Finding Me podcast Leith McKay

This conversation is personal. I invited Shirlee to have a conversation about Covid because I feel deeply that healing is needed from this period when our lives were turned upside down and fear became the foundation for a lot of decision making. And I can’t think of a better way to facilitate this healing than through conversation.  
Covid has changed me. It changed how I see the world and how I show up everyday. That time was particularly challenging for me because my perspective and choices clashed with what was considered “right”. For the first time in my life I did not follow the “rules”. 
This experience has deepened my commitment to leading conversations from a place of love and curiosity with other open-hearted women like Shirlee. I want to humanize our individual experiences—including those that are different from my own —and encourage deeper reflection of that period. 
If you’re a curious and heart-centered individual and want to share your experience from Covid, I’d love to hear from you. DM me on Instagram at FindingMEpodcast.
 

Melanie’s journey from childhood abuse to becoming a psychic medium and embracing her gifts is an incredible rollercoaster ride. 
For many years Melanie was driven by a desire to control her experiences for a sense of security but she’s learned to surrender to a deep knowing that life is happening FOR her, rather than to her. This perspective grounded in curiosity and compassion permeates our entire conversation. 
Melanie shares so many insights from her own healing journey. We discuss:
processing emotions trauma trust death grief marriage parenting FOPO (Fear of Other Peoples Opinions) This conversation has challenged my thinking and I absolutely loved every minute of it.
 

How do you trust your body when it’s massively let you down? 
At the age of 25, Kelli is diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, an autoimmune disease of the Central Nervous System. Having never heard of the disease, she follows the medical protocol she’s given and tries to carry on with life and her love of dancing.
What I find so fascinating about Kelli’s journey with MS is how she learns to listen to and trust her body. She quits the traditional medical route and puts her trust in a Homeopathic doctor and his alternative approach to treating the body as a whole.
She becomes aware of her emotions and their impact on her symptoms, she learns to work her life around her MS - carving out several careers from home, raising her kids, finding creative outlets and navigating a pandemic.
Her most recent accomplishment is writing a book, Fabulous in Flats, that documents her journey with MS, how she’s managed her symptoms and the lifestyle and habits that have allowed her to thrive.
 

Caitlin shares her journey with Young Onset Parkinson’s Disease. She spends the first six years of her diagnosis in denial, intent on proving her doctors wrong even as her symptoms progressed. Once she accepts her neurological disorder she takes on a million projects so she doesn’t have to face her greatest fear: there is no cure.
It’s only once all her projects start to fall apart and she hits a very low point does a door in Caitlin’s mental armour crack open to new possibilities. She shares her experience at a recent Joe Dispenza retreat and her new perspective on living and hope for the future. What I find so inspiring about her journey is how she’s found a sense of curiosity - curiosity around her body, her mind and her disorder.
We cover the importance of processing our emotions, how energy is stored in the body, getting in touch with what our bodies are telling us, how our menstrual cycle can affect medication and believing her health is worth advocating for. 
 

Nona shares her life and her 'crying on the bathroom floor moments' as she calls them. She struggled with a congenital disease, chronic pain, compulsivity and addiction. She was also in debt and depressed and hiding it from the world. 
And then she has an out-of-body experience that changes her life.
Her mind is opened to a new way of being, a new consciousness that she puts words to as best she can and shares how she moves through the world today, without pain and without addiction. Essentially away from fear and into love.
This conversation opened my mind to new possibilties; to questioning the stories I'm telling myself and essentially opening myself up to new ways of living. I honestly feel like a different person since this conversation. 

Sandra and I cover everything from giving away our authority, to death, to life’s biggest lessons, to hypnosis and unlearning all the things that we find no longer useful in life. 
What has stayed with me the most is her love for simply being human. Early in our conversations Sandra says “Everytime i feel my heart break…there is part of me that feels joyful that I can even feel that.”  How beautiful is that?  She is intelligent, funny, reflective, an amazing storyteller and I just took it all in.
This conversation has been such a gift. A gift to have gotten to know Sandra better. A gift for including other women in the experience. A gift for the unknown possibilities that all this knowledge, perspective and community will bring in the future.