April 13, 2025 • 49 mins
What happens when the life you've meticulously built suddenly feels like it belongs to someone else? This is the question at the heart of our profound conversation with Kelly Sparta.
Grief isn't just about losing someone—it's about losing identities, futures, and versions of ourselves we thought we were supposed to become. Kelly Sparta shares her transformative journey from childhood chaos to spiritual awakening, revealing how grief becomes a gateway to reclaiming personal power.
• Kelly grew up with psychic experiences from early childhood, raised by an alcoholic mother who was dedicated to nurturing Kelly's abilities
• Constant relocations taught Kelly to adapt quickly to new environments but created a deep sense of feeling unwelcome
• A painful marriage and 100-hour work weeks led to burnout and eventually, a transformative spiritual awakening
• Grief operates as a "beingness state" requiring us to process emotions rather than rationalize them away
• When we open to receive love after a prolonged shutdown, grief often surfaces as tears whenever we feel loved
• The current collective grief serves a purpose in global awakening, similar to how COVID-19 forced internal reflection
• Reclaiming personal power requires establishing safety first, then working through fear, anxiety and self-doubt
• Most people entering spiritual paths carry childhood trauma that must be processed to step into authentic power
If you're navigating grief or awakening, Kelly offers free sound healing to clear grief. Use this resource to support your journey.
🌿 Feeling stuck or spiritually disconnected?
At Soulful Energy Medicine, I help you release energetic blocks, clear emotional pain, and reconnect with your true self. You’ll find a safe, grounded space for soul-level transformation through virtual healing sessions.
✨ Book your free discovery call: Soulful Energy Medicine
Foundation for Shamanic Studies: Explore here
“The Way of the Shaman” book by Michael Harner
Society for Shamanic Practice: Explore here
Connect
John@urbangriefshamans.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
John Moir (00:01):
You did everything right.
You worked hard, followed theplan and checked all the boxes.
Maybe it was the career youpoured yourself into, maybe it
was the relationship you builtyour world around.
Or maybe it was the dream youchased for years.
(00:22):
You sacrificed, you stayed uplate and you pushed through the
hard times, believing that onceyou got there wherever there was
it would all finally make sense.
What happens when you wake upone day and the life you built,
(00:43):
the one you worked so hard for,feels foreign, like it belongs
to someone else?
That's a grief no one preparesyou for, because grief isn't
just about losing a person.
It's about losing an identity.
It's about losing a future, aversion of yourself you thought
(01:05):
you were supposed to be.
It's mourning the years youspent believing in something
that no longer fits.
And even when you know deepdown that it's time to move on,
letting go can feel unbearable,because who you are without this
(01:27):
thing you built?
Here's what I want you to knowyou are not lost, you are
becoming, and letting go of anold life isn't failure, it's
evolution, it's growth, it's thesoul whispering.
There is something more for you.
And yes, stepping into theunknown is terrifying.
(01:52):
Yes, it feels like free-falling.
But what if, on the other sideof that grief, there's a life
that feels lighter, a life thatactually fits who you are now
and not where you were when youstarted this journey?
Kelly Sparta (02:11):
So grief can be painful or it can be ecstatic,
depending upon how you approachit, and one of the things that
happens when you open to receivethe love, finally, is that it
squeezes out some of the grief,and so you find yourself crying
every time you feel loved, andfor me, that process took like
(02:34):
two years for me to clear thegrease before I could stop
crying every time I felt loved.
John Moir (02:41):
Our guest is a force of nature, equal parts mystic,
mentor and truth teller.
From an early childhood markedby psychic sensitivity,
emotional chaos and constantchange, she emerged as a guide
for others, walking the edgebetween the spiritual and the
everyday.
Her journey wasn't easy,navigating deep grief, burnout
(03:02):
and a breakdown of identity.
But through it all, she keptfollowing the call and today she
is known for her ability tohelp others move through their
awakenings with clarity, graceand power.
Welcome back, you are listeningto the Urban Grief Shamans and
I'm your host, john Moyer.
Kelly Sparta (03:22):
The grief in the world is serving a purpose right
now, just like COVID served apurpose.
It put everybody into forcedhermitage where they had to be
with themselves.
It was part of the collectiveawakening.
The grief is there.
Right now we're doing acollective energy shift and the
very first thing that happens isthe ego screams up and tries to
(03:44):
defend itself, and that's whatwe're seeing in the world right
now.
John Moir (03:48):
This is our guest, kelly Sparta.
Kelly is a masterful guide whobrings insight, deep compassion
and an unshakable presence intoevery conversation.
She's a transformational shaman, a psychic and a teacher.
Let's jump in a psychic and ateacher.
Let's jump in.
(04:08):
Kelly.
Can you go back in 1998, whereyou kind of packed up and left
everything?
There must have been somethingmore going on with you.
We just don't all of a suddenblossom into our spirituality.
There's usually a long processbefore we get there.
Yes, so could you take us backas far as you're comfortable?
Tell me about your childhood.
What kind of a young girl wereyou?
What was your family life like?
Kelly Sparta (04:28):
Yes, my mother said I was talking to ghosts in
my crib, and so my mom had beenpsychic when she was a child and
had been scared of it, and soshe shut it down and she was
absolutely dedicated to the ideathat I would not have that same
problem, that I wouldunderstand it and be able to
utilize it and all that otherstuff.
My dad, on the other hand, washighly logical, and so mom was.
(04:53):
They were both teachers.
Mom was an English teacher, dadwas a math teacher and she was
the emotional, he was thelogical, and they really did not
get each other right Becauseshortly after I came in they
were done, and so that was awhole thing.
But mom was also an alcoholicand dad was a rageaholic, and so
(05:15):
the two together were quiteentertaining, and so when they
split when I was five, my motherwent deep into a personal
growth journey and proceeded tobring home things like Est and
we would study Sasson Ram Dassand Abraham Hicks and JC Knight
and all of that.
Sadly, she never really didmanage to find her happiness
(05:38):
before she passed away, but allof the stuff that she raised me
with was super helpful for me,and my dad was also psychic, but
would never admit to it.
He always just said, oh, I justread people, I just understand
people, and I'm like, yeah, youare quote unquote understanding
things you have no way ofknowing.
(05:59):
Right, let's do the math.
He would never admit.
He always thought I was just alittle off my nut and it was so
funny.
At his funeral a couple came upto me who had known my parents
when they were still together,when I was like four or five
years old, and he said weremember your mother.
She was a freak spirit which issouthern for crackpot, right.
(06:22):
Yes, like yes she was.
My mother was always a littleoff, and in fun ways and not so
fun ways, but she was a littleoff.
Mom was my best friend.
We moved a lot as a child, somy entire life was spent losing
friends and trying to find newones because we moved every year
(06:44):
or two.
I learned how to reflect theenergy in the room, learned how
to fit in quickly.
It is my superpower.
John Moir (06:52):
If I can just take it back to when your parents split
, it's obviously he was reallythe first male that you loved,
right, and now that's leaving orhe's leaving.
So what was that like for youat that time?
Kelly Sparta (07:03):
Well, it was a split thing for me because my
dad terrified me when he gotangry.
I have memories of hiding in acloset and pulling all the coats
down on top of me to try andget away from the energy of him
screaming at my mother while sheignored him by reading, and so
he was never physically abusive,but the verbal abuse and the
(07:25):
energy of the anger wassignificant for my poor little
empath self, and so I was scaredof him until I was in my 30s,
and so when they split, it was agift because I got a break from
that and I would only see himfor two weeks out of the year.
And, yeah, he did the normaldad things.
(07:45):
I have pictures of him doingnormal dad things Not bad things
, but dad things but I have nomemory of him doing.
I don't have any memories fromthe inside of that house.
I only have memories from theoutside of the house and I have
lots of memories from the housedown the street.
So that tells you.
And the house across the street.
So that tells you.
And the house across the street.
(08:05):
So it tells you that there wasstuff that I was trying not to
remember, right.
John Moir (08:10):
Yeah, for safety.
Yeah, how did that affect yourrelationships at all as you're
growing up oh, big time, teenageyears?
Kelly Sparta (08:17):
Big time I picked men who were emotionally
unavailable and or physicallyabsent.
My first husband was a classicexample of both.
So he was a sub-mariner, so hewould go out to sea for three
months at a shot and he was notemotionally available at all.
And my father ironically lookedat me and said I give it three
(08:39):
months.
When he met him after we elopedthat the only time he ever said
he was proud of me was when andtold him I was getting a
divorce and he said you give it.
I can't say you didn't try.
I'm proud of you.
I'm like I did it to freakingspite you, stupid butthead, are
you kidding me?
So I'm like no, this is notgood for me.
I was doing a lot of work onmyself at the time and you asked
(09:02):
what was leading up to thedivorce and the chucking.
My whole life, my entirechildhood, I had wanted to be
Auntie, mame, without thealcohol.
Mame Dennis was an amazingperson, but she was a free
spirit.
She wanted to see the world,she wanted to talk to free
thinkers, she wanted to becreative and all of these things
(09:23):
.
And it often came with alcohol,because it was the 60s, because
of my mother's alcoholism.
I wanted it without the alcohol, right.
I did manage to have that lifeafter I divorced my husband, but
I followed the American dreamchecklist.
In my 20s I married the thirdperson who asked me, which I
thought was being responsible,but I'm still only 21.
(09:43):
For one, we really didn't haveany common values let's start
with that and I stepped awayfrom my spirituality for that
time and after a while I justwas like you know what this is
not working for me.
I was getting certified in aprogram from Mind Empowerment
International and I went to thisevent and this guy who was
(10:06):
running the event said my handsjust turned on, somebody in the
room needs healing.
And there were only a couple ofus there.
It was a very high ticket thingand I was like I don't know
what you're talking about rightnow.
I've been a healer my wholelife and I'd never heard of
energy healing, which was soweird.
But I studied, you know, whenmy mom got her nurse's license
(10:28):
after the divorce, I was herstudy buddy, so I've got all of
Grey's Anatomy in the back of myhead and he said can I do some
work on you?
And so he came to the hotelroom later that night and did
some work with me, doing someenergy release and some healing
work, and going into my heart,and I he was like okay, tell me
how your heart feels.
(10:48):
And I was like I got nothing.
He's okay, let's just go downsome stairs, open the door,
what's it look like?
I'm like the walls are blackand dripping and he's like why?
And I said my husband?
And he's okay.
So this is interesting.
I've been trying to get myhusband to go to counseling for
years, like four, four or fiveyears and I had been slowly
adding in me you don't want toget a divorce, do you?
(11:10):
I don't want to get a divorce.
Do you want to get a divorce?
He's like no, and I'm like weneed to fix this.
This is not going away byitself.
He just was not willing to doit.
All of that had built up andthat brought me to super clarity
.
And that weekend I came homeand I asked for a divorce and he
immediately said I'll go tocounseling.
And I said too little, too late.
(11:32):
And I said if you'd gone before, then it was because you cared
that I wasn't happy, and nowit's because you don't want to
be divorced, and that's not goodenough.
John Moir (11:45):
Was it a very unhappy time for you at that point?
Oh, I was really miserable.
Kelly Sparta (11:49):
I mean I had started.
So we moved to Connecticut in1993.
And I got my real estatelicense almost immediately
thereafter, 93?
, yeah, 93.
And I, the first year inbusiness now, I had never.
I didn't know anybody, I didn't.
(12:10):
So you can understand how hard Iwas working when I tell you I
sold 25 houses in a year.
I was working a hundred hourwork weeks, working and, but,
and, and I would come home tohim bitching at me because I had
not cleaned the house.
Wow, and I'm like, I'm working100 hour work week, you're
(12:30):
working 40.
Why am I cleaning the house?
And I was like, fine, so Ihired a housekeeper.
And then he wasn't happy withthat because evidently in his
love language, cleaning thehouse was love language and we
didn't have the consciousness tobe able to understand that for
years after that initialconversation.
And so I had burned out,basically my first year in the
(12:51):
business, and so I was workingin an industry that I was fried
in, I was working way too manyhours, I was in this cold war
with my husband and it was just.
I should have divorced himwithin three months, but it just
wasn't.
My people in that area, for themost part, unlike I live in
Boquete, panama, now, andeverybody, almost everybody I
(13:12):
meet here is my people, which isjust a different dynamic,
different place, right?
So yeah, I was pretty miserableand so there was a lot of
buildup on that and the anxietywas insane.
Oh my God, I would wake up inthe middle of the night in a
cold sweat going oh my God, Iforgot these six things and I
literally kept a pad of papernext to my bed so I could write
(13:34):
down all the things that I'dforgotten from the day, because
the anxiety was insanely highand I was having a hard time
keeping up with everythingbecause I had too many moving
parts in mind of help and Ididn't know exactly what I was
doing.
So I was trying to figure itout as I went, and the further
along I got, the more I was.
I did a lot of bridge burningin the beginning because I was
so strung out that I wasconstantly yelling at people
(13:56):
Can't burn your bridges.
I did recover from iteventually, but got called the
force of nature a lot, which wasa kind way of saying a raving,
lunatic bitch.
But yes, yeah, because I wasmiserable and I was stressed out
and I was angry and I was upset, all the things, so I was doing
what I could on myself, but Ididn't have the bandwidth and
(14:19):
the distance to be able to doenough.
And you got to be met halfwayin the relationship.
He just wasn't meeting me atall.
Yeah.
John Moir (14:27):
So is that because most people's spiritual
awakenings are triggered by somekind of loss and would you?
Are we framing, in a sense,your loss as a change of who you
were being a married woman andworking all these hours to
finally having to make some bigchanges?
You're being pushed to makechange now.
Kelly Sparta (14:47):
Yeah, it was just.
It was a cascade of things,right, the alpha moment was that
moment of the healing space,but there was just so much going
on at once that it just landedon my head right enough that I
was really only working 18 or 20hours a week and letting her do
everything else and I insteadwas spending 40 to 60 hours a
(15:18):
week running a Habitat forHumanity affiliate that was in
crisis and was like on the vergeof shutting down because it
lost all its funding and all ofthe volunteers were quitting.
I took over a nightmare, I tookit over that way and then ended
up doing a lot of work aroundthat.
But it was this process of justeverything just built up.
John Moir (15:39):
Your mother had a lot of influence in forming a
foundation for you.
Kelly Sparta (15:46):
It was her and me against the world.
The whole Helen Reddy song,right, that was our theme song,
and so she was there.
She was emotionally five yearsold, my whole life but she kept
the lights on and made sure thatI got what I needed.
We were constantly listening tostuff and she sent me to
psychic development classes.
I only had like one significant, two significant spiritual
(16:09):
experiences in my childhoodoutside of her saying I was
talking to ghosts in my crib.
So one was a ghost that showedup at the foot of my bed in
California that looked like aprospector, and when I noticed
him and freaked out I was likehe disappeared from the waist up
, which was freaky right.
Another time was a boyfriendand I, who I met in Hawaii when
(16:33):
we were on vacation, had beenpracticing talking to me from
Hawaii and I heard his voiceright next to my ear, woke me up
out of a dead sleep, himcalling my name, and I checked
in with him and he's like, yeah,that was me.
And then younger, because thosewere both my late teens,
mid-teens, like 16.
Earlier in middle school I hadbeen and this one's a little
(16:58):
darker, but I had been in achurch youth group and we were
playing in the catacombs in thedark and this kid this kid had a
demon in him and the demon camefor me and in the church
catacombs.
I'm like how did you get ontosacred ground?
I don't understand.
So the ground was clearly notsacred, but came at me and that
(17:19):
was problematic.
So those were really the onlyspiritual things in my childhood
that showed up.
But everything exploded openwhen I divorced my husband and
it's actually the divorce thatreally exploded it because I
didn't move out of state, Ididn't quit and sell my job,
(17:41):
sell my business rather, andquit the nonprofit until like a
year later.
But the spiritual stuff justexploded onto the scene because
when I sold the house, I boughtanother house and it had a ghost
on the property and I startedtaking Reiki classes and I
started taking Shiatsu classesand all of this synchronicity
(18:04):
opened up.
I stepped into this state ofprofound gratitude about my life
, state of profound gratitudeabout my life.
I was, everything was just like, oh, I don't have to check in
with him before I do somethingor buy something or you know
whatever.
And I was just in this beautifulstate of profound gratitude and
that just opened up all ofthese psychic skills for me to
(18:25):
the point where I was gettingguidance that I needed to go.
I remember I was going to go toa spiritualist church event you
know, service and I was goingto be late.
And I'm like, oh, I'm late,maybe I just won't go, and the
voice came into my head veryclearly you have to go, she
won't be there next week and I'mlike okay.
(18:49):
So I went and I'm at the coffeeclutch afterwards and this woman
, who is a regular, introducesme to her mother and I'm like,
oh hi, blah, blah, blah and shestarts talking and I'm like, oh,
you're the reason I had to come.
And she's like what?
And I told her what hadhappened and she's like you're
the sign I asked for.
I'm like, okay, okay, so thingslike that happened a lot that
(19:15):
year.
They were just, it was huge,and it was the year that.
So I was doing the spiritualistchurch and I, they do
mediumship from the pulpit thereand I would always get
something extra right, they, youknow.
And I would go find the peopleat the coffee clash and say, hey
, when you got this message, youknow, I was also getting this.
And so one day, one of the guyswho I used to hang out with and
had done this to multiple times, I said, hey, I run this class
(19:38):
every month, I think.
And the teacher backed out lastsecond and would you be willing
to come and teach a class fortwo hours?
And he's like anything you want.
And I was like, well, I'mtaking a Shiatsu class so I can
teach what I know about that.
And he's like great.
And after an hour and a half Ihad run out of everything I knew
about shiatsu.
So I was like and he's like,well, why don't you just do
(19:59):
readings for everybody?
Now, you know, I've beenreading tarot cards since I was
12.
So if I'd had my cards with meand I was like, oh, I don't do
that.
He's like, you do that everyweek at church.
Oh, no, no, no, I don't do this.
And I finally agreed to do itwith the understanding that
everything I said was probablywrong, because all of these
(20:19):
people were brand new to me.
I had no way of knowinganything about them, except
whatever they might have said inthe middle of the class that I
was teaching, which wasn't muchRight.
And I remember to this dayevery single reading I did for
the people in that room, becauseit was the moment I proved to
myself that I was psychic and Iscared myself.
I was like I have no way ofknowing these things and I'm I'm
(20:41):
looking for things like youknow, one guy's dressed like an
executive, with, you know, theboat shoes and no socks and the
khakis you know, this was thenineties, right and he's dressed
like some sort of corporateexecutive on vacation and I'm
like you're a house you paintfor a living.
And he's like, yeah, I'm a housepainter.
And I'm like, oh my God Right,I'm looking for little dots of
(21:04):
paint on his clothes, on hisshoes, on anything.
I'm like what?
Why would I have known that?
It was a pivotal moment in mylife and it was a function of
just being grateful for beingdone with that marriage that I
had been stuck in for so long.
I also had to go through thegrieving process for that
marriage, to grieve the dream ofwhat might have been the dream
of what you wanted it to be, andI did do that, but I also spent
(21:28):
a huge amount of time ingratitude for being done.
John Moir (21:36):
Well, the idea of grief as a catalyst for
spiritual growth.
Many people think that you haveto endure grief as something
that you have to go through.
You work with transformation,you work with all these people,
and so how do you see grief as agateway to personal power, for
example?
Kelly Sparta (21:55):
way to personal power, for example.
So grief can be painful or itcan be ecstatic, depending upon
how you approach it.
And so I'm going to tell you astory.
I was at an event in Harbin,hot Springs, years ago, and I
was having an experience overand over again of how the you
know, I was just feelingunwelcome over and over and over
again.
(22:15):
I mean, like I was staying in adorm and this woman kept waking
me up in the middle of thenight because I'd been crying
all weekend in the workshop andso I was snoring, and she's like
.
She woke me up and I tried, youknow, I blew my nose and I
tried to wait for her to go backto sleep Good co-sleeper and I
waited 15 minutes and went backto sleep and I had already
separated myself from everybodyelse, put myself on the bottom
(22:38):
while they were up in the top totry and account for that, and
she came and woke me up againand said you're going to have to
leave, like telling me I did,in the middle of the night, get
out of my bed and leave becauseshe was being disrupted, which
you know not okay, which I toldher.
I was like no but, and then Iwent and a group of us from so
there's Harbin Hot Spring,people who live there.
(22:58):
And then there's people at theworkshop and a group of people
from the workshop were in thesauna and one of the people who
live there is like sticking herhead in and going you guys done?
For like no, we're not going tobe done for a while.
If you'd like to come in andgoing, you guys done.
We're like no, we're not goingto be done for a while.
If you'd like to come in andsit, you're welcome to join us.
And she's like no, I'll wait.
And she closed the door and 10minutes later opens it.
(23:18):
Are you done yet?
It's like no, you know, it'sjust like over and over again,
right, this is just, it was thetheme, right, and that just kept
happening.
And so I'm at breakfast.
I go to breakfast and there's agroup of people at the table
They've all been laughing andhaving a good time and getting
dirty looks from everybodyaround them, because it's a
quiet space in Harbin usuallyand so I show up and I'm sitting
(23:39):
there and they, you know I waslate to breakfast, so they all
got up and left and I'm sittingthere by myself, still getting
the dirty looks from people.
And I'm like I'm freaking bymyself.
What is your boy?
They're still giving me dirtylooks.
And I'm sitting there with myoatmeal and I'm eating my
oatmeal and I'm saying I havenever felt so unwelcome in my
entire life.
And in that moment I realized Ihave always felt this unwelcome
(24:01):
my whole life because I'd beenthe military brat who was
constantly moving because ofeverything in my life.
I was just like I feltunwelcome.
And my father got remarried andmy stepmother did her best, but
the kids didn't want me there.
So there was unwelcome theretoo, and so it was just.
I had all of that grief insideof me and I started to cry into
(24:25):
my oatmeal and I was like, oh,this has been true.
And it was unconscious up untilthat moment.
The universe was speaking to meover and over again throughout
that entire event so that Iwould recognize it, I would wake
up to it, get aware of it,because until you're aware of
something, you can't shift itright.
(24:45):
And so what was so beautifulabout this is that I went from
there to the actual hot springs,still in tears and just crying
to myself and just pulling outall this grief and releasing it
into the water.
And this couple came up to mein the hot spring and they said
would you like to be floated?
And I was like, yes, I wouldlove that.
(25:08):
So the universe sent me someoneto literally hold me while I
release the grief right, becauseonce you engage it, once you
accept it, once you are with itand you can allow it to release
from you, it is a hugely openingspace and it allows you to
accept the support that can comefrom that right, to accept the
support that can come from thatright.
(25:31):
There's a lot of different wayswe experience grief in our lives
, and one of the things I talkto my people about all the time
is the fact that when you are ina space where you don't feel
like receiving love is safe, youwill stop receiving love
because it either comes with anobligation or you know it's.
(25:52):
It's just not safe to receiveit, so you stop receiving it.
And then it creates thisinternal belief structure
because your internal self, yourinner child, doesn't realize
that you made that choice, andso it creates a story that says
I'm unlovable and that createsmassive amounts of grief.
And every time you don'treceive love, you get more and
(26:13):
more sad, and so one of thethings because we do work on
opening the heart and opening toreceive, and one of the things
that happens when you open toreceive the love, finally is
that it squeezes out some of thegrief and so you find yourself
crying every time you feel loved, and for me, that process took
(26:34):
like two years for me to clearthe grease.
Before they all recognize hercontributions and honor them.
I bawled my eyes out, okay,because that was all that grief
from my life coming outno-transcript office.
(27:38):
I was still grieving the loss ofmy mother.
So it's back in 2010 and I wasjust feeling sad on the subway
and so I was just letting thetears come and I was just being
sad and the tears were gone, butI was still deep in my grief
when I came out of the subwayand in Central Square in Boston
there is a group of people whosit around and drink all day,
(27:59):
right, and I did not know thisguy was part of that group.
He looked you know he had abomber jacket on.
He looked like you know he hadthe military veteran thing going
on and you know my mother wasmilitary, so I feel comfortable
with military and an older manand he walked up to me and he
said you are too beautiful to beso sad.
And he kissed me right on thelips and not a very chaste kiss,
(28:22):
but a kiss, and I was just like.
It was like the universe sayingit's okay.
And then I caught the smell ofalcohol on his breath and then
he wandered off.
It was like okay.
So that was the universe sayingyou're going to be okay and
we've got you back and you knowall of this stuff.
And so you know, when you letthe grief out, the universe
(28:43):
finds really interesting ways tosupport you.
John Moir (28:46):
Oh for sure.
I want to just ask you aquestion about that sense of not
belonging or not wanted.
Yeah, and I was wondering thatyour parents must have had a lot
of grief when they were youngeras well.
I mean, I can't imagine goinginto the military life as easy
in any way.
So to want to go that way, forone thing I would think of,
(29:07):
there must be something therethat you're chasing your own
demons.
You know like you need thediscipline, you need all these
distractions and the same thing,for the rage that your father
had must have been justsomething terrible that's being
either passed down from hisfather or his grandfather to his
father.
But at the end of the day, whenthey decided to either have a
child or unplanned that, perhapsit was when you're in uterine,
(29:32):
those feelings of not wantingthis child.
I can't be pregnant now.
You think any of that played arole in your feeling not wanted?
Kelly Sparta (29:40):
My mother desperately wanted me.
She told me that she spentyears talking my dad into having
a kid.
My dad did not want children,at least that's her story.
He married a woman who hadchildren, so who knows right.
But you know he also encouragedme, if I didn't want to have
kids, not to so, but my dad was.
I'm pretty sure that what itwas down to is that it was.
(30:02):
My dad was desperately afraidof being a terrible father,
because his father had been aterrible father and you know so
much so that his sister ended upin mental institutions over and
over again.
So you know he never talkedabout the stuff.
He hinted at it, but he wouldnever talk about it.
But, he was very clear that heand my grandfather did not get
(30:25):
along and it was not.
You know his childhood was notokay and it was not.
You know his childhood was notokay.
I've talked to my cousins aboutit his sister's children, and
you know they've all said yeah,it was really bad, but they
never gave me details and that'sokay, I don't need them, right.
But my mother also.
You know, her father died whenI was still a baby and she never
(30:48):
got over that loss.
I mean, she was daddy's littlegirl and she spoke of him like
he was some sort of knight inshining armor beautiful,
wonderful human.
And, to be fair, other peoplespoke about him that way too.
For my mother, it was mygrandmother who was the problem.
You know, at my grandmother'sfuneral she said I'll never tell
you the things that woman putme through and I'm like, okay,
(31:12):
so I was definitely a plannedpregnancy.
My aunt on my mother's side wasdefinitely not a planned
pregnancy but my mother was, ismy understanding.
So you know, I don't think itwas that so much.
I just think there was a lot ofrage and whatnot.
But you're looking for thewhere did the not welcome story
(31:33):
comes in, which is kind ofinteresting because my birth
story has a little bit of thatin it, because my mother had.
She had an obstetrician who Iwas going to be his last baby
and she was committed to himdelivering me and so she had
them drug her to put off thedelivery until he could arrive.
(31:56):
So much so that she was sohopped up on drugs that she said
the minute she saw me she waslike oh good, and then passed
out and she actually was of theopinion that I was a twin.
They had actually said I wasgoing to be a twin and twin baby
boy, small twin baby boys iswhat I'd been predicted to be
(32:17):
and he never predicted.
And I was eight pounds, sevenounces, baby girl, solo child,
right.
But she was convinced thatthere was another twin that had
been stillborn and she didn'tremember it and that they just
never told her about it becausethey knew that it would make her
sad.
And I'm like, okay, but twobabies with one at eight pounds
seven ounces is not veryreasonable.
(32:38):
I don't think so, mom.
But Mom was a little off.
John Moir (32:43):
Kelly, moving on just a little bit, in your material
you talk about training 100,000spiritual warriors.
Not that you call them that,but people who are here to
elevate the planet.
Kelly Sparta (32:53):
Yeah.
John Moir (32:54):
Do you see that grief is something that many of these
people have to move through inorder for them to step into
their work?
Kelly Sparta (33:03):
most people don't come into the spiritual world
without some form of childhoodtrauma of some kind.
The vast majority of people inthe spiritual world have
something that they're dealingwith.
Otherwise they wouldn't be here.
When I'm working with the100,000, what I'm doing is I'm
helping them to move throughtheir limiting beliefs and the
healing that they need to do inorder to be able to step fully
(33:26):
into their authentic selves andfully into the work in the world
.
And, like I said, the vastmajority of people have to work
with some version of openingtheir heart, and so that always
has grief associated with it.
If you had it shut down,there's always grief there.
A lot of people do have actualgrief that they're processing
from that meaning what morenormal people think of as grief,
(33:48):
meaning they had a loss of aloved one or some major trauma
or some massive loss in theirlife.
Some of them will havemediumship.
They're getting messages fromthe beyond, from the person who
crossed over, whatever right.
There's all kinds of thingsthat go on.
I get tons and tons of peopleat different stages.
Interestingly, in the last fouryears, ever since COVID, people
(34:10):
who are waking up are waking upmuch further along on their
journey, and so, instead of justgoing, oh, I kind of would like
to talk to my guides, or I'dlike to talk to my angels.
Now it's, I'm having propheticdreams.
Things are coming at me.
I'm being told I can't come tosome spiritual practitioners
because too many entities arecoming at me.
I'm being told I can't come tosome spiritual practitioners
because too many entities arecoming with me and I feel under
(34:32):
attack, or I'm seeing thingsthat I don't understand.
I don't have context orlanguage for it, and so I'm
getting that a lot more, a lotmore.
And so you know, this is whyI've been working with these
people specifically is becauseit's terrifying to come into
something and not have any senseof language for it and
(34:56):
everybody around you is like areyou sure you're not
schizophrenic?
You know, are you sure youhaven't gone around the bend in
some way?
Because you're delusional,right?
And it's like you're notdelusional.
You've just come into yourgifts and you know you need
somebody who speaks the languagewell enough to be able to
validate and to be able to seewhat you're doing.
(35:16):
So I had a shaman friend yearsago who used to work at a psych
ward and he said about a thirdof the people who were in the
psych ward were actually psychic.
He said they weren't delusional, they were actually seeing
things that were actually thereand he would go in and clear
them for them.
Like you know, one guy wouldscream because something would
be in his room at night and he'dsay, look, I'll get rid of it,
but you can't tell anybody.
(35:37):
I did it.
And he's like, okay, that's thedeal and so he would get rid of
whatever the thing.
You know, these things happenand if they're not understood,
people are concerned.
They're like I don't want toopen my mouth, I could get
institutionalized right, or ifthey're high end in business or
in publicity and they don't wantto be seen as being nuts, but
(35:58):
they need help and so that's thework I do.
John Moir (36:02):
Well, I'm thinking that there's a deep collective
grief in the world right now, somuch.
How do you see spiritualpractitioners and shamans hold
space for that kind of vastsocietal grief?
Kelly Sparta (36:16):
So, from my end because I can't speak for other
spiritual practitioners orteachers but from my end, what
I'm doing is I am being withwhat is right, because grief is
a beingness state.
When we do our spiritual work,we have the masculine path,
(36:38):
which is the doingness state ofstripping away until you become
nothing and you become one witheverything.
And then you have the beingnessstate, which is accepting,
receiving accepting receivingwithout judgment.
All that is until you becomeeverything and you become one
with everything.
And the goal of fullenlightenment is to do both at
the same time and have it not bea paradox, right?
Well, grief operates withinthat feminine path.
(37:02):
It operates within thatbeingness state.
You can only be with grief toallow it to process through you.
When we're living in thiscollective grief state around
the breakdown of everything,it's about being with it and
allowing it to process throughyou.
Right?
Most people aren't doing thatkind of work.
(37:23):
I did a sound healing forclearing grief back in 2020,
when everybody was dying.
I gave it away.
You know I was like anybody whowants it.
Here you go and I've beenconsistently giving that away
for years now because it works.
You know, every time somebodyuses it it clears a little, also
clearing the grief of the world, because your grief is part of
(37:44):
that collective unconsciousWithin your own grieving process
(38:06):
.
You will be also processingpart of that collective grief as
well, because you are part ofthat collective grief right?
The more people wake up and Iam seeing people wake up at a
much faster pace than everbefore the more I see them wake
up, the more grief they aredealing with, and the more you
can get people to be with theirfeelings, the more the world
shifts.
And I think somebody said thatit's a you only need 3% of the
(38:26):
population to change the world,and I'm like okay, 3% is what
we're shooting for, right?
So we've got 100,000 people onthe planet whose job it is to
help facilitate that.
I leverage my value to thecommunity by helping those
people so that they can be moreeffective, be more powerful, be
(38:48):
more in their moment, be moreseen, be everything right.
The grief in the world right now.
There's a point you hit whenyou're doing this work for long
enough, where you recognize thatsome things are meant to be
there and some things are meantto be changed, and the grief in
the world is serving a purposeright now, just like COVID,
(39:10):
served a purpose.
It put everybody into forcedhermitage where they had to be
with themselves.
It was part of the collectiveawakening.
The grief is there right now,so it's almost like we're doing
a collective energy shift.
It's all about the identityshift.
The shamanic death is what theycall it, and the very first
thing that happens is the egoscreams up and tries to defend
(39:33):
itself, and that's what we'reseeing in the world right now.
We're seeing the ego screamingup and trying to defend itself,
but it already knows it's lost,because it wouldn't be screaming
up if it didn't know it waslost and, at the same time, this
grief of letting go of the selfthat used to be right and when
I say self in this case, I'm nottalking about individual selves
, I'm talking about thecollective self right, the
(39:55):
collective identity.
And as that comes through, thatgrieving process is appropriate
and in fact, when we doshamanic death work, we will
often do a funeral rite for theformer self and to really
acknowledge that this issomething that has happened and
to put it to rest specifically.
John Moir (40:18):
Is that considered like a ritual?
Kelly Sparta (40:20):
Yes, absolutely.
We'll do a ritual around it andthere's no collective ritual
right now for what's happeningon the planet, and so the grief
is going to need to be processedsomehow.
I've got the clearing griefaudio.
If you are finding that that'sshowing up in your life, I will
give you a link to get people acopy of it, because it is
(40:40):
helpful and you can do it foryourself or you can do it for
the planet.
It's up to you, because thereis no way of it happening in
other ways other than throughpeople's individual grieving of
other things, where it'll comeout around the edges for that.
So it's actually making grievingmore heavy lifting for the
people who are grieving forother reasons right now.
John Moir (41:02):
There are big misconceptions about healing
grief.
I know healing's not even thereally right word.
Right, Because nothing's broken.
It's a process that for us tobe well, what's the word?
The larger capacity to love,the larger capacity for
compassion.
Grieving is the part that makesus most human.
Kelly Sparta (41:25):
Yes.
John Moir (41:26):
So it's not nothing that needs to be repaired, but
it's to understand the fact thatit's not a pleasant place to be
in, especially at the beginningof a deep grief, when there's a
deep loss and whatever that maybe.
But when you get past thatpoint, if you have the courage
to still engage your grief andthat's what's really needed is,
(41:48):
I think, to process thebeginning of that change is to
now step forward and starttending to those feelings of
grief.
That's where the transformation, or the metamorphosis, start to
take place.
Have you ever come across anybig misconceptions amongst the
people that you're training?
Kelly Sparta (42:06):
Well, so, first thing is, people don't know
about grief brain.
Grief brain is real.
You literally have a hard timethinking when you're deep in
grief.
You get brain fog.
Your brain just won't land onanything.
You have a hard time groundingright, and especially if you are
an empath and the person thatpassed and I'm going to talk
(42:26):
about it as a person that passedin this scenario was close to
you.
Oftentimes you've shared yourenergy field with them and
they've taken part of yourenergy field to the other side
and left part of themselves withyou.
This is the reason why so manycouples who have been together a
long time will pass within amonth of each other.
It's because they take part ofthe person to the other side,
because they're jointly sharingtheir energy, and so half of
(42:48):
them has died already and sothey pass over to balance it out
.
And so grief brain issignificant, right so it.
You know you have a hard timeremembering things.
You have a hard time keepingtrack of things.
It's it's it's you're ungroundedis really what it comes down to
is that you've found ways toconnect into the world, and one
(43:08):
of your ways is gone Right, andso you're just wandering, and so
that makes us feel powerless,doesn't it?
John Moir (43:15):
Yes?
Kelly Sparta (43:16):
Yeah, that too, you know.
There's always that sense ofpowerlessness as well, and that
can really shake your sense ofself, especially if your
identity is based in the ideathat you're a powerful person.
When something like thathappens, that you have no
control over it, can reallychallenge your sense of self.
And so that's issue number one.
(43:37):
Number two is and this isn'tjust about grief, but it's about
all emotions when your heart isshut down, right.
When you've shut it down, youdon't feel your emotions.
You manage your emotions withyour head right.
When you've shut it down, youdon't feel your emotions.
You manage your emotions withyour head right.
You rationalize your emotionsand you try to rationalize them
away, and because of that you'renot actually processing them,
(43:58):
you're just stuffing them.
And so when you start to feelfor the first time after that
and usually in that case, theonly thing you're feeling is
anger or sadness, and that's it.
Those are the only emotions toget through when you've shut
everything down.
And so anger just doesn't help,because the more you let it out
(44:18):
, the more you yell about it,the more upset you get about it,
and it just amps itself up,right, and sadness goes into
depression very quickly becauseyou turn it inward and then now
you're just depressed.
So the both of those are nothelpful.
And so the big fear is thatwhen I start to feel something,
(44:39):
I'm going to feel, have to feeleverything and it's going to
overwhelm me.
And to a certain extent, whenyou start to start to feel, yes,
the other feelings will comeout not generally all at once,
okay, so they do come out, andthey'll come out weirdly and
you'll be like what is this?
I'm feeling this weird way andI don't have any reason to write
(44:59):
because you stuffed it like 30years ago and now it's showing
up now.
So stop looking for a reason,just have the emotion and let it
go right.
Um, that's the thing thathappens when people because
grief can sometimes breakthrough that locked up place for
the heart, and so they'reafraid of the overwhelm of
emotions because they've beenstuffing them for so long.
(45:21):
They know that there's so muchin there, even if it's
subconsciously, they're like, oh, I can't do this right.
But it generally is not likethat.
John Moir (45:31):
If they don't.
The body is even going to.
What's the word get into theact.
That's where we startdeveloping illnesses or diseases
, because the body just needs toget rid of that energy.
Kelly Sparta (45:42):
Yeah, the better.
Vanderkult wrote the book.
Body Keeps the Score.
John Moir (45:46):
Oh, is that?
Yeah, I heard the title, but Ijust know that a lot of the
energy that we hold that it'snot our energy and it needs to
be cleared With the people thatyou're working with.
How do you help them to reclaimtheir personal power?
Kelly Sparta (46:01):
So that again, is a process.
The first thing we have to dois find mental, emotional and
energetic safety, because untilyou feel safe, you don't have
the bandwidth to grow, and sothat's going to be shutting up
the monkey mind and getting yourenergy field solid and not
having other people inside yourenergy field, which is what the
definition of an empath is rightIs.
(46:22):
You're shoving your energyfield out to the point where
other people are inside of yourfield, then setting up some
protections for your energyfield, for your home, just so
that you feel safe.
And then we work on fear andanxiety and worry and dread and
self-doubt and inner and outerjudgment, and we build a
foundation of self-support andcourage.
And that gives you the mental,emotional and energetic safety
(46:43):
piece.
And then from there to get tobeing able to hold your power,
you then have to learn to how toclaim your space in the world.
It's okay for you to take upspace.
You have to set your boundaries.
It's okay to tell people no andto claim that you know to say
you stay there, I'm going to behere, and then own your power,
which is being able to giveyourself permission to have it,
(47:05):
because in a lot of cases we'venot allowed ourselves that,
either because we were killed inthe past life for our gifts, or
because we know that we have awell of rage.
And so, because we have thewell of rage, we won't give
ourselves too much power becausewe might lay waste to the world
with too much power.
And so you have to empty thatwell of rage to be able to get
(47:27):
to that power and give yourselfpermission to have it.
We might not be a good personbecause of the well of rage.
You have to get past that.
We have to work on issues aroundbeing able to.
Are we responsible for what wesee and what do we have to do
with that?
And am I willing to beresponsible?
What am I willing to see?
And all of those things show upin those places.
(47:47):
And then there's the point ofbeing able to internalize your
sense of value, so that you'renot looking for validation
outside of yourself all the timeand you're able to stand
solidly in your own space andnot have to justify your value
and then ultimately learn how tolove yourself right.
And all of those piecestogether, when you combine them,
(48:09):
solidify your energeticcontainer and your sense of self
, your identity and in doingthat, when you can solidly hold
yourself now, you can solidlyhold your power to be able to do
what is the true shadow workthat we have to do to heal
ourselves, which is theself-inquiry process and diving
deeper into the stories and thebelief structures and things
(48:32):
like that that help us torelease all of the rest of it.
John Moir (48:38):
Thank you for joining us today for this powerful
conversation with Kelly Sparta.
Her grief, awakening andreclamation journey reminds us
that healing isn't aboutbecoming someone new.
It's about returning to who wehave always been.
If Kelly's words move somethingin you, take a moment to sit
with it, let it settle, let itguide you Until next time.
(49:01):
Take gentle care and rememberyour power is waiting for you on
the other side of your truth.
You did everything right.
You worked hard, followed theplan and checked all the boxes.
Maybe it was the career youpoured yourself into, maybe it
was the relationship you builtyour world around.
Or maybe it was the dream youchased for years.
(00:22):
You sacrificed, you stayed uplate and you pushed through the
hard times, believing that onceyou got there wherever there was
it would all finally make sense.
What happens when you wake upone day and the life you built,
(00:43):
the one you worked so hard for,feels foreign, like it belongs
to someone else?
That's a grief no one preparesyou for, because grief isn't
just about losing a person.
It's about losing an identity.
It's about losing a future, aversion of yourself you thought
(01:05):
you were supposed to be.
It's mourning the years youspent believing in something
that no longer fits.
And even when you know deepdown that it's time to move on,
letting go can feel unbearable,because who you are without this
(01:27):
thing you built?
Here's what I want you to knowyou are not lost, you are
becoming, and letting go of anold life isn't failure, it's
evolution, it's growth, it's thesoul whispering.
There is something more for you.
And yes, stepping into theunknown is terrifying.
(01:52):
Yes, it feels like free-falling.
But what if, on the other sideof that grief, there's a life
that feels lighter, a life thatactually fits who you are now
and not where you were when youstarted this journey?
Kelly Sparta (02:11):
So grief can be painful or it can be ecstatic,
depending upon how you approachit, and one of the things that
happens when you open to receivethe love, finally, is that it
squeezes out some of the grief,and so you find yourself crying
every time you feel loved, andfor me, that process took like
(02:34):
two years for me to clear thegrease before I could stop
crying every time I felt loved.
John Moir (02:41):
Our guest is a force of nature, equal parts mystic,
mentor and truth teller.
From an early childhood markedby psychic sensitivity,
emotional chaos and constantchange, she emerged as a guide
for others, walking the edgebetween the spiritual and the
everyday.
Her journey wasn't easy,navigating deep grief, burnout
(03:02):
and a breakdown of identity.
But through it all, she keptfollowing the call and today she
is known for her ability tohelp others move through their
awakenings with clarity, graceand power.
Welcome back, you are listeningto the Urban Grief Shamans and
I'm your host, john Moyer.
Kelly Sparta (03:22):
The grief in the world is serving a purpose right
now, just like COVID served apurpose.
It put everybody into forcedhermitage where they had to be
with themselves.
It was part of the collectiveawakening.
The grief is there.
Right now we're doing acollective energy shift and the
very first thing that happens isthe ego screams up and tries to
(03:44):
defend itself, and that's whatwe're seeing in the world right
now.
John Moir (03:48):
This is our guest, kelly Sparta.
Kelly is a masterful guide whobrings insight, deep compassion
and an unshakable presence intoevery conversation.
She's a transformational shaman, a psychic and a teacher.
Let's jump in a psychic and ateacher.
Let's jump in.
(04:08):
Kelly.
Can you go back in 1998, whereyou kind of packed up and left
everything?
There must have been somethingmore going on with you.
We just don't all of a suddenblossom into our spirituality.
There's usually a long processbefore we get there.
Yes, so could you take us backas far as you're comfortable?
Tell me about your childhood.
What kind of a young girl wereyou?
What was your family life like?
Kelly Sparta (04:28):
Yes, my mother said I was talking to ghosts in
my crib, and so my mom had beenpsychic when she was a child and
had been scared of it, and soshe shut it down and she was
absolutely dedicated to the ideathat I would not have that same
problem, that I wouldunderstand it and be able to
utilize it and all that otherstuff.
My dad, on the other hand, washighly logical, and so mom was.
(04:53):
They were both teachers.
Mom was an English teacher, dadwas a math teacher and she was
the emotional, he was thelogical, and they really did not
get each other right Becauseshortly after I came in they
were done, and so that was awhole thing.
But mom was also an alcoholicand dad was a rageaholic, and so
(05:15):
the two together were quiteentertaining, and so when they
split when I was five, my motherwent deep into a personal
growth journey and proceeded tobring home things like Est and
we would study Sasson Ram Dassand Abraham Hicks and JC Knight
and all of that.
Sadly, she never really didmanage to find her happiness
(05:38):
before she passed away, but allof the stuff that she raised me
with was super helpful for me,and my dad was also psychic, but
would never admit to it.
He always just said, oh, I justread people, I just understand
people, and I'm like, yeah, youare quote unquote understanding
things you have no way ofknowing.
(05:59):
Right, let's do the math.
He would never admit.
He always thought I was just alittle off my nut and it was so
funny.
At his funeral a couple came upto me who had known my parents
when they were still together,when I was like four or five
years old, and he said weremember your mother.
She was a freak spirit which issouthern for crackpot, right.
(06:22):
Yes, like yes she was.
My mother was always a littleoff, and in fun ways and not so
fun ways, but she was a littleoff.
Mom was my best friend.
We moved a lot as a child, somy entire life was spent losing
friends and trying to find newones because we moved every year
(06:44):
or two.
I learned how to reflect theenergy in the room, learned how
to fit in quickly.
It is my superpower.
John Moir (06:52):
If I can just take it back to when your parents split
, it's obviously he was reallythe first male that you loved,
right, and now that's leaving orhe's leaving.
So what was that like for youat that time?
Kelly Sparta (07:03):
Well, it was a split thing for me because my
dad terrified me when he gotangry.
I have memories of hiding in acloset and pulling all the coats
down on top of me to try andget away from the energy of him
screaming at my mother while sheignored him by reading, and so
he was never physically abusive,but the verbal abuse and the
(07:25):
energy of the anger wassignificant for my poor little
empath self, and so I was scaredof him until I was in my 30s,
and so when they split, it was agift because I got a break from
that and I would only see himfor two weeks out of the year.
And, yeah, he did the normaldad things.
(07:45):
I have pictures of him doingnormal dad things Not bad things
, but dad things but I have nomemory of him doing.
I don't have any memories fromthe inside of that house.
I only have memories from theoutside of the house and I have
lots of memories from the housedown the street.
So that tells you.
And the house across the street.
So that tells you.
And the house across the street.
(08:05):
So it tells you that there wasstuff that I was trying not to
remember, right.
John Moir (08:10):
Yeah, for safety.
Yeah, how did that affect yourrelationships at all as you're
growing up oh, big time, teenageyears?
Kelly Sparta (08:17):
Big time I picked men who were emotionally
unavailable and or physicallyabsent.
My first husband was a classicexample of both.
So he was a sub-mariner, so hewould go out to sea for three
months at a shot and he was notemotionally available at all.
And my father ironically lookedat me and said I give it three
(08:39):
months.
When he met him after we elopedthat the only time he ever said
he was proud of me was when andtold him I was getting a
divorce and he said you give it.
I can't say you didn't try.
I'm proud of you.
I'm like I did it to freakingspite you, stupid butthead, are
you kidding me?
So I'm like no, this is notgood for me.
I was doing a lot of work onmyself at the time and you asked
(09:02):
what was leading up to thedivorce and the chucking.
My whole life, my entirechildhood, I had wanted to be
Auntie, mame, without thealcohol.
Mame Dennis was an amazingperson, but she was a free
spirit.
She wanted to see the world,she wanted to talk to free
thinkers, she wanted to becreative and all of these things
(09:23):
.
And it often came with alcohol,because it was the 60s, because
of my mother's alcoholism.
I wanted it without the alcohol, right.
I did manage to have that lifeafter I divorced my husband, but
I followed the American dreamchecklist.
In my 20s I married the thirdperson who asked me, which I
thought was being responsible,but I'm still only 21.
(09:43):
For one, we really didn't haveany common values let's start
with that and I stepped awayfrom my spirituality for that
time and after a while I justwas like you know what this is
not working for me.
I was getting certified in aprogram from Mind Empowerment
International and I went to thisevent and this guy who was
(10:06):
running the event said my handsjust turned on, somebody in the
room needs healing.
And there were only a couple ofus there.
It was a very high ticket thingand I was like I don't know
what you're talking about rightnow.
I've been a healer my wholelife and I'd never heard of
energy healing, which was soweird.
But I studied, you know, whenmy mom got her nurse's license
(10:28):
after the divorce, I was herstudy buddy, so I've got all of
Grey's Anatomy in the back of myhead and he said can I do some
work on you?
And so he came to the hotelroom later that night and did
some work with me, doing someenergy release and some healing
work, and going into my heart,and I he was like okay, tell me
how your heart feels.
(10:48):
And I was like I got nothing.
He's okay, let's just go downsome stairs, open the door,
what's it look like?
I'm like the walls are blackand dripping and he's like why?
And I said my husband?
And he's okay.
So this is interesting.
I've been trying to get myhusband to go to counseling for
years, like four, four or fiveyears and I had been slowly
adding in me you don't want toget a divorce, do you?
(11:10):
I don't want to get a divorce.
Do you want to get a divorce?
He's like no, and I'm like weneed to fix this.
This is not going away byitself.
He just was not willing to doit.
All of that had built up andthat brought me to super clarity
.
And that weekend I came homeand I asked for a divorce and he
immediately said I'll go tocounseling.
And I said too little, too late.
(11:32):
And I said if you'd gone before, then it was because you cared
that I wasn't happy, and nowit's because you don't want to
be divorced, and that's not goodenough.
John Moir (11:45):
Was it a very unhappy time for you at that point?
Oh, I was really miserable.
Kelly Sparta (11:49):
I mean I had started.
So we moved to Connecticut in1993.
And I got my real estatelicense almost immediately
thereafter, 93?
, yeah, 93.
And I, the first year inbusiness now, I had never.
I didn't know anybody, I didn't.
(12:10):
So you can understand how hard Iwas working when I tell you I
sold 25 houses in a year.
I was working a hundred hourwork weeks, working and, but,
and, and I would come home tohim bitching at me because I had
not cleaned the house.
Wow, and I'm like, I'm working100 hour work week, you're
(12:30):
working 40.
Why am I cleaning the house?
And I was like, fine, so Ihired a housekeeper.
And then he wasn't happy withthat because evidently in his
love language, cleaning thehouse was love language and we
didn't have the consciousness tobe able to understand that for
years after that initialconversation.
And so I had burned out,basically my first year in the
(12:51):
business, and so I was workingin an industry that I was fried
in, I was working way too manyhours, I was in this cold war
with my husband and it was just.
I should have divorced himwithin three months, but it just
wasn't.
My people in that area, for themost part, unlike I live in
Boquete, panama, now, andeverybody, almost everybody I
(13:12):
meet here is my people, which isjust a different dynamic,
different place, right?
So yeah, I was pretty miserableand so there was a lot of
buildup on that and the anxietywas insane.
Oh my God, I would wake up inthe middle of the night in a
cold sweat going oh my God, Iforgot these six things and I
literally kept a pad of papernext to my bed so I could write
(13:34):
down all the things that I'dforgotten from the day, because
the anxiety was insanely highand I was having a hard time
keeping up with everythingbecause I had too many moving
parts in mind of help and Ididn't know exactly what I was
doing.
So I was trying to figure itout as I went, and the further
along I got, the more I was.
I did a lot of bridge burningin the beginning because I was
so strung out that I wasconstantly yelling at people
(13:56):
Can't burn your bridges.
I did recover from iteventually, but got called the
force of nature a lot, which wasa kind way of saying a raving,
lunatic bitch.
But yes, yeah, because I wasmiserable and I was stressed out
and I was angry and I was upset, all the things, so I was doing
what I could on myself, but Ididn't have the bandwidth and
(14:19):
the distance to be able to doenough.
And you got to be met halfwayin the relationship.
He just wasn't meeting me atall.
Yeah.
John Moir (14:27):
So is that because most people's spiritual
awakenings are triggered by somekind of loss and would you?
Are we framing, in a sense,your loss as a change of who you
were being a married woman andworking all these hours to
finally having to make some bigchanges?
You're being pushed to makechange now.
Kelly Sparta (14:47):
Yeah, it was just.
It was a cascade of things,right, the alpha moment was that
moment of the healing space,but there was just so much going
on at once that it just landedon my head right enough that I
was really only working 18 or 20hours a week and letting her do
everything else and I insteadwas spending 40 to 60 hours a
(15:18):
week running a Habitat forHumanity affiliate that was in
crisis and was like on the vergeof shutting down because it
lost all its funding and all ofthe volunteers were quitting.
I took over a nightmare, I tookit over that way and then ended
up doing a lot of work aroundthat.
But it was this process of justeverything just built up.
John Moir (15:39):
Your mother had a lot of influence in forming a
foundation for you.
Kelly Sparta (15:46):
It was her and me against the world.
The whole Helen Reddy song,right, that was our theme song,
and so she was there.
She was emotionally five yearsold, my whole life but she kept
the lights on and made sure thatI got what I needed.
We were constantly listening tostuff and she sent me to
psychic development classes.
I only had like one significant, two significant spiritual
(16:09):
experiences in my childhoodoutside of her saying I was
talking to ghosts in my crib.
So one was a ghost that showedup at the foot of my bed in
California that looked like aprospector, and when I noticed
him and freaked out I was likehe disappeared from the waist up
, which was freaky right.
Another time was a boyfriendand I, who I met in Hawaii when
(16:33):
we were on vacation, had beenpracticing talking to me from
Hawaii and I heard his voiceright next to my ear, woke me up
out of a dead sleep, himcalling my name, and I checked
in with him and he's like, yeah,that was me.
And then younger, because thosewere both my late teens,
mid-teens, like 16.
Earlier in middle school I hadbeen and this one's a little
(16:58):
darker, but I had been in achurch youth group and we were
playing in the catacombs in thedark and this kid this kid had a
demon in him and the demon camefor me and in the church
catacombs.
I'm like how did you get ontosacred ground?
I don't understand.
So the ground was clearly notsacred, but came at me and that
(17:19):
was problematic.
So those were really the onlyspiritual things in my childhood
that showed up.
But everything exploded openwhen I divorced my husband and
it's actually the divorce thatreally exploded it because I
didn't move out of state, Ididn't quit and sell my job,
(17:41):
sell my business rather, andquit the nonprofit until like a
year later.
But the spiritual stuff justexploded onto the scene because
when I sold the house, I boughtanother house and it had a ghost
on the property and I startedtaking Reiki classes and I
started taking Shiatsu classesand all of this synchronicity
(18:04):
opened up.
I stepped into this state ofprofound gratitude about my life
, state of profound gratitudeabout my life.
I was, everything was just like, oh, I don't have to check in
with him before I do somethingor buy something or you know
whatever.
And I was just in this beautifulstate of profound gratitude and
that just opened up all ofthese psychic skills for me to
(18:25):
the point where I was gettingguidance that I needed to go.
I remember I was going to go toa spiritualist church event you
know, service and I was goingto be late.
And I'm like, oh, I'm late,maybe I just won't go, and the
voice came into my head veryclearly you have to go, she
won't be there next week and I'mlike okay.
(18:49):
So I went and I'm at the coffeeclutch afterwards and this woman
, who is a regular, introducesme to her mother and I'm like,
oh hi, blah, blah, blah and shestarts talking and I'm like, oh,
you're the reason I had to come.
And she's like what?
And I told her what hadhappened and she's like you're
the sign I asked for.
I'm like, okay, okay, so thingslike that happened a lot that
(19:15):
year.
They were just, it was huge,and it was the year that.
So I was doing the spiritualistchurch and I, they do
mediumship from the pulpit thereand I would always get
something extra right, they, youknow.
And I would go find the peopleat the coffee clash and say, hey
, when you got this message, youknow, I was also getting this.
And so one day, one of the guyswho I used to hang out with and
had done this to multiple times, I said, hey, I run this class
(19:38):
every month, I think.
And the teacher backed out lastsecond and would you be willing
to come and teach a class fortwo hours?
And he's like anything you want.
And I was like, well, I'mtaking a Shiatsu class so I can
teach what I know about that.
And he's like great.
And after an hour and a half Ihad run out of everything I knew
about shiatsu.
So I was like and he's like,well, why don't you just do
(19:59):
readings for everybody?
Now, you know, I've beenreading tarot cards since I was
12.
So if I'd had my cards with meand I was like, oh, I don't do
that.
He's like, you do that everyweek at church.
Oh, no, no, no, I don't do this.
And I finally agreed to do itwith the understanding that
everything I said was probablywrong, because all of these
(20:19):
people were brand new to me.
I had no way of knowinganything about them, except
whatever they might have said inthe middle of the class that I
was teaching, which wasn't muchRight.
And I remember to this dayevery single reading I did for
the people in that room, becauseit was the moment I proved to
myself that I was psychic and Iscared myself.
I was like I have no way ofknowing these things and I'm I'm
(20:41):
looking for things like youknow, one guy's dressed like an
executive, with, you know, theboat shoes and no socks and the
khakis you know, this was thenineties, right and he's dressed
like some sort of corporateexecutive on vacation and I'm
like you're a house you paintfor a living.
And he's like, yeah, I'm a housepainter.
And I'm like, oh my God Right,I'm looking for little dots of
(21:04):
paint on his clothes, on hisshoes, on anything.
I'm like what?
Why would I have known that?
It was a pivotal moment in mylife and it was a function of
just being grateful for beingdone with that marriage that I
had been stuck in for so long.
I also had to go through thegrieving process for that
marriage, to grieve the dream ofwhat might have been the dream
of what you wanted it to be, andI did do that, but I also spent
(21:28):
a huge amount of time ingratitude for being done.
John Moir (21:36):
Well, the idea of grief as a catalyst for
spiritual growth.
Many people think that you haveto endure grief as something
that you have to go through.
You work with transformation,you work with all these people,
and so how do you see grief as agateway to personal power, for
example?
Kelly Sparta (21:55):
way to personal power, for example.
So grief can be painful or itcan be ecstatic, depending upon
how you approach it.
And so I'm going to tell you astory.
I was at an event in Harbin,hot Springs, years ago, and I
was having an experience overand over again of how the you
know, I was just feelingunwelcome over and over and over
again.
(22:15):
I mean, like I was staying in adorm and this woman kept waking
me up in the middle of thenight because I'd been crying
all weekend in the workshop andso I was snoring, and she's like
.
She woke me up and I tried, youknow, I blew my nose and I
tried to wait for her to go backto sleep Good co-sleeper and I
waited 15 minutes and went backto sleep and I had already
separated myself from everybodyelse, put myself on the bottom
(22:38):
while they were up in the top totry and account for that, and
she came and woke me up againand said you're going to have to
leave, like telling me I did,in the middle of the night, get
out of my bed and leave becauseshe was being disrupted, which
you know not okay, which I toldher.
I was like no but, and then Iwent and a group of us from so
there's Harbin Hot Spring,people who live there.
(22:58):
And then there's people at theworkshop and a group of people
from the workshop were in thesauna and one of the people who
live there is like sticking herhead in and going you guys done?
For like no, we're not going tobe done for a while.
If you'd like to come in andgoing, you guys done.
We're like no, we're not goingto be done for a while.
If you'd like to come in andsit, you're welcome to join us.
And she's like no, I'll wait.
And she closed the door and 10minutes later opens it.
(23:18):
Are you done yet?
It's like no, you know, it'sjust like over and over again,
right, this is just, it was thetheme, right, and that just kept
happening.
And so I'm at breakfast.
I go to breakfast and there's agroup of people at the table
They've all been laughing andhaving a good time and getting
dirty looks from everybodyaround them, because it's a
quiet space in Harbin usuallyand so I show up and I'm sitting
(23:39):
there and they, you know I waslate to breakfast, so they all
got up and left and I'm sittingthere by myself, still getting
the dirty looks from people.
And I'm like I'm freaking bymyself.
What is your boy?
They're still giving me dirtylooks.
And I'm sitting there with myoatmeal and I'm eating my
oatmeal and I'm saying I havenever felt so unwelcome in my
entire life.
And in that moment I realized Ihave always felt this unwelcome
(24:01):
my whole life because I'd beenthe military brat who was
constantly moving because ofeverything in my life.
I was just like I feltunwelcome.
And my father got remarried andmy stepmother did her best, but
the kids didn't want me there.
So there was unwelcome theretoo, and so it was just.
I had all of that grief insideof me and I started to cry into
(24:25):
my oatmeal and I was like, oh,this has been true.
And it was unconscious up untilthat moment.
The universe was speaking to meover and over again throughout
that entire event so that Iwould recognize it, I would wake
up to it, get aware of it,because until you're aware of
something, you can't shift itright.
(24:45):
And so what was so beautifulabout this is that I went from
there to the actual hot springs,still in tears and just crying
to myself and just pulling outall this grief and releasing it
into the water.
And this couple came up to mein the hot spring and they said
would you like to be floated?
And I was like, yes, I wouldlove that.
(25:08):
So the universe sent me someoneto literally hold me while I
release the grief right, becauseonce you engage it, once you
accept it, once you are with itand you can allow it to release
from you, it is a hugely openingspace and it allows you to
accept the support that can comefrom that right, to accept the
support that can come from thatright.
(25:31):
There's a lot of different wayswe experience grief in our lives
, and one of the things I talkto my people about all the time
is the fact that when you are ina space where you don't feel
like receiving love is safe, youwill stop receiving love
because it either comes with anobligation or you know it's.
(25:52):
It's just not safe to receiveit, so you stop receiving it.
And then it creates thisinternal belief structure
because your internal self, yourinner child, doesn't realize
that you made that choice, andso it creates a story that says
I'm unlovable and that createsmassive amounts of grief.
And every time you don'treceive love, you get more and
(26:13):
more sad, and so one of thethings because we do work on
opening the heart and opening toreceive, and one of the things
that happens when you open toreceive the love, finally is
that it squeezes out some of thegrief and so you find yourself
crying every time you feel loved, and for me, that process took
(26:34):
like two years for me to clearthe grease.
Before they all recognize hercontributions and honor them.
I bawled my eyes out, okay,because that was all that grief
from my life coming outno-transcript office.
(27:38):
I was still grieving the loss ofmy mother.
So it's back in 2010 and I wasjust feeling sad on the subway
and so I was just letting thetears come and I was just being
sad and the tears were gone, butI was still deep in my grief
when I came out of the subwayand in Central Square in Boston
there is a group of people whosit around and drink all day,
(27:59):
right, and I did not know thisguy was part of that group.
He looked you know he had abomber jacket on.
He looked like you know he hadthe military veteran thing going
on and you know my mother wasmilitary, so I feel comfortable
with military and an older manand he walked up to me and he
said you are too beautiful to beso sad.
And he kissed me right on thelips and not a very chaste kiss,
(28:22):
but a kiss, and I was just like.
It was like the universe sayingit's okay.
And then I caught the smell ofalcohol on his breath and then
he wandered off.
It was like okay.
So that was the universe sayingyou're going to be okay and
we've got you back and you knowall of this stuff.
And so you know, when you letthe grief out, the universe
(28:43):
finds really interesting ways tosupport you.
John Moir (28:46):
Oh for sure.
I want to just ask you aquestion about that sense of not
belonging or not wanted.
Yeah, and I was wondering thatyour parents must have had a lot
of grief when they were youngeras well.
I mean, I can't imagine goinginto the military life as easy
in any way.
So to want to go that way, forone thing I would think of,
(29:07):
there must be something therethat you're chasing your own
demons.
You know like you need thediscipline, you need all these
distractions and the same thing,for the rage that your father
had must have been justsomething terrible that's being
either passed down from hisfather or his grandfather to his
father.
But at the end of the day, whenthey decided to either have a
child or unplanned that, perhapsit was when you're in uterine,
(29:32):
those feelings of not wantingthis child.
I can't be pregnant now.
You think any of that played arole in your feeling not wanted?
Kelly Sparta (29:40):
My mother desperately wanted me.
She told me that she spentyears talking my dad into having
a kid.
My dad did not want children,at least that's her story.
He married a woman who hadchildren, so who knows right.
But you know he also encouragedme, if I didn't want to have
kids, not to so, but my dad was.
I'm pretty sure that what itwas down to is that it was.
(30:02):
My dad was desperately afraidof being a terrible father,
because his father had been aterrible father and you know so
much so that his sister ended upin mental institutions over and
over again.
So you know he never talkedabout the stuff.
He hinted at it, but he wouldnever talk about it.
But, he was very clear that heand my grandfather did not get
(30:25):
along and it was not.
You know his childhood was notokay and it was not.
You know his childhood was notokay.
I've talked to my cousins aboutit his sister's children, and
you know they've all said yeah,it was really bad, but they
never gave me details and that'sokay, I don't need them, right.
But my mother also.
You know, her father died whenI was still a baby and she never
(30:48):
got over that loss.
I mean, she was daddy's littlegirl and she spoke of him like
he was some sort of knight inshining armor beautiful,
wonderful human.
And, to be fair, other peoplespoke about him that way too.
For my mother, it was mygrandmother who was the problem.
You know, at my grandmother'sfuneral she said I'll never tell
you the things that woman putme through and I'm like, okay,
(31:12):
so I was definitely a plannedpregnancy.
My aunt on my mother's side wasdefinitely not a planned
pregnancy but my mother was, ismy understanding.
So you know, I don't think itwas that so much.
I just think there was a lot ofrage and whatnot.
But you're looking for thewhere did the not welcome story
(31:33):
comes in, which is kind ofinteresting because my birth
story has a little bit of thatin it, because my mother had.
She had an obstetrician who Iwas going to be his last baby
and she was committed to himdelivering me and so she had
them drug her to put off thedelivery until he could arrive.
(31:56):
So much so that she was sohopped up on drugs that she said
the minute she saw me she waslike oh good, and then passed
out and she actually was of theopinion that I was a twin.
They had actually said I wasgoing to be a twin and twin baby
boy, small twin baby boys iswhat I'd been predicted to be
(32:17):
and he never predicted.
And I was eight pounds, sevenounces, baby girl, solo child,
right.
But she was convinced thatthere was another twin that had
been stillborn and she didn'tremember it and that they just
never told her about it becausethey knew that it would make her
sad.
And I'm like, okay, but twobabies with one at eight pounds
seven ounces is not veryreasonable.
(32:38):
I don't think so, mom.
But Mom was a little off.
John Moir (32:43):
Kelly, moving on just a little bit, in your material
you talk about training 100,000spiritual warriors.
Not that you call them that,but people who are here to
elevate the planet.
Kelly Sparta (32:53):
Yeah.
John Moir (32:54):
Do you see that grief is something that many of these
people have to move through inorder for them to step into
their work?
Kelly Sparta (33:03):
most people don't come into the spiritual world
without some form of childhoodtrauma of some kind.
The vast majority of people inthe spiritual world have
something that they're dealingwith.
Otherwise they wouldn't be here.
When I'm working with the100,000, what I'm doing is I'm
helping them to move throughtheir limiting beliefs and the
healing that they need to do inorder to be able to step fully
(33:26):
into their authentic selves andfully into the work in the world
.
And, like I said, the vastmajority of people have to work
with some version of openingtheir heart, and so that always
has grief associated with it.
If you had it shut down,there's always grief there.
A lot of people do have actualgrief that they're processing
from that meaning what morenormal people think of as grief,
(33:48):
meaning they had a loss of aloved one or some major trauma
or some massive loss in theirlife.
Some of them will havemediumship.
They're getting messages fromthe beyond, from the person who
crossed over, whatever right.
There's all kinds of thingsthat go on.
I get tons and tons of peopleat different stages.
Interestingly, in the last fouryears, ever since COVID, people
(34:10):
who are waking up are waking upmuch further along on their
journey, and so, instead of justgoing, oh, I kind of would like
to talk to my guides, or I'dlike to talk to my angels.
Now it's, I'm having propheticdreams.
Things are coming at me.
I'm being told I can't come tosome spiritual practitioners
because too many entities arecoming at me.
I'm being told I can't come tosome spiritual practitioners
because too many entities arecoming with me and I feel under
(34:32):
attack, or I'm seeing thingsthat I don't understand.
I don't have context orlanguage for it, and so I'm
getting that a lot more, a lotmore.
And so you know, this is whyI've been working with these
people specifically is becauseit's terrifying to come into
something and not have any senseof language for it and
(34:56):
everybody around you is like areyou sure you're not
schizophrenic?
You know, are you sure youhaven't gone around the bend in
some way?
Because you're delusional,right?
And it's like you're notdelusional.
You've just come into yourgifts and you know you need
somebody who speaks the languagewell enough to be able to
validate and to be able to seewhat you're doing.
(35:16):
So I had a shaman friend yearsago who used to work at a psych
ward and he said about a thirdof the people who were in the
psych ward were actually psychic.
He said they weren't delusional, they were actually seeing
things that were actually thereand he would go in and clear
them for them.
Like you know, one guy wouldscream because something would
be in his room at night and he'dsay, look, I'll get rid of it,
but you can't tell anybody.
(35:37):
I did it.
And he's like, okay, that's thedeal and so he would get rid of
whatever the thing.
You know, these things happenand if they're not understood,
people are concerned.
They're like I don't want toopen my mouth, I could get
institutionalized right, or ifthey're high end in business or
in publicity and they don't wantto be seen as being nuts, but
(35:58):
they need help and so that's thework I do.
John Moir (36:02):
Well, I'm thinking that there's a deep collective
grief in the world right now, somuch.
How do you see spiritualpractitioners and shamans hold
space for that kind of vastsocietal grief?
Kelly Sparta (36:16):
So, from my end because I can't speak for other
spiritual practitioners orteachers but from my end, what
I'm doing is I am being withwhat is right, because grief is
a beingness state.
When we do our spiritual work,we have the masculine path,
(36:38):
which is the doingness state ofstripping away until you become
nothing and you become one witheverything.
And then you have the beingnessstate, which is accepting,
receiving accepting receivingwithout judgment.
All that is until you becomeeverything and you become one
with everything.
And the goal of fullenlightenment is to do both at
the same time and have it not bea paradox, right?
Well, grief operates withinthat feminine path.
(37:02):
It operates within thatbeingness state.
You can only be with grief toallow it to process through you.
When we're living in thiscollective grief state around
the breakdown of everything,it's about being with it and
allowing it to process throughyou.
Right?
Most people aren't doing thatkind of work.
(37:23):
I did a sound healing forclearing grief back in 2020,
when everybody was dying.
I gave it away.
You know I was like anybody whowants it.
Here you go and I've beenconsistently giving that away
for years now because it works.
You know, every time somebodyuses it it clears a little, also
clearing the grief of the world, because your grief is part of
(37:44):
that collective unconsciousWithin your own grieving process
(38:06):
.
You will be also processingpart of that collective grief as
well, because you are part ofthat collective grief right?
The more people wake up and Iam seeing people wake up at a
much faster pace than everbefore the more I see them wake
up, the more grief they aredealing with, and the more you
can get people to be with theirfeelings, the more the world
shifts.
And I think somebody said thatit's a you only need 3% of the
(38:26):
population to change the world,and I'm like okay, 3% is what
we're shooting for, right?
So we've got 100,000 people onthe planet whose job it is to
help facilitate that.
I leverage my value to thecommunity by helping those
people so that they can be moreeffective, be more powerful, be
(38:48):
more in their moment, be moreseen, be everything right.
The grief in the world right now.
There's a point you hit whenyou're doing this work for long
enough, where you recognize thatsome things are meant to be
there and some things are meantto be changed, and the grief in
the world is serving a purposeright now, just like COVID,
(39:10):
served a purpose.
It put everybody into forcedhermitage where they had to be
with themselves.
It was part of the collectiveawakening.
The grief is there right now,so it's almost like we're doing
a collective energy shift.
It's all about the identityshift.
The shamanic death is what theycall it, and the very first
thing that happens is the egoscreams up and tries to defend
(39:33):
itself, and that's what we'reseeing in the world right now.
We're seeing the ego screamingup and trying to defend itself,
but it already knows it's lost,because it wouldn't be screaming
up if it didn't know it waslost and, at the same time, this
grief of letting go of the selfthat used to be right and when
I say self in this case, I'm nottalking about individual selves
, I'm talking about thecollective self right, the
(39:55):
collective identity.
And as that comes through, thatgrieving process is appropriate
and in fact, when we doshamanic death work, we will
often do a funeral rite for theformer self and to really
acknowledge that this issomething that has happened and
to put it to rest specifically.
John Moir (40:18):
Is that considered like a ritual?
Kelly Sparta (40:20):
Yes, absolutely.
We'll do a ritual around it andthere's no collective ritual
right now for what's happeningon the planet, and so the grief
is going to need to be processedsomehow.
I've got the clearing griefaudio.
If you are finding that that'sshowing up in your life, I will
give you a link to get people acopy of it, because it is
(40:40):
helpful and you can do it foryourself or you can do it for
the planet.
It's up to you, because thereis no way of it happening in
other ways other than throughpeople's individual grieving of
other things, where it'll comeout around the edges for that.
So it's actually making grievingmore heavy lifting for the
people who are grieving forother reasons right now.
John Moir (41:02):
There are big misconceptions about healing
grief.
I know healing's not even thereally right word.
Right, Because nothing's broken.
It's a process that for us tobe well, what's the word?
The larger capacity to love,the larger capacity for
compassion.
Grieving is the part that makesus most human.
Kelly Sparta (41:25):
Yes.
John Moir (41:26):
So it's not nothing that needs to be repaired, but
it's to understand the fact thatit's not a pleasant place to be
in, especially at the beginningof a deep grief, when there's a
deep loss and whatever that maybe.
But when you get past thatpoint, if you have the courage
to still engage your grief andthat's what's really needed is,
(41:48):
I think, to process thebeginning of that change is to
now step forward and starttending to those feelings of
grief.
That's where the transformation, or the metamorphosis, start to
take place.
Have you ever come across anybig misconceptions amongst the
people that you're training?
Kelly Sparta (42:06):
Well, so, first thing is, people don't know
about grief brain.
Grief brain is real.
You literally have a hard timethinking when you're deep in
grief.
You get brain fog.
Your brain just won't land onanything.
You have a hard time groundingright, and especially if you are
an empath and the person thatpassed and I'm going to talk
(42:26):
about it as a person that passedin this scenario was close to
you.
Oftentimes you've shared yourenergy field with them and
they've taken part of yourenergy field to the other side
and left part of themselves withyou.
This is the reason why so manycouples who have been together a
long time will pass within amonth of each other.
It's because they take part ofthe person to the other side,
because they're jointly sharingtheir energy, and so half of
(42:48):
them has died already and sothey pass over to balance it out
.
And so grief brain issignificant, right so it.
You know you have a hard timeremembering things.
You have a hard time keepingtrack of things.
It's it's it's you're ungroundedis really what it comes down to
is that you've found ways toconnect into the world, and one
(43:08):
of your ways is gone Right, andso you're just wandering, and so
that makes us feel powerless,doesn't it?
John Moir (43:15):
Yes?
Kelly Sparta (43:16):
Yeah, that too, you know.
There's always that sense ofpowerlessness as well, and that
can really shake your sense ofself, especially if your
identity is based in the ideathat you're a powerful person.
When something like thathappens, that you have no
control over it, can reallychallenge your sense of self.
And so that's issue number one.
(43:37):
Number two is and this isn'tjust about grief, but it's about
all emotions when your heart isshut down, right.
When you've shut it down, youdon't feel your emotions.
You manage your emotions withyour head right.
When you've shut it down, youdon't feel your emotions.
You manage your emotions withyour head right.
You rationalize your emotionsand you try to rationalize them
away, and because of that you'renot actually processing them,
(43:58):
you're just stuffing them.
And so when you start to feelfor the first time after that
and usually in that case, theonly thing you're feeling is
anger or sadness, and that's it.
Those are the only emotions toget through when you've shut
everything down.
And so anger just doesn't help,because the more you let it out
(44:18):
, the more you yell about it,the more upset you get about it,
and it just amps itself up,right, and sadness goes into
depression very quickly becauseyou turn it inward and then now
you're just depressed.
So the both of those are nothelpful.
And so the big fear is thatwhen I start to feel something,
(44:39):
I'm going to feel, have to feeleverything and it's going to
overwhelm me.
And to a certain extent, whenyou start to start to feel, yes,
the other feelings will comeout not generally all at once,
okay, so they do come out, andthey'll come out weirdly and
you'll be like what is this?
I'm feeling this weird way andI don't have any reason to write
(44:59):
because you stuffed it like 30years ago and now it's showing
up now.
So stop looking for a reason,just have the emotion and let it
go right.
Um, that's the thing thathappens when people because
grief can sometimes breakthrough that locked up place for
the heart, and so they'reafraid of the overwhelm of
emotions because they've beenstuffing them for so long.
(45:21):
They know that there's so muchin there, even if it's
subconsciously, they're like, oh, I can't do this right.
But it generally is not likethat.
John Moir (45:31):
If they don't.
The body is even going to.
What's the word get into theact.
That's where we startdeveloping illnesses or diseases
, because the body just needs toget rid of that energy.
Kelly Sparta (45:42):
Yeah, the better.
Vanderkult wrote the book.
Body Keeps the Score.
John Moir (45:46):
Oh, is that?
Yeah, I heard the title, but Ijust know that a lot of the
energy that we hold that it'snot our energy and it needs to
be cleared With the people thatyou're working with.
How do you help them to reclaimtheir personal power?
Kelly Sparta (46:01):
So that again, is a process.
The first thing we have to dois find mental, emotional and
energetic safety, because untilyou feel safe, you don't have
the bandwidth to grow, and sothat's going to be shutting up
the monkey mind and getting yourenergy field solid and not
having other people inside yourenergy field, which is what the
definition of an empath is rightIs.
(46:22):
You're shoving your energyfield out to the point where
other people are inside of yourfield, then setting up some
protections for your energyfield, for your home, just so
that you feel safe.
And then we work on fear andanxiety and worry and dread and
self-doubt and inner and outerjudgment, and we build a
foundation of self-support andcourage.
And that gives you the mental,emotional and energetic safety
(46:43):
piece.
And then from there to get tobeing able to hold your power,
you then have to learn to how toclaim your space in the world.
It's okay for you to take upspace.
You have to set your boundaries.
It's okay to tell people no andto claim that you know to say
you stay there, I'm going to behere, and then own your power,
which is being able to giveyourself permission to have it,
(47:05):
because in a lot of cases we'venot allowed ourselves that,
either because we were killed inthe past life for our gifts, or
because we know that we have awell of rage.
And so, because we have thewell of rage, we won't give
ourselves too much power becausewe might lay waste to the world
with too much power.
And so you have to empty thatwell of rage to be able to get
(47:27):
to that power and give yourselfpermission to have it.
We might not be a good personbecause of the well of rage.
You have to get past that.
We have to work on issues aroundbeing able to.
Are we responsible for what wesee and what do we have to do
with that?
And am I willing to beresponsible?
What am I willing to see?
And all of those things show upin those places.
(47:47):
And then there's the point ofbeing able to internalize your
sense of value, so that you'renot looking for validation
outside of yourself all the timeand you're able to stand
solidly in your own space andnot have to justify your value
and then ultimately learn how tolove yourself right.
And all of those piecestogether, when you combine them,
(48:09):
solidify your energeticcontainer and your sense of self
, your identity and in doingthat, when you can solidly hold
yourself now, you can solidlyhold your power to be able to do
what is the true shadow workthat we have to do to heal
ourselves, which is theself-inquiry process and diving
deeper into the stories and thebelief structures and things
(48:32):
like that that help us torelease all of the rest of it.
John Moir (48:38):
Thank you for joining us today for this powerful
conversation with Kelly Sparta.
Her grief, awakening andreclamation journey reminds us
that healing isn't aboutbecoming someone new.
It's about returning to who wehave always been.
If Kelly's words move somethingin you, take a moment to sit
with it, let it settle, let itguide you Until next time.
(49:01):
Take gentle care and rememberyour power is waiting for you on
the other side of your truth.
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