Find Your Spark

In this episode of the Find Your SPARK Podcast, Nicole Wilson shares her brother’s story and the impact of suicide loss from a loved one. Last week, Nicole released a blog sharing her perspective as a young girl, losing her father due to suicide. This week, she shares her brother Seth’s story. Last year in 2020, Seth ended his life by suicide. As this situation is still very fresh to her and tough to talk about, Nicole shares how this experience with a clearer understanding of mental health and resilience, made it a little different than it was when she was a child and unaware of her SPARK. Nicole expresses her feelings throughout the experience and how she navigates through with compassion and love for her brother and explains how she understands her brothers heartbreaking experience - how his thoughts took over the moment he was in so innocently. 

In this episode of the Find Your SPARK Podcast, in honor of suicide awareness month, Nicole Wilson and Kathryn Bonney share their stories and experiences on suicide and why bringing awareness around it is important. Kathryn shares her history with suicide and how learning this simple understanding about the human mind has helped her overcome those strong and overwhelming feelings that used to wash over her and caused many suicide attempts. Kathryn shares her eye-opening moments and how she got through it to be here today and bring awareness around the mind and suicide prevention. Nicole shares her experience with the loss of two people in her family due to suicide and how she has noticed, since learning about the mind, the innocence in those lowest moments of her father and her brother. Bringing awareness around the mind and mental health is so important and everyone deserves to understand it. Your SPARK is always there, even when it feels really covered up. This is why we at The SPARK Initiative want to bring awareness around suicide this month. To help everyone who has felt the overwhelming feelings of suicide, a survivor of suicide, or a survivor of suicide loss, we are here for you. Your mental health matters to us and we are here to help you see your SPARK inside.

In this episode of the Find Your SPARK Podcast, Stephanie shares another incident that almost led to a nervous breakdown. In a complete betrayal of her trust, her son charged $1200 in video games to her credit card. While efforts to get the money refunded have failed, something inside her is telling her that it’s ok. Stephanie explores how this could possibly be true when all evidence points to the contrary. Join Stephanie in her raw, ongoing exploration of the unknown where it appears that it might be possible that WE are ok even when IT'S not ok.

A few weeks ago, Brooke and Ashley shared about their experience working with a group of inspiring women from the Falkenburg County Jail in “The Healing Power of Presence” podcast. In this weeks’ episode, they reflect on their time teaching  SPARK’s Insight to Well-Being Program with this group and how the space created allowed the women to teach themselves and SPARK their own insights.  Brooke and Ashley also share a few letters the women wrote. Listen as the participants, themselves, explain why understanding their mind and their emotions helped them to see others in a deeper way and created unexpected connections that led to the whole group coming together despite all their differences.

*There were two quotes shared on this podcast that were in letters the ladies in jail wrote out. We wanted to give credit to the two authors who wrote these quotes.

The first quote is from Nicola Bird’s A Little Peace of Mind book. “When we look back there were always little signs that we were heading off course, but we were so caught up in our self-conscious worried thinking about ourselves that we either didn’t hear them or completely ignored them, but life happens in service of us and it keeps attempting to wake us up until we have no choice but to listen.”

The second quote shared was from the same book and was a quote by Dr. Dicken Bettinger. “Your psychological suffering is simply a function of mistaking your own thought content for truth.”

In this episode of the Find Your SPARK podcast, Stephanie Fox asked her mom, Shirley, to join her to discuss a recent harrowing experience driving to the top of the Continental Divide in Colorado. While they are happy to have done it and lived to tell the tale, both of their minds convinced them that death was a real possibility. On the other hand, the other passengers in the car were either having the time of their lives or totally obvious to any danger.  Stephanie and Shirley reflect on the power of the mind, how it created their experience and the relief that was available to them by closing their eyes and going to their happy place.

In this episode of the Find Your SPARK podcast, Brooke and Ashley share about their experience of presence inside jail.  They share what they have seen about listening while truly being present with someone, and the connection others feel from this. They talk about the different ways many of us are taught to listen and the truths they have seen about listening.

In this episode of the Find your SPARK podcast, Nicole Wilson reintroduces some familiar faces. SPARKING Change Interns, Sadie and Zaria discuss their upcoming group project IGNITE  and what inspired it. They have focused on the impact they wanted their project to have, what each group member wanted to bring to the table, and the population they wanted IGNITE to reach. This group of interns all have aligning passions and collaborated to SPARK something amazing; from expressive art to life skills and financial literacy, tune in to catch up on the latest in their community.

In this episode of the Find Your SPARK podcast, Nicole Wilson introduces SPARKING Change Intern, Zaria Jean-Baptiste. Zaria shares her experience with the internship program and what she has seen for herself on a personal level. She explains how prior, she had everything in life planned out on a timeline – from graduating school to getting married and having kids. She learns that the way the mind works, and how the world can sometimes throw us off track, we can adjust and know that even though things don’t go as planned, that we are still ok and resilient throughout the process. She also shares how the one thing she wants to always remind herself of after she completes the internship is that she never has to go searching for herself in the world, that everything she needs and has is already inside of her. Whether it’s her SPARK guiding her to do something different or take a step back, she knows to trust it and that her ability to adjust and create is always within.

In this episode, Brooke Wheeldon-Reece and Ashley Hunt reflect on their personal experiences with conflict. While Brooke used to run towards conflict, Ashley used to run away from it, and they discuss how they’ve learned to handle confrontation in healthier ways. They also express how important it is for one to be in a clear state of mind when bringing up issues and the significance of responding as respectfully as possible. Tune in to learn how caring about your relationships means trusting that the people close to you can handle those difficult conversations!

In this episode, Brooke Wheeldon-Reece and Ashley Hunt reflect on their personal experiences with conflict. While Brooke used to run towards conflict, Ashley used to run away from it, and they discuss how they’ve learned to handle confrontation in healthier ways. They also express how important it is for one to be in a clear state of mind when bringing up issues and the significance of responding as respectfully as possible. Tune in to learn how caring about your relationships means trusting that the people close to you can handle those difficult conversations!