Hello everyone, welcome to the Sex, Love, and SuperPowers podcast show. I’m your host, Tatiana Berindei and today I have with me a very special woman, Victoria Markham. We’re going to be discussing the role of grief in our spiritual evolution. I know this is not one of my normal topics, and some of you might wonder what it has to do with sex. Maybe it has nothing to do with sex, but in my world, it has a lot to do with the dark feminine and our willingness to handle and navigate difficult terrain. Sometimes that enters into the bedroom as well, so in my universe they’re all interrelated.
But before we go into this topic, I wanna tell you a little bit more about Victoria. I’m gonna read the bio that she wrote, and I loved this so much. It’s written in the first person, so this is Victoria’s voice before you actually get to hear her voice. She says, “Over the years, I have read many bios that listed an array of appropriate and impressive education qualities best to serve clients with. Deep inside I would ask myself if I couldn’t trust my heart, projects, and confidence, solely based on the letters after someone’s name.”
“As I write this and introduce myself to you, I ask myself, do people wanna know about my education, or would they rather know about me and the depths of my life experience that brought me to a place honored enough to call you forth into your brilliance. I’m setting aside the mainstream way of introducing myself for a more personal, hearted delve into who I am so that you get a sense of me beneath the surface skin of where or with whom I have studied.”
“I am someone who knows that in order to guide others; you must go to the depths and back yourself. I have been there. I still and always will go there. What makes me a unique and powerful guide and coach is the culmination of life experiences that have tested me down to the core. I have been brought to the bottomless pit of grief many, many times thinking I would not come out, and I came out. Against all odds.”
“I’ve traveled the world and had deep interfaces with many cultures, indigenous and modern. I have facilitated hundreds of women in various settings to honor and evoke their magnificence. I have sat on my knees countless nights in all night long sacred ceremony on Navajo land and with native Hawaiians. I have attended the sunrise makahiki ceremonies honoring the seasons and cycles of their indigenous life. I’ve spoken in front of thousands of people in Germany at a conference for bringing back rites of passage and initiation for the youth in Europe, and sat for months at a time with teachers learning how to guide people back and forth across thresholds of life.”
“I birthed three children at home. Buried one at three and a half years of age. I have plummeted from 150 foot cliff, died, then lived. I have stopped generational sexual abuse in my family blood line, and raised myself from a very young age. I’m 18 years happily married and have more certifications than I can list. After 22 years of education, eco-psychology is my focus, as I feel that healing cannot happen without connection to the natural world.”
“I’m a guide, a resilient and reverent advocate for being real and awake.” This is why I love you to pieces, so that was a really beautiful introduction, and welcome to the show, Victoria.
Thank you, Tatiana. Thank you so much.
So I think our listeners already have a real strong sense just from that bio of who you are and what you bring and what you have lived, just a little taste of that. But I am going to ask you the question that I ask all of our guests when they come on this show. I’d love to hear it in your words. What are your super powers?
I feel like my super power is I land on my feet.
Well you know, I’ve had some time to really sit with this question, and you know, a super power, what do I feel like is kind of unique, beyond. I think I just have one, you know? It kinda covers everything. I feel like my super power is I land on my feet, you know? I don’t really understand exactly how that happens, and I don’t understand a lot of the support that comes to hold me there. But I just always seem to keep landing on my feet.
Makes me think of a cat.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, from knowing you and working so intimately with you, I can absolutely attest to that. What you’ve walked through is tremendous, and the way that you continue to show up for life and show up so boldly, and so willing to be real and authentic and angry and in pain and in joy, and just real and raw is something I truly admire about you.
So you know, we’re here. We’re discussing the role of grief in our spiritual evolution. This is a shadow topic. This is one that doesn’t get a lot of air time, especially in our culture, where we sort of expect grief to go away eventually. We don’t know how to do it very well, in my opinion.
You’re someone who’s walked through the tremendous grief of losing a child, which, you know, no one would ever wish on anybody. Yet you’ve walked through it and you continue to walk through it. I’d just love to hear you speak a little bit about that and about the grieving process and losing Koa and still mothering another child and birthing another child after that, you know, what that has been like for you in terms of your spiritual evolution.
Yeah, I think the stark reality of Koa’s death really catapulted me into really understanding that I don’t really know my evolution in general, you know. That it kinda took me out of the control space and put me into a full surrender into this life. Instead of having the answers, it brought me to the questions.
As I would ask the questions, it just seemed like life started living itself. Instead of getting out in front of it and trying to steer it and believe that I was manifesting and making happen this life that I so badly wanted, I started to get behind it and just really breathe into what am I doing here, and what are we doing here? And what was the evolution of my child, and was it really a tragic accident?
I started following the questions down into the rabbit hole that I was already going into, the grief. You know, the underworld. What I found when I got there, Tatiana, was that there’s so much more to death than dying, and there’s so much more to grief than grieving. That was unexpected, you know, it’s our culture. We walk around feeling like oh, someone dies, then we go into grief, and then we go into the lament process and everyone brings the casseroles and then three weeks, a month goes by. We’re supposed to get back to our life.
There’s this kind of format that’s been laid out of the stages, you know. But there really aren’t any stages. There really aren’t any, they’re actually, it’s total chaos. Then yet, down in the underworld comes this other information that is not available to the upper world who’s not experiencing the grief. That’s that really life keeps living you, and you keep breathing and there is new beginning within the old endings. Even in the most excruciating of pains of my life I was able to create a beautiful daughter.
One year later, I’m growing life inside of me.
You see, so that’s the kind of cycle is like, the worst thing in the world that this culture says can happen to someone evidently just happened to me. One year later, I’m growing life inside of me that happens to be the most beautiful, buoyant, healthy, loving, sweet, magical little girl that I birthed at age 43 against all odds of our culture believing we’re too old to birth at that age. You see, so it just broke all the rules.
Everything that was a rule about life or that I was holding onto as a structure just broke apart.
Which is … it might seem odd to say, but there’s so much freedom in that.
Exactly.
We’re gonna go to a quick break, and when we get back from the break, we’re gonna continue with this conversation. There’s a lot that we can cover and a lot that we won’t get to because this topic is pretty bottomless, I think. But before we go to the break, will you tell everybody where they can go to find out more about you?
Right now my website is under construction, and will be launched by the end of May. So right now you can find me on Facebook at Victoria Markham.
Okay, and what will your website be? Because the chances of this getting aired before it’s launched are slim. So probably by the time people are listening to this, your website’s live.
Yeah, it’s called victoria.life.
Say that one more time, ’cause I heard you sort of phase out. So I didn’t get it, but maybe someone else did. But say it again for my purposes.
Victoria, which is my first name, and then dot life.
That’s the whole website?
That’s it.
Oh my god, I love it.
Thank you.
Okay. So we’ve been talking with Victoria Markham about the role of grief in our spiritual evolution, you can find her at victoria.life and we are gonna do a high vibe deep dive with this when we return, so stay tuned.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
Music Credit: All instruments played by Amanda Turk. Engineered and produced by Tatiana Berindei and Daniel Plane reelcello.com
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