088 – Kelly Rich: Sensitivities as Superpowers

Sarah Tacy [00:00:06]:
Hello. Welcome. I’m Sarah Tacy, and this is Threshold Moments, a podcast where guests and I share stories about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves. The path is unknown, and the pull feels real. Together, we share our grief, laughter, love, and life saving tools. Join us. Hello and welcome to Threshold Moments. Today, we have with us Kelly Rich.

Sarah Tacy [00:00:42]:
What I love about this conversation is really getting to listen to somebody as they help us feel into the possibility of what it would be like to turn into our sensitivities and to use them as superpowers. Kelly’s story is painful. It’s can be hard to fathom. And it also shows that the way that our body so intelligently helps to mask, soothe, or numb what is too much. It shows us how some coping mechanisms can be lifesaving until they’re not. And what the process could look like from small doable pieces to, Oh my God, all at once, shamanic initiation. And how does one make it through that when the numbing devices no longer work at all of the things that have been suppressed are now up for feels. Navigating that and utilizing these lessons in her ability to hold space that understands such a huge range of feelings.

Sarah Tacy [00:01:58]:
It was such an honor to get this time to speak with Kelly. We are actually within similar communities. We live not too far from one another and we’ve never seen each other in person. So this was a really, really great way to check-in and to meet a sister. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Without further ado, Kelly Rich. Hello, and welcome to Threshold Moments. Today we have with us Kelly Rich.

Sarah Tacy [00:02:40]:
Kelly is a serious, shamanic practitioner, ceremonialist, writer, designer, and supporter of women in business dedicated to helping people tap into their inner wisdom, own their intuition, and do what they came here to do. She believes beauty is the portal to the divine and her love of holding healing spaces has drawn her to creating an online school, over a dozen retreats, hundreds of events, and facilitating thousands of soul readings for clients all over the world. Known for her fiery approach, she is the host of the Own Your Intuition podcast and has been helping people through Sacred Transformations since 2011. Welcome.

Kelly Rich [00:03:27]:
Thank you. I’m so honored to be here. Thank you for having me.

Sarah Tacy [00:03:31]:
Yeah. Thanks for being here. As you and I were checking in before, I had asked you to help me define a word. And I was thinking actually, as I was going through who you are and what you do, which I understand are these like 3 d orientation points. If we could even jump into a few of the words or phrases to understand with more context and texture. And so the first word is a Cirrus. Could you tell the listeners a little bit more about what that is?

Kelly Rich [00:04:09]:
Yeah. So for me, Cirrus feels like a reclamation of the wise one within me and within us all. And ever since I was a little girl, I could always sense things that were maybe labeled as the unseen. You know what you can’t necessarily see with your 2 eyes, but maybe you can with like your witch eye or your your inner eye. And I like to imagine my skin as having eyes everywhere as well. I tend to be a deep feeler. So it’s not just serious in the in the sense of like clairvoyant or seeing things clearly or seeing the unseen clearly, but feeling things clearly as well. And my sense of feeling and my sense of sight, some would say clairvoyance.

Kelly Rich [00:05:05]:
They tend to be like really great friends. So serious to me is weaving those aspects of me that have just always been there and in what feels like a healthy way.

Sarah Tacy [00:05:18]:
As you describe that, I am going back to March 17th. I’m in Scotland for the 1st night and I’m meeting up with a group of women at the Witchery. And it’s the 1st night that we’re all meeting and it’s kind of the night before the official retreat is starting. And, and I go there in my witchy dress going up the cobblestone streets. And I arrive at the dinner table with all these women who are, have been deeply in their process for years. And we all receive a necklace that has a thistle on it. It’s copper and it’s this, Dana, don’t forget where you came from. Don’t forget who you are.

Sarah Tacy [00:06:06]:
And each one had a little card in it. And so we read something that the card said. And as we’re going around, I start to feel this little itch in my eye, and then it turns into a pain. And then I have this like, oh, God.

Kelly Rich [00:06:20]:
I had

Sarah Tacy [00:06:21]:
to, like, excuse myself from the table. My eye started hurting so bad. So I went there. I was completely fine. And by the time I left, my eye was oozing, like, a 4 year old’s nose, and I had a major eye infection. And as I left the table, I was like, I know this is, like, a group of people who like to make something out of things, but can we not find symbolism around this, please? Can we just leave this? I’m gonna, like, find a pharmacy tomorrow morning before we take him on our adventures. And since that night, of course, I have really been in the inquiry of what it means to see. And I had taken along with me a book called The Celtic Wheel.

Sarah Tacy [00:07:04]:
And there are sections throughout it that talk about the seers, the ones who would see with their heart that would see, I love what you said, your skin, like thousands of eyes. So I see all the and imagine the sensory receptors all over our skin. And beyond that, those thousands of eyes and was in the ceremony this last weekend. And someone was saying to me about my kind eyes, which I know can also can come off as stony. Right? And this like place between my heart and my eyes. So I realize I’m processing my own story out loud right now, but I am appreciating as I’m hearing you talking about the dimensions that we see and the dimensionality with which we see with. And also, I just wanna show you that the very first page that I wrote in my journal for that, before the eye thing happened on the plane, I the first thing I drew was an eye. Thank you.

Sarah Tacy [00:08:02]:
It’s interesting for me that that word popped out. Didn’t imagine going there, and thank you for describing that. And I’m gonna go one more. I circled soul readings. We will get into your story, but I’m just for me to unfold the bio to soul readings. Can you tell me about that?

Kelly Rich [00:08:24]:
Soul readings and my work can feel really hard to describe. So I don’t want to sweep by the fact that although I’ve been doing this work for a little while now, I still actually struggle with describing who I am, what I do, and what things are. And I realized that it’s actually a positive thing to be able to describe what you do. So I’ve definitely taken some time sitting with it. But what I’m feeling right now to say to you and to everyone listening is it’s really how I get to like be myself and show up and like do what I do. Like how I see things, how I sense things. And there’s no limitation with soul readings. Sometimes when people are doing readings, it’s very specific.

Kelly Rich [00:09:20]:
Like there’s going to be mediumship where they’ll connect to past loved ones or it’s about the Akashic records. But for me, it’s more of casting a circle of love that people come and sit in with me. And I talk to them about what I see and what I feel and what’s coming through my senses. And, but I find that soul readings when they’re more of a conversation, it’s like that’s when it feels most in alignment because I feel like sometimes with this type of work, if the reader or the healer is sitting there just kind of talking at the client, there can be this air of like, somehow I know more about you than you know about yourself, but that could actually never be true. So I always like to invite people into the conversation and I’m not really interested in, like, proving myself or like sitting with people who are like trying to get me to, like, prove, like, that’s just not what I wanna do and it just doesn’t feel good to me. So people are welcome to ask clarifying questions. And of course, if there’s more information, I elaborate, but sometimes people need to sit with things. So if I were to just describe it, it really in a simpler way, it’s like a blessing for the person and the soul that I’m sitting with.

Kelly Rich [00:10:39]:
And people ask all kinds of things from relationship struggles to what their purpose is in the world. That’s probably, like, the biggest thing that people ask and if they’re on the right path and guidance, clarity.

Sarah Tacy [00:10:57]:
Amazing. Beautiful. I love, as you’re saying that, I could really picture. There are times when I’ve sat with a psychic and I’m like, oh, I don’t wanna give too much information. And I really love the difference of of it being a conversation where you’re also really open to being highly intuitive and seeing bigger pictures and allowing the wisdom of your client to come through. It reminds me of the way I used to work therapeutically with clients in New York, which was I’m listening. I’m asking questions and I’m asking them to when I ask the questions, how does your body feel about this? When do these things happen? And we’re kind of working together with intuitive thoughts, tools I’ve built. And then largely, what is the client feeling? How does this integrate? And it’s more empowering for the client than somebody just coming in and like, this is what you need to do.

Sarah Tacy [00:11:52]:
And if it doesn’t work for you, then you’re screwed. Right? Like, it’s like it’s a living document and, you know, with various people or energies wanting to like come in and be part of the authorship. And so kind of getting to play with, you know, where the script is coming from and what will go down. So I really appreciate that and your description. On here, it says that you have a fiery approach. And I heard you also say that when you were young, you could see things differently. And I’m about to weave a few things together. As I asked you, if there are any big thresholds in your life, you named a few and and the 2 you named are quite big.

Sarah Tacy [00:12:44]:
And, and I always noticed myself, like when I’m about to bring up a threshold that feels this for me monumental, and also I imagine that it carries with it a lot. I’m wondering if you could speak to us about that threshold and how it affected your life and your becoming.

Kelly Rich [00:13:08]:
Yeah. I’d be honored to. Thank you for asking this question. I think it’s hard to say where my fiery nature comes from. I’ve studied the elements for a very long time and the elements live within all of us. So we all have that fire. What makes us different is how the elements are expressed through us. We all have wind, space, water, earth, and fire, but what makes you different is the way that they’re composed inside of you.

Kelly Rich [00:13:46]:
So for me, the fire, at least my understanding today of myself is it’s always been there and it’s always been high in the sense of like passion and like can have really strong opinions. And even when I talk sometimes, especially when I’m teaching inside my course and like relistening to podcast episodes I’ve recorded and on stage and teaching yoga, like, there’s a part of me that just naturally comes out and it’s that fiery sense of sometimes it can feel really intense for some people and other people, this is what I’ve heard from them is it helps to light a fire inside of them. It helps them to remind them of that fire in them. And I I do feel that it would also be difficult to say that it that part of me doesn’t come from that time when my father died and then, you know, what I had to do to process that for decades. I mean, I’m still processing it. I think I’ll always be processing it. There’s always another layer. And I think that’s really what my grief is.

Kelly Rich [00:14:59]:
Like it’s I don’t know if it ever goes away when you lose something that your brain is like, no, you shouldn’t have lost that. Right? It’s like the spiral just continues and continues. But something that I’ve really learned about myself particularly in the last 10 years is maybe even less than that is that experience helped me to like live my life and like death taught me to live. And I think one of the most irritating things for me, like as a not just like a facilitator, but a human being is when somebody like doesn’t realize they’re alive. Like, it’s like I really do just wanna shake them sometimes and sometimes people actually do need that. I know I’ve needed that. Just because I’ve had this experience doesn’t mean that I’m always living life consciously and like head in the clouds, airy fairy, everything’s fine and beautiful. Yay life.

Kelly Rich [00:15:59]:
But I do think that I have a bit of a leg up here because death has taught me to live. And when I’m afraid to do something that my heart really wants me to do, do I just think about the people like that are laying in a hospital bed that actually can’t even move their bodies? Like, I’ll actually put that image in my head, and then I’ll think about my dad. Like he can’t even do anything. He’s not even in the flesh his life was taken. So for some reason, I’m here and I have this air in my lungs and I have this beautiful body and this beautiful mind and this spirit that is strong. I’m not meant to sit around and let fear keep me from doing the things that my heart wants me to do. My my heart is my compass. Mhmm.

Kelly Rich [00:16:48]:
And I don’t always get that right either. Fear definitely wins sometimes, but I know in my bones that the more I do this work, the better I get at honoring those callings and quieting the fear. And, yeah, when he died, it was a very confusing time being so young processing death, but not just that, it was very publicized, and it was all over the television and the front pages of newspapers, and there were definitely sides to it. So like people saying he should have died and people saying he shouldn’t have died, and the man who murdered him also murdered 2 other people. And when you look at the evidence, it’s pretty clear, but the man didn’t go to jail. So it was a murder trial, and it actually ended up ruling in his favor. So, yeah. So I had to process all that as well.

Kelly Rich [00:17:45]:
So as a child, there was this feeling of not only was my did my father die, but he was murdered and the person who murdered him, there’s no justice. So for a long time, it really pushed that all down and everything was fine. Like it was like paint the face and color, like I’ll never forget the the image of my mom going to the funeral and me staying back and coloring on the floor. I can’t remember who was watching, but it was like she’s trying to talk to me and there was like nothing inside of me that wanted to listen to her. That was like absolutely not. We are fine. We’re not listening. We’re not even accepting where you’re going, like this is what we’re doing.

Kelly Rich [00:18:25]:
We’re gonna color. My brain through the trauma just kinda skipped over time. Like it was like, we’re not going to deal with that, and it really affected my memory as a child, and it wasn’t until I was about Yeah. I was about 15, and I was sitting in health class as a sophomore in high school. And interestingly enough, I’m coloring and doodling in my notebook, and they put on a movie in health class. It’s just beginning and one of my best friends, she’s sitting next to me, she looked up and she’s like, Kelly, this movie is about your dad. And they had played a documentary about the murder, which I had specifically not watched on purpose. It had been out for a few years.

Kelly Rich [00:19:14]:
And so I started seeing pictures of him on the TV and it just it really, like, awakened all that stuff that I had pushed down. And the fire, the shadow side of fire is anger, at least for me. And that anger came out and toward the teacher after class, which to me even, you know, as a 30 something year old woman, like, yay, Kelly, 15 year old, like, warranted anger, like, channel that anger. This is this is actually where it belongs. Like, how irresponsible and disrespectful. And he didn’t even know that it was my father, so it really, like, created this thing in the school and and in my own life. And that’s really, I think, when I started feeling really lost, like really lost in life. And I had to start processing because I hadn’t yet.

Kelly Rich [00:20:05]:
And

Sarah Tacy [00:20:07]:
then there’s like a bunch

Kelly Rich [00:20:08]:
that kinda, you know, goes from there and it’s a lot, but when I look back, I wouldn’t be able to hold space in the way that I do without these experiences. And I I actually like feel my heart smiling because it does feel like a gift.

Sarah Tacy [00:20:30]:
I

Kelly Rich [00:20:30]:
know that sounds odd, but yeah, in like a weird way, it’s a gift.

Sarah Tacy [00:20:38]:
Thank you for sharing.

Kelly Rich [00:20:40]:
Yeah. Thank you for listening.

Sarah Tacy [00:20:42]:
Yeah. As I I have, you know, a different scenario, witnessed a few young people who have had parents taken too early. And I’ve seen just what you were, what you experienced, what you were speaking of, of the coloring of the playing in a different area of this really incredible, wise system that knows when too much is too much. And then the years where the capacity or the lens begins to open to see and feel more, and then what tools are available. And the nervous system field work that I inhabit, there’s, there’s this three directions map. And with activation, there’s this option in the first direction that soothe and distract. And what’s been such a gift for me is just seeing in the soothe and distract, like it could be yoga, it could be meditation. It could be, could be cutting.

Sarah Tacy [00:22:00]:
It could be drugs. It could be right. And some of them, our society is like, Oh, those are good and those are bad. But at certain stages in the journey, they’re life saving depending on what’s available to us. And on your sheet, you said that in 2011, there was a time in which the numbing devices stopped working and you quit everything cold turkey. Was there anything that triggered the cold turkey change?

Kelly Rich [00:22:41]:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I remember it clearest day. My friend, she was living in California at the time and I was a really big weed snob, you could say. Like, just loved loved marijuana so much. And you know, looking back and through my lens of Ayurveda and holistic health, I can so see how smoking weed numbed my pain. Like in Ayurveda, that’s what it does. The the energetics of marijuana is it numbs

Sarah Tacy [00:23:15]:
pain. Mhmm.

Kelly Rich [00:23:16]:
And it’s not just physical, it’s also emotional. So I’m always like looking at that thread with clients who just can’t seem to quit it, and if there’s no physical pain like, okay, we have to look at what what’s in the emotional web here and in the mental web and in the spiritual web. So she went out to California. She was living there. She came back and she had edibles, which I had never really dabbled in. I’d only, like, smoked it. And I was working at a restaurant in the time going to school. And she had this like little what were they? They’re like little mints.

Kelly Rich [00:23:55]:
They like actually looked like those really cheap white and red, like, almost like candy striped. Do you know what I’m talking about? Those mints like wrapped yeah. Like the clear wrapper. They looked like that and they were all, like, kinda crushed up. It was like the end of them at the end of this bag and I was just like, oh, there’s not that many and I took them all. And I got into my car, like, can I be saying this on the podcast? I got into my car and I was driving to work and it actually felt like I was lit like in a different realm, like not in a good way. And when I got out of my car, it was like I I had never felt anything like that in my life. It was like my nervous system like didn’t exist.

Kelly Rich [00:24:35]:
It would like it was like I didn’t exist in a way, but I was still moving and I had to wait on a table. And I got to the table and there was like a party of 10 waiting for me. And going to the table like, am I is this really happening? They’re giving me their order, they’re giving me their order, and like in the middle of the order I was like, I’ll be right back. And I just walked over to my manager and, you know, told him what was going on. And the next morning I woke up and sort of like the universe was like, I’m gonna give you this now and I’m gonna give you this now and this and this and this, and you’re gonna have to deal with all of it. And I started having panic attacks. And I realized that that moment with the edibles was my first panic attack and they just started coming. And when I decided, I was prescribed Adderall at the time for ADHD, and I think I was overprescribed to be honest, and it just totally changed everything for me.

Kelly Rich [00:25:38]:
Like when I was on the medication, I could smoke a cigarette like every 10 minutes. Like I was smoking at least a pack a day at the time. I was drinking every night almost after work. It was sort of the norm in the restaurant world, like it’s just what everybody did. And of course, smoking meat morning, afternoon, and night. It was like all of these things that kept my feelings just really quiet for me. And so when I started peeling them all away, which I did in at the same time, the panic attacks came even more and it felt like I was dying. Like I actually felt like I was dying.

Kelly Rich [00:26:20]:
Like my physical body even changed so quickly looking in I remember looking in the mirror being like, I have no idea who you are. Mhmm. I just don’t know who you are. And people just started coming out of the woodwork. Like like literally coming out of the woodwork, people would be like healers. So just find me and be like, do you want this? And do you want this for free? And can I help you for free and come here for free? Like and everything was if not free, they were having me pay whatever I could. And I was in an apprenticeship at the time at an acupuncture clinic in Maine. And I was working the front desk and making all the teas and the roll for he came down one day and he’s like, I don’t know what it is, but something told me to come in here and ask if you want a 10 series, Which for people who don’t know what a 10 series is, it’s 10 sessions that goes through the whole body and helps with, like, aligning the body, but it’s so much more than that.

Kelly Rich [00:27:16]:
For me, it was like emotional, mental, spiritual, and that fucked my life up. Like, and I say that clearly and bluntly for a reason because that there helped me to feel how sensitive I was, which like kind of blew me open. Maybe a little too much looking back. It was like everything that I had buried, everything that I had known and seen in people started coming up. And honestly, I didn’t know if I was gonna make it for a while. Like, if I could survive feeling how I felt. It was kinda like the veil was covered and then someone just took it all away instead of layer by layer. It was like everything, like I was just blown open.

Kelly Rich [00:28:09]:
And that took a while as you can probably imagine to feel safe in my body again and feel safe with my gifts, and I started through that experience seeing like why I had numbed for so long and not just things with my dad, but memories coming up and, yeah, how I dealt with certain things and how I could feel things that weren’t there and see things that other people couldn’t. It was like a life or death. That’s what it really felt like. Like, Kelly, you’re either going to, like, go through this initiation and accept who you are or you’re not and you’re you’re probably going to die.

Sarah Tacy [00:28:53]:
Of course, it makes sense. As you you said initiation before that, I was like, this is a shamanic initiation. This is again, in in my world, we’d say like small doable pieces over time. And this is like, no. Not at once. You will live or you will die and you will find your way or you will not. Yeah. I found myself going back to another portion of your story and just feeling like I wanted to say out loud, I’m so sorry.

Sarah Tacy [00:29:21]:
I wish I could rewind time and say, I’m so sorry that the teacher played that role. And so amazed and, like, it was just like they’re rooting you on that that part of yourself that was able to say, this is so inappropriate. And as I’m here listening to this next portion of your story, I am then so curious that when you find yourself blown open and completely exposed and everything that you’ve spent years numbing. And I really heard and felt that. Like, there’s a story of and the sensation and the processing of your father and to be a child who feels and sees so extensively that there are so many more layers to go along with that. And so how, how did you meet yourself and how, how did you make it?

Kelly Rich [00:30:22]:
Well, I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t still meeting myself and I wasn’t still like making it sometimes. And not to like try to write the story that hasn’t happened yet, but I think when one goes through what you will use your language of like a shamanic initiation or shamanic death, Like we don’t just grieve other people, we grieve ourselves when we allow ourselves to go through these massive transformations. Even like, especially the ones where we’re like kicking and screaming and holding on for dear life to like that shedding skin, which I definitely did. But I do wanna mention that it was right at that time to one of the healers that found me was my teacher and elder and friend Anya, who is a shamanic practitioner who eventually took me under her wing and taught me her ways. But really when I say taught me her ways, she helped me find my way. And I was going through what one would call a shamanic initiation. And I think without her and without people who really understood what I was going through, I don’t know if I would be sitting here with you today. And in my bones, I feel it was like, God, God, ask the universe saying, here are these angels on your path in human form and you cannot look away.

Kelly Rich [00:31:57]:
What was the question? Sorry.

Sarah Tacy [00:32:03]:
As you were stripped open, as you became Yes. More raw, as you became how were you able to meet yourself? And I hear that it is still a process and kind of looking for, like, what was your survival strategy or story. And I ask this largely also because part of the purpose of this podcast is the idea of accompaniment. And so although people listening may not have your exact story, there will certainly be many people who listen, who have felt stripped down to the bones, who have said, I have no idea who I am anymore. And I don’t know if I can handle this amount of pain or this amount of grieving, or perhaps they fear opening up for that very purpose. And to hear a story, even though it’s not in its completion, to hear a story of a journey is kind of then wondering, how did you survive? And so I hear that angels in human form showed up and was there, were there movement practices? Were there breath practices? Was it simply being held by another, being seen? Tea, acupuncture. I’m wondering what, what saved you or what helped you when you said you were going to kind of, you were going to live or die. What helped you land where you are now?

Kelly Rich [00:33:28]:
All of the above. The 2 most important things that are coming through right now is healing and community. Like there was, there was no way that I could have ever, but I wouldn’t be who I am today without those earth angels and without the help and the people who said, I got you.

Sarah Tacy [00:33:56]:
And

Kelly Rich [00:33:58]:
the second, honestly, understanding my intuition and understanding who I am and what I feel and how I perceive sensation and life around me. And understanding my gifts and how to channel them and really sitting with the question of, like, what is my purpose? Like that question over and over again. And one of my favorite things even to this day is show me the way. I’m right here. Show me the way. I’m listening. But it even is like one of the scariest things to say because the way like, sometimes people think owning your intuition, like doing the work of like sole purpose and knowing why you’re here. It’s like, oh, once I own my intuition and once I know why I’m here, like everything’s smooth sailing.

Kelly Rich [00:34:57]:
I’m so intuitive that I can see so far ahead that I can skip all the garbage, all the discomfort, all the things that are gonna make me feel things I don’t wanna feel. That’s not how it works. Sometimes intuition and saying show me the way means you’re gonna be brought right through the shit that hurts the most because you need to grow from it. You need to learn from it, you need to sit with that. So for me, it was actually doing that work, but also being held in community at the same time that was the most important, I would say. But I’d also be lying if I said I wasn’t doing yoga regularly and having boundaries with really toxic people. Like, something I didn’t mention was I lost every single one of my friends. Like, I had no friends left.

Kelly Rich [00:35:49]:
If you were to look at my life, like one day and then the next day, the friends that I had surrounded myself with, like, they they couldn’t come with me anymore. So people that I worked with, they started, you know, letting me lean on them for support. My friend group slowly shifted to be more healthy. But the people that I’m talking about with community, while it was my work community, it was it was the healers. It was the earth angels. It was those people that took me under their wing. So I wanna be wanna be really clear about that too because I think sometimes it’s what I see is people try to hold on. They try to hold on to relationships.

Kelly Rich [00:36:32]:
And if you really go through like a shamanic death and at least one relationship in your life doesn’t change, it’s not a shamanic death. Like, you’re that’s not how it works.

Sarah Tacy [00:36:48]:
I’m really interested sometimes with how podcast guests line up. And so I had Lola Lamore on yesterday. And the beginning, I took one of her last newsletters called Stripped the majority of our conversation when I said, I hear you talking about this part of life, this midlife, and stripping away all that is not you. And it sounds sexy and it sounds like a listener go, Oh yeah. Yeah. But could you take us more into detail? And when she really took us into detail, it was kind of like, woosh. Right. Cause I did like, I was saying that sometimes I feel I judge myself because when I go through times that are dark or require stripping or letting go of things that my ego love, that I feel like because I have these tools, I should somehow suffer less in it, or I should find the light sooner or And she just highlighted that, no, like if you’re, if it’s a true stripping away, it’s stripping away.

Sarah Tacy [00:37:51]:
Sometimes there’s something you really love in order to find yourself even more. And that should not be painless. Like and it’s and I’m not here to say to people like, you must like, look for the most painful thing and go for it. Because what I wanna highlight in your story too is, is that being held by the earth angels is the finding resource while going through something hard and being open to it being different than what used to be your resource.

Kelly Rich [00:38:25]:
I didn’t have anyone in my life up until then that I could really feel held by in those ways. Like I didn’t have anybody that I could have those conversations with. Actually, maybe I did. I just couldn’t see it or didn’t feel safe with them because I think that’s important. Just because someone is available doesn’t mean you have to say yes.

Sarah Tacy [00:38:51]:
Right.

Kelly Rich [00:38:52]:
And that’s something that I think is a dance for a lot of people who tend to be people pleasers. Like, oh, the first person that shows up versus, you know, how’s it going? Like, you don’t have to lean on them, especially if they don’t feel safe or like you want to. So there was a lot of, like, learning that and unlearning that. But

Sarah Tacy [00:39:18]:
I hear the art to that too, of the people pleasing. 1 is not just letting anyone into your heart who wants to come in. And the other I would imagine is learning to receive help from those who are capable of giving it. If you have rarely received it before that feeling of possibly being a burden and thinking that being a burden means that you won’t be accepted or you won’t belong or, and so I could see dancing with both of those things in the reprogramming process.

Kelly Rich [00:39:55]:
I think one of the most difficult things for me is hearing what people don’t say. Because somebody can come up to me and say, I can hold you. But everything they’re not saying I’m hearing, which is I have no capacity to hold you. I just feel like I should say this.

Sarah Tacy [00:40:19]:
Mhmm.

Kelly Rich [00:40:20]:
And that’s a really tricky thing to navigate because sometimes people don’t eve they’re not even aware of that. Yeah. Which is where like soul readings in one place they were born from was from that being able to hear what people aren’t saying. So if someone sits at me and they say something like, I really wanna grow my business. I’m here to talk about my business, but what they’re not saying is their relationships in life are crumbling and falling apart and they’re miserable in their marriage. I can’t talk about your business because this is a dumpster fire. Yeah. And this is affecting everything in your business.

Kelly Rich [00:41:04]:
And sometimes people just they’re so caught in illusion that the conversation can’t go anywhere unless they’re willing to look there. So for me, in my personal life, it’s like my work doesn’t just turn off

Sarah Tacy [00:41:21]:
when, like, my work is done for the day or whatever time

Kelly Rich [00:41:24]:
it ends. It’s like I am who I am. And sometimes that’s really hard to navigate. Like right now inside the healing art of intuitive readings. It’s a new course that I birthed a few weeks ago. A big part of what this really is, is holding healers to be the best healers they can be because I see so many healers burned out. Like, they’re called to hold others and they’re called to hold space, but they like actually can’t to the capacity that they can because one, they don’t know how. And 2, it’s like their energy is being siphoned in all of these places, but they’re like, but I have this calling.

Kelly Rich [00:42:11]:
I have this calling to hold. It’s like, if you don’t deal with all this other stuff in your life, you’ll never be able to hold the space you feel like you can. So I don’t know if that answers what you asked. I feel like I went on a tangent there.

Sarah Tacy [00:42:26]:
I think it’s a good tangent to go on. Okay. Good. Because, again, I think it’s something that, you know, even if someone didn’t identify yet or at all as a healer, I think that someone who holds role as mother or as business partner, There are so many of us who offer help when our energy is being siphoned out in so many different places and we don’t know how to contain or receive or regenerate our own source and conscious of where energy is coming and going and the power. And now I’m just thinking of this one other thing, which is, you know, this idea as a parent, if a child is having a big meltdown, if the parent could hold a space and really be settled in their body. And it’s okay because like, a lot of times, like, I can’t. And so but I just have been learning over the years of like, can I resource from the trees? Can I do things during the day that actually bring me real happiness? Can my husband and I start to get more honest with each other and do it in a way that is not intentionally hurtful. It doesn’t mean that at someone’s truth, it’s not gonna hurt.

Sarah Tacy [00:43:42]:
And all of these things play in my ability to really be present and be stable as my child is having their larger range of emotions. And so I wrote down just the I’ve got you, something about when you said, like, I’ve got you. And what does it take to really have somebody and to really have ourselves and really be honest when we say that? And I was thinking about how that is most likely, you know, what you needed then and what you give now, the container of I’ve got you. And you were talking about looking for your purpose. And earlier you said so many people come to you looking for their purpose. And so I’m just kind of seeing that the medicine that you needed and have found or working with over time is often what people come to you for. And the last thing that I am curious about as we come to time here is beauty. I, again, it’s like, Oh, look at the people who are gonna be on this podcast in October.

Sarah Tacy [00:44:42]:
So Sarah Jenks will re air and Lila L’Amour and yourself. And I think that there are some people who are ceremonialists who really utilize and, and I’m thinking, okay, Nisha Moodley was on last month too, and Ginny Muir. And I think about the spaces that these women create in ceremony and understanding how it affects the field and how it starts to affect things before any word is ever spoken. And I think somewhere in here, oh, she believes beauty is a portal to the divine. And I’m wondering if you could say anything about how you use create beauty as a portal.

Kelly Rich [00:45:28]:
I would love to. I would also love to comment on what you you said a moment ago about I’m gonna summarize in my own way What I needed, I now give. Mhmm. And something that really shifted my perspective is when one of my teachers said there’s no difference between healing and being healed. And what you need is what someone else needs. I also, in my work, I’ll bring women through deep reflection sometimes in the form of ceremony to sit with their life and to look at who they were. Like, what did you love as a child? And what were the characters that you were drawn to? Like, what were the qualities of those characters and what qualities in them are also in you? And the things that you loved, how did that shape you? I think we can complicate our purpose too much. If you’re truly, truly meant to help people through their own sacred transformations, which a lot of people use that language these days.

Kelly Rich [00:46:52]:
Right? Then you yourself have to go through transformations. You are not spared, but also the space you hold is related to the space you were in before. So for me and my work, when I mentioned and shed a couple tears earlier about telling the story of my father and how it really was, and I can see it was a gift because there’s no way I could hold space for people in the way that I do without that experience. There’s no way. So the transformations you’ve gone through, some people call it like channeling your pain into purpose. Right? It’s like your purpose is right there. I think we over complicate it, like take some time, reflect on your life. What have you gone through? There’s such a difference between knowledge and experience.

Kelly Rich [00:47:45]:
I’ve spent my whole life. I’ve spent 100 of 1,000 of dollars on educating myself. I had to realize that education isn’t wisdom. Wisdom comes through experience. You can buy knowledge. Go for it. It’s a beautiful thing. But the wisdom comes from experience.

Kelly Rich [00:48:04]:
So I I felt like I really had to say that before I continued, but beauty as a portal to the divine. The first thing I think of is a rose and roses hold such a sweet space in my heart. I’m just so so drawn to them. It’s pretty rare if I don’t have roses in some shape or form at a ceremony or an event or a retreat. And your like, what you think is beautiful, it draws you in. Like, when you see, like, a beautiful human, whether it’s their physical form or their aura or their eyes or their glow, What does it do? It draws you in. It pulls you in. It grabs your attention.

Kelly Rich [00:48:54]:
It’s like you can’t look away. It’s like that person who has the glow and they walk into a room and everybody just stares. Like, there’s something there even if you wouldn’t call it beauty. Right? It’s like a portal to something. And to me, I’ve always loved beautiful things, like in the form of material things. And that was a really big struggle for me actually throughout many periods of my life. Like I thought that I couldn’t do what I do and like love fashion or love clothes or love like putting on lipstick. And I thought I had to look like everybody else.

Kelly Rich [00:49:28]:
And I think sometimes I can catch people off guard actually by what I wear because they think I should be wearing something else if I’m like holding ceremony. But what is beautiful to me, like I feel connected to the divine because that’s a part of my calling. It’s a part of what I love and beauty to me just feels like love. Like if you think something is beautiful, like there’s probably love there. So to me, love is God. Love is nature. Love. Love is everything To me, like, my work is love.

Kelly Rich [00:49:59]:
Like, when people ask what I channel, it’s love. So another way of saying that, I guess, would be beauty. Like, creating beautiful spaces and seeing people and their energy just completely transform when they walk into a space is unlike anything else. And I think, of course, beauty goes beyond just the physical stuff. But, again, that can be a portal too, but it’s our energy. It’s like the intention behind why that rose is there and why it’s in that corner and why that specific candle is with that. Like that energy, that that to me is beauty because that is someone’s true essence when they create and they heal from that real and true place. Like, that’s beauty.

Kelly Rich [00:50:44]:
That’s a portal. That’s where you channel from. That’s, like, that’s it. Like, if you feel that, probably has something to do with why you’re here. Mhmm. As

Sarah Tacy [00:50:55]:
you said, love and beauty and God all in the same sentence, it made me think of being back 2,008 at Agape in just outside of LA with Michael Beckwith. And he tells his story about his awakening in which in a dream, he is he’s killed. And it’s not that’s not normally what happens. Generally, right before we’re about to die in a dream, we’ll wake up. And he said it felt like a real death. He could see the whole thing happening. He could feel the pain and he felt himself die. And as he died, he had this at that time, he was not wanting to use the word God.

Sarah Tacy [00:51:40]:
And so he called it love beauty. Like, he did. Like, this is my memory of the story. It’s like so he called the divine love beauty, and all he could see and all he could feel was just this love beauty everywhere. And he woke up in what some people may have said was like his awakening or one of these big moments where he had this absolute shift in the life he was living to who he became and what he channels. And that sometimes he drops into this space where he’ll be in an elevator and he just drops fully into this love beauty and he thinks he knows everybody. And the other thing that came up as you were talking about people coming more and more into their essence, that it’s not the most beautiful person, how it might be described on paper, that may draw someone’s attention as they walk into the room, but their essence and their vibration. And I think about when I used to do these teacher trainings in Costa Rica, whether as a student or a teacher, and I would watch people over the weeks and they just became more and more beautiful.

Sarah Tacy [00:52:50]:
And sometimes it looked like they had this glow. And I was like, well, it is humid down here. Is it the humidity? I feel like, but at the beginning, I didn’t see it. And the way people would glow and the light that came from them after a month of hours of day of moving their body and breathing and working through pieces of themselves on that last day or even as just as a month was unfolding, they just would exude more and more beauty and light. And so although I was really thinking about, yeah, the the rose and the setup of a room and all of that is part of it, Those other images came to mind as you were speaking. So thank you for bringing those images back into my current time awareness.

Kelly Rich [00:53:41]:
Yeah. My pleasure.

Sarah Tacy [00:53:43]:
Thank you for coming on today. Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for sharing your honesty. Thank you for after I say something, going back and and kind of closing the circle with what feels true and real to you. I appreciate that.

Kelly Rich [00:53:58]:
Thank you so much for having me. This was this was a joy, actually, to talk with you. I know we talked about some heavy stuff, but it was a joy to sit here with you. And thank you for asking the questions that you did.

Sarah Tacy [00:54:12]:
Thank you. I will generally close out with a little prayer. And so I’ll just see what comes to mind. What comes to heart generally comes in the form of a show me. In this moment, feeling an abundance of presence and gratitude. And first I may say giving gratitude for those times in life where what came was so massive gratitude for the body and its infinite wisdom of how to numb or medicate or help us through. And then show me, show me times and places that angels in human form have showed up. Show me in present time angels in human form or animal form or in nature, or perhaps even ancestors who may be around that I don’t naturally see or naturally notice.

Sarah Tacy [00:55:45]:
Show me resources as I become more and more myself. Show me authentic sisterhood with those who are finding ways to really tend to themselves as self care being a basis of community care. And I’m inviting for myself and anyone who feels good, just a nice full inhale and an exhale. Thank you so much. Thank you for tuning in. It’s been such a pleasure. If you’re looking for added support, I’m offering a program that’s totally free called 21 days of untapped support. It’s pretty awesome.

Sarah Tacy [00:56:49]:
It’s very easy. It’s very helpful. You can find it at sarahtacey.com. And if you love this episode, please subscribe and like. Apparently, it’s wildly useful. So we could just explore what happens when you scroll down to the bottom. Subscribe, rate, maybe say a thing or 2. If you’re not feeling it, don’t do it.

Sarah Tacy [00:57:10]:
It’s totally fine. I look forward to gathering with you again. Thank you so much.