Grief Is Wild With Iris Rankin

Grief is WILD! A series of major moves and the breakup of a seven-year relationship were trail markers on Iris Rankin's path to personal transformation. We dive deep into the "losses we consciously create"—like moving, breaking up, and choosing to leave our comfortable lives.

Transcript

So Iris,

Let's jump in with your lost story.

Where would you like to start?

Yeah,

So I guess the best place to start would be a couple of years ago.

So I would say in terms of my own lost story,

I haven't had what people generally think of in terms of grief.

I haven't had that devastating loss that really rips you open.

The type that normally is accompanied with the death of a really close loved one.

But the last several years,

I guess I've had what you could call like everyday heartbreak.

And I think that there's loss related in that too.

And there was something that you said,

Which is that grief is something that we all experience.

And it may look different for different people,

But it's a sure part of the human experience,

Whether you have had devastating loss or not.

We all lose things at one time or another.

So for me,

Most of this has to do with the grief that you experience when you're in a time of intense personal transformation.

And you mourn the loss of the life you otherwise would have had.

So the last few years,

I had been living in Boulder,

Colorado.

And my partner and I moved to Alaska,

This just remote rural fishing town on the coast.

And after a few months of that,

We moved back to Colorado.

And then after a few months of that,

We moved back.

We moved to Montana.

And then we moved back to Colorado again.

And I think I lived in at least seven different houses or apartments during just two or so years.

So yeah,

So it's a lot of change.

And even when it feels exciting and invigorating to be moving on to this new step into your life and to be traveling 4,

000 miles across the country,

There can still be this sense of loss.

You know,

You're leaving friends behind and jobs,

Even really good jobs,

And ways of being,

Too.

Like you're just shedding your skin as you're moving from place to place.

And it's sort of impossible not to have personal change happen when you're moving that often and just kind of thrown into all these different situations.

So I would say that while I was in this place of intense personal transformation,

I just kind of felt that I was changing to the point that I couldn't fit myself inside my old life anymore.

And one of the things that was included in that was my relationship.

There's mourning that happens with that sort of change.

I ended up ending a seven-year relationship.

And I mean,

I'm 27 now.

And so that's a really large portion of my life,

To have seven years with this one person.

And there's that feeling of leaving your best friend,

Leaving a certain sense of security,

And putting aside what you would have thought would have been a particular future.

And so even though you know you're making a choice that is aligned with your heart,

Grief is still there.

And you have to let yourself feel that grief.

And I guess around that time is when I really started thinking about loss,

Because it surprised me.

Up until that point,

I didn't realize that loss could be something that you create in your own life.

I would say in terms of grief,

A lot of the time we think of things that are taken away from us.

And sometimes I think it is that way.

But I think that there's this other kind of grief,

Too.

When you consciously make a choice to leave something behind,

The loss may still be there,

Even if some part of you knows this is the right step to take.

I'm curious,

As you're talking,

You've dropped the phrase personal transformation a lot.

I'm wondering what that looked like internally for you and when you realized you were in this place of personal transformation.

Was it after a couple of moves,

Or all of a sudden things started moving,

Period?

And then you were like,

Oh my gosh,

Something is happening internally.

Or what kind of happened?

Because I'm hearing the catchphrase,

Personal transformation.

And I'm also getting a sense that during this time,

You were physically,

But also maybe emotionally,

Mentally,

Spiritually uprooted.

It sounds like there wasn't a landing place for you.

Definitely.

I would say that the transformation really was catalyzed by the move.

I didn't make a lot of major moves.

And so before we were having this big experience of going to Alaska and going to Colorado and going to Montana and coming back to Colorado,

Before that happened,

We had been in Boulder for six years.

So we were really rooted.

And it felt like it was a good time to make a change.

But things were just tumultuous.

And I think that it's a good and necessary part of your 20s to live in strange places and with different people.

But just the fact of being such a homebody personally and having to move,

Sometimes for a few of those moves,

I had to move every three weeks.

And so you almost get settled in a place.

And then you have to pull yourself back out of it again to move on to something else.

I would say in terms of personal transformation,

I had always been such a rooted person that this was a chance to feel what flight feels like.

And sometimes flight feels like you're catching air beneath your wings.

And sometimes it feels like you're crashing straight into the ground.

And in terms of specifics,

Part of what happened in that transformation was really a greater finding of purpose.

And I would say that in experimenting with different places to live and with different things that I was doing,

I did a yoga teacher training during that time.

And that really shifted my internal landscape.

I have always been an atheist.

And then I was having all these spiritual feelings and not sure what to do with that and not sure how that would fit into my relationship.

And also realizing that I wanted to take some of these new personal insights and figure out a way that I could use them to be of service to other people.

For sure.

And I know that you said the breakup was kind of,

I don't know if I want to say at the tail end of all the moves or at the tail end of the transformation,

But it sounds like that was kind of like a bookend for everything that was happening.

I know that you said that that surprised you.

And I want to talk more about the idea of choosing or creating loss in our lives.

What was it about what was changing in your life that led you to that decision?

And then talk a little bit about the surprise of that,

The unexpected darkness or joy or release or the emotions that came with that.

So as I was kind of mentioning,

The changing as how I was seeing myself and how I was showing up in the world,

At the time,

I really just was feeling like those new parts of me were too big or expanding too quickly outward to sit within how our relationship really was showing up.

And it's just in terms of loss,

It was something that I really felt needed to happen in order for me to step into a new doorway of purpose,

To get to a new level.

I really had to see how I could expand outward on my own.

It's one of those things where I fought with it for probably a year with that decision,

Even though my heart just kept saying,

It's time.

It's time.

You have to let it go.

And I just didn't want to.

And I think that that's really something that's embedded in grief is that we have to come to terms with eventually letting go of things that at some point or another we don't want to let go of.

And I guess in terms of the surprise,

I was surprised that I could grieve something that I had created.

Because in some ways,

You think,

Oh,

Well,

If I'm stepping into my purpose,

It must feel good.

But it doesn't always.

And a lot of stepping into your purpose feels really challenging.

And I think heartbreak can definitely be a part of that.

It's hard a lot of the time for people from the outside looking in to see your experience as multifaceted.

And that's one of the things that gravers struggle with the most is that this experience is multifaceted.

And nobody gets that.

I want to know,

Diving deep into your purpose and releasing this relationship of your own choice,

Of your own creation,

What was it that called you to that purpose?

What was it that called you to come back?

When we were in Alaska,

So during our first move,

I had a lot of extra time on my hands.

And so I really started thinking about what might this look like in the world.

And so at the time,

I didn't really know what it would evolve into.

It since evolved into my personal coaching business.

But at the time,

It was really just starting to share these deeper truths that I was starting to uncover and wanting to bring them to other people and realizing that if I'm telling people to face their challenges wholeheartedly,

I had to do it myself too.

And so I think that was the greater impetus there.

So talk about how this experience in your life has evolved into or fed or nourished a business that exists for you now.

Because it sounds like part of your coming back from this is the process of creating something new.

So as something else,

For lack of a better term,

Dies,

Something else is born.

And it's not necessarily stronger or better,

But it is different and more aligned with who you want to be in the world.

Yeah,

I would say one of the things that I read right around the time of that breakup,

I had read Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Tingkola Estes.

And on that day,

I had opened the book at random.

And the story that came up was steel skin,

Soul skin.

To paraphrase the story as short as I can,

There are these steel women who are out playing and a fisherman sees them and he steals one of the steel skins.

And he keeps it hostage from the woman,

Tells her to come and live with him.

But he does promise that after seven years,

He will give her back,

Her steel skin.

Seven years come and they pass and they've had a son together.

And over this time,

As she's been away from the sea and as he's held her steel skin,

Soul skin hostage,

She withers.

She gets this limp and she starts going blind and she's really disconnected from this life source.

And eventually,

Her son is able to steal the soul skin and bring it to her.

And in bringing her the soul skin,

She can come back down into the waters and be with her steel family.

But while she's in the water and she gets all of that vitality back into her,

She's still looking back up and feeling the loss for this son who can never come down into the depths with her.

And that story itself,

I think,

Has so,

So much that is profound and related to grief.

And in my own particular story,

For a time,

I think I set aside my soul skin.

It's just been this process of returning to my own skin that creative energy,

The things that really make me feel good in my body and my mind every day,

Knowing that when I'm returning to my skin is when I'm feeling most alive and most myself.

And that has translated into my coaching because I really want other women to be able to feel this feeling as well.

And I talk a lot about wildness in my writings and in my coaching calls.

It's really that element of coming back to your truest part of yourself.

And it's also literally connecting with nature,

Which I think for a lot of people is really helpful when dealing with loss.

And also really getting in touch with our voices,

Our personal voice as a woman,

And the wild aspect of that.

What do you think is wild about grief?

It's raw.

What's wild about grief is that we can't ignore it.

There are many,

Many things that we choose to ignore in our lives and that in itself is its own kind of domestication.

But when you experience loss,

Especially profound loss,

It just stares you back in the face and you can't ignore it.

And part of what's staring back at you is yourself and really the darkest parts of yourself and also these tender,

Not yet sort of seeded parts of yourself too.

And I would say also in terms of voice and wildness,

Grief I think helped you find more of your voice.

Oh my gosh,

That was just so beautifully said.

I've got shells over here.

That was so cool.

And I agree 100% with everything that you said,

Because there is something absolutely unignorable about grief.

We can try and stuff it away or watch Netflix away or pray it away or all these things we do to try and avoid experiencing everything about grief,

Not just the pain,

But just like the depth of it.

And I so agree that there is something so wild and unignorable about loss.

What does your life look like and feel like now with this loss and your personal transformation kind of including in it?

So what's different about you,

About your work,

About your relationships between pre and post?

I would say a lot.

I don't necessarily know that this applies to all grief,

But in this particular situation and in the situations where you have to give something up in order to step into this greater next sense of yourself,

A part of you has to die,

Or a part of what you're doing has to die.

I was thinking about this the other day,

And I just feel so much freer having allowed myself to fully process that particular loss.

And I think that that will,

In turn,

Make me more resilient for other probably more devastating losses that will come in my life.

And I would say,

As far as with that particular relationship,

My partner and I ended up getting back together this winter.

A part of our relationship and each of our identities had to die in order for us to move forward,

And that's not a bad thing.

And so in some ways,

It's really just refreshing and welcoming to know that now we're reunited this time as whole people contributing to one cause rather than two fragmented people trying to fit into something that didn't fit us anymore.

And then I would say,

Too,

That that experience,

That loss and the coming back is informing how I'm dealing with other aspects of grief.

And so I would say in my current life,

The thing that I'm grieving is that my father was diagnosed with dementia this winter.

And there's this that you really love gradually losing integral parts of themselves and parts of their personality before your eyes.

And I would say that having learned how to grieve before,

It's helping me now.

And I think one of the hardest parts about this is that resentment of losing someone before you,

That they're alive but not really fully themselves.

That resentment gets in the way sometimes,

But I've been learning to give myself grace and to just give myself heaps of self-forgiveness because that sort of thing makes you feel like a terrible,

Terrible bother,

But also part of grief is just letting yourself feel everything and just accepting all that you're feeling.

So I would say that that previous loss is kind of informing how I am now and really the,

I think,

In some ways,

You're just building this kind of self-resilience and also the capacity,

As we were talking about grief not letting you ignore it.

Once you experience grief and you really look it in the eyes,

You can't ignore that part of yourself.

I think that that's something that you can take in other areas of your life too.

And so you can really be more conscious about not numbing yourself or shutting down in other areas.

And so I would say that that's kind of how things have shown up recently.

And I would also say that the other way that grief has been a part of my life since then is holding space for others who are grieving,

Who are losing these certain parts of themselves that they know it's time to let go of,

But maybe there's still some resistance and sadness about losing that anyway.

Really having myself as a person who can give people time and space to process these changes that they're having.

That's perfect.

That's so lovely.

Well,

I want to hear in your words,

What are the big projects that you're working on and where can people find more about your work if they're interested in being wild,

If they're interested in applying wildness to grief,

Or if they're interested in just nourishing that muscle of self-compassion that so many of us have that are underdeveloped?

Yeah,

So I'm an intuitive personal coach.

And what that means is I use my own intuition to help guide you through your own transformation,

But more so I help you in the process of cultivating your own intuition.

I do sort of shorter strategy sessions for coaching,

And I also do long-term six-month coaching engagements.

But what I am just releasing this month is just a one-session coaching engagement,

And it's called Meet Your Inner Wild Woman.

Meet Your Inner Wild Woman is an hour-long call that we do together.

And the beginning of the call is a guided visualization where you come to the wild landscape and you meet your inner wild woman.

And this is the part of you that is most connected to your values and your purpose and really kind of this guiding direction for what you want in your life.

And then for the rest of the call,

We kind of unpack what you see in that meeting with your inner wild woman and really see how that will inform your action steps.

So it has these three parts of the visualization and really the one-on-one coaching and leaving the call with some concrete action steps that are informed by purpose and really help you feel like you're showing up in the world in the way that you want to.

So support your work in wildness,

And thank you so,

So much for coming on the show today,

Iris.

I've just been so excited to connect with you and to have you here.

Thank you so much,

Shelby.

It's been a pleasure,

Truly.

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