A dancer since childhood, Sheila Collins never lost her love for the art. When studying for a career in social work therapy, she recognized that movement can often help more than words. She married the two passions in her life and at age 81 continues to share her talents. Faced with loss of her two children over a period of years, she has now focused on grief and managing the grief process. "We have to learn how to do it and to get good at it." You won't want to miss this very positive perspective Sheila brings to difficult life experiences.
Transcript
Diane Dayton 0:01
This is changing the rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the Luckiest Guy in the World.
Ray Loewe 0:14
Good morning, everybody. This is Ray Loewe, your host of Changing the Rules. And you're going to notice this morning that KC Dempster is considered conspicuously, I didn't get that word, right. But whatever it is, she's missing. Okay, and she's caught in traffic this morning, and will be here later to join us. But I guess you're just gonna have to put up with me for the short run. So, Changing the Rules is a podcast, obviously, about changing the rules. You know, we get all these rules in life that are thrown at us and we get them by teachers. We get them by parents, we get them by your employers. And the next thing you know, you got rules, rules everywhere. And one of the problems with rules is that they're resstrictive. In other words, rules tell you what you have to do or what you can't do. And one of the things that happens is you can't be free to be you if you're putting up with other people's rules. So one of the things that we find is that the people who really get ahead in life handle rules well, and they do really well at working with a rule set that they create that's around now for the last 45 years that shows you how old I am over here. I've most of my adult life, I have been studying the group of people that I like to call the luckiest people in the world. And the luckiest people in the world are those people that you see all the time. They just have this aura of luck about them. You know, everything is working for them. They're successful in their jobs. They work hard, but they find time to play. You know, just everything works. And I decided years ago that this was a group of people that I would just love to hang out with their interests. They're always doing exciting things. And probably more important, this is a group of people that I would actually like to be. So after studying them for 45 years, we finally came up with a definition for the luckiest people in the world. And that definition is that the luckiest people in the world are people who design personally their own lives, then they step in and take control of their life, and they live it to the fullest. Now, you can't design your own life if you're living by somebody else's rules. So one of the things that we found is that there are about 10 or 12, mindsets that the luckiest people in the world have, and that's what sets them apart. And probably one of the biggest ones is that they handle rules well, and we have a special guest today that's going to come on after we take a short break and is going to talk to us about the rules that she's been faced with it. She has broken over a period of time. And one of them that that you want to know is that she has a very definite mission in mind as to what she does. And that's one of the mindsets that set the world shut the luckiest people apart. The second second one you're going to want to look at is that she is continuing to use the talents that she's developed over a lifetime, at a time in life when many people are hanging up what they do and not doing anything. So we're going to come back in a couple minutes with Sheila Collins, but let's take a short break Taylor.
Diane Dayton 3:39
You're listening to changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.
Ray Loewe 3:49
I love the short breaks over here you know they're their primary let people know that they're listening to the right people over here and we have Sheila Collins and Sheila Say hi. Hello there, okay, and Sheila is off in the wonderful city of Pittsburgh somewhere I think.Is that right?
Sheila Collins 4:08
That's right, right here on the Allegheny River. Well, I hope
Ray Loewe 4:11
I hope the back there I hope the weather is better there than it is here in sunny downtown Woodbury, New Jersey. It's hot here.
Sheila Collins 4:20
Oh, yeah, we've been having hot too, but it's, it is summer.
Ray Loewe 4:24
Okay, so So let me ask you a couple of questions. You describe yourself as the Dancing. Social Worker. Yes. Yeah. All right. You got to tell us about that.
Sheila Collins 4:38
Well, I started dancing when most people are not. A lot of young girls are put in dance class, you know, when they're little and I did that. My mother did that. She didn't get to have dancing. So she wanted me to do it. And for me, I just kept doing it all my life. And I know you're most people outgrow. That's that. Like you know, okay go on and do something else and I have done many other things but somehow go always going back to I have selected the road of, of dancing or continuing to dance all my life and that has made all the difference. For sure. In my health and everything
Ray Loewe 5:19
okay, so describe what you mean by dance because this isn't just going on doing ballroom dancing, it might be some of that, but you actually have a studio and, and and talk a little bit about what it is you do here.
Sheila Collins 5:33
Well, I what happened for me was Ray, that when I was going to school as a social worker, now I had been a professional dancer and done all kinds of dancing. But when I was going to school as a, you know, to become a therapist and a group therapists with I was teaching children movement and dance and I began to see how you could you could use movement and and people's experience of their own body And their own energy to really teach them wisdom or to how to how to connect with their own wisdom. So that began that curiosity began for me then that I began using movement in all kinds of different ways as a therapist, as a teacher, getting people to embody whatever it was that they were experiencing, and getting them to be able to express it, you know, we are so wedded to words in our culture. And actually, it's not really words that, that make it through sometimes so that we're it's really the body and the gesture and facial expression, that sort of thing. So, yeah, so I've been just moving. I've taken some of this into women's prisons, I've taken it to organizations that serve patients are in health care. So it's just you know, but I bring those two worlds together because I haven't given up being social worker, and I haven't given up being a dancer. I'm putting those two things together.
Ray Loewe 7:04
Okay, now, can we let people in a little secret and tell them how old you are?
Sheila Collins 7:11
Well, sure, absolutely. I said you can't brag about it if you don't tell him.
Ray Loewe 7:15
Okay. So give us the magic number.
Sheila Collins 7:19
Well, I just actually, I think even since I've talked to you, I've gotten a different number I just had at first birthday. So that's a big eight. Oh, and that was a little off putting, I have to say it, you know, but then I began to see how well how fortunate I am and how you call it lucky. But I think that there's a lot of things I can credit for, you know, luck always favors the prepared. So I think that I have prepared myself to be lucky.
Ray Loewe 7:54
Okay, I I agree with you 100% on that and I wanted to get the dancing on the table because I think It defines who you are. It tells a little bit about your background. And of course, you've woven in the social work idea. But there is a there are two things, I think that are extremely important about who you are and what you do and really define why you're lucky. So one of the things that you do in addition to your dancing studio and your social work, is, uh, you claim to be an expert on grieving and the grieving experience and I believe you've written a book The Art of grieving, is that correct?
Sheila Collins 8:31
Well, that's the one I'm working on right now. I have a book called Warrior Mother, A Memoir of Fierce Love. Unbearable Loss and the Rituals That Heal, which is my memoir of the experiences that led me to be so fascinated if you would, and now passionate about how we need to learn how to grieve because it's so important for us.
Ray Loewe 8:55
All right now most people when they look at some of the things that you've had to deal with In Your Life would not consider you a lucky person. And yet, when I look at when I look at you, and what you've done with this, thing you very definitely are one of the luckiest people in the world because because you've taken some, some experiences that most people would rather avoid and turn them into very much positives. And you're coaching this experience. So So let's talk about the grieving experience a little bit. And let's talk a little bit about how you got into it and what you do and why this is such a significant thing in your life.
Sheila Collins 9:36
Yes, well, you know, you, you mentioned about how there are these rules, but sometimes we don't know the rules. We're just obeying them. And so I went out when I was having these difficulties with my children. I had a child who was dealing with AIDS, my son was dealing with AIDS, and went through all of that with him and his death, and then a few A number of years later, my daughter had breast cancer and you know, and in our culture, the rules are you have to just stay positive, keep positive, and there's nothing wrong with positive, don't get me wrong about that. But in in this world, we're not encouraged to notice what is underneath the surface sometimes, of what we're experiencing. And so it's sometimes helpful. In fact, it's always helpful to know that we're grieving and then to realize that it's a process. It's not a linear process. So you know, you can have these grief bursts, even years later after an event, or a loss and, and losses, by the way, happen all the time, all of our lives. Because if you love something, you're going to and you're going to lose it or it's going to change in some way, you're gonna have grief. So it's just so loaded into our experience of love. And loss that that's why I say we have to get good at it. We have to learn how to get good at that process.
Ray Loewe 11:00
Okay, you told me an experience that you went through with a friend of yours who was in their final stages of life and and and that this set up an awful lot of you're thinking about grieving right now and and then I want to come back and talk a little bit about grief and regret and things like that but but tell us if you would about this experience that you had with your friend and, and how you felt about the whole thing and what happened and how it set you on this course to writing your books and coaching in this whole area of grief and etc.
Sheila Collins 11:35
Yeah, well, I think you're referring to my friend Rose and she we had been friends for 20 years and Rose was one of those absolutely positive people just and had friends everywhere. And she she had breast cancer and dealt with it for a number of years. And then she called me one day and said, you know, it's everywhere now and I'm in the hospital and I want like you to Come and be with me. And so she had to turn the corner and instead of trying to keep alive. She had to see if she could, could die. She, that's where she was. And of course, you know, neither one of us knew anything about that process at all. So I just went in to be with her and we both thought it'd be a day or two, you know, and it ended up 14 days. So 14 days of her dying and this experience of, of intimacy that we had and her friends dropping by and we're singing and we're making jokes, and we're just, we're living fully inside of this cocoon of, of her hospital, turned hospice room. And, and then, then one of the things she said, and she starts to plan, you know, her service and she wants and she says, I would like I saw that you were dancing in the room when she would be kind of going to sleep and I would just do a little kind of Tai Chi like movement and she said, I'd like To dance at my service, well, I've never had heard of anybody dancing at a, I mean, I know they do, but nobody I ever knew. But I did that. And so that began to help me to recognize the use of, you know, the actually storytelling and dance and music and all the things that our ancestors used. When to get through tough times, your told would do that wherever whatever ancestor you have, they probably were in a culture where they sang and danced and and told stories, and they would have ceremonies when someone would cross and that sort of thing. So I began to see that we needed to reclaim grief as an art and that's more of my book now that I'm working on now The Art of Grieving is coming from
Ray Loewe 13:50
Well, let me first comment that you have to be one hell of a friend. Okay? to go through that with and and to do that willingly because that's An experience that most people would just walk away from. Okay. And and yet
Sheila Collins 14:05
Well again. Yeah, I think that's part of the rules, you know, we're supposed to not do go into, and we have this we have this duality. There's a good experiences and the bad experience. This is good, this is bad. And we don't really recognize Ray that within the most painful, difficult experiences. That's where the gold is. I mean, there is gold in there, I'm telling you. And if you think about it, people will even though it was tough, it was painful. It was challenging. When they're afterwards there are things they would never trade. And I feel that about my experiences with my children as well. Okay, that that that those things never would have happened if we weren't in such a tough spot.
Ray Loewe 14:50
You know, so So here we are, first of all, you you you've taken a rule of thumb that somebody's thrust upon you, you know, that wasn't very pleasant, you've turned it into a positive These are the characteristics of the luckiest people in the world, by the way, okay? And, and, and you turned it into an experience that actually did some things. I mean, most of us would bypass that system, you know, they feel bad about it. And then they'd regret later that they didn't spend time with people that they loved and that they cared about. And you just kind of went right into this thing. And I have to tell you, you're a better person than I am from the standpoint of being able to do this, but I admire you for it.
Sheila Collins 15:33
Well, but when you think about it, how do we get to be a better person? We get to be a better person by saying yes to what life asks of us. And and we also have another rule, I think, in our culture, that is, you know, we are the master of our fate and we get to say all the things that are going to happen to us and of course, that's bullshit. It's that does that isn't it? If there isn't anybody that hasn't had a lot of things happen to them. They never invited, whether it was, you know, breaking your shoulder or, you know, you know, having a disease that happened to you or one of your kids or, I mean, it's just things come along. You know, that still happens to good people
Ray Loewe 16:15
Yeah. So you, you now coach people through this process, you teach them how to deal with it and, and of course you're dealing with it again with your daughter, right?
Sheila Collins 16:25
Well, no, I, my daughter is deceased, but I now get to see the effects of her life and her and the way she lived her life. As the doctor came to her service said, I don't usually go to the service of my patients, but I just couldn't miss being here to honor her. He said, it wasn't how she did, how she dealt with her disease. It was how she dealt with her life. So that's the legacy that we give our kids
Ray Loewe 17:01
So now you teach people or you help people deal with this thing and give us the name of your first book out. And then tell us a little bit about the second book that's coming.
Sheila Collins 17:11
Yes. Okay. So yeah, the the first book was Warrior Mother, Fierce Love, Unbearable Loss, and the Rituals That Heal. And it does tell the story of my time with rose and then my time with my, each of my children, and also all of the things that were done that the community see we think of this as we make this through by ourselves. So that's another rule and that's another dumb rule because we don't it's, we do it. We get where we are, because there's an African saying, I love, "I am because you are." So if I, if you can see what I've accomplished, you can. I can point in many directions to the people who saw me through it encouraged me maybe even discouraged me sometimes. That's all part of what, you know. We're just, we're in a network of relationships.
Ray Loewe 18:11
Okay, well, Unfortunately, we're near the end of our time Time flies fast when you get into these discussions and I think what I'm going to do is talk to you about coming back sometime because this topic is is so fascinating to me and it's the way you handled it. And it's part of what I want what I want to be. So you know, I told you earlier that the luckiest people in the world are those people that I want to be well I want to be what you can do here, okay. And to kind of summarize, quickly so we have we have the dancing social worker out there and you're still dancing and you still run a studio, and you're still doing all of that stuff. And uh, you
Sheila Collins 18:54
and by Studio Ray has turned into a media studio because I'm Doing everything online. So I'm doing I'm doing programs and, and performances and things online. So that one of the platforms is we have the reimagined festival, and it has, it has burst into the scene you can imagine with pandemic and all of this, there isn't anybody that isn't grieving or losing, you know, hasn't lost a lot. So that's the other reason. I think what I have to say has some kind of an audience because there's nobody in the globe that hasn't experienced tremendous change and loss.
Ray Loewe 19:41
Today, you can't even be with your loved ones that are dying of this awful disease that we have. And, and and so I think, uh, I, you know, you've got two traits here that come out to me one is that you very definitely have a mission in life here. And an 80 year 81 years old young. You're just starting On your mission, I think and and second of all, you're continuing to use those talents and continue to develop them. Way beyond the time when other people are playing golf or staying home or giving up on life. And, and so Welcome to the world of one of the luckiest people in the world. Because Sheila, you certainly are one of them. And we're going to have to end this podcast right now. But we will be back in touch with you. And I'd love to hear more about what you're talking about and doing. So thanks for being with us.
Sheila Collins 20:32
Well, thank you. It's great to meet you and to meet your listeners. So thank you very much.
Ray Loewe 20:37
That's great Taylor.
Diane Dayton 20:39
You're listening to changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.
Ray Loewe 20:48
And too and thanks to everybody that was listening into us today and meeting Sheila. And we're going to be back next week with another guest and stay tuned and Thanks for joining us.
Diane Dayton 21:03
Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us in two weeks for our next exciting topic on changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world.