Ep32: Valuing Stories of Suffering- Holly Kapusinksi, MSN, RN NC-BC CPNP-PC

About Holly Kapusinksi

Holly Kapusinksi, MSN, RN NC-BC CPNP-PC

As a young girl, Holly was drawn to nature and helping others which provided deep connection to others. It was while volunteering as a candy striper that she dove deeper into interacting with patients and families and planted the seeds of a career in healthcare.

 

Her desire to pursue nursing cemented while in college after a serendipitous meeting with a Nurse Practitioner.

 

After attending Purdue University for three years studying the natural sciences, she fulfilled her dream to become a nurse and proudly graduated from Akron City Hospital’s Idabelle Firestone School of Nursing in Akron, Ohio with her nursing diploma. She went on to obtain her Master of Science in Nursing from the University of Akron with a focus on the health and wellbeing of children as a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner.

 

She was awarded ANCC’s credential of Pediatric Nurse Practitioner in 1996 until 2001. After taking some time to stay at home and homeschool her children, she pursued recertification as a Primary Care Pediatric Nurse Practitioner in 2021. She is currently combining her love for children, families, and teaching as both a PNP and Nurse Coach.

 

She has had a lifelong interest in the impact of nutrition on a person’s wellbeing, along with alternative healing therapies, and the mind, body, and spirit connections to a person’s wellbeing. In 2017 she attended the International Nurse Coach Association program and obtained her Board Certification from AHNCC as an Integrative Nurse Coach® in 2018.

 

She went on to obtain additional advanced training in Clinical Nutrition from the Institute for Functional Medicine and the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine’s Plant Based Prevention of Disease Conference.

 

She established Life Cycle Balance LLC in 2018 and has led numerous online and community wellness seminars and webinars on topics ranging from bearing witness to suffering, stress management, nutrition, brain health, caregiver stress, self-care renewal techniques, and non-violent communication techniques from the Center for Non-Violent Communication.

 

She has completed advanced training as a facilitator for Non-Violent Communication and Healing Circles Global.  In 2020 she presented a workshop at the South Eastern Theatre Conference (SETC) in Louisville, KY on using NVC starting with yourself.  In 2022 she co-presented with Dr. Karen Avino at the AHNA annual conference on finding your coaching niche using Appreciative Inquiry.

 

She volunteers with the Panhandle Health Medical Reserve Corps. in Idaho, in her church, and community. Her passions include her family, learning Latin and American Sign Language, reading, cycling long distances, hiking, traveling and exploring health and wellbeing.

 

Her future dreams include developing additional programs to provide healing and nurturing for children and families, creating a wellness center, and writing a book about being a Nurse Coach and healing from trauma.

Contact

holly@lifecyclebalance.llc

Ep32: Valuing Stories of Suffering- Holly Kapusinksi, MSN, RN NC-BC CPNP-PC Highlights

“Every single person has an idea of what suffering is to them. And their suffering may not be the same as mine. I came to understand that I can never label somebody else and their experience as being suffering, or joy, or happiness, or loneliness, or sadness. It’s asking them what it is for them. And that has helped tremendously in being able to build therapeutic relationships with patients and clients.”  ~Holly Kapusinski, MSN, RN NC-BC CPNP-PC

Aha’s

  • Stories are an important element of the human experience and need to be told!
  • Nurses have so many important stories to tell and to share
  • Suffering is a unique experience to each human
  • Suffering in Nursing is felt not only as a patient, it is also felt deeply as a Nurse bearing witness
  • The Nurse Coaching Integrative Approaches for Health and Wellbeing textbook written by Barbara Dossey, Susan Luck and Bonney Schaub speaks extensively to the human element of suffering and notes…

Nurse Coaches;

  • acknowledge the suffering
  • give voice to the suffering
  • bear Witness to the suffering
  • create and implement a self-care plan
  • develop a supportive Work Environment

Resources and Links

Dr. Margaret Newman

Integrative Nurse Coach Academy Nurse Coach Certificate Program

How to Release Stories of Suffering to Protect Your Own Energies:  Tips from Integrative Nurse Coaching Students

Nurse Coaching Integrative Approaches for Health and Wellbeing textbook

Ep32: Valuing Stories of Suffering- Holly Kapusinksi, MSN, RN NC-BC CPNP-PC Transcript

Nicole Vienneau  00:00

Welcome, everyone, to Integrative Nurse Coaches in ACTION! My name is Nicole Vienneau. I’m a Board-Certified Nurse Coach and I’m also your host and today it is exciting because we are speaking with Holly Kapusinski, who is a Board-Certified Nurse Coach. She’s also a Pediatric Primary Care Nurse Practitioner.

She is the owner of Life Cycle Balance. And she’s also senior faculty with the Integrative Nurse Coach Academy. And she also happens to be a very dear friend of mine. And I am so excited, because we always talk about Nurse Coaching. When we get together, we are like Nurse Coach nerds, and I love it. So, let’s welcome Holly today.

Holly Kapusinski  00:49

Thank you, Nicole. Oh, it’s such a pleasure to be here. I was asked, not too long ago, when I was gonna get a chance to be on your show, and I was like: when I get asked by the extraordinaire Nicole. That’s when. So, I was really excited that you asked me to come on and share our teatime together.

Nicole Vienneau  01:12

Exactly. We’ve got to have our teatime. Our teatime to talk about all things Nurse Coaching and beyond and whatever comes up today. And so before we get into the nitty gritty of Nurse Coaching, we all would love to hear a little bit about your story of how you became a Nurse.

Holly Kapusinski  01:30

I think it’s a really interesting story because I never really saw myself as a Nurse. I remember always wanting to be a pediatrician. And my heart was always kind of leaning in that direction. And then, you know, sometimes what happens throughout our life, we have like new moments that happen to us. And we change our direction or our focus.

And so that moment for me came while I was doing undergraduate studies at Purdue University, which, interestingly enough, I never wanted to go to Purdue, I actually had a little private liberal arts school picked out that I wanted to attend and kind of follow my passion there. So, I ended up going to Purdue and I felt swallowed up. And I felt very alone.

I can remember calling my mom like telling her that I would have to show my student ID in order to like go take an exam. And that just was not at the core of who I was. So, I struggled. I struggled a lot while I was there. But I also really became interested in science and the body and really starting to understand that I was very attracted to knowing how things worked within our body and what drove us.

And so I started feeling like maybe I wanted to do Nursing, but it was so competitive at the time. And it was really difficult to get into Nursing school there, that I decided to leave Purdue and I ended up going back to Ohio where I was from. And I found a diploma Nursing school attached to a hospital that I absolutely loved. And I spent two and a half years there. And I felt like I was home.

I really felt like, you know, in those days, we were not only Nursing students, but we were also staff for the hospital. So, I worked at the hospital as I was going through Nursing school, like as a Certified Nurse’s Aide almost. And I just fell in love with the patient interaction and just getting to know more and more about what happens in health and wellness, and in sickness and disease.

And I explored every floor I was on that I worked, and I started picking out which areas I thought I would really like. And critical care was like at the top of my list. I just thought it was exciting. It kind of went towards my type A personality of like, you know, being able to move and think and do and be and like just be in the thick of everything. And I graduated and that was my dream. I wanted to work on it in ICU.

But in those days you weren’t allowed to. Like, you had to kind of do your due diligence, so to speak, and go through the ranks. You weren’t… that was like the elite, you know, to get to ICU. So, my first Nursing job was actually on a plastic surgery floor intermixed with med surg, and I loved it. Because we had ventilators, we did cancer treatments. We did cutting edge kind of things on this floor.

And I really… I fell in love more and more with it, and what I was doing, and it was exciting to be developing as a Nurse, and fulfilling that part of myself that was really intrigued and curious. And I had a health scare on the way to work one day. And that kind of ended my career for a while.

I didn’t really know what happened. It was kind of like I had a TIA on the way to work; I lost feeling and sensation on the left side of my body.

And I was in the hospital for a week and a half. Nobody could really figure out what was going on. And during that time, I was having these really deep conversations with myself, with the universe, with the Creator, whoever that was. I didn’t really know, I didn’t have a faith at that time. And I started evaluating what I was doing, how I was living. Really starting to think about what was really important to me.

And my life changed after that. It just radically changed. I went back to work. And they really could never give me an idea about what happened. And I went on with my life. And I started thinking a little bit differently about what I wanted to do. And so I had my son. And we moved to Florida, and I was living with family. And I was leaving my son at daycare, and I had a job at an ICU in pediatrics in St. Petersburg, Florida.

And I loved it. But I also started discovering a part of myself that I lend towards Nurse Coaching, and that is I started thinking about how being in the world could influence other people. And so my interactions there with the families and with these children, and then having my own son, just really turned things around in a different direction for me.

I still absolutely loved pediatrics, but it was hard to have a small child and work in an ICU in pediatrics. So, I decided to go back home with my son, and I ended up being a Charge Nurse in an adolescent chemical dependency unit.

And that was even more Nurse Coaching for me, because suddenly, I was interacting in a way, listening to these stories of these young people and hearing the highs and lows, things that were changing their lives, things that were keeping them from doing and being who they were wanting to be.

And I started thinking about going back to school and getting my Nurse Practitioner and thinking about how I might be impactful in that way. And so when I started my master’s program in that, it was an RN to MSN program, which was one of the first in the country. And I felt very privileged to be a part of that. I started learning about the Nurse theorists. And I fell in love with Dr. Margaret Newman. Health as Expanding Consciousness.

I was amazed at what she was talking about. And I just felt such a heart connection to this woman, this person who was really thinking about how interacting with other people was all about consciousness and evolving and how there was not health and disease, but there was a continuum. And that when you interacted with each other, you kind of expanded together.

And my dream, of course, was — she became one of my first mentors — I wanted to meet her so badly. And I reached out to her; I wrote her a letter. She was working at the University of Minnesota at the time. And I was a little full of myself. I had a little… I was, you know, in my late 20s, and so I was just feeling like I could do anything, right? You know, I mean, I just had so much gumption.

So, I never expected her to contact me back. It just was kind of like a fan letter, you know, where I just really love you and I love what you’re doing. And this is what I’m doing and this is where I’m working, and I’m in my master’s program. And she actually picked up the phone and called me.

And I remember, my boyfriend at the time answered the phone, and he’s telling me that Dr. Margaret Newman’s on the phone.  And I said, “Oh, get out of here. She is not.” I thought he was like pulling my leg because, you know, he knew how much I was in love with her and I was doing all this stuff about her theory.

And so, he’s like, “No, really, she’s on the phone.” I mean, he was like dead serious. And I was like, “Oh, my gosh, no.” I was afraid to pick up the phone, like, I was like, “Hello?”

So, one of the highlights of my life was to, like, hear her. And I actually got to go and meet her and see where she worked and spend a few days with her, and did some research with her while I was working on the adolescent chemical dependency unit. And just really felt like that was the direction my life was gonna go in. And then again, life happened, things changed.

I got married, I ended up in a country — in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — and I couldn’t work as a Nurse. And I started having children. And my life just kind of took a different turn. And I just tucked that away somewhere within myself, just knowing that one day I might get back to that. And long story short, many more things started happening. And I ended up in a place where I had spent years homeschooling my children, and I was looking and thinking about what did I want to do next.

And I had also healed myself from a very serious heart condition. I changed my lifestyle. I changed how I thought, how I was eating, my activity. And I healed myself from that heart condition. And I thought to myself: now, I want to do something where I can help other people heal themselves in ways that maybe they didn’t think were possible. So, I started looking into coaching.

And I still remember the day, Nicole. Like, I happened to come across a press release where INCA was partnering with the Institute for Functional Medicine and offering a program. And I was like, “What? I could be a Nurse and a coach? I could combine the two? The two great loves.” And so I got on the website, and I started looking who it was I could call, and your name came up.

You were closest to me; you were in Texas at the time. I was in Mississippi. I’m like: I’m calling this Nicole person, I’m going to find out what this is all about and see whether or not this is something I want to do. So, I did. I picked up the phone and you answered and we had a lovely conversation. And you just started asking me coaching questions.

What’s stopping you? What do you see yourself doing? How do you see this making an impact on your life? What’s keeping you from signing up right now? And I was like: “Nothing! I’m going to do it!” So, I hung up the phone, and I signed up. And I remember also talking to you about like the different locations because there were some options for where we could take it.

And of course, I had been to Washington State before. I loved it. And it was a place that called to my spirit. So, I went to Harmony Hill and I fell in love. I fell in love with Nurse Coaching. I fell in love with the Pacific Northwest. And probably the most important thing was I fell in love with myself all over again. Because I had lost myself along the way.

And I fell in love with the people who went through the program with me. And it was one of the first times in my life that I felt such a strong connection to other men and women who were feeling the same way that I was and had the same kind of desires and dreams. And it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. I still think that it was a pivotal moment in my life.

Nicole Vienneau  14:54

Holly, you and I are in two different states and I feel your energy as if you were sitting right beside me. And what a story. What a beautiful story that you share with us. From your beginnings at Purdue, and discovering science and wanting to know more about the body, and then getting your diploma in Nursing, and being staff at the hospital.

And my husband and I were just talking about this, I was trying to describe what it was like when I too was staff at a hospital going through a diploma program. And it was just a fun conversation, because he was like: “Wow, you guys did that?” And then your journey into discovering that you wanted to do, you know, that you felt that you had to do your time in Nursing, right? Which we’re often told that.

Yep, things are changing in respect to that. And then you had a health scare. You called it a health scare. And going through that allowed you to create some space and see yourself a little bit differently, and learn about self-evaluation. And moving through life, having a son, working in pediatrics ICU with a little one. You know, I’m thinking of all the Nurses who are doing similar things, you know?

Being a mom, being a dad, working full-time in such critical environments. And then meeting Margaret Newman. Your Nurse Theorist hero. And then working with her, too. I mean… and the balls. Can I say that on this podcast? I can. The gumption, the courage to reach out and ask her and talk and want to, you know, work with her and absorb her knowledge. I mean, and then just, you know, finding Nurse Coaching in a roundabout way.

And then we meet. And then we also meet, through this incredible Nurse Coaching program at the Integrative Nurse Coach Academy, a whole family of Nurses who love this work of Nurse Coaching, of being with one another instead of at one another, and just really connecting through the heart space. And, you know, basically, I think we are slowly shifting the way we see healthcare, and how we are living and working in healthcare.

Holly Kapusinski  17:44

Yes, I agree. I remember standing on the steps of Harmony Hill and asking for two things. One was that I would live in the Pacific Northwest, and that I would one day become faculty with INCA. And I just fell in love with Nurse Coaching to such a depth of my being that it was an aspiration of mine just to… I mean, you know, being mentored and being taught, you know, by Jan Booth and Karen Avino and Dianna Blom.

And, you know, Gretchen Schodde was there, and I mean, just having that experience of these women and what they shared with us and how they mentored us through that process, I just felt so held. And then, you know, actually getting to start teaching online with you and Jan was such a privilege, to learn from both of you, to get to do that.

So, I truly feel that it was serendipitous also in the fact that, you know, the Nurse Coaching, Dr. Barbara Dossey, and Susan Luck and Bonney Schaub, they all talk about some of the theorists and Dr. Newman was part of that. You know, and having the opportunity to learn from Susan Luck, who was a pioneer in holistic medicine Nursing, that thought, that way of being, the environmental piece, was so life-changing for me, also.

Just opened up my eyes to so many different things that I hadn’t been aware of. It’s like being in a room full of rockstars sometimes, you know? Like, just people that you admire that are really stepping out and doing really life-changing work to help many people. It’s a different way of being, and like, in the hospital, it wasn’t like that, it was somewhat like, you know, just for each other.

But I mean, really, Nurse Coaching is about really helping, like Dr. Dossey always says, you know, local to global. We’re covering the entire world. You know, it’s like the consciousness expanding through out the globe and changing the way we’re being with one another.

Nicole Vienneau  20:27

This new way of being, as Nurses — what were some of the things that you found within the program or relationships, or what were some of the things that really helped you evolve, or that you see is helping you evolve?

Holly Kapusinski  20:46

I think probably the number one thing that really helped was our core value number two, which is that piece about ourselves, the self-development, the self-reflection, and the self-evaluation. Just being more self-aware. Like I had mentioned earlier, I had lost myself through a series of many different events in my life, and by the time I came to Nurse Coaching, I really didn’t recognize myself.

I had forgotten some of my deeper wisdom. And it transformed me, to go through the process — that rediscovering myself. And I mean, you know, I tell this story to my students a lot, because it really was impactful. Two things were really impactful for me during my journey. One was we were given an assignment to write down what suffering looked like to us. I never even thought about that.

I had been carrying a lot of different suffering through my life, through my professional life, through my personal life, and I had never really been able to, or been asked, to think about what did that look like? Could I have a visual picture of that? And could I write about what did I think meant what did suffering mean to me? And that opened up a whole new vision for me, of what it’s like for each individual person.

Every single person has an idea of what suffering is to them. And their suffering may not be the same as mine. So, I really came to understand that I can never label somebody else and their experience as being suffering, or joy, or happiness, or loneliness, or sadness. That it really, it’s asking them what it is for them. And that has helped tremendously in being able to build therapeutic relationships with patients and clients that I’ve worked with in the hospital and out.

And even in my own personal relationships, never assuming that I have the answer to what it is that’s happening in their life, but really just asking that question. And the other was, is I felt I had put myself in a situation where I felt so trapped. I really felt like I had boxed myself in — in who I could be, who I wanted to be, and how I felt other people thought I needed to be. And it was all a big jumble, like a self-imposed kind of prison.

And we were given an assignment, or you know, kind of like a little — I don’t know if assignments like the right word — but we were given like a task to just like pick a picture of a door, or a window, that you identified with. And just that we were going to just share a little bit about that. And so, I remember picking like this medieval looking, kind of bars looking, kind of door, window.

And just sitting with that, just having some time to sit with that and think about, and ask myself: what is it about this picture and the situation that I have right now that makes me identify with this? And I just started playing around with the picture and I turned it upside down and suddenly it was if my whole worldview changed because suddenly, I didn’t see a door, I saw a window.

And it was an a-ha moment for me, that at any moment in my life, I could choose to get a different perspective, change the way I was looking at something, maybe ask somebody to talk to me or listen to me about what I’m struggling with. And I would have that moment of clarity, where I would be able to find within myself a different way, a different path, a different opening.

And so, I try to offer that to my clients now, when I work with people, you know, I listen to where they are right now, and what’s happening to them in that moment, and then maybe we explore what it was like before, or maybe asking, you know, tell me about a time when you really felt like you were more yourself, or that you really connected to yourself. What does that look like? And it gives people an opportunity to explore how a different perspective can change the way they’re looking at themselves, right then.

Nicole Vienneau  26:24

And that change of perspective, in the same space that we as Nurse Coaches were sharing that sacred space. And hearing them and being with them, and not trying to find the answers for them. Because we know we cannot do that, which is always a big shift for our new Nurse Coaches when they come into the program, because Nurses are always so focused on telling people what to do.

Because we have all the answers. And this perspective, though, flips everything on its head potentially, and us creating that safe space for people to explore that. So, I really heard you speaking about that door, and the bars on it, and I was imagining that as you were speaking to your life at that time, and then you flipped it over, and all of a sudden it becomes a window. And then the a-ha moments that come from that.

Holly Kapusinski  27:37

Yes, I really believe that I was reintroduced to love when I went through the program, that I had a new perspective of what love could be. And I felt such a burning desire to be able to share that, you know, with other people, not just people I worked with, but you know, when I started my business, I really felt a need to give back to my community because we were so injured. We had gone through Katrina.

And it’s really difficult, I think, for others to understand the trauma that’s associated with such a large scale natural disaster. I think people who go through wildfires and earthquakes and other large scale disasters where you don’t have any control over what’s about ready to happen, can somewhat fathom the impact that that leaves within… it just stays there.

And there are many people who still, to this day, on the Gulf Coast, suffer greatly and aren’t necessarily aware that that’s what it is. Whenever there’s a thunderstorm or whenever there’s just a threat of something coming, it’s a trigger, you know, that you don’t really understand. So, when I graduated and got my Nurse Coaching and became board-certified and started my business, I really wanted to give back to the community to bring a sense of togetherness again.

It was so devastating to have so much destroyed, not just your own personal home, but your community. I mean, our libraries were gone. Our hospital was, you know, incapacitated. You know, our places that we went to worship, our grocery stores, our trees… I mean, you know, like the whole landscape was changed. You know, the wildlife was gone. It was… it was just unimaginable.

It’s really hard to talk about because it’s still there. There’s still a part that lingers there that, you know, remembers it. Even though I didn’t stay — I mean, we left, we weren’t present when it came — we knew it was going to be really bad. We went back a couple of weeks after it had come through, and just even driving to get back to our homes was like going through a warzone.

So, I think that there’s really something to be said for helping to be a presence to your community in healing, and what you can do. And I know you do a lot of that, Nicole, as well. So, I know that you feel that same sense of like, being within and surrounding the community so that they’re aware that there’s somebody that they can connect to.

So, that’s where I started when I started my business, was in the community, was to be at the library to offer things at the library and connect and let people know that I was there and available to talk to and to listen, you know, to some of the things that had happened to us.

Nicole Vienneau  31:31

And holding that sacred, safe space for anything to come up.

Holly Kapusinski  31:39

Yes. And I see it would be a great need now, after we’ve gone through COVID, as well. You know, I was very saddened when we first started going through COVID, and there was… I knew that there was an ability for Nurse Coaches to be available to help. And yet we had restrictions, you know, like, for instance, some of the things of having a Nursing license in a single state.

Not being part of the compact. And yet, you know, you’re available to hear people suffering and people’s situations, and to have somebody listen to them, and be there and to walk alongside them. So, I mean, I did an interview, you know, talking about that — how important it is for us to be able, as Nurses, to be in the community and available.

That we have so much training and ability, as Nurses, to offer that to people in the community and people who have suffered through the hospital system, and people who have suffered through losses of family members. It needs to be utilized more. I mean, I just can’t say enough about that. I think that Nurse Coaches are integral to changing that and being part of the healing solution.

Nicole Vienneau  33:16

Oh, yes. We think of Nurses as the most ethically sound and trusted profession, and who better to listen, and who better to be with and to tell your story to then a Nurse? Because of those beautiful qualities, and many more, and many more, of course, and us Nurses are full of so many amazing qualities. I imagine you after Katrina, just being there, you know, being there, doesn’t describe what I am imagining.

However, I feel that, you know, this safety that you were offering, the openness and the willingness to hear the stories and to be with the people who had suffered in their way, right? And I just go back to what you said earlier. Even though you may have experienced the same Katrina, yet everyone was affected so differently in their suffering. That’s… yeah, that’s one of the things that I love so much about Nurse Coaching, is that we are allowing those stories to be told and opening up space for them to hold them.

Holly Kapusinski  34:49

I remember shortly after Katrina, when we started to get back to somewhat “normal”, they sent out social workers who were going door to door, knocking on doors, you know, to ask if anybody wanted to talk or if you were suffering from anything. And I remember thinking that, at the time, that really was not what we needed. What was really beneficial was similar to what a Nurse Coach does.

So, I remember being in the line to like, receive my ice and my bottled water and my little supplies after, in our little community, and we would get those, you know, like, sometimes we would get even Capri Suns. There would be — they sent in like the National Guard — and there were people there to help us just get small supplies. And what was so impactful for me were two things during that time.

It wasn’t the social worker coming and asking if I wanted to talk, it was a man who asked me if I wanted a piece of candy, who was standing, waving us through, but saw me. He saw my distress, and my pain, and what I was going through. And that human act of kindness, of just being there, present with me, and offering me something to connect us, was so healing.

And the other was, the day I saw the Salvation Army food truck setup. And I finally got a hot meal after several weeks of eating MREs. I still remember that. I mean, it was like, you know, beans and rice, but I didn’t care. I was so happy to have… like somebody thought enough about making us food and nourishing us, that I was in tears. Just those moments of real connection, and I really feel that that’s what Nurse Coaches do, as well.

Nicole Vienneau  37:11

I’m thinking to the name of your business, Life Cycle Balance, and how this connects to you as a human, you as a Nurse, Nurse Practitioner, Board-Certified Nurse Coach, but also the stories that you’ve shared here with us. And can you tell us more about Life Cycle Balance and what that means to you?

Holly Kapusinski  37:43

Yeah, I actually came up with that name while I was riding on a 400 mile bike ride with my daughter. And we were doing the Erie Canal ride across New York. And there were periods of time when I didn’t know if I was going to be able to get on my bike or ride 50 miles that day. And I would have all this time in my mind to just like… I was just trying to just get from one place to the next and just stay on the bike.

And I just kept thinking about that, you know, how like life is just a cycle. And sometimes we’re balanced, and sometimes we’re not. And the coming together with another person and the parting ways and the coming together and the parting ways. And so, I knew that I wanted there to be like a bicycle wheel in there. Because it’s circular, right?

I mean, sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down below and sometimes you get flats, and sometimes you are riding smooth, and sometimes you’re not. And so, I just really started thinking about like what I wanted that to look like. And I guess I also started thinking about it a little bit more after I graduated too, and started thinking about what I wanted it to represent for people.

And, you know, when I worked to come up with the logo, and really cemented for me what my business was going to be, it just fit perfectly, you know? Like, I have leaves that are just connected at one point, and because we’re all connected, we all belong together. I think we forget that so many times, that we belong to each other. And we get unbalanced when we forget that we belong to one another.

So, it has a lot of significance for me, and a lot of meaning, and it’s very personal. Because I did have a lot of, you know, ups and downs and coming unglued and coming back together. I mean, I feel like sometimes I’ve lived five people’s lives instead of just my own. There’s just so many things.

Sometimes, when I think about writing down some of the things that have happened to me, or I try to talk about any part of my story, I’m like: nobody’s gonna believe this, it’s just so far fetched, it would even be out of the Hollywood level, just because it’s like, so unbelievable sometimes. But it’s true. It’s my story. And so, I would say, probably in the last few years, I’ve really been trying to embrace it and not minimize it.

Because for a long time I did, I tried to make it seem like my life was not that bad, or I hadn’t been through that much. And it caused myself a lot of pain and suffering. I like what you talk about, that emotional labor, you know, I feel like I spent a lot of years doing that. Like, I had something within myself, I knew the truth of things, but whenever people would ask me how I was or want to see the outside of it, then I would just give them what it was that they wanted to see.

Not truly who it was that was inside. So slowly, I would say over the last five years, I’ve been starting to embrace that. All of me. Every shadow, every smile, you know, everything that makes up me. And honoring that. Because there’s nobody else like me. And there’s nobody else like you. And each one of us is so unique and so special. And sometimes we hide that and get lost in it, and forget it, and don’t share it.

Nicole Vienneau  42:02

So very well said, and said right from your heart. Which then leads me to my next question, which is, you spoke of Nurses at the bedside, having gone through COVID, which is its own trauma itself. And our listeners, all of us listening would love to know some words from your heart, maybe specifically to Nurses who are struggling right now.

Holly Kapusinski  42:35

I think that people like to give us a lot of platitudes when we’re struggling and in trauma and have experienced, you know, things that nobody else can understand. And I think that it’s really important that we collectively hold space for one another, for whatever it is that you need.

And having another human being, just to give you that space, to allow you to feel whatever it is that you’re feeling and not give you advice or tell you what it is that you need to be doing, or you just need to take care of yourself better, or you need to, you know, meditate or you need to do all these things. I think it’s really important for all of us just to be okay with not being okay.

Just feeling. Just allowing for that feeling to be present, and to have somebody acknowledge it, and to honor it, and to say: I see you, and I hear you, and I’m holding you in my heart for whatever it is that you need. And if you need something, I’m here, and I’m willing to be there for whatever it is that you need. There is no way to understand things that are completely out of our control, so the best thing that we can do is hold on to one another.

Nicole Vienneau  44:20

Yes. And I’m giving you virtual hugs right now. I’m giving virtual hugs to you, Holly, and I’m also giving… I know we’re all giving virtual hugs to everybody listening. So, where can we find you, Holly? Where can we find you?

Holly Kapusinski  44:41

Well, you can find me on my web page, my business, at lifecyclebalance.llc. And you can find me at holly@lifecyclebalance.llc for my email. I have an Instagram page: @lifecyclebalance. And I have a Facebook page.

Something that I’m getting ready to offer that I would like to just share with everyone is, I’ve given a lot of thought and attention to the suffering of people who have lost… infant loss, whether prenatal or, you know, in the first year or two of life, and holding a healing circle for that intention. And I’m going to offer it every fourth Wednesday of the month, and you can come and go as you like.

But just to hold space for people who maybe have never shared that information with somebody, or felt like there was a safe place to open up about that or feel connected to another person. We do such a great job of honoring the lives of those who have lived long, and those who are cut short, sometimes we do not honor, and also, tragically, we sometimes do not want to talk about. So, I really felt called to bring some time to that, and just offer that for people who might need that.

Nicole Vienneau  46:17

Beautiful. A beautiful intention and definitely bring attention to the loss in creating that safe space. Yeah, thank you. And I will for sure be sharing all of these links in our show notes to find more about the healing circle for infant loss, and that would be lovely, to share more about the healing circle for infant loss.

So, before we end our time together, I’ll just open it up for is there anything else that you would like to share?

Holly Kapusinski  46:56

Two things. So, one of them is recently this just really spoke to me, because we talk a lot about how Nurse Coaching is different. What is it that’s different about Nurse Coaching, that way of being with people and not having to give them advice or knowledge or be the expert. And it’s a different way of being. And I read this recently and it just helped me to really put it succinctly. And it was: knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. So, I think that’s what I’m going to leave everybody with.

Nicole Vienneau  47:45

Knowledge puffs up. Love builds up.

Holly Kapusinski  47:50

Let’s start building each other up.

Nicole Vienneau  47:54

Thank you so much, Holly, for sharing your wonderful wisdom, beautiful insights on many different things. And thank you.

Holly Kapusinski  48:05

Thank you, Nicole. It’s been a pleasure.

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