Ghost Stories Sashka Rothchild & Victoria Sterkin

A little end-of-the-year dip into all things going inward, what gifts (and discomfort) darkness can bring us, slowing down and recharging. What we find hard and easy about the holidays and celebrations and how grief factors into the end of the year.

Part 2 of our conversation with Venus Beaver, including discussion of epiphanies, shame, joy and thawing the f out

Venus is no stranger to grief, having experienced the loss of her mother, father, and brother within the space of a few years. These losses were a catalyst for her own healing journey with the energy of grief being one of her master teachers. These experiences have shaped who she is and deeply informed the work she now does with others.

Venus Is an intuitive channel and guide, highly attuned to the subtle energy field. She specializes in soul retrieval and soul integration, which focuses on bringing aspects of our being that have been fragmented through trauma, back into alignment with our current present moment, and highest self. Venus serves as a conduit of higher guidance and healing, and as a guide for others to uncover their OWN inner healer.

Venus is no stranger to grief, having experienced the loss of her mother, father, and brother within the space of a few years. These losses were a catalyst for her own healing journey with the energy of grief being one of her master teachers. These experiences have shaped who she is and deeply informed the work she now does with others.

Venus Is an intuitive channel and guide, highly attuned to the subtle energy field. She specializes in soul retrieval and soul integration, which focuses on bringing aspects of our being that have been fragmented through trauma, back into alignment with our current present moment, and highest self. Venus serves as a conduit of higher guidance and healing, and as a guide for others to uncover their OWN inner healer.

She lives on the island of Kauai with her 3 daughters and dog Ollie :)

Zainab was born in Michigan and grew up between there and Pakistan. An only child, she lost her father to cancer at the age of 14, leaving her and her mom to figure out how to create a new version of their family unit together. She currently lives NYC and works as an agent in the world of art and fashion.

A beautiful and honest conversation about the similarities and differences in multiple losses, how non verbal communication can become it's own special language for support between family members and what it feels like to be in the room when someone transitions. Zainab generously shares her experience losing her father and watching a very close family friend pass a few years later.

A short interlude for an intimate, open and familiar chat with our hosts Victoria and Sashka

Some themes explored in this conversation include…

Expectations

Entitlement

“Early death”

Finding the both/and

“Foreboding grief”

Victoria on Sashka…

First and foremost, I’ve known Sashka for lifetimes. She’s one of those women who enter your life and there’s deep knowing of each other on a cellular level. I don’t even have to look at a menu when I go out to eat with Sash because even though our taste buds are very different, she can feel exactly what would be my perfect order. 

Layered on top of our cellular connection, there’s the commonality of what it means to move through the world as a woman who has lost her mother from way too young of an age. She was 18 when her mama transitioned and while our struggles and lessons have been different, there are things that we can talk about in such a way that other friends of mine who haven’t understood this level of loss and change just don’t have the same understanding of.

What I’m realizing in both of these points, is the nonverbal communication, the quantum connection that we have access to together. It’s quite exquisite. It’s sophisticated and refined and graceful and beautiful. It’s the kind of communication that is too subtle for many to pick up on but maybe the strongest indicator of true collaboration. 

Sashka loves to play the game of… Oh there’s a problem to solve? Let’s figure it out! She comes at strategy from a baseline of curiosity. It’s playful. It’s (one of) the superpower(s) she learned from her grief-work, to soften around the stuckness, the hurdles. The hurdles often leave people feeling like they no longer have access to choice. Sashka takes the hurdle and says, how much would it cost to rent a plane to fly over it? But what is the carbon foot print of that decision? Is there a way we can fly over it ourselves? Can we take a running leap? Can I get us enough headway to make the jump? Will there be snacks on the other end? She doesn’t give up. She finds playfulness in the challenges that life brings to us. Her resilience is quite breathtaking. 

Sashka on Victoria…

When Victoria and I were introduced by our mutual friend, it was with a knowing wink of, “I think it’s time you meet”. I remember our first conversation having a volley to it that I’d mostly never experienced with someone, it spanned work, childhood, life and death in a way only someone who had lost their mother could understand. It made me feel at home.

Every day that I’ve had Victoria in my life I am reminded that it is not only possible to survive a life that at times, felt wild and broken, as long as you have people around you that are learning to navigate the waves of grief and healing as skilled sailors keeping our heads above water.

Victoria’s mama transitioned when she was so little, leaving her a path of untangling. She took the feeling she was left with, the fear and loneliness and confusion and transmuted it into something expansive, loving and playful, a feat I am never not in total awe of.

There is a magic quality Victoria has, deep inside her bones, that is the gift of allowing anyone around her to feel safe and really seen, with a disarming knowing, without shame or judgement. She sees underneath and behind, above and inside with the deepest insight, curiosity and love.  I think this is both innately who she is, molded by her life and losses, generations of family history but it is also very much on purpose and a skill she has made it important to hone. She has spent her life teaching her system to listen first because it is both what she needed when she was younger, but also what is needed for anyone to access change and a new way of existing. She knows that without safety and the vulnerability of real connection, we are all tethered to the things that keep us stuck, that keep us from rising. 

Victoria has dedicat

How career can be informed/inspired by loss and trauma, the stigma around certain types of loss and finding meaning and purpose in the mess.

Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Shira Gill is a home organizing expert, speaker, coach, and author with a less-is-more philosophy. Over the past decade she has helped thousands of clients all over the globe cut the clutter and create more space for what matters. Her innovative process and toolkit applies to anyone, regardless of their budget, space, or lifestyle.

Shira’s work and home have been featured in Vogue, Dwell, Better Homes & Gardens, House Beautiful, Architectural Digest, Apartment Therapy, Domino, Forbes, Goop, Harper's Bazaar, HGTV, InStyle, Parents, and Real Simple and The New York Times. Her debut book, Minimalista, was recently published by Penguin Random House.