My grieving process lasted years. From that point forward, there was something in me in learning how to actually have a voice and communicate the pain that was in me. And what I love about Hoffman is I think it gave me and it gives people a chance to actually, at times, communicate things that maybe we've never said that we feel inside. And I needed that. I I needed that in so many different ways beyond just my brother. And but that was just where I kinda learned the power of that moment.
Hello, and welcome to Love's Everyday Radius, a podcast brought to you by the Hoffman Institute. My name is Sadie Hanna, and in this podcast, you'll hear real conversations and stories with graduates about their courageous journey inward and how their love and light are living in the world around them. Love's everyday radius. Thank you for being here and welcome. Before we dive in, please note that this episode references grief and loss. Please use your discretion as you listen.
Hey, everyone, and welcome. I'm Sadie, and I'm here with Corey Campbell, my colleague, my friend, and so much more. Corey, thank you for being here with us. Yeah. What's up, Sadie? This is kind of fun. I listen to the Hoffman podcast when I walk my dog most mornings, so this is kinda cool to be on. Yeah. Wonderful.
I know many of the people listening are Hoffman graduates, and so they may have some sense of you already either from being with you as a teacher, hearing you and your teaching through the app, or online various different ways they may have accessed you. I would love for you to take us into a much more whole view of who you are. What's happening for you? What are you doing in the world, how did you get here?
Yeah. You know, it's neat, I think, in Hoffman because we don't actually share much of ourselves, and so I often feel like I learned so much about these people that I get to work with. And, yeah, there's very little shared on the other end. So I would just start off by saying my primary roles in life, I'm a husband, I'm a father, a son, a brother. And on the work front, in addition to Hoffman teaching and coaching, I'm an entrepreneur and a leadership consultant.
And what I would say just purpose wise, just really trying to inspire people to live more energized, engaged, and connected to themselves in their lives. That's really what drives me every day. Wonderful. Give us a little bit of the backstory. How did you come to do the work that you're doing right now? Yeah. I'd go all the way back to college and studying psychology. I've just been this lover of, like, understanding why do people do
what they do. I even love studying animals and insects and just watching behaviors. And I took kind of an interesting route. I had done my sophomore year of college at the University of Hawaii. It was an exchange program for Virginia Tech. I fell in love with Hawaii. I decided I was gonna go home, graduate from BT, and then move straight back to Hawaii, and that's what I did. Got here, you know, lived in a hostel for a number of
weeks. No one would hire me because I think I didn't have a Hawaiian address. And then finally got a job at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, which was amazing and so much fun. And I was bartending there. And then that led into, moved to Japan, and I taught English for three years. And I had always wanted this experience of living outside The US that felt like a perfect medium. I knew I wanted to stay in Hawaii and, you know, having some connection to Japan and Japanese
language ability, I knew would be helpful. So that's led me there. That was a really wonderful experience. And one of the a few moments where I think I realized that my views on this world are so limited and narrow And that when I got outside The US, I started to really feel like, okay. I need to expand how I see this world. I came back to Hawaii. I got kinda
fell into a job in hotels. I was a guest services manager at Sharon Waikiki getting yelled at for about twelve to fourteen hours a day, and I can remember thinking, like, this is the worst job in the world. Like, who wants to be this guest services manager? I really I I often share this story. Like, I had a moment where I decided I either quit this job or I choose to look at it differently, and I think it's been very instructive for
my life. I just decided I was gonna go back to being myself and not allowing the negativity of the role to just beat me down every day. And I think somewhere in there, I started to really understand, like, energy. If I bring a certain type of energy to an experience, I can definitely interject that into the other person. And as we talk about Hoffman, I mean, I think that's one of the core concepts is if we own a % of our 50, we actually have
the power to shift the other person. And then just briefly on my roles, then I moved from guest services. I opened up a bar called Rumfire at Sheridan Waikiki as the
AGM. Then I moved over to the Royal Hawaiian as a learning and development manager, found my passion in training and people, and I left Hawaii and took a role as a corporate trainer for Starwood Hotels and Resorts and traveled for about three years doing leadership training across America and Canada and Puerto Rico and was just kind of feeling exhausted. Came back to Hawaii. I was overseeing training for Starwood's four kind of big brands, which you can add the Mortar Surfrider and the
Sherna PK. And then I broke off on my own in 2015 and started Akamai training consulting with just this desire to train and do things that impacted people's lives. And then just to bring the whole picture together, I and I guess it was right before COVID was hitting. Hoffman sent out an email saying they were doing teacher training. I just had this deep desire to be
in a space. I love leadership training, but I always found my best days were when I was working with someone and it dropped beneath the surface of leadership into why do they operate the way they operate? You know, I did Hoffman with zero intentions of being a Hoffman teacher. And years later, something hit me when I saw that email. I was like, I really would like to be a part of an organization that helps people connect to themselves. And so that's what led me into Hoffman as well.
Can you describe for me what happened for you when you fell in love with Hawaii? How did you know? Yes. Oh, gosh. It's, it was this I don't know. It's just since when I got to Hawaii, just that there was something spiritually beautiful about this place, you know, not religious based. Just like I felt very connected to nature. You know, life in college was going to class and then typically going hike, going to a beach, getting under a waterfall.
And I often reflect on that time in my life, and I realized I was most in touch with myself. I remember I took a, interpersonal psychology class. We had to read Jon Kabat Zinn's Wherever You Go, There You Are meditation book, and we had to write about our own personal meditations. And I just remember feeling like I could sit outside and just feel this total sense of peace and comfort. It was really, really powerful. And so I think that's what drew me here. I felt that in the people here as well.
You know, if you can drop beneath the surface greetings in Hawaii, there it's just this beautiful heart and connection that people offer. What led you to decide to take the process? Oh, yeah. I wanna mention one thing, Sadie, that, is coming up for me. I, as a kid, moved schools almost every year. My parents were like my mother was very involved in education. So it would be, you know, this is a better school for you this year. This
is a better teacher this year. My mom was a previous third grade teacher. I hated it, and I would get sick each day. Now what I realize is almost every school year when I was a kid, I had to relearn how to, like, make friends and become accepted. And I think somewhere in that, I was a shy kid actually growing up. But then somewhere when I hit my teenage years, that turned into energy. I assume that it was it came from just this need for acceptance, which drove a lot
of my patterns as well. And then one other big part of my story is when I was in high school, I was chasing a basketball dream, and I left my parents in Virginia, and I went to a school in New Jersey. I had done a basketball camp at Syracuse. This coach had come, asked for volunteers to do drills. I did some ball handling drills. He was like, give me your address. I'll send you a pair of shoes. And my AU coach at that time was like, you're gonna go play at that school.
This was Saint Patrick High School. It was one of the top schools in the nation. I was like, yeah. That's funny. And he's like, no. You're gonna go play at that school. And I was a good player, but that was nowhere near that ability. I went up and scrimmaged with this team, Sadie. I had probably the best day I've ever had playing basketball. And I remember this coach was like, come up. Come live with us. I lived in
an assistant coach's basement. And I went from a predominantly white school to an all black inner city school, and it was tough in the beginning. You know, my whole career is really funny. I played with a six eight guy named Corey White. That was his name, white guy. And so, he was Corey White, and I was white Corey my two years at Saint Pat's. Yeah. I was one of the only white guys in the school. I was the
only white guy in the team. And I'm so grateful to that experience in reflection back because I think even energy wise, I mean, a, it taught me so much. I I understand, you know, this concept of privilege differently, I think, from that experience because I felt judged when I first got there for being a white guy. Everywhere we traveled, it was like, who's this white boy? Why
is he with this team? And now, like, I can see how blinded I was to to the experience of most of the world being judged for color skin, the way you look, all these things. And so I think all this wraps into my just energy. Like, I I feel like I've become this study of energy because I've kind of been in a place in my life where I've always needed to understand it better. So that hit me as you were
talking about that. And then what brought me to Hoffman actually, ironically, was that I was losing my energy. I was in a space where from the outside, I think if you looked at me, people were like, wow. You you have your stuff together, Corey. You're you know, you've got this business. You know, you're healthy. But inside, what I was feeling was just absolute exhaustion. I truly like, without knowing it, and this
is why I'm so grateful to Hoffman. Without knowing it, I was placing a % of my value on external validation. And I can remember, it was all work based. If I did a training for someone and it went well and we had this connection, I'd feel great when it ended. And then oftentimes, you know, I wouldn't even get feedback. It's like the training ended. The next morning, I would wake up and be like, was that even real? Like, you know, who are you,
Corey? You're you're nothing unless you're doing something today. It was interesting. I just felt like something is wrong in my life. Relationship wise, I was drawing in wrong energy to me. I had a really traumatic experience of a woman faking a pregnancy after we broke up and leading me for four months thinking she was pregnant when she wasn't.
And and I think, and this is where I love Hoffman because what I came to understand is I went to Hoffman thinking it was my dad's patterns that really were kinda creating pain for me, but it was my mom who was loving and giving. I was replicating her pattern of saving, if I was to name it, being a martyr. Like my mom put herself beneath me and my two brothers, my dad. You know, as I became an adult, I understood that more, and I didn't realize I was
doing that. And I was drawing that energy towards me of people that just wanted to, in my opinion, suck energy, you know. And I was so glad to give it, Sadie. It was like, yes. Take. Take. Like, this makes me feel good when I give, but it was leading me into just exhaustion.
You're bringing up something an interesting thing, this exchange of energy, this feeling of it being sucked away from you, this recognition that if I have a lot and give a lot and demonstrate a lot, maybe I can be accepted, maybe even transactional nature to energy. It's very interesting for me. Doing this role in Hoffman, I feel like sometimes I can see or sense energy between me and another person. But at that time, I had zero ability,
and I never understood it. And I think what was happening for me, you know, in a nutshell, I think my mom gave up her entire life for her boys. I mean, there's a whole story. They were both my parents are from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. My dad wanted to be out on the West Coast, and so we moved to Oregon as a kid. I just grew up thinking, like, yeah. My parents love Oregon. This is
all great. I found out as an adult that my mom had made a deal with my dad to maybe go there for, like, a year or two just to experience it and then move back to the South and be near family. And at some stage, that didn't happen. I mean, it sounds like that was probably an argument between them. And my mom, I think, just sucked it up and said, I'll pour everything into these boys, into this family.
And I believe and this is why when people come to Hoffman, sometimes they're like, you know, I had amazing parents. I actually don't understand negative love syndrome. I don't understand how I got patterns. And for me, I can totally identify with that because I thought I had nothing from my mom. She was great. And then I realized, oh my gosh, like the patterns that hold me back that actually suck my energy are from my mom of trying to live up to this model of what life can be when you
take care of everyone around you. And the ironic thing is is, like, all the people around me loved that. You know? When Corey's here, it's great. I loved it. I'm like, I can give to you. I can give to you. And then I can remember times after friend gatherings going home and being like, I'm just, like, exhausted. And there was an emptiness to it. I think it was because I wasn't respecting myself in the sense of, like, even looking at my own needs. It was just modeling my mom.
So you're speaking about the negative love syndrome, which is this human experience of learning what you need to do to be loved, accepted, safe within your family. And oftentimes, that's modeling after what you see your caregivers doing. Yeah. So I grew up with two brothers. My middle brother had diabetes as my father does, and they would just butt heads. I think it was partly diabetes driven. I think it was partly middle child to to father kind of driven.
But I remember as a kid, what this meant for me was, okay. I need to be funny and connecting. And, I mean, I really believe this as a kid. I thought my role was to make everyone else happy. I can remember seeing my brother fight with my dad. I can see my mom fight with my dad and thinking like, okay, I'll go take care of them. You know, I mean, I think this was subconscious for me as a kid, but that became what I could do. I have battled sometimes even, like, concepts in
my life. And when I learned some of Hoffman's, I was like, woah. Okay. It's true. It's true. This is why this goes so deep. And I had done a lot of self work before Hoffman, different programs, and had great experiences, but none of that ever stuck. And I realized when I did Hoffman, like, I think the reason why is I never went deep enough and really understanding, like, wow, negative love is, you know, beginning from zero to 18 months. I was like, wow. This now connects for
me. Like, this is deeply set in me. And it's why, you know, I think post Hoffman, I still have to continue the tools and practices or I can easily drop back into this for your value is in taking care of others. So it's interesting, yeah, how it still lives in me in a way that I've gotta still continue to do the work. Even now as a Hoffman teacher, years after the process and years after teaching, you still have to pay attention and do do the work.
Yeah. I'm just picturing you in the back of the car on the way to the airport with your hands in your heart and this beautiful intimate moment. Yeah. What's neat is in that space, I often actually fall asleep in that car ride. And I think I fall asleep because it's finally allowed my heart to breathe. That experience itself allows me to relax and just kinda sink into I mean, truly sink into the reversal of my shame statement, which is you are enough just as you are, Corey.
You know, it's so fascinating to me when I hear people's shame statements in the process and I think about mine. You know, I see people every day and it's just like this assumption that can happen automatically for me, which is, everybody looks good and okay. They're walking their dog, you know, they're happy. And I think all the time about how I was just walking around with this message inside me of I'm not enough. I have to do in order to get love.
And again, at a subconscious level, I wouldn't have had words to describe that before Hoffman. And that moment in the process of like actually uncovering this first pattern that was learned, it was instrumental for me even in my world today. I can hear that dark side message in my own brain of, you're not enough, Corey. You gotta do. Go do. Go do. I hear that when I come home from Hoffman. I walk back in and my wife's
had the baby for a week. I I have this automatic response of I've gotta go do to prove to her that, like, it was okay for me to have left Hoffman. My wife and I have a beautiful connection now and we can conversate about that. And one of the things that was really hard for me was actually, initially we would go hiking together, which was great. I need to be out in nature.
And then I realized if I'm around her, I still feel, especially after being away for so long, that my energy wants to go towards her and that actually to fully fill my own heart, I need to do this on my own. And so it was tough for me to ask. We obviously talk about in Hoffman about advocating for your needs and
compassion with boundaries. And one thing I realized is I would love to just do one hour nature on my own, just go hiking, and then flip that around and see how we can get her this time and the space that she needs. But being able to ask that question was totally new for me. It is a way of me reversing my shame message. Like I have enough value inside to ask that question and then she and I can work through how that can happen and it can look. And it's just for me listening to myself.
I think Sadie has been the answer that I never knew I could really do. Now Hoffman's given me ability to do that. This is a big difference, a huge shift you've just described. How did that happen? I have this moment in my process that is popping up into my head right now. I oftentimes will share this with my small group that I almost missed the entire point of the process.
I did my process in Saint Helena at the old site, and there's a moment where, you know, we're asked to go out in nature and just connect with nature. And I was drawn towards this creek that ran through Saint Helena, And I went and sat by it and I was, you know, in this beautiful space of listening to my spiritual self, which said, Corey, like get in that water. I've always had this great feeling and connection to water. I lay down in this creek and it's freezing.
And I feel my whole body shut down, like, just from the temperature of the water. And then I started breathing. And I opened my eyes. The sun is shining through the leaves. The leaves are dancing above me. And I had this moment of like recognition of like, Corey, this is what your patterns do. They clamp you down. You shut down. You go in these little spirals, vicious cycles, and you miss everything around you. And just from having stopped and breathe and let things
move through surrender, right? The true meaning that I took on of that word surrender. Look at this beauty that surrounds you. And it was amazing. And then I'm now walking back to the classroom. I'm soaking wet. I'm shaking. I'm so cold. My body is cold even though my heart is like on fire with love and warmth. And I start to have like a a shame spiral. I'm like, oh my gosh. And I walk back to this classroom wet. You're so stupid, Corey. Why'd you do this?
So fast forward, we have this experience of sharing that. And I did share like this magical moment that I just went through. And then, you know, a little later in the process, one of the students kind of said to me in one of the experiences, you know, like, hey, you know, I had this negative reaction to you, Coconut, and, you know, you came back in soaking wet and then you're drawing attention to yourself. And I just remember hearing these words and going, oh my gosh. See, this is what happens,
Corey. Like, when I'm just myself, like, letting me do what I want, like, I it impacts people in a negative way. I was just in this shame spiral. The beautiful part of this whole story is this guy who I'd not really spoken to the whole process. He was just, you know, in a different space. I went to him at a break and I I can remember this like it was yesterday. I just said, hey, you know, his childhood in the ass, and I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to, like, you know, mess
with your experience or whatever. And he looks me dead in the eye, and he had this beautiful robust Texan accent. He's still a friend of mine today, which is actually a really neat part of the story. He looks me right in the eyes, and he says, Coconut, you're missing the effing point, man. He said, I love that you got in that water. I love that. He goes, That's my own stuff. I would have never been able to do that. My father would have never done
that. Like, and I I just remember my whole body flushed. I was like, oh my gosh, man, I'm getting tingly just sharing this story because that brief encounter, I was like, oh my gosh, I almost walked out of here thinking I need to just be small because I can impact other people negatively. And in that one moment of him saying that I realized what the process is trying to teach us is that all we can
offer this world is to be ourselves. And all I can offer is to be myself, to be aware and acknowledge when I'm in patterns. And if that's causing me to do something that's not right, then, yeah, I have my work to do. But if I'm in touch with my spirit as I was in that moment, that I truly can't change and chameleon my way into making it perfect for everyone else, which was a a huge pattern
of mine. And so I've come to reference this whole concept in my own brain is this, like, idea of permission to shine. Like, each human and little coconut inside me, we have permission to shine. And I I heard a student reference it that way one time, and I was like, I love that. That's exactly what it is. Trust yourself. Trust your light. And this is the story that I tell myself always. Like, Corey, notice when you're in patterns, % do that
work. And when you are connected and you're being yourself, trust your light, radiate that light out. It's kind of a little bit of like a mantra that I think I have in me. And because I'm a visual thinker, like, I oftentimes sense, like, this my heart, what does it feel like when it's radiating, when it's, like, pulsing love to myself, to others? And, yeah, that moment in my process, I I think, taught me the most critical lesson I could have learned
walking away. Wow. It's this moment of I can actually make myself happy. I can do what feels good to me even if that doesn't make someone else happy. Right. And, oh my gosh, for a guy who grew up with patterns of people pleasing and helping and saving and martyr, that was such a foreign topic and an idea for me. I keep in touch with him. About once every six months or so, we have a call, and I am so grateful to him for giving me that lesson. It's just amazing.
You know what I've come to appreciate is, like, there's so much happening in the process that it can be hard to capture all these moments. And that's why I think I often share this with my students is, like, the real process begins post process, right, which is as I think we commonly talk about at Hoffman because that's where the integration really occurs.
When I notice those patterns which are always in me of, oh, I should just people please do, it's this moment where I can catch myself and realize there is a right road here for me with consciousness and choice and presence and connection to my own spiritual self. Like, I can choose that right road. And so, yeah, that was a very foreign idea for me that now lives in access for me. It still takes
work to access. Right? I can't go on autopilot, But when I bring consciousness to myself, I know how to choose that road. Your description of getting into the creek and laying down and just feeling yourself opening and you saying all I need when I get home from teaching is a few moments to fill my own heart and an hour in nature. The source of energy for you sounds like it's your own love and nature.
Yeah. I think that is very true. Like, I have this deep connection to just feeling my feet on the ground even, you know, in shoes hiking. There's one other thing for me that just is one of the most visceral experiences. I love to get under waterfalls. Very lucky in Hawaii there are, you know, it's very accessible, like, waterfalls aren't blocked off. But for me to either hike out in nature or to just go sit underneath a waterfall shifts everything.
One other, like, important part of my story which connects to this, my middle brother passed away from a diabetic reaction. My last time spent with Micah was in Hawaii, in Hana, Maui, which is the most lush, beautiful spot in the world, in my opinion, full of waterfalls. And he had come out here and we had just gotten under tons of waterfalls. And so for me, when I'm able to do that, it's my one deep connection to my brother. Like, I have this little song or I it to myself.
It's from Braveheart, I think. But when I get under the waterfall, I this song and I can feel my brother's presence in me. And so I think there's this connection to me with him, with nature, with water. Somehow it's all kind of molded together into this beautiful way for me to just replenish. The people pleaser, the energy giver, the must make others happy becomes more self full and doesn't sound like very much. A moment of breathing into your heart and our nature.
I've come to appreciate that the word selfish, which I think has a negative connotation in the world, might actually be one of the most important words for us to reframe. Self centered, I think, is a perhaps a pattern driven way of being, but selfish. And I tell all my students as they're starting the process in the pre call actually to get really selfish this week, to just worry about themselves, to try to
change that word even for myself. As I look at, like, what needs I have and how could they be met, you know, sometimes it's actually just taking a moment to be selfish, to fill, you know, my own heart, which then allows me, I think, to operate in this world where I can fill others. One final question. Can you describe for us what it's like to come home and hold Caden in your arms after having filled your heart and spent time in nature? And here you are present as a father. Take us to a moment.
Oh my god. It's the greatest thing in the world. I have to say, I just adore being a father, and I love that little dude so much. I just like to, like, look in his eyes, see his little smile, hear his giggle. There is something so pure and so beautiful about babies, which I fully admit, I think I was completely unaware until I had a child. I remember not really noticing babies that much. And now I'm like, wow. How did I
not? Because just to feel this connection with him, it's almost like visually, sometimes I sense when I'm holding him and especially coming back from a process where I haven't seen him, I feel there is no barrier between him and I. It was one of the neatest things when I learned that babies feel this way. You know, their world is a % internalized. Like, if you hold their hand, they
think it's their hand. And, like, I think I steal that in that moment and try to envision that he and I are one, as I do with my wife too. Like, we are one in this moment of coming back. And it's beautiful, Sadie. Yeah. Thank you for asking about that, man. I got this big smile on my face just thinking about holding him and just feeling his joy. And if I may just add, it is also something I harness.
In the process, we talk about pain with another human in this world and oftentimes thinking of that person as a baby to understand like, Hey, something happened to them in this world that put them in a place to do whatever it is that they did to you. And I go back to thinking about Caden and I'm like, Wow, like, Yeah, this is the purity that every human comes into this world as. And it connects that point so much for me because there is no way a baby could do anything to hurt anyone.
So it truly is, if that ever happens, what has happened to that person? Beautiful moment of connection with purity in a sense. I love that you said he and I are one, and I think about attunement. What a beautiful gift to offer. Yeah. Oh, I love it. It's so funny you say you often talk with people, and they're like, are you gonna have more kids? And I'm like, I hope so. I initially planned maybe one or two, but now doing it, if we could afford it, I would,
like, have five or six kids. Like, I just I totally get now these families that grow and just grow big. There's nothing like it in the world. And what's neat for me is having been a person who has patterns of I've gotta take care of everyone in this world to get value, what's neat for me now as a father is I noticed internally that sometimes that messaging is, I just need to take care of this little being, you know, and my wife. And if I can take care of them, I'm doing a good job in this world.
And that's something that would not have ever made sense to me before. It would have been like, no. You gotta help more people, Corey, to get value. And so it's made my world very, like, microscopic in that sense. Like, I just really need to love this child as much as I can. And that that is enough, You know? Hopefully, I'm doing other things too, but that is enough. That is enough. I am enough just as I am. I love hearing you say these things and hearing your story. Wonderful.
And before we go, is there anything you wanted to say that I didn't ask or that you didn't say? You know, the only thing that came up for me, Sadie, was, I had this really interesting experience when my brother passed. I was in Japan. I had been in Japan about a year and a half, and I was running late to work. And I had one of those old school answering machines that would, like, speak out loud when a message was being left. And I remember the phone rang, and I was like,
I'm not gonna answer it. I gotta get to work, but I'm just gonna listen to see who it is. And it was my father telling me that my brother had died. He said, Corey, sit down. Micah has died. I mean, it was just that straightforward. I don't remember anything after that, ironically. And what was really tough and interesting culturally is I remember receiving a call and thinking it was my office asking me where I was. And I just said, you know, my brother's
died. Hang up the phone. About thirty minutes later, two of my friends, other English teachers in Japan showed up at my door, and they're like, hey, we heard what happened. I I couldn't understand how they even knew. And then soon after that, I had three of the kind of bosses at my office my education office in Japan show up, and they came in and they sat Seizo style, like, on their knees in my living room for I don't remember how long. And in the moment, I remember thinking, like, I don't
like this. Like, I don't want anyone around me. I just wanna be by myself. In reflection afterwards, I came to realize there was this beautiful cultural moment there that was like with deep respect. They came and sat there in silence in my living room as I was just coming to terms with what had happened. Then what was really hard for me is I just feel like I buried my brother's death inside. You know, I went back to The States, and I remember I had this weird emotional moment of, this is
so strange. I'm seeing people that I haven't seen for a while because I've been in Japan, so I'm supposed to be happy. And yet I can't be happy. And so I remember, like, I think I just compartmentalized my brother's death, like, a %. I mean, truly, I think it took me about three years where I would just have these really adverse emotional reactions. I'd be in the middle of parties, and I would just leave. I was like, I can't even be in this space.
And I remember times even in Japan where I would walk miles because maybe I'd had a few drinks, and I was like, I can't drive, and so I'm just gonna walk to get home. One thing I wish I had done differently is, like, I wish I had tried to process and work with it, because I just truly buried it. And I had a moment with a friend where I actually I had drinks, and I was sitting on this hotel balcony, and I just spoke to the sky about everything I wanted to say to my
brother. And some of it was anger about how he took care of his own diabetes. And there was something so healing in that expression of energy for me that I remember I woke up the next day and I was like, wow, I feel something has moved in me. I'm not holding on to all this anymore. And that truly was the opening for me to actually really start grieving.
My grieving process lasted years. From that point forward, there was something in me and learning how to actually have a voice and communicate the pain that was in me. And what I love about Hoffman is I think it gave me and it gives people a chance to actually, at times, communicate things that maybe we've never said that we feel inside, and I needed that. I I needed that in so many different ways beyond just my brother and but that was just where I kinda learned the power of that moment.
You're describing such a presence with yourself. What you describe in just speaking it up to the skies, giving a voice to it and allowing it. Yes. Now when I am around people who have experienced death, like one of the things I always try to do is just get people talking about it, about the person, about it, because I've realized like that expression of the
energy is what releases it. Truly, right, as we name the second step of the cycle of transformation expression, I it's very real for me on why that's so important. I just go back to that image of you sitting with your son. All I have to do is be here to love him and that is enough. It sounds like you are doing that for yourself. Yeah. I will forever try to live by the words, I am enough just
as I am. I'm saying it with my hands and my heart right now and allowing it to move into my heart, which is, what keeps me on solid footing. Thank you so much for being here. Yeah. Thanks, Sadie. I appreciate it. And love to this entire Hoffman community. I feel so grateful to be a part of it. Thank you for listening to our podcast. My name is Liza Ingrassi. I'm the CEO and president of Hoffman Institute Foundation.
And I'm Razi Ingrassi, Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute Foundation. Our mission is to provide people greater access to the wisdom and power of love. In themselves, in each other and in the world. To find out more, please go to hompaninstitute.org.