How did doing a Life Review transform you? How did that happen?

I wasn't someone who was in the habit of sharing about myself. I always liked introspection and meaning making, and one of my favorite things was to have an aha moment. That's what I enjoyed about going on retreats when I did. However, sharing my entire life story with someone was not something that I could even imagine myself doing, I always thought myself a private person, and kept to myself. But I found this experience so integrative and also revealing about my own self, my own patterns, places where I needed to grow and put my focus if I wanted to develop more fully. It just really brought into view where I was held back most powerfully. 

And one of the most amazing things is, I always thought I was an introvert, but then when I told my story, it was a story of a very sociable childhood and adolescence. And when I looked into the work of Susan Cain, an introverted child is entirely different. It’s about where we derive energy, from social interaction or solitude? And I realized I'm not an introvert, and started to embrace the extroverted part of myself again.

What kinds of discoveries did you have that affected your moving forward?

Well, I would say the impact of my upbringing on my current self, and not only the impact, but also realizing that I was separate from it. Because revisiting the context as an adult, it was clear that some of the messages I internalized were just tools my parents were using to keep me in line. From my adult perspective, I could see that my parents didn't mean any of that literally, they were just trying to control me. Yeah, and I had walked around with that sense of inhibition and self-suppression that led me to believe I was an introvert. So realizing that that was not based in reality, it transformed my sense of self and gave me the drive to show up completely differently in my relationships and my work in everything I do now.

So you discovered that some of your inhibitions were designed in from your childhood, and you can undesign those?

Yeah, yeah. And the thing is, for me, it was so challenging. It was a big thing for me to face, to own those messages, only to realize that they're actually not true. It's kind of simplified when I say it, but it was a huge revelation for me. I could just see my parents trying to manage me and get on with their business, but these messages to a child's mind are defining, right? So seeing that alone was transformational for me.

Tell me about your journey in terms of how you came to create the work that you do.

I had that desire to tell my whole life story, which is unusual. I haven't met too many people who carry this desire, specifically to tell it in a spoken way. Because some people write a memoir, but that's a bit different. Solitary versus relational, it's a different outcome, I would say. And so when I when I discovered that this very thing existed as a well-established methodology, I wanted to train in it. It was very compelling to me, I didn't have any second thoughts because I realized that this was so missing. It was surprising to me how I was looking for a place to tell the story, and I wasn't finding it. Therapy was not an option. But I wasn't finding any other places where you could tell the whole story. We have places to tell episodic stories, let's say in personal storytelling workshops or groups, but they don't go through the whole story.

Where did you get trained?

Life Review used to be taught as a certificate program at the University of Wisconsin, and then transferred to the University of Connecticut. By the time I discovered it, the training was discontinued. So I got trained through private mentorship with a a US-based Life Review expert Dr Galen Tinder. Telling my life story was part of my in-depth training.

Did you grow up in Canada?

No, actually, I grew up in what was then the Soviet Union. I'm half Russian, half Ukrainian. I spent my time between both countries, and at 22, I went to New York. I lived there for 15 years, and then I met my husband, and we moved to Japan for five years. And then at the height of pandemic, we came to Montreal because my husband is from here. It was a very interesting thing for me to bring together all these reinventions that I experienced by living in all these cultures. Changing the languages, changing the cultures, and so dramatically, from post-Soviet Russia to New York, and then from New York to Japan, the opposites in many ways, and yeah, understanding who I am across all of these reinventions. It's all in the life story. 

That's quite a journey. Thank you for sharing.