Episode 79: Leading a wellness community for healthcare workers with Sarah Hines

In this episode of the Community Strategy Podcast, you’ll hear a recording of an interview with Sarah Hines, the Host of Leading while Healing Network, who shares her community-building journey. 

She also just launched The Lodge Project, which you can learn more about or if you are interested, email her at sarah@inlodgewetrust.com. As Deb’s client, Sarah, and Deb collaborated on the community strategy, structure, and design of the network. 

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Transcript

I’m so excited today to share with you this amazing interview I am going to do for the community strategy podcast with Sarah Hines.

She’s a client that I worked with in the beginning of 2022.

Although we’ve known each other probably since 2020 and she has built this amazing wellness community for health care workers and obviously this entire world has experienced a challenging time of this pandemic.

And our health care workers were on the front lines of this the entire time have probably had the experience that they haven’t been able to focus on their health and wellness. And that’s what Sarah helps people do is really take care of themselves so that they can take care of other people.

So with that Sarah welcome to the Community Strategy Podcast.

What an honor to be here and to see it live. Thank you. 

And and by the way for people listening to this recording, we do have people in our studio audience to shout out to the fine calm your members who are here, Susie Missy and Ani thank you for joining us today. We might have other people join us after a little while. But we’re going to just chat Sarah and I for a minute to Sarah tell everybody a little bit about your community and your journey. Just just a background on you for everyone here. That’s a big question. That’s a four day answer. But I will sum up in in two minutes. So our little community really started with a basis of grief care. So being healthcare uh and through Covid, we’ve seen a lot of death. We’ve seen a lot of, we’ve gone through a lot of traumatic or activating experiences and because of that, we believe as a core uh to our core that um in order to heal and hold and thrive, we need to be able to honor what we’ve been through a little bit and and to learn how to carry it.

And in order to do that, I believe that in order to heal us as a community of health care workers, that we also, we’ve been through so much together that in order to heal, we need to do that together too. So I decided that we were going to go after a few healthcare organizations in order to kind of help them front lines in person through Covid. We were present inside of a lot of long term care and retirement homes here in Canada and across the country. So I have a whole team of about 35 people now which amazes me. So I have 35 people across Canada that have been walking into covid filled long term care and retirement homes, whole helping employees kind of ground themselves a little bit And to make it through the next five steps. The next date steps, the next 10 steps and where better to bring people when they’re up at two in the morning because they don’t know what day it is and they’ve been through four doubles in three days is online where they need a little bit of moment, a little moment to kind of connect back into themselves that they need to know they’re not alone and they can connect with other people that do the exact same job, they do not only for the same company, but broad, broader than that um and just know that they’re not alone and um they have a group of people that are there to support them.

So that is my summary. That’s that’s Beautiful, beautifully said, Beautifully said. And you and I met, I think I think it was in 2020, was it that long ago? But yes, I think that’s for sure, I think it was at least if nothing else in the beginning of 2021 because I remember um when we, at some point we had relaunched the community in 2021 you were one of the first people who had joined um after you had been like getting my emails or chatting with me I think online on the mighty hosts or something and joined. And so you’ve been this community member for so long, but you’ve just, what is the challenge been for you? What do you think? Well, I think it’s an entrepreneurial challenge, right. You’re always spread so thin, right? And and you have no money, I would hire a million, a million people to help me if I could write, but I don’t have any money to pay them and you know, I can only make so many cookies and and trade so many services, right?

So I think I was like, this is one of those things that I need to leave too, someone who knows what the heck they’re doing and I kind of put the stake in it, I was, the first part was, I don’t know, I can do this, I’m a community builder and I put the stake in that and I’m like, I’m gonna do it. And then at some point I realized that um you can do it, but do you do you can you do it well and and is this where you need to spend your time? And that’s when I was like, I think I just need really smart people to help me. Mhm. And I found you lovely. Just so so kind. Sarah is, if anybody’s listening, you’re Sarah is the kindest, awesome, ist, funniest person you’ll ever work with and for her challenging topics that she’s dealing with every day and the stress and anxiety that she’s experiencing or has her members or other people experiencing.

She brings such a lightheartedness to it, that it was such a joy to work together. And so I just wanted to make sure he pointed that out because we just had so much fun, we were like, okay, we gotta get stuff done, but we’re also having fun. And so I think the partnership that we had in the beginning of the year was just, it was just a blessing to be able to help you as you really were working through this. Okay, what does it look like to build a community? How do we work? How do we make this happen? And like talk me off the ledge, like I don’t know how many times you talked me off the ledge, right? Because you get stuck in your own stuff and when you’re stuck, you’re like, and you have no one to really kind of connect with it a little bit and to know like to call you out on your own. Yeah, you can say it’s okay. I know you are sorry, I’m not going to be offended. I don’t think anybody in this room is going to be offended. Really hard not to get someone, you need someone to call you out on your ship, right? And as a leader, a lot of people just say yes, they’re trained to just agree with you.

And I find that I’m sitting back going, I don’t think this is right? And I don’t know where I’m wrong and I need someone to talk me off the ledge and that is, I was like, Deb like, what the hell am I doing? And she’s like, you need to calm your ship down, you’re doing okay. I’m like, okay, good check, right? I think was probably the best, well not the best part, but one of the best parts. So, tell us a little bit about how, how you launch this community, like I helped you put some structure together, how did that experience go and and just moving past our partnership, But how did your, how did your actual launch and onboarding go for you? Well, I was again, I I think it starts with you, right, because I think, like, I I had this, like, grand vision of what it was going to look like, and you made it into something that, that I could hold right, which is so much different than what was, like, that’s a lot of work, right? We, we it’s a lot of work to go from here into actually something tangible.

So that journey for me was where you came in and I think there was a few things I had to hold onto in order to make that, that a viable thing, especially given that we were holding onto very tender bits as we go in, we were holding onto trauma, we had a lot of suicide ideation happening, we had a lot of physical symptoms of trauma being present in our homes and in our, in our, the people that we were caring for, right, they couldn’t walk past the covid wing of their home without getting ringing in their ears, right, and how do you hold that inside of a community. So there were a few things that I need to, I had to hold quite true inside and hold quite honorably inside of this community and trust was probably one of the biggest ones that I had to hold onto, which means that I needed to be consistent and that to me was probably the hardest thing as an entrepreneur is building consistency inside of your community while also doing a million other things, right?

I don’t know how many times I was like two days and I was like, oh, I logged in and oh right, because you don’t know who’s chatting with you when you’re dealing with these tender bits, right? You don’t know who’s, you’ve opened that channel of communication with people, you need to show up, right? So that, to me was the hardest part. Now I’ve got a bit of a cadence, I’ve got a bit of a habit around it. I check it at the beginning of every day and I check it at the end of every day and if I have two minutes while I’m waiting for someone to show up on a zoom or I’m waiting for something and I open it up and just make sure right that to see what’s happening. Um, but that I would suggest it was kind of the hardest part as a person, but the community was ultimately set up for, an organization, an organization that wanted to have a community, um, that I pitched a community to. I pitched it as we’re going to personalize their experience and we’re going to do it at scale and how are we going to do that? We’re going to do that through our community. So I’m gonna have one on one interactions with all of the people that enter into my community at any time.

They can reach out to me or any of my other my advocates, but we were also going to take their experiences and build on it together. So that, to me has been the caveat as to how we built trust inside of our community so that people know they can come and that they will be held, but what they need. Yeah, it’s a good point to say, um, your structure was not that of a membership model, it was more of a project. You offered it to a client, you said, here’s an opportunity for us to do something together. They, they funded you basically on, on the back end so that you could then, um, you know, do things like hiring me and having the time to be able to not have to worry about so much client work because you’ve already kind of got the bits of money thing problem circumstance figured out and it was the time, right? It was just the structure in the time and, and trying to figure out how all the moving pieces are gonna work together, but then later, knowing that you’re going to, um, make sure that it scales for you so that it’s not too overwhelming for you.

And we worked on keeping it simple right? We worked on really keeping it simple, we have to work on that and then we can and then we can and then we can, you need to slow your roll, right? So used to working quickly right on having to work quickly, you’re doing a proposal, you’re doing a thing, you’re have an idea you have to do and and all of a sudden you’re just like, no, no, you need to like slow it down. She’s like, well why don’t you just do the one and then see I was like When have I ever done one to see like the whole thing was just boring to me and I think that’s just building your own business. You’re used to kind of running at 100 and 50 mph and falling asleep as you walk towards the bed and then getting up and doing it again. You forget that sometimes you need to just slow your roll a little bit. That was a big part. I definitely have learned about slowing my own role with my own business because I can write blog posts and create content.

And I talked to susie about this a bit yesterday she was trying to help me um work on the signature talk and I just go 1000 miles, right, I’m like, oh then I can do this. Oh but this is and yeah, one of the biggest things that I’ve learned with working with clients over the last few years is that Just try like do something, have an idea, make a decision, stick to that decision and then stick to it for like 3-6 months because you can’t see something immediate results are not going to happen in the community, it’s not gonna be like you put the on switch on, invite everybody in. And then the next day it’s like the whole community is full of content that they’ve created. Like it just doesn’t work that way and some clients are are not understanding that that I worked with recently. So I think it’s been a challenge to to go and and people that are listening probably are thinking well how much content has she created? How do these people have time, like if their health care workers they’re busy. So tell me about a little bit about what your community structure looks like inside your community.

Oh it’s been a whirlwind, right? So at first it was like here’s all these like tips and tricks and here’s the download that you can like a pdf and you can take all this content and you can have it and then I was like people don’t want more ship to read like they’ve got enough, right? And so we I started doing a little bit of video like just personal video like hey like I don’t know what it’s like for anyone in B. C. But in Ontario it’s a disaster? The weather is horrible. I know that you’re traveling this morning was horrible and I’m so glad you stopped here for a hot second before you went into work. So we’re just gonna take this like the bullshit ary of the weather and we’re gonna make it into something just a little we’re just gonna know that it’s gonna be okay. So those types of videos really helped. I started making playlists so I would have you know like what’s your what’s your playlist for the day? Like let’s have a like a rock out playlist that you’re going to play on in your car on your way home after a bad day and give me your songs.

I’ll put it all on the playlist. So I had the whole company come in and give us these songs that they could play and know that. Oh it was so and so from that home that really loved this song right? So I just brought this sense of camaraderie around it. The other thing that I found really worked well because they all knew each other or they all worked for the same company. There was this connection between everybody already a little bit so I did I’m doing actually a series called six burning questions and I ask all I ask people to be a guest and they come in and everybody answers the same questions and then at the end, the last question I ask is what is your theme song and I take that theme song and I put it in the playlist. So I’ve yeah, I’ve gone across now from like the ceo to like a sales administration to a P. S. W. Two. So I have all of these beautiful stories coming in of resilience and just when someone turns around and says, I don’t know, oh you know someone still did a video, I’m gonna go watch it right?

So and then I sent an email out and say just letting everybody know there’s a video out and it’s your manager that that did a video on this thing and here’s a link to it, come join the community. So I used it as a little bit of a link back in for everybody and they love it. Oh I saw someone so those, I’m like how about you? Do you want to do stick there? Like never in a million years would I ever do those? And I’m like, come on, it’s not that bad. You can take right, awesome fun. What a great, so many great points there because you have taken the task of like how do I create engagement and content, which is the biggest challenge that community leaders tend to have when I talk to them because they’re like, I don’t have time to create posts, what does the content plan looks like? And you’ve what I tell people, we talked a bunch about this I think during when we work together, but just just create a space for people to be seen valued and heard tell them that they’re important. Tell them that they matter, tell them that you want to hear from them, create a fun playlist.

That’s a way of keeping it light and fun. These people have hard, stressful, challenging, overwhelming, ridiculously hard jobs. Yeah. Just just immensely challenging jobs that they are doing day in and day out. Just celebrate them like you said it, right. This idea just just celebrate them because they don’t feel celebrated, right? They don’t, they feel forgotten, right? And if they hear if they’re called a hero one more time, they might, they might like go postal, right? They don’t want to be called a hero, right? I’m just doing my job right? And they’re like, oh healthcare heroes. And they’re like, please stop like and just fix the system right, that we’re in. I it’s it’s been actually just beautiful. Um and I think the other thing that kind of happened was inside of that main activity feed. I had all these people separated in groups at the first at the onset because I was really afraid that they weren’t gonna feel um that they needed to be held in their own group, like a long term care group and a retirement group.

But then we started posting in that activity feed a little bit more than just the groups and there’s now this cross pollination that’s happening in between these two groups and the retirement people are, you know, reaching out and talking about how great healthcare workers, long term care workers are and long term care workers are asking about how hard it is to fill beds after covid in retirement. How hard is it to sell a bed in retirement? Like tell me about that and you can see this like cross pollination happening which is kind of magic, magical. Yes, I love that and it creates so much simplicity. Now you’re not having to figure out about checking different areas. One of the things that I love about mighty is this concept of everybody’s in the community. So regardless of whether you have separate groups or separate areas, what I call different areas, courses or groups bringing them to all the benefit is that all of them are in this place.

And so some people come in the doorway in one way and other people come in the other way or the back door or whatever the side door and they all but they’re all there, they’re all in the house and they can all connect and share together and that just allows you as the host to keep it simple and like connect everybody in this main place. You might have sub spaces or sub areas but that’s the magic. I feel like is they can then support each other and share and learn more because part of community is just learning about other people’s experiences and enlightening yourself about what it’s like. What is it like to be somebody in Canada? What is it like to be somebody? I was on a call yesterday with the community and there were seven, there were people from seven different countries on one zoom call and to learn the different experiences were in the same moment, we live on the same planet Earth, but having so much different spaces, but yet so many commonalities of like we’re human beings, we wish that things were easier.

We wish that life was a little bit more joyful. Sometimes we wish that we could enjoy our life and not feel like we’re working and and all these things. So great points. I am opening it up. So questions raise your hand and meet yourself. If you have a question any of you, I’d love to hear from you guys, but I think so great to hear from Sarah and and thank you so much for sharing your journey Missy, I saw you were raising your hand, Sarah. I’m fascinated and your people you’re working with are just so lucky because wow, what a resource for them to be able to have in this super challenging time. My question has to do with when you started and got people up and running as you mentioned yourself, you had to find a rhythm for checking in on a regular basis. How have you encouraged participants to do that? Because one of the responses I sometimes hear is I have already have so many places. I’m checking now. Obviously you’re providing such a warm, safe spot for them.

I’m sure once they get in there they want to come back and revisit. But how about that initial, you know, come on in. It’s gonna be great. I know it’s one more thing to check, but I’m just curious how you handle that. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you. First of all, I really appreciate the compliment. It means a lot to me to hear it because you get, you get kind of caught in it a little bit too much and you forget the bigger picture sometimes, but I do feel like video has been really easy as an easy connector. As long as my videos are under like three minutes, four minutes. I find those to be the ones that get posted on the most is the videos and it doesn’t have to just be me like it. I do also have a team. Um, and, and so I’ve given up some creative control to them. So if I want to go on vacation, I don’t have to do that. I let them kind of hold on to that as well for me. So that’s been helpful. I also find they like to hear their own stuff.

I like to see their name mentioned. They like to have the video, the interviews that that six burning question piece. That’s huge. They love seeing their own, like, team members in things. So I find the videos to be the most helpful. Um, I used their leadership team. So I did, I had an interview with the Ceo and I asked him the six same six burning questions. That was the highest hit video that I had. Um, and then I also do email blasts. So I’ll put out because I have all of their emails, right? I can go out and say, I know, you know, I know you got a million things to check, right? You don’t have to check. You can just, here’s a few things, right? Like here’s the, an update, like a quick fact sheet, like a quick hit. Like here’s three things you might be interested in, right? And just links to those particular things. I curate it a little bit in chat. So I’ll send them a chat note and say, I know you’re busy. But this post based on our conversations are based on some of your other posts would be really interesting for you to maybe check out.

We’re just thinking about you when I have nothing to say I do that. I go into the chat and I’m like, who hasn’t engaged in my community in like two months and I scroll and I find that one person and I’m like, okay, what am I gonna say to say you join the community. I hope we’re giving you what you need. If there’s something you’re looking for, Let me know what do you enjoy about another community and just know that I’m here and I’m thinking about you. So those are the types of things that I’ve done. I I also, the content from somebody else is helpful because my voice is not what everybody wants to hear. Right? So I make sure that my like, I love the idea of perhaps getting another community leader to come in and be a guest on my community so that and have that sharing back and forth because I think hearing other voices is really what a community is. So I’ll have them say, Okay for mine as an example, we have a particular team, a title, a particular title and I’ll go into that particular title and I’ll say, Okay, we’ve got 15 people here with that title.

What would be a really good burning question for them and do an event for them Specifically. Let’s have a chat. You’re all recreation managers. How about we have a chat about what you’re doing for your employees. What are you seeing in your residents? What’s happening for you? So I curate little calls for them as well. Great, thank you. Those are some great ideas. Thank you. I love the point that you mentioned about the categories. I think that’s an under used area of most communities that I I see and I work with with the hosts is that they’re quite not sure how to use the categories area of like what do I want them to connect as far as like interests or you know for your example like it makes sense for them to be whatever their position is. But I think there’s a lot of ways for you to connect your members with that category area and so I really congratulate you for like taking that area, identifying, doing a little bit of like strategic thinking. How can we really impact one subgroup of of our community members and then just kind of changing that as you go when maybe there’s other times when you don’t have a lot of other things happening that you can then fill in those gaps.

So I definitely wanted to recommend that susie I saw you came off mute so I definitely want to pivot over you. So I it’s a good segue that you were just talking about categories because I had two questions, one is related to categories. So in Mighty Networks, there is the opportunity for so many different ways to arrange groups and subgroups. So I was curious to hear about your categories. Is that what you, I don’t know the right terms to use um in this context but in my community actually I I have more, I run a cohort program in Mighty Networks. So in my my cohorts might be like your categories, I’m not sure but they’re private groups that only meet with these people in their group and it’s closed then what I have not done that you have done is then there’s a wider community around it and then you can cross politics.

So I’d like to hear more about what’s happening in the private groups. But then also you did mention what’s been successful about cross pollinating. So the private groups, I guess how they’re structured, how much maintenance you’re doing with those groups. And then I also wanted to know about, do you have different pricing levels? And what does that look like? So thank you and thank you guys so much. This is such a compelling and conversation. And I actually have a couple of people I want to introduce you to Sarah because I know some people who are aligned in their work. Um I love the question because it was probably one of the hardest things I had to figure out around community. Um and when we started posting down that kind of main activity feed and we started to see that cross pollination. It was it was worrisome a little bit right, Because you weren’t sure how, because there’s like health care is an interesting beast in that that they have been trained and trained and trained again on the importance of privacy and confidentiality.

Um They pride themselves on it. Right? So, so to to not hold it as the main thing was actually a really interesting thing inside of of healthcare specifically. But what I feel I’ve done with those groups and I think you call them, you call them cohorts is that there’s I give them little juicy bits inside of those. I give them this really special sauce inside of those groups and I make the main hallway, I call it the hallway because I think of it as a house still, but I give them in that activity feed the general stuff. So inside of my groups or my cohorts, I have like their own playlist. I have like little gifts and little prizes I have, like I mentioned people by name specifically inside of those groups. I make it very curated for the people that are in there. So I’ll if I post something in my long term care group and I know it’s about, for example, made right, which is medical assistance in dying.

Um they’re they’re a little bit more aware of that, that feel they’re a little bit more aware of that system and that that piece and I can talk a little about it a little bit more factually. Um but when I take that same post and I put it into my retirement group, I have to hold it a little differently because they’re not quite versed on that. They don’t think of it as a from a medical perspective, they think of it from a heart perspective. So I hold it a little bit differently and that’s the main difference I find in between that main activity feed where it’s very general to end the differences between the groups that I have. I hold things a little differently and pricing, I don’t have any pricing because I sold it to corporate and corporate paper for the community. So everyone has the community for free, right? Which is hard for engagement, right? Deb Yeah. The one thing now, the one thing we did I do talk with people about is the aspect of they have invested in it so that that component is missing for you.

However, it’s also an ability, it’s a different model where you’re able to connect people in a workplace situation. And I think that the biggest thing that I’ve heard from people working in corporate that are still doing corporate work is that they feel disconnected from their team working remotely. They don’t have a sense of team teamwork. They feel like they’re working alone a lot of times or they’re you know, just feeling very alone and just out there and so communities that are focused on bringing employees together in a way and to offer them some kind of another an alternative space, not a space where they’re like having to, it’s a training or having to do this. It’s not a required thing. This is a we want to support you and make sure we offer, the biggest thing I’ve heard is mental and emotional and physical wellness programs for large corporations is the most important thing that anybody looking for a corporate job in this time period, they’re like, the first one of the first questions they’re gonna have is what’s your wellness plan look like?

What’s your, what are your offerings as far as like, time off and all of those things? Like, how do I take care of myself better? Because that’s the thing that people have really struggled with the last few years and prioritizing that as a company is gonna set you apart as an organization of saying, we prioritize our our employees so much that we want to offer them a space where they can share their emotional and physical and and all the challenges that they have. Um, so I think your structure well, it might not make sense for like maybe the people in this room or some of the people listening. It also is a way bigger opportunity for some people in your position who work with larger organizations. I know there’s consultants, in fact, there’s some in the front calling your community who might see the benefit of offering this to if they don’t already to their clients as an offering an additional service without question. Without, because I think one of the things that really sold the community to these companies as with me running it was was was that it was the third party and therefore it was, it was their their information was confidential, there wasn’t someone in Hr that was in the community lurking around trying to see who was the most troubled.

So, so, there was this and and they loved that about it. Like, that was the reason they wanted me. They wanted to do a community, but they were really worried about that being a big reason to not, that was the reason they didn’t do it themselves. Right. Was because of that. So, that was the key selling point in me running their community for them. Yeah. Amazing, susie. So, you mentioned events at one point, but it sounds like most of what happens in your community, whether it’s inside category group or obviously on the activity feed is more what I would call asynchronous. Do you have, what do your programs look like that are synchronous or live? That’s a big one. We do have, I haven’t done any events across the whole community. Right. Because I am not so sure on on what that looks like for them specifically.

Right? It’s a tough one to sit inside of and hold life for these people. What I have kind of held on to is the idea is the same across all of the groups. So, I’ll do a call inside of one community, one co hurt one group. Um, and I’ll just do this exact same call inside of long, like a long term care and retirement. I’ll do it twice. Right? So, and what I think is interesting about the calls or the support calls as I don’t prepare for them. I I walk in and I’m like, what’s coming up for you? And we, and we flow through that, right? We don’t we don’t schedule it, we don’t agenda those support calls, but then I do have topics that are quite group specific. So grief in the body, I can’t remember who did body work, I think any of you did, But this idea where we have like grief stored in your body, what is that? No one, no one talks about that.

Right? What do we, So let’s let’s have a hot second about what that might look like for you and how that actually shows up and let’s build some awareness around it. Right? So those are the types of like, and we do that in long term care because they’ve been grieving significantly in retirement. It would look a little bit different. Right? In the retirement, we talk about like how to take care of your body, Right? Because you’re on your feet for 15 hours a day. Right? How do we actually take care of our body. Right, so the conversation is a little bit different but it’s the same idea. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. Great questions by susie. Thank you for asking them. I appreciate the help on questions. I love this. This is like, so fun to have people, I just did another podcast interview. That was just me and I’m like I’m so excited to do live interviews because you get so much more amazing cultivated questions, when you have a great people which we have a little community right here, which is like amazing. So I’m super excited because in the next couple of months that’s what we’re shifting to with the community strategy podcast, we’re gonna be doing live interviews twice a month with a fine come here community beginning basically now, but we’re moving to Fridays at 12 p.m. Eastern time officially in august, I just wanted to throw that in and mentioned that before, I forget.

Um Missy had a comment about confidentiality as far as just getting clear on what did that actually look like for your community. Is there anything you could share their and really it was um it may be too fine tuned to your community. It was, it was more just curious. So you have these people who all work across an organization and I understand that not having the HR people in there is super positive and helpful. How um like how do you decide what level to kind of cut that off and you still have employees right who maybe know each other or working in the same environment. So how do you work with that? I particularly on the subject you’re discussing which are, you know, stress and burnout and grief and lost and those are very, very personal and I can see that while it’s super beneficial for them to share and get feedback and support around that. I just wonder how that gets managed. Yeah. So, so when, when I ever, when whenever I do grief specific care, I ask people not to focus on the story, but to focus on the emotion that the story has.

So we so we don’t have and I don’t, I this is speaking from someone that here’s a lot of story. So the words are gonna come out a little harsh, but I don’t need to know your story. I just need to know how you’re carrying it. I just need to know how it’s showing up when someone loses someone when you’re when my mom dies and someone goes, what happened? What are the details of it? What is this? What is that? That is a hard thing for me to have to do is to continue to tell the story of how my mom died right. What what’s more important is that I’m a I’m handling it okay. That I have some bad days. It seems to show up today as frustration and tears and and so we talk about that, right? So we focus on the emotion of the thing rather than the story itself. So that helps a little bit because even when people say today, I’m really frustrated because I had to walk down and I walked past that Covid hall and I’m remembering it and I’m worried about the fall.

Well let’s talk about the frustration and let’s talk about how we can’t change the future. We can only control our reactions to it. So let’s talk about that. So that’s the way that we manage care inside of the community is we don’t hold story, we hold the motion and there’s a really big difference inside of that, but and and we and we remind people of that all the time. So when someone comes into the community and decides to post their story, the first thing I do is I go back into the chat and I say, I loved your story. I’ve taken it down for just a quick minute out of the community because I wanted to talk to you a little bit about it before we post it back up. How are you being helpful to the community? How? So I have to coach people on that a little bit and they say, okay, can I still post it? I’m like, you can, but can you change it? So it holds this, hold this and tell your story, right? So I i it’s a coaching moment for me that I go through with them a little bit so that they can be better community members and mentors and peer supporters, right, healers in their own way.

It’s a long answer. Sorry, No, that’s great. And I love the I love that individual coaching conversation because like you said, they’re then going to be able to apply that in other conversations that they’re having with people. That’s it. That’s it. Because sometimes people need to hear the story a little bit. I don’t want to whitewash it away, right? I just wanted to be held with something, right? It needs to hold something. Yeah. And and how is their movement out of that story? So, the story is important. But what’s really important is how are we going to heal from that and how are we going to move forward? And we we have a similar in our community as well, which is, you know, especially when we have one hour together a week and there are, you know, 12 women or however many women show up that week, we can’t have everybody tell their whole story. It is more about what is what’s creating a challenge for you and how do you take that and use it to move forward? How are you? How are you journeying with it? Right. It doesn’t even have to be movement forward, right?

It could be movement down the movement back. But how are you holding? How are you holding it? All right? What is what is your goal with it? What do you how are you nourishing yourself because Right, that’s what we hold. We get often caught, especially in grief and I know not everything is that way, but we often caught in this movement forward in a way and I focus on sitting in it. Thank you for that re clarification. That’s very yeah, sorry, but yeah, no, no, it’s a big thing, right? It’s hard to do too, yeah, and our society doesn’t necessarily encourage that staying in it. People do sort of have this timeframe, right? Like, okay, you, you should be done with that now, right, Again, what a gift to people to really allow them a different way to be with it with any healing, right? The importance is the awareness. Yeah. Right, And that means sitting in it, my jaw aches all the time, Right? And until and he said, oh, tongue relaxation, I’m like, it’s my damn tongue.

I totally know that it’s this stressful thing because my tongue lives on the roof of my mouth, I need to talk to her, right? And it’s being aware of those moments where you can kind of sit inside yourself and sit inside of awareness that would find real community kind of come together and say that was that was learning and I’ve set myself up because I’m being aware to learn, that’s beautiful, thank you. What I loved about that conversation, but I was able to observe was that you not only took it as a coaching moment for them that ripples down to like, oh I can better communicate with the community members, it also gives them a way of like not focusing so much on the story, so they can really work through the emotion and that’s what we all have in common as that humans, we all have emotions. Your story is different. Your journey is different, but we all have that and I feel like so much about community is I want to feel like I’m not alone in this challenging thing and that offers them the ability to see, Oh, so it’s not like just me and it’s like not just oh this is what’s happening to me.

It’s now about how well that’s you’re just validating their feelings and saying it’s okay to be sad or angry or frustrated and on top of the fact if it’s six months or a year later after somebody passes, that doesn’t mean that we’re just gonna have moved on and that grief, especially with what you’re doing with grief, it’s up and down and sideways and backwards and forwards and around and back. And it’s it’s I’ve just went through it myself and it’s just it’s an insanely frustrating thing to like, want to be at a different place. Like I’m feeling right now stressed about, you know, I want to be in a different place, but my my emotions are just not ready to be there yet. And and then how do how do you post that? How do you help them post something like that? That gives people something to respond to that isn’t about love and light and hope and prayers because it’s that’s kind of vapid what we want is actual help.

We want. We want to either we want to see some compassion but we want a strategy and we want to have a discussion about it and it’s really hard to discuss things and have an open comment and open conversation happening in your comment section. If people are just telling their story because what you get is a Me Too. You get other people’s stories, you get a pylon and what happens in the pylon is the first story is dismissed because now everybody is talking about the pylon. How can you help them curate a post that gets the comment section going and it is healing and supporting for those that are commenting and those that post it. Yeah. And I just that’s a whole talk right there, right, That’s a whole seminar right there. How do you create a post that’s powerful and meaningful and solicits response, productive response but doesn’t discount anyone’s story. And in fact, and it raises the bar of conversation around something that’s more relatable to all and not just Once persons or five per people’s stories sharing.

So I love that. Susie had a quick question. So I am gonna pop over susie and then we’ll wrap up with our interview today a lot of times when people start communities, they think about their content and you mentioned Sarah, you started out with all these PDFs but you’ve let go of that and now you’re doing more connections. So I just wondered what your thoughts are about content versus community and how you use those in a ballet, You kind of just, you kind of just touched on it. But I’m curious to hear your thoughts about it’s interesting because there is this fine balance, right? I find because you’re you’re you’re trying to appease a whole bunch of people, you’re trying to make it worthy for people who want to talk about their feelings and you’re also wanting to build community around someone who’s quite operational, right? That is looking for tips and tricks. So the PDFs really helped for the tips and tricks people, right? Um the question I ask is for whom, Who am I doing this for?

And if the same answer is always the heart centered for the tender hearted, then sometimes I need to add in onto the tenderhearted post pdf. So, because now I got you, now I got you because I got information, you’re gonna need to post in your lunch room, right? There’s a there’s a take away inside of this one that you can print off and put somewhere, right? So there’s there’s that depend like if I keep going down the tender hearted place, I know I need to post a pdf sooner or later practicality. People want something you can grasp onto practicality. They were like, okay, where’s the checklist? Where’s the templates, what the biggest lessons I learned in the fine calm your community? Is that so many people were like? Yeah, yeah, this is all great. But where’s the checklist that I can just get it done or where is the template? And so it’s, it’s a combination because you’re serving different learning styles and different interest or ways people want to consume content. Some people want to watch videos, other people just want to listen to a podcast.

Other people want to read a blog post, um, or transcript or whatnot. Some people just want the, okay, give me the recap. Give me the three bullet points because I don’t have time for anything else. So trying to serve all of those different people is, is hard, but repurposing the same content in different ways. Does it makes you don’t have to reinvent the wheel? You just say, all right, well, I’m gonna record a short snippet for people. Listen, I’ll put together a quick little, here’s the five tip thing and I’ll share it to people in a bullet point form so that they can consume it easily. And you’re making it the more easy that I’ve learned, the more easy you make it for them and for yourself, the better experience is going to be for All right. I also find like, just keeping it real every now and then, like I drop a lot of f bombs in my community and I’m, I’m working with a corporate client, right? That’s, that’s paid me to do this for their employees and I’m like, we just need to slow the down.

Like I’ll say it and I’m like, and and and all of a sudden now you’re real, right? If you’re continually going down this path of love and light as an example, like a lot of people do woke ism or whatever we want to call it, you can put any label on it, right? But if you continually have the same voice, you come off is not real. Mhm. Right. And so I add in like, the I add in some f bombs, I add in like, okay, here’s a picture of an old woman dressed up as like a hip hop artist and here’s the playlist for the weekend. So it catches people off guard because they’re not expecting that from a grief support. Yeah, it’s like, no, no, we’re real people here. Yeah. And keep it light. Have fun. People, if they’re going to invest their time energy money, you know, whether whatever it is, they want to have a little fun. We don’t want to talk about hard stuff all the time. That’s exhausting and draining and so keeping it light. Plus the fact that like, puppy dogs and cat videos and rainbows only get you so far with positivity.

I’m, you know, I love my affirmations, but at the end of the day, if you’ve got really challenging things happening, we want real reality to step in and be like, no, we hear you, this is we’re struggling to, or here’s what’s happening, here’s what’s real like, it’s okay to be here and, and just say like, this is a really hard moment for me and and be open about it and not sugarcoat any, any of it. Great points, thank you so much. What a great conversation. Thank you all for participating. Um so glad that Sarah and I got to sync this up, we rescheduled and we had some challenges with time and things like that. So I’m so glad that we finally got to connect with you being on the podcast and the episode will come out. I will put the recording in the fight call here community for the members of the podcast will be probably airing in july. So just so you know, keep an eye out for that for everyone. And as soon as we get that out, we’ll definitely share it with with all your audience Sarah. If anybody wants to connect with you or is interested in working with you, how can they do that?

Well, they can join my website or they can go into my website which is the lodge project dot com. We just went through a little bit of re brands the Lodge L O D G E project dot com or they can email me. Um I don’t am I allowed to say that on here. You can say whatever you like. You just got a lot of subscribers. So you like get some emails right? So with Sarah at in large, we trust dot com. Can you throw that in the chat by the way too, For the people who are here. I love it. Yes, I’m doing it now. I can’t do two things at once though. I know it’s okay and I love that you’re doing so many awesome things and so I’m excited to learn more about what you’re doing with with this new brand and super excited for you and all of the amazing work that you’re doing. It’s so needed. So, thank you again for everybody listening. Please check out Sarah’s website. We’ll have show notes and the transcript in the show notes and on fine calm.

Here’s website. Until the next time. I hope you are finding a little bit of calm today, Sarah, I feel like you are a little bit right now. I’m just slowing my roll down. There you go. Finding a little bit of calm. Joy, light, light heartedness or any of those other emotions. Um hopefully you’re feeling well until this time. Take care. I hope you’re finding calm on this day, evening, afternoon, morning Tuesday friday or anytime in between wherever it is. Whenever it is for you find calm. Take care and we’ll talk to you next time.