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Your book Overwhelmed and Over It encourages women to say, “This way of working isn’t working. And it has to change now!” Please tell us more.

Women have been a major part of the workforce for over 50-years, fighting for equal rights, equal pay and work/life balance. Our way of working, the way our structures are set up in our educational, healthcare, and financial systems are such that even if you have a high paying job, you can’t afford your life – you are either strapped for money or exhausted from trying to do it all. We women have become so resilient that we’ve become too tolerant. The truth is that the way our systems are structured, are built for burnout – we are expected to do more with less, to be accessible all the time. While some of the ways we’ve had to work for the past century or two may have been needed to get us here, it cannot and will not take us to where we need to go. There is a direct link between the instability and resource depletion on the planet and the pressure and burnout in people. If every woman on the planet looked around and really opened her eyes to what we’ve accepted as “how things have to be” in everything from the structure of a M-F workday to two weeks of vacation, to school schedules, to maternity leaves, we’d see the truth – we’ve been assimilating into systems that never had our best interests at heart. Today, in a world that must change, together, we do have the power to say, “NO MORE” to what’s not working. We must tap into our feminine wisdom to create the new ways – where wholeness, wellness, sustainability, harmony, and prospering – for all is at the core.

Your book seems to be coming along at a perfect time as so many are reimagining and redesigning the ways they work in dramatic ways. Do you think these times of change make it easier or more challenging for women to implement the perspective you offer?

Eventually easier, but at the moment it’s really challenging for many people because they have had to respond so swiftly, and there is so much uncertainty, that frankly most people haven’t been trained to deal with. I started writing Overwhelmed and Over It more than three years ago, and I’ve been teaching the principles in it for over a decade to help women see how the systems are built for burnout, while offering a different way to design our organizations, lives, and world. The pandemic and the social uprisings are like a big Universal wake up call to humans to slow down and look around. We as humans designed the systems that make up our society and world – from government to economics and beyond – which means we can re-imagine and re-design new ones. Where we start: Putting wellness, sustainability, and real wealth at the core of our own lives, not as an afterthought but as a requirement for how our jobs, roles, organizations, and lifestyles are designed. We must start asking courageous questions about what does not feel right or good, while unleashing our feminine wisdom to speak and challenge the status quo. We must wield our power as women to birth and design new ways of working, relating, and living that support and sustain people and the planet.

Your book encourages women to embrace the power of their fierce feminine heart. What do you mean by that?

Most women have been taught to use, value, and trust only half their power for making wise, aligned choices – the power of the intellect, which stems from the mind vs. full spectrum of power which includes both the intellect AND the intuition, which stems from the heart and body. We’ve been domesticated into a society that heralds the rational, mental, and logical, which are traditionally more masculine-based, over the intuitive, feeling and sensing ways of accessing knowledge that are more feminine-based. When women reconnect with their fierce feminine heart, and trust their inner knowing, confidence, courage and clarity build like a spiral within them. They stop waiting and assimilating and start feeling their power to make changes and create the world they desire to see – for themselves and the people they love and lead.

Instead of managing stress, you encourage women to release stress daily, in ways that support, not sabotage them. Can you give us a practical example of how that works?

Most women are so tired by the end of the day and they’ve given so much, that instead of releasing stress in supportive ways, they default to sabotaging habits that give them temporary relief but add to their allostatic stress load. They wine down vs. wind down. They fall asleep in your work clothes. They start a second day of work at 8pm. Here’s the truth most women don’t know that causes them to make choices that create burnout and overwhelm: How you end your day determines how you will start your next day. What you put into your body, mind and personal energetic and emotional field the hour before you go to sleep goes to sleep with you.

I teach women the practice of “Downshifting,” which is consciously choosing how to complete the last hour of their day – what they do, what they interact with and what they ingest. It’s not about doing more. It’s about stopping doing what depletes and drains you and releasing those sabotaging habits. It’s about replacing them with sustaining rituals, practices, and activities that actually replenish you and support your mind, body, spirit and heart to get calm, clear and rest.

You teach that women often bankrupt themselves because of the unconscious OVERgiving imprints that cause them to over give, over work, over care take and over stretch themselves and their resources. What are these imprints and how do you know if one is operating in your life?

Women operate like banks that give more withdrawals than receive deposits. It doesn’t take a business whiz to know if a bank or business gives out more than it receives, it goes bankrupt. Same with us. More often than not, we are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy – emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, even financially, because we keep giving more than we receive and can afford to give. Women have been overgiving and under receiving for so many generations, we’ve just come to accept it as a normal way to operate, work and be in relationship.

What I teach women is that they need to RETAIN their life force and resources and not just give all their time, energy, money, and care away by altering the exchange of input and output – with projects, people, organizations, communities, and everything else. The first steps is to become self-aware of the specific ways you overgive. After over a decade of research I have identified 13 ways – including OVERcaretaking, OVERextending, OVERfocusing on the future, OVERpromising and OVERprotecting, to name a few. If you can reveal the specific ways you overgive, you become empowered to shift the imbalance. Once women start to see all the ways in which they are overgiving and betraying themselves, something awakens in their fierce feminine heart. Something empowers them to take a stand for their own needs and to work and show up for others differently, in ways that create a harmonious give and take exchange.

Christine Arylo, MBA, is the author of Overwhelmed and Over It. As a transformational leadership advisor, three-time bestselling author, and host of the popular Feminine Power Time podcast, she is recognized worldwide for her work helping women to make shifts happen — in the lives they lead, the work they do, and the world they wish to create. Arylo offers workshops globally and lives near Seattle. Visit her online at OverwhelmedandOverIt.com.

Excerpted from the book Overwhelmed and Over It. Copyright ©2020 by Christine Arylo. Printed with permission from New World Library.

My husband and I were married for 29 years. He passed away in November of 2001. After his death, I found out that he'd had an affair with another woman, and they had a son together. I forgave him for this, but it seems something or someone doesn't want me to move on. Things keep missing from his grave. I will put them there, and when I go back, they are gone. Also, I have a three-year-old grandson who never met my husband, and he keeps saying, "Grandma, do you see that man?" when there is no one around. When I go to my husband's grave, I just feel nervous and sometimes scared. When I am there it feels as though he is looking at me. We had a good marriage most of the time, until he got really sick - then I was called everything but my name. On the last night he was alive, we spent a good couple of hours together, and we had a really nice conversation and he said he loved me. Why are these strange things happening, and why do I feel so nervous about him? Thank you for your time.

Bonnie

Dreamchaser:

Let's deal first with the things missing from the grave. I know that in most cemeteries, you pay for the gravesite to be cleaned and maintained. There is a person who goes around and cleans up all the debris from on and around the graves. The things that you put on the grave are picked up by this person. If you want to double-check, please go to the office the next time you are there and ask the caretaker if he knows what is happening to the things you leave on your husband's grave.

The next thing we need to discuss is your little grandson. Children are born with the gift to "see." Have you ever watched a baby talking to "nothing but air?" Show your grandson a picture of your husband and ask him if that is the man he keeps seeing.

Your grandson sees all sorts of spirits in the house, not just your husband. Before you jump to conclusions on this one, make sure you two are talking about the same man. You can always ask children to tell you things about the person they see, or to draw you pictures. If you encourage them, they will give you amazing details.

I find it interesting that the first details you offered us were about how you discovered after your husband's death that he'd had an affair, and a child was born from that affair. You then say you forgave him. While your questions really had nothing to do with those facts, your mention of this right from the beginning IS meaningful.

I feel you have not really forgiven your husband, and that he knows that and is waiting around for your complete forgiveness. I think you are scared of the spirit of him because you know you really are still very mad at him. He never told you about the affair, not even at the end, and when you found out, you were so stunned that it took quite a while for you to even believe it.

That is NOT something that a man who loves his wife or has a happy marriage does, at least not according to what you have always believed. The whole situation has thrown you for a big loop. You had that wonderful last day together, and you felt so loved. Then you found this out, and it cast a big proverbial shadow over everything you believed your marriage to be.

I have an idea: I think you should have it out with him. I think you should speak to the air just like you would speak to him and let him know how you feel about him dying, how he treated you at times, and especially how you feel about his affair. Really hash it out with him. You will feel better after you say it all.

Nothing is holding you back from moving forward. This is all about you and your grief. Please do not push yourself. When it is time for you, you will be able to start to move forward. You are reconciling a lot heavy experiences and truth in your head. Give yourself time to completely heal.

I wish you peace with the past.

*****

Astrea:

Losing a spouse after all those years together has to be one of the most difficult experiences to deal with. It takes a VERY long time to get over something like that. Discovering that your husband had a separate family would be a shock for ANYONE, but I'm sure it feels even worse after that person has moved on into the Light.

You've not been able to confront him about what he did to you. You don't get to discuss why he did it or what made him feel he could betray you that way with another woman. Twenty-nine years is a lifetime, and to discover he had such a huge secret from you must hurt very deeply. It's a shame it couldn't have remained a secret until you join him again in Heaven, when he might be able to explain himself.

Nevertheless, this secret does not mean that he didn't truly love you, and still loves you from where he is now. Nothing is keeping you from moving on but YOU, because even though you've tried to forgive him, you're still not truly over what happened. When you're ready, you WILL move on.

Teenagers steal things from graveyards and keep them as souvenirs. That's what's happening at the cemetery with the things you leave on your husband's grave. I see a "pack" of them scavenging weekly. Sometimes kids take things to scare themselves into thinking they'll see apparitions or "ghosts." I don't see anything magical or metaphysical going on there - just a normal bunch of delinquents getting their kicks. They do it to scare people, too. It's a game to them, and it happens in every cemetery. I've seen kids with a room full of graveyard "souvenirs."

Having your husband mistreat you while he was ill has also stuck with you, and that's why you feel nervous and unsettled at his grave when you visit. You never got over that bad treatment, and it's stuck with you like glue. It's hard to let go of that cruelty.

Since it makes you UNHAPPY to visit his grave, stop going. Your husband isn't at the cemetery or in his grave anyway; he's in Heaven having a FINE OLD TIME.

The only time his Spirit is close by is when he's with your grandson. He's watching over him, and the kiddo is still little enough to SEE him and not feel it's crazy or scary. Considering some of the things your husband did when he was alive, looking after your grandson is the LEAST he could do. It's sort of a "GUARDIAN ANGEL" job. Your husband loved his work in life, so it's natural for him to still be working now.

I wish you could see him as your grandson does. Get him to describe to you what they do together before he gets too old to do it, or gets all hung up about telling you. This is going to make it easier for you to move on and have a GOOD life. You'll be able to see your husband through your grandson's eyes as the loving, caring person he was when he was well and truly with you.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.