From My Heart To Yours Linda Vettrus-Nichols

Eva Hoffman: “We have wonderful experiences when we connect with others. I take all of my students, regardless of age, through what I call a self-discovery learning adventure. What we discover is that, although we may seem the same, we are all beautifully different. Because we are beautifully different, we are all special. I am special and you are special. We are all special and it's extremely important that we all realize that fact. A lot of young people, even small children already at school, don't feel that they are special. 

Not all children feel that they are special in their own homes. That is something to be remembered. I enjoy teaching my great grandchild positive self-talk. For example saying, “I am special” about themselves. Initially, I had trouble saying that myself. 

Some school children are labeled Special Needs. I can sympathize with that and yet I believe that every child is a special needs child. When we believe that, we treat them as individuals. 

I also believe that we need to teach children about unity, the fact that ‘we are all one’.”



Have a listen as I interview my special guest, Eva Hoffman.




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Eva Hoffman: “I have been a lifelong learner and yet I never liked school. I didn't like it when I was little and I didn’t like it as a teenager. The moment I left school, things changed. When I became a teacher, I promised myself that if I saw my students not loving to learn, I would change my profession. I believe that it’s a crime if there’s no heart in the teaching or the learning.

I am from a loving family of lifelong learners. My parents were musicians and professionals at a music academy. When my father was eighty-seven years old, this is what I heard as I walked into the house, "Look what I have just learned!" A typical greeting of his.

I was not a bad student. It's interesting, because my friends remember me as a very good student. I don't think I was. I mean, I got the right grades. I managed everything that I needed to manage. I passed all the exams, there was no problem of that kind. There also was no heart in the teaching. I had only one teacher who really taught me something that I carry on until today. In my mind that was not good enough. I promised myself that as a teacher, I’d be remembered in a different way.

I've been extremely interested in people and when you get to know them, when you are interested in them, the next step is loving them. 

I have always loved teaching and when I have a chance to teach, I feel the connection. I feel love.”



Have a listen as I interview my special guest, Eva Hoffman.




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Carol Banens: “I am grateful for the gratitude journaling I have done for years. I am also grateful that I continued writing in that journal after my husband died. I did it every night, no matter what. I can remember sitting upstairs with my diary open thinking, 'what am I grateful for?' And I made sure I found something, whether it was my warm bed in the winter or the air conditioning in the summer. 

Grief is about looking back and looking at loss.

People tend not to live in the present moment. We're either worried and thinking about what went wrong, what we should have done or we are busy getting anxious about the future. 

The wonderful thing about gratitude is that we can keep adding it into our day. This is when the joy of life returns.”

Have a listen as I interview my special guest, Carol Banens.




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Carol Banens: “Once you're in grief, and you've lost someone, you realize there's so much more that perhaps you could have done for them, listened to them, or asked of them. I'm a piano player. My dad was a surgeon and quite a good jazz pianist. He'd say, practice hymns and play chords, it will give you chord sequences. And of course, I never listened because he was my dad. After he'd gone, I ended up marrying a jazz pianist. That's when I realized, oh, my dad was right. If only I had done that. Did I learn from that? Not enough. 

I relished my husband, but not as much as I could. I think we can always do more. 

I didn't ask him to teach me a really groovy Happy Birthday. When you're at a birthday party and there’s a piano and people find out you can play piano they often say, "Can you play Happy Birthday?" And it's like, “No”. That's such a silly little thing. But it's one of those things I wonder about. That was Brian's skill. He was a musician. Why didn't I tap into that? Was it because I was always too busy? 

I was too busy to smell the roses. I was working and looking after my mom.

We don't know how long others will be with us or we with them. So, taking the time to appreciate who you have with you and why they're with you is important. If only we could hear that lesson before they are gone so that we can do it in advance.”

Have a listen as I interview my special guest, Carol Banens.




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Carol Banens: “Being kind can mean so many different things. When it comes to grief, it doesn't mean trying to fix grief. Let's get that out there. Because you don't fix grief, you live through it. You get to work through it. In grief, being kind to yourself can be calling on a friend for a chat, monitoring the intensity of your grief, or journaling about your grief (what you’ve lost and what you still have). Being kind to others in grief is about remembering that they are on decision overload. They might not even know what they want or what they need.

When my husband died, and before I could even think about mowing the lawn, my realtor sent over a lawn crew. This continued all summer. What a gift and a blessing. Talk about instilling gratitude! It took away a burden I didn’t even know I had. It was one less thing for me to think about.

So when I think about being kind, sometimes it's the practical things that make all the difference in the world.” 

Have a listen as I interview my special guest, Carol Banens.




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Carol Banens: “It doesn't matter how someone dies, grief is immense. We get to remember that fact. When my husband died, I pushed everything down so I could go back to work, so I could manage things, and it came back to bite me for not dealing with it. It's exhausting to put on a facade of 'I'm fine', if you're not. As soon as we start to have these conversations, as soon as we're with compassionate people who will sit with us and listen, let us put our head on their shoulder or go for a walk with us, it softens our grief. Community coming together is such a beautiful way of dealing with any sort of trouble because it allows us to see the connection between people.         

It's so important to talk when you are ready to talk. Grief has to be witnessed, it has to be heard. And the more we talk about it, the more we stop resisting it and pushing it down.” 

Have a listen as I interview my special guest, Carol Banens.




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Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/linda-vettrus-nichols/message