Interview with Jeanie Oberg McKinney
In this episode, we will uncover 3 keys to:
- The importance of resilience in the face of grief, trauma, and divorce.
- The significance of self-discovery and empowerment as essential steps in the journey of recovery.
- The benefits of seeking help and building a support system.
Podcast Transcription
Episode 10: Jeanie Oberg McKinney – Grief & Trauma Expert of “Mindful Pivot Points Life Coaching” for Divorcees
Intro
Odiva Vasell: (00:00)
Welcome, fabulous fempreneurs! We have an exciting and yet in-depth interview today with Miss Jeanie Oberg McKinney. She is a grief and trauma coach, and she’s going to tell us exactly how we can address this as part of our lives because none of us can avoid the facts of life which cause grief and trauma. So, welcome, welcome, Jeanie.
Jeanie McKinney: (00:35)
Thank you, thank you so much.
Odiva Vasell: (00:38)
Yes, thank you for joining me today, and I just want to say, as I’ve said before when I first met you and found out about what you do, this is such a needed field. The reality is that so many of us go through this time of our lives with no one to turn to, right? And that’s sad and that’s tragic, and the repercussions happen throughout our family and our lives. So, tell me more. Introduce yourself and tell me more about how you got started.
The importance of resilience in the face of grief, trauma, and divorce.
Jeanie McKinney: (01:21)
Okay, well, I am Jeanie Oberg McKinney. I have five kids, and I have actually done grief and trauma support off and on for most of my life. I was holding my mother’s hand when she passed away when I was 15 after a battle with cancer, and that kind of started me on a trajectory of supporting others. Within weeks, I had issues, a friend of mine’s fiancé died in an airplane, and he and his sister and I supported her and his family just because I was a half a step ahead. You know, I kind of did that as needed, and then I lost four of my own children in the second trimester and really started taking a deep dive on healing the grief and trauma of that. I ran some grief support groups for a while and worked with a group called Parents Reaching Out, supporting families who had lost a child. In that process, I trained some organizations as a part of a panel with the hospitals, helping nurses know what to say and not to say. Staff with the loss of a child, in particular, but also working with the Crisis Pregnancy Center locally, training their staff on the things to say and not to say. And most recently, because after 28 years of marriage and raising, well, mostly raising five kids, I went through a divorce. I have now shifted my focus to supporting women who often find that every support system they have or had is gone. For example, family systems. Maybe you were a part of their family because you had a smaller family or something like that. That support system is gone. Maybe people knew you both and don’t want to pick sides, and so suddenly you have no support. Typically, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Whoever is the loudest in complaining often will be the one everyone gives attention to. So, I have now formed my Mindful Pivot Points coaching for women starting over successfully and support women before, during, and after divorce. The first step in all of that is, let’s evaluate. Do you really need and want a divorce, or are you going through something emotional? Let’s deal with the emotions first because sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know and we have skill sets that we can polish up or maybe even just learn for the first time. Maybe previous traumas that we’ve brought into the relationship that we can heal from that change all the dynamics, and the divorce wouldn’t be necessary. So, that’s where I started.
Odiva Vasell: (03:55)
Wow, that is brilliant because just removing the other person out of the problem doesn’t take away all the problems. In fact, it probably creates more. So, if you can’t get yourself aligned first, yeah.
Jeanie McKinney: (04:11)
Yeah, that’s the real thing. Because I have also taught grief and trauma in an inner healing as a facilitator with an organization for years. One of the things that we have to realize is the only person we have control over is ourselves. And a lot of times, our behavior patterns are trying to control someone else because we want them to do something, because we have an unmet need. And we have to take a look at what was that unmet need, and where did it come from? Many times, it comes from our childhood. So, we have mother wounds, we have father wounds, we have traumas of varying shapes and sizes. You know, trauma comes in all forms. I like to say that if we suck air, we have trauma. We may not know it, though. It may be so subconscious that it’s still affecting us, but we don’t know it. And so, that’s typically where I want to start with women. Let’s evaluate what’s really going on. Have you had a trauma in your life that is causing you to react, or are you working actively on the inner healing so that you can sit back and respond? And those are two very different things, particularly in a relationship.
Odiva Vasell: (05:24)
It sounds like trauma is part of the human journey.
Jeanie McKinney: (05:27)
It is.
Odiva Vasell: (05:28)
To think that we’re all alone in our particular trauma is a lie. And that kind of sets us to be alienated and feel more trauma.
Jeanie McKinney: (05:40)
Exactly. And, you know, a lot of times we write stories with those lies that we believe. We paint dragons on the wall that don’t really exist because we’re looking at it through that lie that we’ve believed and through the pain that we experienced, even if we don’t recognize that that’s what we’re doing.
Odiva Vasell: (05:58)
Okay, that resonates with me. Guilty, I’m sure. Yeah, because we see things through different, well, some say rose-colored glasses, and then you see someone else who’s looking through their psychedelic color glasses, and you’re like, why can’t they see what I see?
Jeanie McKinney: (06:17)
Right.
Odiva Vasell: (06:18)
Why can’t they see what’s happening in this situation? Interesting, interesting.
Jeanie McKinney: (06:23)
It happens really very frequently because we have different communication skills. We have different family, social skills, maybe religious skills, social skills, and so we view things differently, and that communication can get broken because of our assumptions and our subconscious things that we bring with us, and we aren’t even aware because you know what is normal. What’s normal in one family may not be normal in another family, and yet you don’t know what you don’t know.
Odiva Vasell: (06:49)
What is normal? Who’s normal?
Jeanie McKinney: (06:51)
Exactly.
Odiva Vasell: (06:52)
It doesn’t exist.
Jeanie McKinney: (06:53)
Exactly.
Odiva Vasell: (06:55)
Ah, this is…
Jeanie McKinney: (06:56)
And then we transfer that into a relationship and say, “Well, you’re not normal; I’m normal.” Really, sometimes there may be some issues that need to be dealt with. But before anyone takes the journey down the road of divorce and, you know, just causing additional trauma for themselves and for family members, for children, things that actually set them up for more down the road themselves, it’s really important to take a deep dive and look inside. That’s where I begin with working with people. Is this really what you want to do? And it is.
Odiva Vasell: (07:31)
An awareness.
Jeanie McKinney: (07:32)
I’ll support you, yeah.
Odiva Vasell: (07:34)
Yeah, greater awareness of self. That’s where it all ends.
Jeanie McKinney: (07:37)
Yeah.
Odiva Vasell: (07:38)
So, tell me a little bit about your journey, 28 years that you said.
The significance of self-discovery and empowerment as essential steps in the journey of recovery
Jeanie McKinney: (07:43)
Yeah, and you know, the sad thing was, is that you, like I said, we don’t know what we don’t know. You enter into a relationship till death do us part; you’re committed. I was committed, he was committed, both of us to the best of our ability at the time. And that’s really the issue is that sometimes we, I mean when we’re young, we just don’t have the skill set. And so, we were within a matter of weeks of our marriage in counseling, and I went, “Oh my God, I made a big mistake. I want out.” But, you know, through some counseling, we learned some skills, and that helped us get down the road. But as time went on, you know, sometimes you can start out with something that’s really little, but that little thing over time expands and gets bigger and bigger because we’re off course, you know, and maybe not as much off course as misaligned. And if we can’t course correct enough, in which we did, you know, we spent… I can’t tell you how many hours in the counselor’s office over the years. But things didn’t change. They would change for a matter of months and then come back. And that’s where that subconscious stuff comes in. And eventually, I realized I’m the only one working on this relationship. You don’t even show up to the appointments, and when you tell me that you talk to the counselor, all you did was wave to her in the church foyer and say hello. So, you know, when you begin to start seeing things that don’t make sense, mind you, I had five kids. I homeschooled them from K through 12. So, I was busy, busy, busy, busy. You know, six subjects, five kids, music, art, PE, added up classes outside of the home. It wasn’t until some of the kids started graduating that I had a chance to look up and go, “Wait a minute, this story didn’t align with this story, which didn’t align with this story. Uh, something’s not right here.” And we had an opportunity, I’ll call it, to start a business, and that opportunity came about because my husband was yet again unemployed, and this time for two and a half years. And we tried building a business during that time. And as I was talking to customers, I was listening to what he told me had happened in the meeting and what they told me had happened in the meeting, and they didn’t match. And that’s when I began understanding that I was being lied to about a lot of things, and suddenly I started stepping back and watching and started the process of realizing this is really unhealthy. I got to figure out what to do, and that was a process. It took me years because I did not want to throw away 20 plus years of marriage as I was beginning to wake up to these things.
Odiva Vasell: (10:29)
I have beautiful shoes that I broke in. I don’t want to throw them away, investing so much with myself and to a life that, as you said, you planned was death do us part, and now things are unraveling, and you have to be brave enough to take a step back and look at.
Jeanie McKinney: (10:49)
I really did. And looking at the effects of the five kids, you know, how’s that going to affect my kids? I’ve told them all their life that they should honor their mother and father and that we should love one another and that we should be willing to forgive, and here’s mom going, “Hmm,” you know, 7 times 70, have we reached that yet? How many times am I going to forgive? It was bad. And there were times where I dug this out financially again and again with financial irresponsibility, just things that I didn’t put the dots together until much later. But I actually had to, you know, I realized I’m the only one that can work on the change that is needed. And so, I did a lot of inner healing, just really did some deep dives with myself, with the grief. You know, losing four children was not a small thing, and that typically blows couples apart. But I was committed and really willing to work on myself, and that has been my strength through the whole process is just that, one, my faith. I pray, “Lord, what’s the next step? I just need one step. Please don’t give me three because I can’t handle three, just one. And what do I do now?” So, in that healing process myself, I changed the dance. I no longer dance the dance. He could no longer puppet-control me with passive-aggressive manipulation. He could no longer poke my buttons and have me respond the way that he was used to, which actually brought up a bunch of anger and resentment because he was no longer in control. I wasn’t predictable anymore. I was actually learning how to stand in my own strength and how to say, “I’m really sorry that you have that issue, but that’s not my issue, and I can’t help you with it. But I can pray for you, and I suggest you talk to the therapist about that, or, you know, just that’s something you’ll have to deal with at work. I can’t help you.” I had been an enabler for a long time because he’d say, “I don’t know how to do this, do you?” And I’d say, “Yeah,” and he’d drop it in my lap. Come to find out he was doing that to the women at work as well and not actually doing his job. They were all doing bits and pieces because when you’re the victim and you’re helpless and you don’t know how to do it, what do we do as women? “Oh, let me step in and fix it for you. I can help you because you’re so charming, and in my case, because I love you.” But in all actuality, when we are not allowing someone else to step into their shoes of responsibility, we are becoming a codependent part of the problem. And that’s what I had to recognize in myself. My codependency was creating the problem, and when I started healing and being less codependent and standing up for myself, that actually just revealed the depth of the problems.
Odiva Vasell: (13:49)
Codependency is something that we did not even acknowledge, I would say a couple of decades ago. That’s just the way things were. And now we are stepping into our power and realizing, “Ah, we’re individuals.” That is the new story and the new awareness that we’re creating. And if I can say anything about listening to your story is that you had that resilience, and you still do have that resilience to keep putting, as you said, one foot in front of the other. That’s amazing. So now, in this business you’ve created, how do you get women on that pathway to realize, “Oh no, I’m divorced, and I’m feeling shame or regret, and I just want to hide in a corner,” and people are telling me, “Suck it up because it’s just a part of life that many people go through.” How do you actually get them to realize there’s more to it than just suffering?
Jeanie McKinney: (14:51)
Well, like I said, the first thing we do is I help them evaluate where are you coming from, where is, first of all, specific to if they’re considering marriage, which, by the way, I have a master class next Thursday at 4 pm Alaska time. That is what it is. It’s if you’re considering divorce, three keys to help you decide, should you stay or walk away, because we really have to know that. First of all, if our head and our heart are not strong, this is going to do more damage than help at the moment because most of the time, not always, but statistics prove that most of the time, women end up in poverty after a divorce because they lose at least 50 percent of the income, and women typically are not earning as much as the men anyway, and then they have the children. Most of the time, they end up with custody. Sometimes they get support, sometimes they don’t. So, it’s a serious decision to make. So, I really work with women, first of all, to make that decision. But once that decision is made, I work with women one-on-one with inner healing and helping to empower them to stand strong because if they’re going through the divorce process, it’s not something that we’re taught. Nobody knows it except the lawyers, right?
Odiva Vasell: (16:03)
Yeah, and they’re not there to help.
Jeanie McKinney: (16:05)
So, you know, you don’t know the questions that you’re going to be asked, the decisions that you have to make, and suddenly you’re in a courtroom, and they’re saying, “Well, do you want this or this?” And you’re going, “I’m already so nervous, my stomach is in knots, my head is all over the place, I’m hyperventilating, and you’re asking me to make a decision that’s a lifetime decision. I wasn’t prepared for this.” And so, I work with women to help prepare them mentally and emotionally for the kinds of decisions that they’re going to need to make, as well as the things that they are worthy of requesting, the things that they deserve after 28 years of marriage. Maybe they were like me, where they were told in many subtle ways that you were devalued and not worthy of anything. And then in the court documents, if any of what was said was true, I should have been in jail. Thankfully, the judges see this, and you know, this particular judge just kind of went, “How could the kids spend 24/7, 365 with this homeschooling mom, and everybody says they’re amazing, but she’s been abusive?” Yeah, just people, the ugly side of people comes out in divorce. And I really work with women to learn how to stand tall in their strength, in their character and integrity, and even when they’re shaking on the inside, to find that confidence within to approach things from what is in the best interest of my kids, what is in the best interest long term, to learn how to compromise in the right places, to give and take in the right places. If you can settle outside of court, that is so much better. I walked away with it. It took me four and a half years to get divorced from a man who walked out the door and wanted the divorce and eighty thousand dollars. Why? If you want a divorce, please just leave. But that’s the other part of my program, dealing with the toxic and the abusive relationships and how you handle those because those are the ones that tend to go on and get ugly.
Odiva Vasell: (18:05)
Yeah, just having that paper signed that says you’re divorced doesn’t mean that you’ve immediately separated. There can be ongoing abuse and manipulation from both sides. So you really want to be prepared, and you are stepping in the fold and standing there for women who need some guidance, objective guidance. I like what you said, that the first step is really getting aligned with yourself and who you are as a person and your needs.
Jeanie McKinney: (18:42)
It’s really critical because as women, we tend to put ourselves in the caboose of the train. Everybody else’s needs come first. And I know in my case, I actually stepped back and went, “Okay, my mother died at 54, and I was at the time approaching that age, and knowing that disease often comes from that inner stress and the overt flooding of cortisol and all of these things.” And I realized the amount of stress that I’m living under right now, the only thing I can change is me. And then once I got strong enough, I realized, no, I can actually say, “I am important enough that I want to live, and I need to de-stress my life. And what are some of the ways to do that?” And I was grateful for the counselor that I had used for years, finally realizing, as I was telling her some of the things that were going on, we were separated for three and a half months after he threatened me with a shotgun. So as I was explaining to the counselor some of the things that were going on during that time as we were trying to reconcile, she began to see what I had been telling her all along. But when you’re dealing with a covert narcissist, they’re very subtle things, and people don’t realize that it’s just millimeter by millimeter by millimeter that they completely destroy your foundational self-worth. And she began to see how he was gaslighting me and all of the things that he was gaslighting her. And as a therapist, she goes, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t see this because he’s done so well from the upbringing, and I just didn’t see it.” So as we went through the process, that gave me an understanding of just how strong I had been and how much I could turn around and help others. And that resilience is really important, but so is support, so is having somebody who can say, “Oh, I see that. No, you’re not crazy. No, that is really a toxic behavior.”
The benefits of seeking help and building a support system.
Odiva Vasell: (20:39)
I think that’s the first step to coming out of a trauma, to be seen, you know, and heard, your story, and not just devalued and not acknowledged for what you’ve been through. And so you’re talking to a lot of women now who are being strong, but you don’t need to just take on the whole world and continue strong the whole time by yourself. You need some support system.
Jeanie McKinney: (21:11)
You really do, and your support system doesn’t have to be enormous, but you need to have a place. Like, for myself, there was a time in my rebuilding of things, I started a commercial janitorial company because I realized I knew how to do two things. I could teach, but I had no teaching certificate, although I taught certified teachers how to homeschool kids because I helped start several homeschool programs here in Alaska. And so, I could teach and had more experience, but I would still be hired on as an entry-level. My children, my two younger kids that were still in school, the girls would have to go to school in junior high while their parents were going through a divorce. For my youngest, I went, “Oh no, she’s dyslexic. She does not need that additional trauma.” So I thought, “That’s not an option. That’s off the table.” The other thing I know how to do is clean up after people because I cleaned up his messes, my messes, their messes, our messes. And I could still homeschool the girls during the day and do commercial janitorial at night. So here I am, 12 years later, still doing commercial janitorial. And during that time, though, I also, because I was good with numbers and with money and wanted to learn investing, I also worked within a Fortune 100 insurance company, learned great skills, also learned all the manipulative sales things that my former sales husband had used on me, which angered me tremendously as I realized I’m being fed scripts. But in that process, I also learned a whole lot of things about setting myself up for the future, setting myself up for future success, my kids, you know, putting things in place that I really am grateful for that time. But there was no time left for sleep, and there’s just that small window of time that you can do this. You know, we can sprint, and then we have to settle into a pace. So I sprinted for a while, and that was very difficult. But sometimes it’s what’s necessary. But you cannot do that long term. You have to find a solution that you can settle into that is one that is sustainable.
Odiva Vasell: (23:19)
Well, I like what you said about having a sacred place. And, again, your story is so inspirational, where you said, “What can I do? What am I able to do and good at?” And you started to build a business through that knowledge. And that’s so inspiring because, again, a lot of women who are in the process of getting divorced or deciding if they should or shouldn’t are looking at what can I do independently if the rug is pulled out from under me. So that’s huge.
Jeanie McKinney: (23:58)
It really is. Evaluating that is a huge process because typically our self-esteem has been taken away. And, you know, I struggled with how much do I charge? What is a reasonable amount to charge? I went in for an interview with this company, and the manager had been a contractor. And I had just pulled an all-nighter for someone for their inspection because with construction, things happen. Things go wrong. They painted the house the wrong color. They had to come back in and repaint. As the commercial cleanup crew, we ended up pulling an all-nighter so that they could pass the inspection the next day. And he said, “So you just pulled his fat out of the fire. I hope you are charging him triple time.” The first time that thought came to my head, I was so used to working around the clock for free. It took me a while to go, and so I said, “Really? So what would that be valued at?” And actually, he’s interviewing me for hiring a job, and I’m interviewing him for what do I charge for what I just did.
Odiva Vasell: (25:01)
But this is good. I mean, you’re also telling us that this is a learning process, and there are many factors that we can learn about our environment and ourselves. And I think the biggest message here is that there is hope. There is so much hope for you, regardless of past traumas and horrible situations that you might have experienced, holding the family together, and what your financial future looks like. There is hope for survivors of trauma and grief, and I’m just so glad that you are here for them to support them. And I want to thank you for coming and sharing your story with us today. And really, like, I wish there could be more of you in every state, but hopefully we can pass this knowledge of who we are as women and the role that we play doesn’t stop when we are in bad relationships or if we do get a divorce. It doesn’t stop there. There is still life.
Jeanie McKinney: (26:11)
There is, you know, and that’s the thing, is that I knew that there was light at the end of the tunnel. And it did take me a little while to go, “Okay, that light at the end of the tunnel is good. It’s not a train wreck coming at me.” You know, sometimes we feel like that when we’re in the midst of it. But that’s where it’s really important to have the support, and I’m grateful that I did have those few friends. I had another friend going through a divorce with six kids and some of the similar types of crazy that I was dealing with, and we helped each other along. And those key people in your life, but we both realized that what would we have done if we didn’t have each other? Now, there are places, and I did do a divorce care course twice because I needed it through our church. But I didn’t find what I needed there as much as I did just getting out there and taking the time. I took a walk and just went, “Okay, I don’t know what I’m doing.” I sat on a rock, I just listened. “Where do I go from here?” You know, just that still small voice. As scared as I was to start a business because I had done other ones just to kick in for the family budget because he had always overspent and I was trying to make ends meet. But I’d not really done it on my own, and I was scared.
Odiva Vasell: (27:30)
Okay.
Jeanie McKinney: (27:31)
Turns out that my son, great at lots of computer things, he and I are business partners, and he helped me get it up and running. I ran it with him for a while. Everybody worked evenings together. That was the other beautiful thing, is that we could work together as a family, and they learned skills. He’s gone on, he’s a manager now, and he tossed it back into my lap. We’ve kind of tossed it back and forth as we tried other things. But, you know, we can reset and restart, and, you know, I moved into coaching after doing inner healing stuff with people for 25 years. So there’s always something that is preparing us for the next step. I didn’t know when I got a rental property and I got it paid off that that was going to be paying my bills for a little bit. That was awarded that in the divorce because I was the only one that worked on it. The kids and I worked on it together. They learned life skills with it through homeschool stuff. And so, you know, we can always learn something more, and that’s the hope, is that we can learn. There’s so many things we can do. We just don’t know what we don’t know.
Odiva Vasell: (28:37)
As long as we’re alive, don’t know, there is hope, and there is something else you can do or another way that you can transform as you’ve become more aligned into who you are. So never give up hope, I think is the biggest message that people can take away from listening to this, and seek support around you. And if you don’t have the support you need, you can find Jeanie, and I will be posting all the information for you to reach her, and just do not give up hope, ladies.
Jeanie McKinney: (29:14)
Yes.
Odiva Vasell: (29:15)
There is a new life on the end of this journey for you.
[Music]
Conclusion
In summary, this serves as an inspiring testament to the human spirit’s resilience in the face of adversity. It reaffirms the power of self-discovery and empowerment during times of grief, trauma, and divorce, urging us to recognize our intrinsic worth and take control of our destinies. It also underscores the vital role of support and community in these journeys, reminding us that we don’t have to navigate these challenges alone. It’s a profound reminder that, even in our darkest moments, there’s always a path to healing, renewal, and the beginning of a new, empowering chapter in our lives.