Neurogrowth Coaching and Advocacy with Stacy Griffin - S2 E24

Becky Miller:  Welcome back to Autoimmune Adventures. Today we're excited to have our very own co-host Stacy Griffin joining us in the spotlight. Stacy has had an incredible journey from teaching at the university and later at middle school to navigating life with autoimmune disease and ultimately transforming those challenges into a mission to help others. She's the creator of the AshRise and Alchemy Frameworks designed to help people rise from loss, trauma, and illness, and turn struggle into purpose. Stacy is also the visionary behind the Luminarium, a community helping families and autoimmune adventurers find their light and flow more fully through life. We can't wait to hear her story, her insights, and all the wisdom she brings from her experience as a teacher, coach, advocate, and autoimmune adventurer.

Stacy Griffin:  Hi everyone. You already know me, so I'm not going to take a lot of time to introduce myself, but I'm happy to be here today.

Alysia Thomas:  So, I have to take credit for um this episode happening because I we were talking about what episodes we should bring on and I thought, Oh my gosh, Stacy has a really remarkable story and she has so much wisdom that she can share, so much light that she can shed on on some of the experiences that we as as autoimmune warriors face. And so I brought it up and they agreed with me.  

So here we are and we are so happy to be focusing on her today. So Stacy, you started out as a teacher, but you had to step away from that when your autoimmune issues um became so challenging that you weren't able to stay in the classroom. Share with us a little bit if you would about how that experience shaped the path that you are on today.

Stacy Griffin:  Well, I started as a college professor years ago and then I ended up in corporate America for a short period of time and I loved teaching so much that I decided to return to teaching and I did that by entering the seventh grade English classroom. room, which I really enjoyed. I loved it. But not too long after returning to teaching, I discovered that I had lupus. And I knew it was going to be a challenge, but I've always been a go-getter. And so, I thought, "Oh, it'll be just fine. I'll just do the best I can. It'll be great."

The problem was that pretty soon, because I do love teaching, I was well loved by my students. And that meant that I was becoming the writing um, teacher who was in charge of writing club and I ended up being the English department head and that was also a big blessing. But the problem was I was not really taking into account that I had a chronic illness and that I needed to be taking care of myself. So my body let me know in no uncertain terms that I was not taking good enough care of myself. And that came in heart palpitations and all kinds of problems that shut my body down. And then it happened mid school year.

So I ended up having to leave my students and leave my colleagues in a lurch while I had to leave school and take care of myself physically. And it was very disorienting for me. And that was when I really began to realize that it isn't something you can just put on a back burner and forget about. You actually have to care for yourself. And that was the turning point for me. I had to realize that as much as I love teaching, it was risking my own health. And that health risk was not going to serve me or anyone else in my life. And so I had to make a change. And that change involved me figuring out how to move forward.

The answer for me specifically was to begin working with Kohila Sivas who is a holistic neurogrowth learning success coach mentor, and that meant that I could still be a teacher from home, and so that's what I chose to do. I think one of the struggles that we come across as people with chronic illness is that we have these desires, these things that we have spent - I spent years getting my education to be a teacher and then suddenly I found myself in a situation where my body was not going to let me know do what I needed to and what I had trained for. And so I had to transition. I had to work with teams in a way that I physically could do it. So that was basically my journey is that my body gave me a hard stop and I had no choice but to change.  

Alysia Thomas: And coming from a sisterly standpoint, that was a heartbreaking transition to begin with. You love, love, love what you're doing now and I love that you're doing it, too. Um, but while you were coming to terms with your doctor saying you cannot keep doing this, that was heart-wrenching. And that's why we've brought it up in our podcast before. Sometimes when you are living with a chronic illness, you might have to make some pretty massive changes in your life. and one of those might be a complete shift in your career and it's turned out to be a a huge blessing for you. But um that right there is is an an example and why we bring it up. Um that when you advocate for yourself sometimes that means you have to change something you've been doing that you love.

I mean, when you think of advocating, sometimes you think of like, well, I don't want to do that or I can't do that or whatever. But this is something you wanted and you loved and you were so good at it and you had to shift and I love that you were flexible enough to do that. But that was a heart-wrenching time for you. I remember.

Becky Miller:  I do too. And um, I remember how excited I was for you when you found Kohila and and her program, um, because I knew how much you love teaching and I was excited for you that you had the opportunity to do it from home. And um, kind of along those lines, when you discovered Kohila's blocks to flow approach, how did that open the door for you to kind of reimagine what education and coaching could look like for you?

Stacy Griffin:  Well, the reason that this matters is fairly simple. I think that when we have chronic illness, we have these blocks in our mind where we believe our life is over. Our life is over. It's never going to be good again. And that's a block. And if we allow ourselves to look at it as something new, instead of something that's blocking the way that we want to work and move forward, then we're able to flow either around it or remove the block entirely, and just realize that everything that really matters in life will happen if we make space for it.  

And that's what I learned from Kohila is that we have to have that forward momentum in our life. And the only way we can achieve that is if we have a good attitude. So as we know, one of our Big Six is Growth Mindset. And that is pretty much what holistic coaching is, is teaching people how to have that growth mindset and how to give them a neurological like, an in-brain way of understanding in our body what we need. We can't control our nervous system if we don't control our mind first. So that's why meditation works. It doesn't work for everyone the same way, but meditation can be a very good way to focus in on that. What I do as a coach is I train people how to use their growth mindset at a neurological level. So I teach them how to train their brain, how to use that neuroplasticity to deal with the things that are going on in life.

And so when everything happened to me physically, that was why meeting Kohila Sivas was so important for me. And that is why learning what I needed to for my coaching was so important because I could see that it didn't just apply to me as someone with chronic illness. It applied to teenagers who were struggling, parents who were having a hard time getting their their helping their children or anyone else, but I mainly work with people who are experiencing some form of trauma, whether that's physical or emotional. And that is why it's important is having that neuroplasticity. We have to be able to train our brain.

So discovering Kohila that was the blessing that it gave me is it opened up that entire world of neuroplasticity and explained in a way that made me as an educator understand how I could help others.

Alysia Thomas:  I feel like it was a beautiful bridge between teaching and advocacy and I love it. I love it. Um, so what when was the moment that you realized that your work with teens and parents wasn't just about school and test scores that it was about it was more about advocacy and healing?

Stacy Griffin:  I think I've known that teaching was advocacy from day one. I think it's what made me want to be a teacher because there's always been conflict for kids. When I was teaching college, it was the conflict of I'm not with mom and dad anymore, and I don't know how to do laundry, and I don't know how to write a paper and all that panic. And I would tell them, you know, you need to advocate for yourself. You need to take a stand. You need to go talk to your teachers. You need to call mom and dad. You need to have these conversations. Advocacy is about not being scared to say what needs to be said. And so often in life, people just don't know how to do it. So as a teacher, I would help my students advocate for themselves, whether it was educationally or even in their personal lives.

The education system that we have in this world does not suit the individual needs of the child. We are living in a world where your whole self isn't even looked at. Okay. So, one of the things I learned from Kohila was that it was important to look at a holistic view of a person. If we were able to do that in schools, that would be great, but it's really hard when you're one person in a room filled with 30 kids to approach it from a holistic standpoint. So for me, what really mattered and what led to advocacy and healing for myself was what I then learned to put into my coaching was that you need to stand up for yourself. You need to have belief in yourself and you need to have an understanding of how to get the things that you need to be happy. And whether that's coaching or that's chronic illness, it's the same road. And so I love that you compared it to a bridge because it really is a bridge. Regardless of which side you are on, we're all going in the same direction, which is trying to get the things that we need to be successful and to move forward in life. That's what advocacy is for.  

And so as someone with chronic illness, being able to know how to advocate for yourself, with your friends, with your family, with your medical practitioners, all of your medical doctors and the different people that are helping you, if they don't know what you're experiencing, then they can't help you. Just as much as if a teacher doesn't know what is wrong, they can't help you. So it just kind of all comes together in a beautiful whole.

Alysia Thomas:  I wanted to add in as you were talking about, you know, that the education system doesn't look at individual child as a whole, neither does the medical system, right?

Stacy Griffin:  No, it doesn't.

Becky Miller:  Yeah.

Stacy Griffin:  They cookie cutter us.

Alysia Thomas:  They and and they say, "Okay, you go to this doctor for this and this doctor for this and this doctor for this and this doctor for this." And when you have chronic illness, you can ask Becky how many doctors she has, like how many doctors and how much coordinating it takes to make sure that each of them has the information they need to help you.  

Um, that is why we have this dream of having an autoimmune center where people can come and they have all those doctors in one place and those doctors can meet together and they can talk about patients as a whole. They can take a holistic approach which you have to take with an with autoimmune disease. You have to because it is your whole body that is affected by this. So I see so many I see so many parallels here. I love it.

Becky Miller: I agree. And I'm sure that anybody who's a listener has heard us. We talk about advocacy all the time. We actually have a course um, a self-advocacy course in the works. And so um, you'll see it there. But you'll continue to hear us talk about advocacy because that is proven to be one of the best ways to get the best results definitely in health situations, but honestly throughout your life in general, I would say.

And so kind of going to the podcast, um Stacy, you're obviously one of the co-creators. Um, we joke around about how I'm kind of our idea person and about a year before we started the podcast, I put it out there and we were all kind of like, "Yeah, that's a good idea." And then about a year later, I mentioned it to Stacy again and I was like, you know, I think this might be helpful. And credit to her. She's our leader. She's the one who took the initiative. We all work on it together, but she was the one who kind of got us moving. She's also the one that keeps us on task because Alysia and I are very much, "Look a squirrel!," and we, we have a lot of things we get excited about. So, she puts her teacher-ness to use with us as well.

Um, but really quickly, could you tell our audience how your personal journey with autoimmune disease gave you this insight for helping others and having this desire to to help people with autoimmune disease through this podcast?  

Stacy Griffin:  Well, I think that one of the big things for me was that autoimmunity completely disrupted my life. And I thought if it does this to me, it does it to anyone who has this experience. And as a teacher, my automatic reaction when there's disruption is to try and return things to a state of normalcy. And then I realized I can't do that with autoimmune disease. There is no normalcy. So what do I do? And so I started to think okay when something happens in life that's really hard how do I deal with it? Well, I go to my people and I have people but there are people that don't have people. And how did I know that? I knew that from years of working with teenagers who felt like they were alone in the world, and then spending hours online in different groups listening to the people say, "I just got diagnosed with this and I don't know who to talk to about it and I have no one. I have nothing.  I am alone in the world." And I didn't want people to be alone.

So when Becky said, "Hey, you know, it might be cool if we did this," I was in a place, because of what had just happened to me with losing my ability to be a teacher full-time, I was in a headspace where I was like, "For the love of all that's holy, please give me something to do." And I saw this as a way to move in a direction that would not only help myself, but more importantly would help other people, because that's where my joy comes from is helping other people. It doesn't come from making life great for me.

So because of that when my disrupted life came into how do I put this? Let me try again. When my life got disrupted, I began to understand that anyone with that diag... any, any kind of diagnosis would be disrupted. And that disruption led to a need for something to be done. And that's where the podcast came from was I had to pour that fierce desire to serve somewhere. And this is where it felt like it belonged. I think I also realized we needed a space for different people to be seen and heard.

And the podcast and my personal experience and the personal experience of the two of you, it only made sense. And if I'm being selfish and honest about things, any excuse to hang out with the two of you was great with me. So, I was very on board with it.

Alysia Thomas:  Yeah.

Becky Miller:  I think we've all loved that. Like it's been we have always been close as sisters, but I have loved so much getting together every week for our podcast. I think we're closer than, you know, than ever. It's been great.

Alysia Thomas:  I love having something that we get to do together every week regularly. And not just something that we do together, but something that we're doing for others. I love it. I love doing it together.

So, as you said, um, one of our Big Six principles is a Growth Mindset and a positive attitude. And, um, you are are you're teaching people how to get that and how to use it once they have it. And when we were putting together the podcast, um, you had this idea to use a mountain as an analogy. Can you kind of give us the rundown on on that? How you came up with that idea.

Stacy Griffin: Well, Becky and I were talking one afternoon and I said, you know, this is like a journey. And she said, yeah, it is a journey. And I don't honestly remember which of us came up with the idea that it needed to be a mountain, but it needed to be a mountain. It's a hard climb. And when I think about the different autoimmune diseases that each of us have been diagnosed with, I think about how after a diagnosis, you're looking at, in our case, because we all have several different diseases, we're already on the mountain.  

I was put on the mountain by Hashimoto's. We all have our different stories as to what put us on the mountain, but then we're on the mountain and then suddenly it's like, "Oh, let's throw lupus at you." So now it is one of those situations where it's a constant climb. It's never going to get easier. There are ways that we can make it more tolerable. There are ways that we can slow down. There are ways we can enjoy the view. There are all kinds of delightful and wonderful ways that we can make it more bearable, but it's not going to be easier. And that was something, that, that's why I thought of the mountain because a mountain is something that requires a lot of you all the time. It never stops requiring a lot of you. And so you have to become stronger and you have to become better at climbing. And the only way you can do that is with tools.  

And so that's why we spend time talking about tools and that's why we spend time talking about the climb because we don't want people to be discouraged. Anyone who's ever climbed a mountain knows that there comes a point in time where you reach a vista where something is truly beautiful. And I have reached many vistas in my climb with autoimmune disease where I have seen beautiful amazing things. And probably the best example of that is my coaching career. I never would have done it had it not been for autoimmune disease. It's my silver lining. It's my wow in the midst of the crazy because I, I, I was content with the idea of being a teacher until I retired and moved into a little cottage somewhere. And now I have this whole new life where I do very different things than I did before. And now I'm a keynote speaker and I'm building a course, and I'm building a course with you guys, and it's just this amazing and beautiful fruitful life. But it none of it's been easy. It's been a fight. It has been a climb of a lifetime. But I'm grateful to be on it despite the fact that it's hard sometimes.

Becky Miller:  Okay. So, you've helped our listeners get a pretty good idea of your own personal journey and how hard it has been to readjust and redefine your life in a lot of ways. Um, as you're working with people, how do you help them address trauma, illness, and loss, and actually move more toward emotional and even physical healing?

Stacy Griffin:  Well, obviously without getting into a long coaching session with all of you, I'm going to give you just some key points. The first thing that a person has to do is acknowledge their trauma. If you don't acknowledge that it happened, it didn't happen. And if you don't acknowledge it, you can't fix it. You have to be able to also believe somewhere inside of you that the future can be better than what has happened to you in the past.

Now, I'm not going to say that I'm a therapist. I'm not. I would never have made it through the different miscarriages I had, the different trials that I've had, loss of our parents, had I not had a good therapist. So, I'm going to tell you right now that when I have people come in and they're not ready to work with me, I will encourage them to do therapy because you have to address those deeper things. You have to have an understanding and understand that it's absolutely crucial to access and process your grief and loss. Okay. So that's the first step. But once you have had good therapy and you are in a place that you're ready to progress, that's when I start working with people.

And that's where self-work begins and self-compassion and mind mastery. And it's what we do here on the podcast with our growth mindset is we walk people through how to embrace a better world. Then I give them an understanding of emotional stability, how to reduce their stress. Then if they are continuing their therapy, we do self-practice in combination with their therapy so that they can move from surviving to thriving. The thing about trauma, illness, and loss is these are things that come to us without us doing anything to deserve them. There are a lot of things in life that happen to us because we're stupid or because we make bad choices, or whatever the case may be. What makes trauma and illness and loss so difficult is we have no control over them. They happen to us and we are powerless to stop it. And that powerlessness can freeze us and it can really break us up into pieces. So the goal is to do what the Japanese call kintsugi ,where you take those pieces of yourself and you line them with gold to put yourself back together.  

Stacy Griffin:  And that is what I believe that I do. I am a person who does emotional kintsugi with people. I help them put those pieces back together, because we're still beautiful. We're still amazing. We still have so much to offer the world. We just sometimes forget it, because when we're in trauma and loss, we can only see the trauma and loss. So, we have to allow ourselves to rise above that and fully understand that we are still who we were before. We may have to approach the world from a different standpoint if we have chronic illness. We have to deal with whatever loss we have. Whether it's the loss of someone we loved, a dream that we had that was never achieved, a loss of a job, a loss of babies in my case. There's a lot of loss in the world. There's a lot of sadness in the world. But the truth of the matter is all we have to do is be willing to look for the light. And that's what I do with people who have trauma is I help them find that light again.

Alysia Thomas:  I love it. You're, you're inspiring me. Um, you are turning this into a keynote and a course and even probably a book. So what message do you want your work to leave behind for others?

Stacy Griffin:  I want people to realize that everyone has loss, but we have a choice. After we lose, after we have trauma, after we have pain, we have a choice. There are two paths. We can let it destroy us or we can let it transform us and strengthen us and make us better. My work, whether it is me speaking or me doing my course or me completing my book or me working here on the podcast, all of it is simply to remind people that they can rise. They can advocate for themselves. They can find their purpose. That is what matters most to me. So that's why I share the message. whether it's through my coaching or through the podcast or anything else I do is because I want people to understand that trauma is not the end. Loss is not the end. There's still so much about life that is worth living after the pain, after the loss, and it actually can empower us in ways that aren't often mentioned in the world whole as a whole. So that's what my goal is, is to help people understand that you can rise very much like a phoenix from the ashes of your pain and loss and be reborn into something bigger and stronger than you were before.

Becky Miller:  Wonderful. I love that. Um, you had also mentioned something called the Luminarium. Can you tell our listeners what it is, and why you chose the name?

Stacy Griffin:  As I mentioned, the Luminarium is a place of light. So, all it means is being someone who wants to carry light. And that's what I want to do. I want to carry light to other people. But I also want other people to learn how to carry light for themselves and for others around them.

So, I've been inspired by my personal luminaries who've guarded me through dark times. Both of you are two of those people. my our parents were luminaries for me. I've had mentors and friends and other people who have just been a bright light in my life. And so my vision was to create a community with a resource for families and autoimmune adventurers where they could go and find ways to gain light. And that's what the Luminarium is. So it allows people to help themselves rediscover their light within and use it to heal themselves.  

Becky Miller: I agree 100% on that. Okay. Okay, Stacy. So, before we wrap this up, could you tell us exactly who you work with and also where people can reach you if they'd like to work with you?

Stacy Griffin:  All right. The best way to get a hold of me is to drop me an email. It's stacy@stacyannegriffin.com. And as far as who I work with, I work with everyone, but if you want to know what my specific programs are, I do Blocks to Flow, which as I mentioned was a Kohila Sivas program, and that is with me working with teenagers. I can also work with younger kids, but usually I work with teens and their parents. I work specifically with parents who feel that they need help to understand their children and give them what their kids need. So that's one program.

Stacy Griffin:  Then my own program is called AshRise and Alchemy and it's the concept of trauma-informed connection that you have mind mastery over your own body and mind. And you can take the trauma that you've experienced, the loss that you've experienced, and you can alchemize it, change it from what it is into something better that will help you grow. So those are the programs that I have, and everything is outlined on my website. So that's the best place to get a hold of me.

Alysia Thomas:  There is such a need for what you are doing. Like I know the stuff we've all, all this stuff we've talked about. I know about it. I know it's real. In fact, uh, Stacy is working with my daughter, and I, I am just fascinated and I'm like, how? I know about this stuff, but I don't know how to do it. You're doing you're teaching people, you are coaching people the how-to steps of it, which is what I need and is what probably everybody else needs. So, I love it.

Stacy, thank you so much for letting us interview you about this. Thank you for sharing your journey and even though it's very familiar to Becky and I, I know that our listeners are going to appreciate hearing it and are going to find things that resonate with them. Um, we love that you have created what you have created um for families and for autoimmune adventurers like us to navigate through life with a little bit more clarity and strength and hope. I think so. Listeners, don't forget to sign up for our newsletter on our website. you can stay updated and keep an eye out for our course that'll be launching um, early next year in 2026. You can also find us on our socials and connect with Stacy directly if you or your teens need support with anxiety or loss or blocks to flow with your life. Her links will be in the show notes for easy access.

And remember, you are worthy of joy. Your disease does not define your life, you do.

HELPFUL LINKS:

Stacy's Website: stacyannegriffin.com