Ioana Chei  Transcript

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:00)

We are welcoming Iwana K, a therapist. Welcome to the conversation.

Ioana Chei (00:05)

Thank you, Melanie. It's really nice to be here.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:09)

Wonderful. We're going to focus on resilience, self-compassion, and general compassion today. Let's dive right in, and it would be great if you could tell the listeners what you do for a work and then we'll look at how you developed resilience in your own personal experience.

Ioana Chei (00:31)

Well, Melanie, I'm a licensed psychotherapist and a mindset coach. And I mainly work with families and with children and their families. And I also work with adults, especially on mindset, but also in therapy. And we do focus on resilience and self-compassion. And I was thinking that

Ioana Chei (00:59)

Lately, self-compassion is something that came out a lot in my sessions. And yeah, I help guide them through life and through challenges that arise.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:14)

Wonderful. So, how long have you been doing this work?

Ioana Chei (01:17)

In my private practice for about eight years, and I've been working in associations before that and in a public school. I was working with kids in a public school, yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:35)

Nice.

What sort of age group did you work with at a school?

Ioana Chei (01:41)

It was a diverse group because I worked in a special needs school, and I had kids; it was sixth grade, but the ages varied from 10 to 12. Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (02:06)

What sorts of special needs did you see over there?

Ioana Chei (02:09)

They were combined from mental difficulties, even physical ones. I had vision impairment and hearing impairment. Yeah, but the common ground was the mental deficiency.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (02:33)

Okay, so all of them had some sort of difference in how their minds worked compared to the mainstream.

Ioana Chei (02:40)

Yes.

Yes.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (02:43)

I think we'll look at that a little bit later, because that's definitely something to learn from. But I'm really keen to hear about your personal story so we can learn more about you as a person as well. So would you like to share what we talked about a bit before we started recording? I'd love to hear more about how you developed resilience.

Ioana Chei (03:03)

Yeah, that's a story I don't share very often because I'm the one who listens to the stories but doesn't tell the stories. But I did go through a really difficult time at some point in my life about 10 years ago. I was a bit of an avoider anyway, being more of an observer in my own life than an action taker. But 10 years ago, almost 11, my father passed away. And it was a bit of a shock. We didn't expect it. And it was really hard to navigate. I was pregnant at the time, so that made things even more difficult. And after I gave birth, of course, the baby blues came in.

And then I experienced depression. So for a couple of years, it was really hard for me and for my husband and for the whole family because I was not present. I wasn't there. I was not happy. I was just walking through life with difficulty. And I decided to go to therapy at some point.

And you would say I would have gone earlier as a therapist. I know the importance of that, but I just couldn't pull myself together and just do that. So a couple of years passed by, and then I went to therapy, and bit by bit, I started developing this resilience and confronting my dark sides and confronting the sides that I don't like and starting to accept them and see them for what they are, sides of me that want to protect me, that want the best for me. So I stopped.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (05:14)

What sorts of sides were you needing to accept?

Ioana Chei (05:20)

That's a very good question. Those sides that were scared, I didn't like to be scared. I thought that made me weak. The weak side of me, I hated that side. I wanted to be strong. These types of sides that made me... in my own mind and in my own eyes feel weak and unworthy. Right? So I started to accept that and see that my scared side was trying to protect me, was trying to tell me something. I started listening to what it had to say and integrate it in the whole. And that felt so much better. And I started to be more present and accept the hard times in my life as normal parts of my life that I can handle. So I built confidence and I built resilience, and of course, I built self-compassion, and I looked at myself with different eyes, more kind eyes.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (06:37)

That's amazing. So what sorts of things were you scared of?

Ioana Chei (06:41)

I was scared of everything. After my kid was born, I realised I'm not a scary, scared person. I'm not, I don't have fears of height or things like this, physical anxiety. But after my kid was born, I was scared of going out and meeting more people and uncertainty and new situations and places. And I had to document everything, every step. And I realised that when my kid once asked me, ‘Are we going to handle buying two pretzels?’ And, I said, because he sensed my insecurity, right? For me, it was so difficult to do anything new and out of my comfort zone, out of my safe space. So that's when I realised, I got to do something about this. And the more I build confidence in myself, the more the fear melts. And I realised no matter how uncertain a situation is, I will be able to handle it. But yeah, it was a time of deep insecurity.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (08:17)

I’m wondering from a professional and personal perspective, I'm curious about what it is that happens to young mothers that can prompt the depression because it happens to so many, and it could be, it could manifest in different forms and it could be anxiety, it could be different things, but it sounds like there are those fears because, what I'm guessing it could be is that, especially when it's your first time being a parent, you're in a new situation that you haven't had to navigate and you don't have any past experience to draw upon to navigate that moment. But I'm guessing there could be other things happening as well. What do you think it is that makes this so common?

Ioana Chei (09:09)

That is a very big part of it, right? It's all so new, and you feel so overwhelmed with everything that has to happen. And even if you did see other mothers, you didn't see the whole thing, the whole picture. And you start to encounter all these sorts of things that you didn't expect. But also, it's a life, a new life that depends on you. And that can be scary, right? If anything happens to me, this little small life, what happens to it, right? To the little baby. And that's another side of it. But also, the depression can come from the fact that even though you gained this beautiful life, this beautiful baby that's yours, and you love him or her with all of your heart, you lost your whole life. You lost so many sides of it. And your main role is as a mother. And for a period of time, all the other rules are suspended somewhere.

Right? You don't get to be the friend; the social side of you is gone. The explorer is gone, and all these sides of you that you loved are put on hold. And that's kind of a loss. And it doesn't...

help that people don't really talk about it. They just talk about how wonderful it is to be a mother and how happy you should be. And they look at you funny when you say you're sad and they see you cry, right?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (11:27)

Yes, especially because some people wait a long time to become a parent, or some people think that we should just be grateful that it happened. But that doesn't allow space for the change and the loss of the old lifestyle. This is beyond just identity. There are some things that, at least for a while, you can't do as much as you used to, so it could lead to isolation. And I'm wondering if this is essentially a form of grief.

Ioana Chei (12:00)

It is. That's why I use the word loss because it is. It has to do with grief, too. You're grieving your past life, your past self. And it's hard. It's hard because there are a few people that can actually hold space for that, for a mother.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (12:23)

There are. So did you find that even if you were talking to people who are parents, that maybe they don't want to have those real conversations, it's just a bit more emotion than what they want to look at? And then there are the people who have never been parents, and they just can't imagine it.

Ioana Chei (12:44)

Both are accurate. The ones that have never been parents and I know myself before having kids, I couldn't have imagined all the emotions and all the things that come with being a parent. So I can't wrap my head, people that don't have kids can't wrap their heads around all this. We are different, and even if we're experiencing the same life, the same age of kids, we are experiencing it differently. And some mothers don't want to talk about these feelings, and some mothers maybe don't have these feelings, right?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (13:38)

True, is that partly because every child is different, so they might not be having the same experience?

Ioana Chei (13:44)

Yes, and that's another thing. You imagine your life with a child. You don't know how it's going to be, but you imagine something, and then the child comes, and it's so different and so much harder.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (14:00)

You don't know.

We can't know what we're getting into. So are you saying that no matter how many books we read, no matter how much preparation anyone might do before becoming a parent, there's no way to know the type of person, personality, various habits that that person that you're making is going to develop? So you don't know what your everyday life is going to be like until it happens.

Ioana Chei (14:32)

That is very true. And I'm not saying don't read the books, read the books. They give you some kind of structure and idea of what needs to get done. Yeah, the experiences can be so different. And there's another thing because one of my clients came and said, you know, every parent should go to therapy before having a kid, right?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (14:36)

Yes.

Ioana Chei (15:00)

Solve our older issues and be prepared for a kid. But the thing is, no matter how much you go to therapy, when the kid comes, they discover new buttons that you had no idea were there. So, yeah. And again, I'm not...

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (15:16)

Yes.

So in reality, that could.

Ioana Chei (15:22)

Sorry, go ahead.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (15:25)

In reality, that means you don't know if maybe you will be dealing with a fussy eater and you'll be cooking a whole lot more than you would have, or you don't know if you'll have someone who is going to have insomnia for years. This isn't just, you know, it will be partly personalities, and the buttons could be triggers. They will trigger something within you, but

To some extent, you don't know what your lifestyle is going to be. It's so hard to know how you'll shape your work or your social life or the things that made you, you around this new human.

Ioana Chei (16:03)

Yeah, that's exactly how things go.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (16:07)

So I'm wondering, did you actually? There's an important question. How did you regain aspects of yourself that maybe needed to go on pause after your child was born?

Ioana Chei (16:25)

Hmm. That's a very good question because in our country, I live in Romania, and we have a leave for raising our kids for almost two years. It's like 22 months or something like that. And yeah, it's really nice because we get to spend this time with the kids.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (16:43)

NUTS!

Ioana Chei (16:54)

But on the other hand, we can be a part of the real world for two years. That's a possibility unless we actually do something about it, and we engage in social life because we want to. So that was one of the difficulties when my kid was seven months old, I decided to go for a training in clinical psychology. Once because I wanted to learn all the things that were taught there, but also because I needed something for myself. And I needed this time away from my house and with other people, and I realised my language abilities were pretty poor. Although I talked to my kid and to my husband, it wasn't at the level that I used to. So I had to regain that ⁓ during the training and during my interactions with other people.

And step by step, I started to go out into the world, and the more I went to therapy and my anxiety melted, the more I could go out and meet new people and meet my old friends and so on. But it was a difficult transition from staying at home with my kid all the time. We did go out, but we didn't meet so many people, to having my own group and meeting my own people.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (18:56)

Right. It really takes a while because when they are that tiny, they need you constantly. And so it's a while before you can even be with people a bit more.

Ioana Chei (19:08)

Yeah, that is very true. I used to meet my good friend who had a daughter that was the same age, and we would talk and chat, and we would be with the kids, and they would play. So that was a thing that I had, and I'm grateful for that because it really helped me to be in connection with somebody.

But yeah, it takes a while until you can leave your kid at home and just go out. No worries aside.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (19:47)

For sure.

Yes. That takes time. So I wanted to pivot a little bit and I'm wondering how did, how did parenthood change your perspective on psychology and also extra needs, because I'm very fascinated by your past work in schools. So I'm wondering if you have any insights because were you, sorry,

To clarify, were you working in a school before you became a parent?

Ioana Chei (20:18)

I did, yeah. I worked in school before I became a parent, and then after I became a parent, I didn't go back. So I don't have the experience of being a parent and working in school, but it did.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (20:20)

Yes.

You didn't do both at the same time, but you did both at different times. And I'm wondering what you can say to parents who are interacting with schools and maybe need. So, you know what it's like to work in a school and not be a parent. And sometimes when you're a parent, a lot of these things feel normal because it's your everyday life and trying to explain it to school workers, teachers, anyone else when they can't imagine the perspective of a parent, how would you go about explaining the reality, the mindset, the needs of a parent to people who work in schools who might not have had that experience?

Ioana Chei (21:22)

Hmm, that would be an awesome thing to be done, actually, in schools. I met really empathetic people when I worked in school, and the teachers were empathetic, and my kid's teacher is amazing. And yeah, it's different when you are a parent.

And what I would tell teachers, I think, is that sometimes the overwhelm is real.

And when there are behavioural issues and things that stand out with kids, maybe explore a little bit the whole perspective, the whole world, and not only what the parent does at home, but also how the parent feels, because that influences a lot the behavioural and emotional world of the kid.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (22:42)

So how they feel will influence things. Have you ever felt exhausted and tired from the juggle, and you are a practising therapist, and by this point, your child must be how old?

Ioana Chei (22:59)

Ten. His ten.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (23:01)

10.

So you have a 10-year-old and your own practice. So I'm not going into the whole juggle question, but I'm curious about the exhaustion because I know that it's so different compared to just having a job and not having a family. I'm wondering, do you need to do more to keep your energy?

Ioana Chei (23:27)

Yeah, with time, I learned how to make the transition from work to home and leave things at work, the things that need to be left at work, leave them there. And I use walking and nature a lot to do this transition. And I do use notebooks to leave all the thoughts there.

And everything that needs to be done tomorrow will be done tomorrow, not tonight at home. And I'm not always doing that, but I'm progressing. But the exhaustion is still there. And sometimes I go home exhausted, and my kid takes me as new. That's how we call it here.

They take you as new. That means that they see you for the first time in the day. Well, maybe not the first time because we do see each other in the morning, but for the first time in the afternoon, and they want to play with you. They want to do things with you. They want to tell you everything. They want to be there. And I want to eat.

Ioana Chei (24:55)

Really, that's what I need, actually. And some parents might want to take a shower or go to the bathroom or just sit for 10 minutes and think of nothing, but they can't really. Now that he's 10, I can say, you know, I really need to eat because you know me. And then...

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (24:58)

Yes!

You can't not eat, you have to eat.

Ioana Chei (25:24)

Yeah, I really have to eat. And it was a while until I noticed why I'm so grumpy. Because I haven't eaten. So, yeah, he knows that now, and he gives me space for 10 minutes to eat, and then he comes and we play and we do all these things. But you can get angry if you're not paying attention to these small things.

What do I need as a parent to regulate my nervous system, to regulate my emotions and to be present, to shake everything that happened over the day and be here in this moment?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (26:09)

For sure. You have to prioritise the little things and the basic needs. At what age did you know that everybody is different, but how long ago did you gain the freedom to say, I need 10 minutes to eat.

Ioana Chei (26:24)

And I don't think it was necessarily about his age, but mostly about my willingness to allow myself that time. Because there are two, yeah, there are two factors, you know, if I, if I as a parent think, I, he's…

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (26:41)

Right, you needed to speak up.

Ioana Chei (26:52)

So important and I need to be there, and I'll eat later, then I'll do that, but it won't come out pretty. I'm gonna get mad and so on. And then I'm gonna say, you know, I left my food for this. Well, maybe you should take 10 minutes and then be rested and well and have a good time instead of fighting. So it was more about that - my willingness to give myself that space and that time. But he did start to get it around seven.

Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (27:37)

Good, good. I'm sure it's different for everybody. So let's go back to, we'll go back to the depression story now. And I wanted to really explore how, how all people, how everybody can get the compassion. And do you think that in all of the struggle of getting into a new life stage, do you think that we do need to forgive ourselves for it taking a while to adjust to a new life stage of any sort.

Ioana Chei (28:12)

Yeah. I think we need to forgive ourselves. We need to give ourselves grace, to be patient with ourselves, to have compassion, as I said, because we're humans. And sometimes we treat ourselves as if we're not, as if we're robots, and we need to do things.

Right and perfect. And when I ask my clients, you know, how would you treat your friend if they had the same struggle? The perspective shifts, right? Well, I wouldn't tell them this. I wouldn't treat them like this. Then why do you treat yourself like this?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (29:02)

No. We speak worse to ourselves than we would to other people.

Ioana Chei (29:12)

Yes, yes, we are so much more harsh on ourselves than we are on other people. And sometimes we're harsh with other people, too. But when I see someone that's harsh with someone else, I can only imagine how harsh they are with themselves.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (29:29)

Yes.

Right.

Ioana Chei (29:39)

Because it's three levels higher.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (29:44)

My goodness. Do you think that's a way to have some patience with people who are too critical, knowing they are probably even more critical about themselves?

Ioana Chei (29:54)

Yes, it does help to see things this way. And that doesn't mean allow them to speak poorly to you, but it does bring a level of understanding and repositioning ourselves in relation to that person.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (30:16)

Absolutely. Absolutely. So you deal with probably all sorts of therapy. I'm wondering, okay, let's get to these serious, extra serious questions. So if someone is feeling depressed now, let's, let's actually zoom in on grief specifically, because I think now I'm not an expert IQR, but I think that we're all going to grieve.

something or someone sometime because everybody dies eventually, or even if we grieve a job that we are no longer doing, we all end up having a change that can be overwhelming. So I'm wondering, how can anyone look after themselves and feel better again, somehow? Is it about allowing a timeline, allowing months or years to adjust, or what else can people do?

Ioana Chei (31:20)

Well, it's not only about time, but time does count because sometimes we expect to be up and about in a day or two, and it doesn't work like that. We do need to allow ourselves to grieve. And sometimes what happens is that people allow time, like I read that six months is a good period of time to grieve, and that's the normal amount. But they don't actually grieve in that time. Right? I just allow six months to feel better, but I don't allow myself to cry or to process the loss. And that's necessary. know, allow yourself to cry if you feel like crying, allow yourself to... to stay with the feelings. And yeah, six months is in a book, but it can be more or it can be less. And give yourself that grace that you are you, and it could be different for you. It could be eight months. It could be, right? Don't put a timer on it and expect it to be on time.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (32:56)

That's true. So a year after something happens, you could still be processing that, and it's okay.

Ioana Chei (33:03)

You could, and it's okay, but it does need, I would evaluate how, what intensity is the filling? Is it going down or is it going up? Because that could lead to more difficulties, and it does need intervention. But yeah, it could be a year, and the pain is still there.

And when you lose someone, a person, you always feel that you miss them. And it's on and off, and you can go ahead and not think about it, or you can find yourself crying in the bathroom. So it's...

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (33:38)

Thanks

Ioana Chei (33:53)

It's different for everybody. Don't expect it to be like in the books.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (33:55)

Yes.

So, when did you have that loss, losing a family member? How close was it? Was it before or after? When exactly was it? And how close was it to having the birth?

Ioana Chei (34:12)

I was four months pregnant when my dad passed away. Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (34:15)

wow.

That would be so intense because you have all the hormones and changes and the emotional journey of being pregnant, while also feeling that grief at the same time. No wonder you didn't feel okay.

Ioana Chei (34:38)

Yeah, it was really hard, and it didn't help that everyone else around me wanted to help. They wanted to be helpful and kept telling me, ‘You need to be strong for the baby, and you need to stop crying.’ You know, I needed to cry. I needed to be weak. I needed to just feel my feelings.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (35:03)

I can really relate to that feeling of just being expected to simply carry on because I lost a grandmother during the pandemic, and we're all just in survival mode, just get through the next day and the next day. And there wasn't really any time or opportunity to just, well, react. And so for me, I found those emotions coming out.

A year later, and I finally had a moment when it wasn't as much survival mode compared to the lockdowns. So what I'm saying is that I can imagine a lot of people would have an experience like yours, where maybe they are in a high-pressure job, or they have a really busy life, a big family, whatever it might be. And we just keep going and going and going, and maybe we don't give ourselves time to just process, react and basically feel.

Ioana Chei (36:06)

Yeah, it's true. We go on autopilot and we do the things, we keep moving, and that keeps us ⁓ in the avoidance mode because we don't confront the feelings. They will come up eventually in the body or in the mind or in the behavior, they will show up.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (36:32)

You talk about the body, the mind and the behaviour. I'm wondering, are there other tools that you recommend to go alongside therapy to help to feel better? You mentioned going into nature. Do you do anything else, any spiritual practices, anything else to clear the mind?

Ioana Chei (36:53)

I do meditate and I practice yoga for about five years and that helped a lot with everything, clear my head, get out of that restless mood and quiet the body and the mind and also improve.

Ioana Chei (37:51)

I was talking about the meditation and practising yoga that really helped to quiet the mind, to quiet the body, get out of that restless mode, and really bring calmness into my life. And also, what I found lately were these somatic practices with the body that help the body feel safe, and then the body will send that message to the mind, and that's I'm sorry

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (38:34)

What does that involve?

What is the somatic practice?

Ioana Chei (38:41)

their practices with our body that are really slow, and they stimulate the vagus nerve ⁓ which really brings us into that relaxation mode, that safe space.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (39:01)

What do you do for it? Is that having a shake? Is it movement? Is it something else?

Ioana Chei (39:07)

It's also the shakes, massage, breathing, and all those practices that have to do with body stretching, different types of stretching. Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (39:29)

Awesome. So.

Ioana Chei (39:30)

So I recommend all that besides therapy because it's like a whole. use our mind, we use our body, and they're connected, and it's important to pay attention to all of them.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (39:48)

Definitely, definitely. I would love to get your perspective as a psychologist on yoga in particular, because I do support meditation. I think that a lot of people know that we can be mindful by meditating. And I wanted to bust some myths for a moment because before I started practising yoga, I thought you had to; it's all those myths that I feel embarrassed to say now.

I incorrectly assumed you have to be flexible. You have to maybe not have any injuries. didn't realise that anyone can practice yoga, and I didn't understand how it really can settle the mind and help. Just it clears us up in a way that I can't even completely explain, but it really does. So what's your experience with that, especially with your professional background?

Ioana Chei (40:41)

I understand all the myths. I had all the thoughts when I went in the first time, and the yoga teacher started the meditation, a short meditation, and I was under the impression I would never be able to meditate because my head is in so many places.

And in that moment, I was thinking, where did I put my shoes? Did I put them in the right place? Right? All these sorts of thoughts. And it's like meditating doesn't mean you don't have to think at all. It's not about that. And I actually explained that to my clients when I work with them and mentioned meditation, because they're kind of scared of it. I can't really not think of anything. Well, that's not the point. But yeah, the experience was of, you know, as we talked about self-compassion, think yoga was one of the factors that helped me grow self-compassion. Because the teacher would always say, You know, you don't need to do things like the people around you.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (41:59)

Why how?

Ioana Chei (42:08)

And each one of us is different, and it's okay to be different and just be where you are right now. And that was really helpful. Yeah. It was really, really helpful. And that's the attitude that I took with me from the classes. And I...

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (42:16)

Yes.

Ioana Chei (42:31)

I used it in my own, in my relationship with myself and in my relationship with other people. Because when you're self-compassionate, you're compassionate to others too.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (42:44)

Yes. You don't have to do everything exactly the same as everybody else. And that's the benefit of being in a group when you are doing any sort of practice, because although you are focusing on what you are doing, you will also see that there might be options, the easy option, the difficult option. And it's okay if you're not perfect at the difficult option.

It's okay. You're not passing and failing here. That's the thing we all grow up. Do you agree? grew up with, mentioned earlier, also that we treat ourselves almost like robots. Like we have to, I think there's a perfectionism in this culture. And in a way, some of these practices remind us that some things in life are not a pass and fail. Do you think so?

Ioana Chei (43:16)

Exactly.

Yes, definitely. But I learned that really late in life, that it's okay to make mistakes, that it's okay not to be at the same level if there are levels in life, that it's okay to be where you are. And the...

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (43:47)

Yes.

Ioana Chei (44:04)

An amazing thing that happened was because I loved it so much in yoga, and because I stuck with it for so many years. Now I can see the little steps that I made where they got me. Now I'm the one who does the heart poses in class, right? And I progressed so much and I started

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (44:28)

Yes!

Ioana Chei (44:33)

really late in life, right? 35, that's like you're old for yoga. That was the impression. Oh, I'm not flexible and I'll never be because I'm old, right? And it's not like that at all. Sure.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (44:42)

Wow.

Let's visit that for a second. I'm 36, and it's so odd being in our mid-thirties because anyone who is, sorry, anyone who's twice that age will say, ‘You're not old.’ You're so young, but you compare yourself to the 20-year-olds. And you realise I'm not that young person anymore. I don't have the same freedom.

And so it's like what we're saying before, being a different person. You, did you have to sort of adjust to realise you're in a different stage of life?

Ioana Chei (45:28)

I still do. This year I turned 40, so that was a shocker. When did I get here? Thank you.  But yeah, it took a while to adapt and realise I'm not 20 anymore. But the...

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (45:40)

You don't look 40!

Ioana Chei (45:56)

A cool thing is that because I study yoga, I can do so many things that I couldn't do when I was 20. So I keep myself young in the spirit.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (46:09)

You're back. You dropped for a second.

Ioana Chei (46:09)

I know what happened. I lost you for a moment. Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (46:14)

But so, it will sort that out. But you're saying that you can do some things that you couldn't do when you were 20. So maybe part of finding the joy of getting a little bit older in life just a bit is that we can do new experiences. So even though life might be different, we could have a family, we might simply look different from how we were, we can still learn how to practice yoga, we can lose weight if we want to, we can learn a new skill or try a new job. I mean, you switched to a different profession after becoming a mother. So, it sounds like we can still have a sense of novelty and freshness and health, even as we are becoming a different age.

Ioana Chei (47:06)

Yes, because we're becoming different people, actually, and we like new things, and we discover new things, and it's amazing. I was just talking to my husband, we both turned 40 this year, and it's like we're having the best times of our lives right now because we're better with ourselves, and we experience new things that we wouldn't have.

So it's really amazing, yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (47:35)

Definitely.

So there's a real sense of joy. When we started talking, you mentioned the self-compassion of getting back on track, but it sounds like finding the joy and fun and learning new things can actually, I feel like we're both just smiling even more, talking about that. It's great fun. I think that sometimes life felt really short, or I know when I was 20, I couldn't even imagine being mid-thirties, I couldn't picture it in my head. So we can't imagine what we're going to be at. Okay, let's go ahead and say it and our forties, fifties or beyond, but we're seeing that people are doing great things at all ages, really. So maybe that's a reassurance to you to think that, whichever age someone is in right now, they can be a new person and start again and do anything.

Ioana Chei (48:34)

Yes, I love that mindset because we are always evolving, and I love evolving. It's one of my passions to learn things and develop as I age. And my mom was so funny because I registered for a new training and she said, ‘When are you going to end?’

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (49:00)

What is it?

Ioana Chei (49:03)

This new training

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (49:03)

What is it?

Ioana Chei (49:07)

Well, the mindset coaching, when I registered for it, she said, ‘When are you going to stop?’ And I was like, probably when I'm dead. I'm not sure. I don't know what's beyond it, but probably then. Because I love evolving and growing, and there are always new things to learn, and there are always new ways to grow.

So it doesn't matter what age you are.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (49:36)

For sure. I want to wind up this chat by giving reassurance to people who maybe have not reached this creative and mindful joy that we're exploring. And of course, it's different every day. But for those who are maybe still in those phases of grief and depression, what would you say to those people to encourage them that they can, at some point, find the joy of curiosity and leave their next chapter?

Ioana Chei (50:12)

First, I would say it's there waiting, and it's worth it. And second, but as important, is that it's about the little steps. It doesn't have to be climbing Mount Everest. It needs to be what's the next little step that will get you there. Just patience and baby steps.

We'll get there.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (50:44)

Step by step. Thank you so much for talking and for sharing your story and your knowledge. Thanks.

Ioana Chei (50:54)

Thank you so much for having me, Melanie. It was a pleasure.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (50:58)

It has been.