From Trauma to Triumph: Sara Avant Stover’s Guidance for Overcoming Grief
This week, Doro and Tricia are joined by Sara Avant Stover, a women’s healing coach, business strategist, and author. With openness and grace, Sara takes them along her life journey, marked by significant moments such as her battle with cancer and the profound betrayal by her fiancé, which ultimately led her to embrace her role as a writer and spiritual guide. Sara shares how she navigated heartbreak, as well as her path towards healing, and discusses the complexities of grief processing and advocating for a holistic approach that acknowledges the ripple effect of traumatic events.
Sara also talks about her book, "A Handbook for the Heartbroken," offering invaluable insight into becoming vulnerable, seeking support during tough times, and embracing authenticity amidst life's challenges. She underscores the transformative effect of confronting trauma and reclaiming personal power on the journey toward self-discovery and renewal. With her compassionate guidance, listeners are encouraged to embrace their falls from grace, cultivate resilience, and confidently develop a more authentic and fulfilling life.
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Website: https://saraavantstover.com/
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Quotes:
“When we experience one heartbreak, that can have ripple effects. Heartbreak can be the lead domino.” - Sara Avant Stover
“When we go through a challenging time, we can't go through it by ourselves. We can't go through anything by ourselves. We need community. We need support.” - Sara Avant Stover
“Surrendering to grief is the engine of transformation. Without letting grief move through us, we're not going to be carried to the shores of our new life.” - Sara Avant Stover
Show Notes:
SARA STOVER: I guess we'll go back towards the beginning. And we were talking before we started recording that. I grew up on East Coast in New York City and Connecticut, and I went to college in New York City. And as I was approaching my graduation, I was planning on going to serve in the Peace Corps in West Africa, and I was getting a litany of health tests needed in order to to get a position there. And in one of those tests with my gynecologist, I found that I had the early stages of cervical cancer, which I now know is quite common for women who are in their late teens and early 20s. But it was it was quite progressed. And so with that diagnosis, I couldn't go to the Peace Corps because I was going to need regular screening every three months. And so I was really crushed. But it was how life works. You know, when one door closes, another door opens. And one of my teachers from high school was getting his master's at at Columbia, and I was graduating from Barnard across the street. And we had coffee. And while we were having coffee together, he shared that he was going to go over to Thailand to be the head master of an American style boarding school over there, and he offered me a job, and he offered me a job to teach English literature and writing and dance. And he said the person who was just going to teach this was just dropped out. And we need to know in the next couple of days if you want to come.
SARA STOVER: So I didn't know anything about Thailand, really. I just associated it with elephants and rice. And I remember I went to went to Barnes and Noble and read about it, and particularly about this city in the North where I would live called Chiang Mai. And I just felt, yes, I want to go there. So I ended up going there. I thought I was just going to be for a year, but I ended up, I ended up living there for nine years for my, the decade of my 20s. Wow. And it was there. I taught at that school for a couple of years, and then I branched off to work for myself and started writing for us magazines, got my yoga certification, and then started specializing in supporting women. And that was really just the beginning of the journey that I continue to be on now. And I ended up moving back to the US when I was about 30 and moved here, where I am now in Boulder, Colorado. And my first book came out at that time called The Way of the Happy Woman. And since then I've been writing books and leading retreats and online programs for women. Uh, first starting with more of a general women's spirituality. But now I focus more exclusively on spiritual women entrepreneurs, but all about really finding our true power inside and expressing that on the outside and clearing all the obstacles, especially the limiting beliefs and the past wounds that stand in our way of doing that.
SARA STOVER: I share in the book that I yeah I acknowledge the, the contrast of my first book was called The Way of the Happy Woman. And then my third book is called A Handbook for the heartbroken. But my books really follow the different seasons that we as women move through, both physically and emotionally, psychologically, spiritually. And this book grew out of a series of experiences that I had serial heartbreaks between 2016 and 2020, and the catalyzing event was finding out in a very shocking way that the man that I was engaged to, we were together for five years, that he had been cheating on me for the majority of our time together.
SARA STOVER: And for for anyone who's experienced a betrayal, you understand that? It just splices splices you through the core and yeah, and not only shattered our relationship, but it really shattered my sense of self, my trust in myself, my perception of what my life was about and what my life had been about for this past several years. And then it had ripple effects that moved out through all areas of my life, my relationships, my career, my finances, and. And then there were that wasn't just a one and done event. Then there were several more experiences that happened over those years that led me deep into this studentship with with heartbreak.
SARA STOVER: I don't know how if I don't know exactly how they were related to it. I think some were. Some of the things I talk about in the book is when we experience one heartbreak that can have ripple effects and that can be we can have a lead domino. Yeah. So say there's a divorce. Or in my case, we weren't married, so it was a separation. But then that can have ripple effects. So we can lose friends because our, our friends might be siding with one person or the other. We can have financial challenges if we, someone in the partnership was more of the breadwinner. And maybe if we if we, especially in my case, being self-employed, it takes a lot to to show up for people and to keep everything running. And when you're going through challenging times and you don't have time to rest and take a break, that can kind of have a compounding negative impact. There can be challenges.
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