. We had, you know, some old school mentality around like, what happens in the family stays in the family. And so we weren't really taught how to talk about our emotions or how to go through hardships and community and leaning on others to really help us. And so carrying all that weight on my own is, is really hard, and we're not meant to. Welcome to Love's Everyday Radius,
a podcast brought to you by the Hoffman Institute. I'm your host, Sharon Moore, and I hope that you enjoy today's conversation and that the stories shared by our graduates impact move and inspire you. Welcome back everyone. Today I'm excited to have our guest, Kristin Eski here with us to share her story. Kristin, welcome to the show. Thank you. So Kristen, I love this, you did the Hoffman Essentials in August of 2021, and then you did the actual process in August of 2022. Did I get that right?
One year back? One year back 2020 and 2021. That's. Right. Yeah. Okay. I love that you've done both the Hoffman Essentials and the process, and I'm curious if, when you look back at both of those, let's start with Hoffman Essentials. Is there a pivotal or magical moment or a gift that you took away from your weekend at the Hoffman Essentials? Yeah, that weekend was, um, much anticipated I'd had my eye on coming to the process. And then with the lockdown and covid,
I was such a blessing to be able to do the weekend. And in that weekend, on the first day, we talked about this idea of the left road and the right road, and really living from a place of our patterns or living from a place of choice and getting permission to just start looking at what our patterns are. And in naming some of those patterns and looking at myself, starting to really see how I was like my dad for the first time, so much of my life,
I had always been told, oh, you're just like your mom. And even to this day, and I, I have so many things that I do that are like my mom that I had hadn't really taken a look at the ways in which I was like my dad and what I had learned from him. And so this was an awakening to, of course there's, there's things that I've learned from him. And so looking at how are those alive in me was quite a surprise and a gift. Did that have an impact on your relationship with him?
It did. You know, part of it was seeing the patterns and they're, I think when we kind of come face to face with these parts of ourselves there, there was be honest, a bit of resistance of like, Ooh, yeah, okay, I do those things and starting to see when and how and where they show up in my life. And then what I would say is kind of come full circle back to the process, seeing not only the patterns, but seeing the gifts that I inherited and learned from my dad.
It was getting to see both the dark and the light. And in getting both lenses, I had this new awareness of who my dad in the world is and how he shows up. And a lot of what I had seen in him may have been more of his patterns and not
giving him enough credit for the gifts that he also brought. And I, I mean, I always have had such a love and respect and appreciation for how hard he worked and how much he did for our family and providing, but having this new full, full picture of how he lives within me, it just gave me so much more compassion for who he is and a deeper level of understanding of why he is the way he is.
And it really deepened my love for him that now I can see him even when he's in the glory of his patterns, but just have a lot of compassion for him and also have a lot of compassion for myself when those patterns come up within me. Yeah, it's interesting you said, I've always had gratitude for what he's done for our family and all that he's done, and I've been so grateful. And what I hear is that's your adult mind.
Your adult mind can see, oh my goodness, look what he's done and how he contributed and all that. But then what happened for, in he, he, and also I imagined in the process was the child in you got to express. And once that happened and the adult awareness, suddenly your love, your understanding, your compassion is profoundly deeper.
That's right. You know, Hoffman was the first exposure I had to doing any of this inner child work and kind of starting to retrace how did I get to be who I am, where I am now? And kind of unwinding the clocks of time to go back to those earlier days and really see the innocence of this younger me trying to get love from my parents and trying to fit into this unique dynamic that we had. And with my dad, just when I was very, very young, he traveled quite a bit for work.
And so when he was home, just like really wanting his love and attention and having these like really fun playful moments and experiences with him, but then the missing him when he was gone and now seeing how that desire and the longing for love and attention kind of played out throughout my life of like, okay, look at me. I'm here. Can you, do you see me? Am I good enough? Am I getting your love? Am I getting your attention?
And there's a little bit of sadness there for the younger one and how that was internalized for her and now being able to go back and kind of re-parent and reprogram to give her that love and reassurance so that it's not continuing to play out in my life as an adult now. How did it play out in your life? I mean, I was a very good student.
I kind of did all of the things that I thought I should do and did them in a very traditional standard way to be successful and made a lot of sports growing up. I don't know if my family would say that this was what this the stereotype was, but there was definitely this pressure of like being the golden child and doing things perfectly and doing them really right.
And I received a lot of praise and recognition for getting good grades and playing all the sports and doing a lot of the extra things. Then it kind of became this way of surviving in the world and feeling like I was good enough. My mom would always say to us, as long as you did your best, that's the best that you can do. That day, it was really, really innocent. But the way that it was internalized for me was work hard and do your best
and then that will be good enough. But if a, I didn't get the best grade where I wasn't the best on the team, then there was this part of me that didn't feel good enough. And so I needed to work harder. I worked really hard and I was good at it for a, for a long time, and that that helped me be really successful academics throughout college into my professional career, working in corporate space for quite a bit of time.
But I, I got to a point that it was really no longer a sustainable way of doing life and something had to change and something had to shift. And that was kind of this beginning of a, a personal awakening of, okay, I recognize this, I just don't quite know what to do about it yet. And so it began a lot of my own personal work and my, my journey of kind of redefining who I am and how I wanna be in the world. And, and Hoffman's been a big, big part of that.
Yeah. That, that moment you describe where you're aware, but you don't know what to do about it. Yes. As you know, we call that awareness hell. Yes. Did you say that you felt like you always had to be the best? Yeah. It's really hard and it's really lonely. Yeah. Which is hard today. What does it feel like to not have to be the best or have you succeeded in just kind of being and not being the best in the room or the best in the class or the best on the team?
I think I, I have made significant progress. I would be lying if I said that that was completely out of my humanness. I think I've changed my relationship to that pattern in a way that now it's not a route about being the best in the top and like a ranking or a comparative best, but my new frame is like, how can I be my most authentic self? How can I make choices and show up today in a way that I'll be proud of myself tomorrow?
And so it's a much more authentically aligned way and truthful for me, versus I'm always holding up this comparative lens of, okay, well who am I relative to the people I am around the company that I work in, the type of degree that I have or where the degree is from? That's quite exhausting. And so it's incredibly liberating to be at a place that a majority of the days and time that that is not really what's running me anymore.
I love the shift from the best, which you named is kind of the best in comparison to who you can't be the best without comparing versus shifting into how am I my most authentic self? It's liberating and a lot more, it's a lot more fun way to live. Yeah. Like you said, the loneliness, like how lonely to have to be the best all the time, whereas this, you probably are able to be in community a lot more, be at ease a lot more.
Yeah. And with the best, the perfectionism comes in and keeping guards up and people at arms distance and not knowing where it's safe to really show up vulnerably and authentically or if it's safe at all. And that was a big part of our family too. Like we had, you know, some old school mentality around like,
what happens in the family stays in the family. And so we, we weren't really taught how to talk about our emotions are how to go through hardships in community and leaning on others to really help us. And so carrying all that weight on my own is, is really hard. And we're not meant to.
Is there a moment where you can think about in your life and you reflect and say, wow, that is a situation where I would usually have all my guards up and keep everything in an arm's distance, but I just approached that so authentic in whatever was happening. Scared, lonely, sad, happy. Is there something you can think about?
There's many moments, to be honest. I mean, I think even going into the process itself full well, knowing that this is a, like, I was wanting to lay everything on the table and for the sake of like really stepping into a more honest, authentic, free way of being. And so there was moments even there of like, I thought there the night before the process started just to kind of get myself settled and meeting other folks and like, Hey, are we, are we really doing this? Is this okay?
And so I could see some of that protection coming up. Um, but the way that the process is designed is so intelligent that it really lets each person have their own unique experience while you're also going through, you know, really deep healing experiences in community in that week.
There is this moment that I just look back and I'm, I just see how all of those patterns were just completely absent and what is possible when I just fully surrender in to spirit, to essence to the present and the power that I have to bring people together and build connections and help people feel inspired to do the same themselves, is a moment that I forever remember and constantly remind myself of,
of what's possible. But of course, there's moments that are incredibly triggering too and challenging. My guards go up because there is a little bit of concern of like, is this safe? Am I gonna be okay? And intellectually , I know, yes, but there's still the remnants of these old patterns that somatically physically in my body unconsciously, even like, there's this inclination to wanna close off and particularly in new circumstances around new people that I don't know yet to wanna protect.
And I think there's some intelligence behind that. But then there's also, I think some ways that it can really limit what's possible and, and the connections that are potentially possible. Yeah, I think, like you said, there's intelligence in having the skill of putting up the guard when it's necessary. The choice is the part we work towards is when we suddenly compulsively find ourselves like autopilot, boom, there goes my guard,
but I didn't want it up right now. That's the difference, is you have choice. Oh, this is a moment where I can put down the guard, boom, now I'm connected. Now I'm vulnerable. Now I'm seeing people in a different way. Now they're seeing me. What do you do in your life when you know you want to address a pattern? Let's take being guarded. Is there anything you do, a ritual, a practice so that you can have choice when it comes to that pattern? Yeah. To see the pattern I think is a gift.
And that's come with just a high degree of self-awareness, naming and seeing what these patterns are and, and when they typically, and seeing the pattern of when the pattern shows up. But my, my own ritual is something really, really simple. I usually put my right hand over my heart and I cross my left arm over my stomach and I just kind of cradle myself and I just say in my mind like three times, take a deep breath. I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay.
And it's just this way to like reassure myself comfort and self-soothe and in-source a sense of safety. And it's really helped me navigate some very challenging times too. Not just when the pattern of being guarded comes up, but when I find myself in the thick of a challenge is grounding into the moment and just feeling my heartbeat, feeling my body and that feeling of a hug.
And especially the last several years I've, I've worked from home, I've had my own business since 2018, and then when the lockdown happened, very isolated and I still put spend quite a bit of time alone. And so that touch can be so comforting because I think as humans we really, we crave and need human connection and belonging and touch, and so that the arms over myself can be really comforting. So you mentioned challenging times.
Are there challenging times that you can share with us, uh, that happened since you either did the Hoffman Essentials or the process where, uh, you can see that, oh, the process is alive in me? Yeah. What's interesting is between essentials and the process, it's quite a bit change in my life. My parents sold their house, sold their business, and moved from west coast to east coast to retire. Um, we had Covid, we were in the lockdown, my kids were doing remote learning,
so they were home all the time. I was fairly new, building a business, so an entrepreneur two years in and also in the middle of a divorce. So stacking any one of those things independently, is a lot, stack them together is just a ripe territory for challenge and breakdowns and patterns. And I was working with a Hoffman coach and he would constantly remind me, Kristen, you are in the middle of an impossible situation. And just that reminder was such a gift.
Having someone that could really intelligently, skillfully, masterfully, I would say, be able to hold me and guide me through my own inner experience and journey, navigating each one of those and all of those at the same time was such a blessing. I feel very privileged and grateful for that. The way that I really see the process and the tools and the skills gained from working with Hoffman is the way that I was able to give myself patience and grace.
And in the old me, one of my top patterns is around really being self-critical and extremely hard on myself. And that can be quite a self-defeating experience, internalizing the guilt and the things that went wrong to a place of just storing them in so deeply that they kind of balled up into this dark abyss of shame that I carried
in the process itself. Being able to kind of bring some of those things, all of those things forward and looking at them and seeing them as experiences or moments or patterns, and not that they are me, but they are just part of my human experience, and how can I just keep coming back to spirit? How can I come back to the truth of who I really am? And it's not my patterns, it's something way beyond the patterns.
So just navigating a day, a moment, a circumstance and recognizing like, I am doing the best that I can do right now.
It might not be what it was yesterday, it might not be what it's going to look like in the future when this is long gone, or I'm more past these things, but I'm really doing the best and to like appreciate how I'm showing up, appreciate myself for making it one moment, making it through one day, the day-to-day progress that we oftentimes just overlook how much courage it can take to get through a day. Sometimes.
Especially when the combination of parents leaving and most intimate relationship dissolving that quickly touches upon core patterns, core wounds. And you know, often we, we marry based on our patterns, right? So, and we got our patterns from our family. So I can only imagine what one day was like navigating both parents leaving, getting a divorce. Oh, and there's a pandemic and your kids are home all day. I sometimes look back, I don't even know how I did it, but I did.
Is there a thread you can connect parents leaving abandonment or, you know, what, what came up for you with this really, really difficult combination of parents leaving right at the same time where your most intimate and core relationship is dissolving? Yeah. Yeah, it was interesting timing and there are no accidents. It's interesting because it was, if I rewind the clock 20 years back, my parents, uh, had decided to send me to live with my aunt and uncle for a year in my late
teens. You know, imagine being 18 and uprooted, moving across country, it felt like starting afresh in that time. It was this deep sense of like, I am really alone and I've gotta figure this out and I've gotta figure it out alone. And I had support in, in financial, in a home and in the basics and the essentials were provided, but the internal experience of trying to figure that out and make sense of all of it, I was alone and I didn't have the skills or the tools or resources to navigate
that emotional journey. I look back and I think, what a gift, because I cultivated this incredible sense of independence and resilience and grit, and I love those parts of me. And so then when I look to what was going on in my life 20 years later, around the time of the process and all of these significant life changes again, I felt really, really alone. That was scary. How am I going to provide for my children and myself?
How am I gonna grow my business to be able to continue to afford to live in the Bay Area, which is one of the most expensive places to live in the country? And how am I gonna do this? I never imagined myself to be in this position as a single mom, and yet I know I can do hard things and I'm gonna do it a little bit different this time, even though I'm alone. What's different is I know how to ask for help. I know what it means to let people in and see me and my hurt.
I know how to let my walls down with people that I deeply, deeply trust and feel safe and held with. And I don't have to navigate this alone, even though it feels like I am doing it alone. And that was hard. It was, it was a hard thing to do to let people in, but it was one of the best gifts that I gave myself.
Was there ever a moment where, because of the enormity of all that was going on, that you lost clarity and started questioning like, oh, maybe we do stay together or maybe, you know, that kind of thing. ? Um, yes. It's the dark night of the soul that wonders all of the things. You know, what could I have done differently? How did we end up here? Can we repair it? What is this gonna do to my kids? You know, we both had come from families where our parents were together, are together.
And for 40 plus years, this was never in the realm of possibility. And so there was a lot of judgment I held against myself of what does this mean about me and what does this mean about my kids' life? And what are people gonna think? There was all of that. Well, the part that I'm really moved by is your ability to still choose going into the unknown.
Here you have this dark night of the soul, probably dark months, half year, year, I don't know, decades where these questions come up and they're hard questions. And yet something in you gave you the courage to move towards the unknown, to leave what was known and lean into the mystery. That's a big deal. It's pretty beautiful even in the, in the hard parts of it.
And I think, you know, part of what I do in the world and in my work and training that I have is, has helped me really tune into my intuition. Our intuition is typically right. Our interpretation may not always be right, but I, I look back at some defining moments and these pivotal moments leading up into this, there was this full body intuitive knowing that like, this has, this has to happen. I changed my major at the beginning of my fourth year of college.
That was a big deal. 'cause I added a fifth year on. And so like in hindsight, I look at that moment from this lens of, I just knew with everything in me, like this is where I was being guided. And then I look back to when I did my, I did a yoga teacher training and the steps kind of leading up to that. I had kind of lost my yoga practice and I had lost touch with one of my favorite teachers. And I just had this day that I was like, I really,
I really need a day off for me. I'm gonna go reconnect with this teacher. It had been five years. And I walk into her studio and I get onto my mat, and then I talk to her after class. And three weeks later,
a teacher training was happening and I'm signed up and I'm doing it. And it, and I had a, my kids were two and four at the time, which is no small feat to commit to that, uh, 200 hour program, but it was so spirit led or so intuitively led, and those were more lighthearted, pivotal changes and moments in life. And so I, I had these knowings of, like, in the moment, it didn't all make sense.
Choosing to separate and divorce for both of us was not an easy decision and one that we'd ever imagined possible, but we both came to that conclusion. But there was, there was just this, this is just the inevitable what's happening right now. And it's scary and it didn't all make sense at the time, but there is a surrendering, and, and now years later, I, I do believe it's what's best for both of us and what's best for our kids.
And it's hard and it's messy sometimes, but I think we're both really committed to raising with humans and working together to raise them and doing our best to co-parent together as a team really well. And I think we're both happy.
So who knows what would've been, how it could've or would've been different had we stayed together, but we're in a good place now, and that's part of the leap in the surrender and the trust that that's what would've happened that I kind of knew that I didn't know yet, if that makes sense. Yeah, it does. It, it seems to me like, you know what it feels like when things are spirit led.
You know what it feels like when it's lighthearted, like adding a major or going to yoga, but you also know what it feels like when there is a large cost, there is dissolving a relationship, the impact on kids, parents leaving, being alone, that's a big deal. And yet you are able to lean in and surrender to spirit.
You said earlier something about I love my independence and my resilience. Well, I think when you know what it feels like to be led by your spirit, there is an added surrender and an added letting go and added taking off the guard. That can happen. It's. Terrifying, but it's so, it's like, it's such a fun way to be alive to what's possible in life. . Well, nobody said, and you keep saying this too,
nobody said it's gonna make sense or be easy. It's scary, but it's, it's the, once you know the feeling, you can't ever go back. You know when it is not aligned with spirit and you know when it is. And sometimes it doesn't make sense. Sometimes you don't even wanna hear it like, Nope, nope, nope, I can't hear that right now. And yet, you, we all know if, if we have that gift, we listen. Even when we resist,
even if it's a decade later, you end up listening. Kristen, what a beautiful journey and story of letting your spirit take a bigger seat at the table and listening and surrendering to your spirit, going into the mystery, and like you said, and living life in this way that feels more fun. Scary but fun. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for being on the show. Thank you, Sharon. Thank you for listening to our podcast. My name is Liza in Grassi.
I'm the c e o and President of Hoffman Institute Foundation. And I'm Ra Rossi 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 hoffman institute.org.