Coloring Life

[00:00:00] Paula: Welcome to ‘TesseLeads” with your host Tesse Akpeki and co-host me Paula Okonneh. “TesseLeads” is a safe, sensitive, and supportive place and space to share, to hear, and to tell your stories and experiences. You’ll hear how our guests are creating opportunities. You hear how they’re navigating diverse challenges. You also hear how they have confronted their dilemmas while shaping their future. Today our guest is Dr. Alise Cortez, and the theme of today is “How Loss Invites Us To Live More Vibrant Lives”. Now, before we go into the podcast itself, I want you to familiarize yourself with Dr. Alise Cortez. She is the Chief Purpose Officer at Alise Cortez and Associates, a management consulting firm specializing in the activation of meaning and purpose. She’s also an inspirational speaker, a social scientist, an author and host of the “Working on Purpose Radio Show”. She’s the author of “Purpose Ignited, How Inspiring Leaders Unleash Passion and Elevate cause”. She’s also the author of “Passionately Striving In Why, An Anthology of Women Who Preserve Mightly to Live their purpose”. This coloring light, how loss invites us to live more vibrant lives, and the great revitalization. How activating meaning and purpose can radically enliven your business. Welcome to “TesseLeads, and I’ll let Tesse take over from here.

[00:02:14] Dr Alise: Thank you Paula.

[00:02:16] Tesse: Hi, Dr. Alise.

[00:02:17] Dr Alise: Hi Tesse.

[00:02:19] Tesse: Hi, glad to have you in this show, I’m excited, I don’t even know what to do with myself, because you said yes to us and you come bearing gifts of, you know, coloring life and that it’s so amazing. Thank you so much. I’m going to read some reflections from your book. “Death is a great teacher losing the ones we love the most can inspire us to treasure our relationships, expand our consciousness, and live more fully. Alise, I’ve been loving the sharing of your journey towards writing this wonderful book. What led you to write this, about loss and vibrant living?

[00:03:10] Dr Alise: Thank you, Tesse. I don’t think I would’ve set out to write a book like this, just like I didn’t set out to become a radio show host. I knew I wanted to be an author, but I wasn’t sure to be writing about this. But it really started when I got the phone call on New Year’s Eve in 2018 when my baby brother called me. And when I saw the phone ring, I figured he was just calling to say, happy New Year. But instead, he called to say that our mother was in the hospital and that I might want to come home because we don’t know how long she might be around. And that set into the motion, I’m the oldest daughter, I’m the oldest of the four children. I immediately called friends who had lost people and I looked for their advice. I hadn’t been through this for quite some time. And they said, “well, when you go up there, write everything down”. And that was golden counsel. So, you know, once I went up there and started the process of being with my mother, I wrote everything down that transpired as she took her leave, and that’s how the story begins. But it reads like a front row seat because it was a front row seat. I wrote the book literally day by day as I went through the experiences of losing both of my parents, then what turned out to be 28 days apart.

[00:04:18] Paula: Did I hear that correctly? You said 28 days apart.

[00:04:23] Dr Alise: I did. You heard it right. 28 days.

[00:04:26] Paula: That’s tough.

[00:04:28] Dr Alise: There’s real magic though, and beauty and love in the story. The second loss really does indicate the power of love. My mother died first. She wanted, she was ready. She had her backpack on jet fueling her tank. She was ready to take her leave, she had enough suffering. But my father really, in many ways, really loved her so much. They had a beautiful love story, which I also talk about in the book. And he really just didn’t wanna live without her. And so he really largely died of a broken heart. And it is profoundly beautiful to imagine that you love someone so much that you literally cannot live without them.

[00:05:06] Paula: That’s a beautiful love story. Really beautiful.

[00:05:11] Dr Alise: And an unlikely one, Paula, my mother was married five times by the time she was 28, and I was in second grade when she hit number five. And so I’d seen the other four come before. But number five was the jackpot and it was unlikely, and it really was a fairytale. My mother was working three jobs, you know, in the restaurant business, cocktail waitress, various things just to make ends meet. You know, she married my dad, number five, who adopted us, and we went to middle class. She realized much more her potential than she could have ever realized without him. That’s why it was a fairytale. It was unlikely that they met. It was unlikely they came together, but they made a beautiful life together and it was completely a beautiful love story.

[00:05:54] Paula: Oh my word. That explains the title of your book, “How Loss Can Invite Us to Live More Vibrant Life”. Because even in the loss, there was a last story embedded there.

[00:06:07] Dr Alise: Yes. And that he wouldn’t have wanted to take his leave if he didn’t have such a strong connection to my mother. The events that I share about, you know, losing her and the conversation that I had with her on her last day, and then all of the activities that we had and helping to handle her estate and. I became much more connected to my father and my brother again through that loss. Another thing that happened from that is that loss gave such a beautiful bountiful connection in ways ignited it. My brother and I are still four years later, stronger connected than we ever were in over the course of our entire lives and youth and as adults, and that happened because of his loss.

[00:06:52] Paula: So you’ve touched a bit on the surface of the vibrancy that comes from the loss. That was one story. Are there any other stories? Because it did something to you, it seems like that it has inspired you to write this book. So, I’ve lost my husband, Tesse has lost her brother. Tell us a bit more about this vibrancy that occurred through the loss please.

[00:07:16] Dr Alise: Well, as you might know about me, Paula, among other things. And so my PhD is in human development, and then I’m also an organizational logo therapist. And so Logo therapy is really the line of existential psychology that really celebrates the notion that as human beings, our chief concern is finding meaning, and meaning is our chief source of motivation. So one of the biggest things that I got from experiencing these two losses was an increased urgency around purpose. Purpose works in life, in part because we don’t get forever and we don’t know when the exit ramp is coming. So when we lose people that are important to us, what it can do when we’re paying attention to it. And what I was trying to also ignite in the book is it can make us become much more aware and give us a stronger urgency to fulfill our own wishes, our own dreams, to be of service to the world, the way that we burn for, ache for, and make us treasure that which still remain. So that’s what I mean by awakening, that it opens the loss and really moves us into transformation when we’re able to embrace that loss and let it work with and through and over us so that we actually get elevated and can be present to the opening that’s on the other side of loss.

[00:08:29] Paula: Wow. Well said. Group us, the openings. Wow. Tesse.

[00:08:38] Tesse: Yeah, I’m sort of leaning in, you know, because that opening at the other side of loss, it’s a journey to get there. Cause often the pain of the loss can be so overwhelming and so deep without journeying through that pain. And getting to the side where we have this connection, this vibrancy, we can lose ourselves along the way. Sometimes by physical death, sometimes by just not having the focus that can help us to bring the vibrancy forward. So, you know, again, another reflection from your book is you’ve lost someone you love, or maybe you’re about to. Your whole life is changing, possibly turning upside down. How do you make sense of it? How do you go through the pain? How do you carry on? I mean, these questions which arise from your book are so deep, and also existential. And you talk within the book about whispers and you know, I’d love you to share with people listening in about your seven whispers. Unpack that for us, because that connected very much with my heart and my head.

[00:10:09] Dr Alise: Oh, thank you, Tesse. So once I wrote this story of losing both of my parents. Well, first what I did was I captured all of the events as they happened and then I went back. And I layered in what did they mean to me. And that’s the storytelling piece that you came in, that you read and got from reading it. Once I did that, I thought, gosh, you know, that it’s a story, but what else can I do to help readers with this? And that’s what I had some reflection, I’d had a few years reflection between the time I lost my parents in 2019 and when I set out to finish the book, which is 2022. So then I thought, well, what did I learn from those experiences? And that’s when I came on the idea of the second part of the book being the seven whispers of wisdom that I got from those losses. How those losses actually allow us to live more vibrant lives. And so, you know, just one of the whispers of wisdom is to love, is to love deeply. And that notion of to, you know, give yourself over, if you will, to love. I think one of the things that I got out of the experience of losing my parents is I was much more courageous in my willingness to be open to love, to love someone else, even if I know they didn’t love me back or they wouldn’t love me back. But to know that I had the capacity to love because there’s such bigness in this thing of being able to love. One of the things I learned also, which I talk about in that particular segment. That whisper that I’ve come to understand is that when we are the lovers, we become bigger when we love someone else. When we receive love, often it occurs as being very soothing and calming and grounding, right? It’s such a beautiful thing that the ways that we participate in this thing called love. And when you get present to that right, you can see why that increases the vibrancy. Then when if we just take it all for granted or we’re not willing to give ourselves over to it, or you know, we don’t let someone else love us or we don’t let ourselves fully love someone else. So that was what I was trying to do and just that one whisper was to really open the spigot on this beautiful, the power of this little four letter word that we oftentimes take for granted. So that’s one of the whispers. I see you smiling.

[00:12:22] Tesse: I’m greedy. I want to hear the rest.

[00:12:25] Paula: 6 1, 1 of the second and the third.

[00:12:29] Dr Alise: One of the other ones is to really pursue your pursuits with courage. Right. So one of the things that I got from loss and from death is that it’s kind of that thing that stares you in the face. I know when my parents both died, I looked at myself in the mirror and went, all right Cortez, you don’t have forever either. You don’t know when the extra ramp is coming, let’s get to it. You have things you want to do, let’s get on with it. And so one of the other whispers is to pursue your pursuits with courage. Go for it, go for the gusto if you will. And it’s kind of a nice way, you know death has a nice way of reminding you and kind of prodding you of okay, you know, I know the couch is really comfortable right now, but you have stuff that you want to do. And if you get to the end of your life, if you didn’t even attempt those things, you are going to be pretty mad at yourself, and pretty disappointed in the life that you created for yourself. So it kind of gives you an urgency to start to pursue them and embrace that, use that channel that sense of urgency that can come from loss. It elevates your understanding, your recognition that, you know, people don’t say, well, I have time for that. No, you don’t necessarily have time for that to get to it. So that’s one of the other whispers. Another one is to forgive, is to forgive generously. This one was hard for me, really hard for me. I didn’t have any forgiveness issues with my family, but I did with other people that came into my life along the way. But what I’ve really discovered about forgiving is it sets you free, right? When we forgive someone for whatever they’ve done or haven’t done for us, however they’ve hurt us or whatever it’s been, when we forgive them, we set ourselves free and it gives this open, beautiful open space for us to be able to live more vibrantly, to have energy to direct toward those other pursuits rather than hanging on to whatever we’re hanging on. This very negative emotion around, you know, not being able to forgive, you know, it’s the albatross around our neck. And so really it liberates us. And so the power of forgiving, and it’s really hard work let me tell you. I can’t tell you that I’ve got it all down perfectly because I don’t, but I do know that the power of forgiving is something worth striving for and worth trying to fold into your life, especially if there’s a big sort of ache that you have in your life that you’re hanging onto. So that’s another. One of them of course, is to live like there’s no tomorrow. We’ve been talking about that, so that really speaks to, again, allowing yourself to go for the gusto. Really just, you know what if today is the last day we have on the planet, would you be okay with that? Would you be satisfied with who you were today with what you strove to do? Would you be satisfied with that? I wouldn’t, I’m not ready yet, but I want to live though in the present so that I can feel like I can, and what that really speaks to is be true to yourself, be true to your values, live your purpose to the extent that you can. Activate those meaning systems so that you’re vibrant and alive. Because when you do that, you can touch more lives, you can make more of a difference with whatever you’re doing in life. I don’t care if you’re an architect, an accountant, if you are a landscape designer. Whatever you’re doing, whatever, if you activate on those levels, everything that you do magnifies. So that’s another whisper that I got was just, and it has to do with presence and just being right here with life and not letting any moment pass you by.

[00:15:56] Tesse: You know, the thread there is so, so rich, you know, and those whispers are whispers, but they can amplify so much, can’t they?

[00:16:06] Dr Alise: That is exactly why I used the word whisper. Because what I’ve discovered is that there are so many things in life that are really right there in front of us that are available to all of us. And they’re trying desperately to get our attention and to help us understand. And they really are kind of whispers. But once you listen to them, to your point, the amplification of their message is so profound when you take the time to really listen to them. And that is exactly why I call them whispers, a whisper and not calls or, you know, acts or anything like that. It’s like a whisper

[00:16:40] Tesse: you know, there’s something about whispers too that is very powerful, because you have to reach a certain place of silence, of quiet of stillness in order to hear a whisper.

[00:16:51] Dr Alise: That’s exactly right. And so what I appreciate about what you just said there, is that means that you need to be present to yourself. So what happens, and I know this too, is we can get so caught up in that hamster wheel of life that we’re moving so fast that we can’t hear our own voice at all, let alone someone else who’s trying to help us. So when we’re quiet enough and centered enough, we can actually hear those whispers, and there’s so much utility and value in those whisper.

[00:17:17] Tesse: Reading your book too, Alise, and also I did some more research. You’ve had other losses as well in addition to your parents, haven’t you? I remember having done some follow up research that I thought, oh my goodness, there’s a lot here. A lot of loss.

[00:17:34] Dr Alise: Yeah, so you know, and thank you for saying that, because I really wrote this book about loss in general. Yes, I’m writing about a loss of my parents, so people. But as we’ve spoken about before, Tesse, this book also speaks to people who lose really treasured pets, people that lose careers that they cherish. And in my case, I’m divorced. I’ve been divorced for seven years. I lost my marriage. It was one of those things that really quietly died, because we didn’t, neither one of us nurtured. But it still absolutely occurred as a loss for me. Still does. It doesn’t mean that I would want to restore it per se, but that loss still lives for me and I’m still learning from that loss. And it wasn’t my idea to get a divorce, but it was a really good idea. But it still hurt like a son of a gun, right? Oh my gosh. And the pain still continues to reverberate as I take and consider and continually realize, you know, my part in the destruction of the relationship. And that’s where I really want to emphasize that I really do believe that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. And so it’s really messy. We’re just messy at this stuff called life and relationships and it’s just part of it. So that’s one of my losses. I certainly lost my beloved grandmother in 1997. She was, my sunrise and my sunset. I loved her really more than anybody in the world. And I only realized actually that the end of 2019, my biological father came back into my life and he helped me understand that she had raised me until I was three years of age. Well, no wonder she was so important to me. And then the other thing that I would say for a loss, and everybody has losses, right? And, but the other thing was, my sister who’s two years younger than me, she and I were so close in our twenties and my thirties. We spent a lot of year living together as adults and under the same roof and just being uber connected, and she disowned all of us, the whole family. She had a big disagreement with my mother and she just felt like she didn’t need any of us. And I have to say, that felt so much like my heart had been cut out of my chest and you know, sitting out there for everyone to see and throb. And so, you know, and I say in the book, you know, she never did reconcile with my mother. She had a little bit limited contact with me over the years and it was me who reached out to her via LinkedIn cause it was the only way that I knew how to tell her, hey, mom’s on her deathbed. If you have anything that you want to say, you might want to call my cell, here’s the number kind of thing. So those are some of the major losses that I can think of that have left their mark on me. And of course I’ve lost pets as well too, but, and I’ve been fired from great jobs, although none of those occurred as losses for me cause they were necessary and they yielded something again that the opening on the other side. But those are some of the losses that I do actually mention throughout the book.

[00:20:30] Tesse: Really, you know, in many ways what you capture are the hearts of other people who have been on similar journeys and that’s really fellow travelers. And as you said, the people talk about constants of life and some of it is taxes, we know those. And some of the losses will always lose things, because of life and what it is. I wonder if you can touch a little bit on trauma, you know. Cause one of the things that I’m interested in is trauma informed environments, trauma informed kind of understandings alongside loss as well. And I wonder if there’s any kind of insights you can share with us from your experience and from your personal professional life that might be helpful for people who are connecting with your work and with your story?

[00:21:22] Dr Alise: As I mentioned, and, and I say in the book too, is, you know, something, not an expert on death or anything like that. My education is in psychology, sociology, and in logo therapy. And I’m not a clinical psychologist, however, what I like to say when we talk about trauma, this is really important and a critical part of my book, it’s anchored in logo therapy. And what I love about logo therapy and what I align so strongly with logo therapy is that it’s a way of life. It’s a perspective of philosophy that teaches that there are no negative aspects in life that can’t be transmuted into positive accomplishments, but for the stance we take to them. So that’s, again, that’s the stimulus and the response, how we choose to respond to them. There’s so much power in how we choose to respond to things in life, including trauma, what’s happened to us. When we start to recognize that it is only us that has the capacity to decide and choose what that trauma means to us, are we victims? What do we learn from this? How did we get access to something else? How did that trauma help us become something else? One of the paths to purpose is adversity. When we can transform ourselves into something else because of something really hard and atrocious that we’ve gone through, we know that is victory. So that’s the kind of thing that I like to be able to celebrate and help people understand that they have access to all the time. When they can see that whatever it is that’s got them, that just is hurt them and that they feel so trapped by. They have some agency in that to get through the other side. And that’s the journey that I’m trying to also steward in this book, is to really take people by the hand and say, let’s go together. And on the other side of this, there’s an opening for you. There’s something more for you and there’s something brighter for you. And so for me, trauma, what I’ve come to understand is that, we need something to catalyze this in life. We have a tendency to want to be asleep. We want to be comfortable. And so, you know, I’m not saying that I’m wishing trauma on anybody, but it has a very necessary role in our lives to be able to catalyze a response to it. And that response is what can allow us to be able to better experience that vibrancy, to be transformed by that growth. That’s the kind of relationship that I would want to be able to put in the hands of people that have experienced trauma.

[00:23:47] Tesse: Wow. I cannot say how meaningful that is. I mean, when you explain about the kind of default to sleep rather than towards awakeness or woke in that way. But also, I love what you’re saying about when we can be at choice even in our trauma, which we had probably no parts in bringing about. I hope we can invite you back to speak a bit more about that thing being at choice in situations that you did not create, but actually knowing that you can create a way towards a different future, because you are more connected with your purpose through the trauma that you may have experienced either individually or collectively. That is so powerful. Paula, I’m going to hand over to you now while I mull on that point.

[00:24:45] Paula: Very powerful words as I use over what you said. I love the fact that you, Dr.Alise said, loss happens, bad things happen, but we do have to make a decision whether we are going to be the victim or the victor that can make a big difference. We can’t erase the past, we can’t erase things that have happened. We live in a messy world, but we do have choices.

[00:25:12] Dr Alise: Thank you. There’s power in choice.

[00:25:15] Paula: There is power in choice. Yes. Thank you. I’ve learned so much about you. I’ve learned so much about loss, and I also can’t help but comment on the fact that even though your book was about losing your parents, through Tesse, you were able to expand on other types of losses, which are all part of life. Thank you so much. And as Tesse says, I would also love to have you come back on again a second time to expand on some of the things that I know we could have gone deeper into. Forgiveness is one of the most difficult things, emotions I think a lot of us struggle with. We know that we shouldn’t, but we do.

[00:26:02] Tesse: Paula, just as if you knew that the back of my mind. You know me very well. At the back of my mind, I say forgiveness because my brother was killed by somebody who killed him and left him to die. Until today she has not said sorry to me, to his wife, to his children. She’s not voice sorrow. And I know that I needed to forgive her before moving on, but that forgiveness is a struggle. It was so deep. The most precious person in my life. This person treated him like nothing and cared for nothing about the family. So, but forgiveness is key and I’m aware of that. Not easy.

[00:26:46] Paula: Oh, yet another beautiful session. To end on this note to our precious listeners, you have just heard Dr. Alise Cortez, you’ve heard about her story, you’ve heard her journey, you’ve heard Tesse and I talk about our experiences. And so we want you to know that your stories matter, your life matters. We ask that you share them with us. We ask also that. If you’d like what you just heard, please head over to our website. We have a new website, which is “www.tesseleads.com” to apply. And we always cherish your reviews because it encourages us to continue to do what we are doing. Thank you again, Dr. Alise Cortez for coming on to “TesseLeads”.

[00:27:45] Dr Alise: Thank you for having me. It’s been just beautiful.

[00:27:47] Tesse: You’ve touched our lives. Thank you so much for that, you’ve actually given it more color. Thank you.

[00:27:54] Paula: Yes, you have.

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