we literally go out and , and stay in bed and breakfasts or tents or whatever.
Like we, we, we get into the culture of the countries we're in. Yeah. So that was really cool. And , and, and that's a lot about who we are as a family and who we are as individuals. I think. Because I think people who travel like to learn and at least people will travel the way we do. You know, you're there to embrace the culture, to learn about the culture, to look at things differently. And I'm wish I could speak languages. My daughter speaks four languages, my son three and my husband too.
But I struggle, I'm English, I'm really good English, but I don't hear , I like, I'm not musical either, so I don't hear . So while I might be able to read and write French when people speak it to me, it's just a bunch of sounds. Especially with lids . So I struggle with that, but I don't have to be gifted in everything. Right.
No, exactly. You're letting your family shine in that area. That's all right .
Yeah . Yeah. And so I'm done got that done before the pandemic set and that's for sure.
Yeah, absolutely. It has shifted things. Um , people's buckets, bucket lists are changing, which is kind of interesting cause we're, we're being highlighted to what's important. I mean, right down to people applauding truckers and honoring their food supply chain differently and taking in activities that we did when we were children to act up , occupy their kids like hopscotch and things, driveway art and things like that. I think it's been a blessing.
It's, it's, it's been hard for some people, but I think overall it's a reprioritization that's going on , uh , right down to the earth having some time to heal. So , um ,
well , and that's really cool too because now you see people, I saw a great picture not long ago on one of my feeds and it showed families before the COVID and families after COVID and before COVID, everybody was sitting in the living room on their device. Right. And then after COVID them outside walking and bicycling and stuff like that. Because once you're forced to do something, it isn't the same attachment as when you do it rebelliously or as a habit. Right,
right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. We both have that inner rebel in us, which is like,
Oh, definitely. I mean, one of the words that I go , okay, I'll back up a little bit. I'm one of those people that walks into the yoga class and puts my mat down anywhere and you know, I might be taking a spot that somebody else always puts them at down on, right? Yes. And when I walk into a boardroom, I never sit in the same chair. Even though I know some people always sit in those chairs.
And when I drive to work, if there's a different path I can take to drive to work, even if it's just two blocks differently, I will do that.
I'm a little bit the same and I find that that gets the creative juices going. Y es. Yeah, for sure. So just shifting gears a little bit, beer, how does intuition come to you? What , how does intuition comes from so many different ways and everybody's got a different perspective on it. How does it work in your world?
I think for me it's more of a mindfulness and a paying attention to those little things that happened . So, you know, I'm, I journal, I do morning pages and when I write, I kind of let my muses just chase words around the page. And every once in a while I'll be writing in the half a page later, I'll go, well , what , just like what? Go back, what did you just write? And there'll be a little germ of wisdom in there that I didn't even know I had. And it's like, like what made you stop and go back?
What made me write it in the first place? Right. And then what made me stop and go back, because I could have written it and morning pages, you don't usually go back on morning pages right there , just kind of stopped and clear you up. So what made me go back and look, it was something that was important. Like, like you, like you wrote this, it's an important reason why you wrote this. So go back and dig in. And that happens relatively often actually.
I remember , um , a while back I wrote, I was writing just something about hiding and just fear. I was doing some stuff on Maslow's for my, for my talk, and it was like, there's fight, fight, flight, or what's the other one? Freeze. And, and so I'm going in writing and I can't remember what all I wrote. And then I went back and looked into it. Hiding isn't freezing. Hiding is flight. Right. Cool. Hey, Whoa .
That's a whole new perspective on the way we hide from confrontation, all that type of stuff. And so I had to dig into that. So that was, I mean, that's the kind of thing that happens, you know, it's like , I'll just go, you know, be walking along and go, Hmm, should I go left or should I go? Right. And it's like, I'll stand there and I'll listen to my body. I've learned to do that. It's like my body's going, no , no , go left. Go. Right. Okay. So I'll go. Right.
And then there's this absolutely beautiful sunset on a pond that I didn't even know was there. And it's things like that that so often it's like, you know, you don't want to go there, you don't want to go there and like, why don't I want to go there? And then you know, I won't go there and I'll be talking to somebody and they'll say, Oh, did you hear about the fight? Right. I was like, no. It was like, Oh my God, I was going to go down there and yeah, there was a fight.
The cops were there and I was like, Holy cow. So it's just paying attention to me it really is. Well, and in that paying attention, even in , um, in how it comes to you is interesting.
Like you are wordy person to me, like words and you are synonymous and so to have you feel almost the directions being given to in words and also have these morning pages, which if anybody is not familiar with them, that I think it's a Julia Cameron exercise and they're phenomenal to just dump and go. Right, right. But to have, I'm a bit the same. I like to dump on Facebook, here's the insight I had today.
And then you go back and read them years later and you're like, huh, that wasn't me writing that. Where'd that come from ? Divinely led. Right. So it's interesting when people migrate intuitively to the things that are part of their intuition. Like I see you posting on Facebook, diving into the meanings of words sometimes or highlighting, giving people almost a nugget for themselves. Is that true? Yeah. I mean , I think
I'm a strong believer in muses. Um, and my muse has a name, her name is Delphina and she's, she won't come to play unless I actually give her room to play. So that's, that's an interesting thing. If I sit down and try to force myself to write, I can't do that. I have to sit and play with her and toss things around and let her find that, that germ of what she wants to talk about. But as long as I pick a word and I start writing something down, then let me see .
They'll come in and say, Oh no, we've got to go in this direction. Or do you really want to do that? What about this word ? Right. She , over the years, Delphina has gotten quite a little personality and she insisted on having her own muse. So I actually had a second news , which I call Kai. And Kai is a Hawaiian word for , um , both air and sea.
So I find that very interesting because it allows me to, this is going to be a very visual description, but it allows me to dissolve as well as to flow .
Nice. Very well put.
And so when you do that, when you allow yourself to say, just let go of everything you think, you know, let go of everything you think you believe and what do you feel? And then go with that feelingAnd it can be scary. It can be funny. It can, it could be ending up nothing. I can be in them yet floating on the water and just send them my face and saying, Oh, that was nice ride . Nothing happened.
But just allowing myself to be open to the fact that, you know, I have these voices in my head, but that doesn't mean I'm insane. So true. Oh my goodness. So true. Thank you for saying that. So true. Yeah, I mean, I think we have all these other voices, like we have all these inner voices, these voices, like our parents. And like one of the ladies said , listen to dr Stephanie. She says, are our mothers, fathers, teachers and preachers.
And we have all these voices that have come to us because they learn it and they're , they're beaten into us or drilled into us. And we listened to those voices because they're voices of authority. But authority doesn't necessarily mean right and doesn't necessarily mean right for us. And I think, yeah, that , that's the part that led me down this whole path of taking a look at labels. Right? So I wrote a novel three years ago. I did it after I had my knee replacement surgery.
I just kind of wanted to explore my creative side and the novels about, well , when it was done, I don't know where, what it was going to be when I started, but when it was done, it was about a young woman's journey towards finding her identity. And in the process of writing it, I realized that we hold back on who we are because people tell us who we are.
Uh huh .
And that's when I started looking at labels and like you heard my speech, I talked about the fact that I grew up in called a cripple. I was a cripple and I was a brainiac and I was a nerd and I was a girl. I forbid I was girl. And all of those things position you in life based on the cultures and religions and the families that you're brought up in and you either fit in or you don't fit in. And that's judgment and like you don't even know the person and you're judging them based on a label.
And because I'm so fascinated by words, I had to take that whole concept and translated into such a way that I could explain when labels were dangerous. And so as you know, my analogy is, is the words we wear , like the clothes we wear and the impact that they can have on us. And I truly believe that if we actually thought about the words we use to describe ourselves, and we chose the words that we want to be, that we have a far better chance of living our life fully.
And so when I call myself an adventurous introvert , I'm acknowledging that I'm an introvert. I'm acknowledging that I need nature, I'm acknowledging that I need quiet time, but I'm also acknowledging that I , I have passions and I, I do things as long as I feel good about what I'm doing and I believe in what I'm doing, I'll go out and I'll, I'll take risks and you know, Oh, I have to be courageous from time to time and I'll back off and I'll cry and I'll do all those things.
I don't have to be an extrovert in order to be complete.
So true. So true. And I kind of take what you're , what you've drilled down so well and I, I've simplified it into, would you talk to the four year old self like that? Would you ever say those things to a little person that you say to your adult self , um, you know, would you want to put wings in a Cape on the four year old self or would you want to put them in a box? So you've drilled it down even further, which I love because it's so true that a lot of times I've been thinking of myself.
Do I know the true meaning of the word I'm using when I use it? I think that that sometimes can be a foible that we fall into because we can make assumptions around what we perceive the word to mean, if that makes any sense.
Yeah. Because it really is about perception. So if I say short, okay, I'm short, I'm five foot and half an inch, and most of the time it doesn't bother me. It bothers me when I can't reach something in the cupboard. And we're like, my son's almost six foot million at home . I said, you're taking away my ladder, but I'll tell you this incredible story.
So I go to this conference one time and one of the books we published was an industry directory and there's a fellow that I talked to every year when he renewed, is that in the book for, I don't know , eight, 10 years, but I'd never met him. But he had a very distinctive voice and I walked into this meeting one day and I was positive it was his voice. I walked out and I said, Ian, is that you? And he looks at me and I met his fear of your is your baby .
And he goes like, it's so nice to meet you. Oh my God, all these shit . You don't sound short. Oh, Oh yeah. Like Ooh , okay. What does short sound like? They don't know. What are you telling me? Are you telling me that this intelligent, capable person that you joked with all the time, you wouldn't have dealt with the same way? And you know when I was short, short take away my brains like it was , I don't think he meant it as an insult, but I took it that way. Interesting.
Yeah. So perceptions , the same word can have so many different perceptions.
Yes. Yeah. Anyways, we're kind of flying all over the place, which is kind of fun. I know it's awesome and it obviously messages that need to be heard by people. So that's the part that I love about this. Be careful with your words. You're someone with a smile on your face and it changes everything. Yeah . So do you have any stories where you haven't listened to your intuition?
A couple actually. Um , one
of them is probably the one that I think of most valid, both of them, but when we moved from Toronto to Monkton just because we were moving the business and the kids how's closed late and all that type of stuff, we weren't quite ready when the movers came and then we had some problems because the tuck cuts back in the driveway, there was damage. Anyway, long story short, we weren't quite ready to pack everything up.
So some of our neighbors came and helped and when we were done, it was like 11 o'clock at night. It was dark. We were standing around the garage and there was this like pile of garbage bags and I , I walked over and I said, we should go through those and make sure everything in here is supposed to be garbage. And people are like, Oh, come on Vierra like don't be silly. Don't be ridiculous.
Okay. Okay. So we get in the car and we drive and the next morning I go and say, where's that bag with all my clothes and stuff? Oh no.
And my change of clothes plus all my jewelry. Oh yeah. All my jewelry was in there . So you know, the gold price that my husband had given me, the diamond I had from my first wedding in the dump somewhere. And then when we got to the city, I had this tent that I absolutely loved. It paid a ridiculous amount of money for this 10th and only needed two poles and two pegs and could set up anywhere in the snow or a mountain or a glacier.
I camped everywhere in it and it had been in a garbage bag and it also was missing one other thing too. And I remember thinking like, you knew it, you stood there and you knew that you should go through those guys . Why didn't you listen to yourself?
Right.
So there's that. And then there's my dad and my dad , um, had disowned me for a number of years after my first marriage broke up. But ultimately we did get back together and we had a very solid relationship. And I remember talking to him one day when I was going through a third or fourth round of a bunch of crap that was happening in my life and I said to my, he said to me, you have to pray, Barry , you have to pray. And I'm going, dad , praying doesn't do any good.
Like every time I get up I'm up against stand up again. I just get kicked in the knees and I fall back down and then I get kicked in the teeth. I said, it just, it doesn't do me any good. And he goes, maybe it is. He says, maybe it's God and the universe trying to tell you you're going in the wrong direction.
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and so I ignored him again for another year.
Aha .
And I kept falling down and then I thought, okay, maybe there's something to what dad said. So I started to listen to some of the alternatives in my life and it completely turned around. So I remember saying to him, okay, I hate to say this, but you're right. So yeah , it's powerful. Yeah. I think we do know these things and sometimes we ignore them because somebody else told us and we don't want to admit their rights . Kind of like I did. Yeah . Or
just like the garbage bag thing, we ignore ourself because other opinions matter or logical or make more sense at that time. Right.
I see . That's really interesting, Heather, because you just made me realize that the two examples I gave you, one of them is me ignoring myself because of other people's opinions. And the other one is me ignoring somebody else's opinion. Yep . Right. So, Oh, interesting. Oh , I have to think about that one.
Yes. Yep . Yeah . It's whether or not the intuition is in line with our logic. It's the fight between the logic, like how can your dad possibly be right? Because that's not logical. Life going bad doesn't make sense coming from a divine place. Right? So it's when it fights with our logic brain and your friends, we're stating logic, like those are all garbage bags. We were like, we're exhausted. Like move on. So it fought against logic. So wits that it's right on paper.
I would my intuition telling me this or that's all wrong. So how can that be good for me? Yeah , it's those twists. So no, I your two examples that are very telling that way too, which is so awesome. And that's why I always find sometimes the, when we don't listen, lessons have almost a explanation point underneath them or beside them. So thank you.
And we never know which one is which. And I guess it's, if I go back to my mountain example, it's like I remember taking a survival course and it didn't go well. So the first thing I learned is just because somebody says that they're , they know what they're doing doesn't mean you should listen to them. If you have doubts, do question it because these guys almost led us into a cliff. But that's a different story altogether.
But the thing I learned out of doing that was that if you are going to do something, you need to stop and pause because if you just keep on going, you don't allow intuition or whatever you want to call it intervention. Common sense, you don't give it time and you really have to stop, pause and be open if you want to hear the message.
Yup , absolutely. So well put you the word wizard. Well done.
I thought I can do something. I can do a lot of things, but when it comes to words, yes, that's my, that's my superpower .
Yeah. One of them. Thank you so much for today. I really appreciate all that you've shared with us. It's, I think it's so important that each person has their opportunity to to talk about this cause it'll resonate with somebody somewhere and maybe change their trajectory. So
awesome. Thank you very much for having me. Really enjoyed this . All right , well maybe we'll do it again there. Yeah , there you go. We obviously can go down a lot of rabbit holes here . Thank you very much . Have a wonderful day. Take care.
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Thank you so much for giving us your time today. We truly appreciate our guests for sharing their stories and insights about how intuition has impacted their lives, and I'm so grateful for Peter trainer for his time and giving me this original music. It's now your turn. It's your turn to listen and act on your own intuition and help make the world a better place. Until next time, keep seeing being, knowing, and doing. If you like this podcast, please share it.
If you want to find others like it, go to www.healingvitality.ca or wherever you would find your podcasts. We would love to have you join us on this journey. Come be a Crow sitting in the tree. Be part of our community. [inaudible] .