Vanessa: the more you can pause and listen to your body, listen to your inner knowing, your divine, whatever you want to call it, the more you will always be guided in the right direction.
Chrissie: when we give up our right to our imagination, our ability to be a visionary is cut off. And then we have unintentionally often unconsciously chosen group think and belonging over our own imagination and vision and inhibits the growth of entire worlds.
Vanessa: when you're 80 or 90 years old, I want you to look back on your life and say, Yes, I lived a life well lived. My life had purpose. My life had fulfillment. And I lived it with an open heart.
Chrissie: You're listening to Solving for Joy. I'm your host, Dr. Chrissie Ott.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the solving for joy podcast. I am so excited today to introduce you to an extraordinary leader in Medicine. She's also a friend and colleague who I deeply admire. This is Dr. Vanessa Calderon. Vanessa wears many hats. She is a board certified emergency medicine physician, a expert in resiliency and the founder of eye care MD, where she helps healthcare providers reconnect with their purpose. Her work as a coach speaker and educator has inspired countless people, and she is deeply passionate about fostering compassion, equity, and resiliency in medicine. Beyond her impressive professional roles, Vanessa brings a sense of authenticity and connection to everything that she does. I can vouch for this. I can't wait for you to meet her and hear her insights and, uh, find joy in the moments that we're going to share with you today. Vanessa, welcome, welcome to the podcast.
Vanessa: Thank you so much for having me, sweet friend. It's wonderful to be here.
Chrissie: So good to have you here. I know that that was a very, very brief and skinny version of your quite impressive CV. And I also know from being your friend that sometimes we don't lead with our impressive accomplishments. But I'm just going to give you a minute to, you know, augment our introduction and, and share some pieces about what you do and have done that, um, will help just kind of bolster a person's experience of who you are and what your perspective is built of.
Vanessa: Yeah, sure thing. Thank you for giving me the space to do that. So yeah, I am Vanessa Calderon. I am an ESL human being, English for a second language. Um, so I learned English. I was born in the United States, but my mother, who is a Latin immigrant from Mexico and my father from El Salvador my mom was committed to us speaking Spanish and so she actually didn't let us speak English at home. And I still remember when I was a kid playing this game with my cousins and we'd say, let's pretend like we'd speak English and then we'd move our hands around and we'd go like this, and that was us speaking English.
So, um, so I mean, fast forward from there, I have 20 years of experience as a leader doing all of many different things, um, department chief, med exec, national board experience. I graduated from Harvard and UCLA medical school. Um, I have 10 years of business development experience, essentially going into new hospitals, starting new departments, hiring folks, uh, streamlining operations, increasing finances, um, and really all of it in service to the patients that we served. Everything I did, uh, one quick thing, sort of to give you a lens. Before I went to medical school, I was a social justice activist. So I worked full time doing grassroots organizing work, and many different facets, uh, primarily, uh, doing healthcare access work, social justice work around racial justice and poverty elimination work.
So I've always been really focused on purpose and creating a difference in the world in a way that's in service and for the highest and greatest good of all. So, and, and you'll see as we're talking more how all of this sort of leads me to where I am today. But, um, I. So after all of this leadership experience and business development experience, I, you know, I was on this path to become a chief officer of a hospital and had been, um, given the, given a job, or at least had been asked to, to serve in that role. And that was when my big crossroads came. And I realized that for me, that was just not the direction my life was going. I knew my heart was not in that, you know, my heart was not aligned with that. However I didn't know what I was going to do. And as you probably have experienced personally, you know, we, I stepped into the unknown and the big gray zone and it was super, super scary. Um, and I, it was one of the first times that I was like, okay, here I go. I'm surrendering and I'm trusting. And I stepped out of, um, that trajectory and went full on into wellness and resiliency.
So I've been doing wellness and resiliency work with, you know, National organizations, uh, physician organizations and non physician organizations. And, um, I recently started working specifically with entrepreneurs. And so I now work with entrepreneurs doing conscious business development and conscious leadership development. So that's now where I'm spending most of my time is working with physician entrepreneurs and other entrepreneurs and really helping them get their businesses off the ground and lead a life of purpose.
Chrissie: All of that just makes my heart sing. Thank you for sharing that, um, that perspective and it pleases me so much to, just to get to center that perspective. Um, and to let people's brains catch up for a minute as they hear like, Oh yeah, let me, let me just connect this to the first thing that Vanessa said. I am an ESL human, and this is my CV today. And instead of following the breadcrumbs that were set out for me in this, you know, predetermined, um, sort of success model to a C suite job, you somatically sensed another truth, another yearning, another future calling you, and went with it, which is just one of the most beautiful, aligned, courageous things that a human can do.
Vanessa: It really is. When you start listening to your body, you know, the knowledge, the wisdom, I love that you said Semitic because honestly, all of our truth, all of our wisdom lives inside of us already. And the more you can pause and listen to your body, listen to your inner knowing, your divine, whatever you want to call it, the more you will always be guided in the right direction. And uh, And that took a lot for me to really lean into because you're right, it's courage. Because up until that point, there's so much noise. Everyone's trying to tell you what to do. You're trying to make everybody proud of you. And here I am, you know, like first, first generation American daughter of immigrants doing my best to make my parents proud, to make my community proud, to make my sisters proud. Who else can I make proud? Never pausing to be like, What about you? Hey, what about, hello, Vanessa, what about you? And it was honestly, you know, you've probably heard this before, but, um, the universe sends you a message and when you don't listen, it's a whisper and then you still don't listen, it's a little louder, and then they start like knocking you over the head. And,
Chrissie: and then they pushed you down from behind.
Vanessa: yeah, and they're like tripping you on the ground, dragging you the other direction. But the truth is, you know, we have free will. And so we can always make choices. And if it's not aligned with who we're supposed to be, that's okay. That's the life you're going to live. And you, you will start noticing the signs that maybe that's not the life for you. And for me, I realized even when I, I don't know if I've shared this with you, Chrissy, but, um, I have recently stopped practicing emergency medicine, which is It's incredibly bittersweet when you are trained in something that you so passionately love and are good at.
You know, I did it for 15 years and last June was my last clinical shift. And the reason why is because I started getting somatic messages from my body, headaches, pains, when I would show up and I needed to listen. And the more I quieted down and listened to what my body was telling me, then I got messages from divine. And finally I was like, okay, it's time to make space for whatever else is coming my way. It's
Chrissie: Even though it's so hard sometimes to do, it is like tapping into our ancient ways of knowing, which is a very, um, you know, it's not what our current culture reaches for first, but it takes stillness and it takes some quiet and those things are actually quite hard to come by at this moment in human life.
Vanessa: A hundred percent. No one is putting that out there for us and no one is giving us the time to slow down. You know, I didn't mention this in my intro, but, um, part of my training that's brought me here above all the credentials and the degrees and everything that, you know, sort of an analytical Western mind needs. A lot of my training has been in ancient wisdom, working with indigenous tribes, going back to my own roots, my Aztec roots, and working with shamans, um, some like famous ones that written books and, and really like learning from them, learning from Buddhist monks and really learning ancient wisdom.
And as you, I'm sure are very familiar with when you start leaning into the ancient wisdom, why it's so wise is you'll notice it's just integrity. It's truth. And everyone is sort of saying the same things, depending on where you are in the world, using different languages, but it's all the same thing. Unconditional love, universal consciousness coming from integrity. And I think what I realized now is, you know, when we connect with somebody else, what is actually connecting? It's integrity to integrity, you know? So when you say, you know, I see your light, I see your light too. What are we seeing? We're seeing truth.
Chrissie: Integrity, alignment, truth. They all. They all come together. It's exciting to think about it. And one of the reasons I feel so good to connect to our somatic, uh, experience is because our somatic experience, I think is informed by our genetic connection to, you know, Generations past that it is where we actually have our roots. It is where we grow from. It's our mother plant. know, I just sent out an email this past week, um, which I surprised myself about the subject line was, you know, ancestral work and acknowledging out loud to an audience of a lot of, you know, Left brain leaning physician types that I believe when we're really aligned, that we are healing generations past that we are doing ancestral work with our day to day actions and alignment and integrity.
Vanessa: And what's really beautiful about that, especially the left for the left brain folks is that it's been proven more and more in the science. You know, when we heal ourselves, we're healing seven generations before us. And we know through epigenetics, you know, you know, that whenever you are the embryo inside of your mother, and she's the embryo inside of your grandmother. Your ovum already exists. That's already there, and so what impacts your grandmother impacts you, and that's just from a genetic level, like, you know, that's not even, that's not ancestral, that's generational.
Chrissie: That's microplastics and preservatives. Yeah. Germline mutations.
Vanessa: And so, yeah, exactly. And it's proven more and more. And so I love that you said that. I, I don't think you and I have talked about this actually, um, but I think your audience, I don't know if your audience knows this, but Chrissie and I are friends and so we kick it and, and we are often at conferences and we were in a hot tub recently together, but I don't think we covered the topic of generational trauma,
Chrissie: we could have. It's never enough time.
Vanessa: Exactly. I, um, I have, it's funny that you bring that into this conversation. The year of 2024 for me was this beautiful, incredible year of healing generational wounds, generational trauma for me that I really leaned into. And I have this beautiful little thing here that my son bought me without me prompting, it says. You know, the famous quote, I am my ancestor's wildest dreams. And so I have it here. And my son was seven, by the way, he was six when he bought that. We were just out. I, we, we went to go do a historical tour of a bunch of museums and plantations and other things in the South. And he just went out and bought that with his own money. And he's like, mom, I bought you something. Can you, I know I'm like, wow.
Chrissie: Yes. That's amazing. That's, that's amazing. So sweet. And so inspiring. What a precious little human he must be. Love that.
Vanessa: Yeah. He's just a cutie.
Chrissie: Well, Vanessa, we talked a little bit about, you know, what it is to solve for joy. And I'm going to ask you to tell us a little bit about what solving for joy is like being you in the world right now. And, um, I know our preliminary conversation points to purpose, leaning into purpose and doing it with an open heart. So I'm just going to open it up and, and sort of like start an exploration of, of these ideas as they relate to our lifelong mission of solving for joy.
Vanessa: It's, it's interesting when you asked me about that and my response was leaning into purpose because it's not just about leaning into purpose, it's doing it with an open heart. And what I mean by that is doing it with intention, doing it from love, because the opposite is obligation and responsibility. And I have had an interesting relationship with this coming from, you know, my background and coming from a place of having so much opportunity compared to my ancestors and compared to other women just before us, you know, like even as a healer, you know, both of us have come into this world incarnated as healers. And what does that mean for us? What was I in a different life? Maybe I was, I, I'm 100 percent sure that I was a witch in a different lifetime and I couldn't be a witch now because, you know, so, um, although I'm coming back to my witchy roots for those that are listening.
Chrissie: Oh my God, I just finished binging Agatha all along.
Have you seen?
Vanessa: Oh, I haven't. No, no. I don't really watch stuff, but I'm going to watch it. I do love her.
Chrissie: Catherine Hahn and Aubrey Plaza. I mean, I don't want to diverge us, but witchy.
Vanessa: I will watch that. Um, but there's a really good book. It's called Just Witch W I T C H by Lisa Lester, uh, who essentially just goes into the power of leaning into being in your power as a woman and as everyone knows, or at least Chrissie and I know from just personal experience, the scariest, the most dangerous thing to any system of power is a woman fully in her power. A woman fully in her power is terrifying to systems of oppression, the patriarchy, the Catholic church, you know, racism, all of those types of things. And what is a witch? A woman fully in her power. And so, I That, that kind of got derailed from purpose and joy and open heart.
But, uh, the point is that when you come from a place of obligation and responsibility, the sense is heaviness, the sense is it's my responsibility. So if I don't do it, I feel guilty or there's shame, or there's all these other things that show up that are just there to hold us back, to make us feel small, to separate us from joy. And the whole, you know, your podcast, Solving for Joy, the purpose of our lives is to feel joy. You know, people study emotional vibrations and we can look at this on maps and heat maps of the human body. They study emotional vibration and I would have assumed love is the highest vibration, guess what? Joy. Joy and love vibrate at the same vibration. Even sometimes joy is measured higher than love. Joy is so powerful. It's so powerful. It's no, it's no wonder we've been kept from joy. How? By being told lies of laziness, by being told lies that you have to overwork, that you have to be productive.
And when you think about all of that. Who does that empower or who is that good for? It's not good for me. It's not good for all of the people that I've coached that are burnt out. It's not good for any other woman. Who's it good for? It's good for systems of power and the people that are leading. Those are the only thing it's good for. And so it doesn't mean that we don't do things that feel good to us, like showing up for our family, showing up for our patients. It means that when we do it, we come from a place of intention, purpose, and an open heart. I'm doing it from love. Cause I want to, not because I have to.
Chrissie: I could not agree more with all of that. And when a woman is fully in her power, as you say, um, this comes, this next piece comes from a session with a client I've been working with. Um, this very powerful human who happens to be in a female body owes no one anything. Owes no one anything. And she is so embodied. And what does the female body do? Like, what are we known for? Creation. Creating life. Right? So then we go back to that co creative trust and surrender to the creative impulse, which is our privilege to dance with from the universe.
Vanessa: Is some powerful stuff. I, I feel like I, I don't know if I'm manifesting this or what's happening right now, but you're like pulling everything out of my brain right now, Chrissie everything I'm thinking, but I, um, it's so interesting. I, at the, as I was coming out of all of my generational trauma, ancestral trauma, all of that healing work I was doing in 2024, and by the way, when I showed up in November to the last conference, you and I were at, I was almost on the other side of that. I wasn't there yet, but I was almost on the other side.
And so I was feeling this lightness and this, this different sense of being, but, um, but I wrote out a map of my body. I just drew out my body. And then I said, who is it? That what is it that I'm leaving behind with this healing and who is it that I'm becoming? And when I wrote out what I'm leaving behind, I just like went to my body. Where do I feel that? Ah, okay. And so when I wrote out, what am I taking with me? Guess what I wrote? Being a sovereign being, a sovereign being, which is exactly what you said. A sovereign being means that we are only responsible to ourselves, that if we want pleasure, pleasure all the way. If we want joy, joy all the way. That if we want unconditional love, that's all the way. If we want material desires, do it. Whatever it is that we want. The things that get in the way of us really stepping into being a sovereign being is shame. And shame is an effing lie. Shame is a lie told to us to keep a small in a little tiny box so that we have no power. Why have we been shamed from our sources of power? What are the sources of power for women? Our sexuality, our money making power, our ability to be creators, creatrixes, if you want to call it that.
Chrissie: Do you know the book called Creatrix?
Vanessa: No, I have not read that.
Chrissie: Write that one down.
Vanessa: That's next on my list. But it's interesting because I have to tell you that I never. I'd never sat and appreciated the fact that I created a human. I have two kids that I created a human until after I was fully back in my power. I sat there and I was like, Whoa, hold on a second. I created that little person from my body. This like amazing human. I created them. Of course I didn't do it by myself. My husband was somewhat involved, but like, but we held them in our body and that our uterus is this incredible source of power. And by the way, none of this is man bashing. I just want to say that because the masculine feminine, you know, the, the masculine and the feminine, those are divine energies and they live in all of us. So none of this is about, you know, down, down with the patriarchy is one thing. Cause the patriarchy is have negatively affected everybody. But this isn't about men.
Chrissie: Yes. Of course. So powerful. So inspiring. I have been signing off my emails for, well, recently I've been signing off my emails resourced and inspired. And that, um, is a big, a big fun for me, but prior to this chapter of signing off resourced inspired. I have been signing off with love and purpose for like 18 months with love and purpose and I've been so focused on love and purpose Vanessa. So this is just like so so aligned. I feel you About leaning into purpose and doing it with an open heart because that is always the way
Vanessa: yeah 100% I think about so, you know right now I work with You Um, I'm the National Director of Wellness and Resilience for this large national physician organization. And in my anti burnout work that I do, which is one small part of the stuff that I do there, when I was really thinking about, you know, how do I want to connect with the physicians? With our advanced providers? How do I want to connect with them? And you know what we never do is we never want to say in medicine we want to connect to their hearts. We never say that because, well, that sounds too, uh, that's not academic enough, uh, whatever, you know? And so I, so I said, like, if I was going to connect to their hearts. What would I be connecting to? And that's where fulfillment came from. That's where purpose came from.
And so I created this diagram, which is what I call the fulfillment pyramid for, for them, for the folks that I work with. And every time I start any talk on wellness, on resiliency, on burnout, on stress, any of that. I start with that and I say, Hey, listen, the reason why this matters is not because we want to make you more productive. It's not because we want you to stay here forever. It's because when you're 80 or 90 years old, I want you to look back on your life and say, Yes, I lived a life well lived. My life had purpose. My life had fulfillment. And I lived it with an open heart. So how do we do that? And then I showed them like, here's the baseline. The baseline is leaning into purpose today. And then we go up the pyramid because what does that do at the end? It makes sure that when you're 80 or 90, you lived a life of purpose.
Chrissie: Yes. Absolutely. It's additive. Right? These incremental gains. And then it becomes logarithmic because as you practice doing the things that are aligned with your purpose, your values, your intended result on this planet, all the things that don't serve that start to magically disappear.
Vanessa: It's and it's a hundred percent magic. So I'm so happy you said magic. It's a hundred percent magic. Why? Only because we don't see it, but it's, you know, it's measured. You can measure in other ways, but we just don't see it. So we call it magic. What's happening in those instances is when you start leaning into fulfillment, to joy, it, again, if you were to measure emotions on a scale, they would look like sine waves, right? And so the, the emotions like joy, love, purpose, those vibrate with really high sine waves. The other emotions like. guilt and shame, they vibrate with lower sign waves. So when we say high vibration or high vibe, or, you know, you hear that on Instagram or you see that it just, it's emotions that are vibrating higher.
So when, when we focus on purpose or fulfillment or love or joy, joy is so So, so important when we focus on those things, we start to focus on higher vibrational emotions. And the reason why other things fall away is because we're no longer a vibrational match for that. And if we're not a vibrational match for that, it's the same reason why when you decide, when you finally decide, I'm going to get my life together. What's happening. You're choosing a new thought and feeling combination. You're vibrating at a higher frequency and things start to happen.
I was just interviewing one of my clients who, um, is about to turn 50 and decided that, okay, this is it. Like, I'm, I'm sick of being overweight. I'm sick of this. I'm sick of that. This is it. I'm going to, I'm going to go for it. So I was like, that's so interesting. Why now? Like, what's different? And of course, thought feeling combination. And now she's vibrating here. Now she's not quitting on her goals. Now she's exercising every day. Now she's a leader at her job, like, you know, cause she's not quitting because we're vibrating higher. It's the same reason why relationships that don't serve you will fall away once you start setting boundaries cause you're vibrating at a higher frequency. It's, I mean, we can call it magic because I love magic. Cause I'm a witch. But, but it's also, but it's, it's just, it's just reality. It's a fact.
Chrissie: It's also uniquely human capacity to simply decide to catapult ourselves into the next version, right? It's not something that our beloved furry friends actually know how to do as far as I know, right? But just to decide, okay, I'm about to launch myself. I've decided this phase is over, and I am now going to activate and self actualize in my next level. So this, this area out in front of me, that's right now, just kind of a fuzzy dotted line. I'm stepping into that. I'm going to match that vibration. I'm going to do the actions that that person would do. And I'm going to expand, grow, advance my own self concept and begin to do what the self concept of that version of me would do.
Vanessa: Yeah. A hundred percent. I'm so happy you brought that in because I think there's this kind of a chasm between who we are and who we want to become. And the only people that get to who they want to become, there's, there's maybe two or three types of people, right? Hyper determined, hyper committed, hyper achievers like us that burn out. Yep. Me and you exactly. Hands up. So we will do it because wow, we're so committed. We're determined. We're going to work as hard as we need to and we push ourselves and we put, and we get there.
Yep. We do eventually get there, but then there's a lot of people that are also high achievers. They're also committed, but they don't see their way. They don't see the path forward. And that's why I think working with people like you, you know, so for those listening, if that's what you want to do, hire Chrissie cause she's amazing. But if like, if you, if you want to do that, you know, It's really hard to get there because you know this as well as I do, that where does our brain go when we start looking for like what's possible? The past, you know, it's like, starts looking for evidence in the past because the brain can only, it's hard for the brain to imagine unless we're really, really good at imagining.
And we got really bad at it after we turned like eight or nine or 10 years old. Most people did anyway. A lot of folks are still great, but I was just thinking the other day about Walt Disney and I heard the story about Walt Disney, um, in a plane flying over the swamp and he leans over to the pilot and he's like, do you see it? And pilot says, do I see what? He's like, do you see that down there? And the pilot's like, do I see what? He's like, it's magical. And it's this and it's that. And he starts describing Florida Disney, you know, and the pilot's like, I don't see what you're talking about, but Walt Disney saw it, you know, it's like the same thing with, you know, I've read, I love to read autobiographies of people doing crazy things that have done amazing things and the same autobiography by Steve Jobs, you know, um oh yeah. Like, and by the way, in his autobiography, he talks about how he really leaned into creativity. You know what he did a lot of in his early days? LSD. A ton of LSD to really like open his mind and lean into creativity and like, and that really pushed him because a lot of those psychedelics open up your mind to see new possibility, to be more creative, to connect you to universal consciousness when you're doing them at small doses. When you do them at crazy doses, then you see funny shapes and other things.
Chrissie: Meeting Dr. Calderon in the ER. In the ER. Yes, they, they literally open up channels for more free association, for more cross pollinating different parts of your brain. And I love that you said that, um, when we give up our right to our imagination, our ability to be a visionary is cut. off, right? And then we have unintentionally often unconsciously chosen group think and belonging over our own imagination and vision and inhibits the growth of entire worlds. Right? We rely so heavily on the people that don't let that imagination go out, that the people who believe in the possible, even when all the signs point to impossible.
Vanessa: Some of my, some of my mentors, some of the people that I like follow, some of my biggest heroes are those folks that always leaned into impossible. But you know, speaking to choosing belonging over choosing imagination, I just think it's important to name how scary that can be and how frightening. I was reflecting myself on my own life journey and how over and over again, I chose belonging and I chose fitting it, not even belonging, fitting in, which is I think that step below belonging, you know? Say
Chrissie: something about the difference, please, because that is such an important understanding to highlight.
Vanessa: Yeah. So I think fitting in is when you contort yourself, like, what do I need to do? How do I need to show up? Who do I, what do I think I need to say? How do I need to dress so that I can fit in with the popular people or with these people versus belonging? Like, when can I show up and be fully me and be seen for me and feel safe, feel psychologically safe to be me. And both of those, fitting in and belonging, sometimes are in opposition with your imagination and pushing yourself forward, you know? And, you know, I spent the majority of my life doing my best to fit in. And there was a large part of my life where we moved around a ton. I went to like three, I went to three third grades, two sixth grades, um, because my mom was a single mom and we moved around a lot looking for work and affordable housing.
And when I think about that version of me. It was scary. And all I wanted to do every time I got there is like make a friend, you know, and in high school, high school. Survive. Yep, exactly. And so what could, what do I need to do to fit in? So we become people pleasers. We become this, we become that, whatever. But the point is the long, the long and short of it is that it can be really scary to lean into imagination. And so if you are in a space where you're like, wow, this is really inspiring. I do want to lean into imagination. I do. Just know that it doesn't have to happen overnight. It's not like, you know, this isn't something you decide today and tomorrow you're this person know that you can do it in steps and 1 percent at a time is all you need. And I 100 percent guarantee that if you do not give up, you will get to where you want to go.
Chrissie: Good message. 1 percent at a time is enough to make a difference. So, Vanessa, before that, uh, before I threw us off a little bit with belonging versus fitting in, you were, you were just about to tell us, a little bit about your mentors, I think in the belonging versus imagination tension.
Vanessa: Yeah. You know, it's funny when you said that the first thing that just popped into my head right now is my mom. So I'm gonna tell you a quick story because talk about, I am so blessed. I come from this lineage of these incredibly powerful women that are like thrivers to the max. Thrivers to the max. My grandmother, my mother, all immigrants, all hardworking, never speaking English and coming here anyway and doing the impossible. But my mom. My mom had this sense that anything was possible, that anything was possible. And I never once in my life growing up, I never heard her say, that's impossible. Never, never. And in fact, she would do things, okay, so it's just as a story.
When we came, when she came to this country, um, she was young and all of her family was still home. She was here with her mom, um, her and her mom and her brother. And everybody was home. Then she married my dad and all of his family was back in their country and their country, my dad's from El Salvador, they were experiencing a big civil war. And, um, my mom's family back in Mexico, poverty and, you know, financial trauma, sexual trauma, all of these things that you face when you're in poverty and my mom decides. Here's this like Latina woman who, by the way, at that time, they couldn't even open bank accounts yet because women couldn't until the seventies.
So my mom was born at a time when you couldn't even open a bank account. And she goes and decides that she is going to safely bring over her family and my dad's family, get them jobs, enroll her kids, enroll the kids in school and do all of this. And she does. And she changes the lives of my uncles and my aunts and my cousins and my grandparents. She brings them all over, enrolls them all in school, gets everybody jobs. And that's somebody who continued to push. And when my mom and my mom didn't graduate college cause she got married at a young age and she ended up having us. What a blessing. Cause she's amazing. And thank you for bringing me into the world, mom.
My mom died in March of 2024, last March. Very recent. I still feel her all around me. And, um, when she died of stage four, breast cancer, and when she got diagnosed with breast cancer, she was like, Oh my God, life is short. So, you know what she decided to do? She decided to run for elected office. So she ran for city council. She has no experience running for office. There was no evidence telling her she was going to win. She's never done this before, but she just pushes herself out there and does it and wins. And then she gets COVID. When COVID was in the beginning, the very first that summer of COVID when she got it and it was so terrifying because she was getting treated for cancer. So her immune system was low and she gets COVID.
And I remember going to visit her and it's when, you know, you can't be in the same space. So she's in a room, the windows are open. I'm outside of the room or I'm outside. We're talking through the window and she's like, Hey, so I just decided that I'm going to run for mayor. I was like, cool, cool, cool, mom. Awesome. And, you know, I mentioned I'm an activist and so getting people elected to office that are all about service to your community, that's my jam. So when she ran for city council, grassroots campaign, I volunteered for her, I was her finance officer. When she ran for mayor, here we go again, volunteering, getting, knocking on doors, getting her elected. And she served as mayor until the day that she died. And never once, she was, in fact, when she was running for mayor during her campaign days, she was getting radiation treatment and chemotherapy. And she would get, for those that don't know, radiation usually happens in sprints. So like seven or 10 days at a time. So there was like a 10 day sprint. She had to get radiation every day. My sister would wake her up. They would go at 7 a. m., get radiation, come home, get breakfast, and then my mom would go campaign.
Chrissie: Is so atypical, unusual. I mean, usually people need the day to recover. This is the, the line, you know, like everybody's really exhausted. They don't feel great. Um, what a testament to her spirit and her vision,
Vanessa: Yeah. Yeah. What a blessing. What an angel she was. What an angel she was on earth. and what an angel she is now.
Chrissie: Yes. Much, much honor to your mom. And she didn't choose belonging, right? She chose imagination. She chose her vision. And it doesn't mean that you have to give up belonging, but when you let belonging or fitting in, um, inhibit or make smaller diminished, the thing that you're here to express and embody. Yeah. We run into like a little snag.
Vanessa: So I'm glad that you brought that back into fitting and belonging because a hundred percent, you know, my parents got divorced when I was a young kid. And I think a lot of the kind of HIC, well, there were a lot of hiccups, but a big one was that my mom was not a typical woman of her time. Okay. You know, she was educated and she was outgoing and she didn't believe in playing small. And I remember one of my aunts that my mom helped come across the border and my aunt was young. She's like 16 when she got here. And everyone assumed that she was coming here and was just going to be a, be a nanny.
Like, that's what people did and what women did from those countries when they got here. And my mom was like, absolutely not. And she enrolled her in high school and enrolled her in night school so she could learn English. And she, oh, she, oh, she tells me this all the time. In fact, when my mom died, she was the first one here and she said, I owe everything to your mother. I owe everything to her, not letting me be what everyone assumed I was going to be. You know, I owe everything to your mom. She's educated, you know, she, her daughter's a nurse now and she, she named her daughter Vanessa because she wanted to honor my mom and there was already a cousin named Olivia, which is my mom's name.
Um, anyway, so I just, um, a hundred percent. So, but the truth is it's, it can sometimes be really scary and what pulls you back into knowing that it's time to lean back into your imagination is when you are feeling that you are not living the life you were meant to live. You know, for me, I mentioned. There was so many times where I was like stressed or burnt out or just, I knew I was not in alignment, but I didn't know what being in alignment meant or what it felt like. I'd never done that before. And it took me living a life that wasn't in alignment to get me to where I am today. And so no shade. If you feel like, man, I haven't done it yet. That's okay. You know, all of us live the life we're living for a purpose and you can always choose alignment. And how do you know you're in alignment? It's because of how you feel. When you're feeling joy, when you're feeling, yeah, this feels good. The more and more you can lean into that and reconnect to your body, the more you will know your body's always going to be your compass. It will always lead you in the right direction. That's how you know that you're living every day in alignment.
Chrissie: So much. Yes. And we've been using the word imagination a lot as well as vision. And I want to say that. We could also be using the word creativity in that spot. You know, we're actually, you know, just neurologically asking more of our prefrontal cortex and our right brain, if you will, to come online because we actually use different parts of the organ. We're familiar with our brain. To catapult ourselves into that more aligned future, and also to say, you know, we are such multifaceted beings that we may be in high fidelity alignment and integrity in multiple areas of our life, and at the same time feel significantly out of alignment and integrity in another area. And we as sovereign beings get to decide when we hear the call enough to take action. In that part of our life that is ready to come more into alignment.
Vanessa: 100%. And just to add to that, so if you are feeling great living the life that you're living now, if you look around and you're feeling really good, it's okay to stop asking, what's my purpose? Or it's okay to stop asking, am I in alignment? Maybe there's no problem. Maybe nothing needs to be fixed, you know? So it's really important to, when you're there, to know that the human brain, because of the way it's wired and it's five to one negativity bias, which means it's scanning the world around us all of the time, every seven seconds looking for danger. And that's been proven, you know, so our brain is always going to look for a problem to solve and you want to solve a problem that's going to get you to the phase in life that you want to get to not just create suffering. You don't want to solve problems that, you know, put yourself in this like problem solving mode that doesn't need to be solved because all that does is create suffering and we don't need suffering. There's enough suffering in the world. We don't need to add to that.
Chrissie: Additional suffering. No bonus points. No bonus points. Vanessa, this has been such a inspiring, invigorating conversation for me. Um, I want to just really end it with honoring your mom, Olivia. I'm thinking about her serving as mayor and being a woman who changed the life trajectories of countless human beings and how healing and inspiring her life has been and that you are carrying on that legacy in the profoundly wisdom informed, love informed, resiliency informed work that you do.
I want to give you space to, um, share what kind of collaborations and work you are open to. If people want to reach out to you, you have yourself an amazing podcast. I want to make sure people know where they can find you there. Um, yeah, and offer you space to just give some, some final thoughts. So glad that you came today.
Vanessa: Yeah. Thank you, Chrissie. It's so sweet that you chose to end the podcast honoring my mom. What a blessing, honestly. Um, you know, one last note on my mom. I realized that And I, I realized this when I was doing my grief work, just, you know, grieving so much grief that I've had to experience and sit with and still go through moments of grief. Her birthday's coming up and that's going to be hard. I just had my birth, my first birthday without her. Ooh, that was tough. And I have to tell you what I've learned and one thing that really brought me a lot of solace is, um, when I was, I was, I'm an athlete, I played a lot of sports growing up. And one of the things I did is I ran track. And when I ran track, I did the relay race. But I really hated it because I was always so afraid that I was going to, you know, like that I wasn't going to be fast enough. I was going to let my relay team down the four by four.
And I realized through this grieving process that. It's not about, you know, that relay race isn't about how fast one person runs. The relay race is won through the passing of the baton. The re, that's, you know, I, and I remember, I was thinking back and I was like, oh my God, no wonder every time we trained, it was always about the passing of the baton, the passing of the baton, the passing of the baton. And I realized just like in track, in life, the relay race, life is won when we pass the baton down and that next person just keeps going. They just keep going and they get ready to pass that baton down to whoever's after them. Because when you and I, you know, finish our, our stint here on earth, on this planet, in this form, in this life form, we get to pass on whatever we're doing to the next generation. We get to be torch bearers. You know, I think about all of the different movements that we have experienced.
You know, one big one right now, the Black Lives Matter movement. Yeah. Yeah. And how profound it is and how these young people decided that there's not going to be just one person. It's a, it's a, it's a movement for everybody because when one person tried to lead, they, you know, something would happen and all of a sudden they would end up in jail or whatever. It's a movement for everybody. And so it's something for me just to be merely mindful of and something I'm so grateful for that. I feel so grateful that I got that baton and that I get to keep going and also I don't feel responsible or obligated. I want to keep going because I want to keep going because it invigorates me. It feels good. It's, it's my, it fires me up. It's my passion to keep going. That's why I'm going to keep going. Not out of obligation. That's too heavy. Not out of responsibility. I'm a sovereign being. I'm going because I want to. And so just thank you for that. Um,
Yeah. So how can people find me collaboration? Um, yeah, you know, I, again, I work with entrepreneurs. I work with physicians who, um, physicians and other entrepreneurs and leaders who want to create conscious businesses, want to create conscious wealth. Um, I help a lot of physicians and other light workers in this space, create conscious and compassionate wealth to create businesses that are aligned with their purpose, to make sure that they're living long and fulfilling lives, not burning out, not trading one burnout career for another one, you know, and, and I'm really good at it. You know, I'm really good at it and I love it and I'm incredibly passionate about it. And I do that with, you know, folks managing billion dollar budgets right now, and I do that with somebody just starting off their coaching business.
And it's my jam. So, um, that's what I do. So if you are interested and you want that help, feel free to reach out to me. You can find me on my website, VanessaGalderonMD. com, which my census will be linked here. I also have a podcast. It's called The Empowered Brain, there's hundreds of episodes on there, um, that are just all of these little nuggets, you know, tied in, we talk about business, we talk about life, we talk about leadership, um, we talk about everything, guilt and all of it, marriage and sex and money. And so, um, that's where you can find more of me. Um, yeah.
Chrissie: You are such a bright light, my friend. I am so glad that you are in my orbit and that I am in yours.
Vanessa: Mm. Likewise, sister.
Chrissie: Yes. And thank you to Kathy who created the Physician Coaching Summit and put us in each other's orbit. I'm so grateful.
Vanessa: Yeah. You know, when I knew I wanted to be your friend, I never told you this, chrissie, but the first Physician Coaching Summit that we were both, or maybe the second one that we were both at, I got up really early to go meditate and I wanted to find a quiet spot to meditate. And there was a fire in the lobby of the hotel where we were staying. So I sat there quietly to meditate and I'm sitting there quietly and I open my eyes when I'm done and guess who's sitting across from me meditating. It's Chrissie. I, and you were in your space so I didn't bother you, you know, and I was in my space and so I don't, and, but you were sitting there in your Zen moment and I was like, Okay, look at, I, that's, and it was really, it's one, it was early in the morning before, you know, before the sun had even come up. And so I was like, all right, this is my people.
Chrissie: That's so heartwarming. I love that. Um, well, everybody, you're welcome. You're welcome for, for getting to meet Vanessa today. And thank you so much for hanging out with us and listening to the podcast. And, um, may you all be well, our hearts are especially, um, with everyone in Southern California today. We're, we're actually recording on January 10th. And so we're several days into the, um, Eaton and Altadena and Palisades fires. And it's just, it's been a really gripping time. So I just want to acknowledge that that's happening in the background today and, um, much love to all of you. Thanks for being with us.
I want to take a quick moment to acknowledge our incredible team. This podcast is produced by the amazing Kelsey Vaughn, post production and more handled by Alyssa Wilkes, and my steadfast friend and director of operations, Denise Crain. Our theme music is by Denys Kyshchuk cover photography by the talented Shelby Brakken and a special appreciation to my loyal champion and number one fan, Suzanne Sanchez. Thanks again for tuning in everyone. May we continue caring for ourselves, caring for others, and may we continue solving for joy. Take care. We'll see you next time.
