19. Fatherless Father's Day Healing After Complex Loss: Navigating Grief, Addiction, and Saying Goodbye During COVID

19. Fatherless Father's Day Healing After Complex Loss: Navigating Grief, Addiction, and Saying Goodbye During COVID

In this emotional and deeply honest episode, we sit down with Ashley to discuss the complexities of grieving a parent who struggled with mental illness and addiction. This conversation explores the challenges of holding space for love while navigating difficult family boundaries, the unique pain of losing a loved one during the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the path to finding true peace after a complicated relationship ends. Key Takeaways * Navigating Complex Family Dynamics: Understanding the difficult balance between loving a parent, setting firm boundaries, and protecting your own family from cycles of addiction and toxicity. * Grief During Isolation: Insights into the emotional hurdles of saying goodbye to a parent under the restrictive and often lonely conditions of COVID-19 hospital protocols. * The "Relief" of Loss: Addressing the often-taboo feeling of relief that can accompany the death of a challenging parent and how to process the guilt that comes with it. * Finding Peace: How Ashley transitioned from trying to "fix" her father to accepting his journey, leading to personal growth, deeper self-reflection, and identity discovery. * The Power of Support: Reflecting on the impact of compassionate healthcare workers and the importance of having a support system, even when family dynamics are fractured. Connect with Ashley: * Instagram: @tranquilwaterstransition * Email: tranquilwatertransition@gmail.com Connect with Nicole: 📧 Join The Four O'Clock Club : a weekly email community sent at 4:00 PM ⁠⁠https://www.nicoleweston.ca/blog⁠⁠ [https://www.nicoleweston.ca/blog] Work with Nicole: Book a free 20 minute introductory call with Nicole    ⁠⁠https://nicoleweston.as.me/introductorycall⁠⁠ [https://nicoleweston.as.me/introductorycall] Instagram:⁠⁠ ⁠ @thenicoleweston⁠⁠ [https://www.instagram.com/thenicoleweston/]

18. Motherless Mothers: Navigating Complex Mother-Daughter Relationships and Grief

Losing a mother is a profound experience, but navigating that loss when the relationship was complicated? That adds a whole new layer of grief. In this episode, I sit down with Veronica to talk about the messy, painful, and beautiful reality of mothering without a mom. What we dive into: * Validation for your grief: Permission to feel the anger, jealousy, and loneliness that often accompanies a complicated loss. * Breaking the cycle: Real talk on how to parent through past trauma and make conscious choices for your own children. * Permission to be human: Understanding that your relationship doesn't have to be perfect to be significant, and your grief is valid regardless of the past. * Connection: Comfort in knowing you aren't the only one navigating the complex, often lonely experience of being a "motherless mother. Connect with Nicole: 📧 Join The Four O'Clock Club : a weekly email community sent at 4:00 PM ⁠⁠https://www.nicoleweston.ca/blog⁠⁠ [https://www.nicoleweston.ca/blog] Work with Nicole: Book a free 20 minute introductory call with Nicole    ⁠⁠https://nicoleweston.as.me/introductorycall⁠⁠ [https://nicoleweston.as.me/introductorycall] Instagram:⁠⁠ ⁠ @thenicoleweston⁠⁠ [https://www.instagram.com/thenicoleweston/] https://www.linkedin.com/in/vlalexander/ Veronica Love is the Chief Revenue Officer at TMG The Mortgage Group and a celebrated leader in Canada’s mortgage industry. A passionate mentor and advocate for women, Veronica champions equity, innovation, and business success. She’s a dynamic speaker, past Chair of Mortgage Professionals Canada, and multiple-time Woman of Influence — known for bringing bold energy, real-world insight, and heart to every conversation she enters in to. She is passionate about raising funds and awareness for great causes - especially women's shelters. Veronica is a proud mother to a 21 year old son and an 18 year old daughter and a teacup Yorkie named Mason.

17. Motherless Mothers Grief: Integrating the Woman Before and After Losing My Mother

In this special episode, host Nicole Weston flips the mic and is interviewed by success coach Laura May Culver, sharing her raw and unfiltered journey as a mothering motherless daughter. Nicole unpacks the complexities of her relationship with her mom, Lisa—a vibrant and nurturing woman who struggled with unresolved trauma and alcohol—who died suddenly five years ago when Nicole was 34. he episode delves into: * The Emotional Impact of Loss: Nicole describes the physical shock of her mother’s death and the subsequent two-year period defined by intense anger, rage, and shame, particularly over the belief that she failed a "soul contract" to save her mom's life. * The Path to Integration: She details the profound shift and healing that occurred about four years in, achieved through mind-body healing and integrating her identity from before her mom died and the woman she is now. * The Power of Community and Purpose: Nicole discusses how the podcast and social media community have been crucial medicine for feeling grounded and validated. Her work is now focused on helping others move stuck grief through the body, using her lived experience to cultivate hope and confidence in women navigating this journey. * Breaking Cycles: The ultimate goal of her personal work is to ensure her own children do not have to experience the level of emotional parentification or unavailability she did, embodying the "identity transformation" required to hold both sadness and love simultaneously. Nicole concludes with a message of thankfulness, forgiveness, and unconditional love for her mother, emphasizing that asking for help is one of the strongest things a person can do. Connect with Nicole: 📧 Join The Four O'Clock Club : a weekly email community sent at 4:00 PM ⁠⁠https://www.nicoleweston.ca/blog⁠⁠ [https://www.nicoleweston.ca/blog] 💻 Virtual Community Call — June 11th at 12 PM ET (free, registration required) ⁠⁠https://www.nicoleweston.ca/communitycall⁠⁠ [https://www.nicoleweston.ca/communitycall] Work with Nicole: Book a free 20 minute introductory call with Nicole    ⁠⁠https://nicoleweston.as.me/introductorycall⁠⁠ [https://nicoleweston.as.me/introductorycall] Instagram:⁠⁠ ⁠ @thenicoleweston⁠⁠ [https://www.instagram.com/thenicoleweston/]

16. Motherless Mother: Finding Joy, Rage, and Spiritual Co-Creation After Loss with Kristen Brandao

In this powerful episode of Can’t Call Your Mom, Nicole sits down with Kristen to explore the complex layers of Mother’s Day grief and the transformative journey of the motherless mother. Kristen shares her deeply personal experience of repressing mother loss for seven years, wearing "armor" to stay strong, until an existential crisis on her 40th birthday cracked her wide open. Kristen’s breakthrough came through the power of writing. By leaning into curiosity, she realized that by numbing her grief, she had also blocked her capacity for joy. Through her debut memoir, Magenta Me, she moved through layers of subconscious programming and inner child work to find radical forgiveness and a new spiritual, co-creative relationship with her mother. As Kristen beautifully dedicates in her book: "For my mom. When I asked the light, it told me to write our beautiful love story. In the end, I found the light was you." * Feeling to Heal: Understanding that you must feel the pain of loss to truly experience the heights of joy. * The Spiritual Connection: Shifting from a physical absence to a spiritual presence where conversations with Mom continue through intuition and creativity. * Breaking Generational Cycles: How healing our own wounds allows us to mother our children with more presence and emotional intelligence. Kristen Brandao hit forty and flipped the script on her life. She went from a highly anxious, emotionally burned-out, over-extended healthcare practitioner, wife and mother of two to owning her story, stepping into her creative power and re-writing the narrative in her midlife memoir Magenta Me. She credits her seven-year suppression of grief after the loss of her mother to the breakdown through which she discovered the portal back to curiosity, creativity and connection to self. She endeavours to share her story vulnerably with the world to inspire others to integrate their grief.  Kristen’s Book: Magenta Me launches on June 25th. If you are in the Burlington area, join the book launch celebration at Spencer’s on the Waterfront! @kristen.brandao on Instagram  Magenta Me book launch [https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/magenta-me-a-colourful-celebration-with-a-literary-twist-tickets-1989170410244] kristenbrandao.com [http://kristenbrandao.com] Connect with Nicole: 📧 Join The Four O'Clock Club : a weekly email community sent at 4:00 PM ⁠⁠https://www.nicoleweston.ca/blog⁠⁠ [https://www.nicoleweston.ca/blog] 💻 Virtual Community Call — June 11st at 12 PM ET (free, registration required) ⁠⁠https://www.nicoleweston.ca/communitycall⁠⁠ [https://www.nicoleweston.ca/communitycall] Work with Nicole: Book a free 20 minute introductory call with Nicole    ⁠⁠https://nicoleweston.as.me/introductorycall⁠⁠ [https://nicoleweston.as.me/introductorycall] Instagram:⁠⁠ ⁠ @thenicoleweston⁠⁠ [https://www.instagram.com/thenicoleweston/]

15. Healing a Complicated Mother-Daughter Relationship After Loss, Trauma Bonds, Guilt, & Grace with Karen Spiers

In this profoundly honest and deeply relatable episode, Nicole sits down with Karen to unpack the complexities of grieving a mother with whom they shared a loving—yet challenging—relationship. This is a conversation for every daughter who is navigating the duality of intense love and deep-seated trauma. Karen shares the story of her feisty Irish mother, Pat (Eithne), a woman who found 39 years of sobriety but never let go of the guilt she carried over her past struggles with alcoholism and depression. The two explore the painful journey of healing a fractured mother-daughter relationship, from the anger and lost trust of teenage years to the eventual reconciliation and fierce bond they forged before Pat's death. Nicole and Karen dive deep into: * The Power of Acceptance: Moving past the desire for your mother to be who you wanted her to be, and instead finding peace by meeting her where she was. * Understanding Trauma Bonds: An explanation of why the grief over a complicated relationship can feel so uniquely excruciating, amplifying childhood trauma and leaving you feeling "alone on an island". * The Anger of Loss: Processing the intense anger that can arise when a parent is lost to an illness tied to choices they made, and the journey to forgiving yourself for being angry. * Redefining Forgiveness: Karen’s powerful perspective that freedom comes not necessarily through the social construct of "forgiveness," but through "reconciling" with what happened and refusing to let past actions impact your self-belief. * Living in the Love Left Behind: How to find comfort and connection in a world that feels broken, channeling the life-long wisdom of a mother who taught that "We are in the grace and love of an unknown power". This episode is a must-listen for mothers who are doing the difficult work of unpacking generational trauma (even the "ugly feelings") and choosing to evolve through grief, rather than being diminished by it. If you’ve struggled to mourn a mother whose relationship was complicated, this episode offers a needed space of understanding, grace, and permission to feel it all. Connect with Nicole: 📧 Join The Four O'Clock Club : a weekly email community sent at 4:00 PM ⁠https://www.nicoleweston.ca/blog⁠ [https://www.nicoleweston.ca/blog] 💻 Virtual Community Call — May 21st at 12 PM ET (free, registration required) ⁠https://www.nicoleweston.ca/communitycall⁠ [https://www.nicoleweston.ca/communitycall] Work with Nicole: Book a free 20 minute introductory call with Nicole    ⁠https://nicoleweston.as.me/introductorycall⁠ [https://nicoleweston.as.me/introductorycall] Instagram:⁠ ⁠ @thenicoleweston⁠ [https://www.instagram.com/thenicoleweston/]