I wanted the layers of the onion to come off. I wanted to go back to not the innocence. It wasn't really that I was after. I just wanted to go back to those things that really gave me joy. I wanted to see what I could do when I truly lived who I actually was. Hello, and welcome to Love's Everyday Radius, a podcast brought to you by the Hoffman Institute. My name is Sadie Gardere. I'm a Hoffman teacher, and I am your host for today. This podcast is about love and about the
courage it takes to journey inward. Thank you for being here and welcome. Before we get started, I'd like to mention that this episode mentions sexual abuse and child sexual abuse. Please use your discretion. Hey, everyone, and welcome. I'm here with Jan today. Jan is a Hoffman Process graduate. She is also a woman who has such a vision for herself in the world. I'm excited for you to get to meet her. Janet. Welcome. Thank you, Sadie. I, I don't know about my vision, but,
I'm excited to be here. Would you begin just by telling us a bit about who you are? You can start anywhere. I'll start with what I'm doing right now. Actually, as we're speaking, I'm in Mexico. I'm down in Cabo, just in San Jose Del Cabo, and I I live off grid when I'm down here. Totally solar powered truck in my water, but I'm also right by the beach, so I get to watch the whales. They give birth out here for about three
months of the year. So it's a it's a spectacular place if you enjoy the desert and you enjoy marine life, which I absolutely do. So I work from while I'm down here. My other home that I'm at is on Vancouver Island, and, I really up there, I focus on a business that I own. It's a cidery, a distillery, a eatery, a tourism place, an orchard. It's an all encompassing vertically integrated business of which I've been doing for many years, but it's, it's a really fun business. It's very action packed,
and I love it. So it's part of, I think, what we spoke about before. I officially, by Canadian standards, became a senior citizen about a week ago. Congratulations. Thank you. It's a very it's very weird. Man, I sure don't feel 65. I really don't.
And in that sort of time period of, like, after well, before Hoffman and the whole process of I ended up at Hoffman, I was going through some very deep thinking, reflection on whether or not I wanted to continue on with my business because of some major things that had happened in my life. And I decided, no. I really wanna carry on because there's some things that I really wanna do with my business, and I'm so I'm so far from done.
I think I'm another good decade before I, pack it in or or maybe I'll never pack it in. I don't know. We had a pre call before this episode and I was really lit from the inside, just an inspiration by some of the passion that you spoke about your life with. So where did you get that passion and what's happening
in your world with it? You know, Hoffman, the process itself, you go back and and you spend a lot of time, obviously, in that first part of your life, those first nine years trying to reconnect with your spirit and going through that quadrinity check. And I think what really became very clear for me is that spirit of who I am. It was obviously there before I went to Hoffman, but it really helped me to get clarity on it while I was there. And the passion, I don't know. I've
always had it. I I feel like I've always wanted to make a difference in life. And exactly what when I was young, I wasn't like, I'm gonna own a cidery when I grow up. That was not on my radar because who actually grows up with, I'm gonna own a cidery at a distillery, but I always felt like I wanted to make a difference. I think I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I think that was very bred into my bones. I think I might have told you I was adopted and didn't know my parents
at all until much later in life. As it turns out, my birth father was very much an entrepreneur doing many different businesses actually in Mexico because he was Mexican, recently passed. And my adopted father was also, I would say, a bit of an entrepreneur. So that was kind of built into me. And as I learned, I also found out about my Mexican father. Also really wanted to make a difference in life. It was important to him to do certain things. So I think that was bred
into my bones. I think there was a socialization, but also, you know, a genetic as well as a nurture nurture versus nature. That's interesting. So you feel the sense that there was on a DNA level, some type of desire to make a difference. Very much so. And even this whole thing of nature versus nurture, when I first found my birth father and I went to this big luncheon that was with a bunch of my uncles and cousins.
And I walked into my uncle's house, and he shows me this massive portrait of my grandmother, his mother. And there she is sitting playing the piano. She was a concert pianist. It's just so crazy because the first part of my life, I sang and danced on a television show from when I was nine to about 17. And there was none of that in my world that I grew up with, but somehow I ended up there. It's a very interesting experiment in some ways because I had no connection
to my birth family. But when I found them, I'm like, oh my god. This circle of life has become so connected for me. How do you think that happens? Somehow being called toward performing, probably unconscious of why, very unconscious of why. I just know from a very early age, I was was fascinated in watching old movies and musicals. I was fascinated with music. I listened to it all the time. And I actually thought when I was a little girl that I was gonna be a singer.
No reason for me to think that. Again, you know, I wasn't in any groups at that point. My family wasn't musical that I was being brought up by. I really thought I was going to be a singer. So when this musical director came out to the schools looking for people to join this show, it wasn't an arrogance, but I just like, oh, yeah. No. That's I'm I'm getting that. And I didn't tell anybody. I just felt like, yeah. I'll be I'll be in that
group. And I was, and I wasn't shocked by it, but it honestly, there was no arrogance in it. It wasn't, it wasn't that at all. It felt like this inner knowing of what I was gonna do. Often students that are in the process, especially with a history of being adopted, really know nothing about their biologic parents or know very little. And there can be some question of like, is it really worthwhile to do work around this, to have the question, what is the legacy
in my life? What's been your experience with that? Oh, I think you're quite right. I mean, in Hoffman, but in general, you know, a lot of people, they don't have the opportunity to make the connection because the information isn't there. It's hard to find, or they don't want to, which is also valid and fair. For me, I had a burning desire. I went through a divorce, two divorces, my first divorce. And at that point in time, it was like, I need to find my parents. I need to find my birth parents.
And so I started on the process locating them. It actually took a long time to find my mother. But once I found my mother, it wasn't so hard to find my father in Mexico because of searching for him. He has a very, Anglo Saxon name. So finding him in Mexico wasn't actually that hard. So the two came together very quickly for me. But the experience for me in finding them was incredibly grounding. It was a massive thing to my life to be able to connect the dots.
And this was no reflection on not loving my adopted parents at all. I love them both, but it was, oh my god. This just makes so much sense as to who I am, as to why I can't sit still, as to why I'm always on a mission to do something. I think probably that passion that you talked about, I've always got this deep rooted, like, I'm just I gotta go do this. I've gotta make this thing happen. It started making sense to me when I met these two people. I'm like, oh, yeah. This just makes total
sense to me now. So you were recently through your first divorce and you felt this burning desire to find them, to have some understanding of this missing piece of what makes up who you are. Take us to that period of time. What was happening? How are you moving through life? And this I'm guessing is pre process, right? I've done two divorces. So it was the second divorce that led me to the path of Hoffman. And that was really the big moment because at that point in time, there was a lot of
trauma that was going on. My Mexican father died. My adopted mother died, and I had been taking care of her for quite some time. She had dementia, and she died. My daughter, whom I love deeply, I'm gonna get a little emotional here, She was going through her own trauma. Anyway, she decided that it was best to cut off our relationship. That was hard. And then I went through a divorce, and that happened very abruptly after twenty eight
years of marriage. And then I went through restructuring of my business deciding to buy him out and go through all of that. And that was all in about eighteen months. So it was just like, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. And at that point in time, I was seeing a a therapist. She was helping me through this amazing woman. Her name is Janice Bell. I have to say her name out loud because she's so absolutely fabulous. I said to her, you know, I need to go back and look at things from
my past. I know there's things in my past that I haven't dealt with. I need to dig in. I need to reflect. And her advice to me at the time was, oh, yeah. You do. But not now. You can't take all of this all at one time. It was the best advice because she was 100% correct. I needed to deal with the actual logistics of what was happening in terms of the finances, in terms of setting things up. Then once I kinda got through it all, I was like, okay. Now? And she goes,
yeah. Now you go to Hoffman. Okay. Now I go to Hoffman. Alright. Didn't even really question what Hoffman was. You know, I did go on the website and I I see this. I can go virtually or I can go full in. And I thought virtually would be far better because I'm so busy with my business and I have so much going on. And I said, I think maybe I should do it virtually. And she said, oh, no. Not yet. You need to go full in. And I went, oh, okay. Full in. So I trust her completely. I went full
in. So it to me, it was kind of funny because when I got there, there was all these people talking about the research they did. And I went, oh, maybe I should have researched. I didn't research. I just went. And when I got there, I was like, oh, I wonder if I'm too old. I'm you know, all those thoughts then started going through my head. But they never went through my head before I actually was landing in the airport. That's kind of
sort of the same thing. There was just sort of a knowing of, I need to go. A time of massive transition and a lot of hurt. You tabled it for a while so that you could survive what was happening. It sounds like. Very much so. And again, that's, I think the innate thing and I think that's there for all of us. I think I'm lucky enough to have that voice. It doesn't speak super clearly
to me, but it's in there somewhere. And I think it's there for all of us that tells us like this, you can handle this now, maybe not this now. And that's what the process was for me. And it wasn't again, it wasn't conscious. It was just like, oh, yeah. If I had tried to deal with Hoffman at the same time as doing all these things, either I wouldn't have gotten out of it what I did get out of it, or it wouldn't have been as
successful for me as it was. Sounds like it was the right time and that you had some discernment about it. Very, very much so because in Hoffman at the process is going back to where those behavioral patterns begin. And that was also very, very traumatic for me. There was all an awful lot of pain around those initial periods. And I'll share just briefly. One was the adoption. I had never admitted to myself that there was ever anything other than pure love for my adopted parents. They did
the best they could. They were wonderful, but I never admitted that my birth parents actually had a place in my life and there were things that came out of that. So there was that to discover. And then there was also a lot of sexual abuse that went on for me when I was very young by a family member that was continuous for a very long period of my life. Although those memories were not hidden for me, I never really allowed myself to feel those memories. It was a total shutdown. Again, my
body just shut it down. And in Hoffman, going for that full on experience, I didn't have the choice of shutting it down. It was just cool, just all there in front of me, which was great, painful, hard. So much so that by my third day, I, because you don't have the phone. Right? So I went to, like, I need to go get check-in for my flight. No. What do you you don't need. I'm like, oh, no. No. I I'm going tomorrow. Right? My brain has so convinced me because it was like,
well, this is hard. I think it's time to access. I was like, oh, wow. I just unbelievable. Right. You need to calm down. There's more to come. You speak to a really important point. The person has to be ready and you also speak to the courage it takes to really feel your way through the healing. It does. It does take a lot of courage. And I think to your point, we have to let people take their own journey and we want to help, you know, a good portion of my life has been, I
need to fix it. I need to help. I need to it's who I am. It's kind of built into my DNA, but I need to let people take their own journey. And so wanting our loved ones to take the Hoffman process, they have to be ready. They have to want to, and otherwise they don't get what they need out of it. What were some of your intentions? What did you really want to get out of the process? I wanted to live my very best life. I wanted to know who I really am. I felt like years and years I had
been hiding myself. So even before, you know, going back and going to those behavioral pieces of which I've been putting layers upon layers upon layers, I wanted the layers of the onion to come off. I wanted to go back to not the innocence. It wasn't really that I was after. I just wanted to go back to those things that really gave me joy. I wanted to see what I could do when I truly lived who I actually was. And that was really my main intention and it's still my main
intention. And I think, you know, we spoke about it in my business. I call it a for profit social enterprise. And what does that mean? It means that you care about the environment. You make money. Everybody needs to make money. We all need to eat. We all need to live. So it's not about not giving it all away, but it's about making sure you're taking care of your environment, making sure you're taking care of earth. So I do things organically. My processes are organic. My farming is organic.
There's a number of things that I I try to enact with that. The people are super important to me, the community that I live in and the bottom line and the profit is giving back. And that's so important to me, giving back. Like, whether that be charities that I believe in and not just giving money, but actually getting involved in the charity in in some way and making sure that it's a place for my community to come. Because in this whole reflection of, do I want to continue to do this business? I
realized like, yeah, I do. I love this business because this is a platform in which I can do this other part of myself that I haven't really, really sunk my teeth into. And so that's what it's giving me in sort of in terms of that personal side of me. So when people say, oh, it's just your business. It's just doing business. I'm like, no, my business is deeply, deeply personal to me. It's a place where I wanna show that
one can do business. And I think probably particularly in this day of age where everything is kind of upside down and wondering what's going on in the world. I know I can't change what's going on in the world, but I can change. I should say I can't change what's going on in the world. I can change little parts in my backyard, and I am a firm believer in that. You know? What you do in your own backyard, if we all were really practicing those things, you're you're not gonna get it right all
the time. But isn't that great? You know, because then you would change the world. You would change the world because you'd be doing these little things of making a difference in your community, making a difference for the people you're leading, making a difference in collaboration. It really sounds like it's less about what you're doing and so much about how you're doing it and what comes from the consciousness of that. Yeah. You're quite right. It's really important to me, but it's more
important to me. Like, how is that process taking place? There's no compromising with suppliers or the ingredients we use or the process we use or the people that help make it. It's all about that rather than, you know, looking at the financial statement. Don't get me wrong. I look at my financial statements. You need you need to do that while running a business, but I don't want it to be just about the financial statements and to trust
that I will make money. The money will be there because if we're doing it right, the money's gonna be there. So if this is a metaphor for life and how you live, how did you come to know that coming into the process, knowing you have to face a lot of pain? What did you learn? What was your experience, and how is that now fueling this new awareness that you have? Well, the pain you come out of pain. You know? You can walk through it.
And if you've got a support system and if you've got love for yourself, I didn't have a strong love for myself. I had a love for myself, but not as strong as when I left and as strong as the journey continues on. If you have that, then you always get through the pain. You always know there's a new day. You always know that there's steps you can take. You feel the pain, but you will get through it. And to me, it's about my community.
I met some really great people and I still stay in touch with some people from Hoffman, but I have really good friends and I have really good family and I know they're there. So feeling the pain is something that I know that I need to do when things are kind of crappy. It's like, I can't avoid it. I gotta go through it because it's really part of the process. But I will come out. I know I have this inner belief that I will always come out. And that gives you the courage to go there.
Yeah. It gives me the courage to go there. I think it's like anything in life. Everyone has trauma and we have two choices. I hope this doesn't sound cliche, but there is always something to learn. And those failures, those trauma is our opportunity to learn as ugly as that sounds. The sexual abuse that I went through as a child, and I know people will probably think this is a bit weird, but I learned so much from that. I don't wish that on anybody, of course, ever.
It's not a great thing to go through, but I did. I learned strength from that. I learned how to stand up to this person. Was I lucky that I could or that I got the opportunity to? Yeah. I think there was a lot of luck in that. We have an awful lot of luck that comes in life, but I learned, I learned and those situations made me stronger to know that I could always get through. And it started young for me. The knowledge
of your strength started young? Yeah. Because I was given these in a weird sense opportunities to learn from the trauma. Take us to a moment in your process that is still with you around self love sense of self a moment that was a turning point or an insight. I I don't know if I can get through this, but I will try because it's my daughter. That is the most painful. She also went through trauma and I didn't save her from that. So huge amount of guilt around that.
And the process helped me to realize how much I love her and how I was wounded myself and still not healed. And that I needed to forgive myself. I needed to give myself love, that I needed to give her grace to leave me, to do whatever she needed to do to heal. And in doing so, I could heal and love myself. So I don't know if that explains it to you, but that happened for me at Hoffman. And it's still a process because my door is open to her, but I don't know if she'll ever walk through it.
But I'm resolving in my brain. It will be her journey, and I will love her no matter what. She will feel that love on some level, but I am going to let her go with grace. And that allows me to have love for myself because it allows me to stop the guilt and recognize that I did everything I could with what I had at the time. And with this, I move forward. I do hope she may come back, but I'm not hanging on to that hope.
Like someday she's going to be there. So I'm leaving my life in suspension because I don't think that does her any good on one level because I think she feels this on one level, but she knows that I'm there. Even though we're not connecting. In the process, we see how much hurt happens. And as parents, I can realize how much we've hurt our children without ever intending to and not be derailed from your own healing and to hold both at once, I think
is really tricky. And I think that's really important. It is. It's really tricky. And I think that's where it's so important to have a really good support group, Because as a mother, you are hardwired to take care of this child and you will do things for your child where you sacrifice your life. You will. And then to find out that what you did,
wasn't always great for them. And you're like, but I just so tried so hard to make it happen, to realize that you're valuable, to realize that you didn't do it and that's life. And it's hard not to, to go down with that. It's hard not to feel so guilty and to have so much pain and to beat yourself up. I guess that's where it sort of wraps into some of the mentoring or to spend time with younger women and to spend time with my female friends to get that strength of
you're good. You worked hard. You did your best. You could. And to reassert loving yourself, having a community that helps you with that is paramount. Thank you for the strength, the courage, the willingness to share yourself so openly. Yeah. Well, thank you very much for listening for your time and, letting me share this so vulnerably. What's next for you? I'm exploring.
I'm exploring some things with my business, partly mentorship and not necessarily in a formal way, but potentially could be in a formal way with women. I love giving mentorship or just the opportunity to have those discussions with women that are trying to juggle their busy lives, because I know how difficult it was for me as a mother of three children and really wanting my career and never feeling I was in the right place at the right time.
Not till later in life, realizing like, oh, you mean you can't have it all at the same time. You can have it all, but not at the same time. So, you know, being able to be supportive of that. For women, it's still a struggle of how do I navigate being a mother and navigate having a career. I just really enjoy spending time with younger women and assisting, mentoring, just talking, you know?
I have this other passion, which is gonna sound a little crazy, maybe to some, but I'm seriously in love with dogs. So part of my brand at my business is dogs. So I encourage all the customers to bring their dogs. We have barcuterie boards, you know, sit outside with picnics, bring your dogs. And I'm kinda looking into whether or not I'm going to rescue senior dogs and give them a safe place to see out the rest of their lives. I've got a fairly large chunk of property up on Vancouver Island.
So, yeah, there might be some little rescue spot going on there. And I wanna continue on in my business in making sure it's a place for the community and continuing to show that business can be done with heart, that you can lead with heart and that it can follow that for profit social enterprise and be healthy and survive. Those are what I'm looking at. What a beautiful way to move through life. Yeah. Because life is actually very good with all the trauma, with all the pain. I mean, isn't
it great? At my home here and being off grid, I'm looking outside right now at the ocean and every now and then a whale will pop up with this baby. I'm like, oh my god. How lucky am I? I wake up most days thinking life is beautiful. That doesn't mean I don't have sadness. I do. But there's always beauty in the moments. And so if you can stop and find those moments and I try to focus on those. I really try to focus on the moments.
And if I'm struggling finding them, I go outside, get into nature, phone a friend, all those things that just can help you like, oh, yeah. Thank you so much for taking the moment to be here, to share this journey of self love, self forgiveness, and your purpose and how that's moving through the world. Thank you. Thank you to Hoffman. Thank you for listening to the Hoffman podcast. My name is Matt Brannigan. I'm the CEO of the Hoffman Institute Foundation and a Hoffman
teacher. Our mission is to provide greater access to the wisdom and power of love within ourselves, in our relationships, and in the world. To learn more or to support our mission, we invite you to visit hoffmaninstitute.org.