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Yes You Can
Host Hannah Pratt pulls back the curtain on being an indoor cycling instructor and fitness coach while covering online business, grief, and designing your dream life by taking action and allowing your story to empower you. Yes, You Can is the podcast you need to dream bigger, laugh louder, and feel celebrated and supported in your instructor journey. #yesyoucanpodcast @hannahrosespin
Yes You Can
Grief and loss and how to keep showing up: a personal episode
Navigating life's toughest moments and still finding the strength to move forward and show up —how do we do it?
On this heartfelt episode of the Yes You Can podcast, I open up about the profound challenges I've faced over the past seven months, including my horse Finn's traumatic surgery and the sudden loss of dear friends, family, and finally putting my dog Pinky to rest this week.
These events have taken a significant toll on my mental health, and I share the struggle of discussing grief while still in the throes of healing.
Through these personal stories, I aim to provide a lifeline for anyone grappling with similar hardships, reminding you that finding meaning and strength is possible even during the darkest times.
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Welcome to the yes you Can podcast, a soft place to land for fit pros and aspiring entrepreneurs looking for a motivational cheerleader who's been through it all and believes your best life is about being brave and tapping into your magic. Hi, I'm Hannah Pratt, an online coach and vulnerability queen. I'm here ready to share my experiences through grief, life and finding my place on the podium to help you level up. So grab a latte and a notebook and get ready to be inspired through the yes you Can podcast. Hey friends, welcome to another episode of the yes you Can podcast. Today we are going a little deep and talking about some hard things. I number one. I'm fine, I am okay, but the last like seven months have really really put me through the wringer, and today I wanted to talk to all of you, the listeners of the yes you Can podcast, about what that's been like and hopefully open up a little bit, especially for those who have also been going through a hard time and maybe need a little bit of a lifeline. So a lot of you have been listening since the beginning, which is so amazing to me, and I am truly honored. I started this podcast not even really to talk to fitness professionals specifically, but to talk about hard things, mental health, kind of be more of a lifestyle type of podcast, and it sort of evolved when I launched Instructor Magic into being more resources for instructors. But I know that there's many of you who are not instructors, have no aspirations to be, don't work in fitness but maybe attend classes, and you're here and so I want to welcome you too. I have goals for the podcast where it becomes a bit more of a lifestyle podcast, because there's often conversations and topics I want to dive into but they don't have anything to do with my strategic marketing plan for Inst instructor magic or aren't fitting into this niche, and so, even though I teach marketing myself, I know how how much of a struggle it can be to be like well, this, I want to post about this, but it doesn't go along with what I share normally and is that confusing to viewers and listeners. And because the podcast is is you know, doing, know, doing, well, but it's not, it's not major by any means, I do feel still a lot of freedom, with an autonomy and flexibility, with posting whatever I want, versus maybe my Instagram that has has a specific type of following um, mostly instructors and so I tend to keep it a little bit more instructor focused there. That being said, instructors are humans first and foremost, and there's many ways you might identify that go beyond being a fitness instructor or are more important to you. So anyway, all that said, I wanted to talk a little bit about what's been going on, starting with last November.
Speaker 1:So I have a horse I have two actually now and this one particular is named Finn. He's a wonderful, wonderful thoroughbred who has taught me so much about horse ownership. I've owned him for just over a year and we've gone through a lot of medical stuff, and in November of last year he was getting a surgery for what's called kissing spine. It is basically when your vertebrae are touching, and I was there during the procedure. It's a procedure where they're sedated but not completely out. They're standing. It's much easier for the surgeon to be able to access what they need to, and it's a ligament snip to be able to access what they need to and it's a ligament snip, so it's not fully not as invasive as you might think when you hear surgery spine surgery for horses. But unfortunately, during that procedure he woke up and came out of anesthesia and I was there. It was incredibly traumatic for me to watch him become aware of what was going on, and you can imagine a huge horse I'm six feet tall, so Finn is also very tall physically running around and panicking and bucking inside a building a medical building resulted in a lot of injuries for him, was resulted in a lot of injuries for him, and that was a broken sternum, a huge chest wound I mean just on and on, you sort of name it, plus the mental trauma of being really afraid of people.
Speaker 1:About a week and a half later, or maybe two weeks, at that point, one of my best friends suddenly died, and he's a person that I never thought I would lose at the young age of 41. And as somebody that I've known for a lot of my life. He was friends with my and co workers, at one point with my mom, who also died 10 years ago, and so he held a lot of memories of her which were really, really important to me, and it was a friendship that was very, very, very important to me and still is, obviously. And about five days later, I had been scheduled before he passed to talk about to speak at an event for creatives on transforming pain into creative potential, based on my experience with losing my mom 10 years ago to mental illness, and I was struggling really hard with what to do with this talk and how I was going to get through it.
Speaker 1:When I'm speaking about grief as an experience that I was actually re-experiencing, there's five stages of grief as tragic as as a young physician, um, passing away from a heart issue that is still a bit of a mystery. Um, at the age of 41, somebody who does boston marathon, chicago marathon, standard iron man competition, runs, swims, bikes, does all the things is incredibly intelligent, smartest person I probably ever met. And just to die like that, really hard to talk about finding meaning. The difference was that I have been through the loss of my mom, which is why I started this podcast, and I knew that if somebody had told me at the very beginning of that process of grief that I never, that you're going to find meaning in this, I would have told them where to shove it for sure and I would have said you know that's completely unhelpful, similar to when people say everything happens for a reason, right Like. I think that that can be true. There's things that happen that are meant to happen. Can be true. There's things that happen that are meant to happen, and I also think that tragedies and losses can't be qualified or summarized as being. This was meant to happen, and I would never say that to somebody, but I had been through this grief experience with my mom, and so I did end up doing the speech, and it was very emotional for me, very meaningful for me, to try and guide myself and everybody in the room many of whom were Paul's friends about how to find meaning in a loss like this.
Speaker 1:At the same time, I'm running a business right. I love the courses that I run, I love the community that I run, I love the community that I have, and, as a person who's also the the personal brand, it is very challenging when you are not feeling 100% and you you can't show up 100% to try and be that version of yourself that you might be known for, and so a lot of you. When you're instructors, you're on a podium, you're often feeling for, and so a lot of you. When you're instructors, you're on a podium, you're often feeling like you're on a pedestal. It can be really hard to to feel like you're you're broken or you're you're experiencing a loss of any kind, and still show up Because you feel like everybody falls in love with that version of you, right?
Speaker 1:I took some time off from teaching. For sure, just over December I had to rehab Finn, so he was at the. He was, you know. I found out about Paul and I still had to go to the barn and do Finn's rehab because it was necessary. And I just remember crying, walking around in this super cold barn, crying into his mane and just being like I don't even know, crying into his mane and just being like I don't even know. I don't even know how to, how to continue on.
Speaker 1:Because I sort of thought and many of you probably have experienced this loss, whether it's loss of kids or parents or anything sometimes you feel like you've paid your dues and I sort of have felt like I'd paid my dues with what had happened with my mom, with being there with her when she died, with handling her estate, with dealing with family issues afterwards really complicated matters when people don't have wills or there's. You know, my parents had been separated but not officially divorced, and yada, yada, and I was the executor at 26 trying to figure all this out. I felt like I'd paid my dues of bad things happening. And then 2024 kept happening, you know, kept going on. Life goes on, but my business definitely was not at the same point where I had left, you know, 2023 on. I just did not have the energy and I still am. Still I'm getting the energy for teaching, for leading my community. The content and the curriculum and everything is something I'm the most proud of. It's just the extra stuff. It's just the extra extra stuff.
Speaker 1:That is really hard to show up to do sometimes and I, my dog Pinky, who's one of my three dogs, was getting sicker. She has Cushing's disease and that is a degenerative sort of disease. She's a bulldog turned 12 in March uh, would turn 12 in march? And it's, you know, an elderly dog thing where they their stress hormone is is exacerbated, the cortisol levels sky high and or skyrocket rather, and losing muscle mass and incontinence and shaking and all the things are like are big symptoms of it and she lasted a good two years with it. But I knew that the decision was going to be looming to put her down. Amidst that, a friend, an acquaintance, a rider of mine passed away due to mental illness and left behind wonderful woman who was expecting and their two-year-old son. And then, in May, a friend of mine and one of my closest friends elder sisters passed away suddenly as well, and yesterday, as I'm recording this, this podcast episode, I put down my dog, pinky the one with Cushing's and had to send her on to her next adventure. Pinky was my mom's dog for some context, so there's like a big loss there in terms of the connection that I've always felt, that I knew was coming, and so the question is how do you show up when you're experiencing what feels like losses after losses? Number one realizing you're not alone.
Speaker 1:Losing Paul, you know, was something that thousands of people have felt I don't mean, I'm not exaggerating like truly, at his celebration of life, which happened in April to allow for travel schedules and so forth, um is held at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. There's hundreds of people, hundreds, I want to say 500 people there, and I was one of uh, one of the speakers, and I was honored to be the final speaker of the evening and I talked about Paul's qualities and how we can try to emulate and leave a legacy, create a legacy, amplify his legacy by living those core values of what he believed and how he lived his life. In December, when I did my talk and just experienced this loss of Paul and was grappling with how do I help my horse and what do I do. I run back to my experience with losing my mom and like what got me through that, and often it was realizing that you know there's many people feeling this loss maybe not to the extent that you are but that talking about them, sharing stories, is one of the best things that has helped me heal. So, trying not to to forget them, and for many who are challenged by grief, it's like I don't want to talk about them. Anytime their name is mentioned, I feel like I'm brought right back to that moment and yes, that is true. And also it becomes way harder to move forward when you are trying to leave them behind versus realizing they're always going to be a part of you.
Speaker 1:I love talking about my mom. I love hearing stories that I've never heard before. I love, you know, when Paul would tell me stories about how she was at work and like the songs she would play while she was working and like these little idiosyncrasies that I either forgot about or didn't really know her in that light, and so it's just like it's like the best movie in your mind of who they were Videos, photos, you know. Anytime I see something of Paul now I'm just obsessed with like watching it, and even with the loss of Pinky yesterday, all I've been doing is looking at photos and videos of her. So one piece of advice in terms of finding meaning is try not to close the door, because it's a futile endeavor. It will never be closed. They will always be a part of you, and I know that sounds cliche and hokey, but they made you who you are in some sense. They impacted your life in some sense. Maybe it's a friend, maybe it's an acquaintance you met.
Speaker 1:I have all the people I spoke about Preston, the man who lost his battle with mental illness recently, cynthia, paul, my mom, pinky these are all people and things that have impacted me, and if I were trying to pretend like they didn't exist or or or never wanted to speak their name again, well, like the grief is going to rear its head in inopportune moments versus allowing for an opportunity for you to connect with others who are feeling the same way, feeling really alone, so realizing I'm not alone, trying to remember the funny things and go through videos and photos, um, their mannerisms, especially with Paul, he had really funny mannerisms and this is something I wish I had more of my mom. I wish I had more videos of her, but the technology just wasn't there at the time and to take a lot of videos and so forth, and she was usually behind the camera. But trying to find meaning is like also opening up for memories, allowing for memories to, to, to enter your psyche and, instead of having them all be painful, think about the funny things. Talk to your friends about the funny things they would do or or the things they love that maybe were weird and funny and quirky. With more of finding meaning, I love to do activities that remind me of them. You know I'm going to be taking my dogs to places that I used to go with Pinky, and that'll be hard the first time, for sure. But I feel like it's almost this portal of accessing these memories and even allowing them to have my other two dogs, to have this experience that's familiar to them, and maybe remember her too, if that's something they can do. Um, with my mom. She loved gardening and I feel so much closer to her when I'm gardening. Paul loved running and we're doing a run for him in september. Um, and like these activities help bring us closer to them and so be open to being close to them, because often it's like when we talk about grief, it's like grief is love with no place to go right. We don't know how to operate in a world where they don't exist anymore. We don't know who we are.
Speaker 1:I missed the version of myself for sure Before my mom passed. I missed the version of myself that I was around Paul, I was funnier. I was like with somebody who knew me so well and knew me for so long With my mom. I miss the version of me that was was, you know, had a mom and in this world and I could rely on her and I could. I just knew I had this like soft place to land and if anything terrible happened I could call her. And and reconfiguring how to behave when you don't have these like solid touch points is really hard. It's going to feel like you are building a new muscle.
Speaker 1:I don't know how to be in my house yet with two dogs and not three, and I think about my animals as being like that's like they're almost tethered to me. It's a bit of a funny reference I was talking to my friend my best friend, gaston, about, but it's like in House of Dragon, it's like the dragon, dragon rider connection is. So what I believe I have with my animals, like I can feel, I just can sense how they're doing, and I in my mind I almost have this map of like a bird's eye view of my house, where each one of them are, and, you know, I think to where Pinky would normally be in the last few months of her life. She'd be like hanging out on the couch or hanging on the bed and like one of the tethers is just sort of it feels like it's like flapping in the wind. You know it's like a fishing line and there's nothing on the end, and so I'm trying to re-tether that to the memories I have of her.
Speaker 1:But I don't know how to exist yet in this house. It feels empty, um, even with two dogs, and so in the finding meaning portion I'm going to do things that remind me of her so I can sort of like read, configure that tethering or whatever you want to call it or however you want to see it, and when possible, you know, when all else fails, doing good for others is my favorite thing to do. It's the best thing for me to get out of my head, because sometimes those of you who've experienced grief you know it's like I just, I just don't want to think anymore, like I can't think about this anymore and I have. Napping doesn't help and all these other things don't help and I I just keep coming back to them in my mind and the only thing that works for me, the best thing, is to think about what you can do for someone else. That could be volunteering, that could be donating a bunch of clothes, that could be creating an event for those of you who do, who are spin instructors or do have access to a boutique fitness studio that you're a part of, like. Like spearheading a charitable initiative is one of my favorite things to do to get out of my mind and just think, feel like I am.
Speaker 1:I, you know, might hate living in my mind right now, because all it is is sad, but the one thing I know I can do that's good is help somebody else, and so I started this Winnipeg Dress Collective initiative in honor of my mom, where I take new and used bridal gowns and I match them with brides in need. I'm going to be working on that today Volunteering on a board, using your skills, the things you can do for good, for spinning, like I've done so many spin away stigma, mental health rides, and I'll continue to do them, even though they're challenging and hard to sort of. Find that that balance between being strong and being authentic. These are just some ways that you can continue to move forward and for me and my business and my podcast and marketing and Instagram and how I show up for my community and all of that, it's like I to answer my own questions I have to give myself grace. I have to give myself grace to for taking subs this week and next week, for taking a bit of time off, for publishing a recording a little bit late you know, 12 hours later than I said I was going to be but also being honest with everybody and saying this is just what happened. Oh, I forgot to mention in June my cousin also passed away and I emceed his funeral and we had to push some of our calls for instructor magic a little bit back because I had to travel to Calgary to go emcee this wedding or this wedding, this funeral, and see my family wedding or this wedding, this funeral, and see my family. And if I wasn't honest about that and I was just continuing to show up, people would be confused because it would be inconsistent, right, it would be incongruent I think that's the right word with what they know me to be in terms of trustworthy and respecting them and respecting their investment and all that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:So if you are a service provider and you're feeling the same way you know being honest with your clients and being and taking the lead a little bit and saying I need a few days, this thing happened. I had something major happen personally. This thing happened. I had something major happen personally. I will get back to you by Thursday having an out of office reply on your email, even at a very basic level, to manage expectations of where you're going to get back to people. If you work at an office and you have the luxury or the privilege or the you know what I think should be just benefit of having sick time or vacation time, the you know what I think should be just benefit of having sick time or vacation time. You're just making people sure people know what that means and in terms of like, I am going to be gone and not reachable these days, um, I'll get back to you when. When I'm back, like manage those expectations. Be honest with people.
Speaker 1:More people have messaged me about losing pinky than I ever thought and I was really debating about putting on my stories because I'm like this has nothing to do with fitness. Will I lose a lot of followers if I talk about something sad? I don't have no idea how many people are gonna listen to this episode. Even it's not exactly a rah-rah like you know. It's sort of like wow, I had to have lost a lot of people and loved ones, but I guess the one thing that I knew to be true when I lost my mom is that talking about it didn't make it worse. It made it better. Talking about losing my mom to mental illness, to her dying by suicide, was connected me with people who had lost their mom's period really young and also people who had lost others who are suicide survivors, and that was so comforting to me because it felt terribly lonely and like every time I talked about it I was hurting somebody by sharing. You know about the loss, and so the right people reached out and put their arms out and said, hey, me too. This also happened to me. So I know for me that talking about these losses has only made my life better, if that's, if I can say that, or at least more, more manageable in the emotions.
Speaker 1:And some people will say you know, reach out if you need anything. And for me, I just need people to show up. I just need people to say it's okay that you're not perfect today. And if you're thinking about how do I get to the point where I can lead classes again or whatever, you know I'll probably have a response that will actually even practice for the riders who who talk to me about it at the studio just because they don't want to break down. You know I don't want to um, it's obviously. I'm not don't want to be inauthentic, but there's just a time where I feel like I need to need to be able to lead a class right and and I don't want to be weeping the entire time Although I'm doing pretty, I'm doing pretty well, I think, all the things considered, but I might have a response that I literally practice, so literally, just like every other way you would coach on a podium, is saying thanks so much.
Speaker 1:I really appreciate, I really appreciate your words more than you know. I might say that I might say thank you so much. I really appreciate, I really appreciate your words more than you know. I might say that and I say thank you so much. I really appreciate it. If they ask questions, I'll be like you know. I really appreciate you asking questions. I know you care so much.
Speaker 1:Let's chat on DMs, if we can. I just want to keep my mind focused on this, on this ride or on this next thing, or I'm just putting a bit of a boundary about chatting about it now because it's it's a bit emotional. So I really appreciate you reaching out and I want to continue the conversation. If we can chat on dm, that would be amazing. So just like letting people know how to even talk to you. You can even do this as a story post. You'd be like I'm so excited to ride again. If you see this um and you want to chat about this, or you want like I really appreciate all the words and and kind messages shoot me a DM. I just want to be able to keep my my game face on at the studio. You can put something like that up. There's no rules with this right.
Speaker 1:Whatever makes you feel comfortable while helping others to support you. For me, again, I just need people to show up and be there. I don't need them to talk about it even necessarily. Journaling is also very helpful and I know there's some of you who are like me who are like journaling, like roll your eyes, but it actually does help quite a bit. Sometimes I'll even just record a voice note to myself where I'm speaking aloud about all the things I'm feeling. I might be in the car and just like sob whatever, wherever I feel safe enough to do that. Where I don't have to, you know, stop myself from crying because somebody else is there or whatever it's like. Getting it out is the most help.
Speaker 1:Finally, mental health Of, of course, I've talked about this with losing my mom, but you know I have a therapist who's amazing, who's helped me with so much in the last seven months, but also preceding that, and I think if we, if we talk about mental health, mental health is being the same as your physical health. You're not only addressing things as they come up and managing the symptoms and trying to fix something, but you're being preventative, like a lot of us will be talking about the way we eat or the way we work out as being like something to help our longevity and how we feel, and so mental health is the same thing. Therapy is one of the best things you can do to explore topics, explore experiences, with the aid of somebody who can see, see things a little bit more clearly and isn't doesn't have a vested interest or like a stake in the game whatsoever, and they can maybe illuminate things for you to think about. For me, I sometimes have blind spots and I think of things as really being really black and white. I like whether it's like friend experiences about, like loyalty or or partners and like ex-relationships. I found it so helpful to have somebody else be like is that the real story or is that a story you're telling yourself and when you're open to that? And like having somebody who knows how to address this with you and you're not leaning on your friends for it, who might know this person or this experience or whatever. It is so, so helpful. So this is where I'm going to stop this episode.
Speaker 1:I really want to say thank you to everybody who's been a part of my community, not just in the last seven months but preceding that. It's been wild how, even with me feeling like I'm operating at 75%, I've had people be like Hannah, your 75% is other people's, 100% or 150%, you're good. Nobody even knows you're going through this. I just wanted to you know, in my intro I say vulnerability queen, and I haven't necessarily been as vulnerable as I used to be as my community has grown, as my following has grown, because you feel like you have to sort of be like a professional now instead of instead of, maybe, a person who is simply doing their best.
Speaker 1:And I do have a lot of exciting things on the horizon with instructor magic, with the instructor resource academy that I'm building, with podium prep, with the choreography vault, with all the offerings. I have hopefully doing an in-person event soon soon being relative term, but I've been asked by by my students to do this. Um, so many things certification for instructors, legitimate that would help you get the credits you need for for professional development or continuing education. So many things are in the works. I am teaching again in Creecom in the fall, as at a college that I teach at. I'm so excited about that and many more things.
Speaker 1:But I just wanted to have this touch point with all of you, my listeners, on some of the things that I've been going through and how I've tried to continue to show up. If any of this resonated, please shoot me a message on Instagram. It's going to feel really vulnerable to post this episode in a less polished way and a more perhaps authentic way, and in the moments where I'm still feeling a lot of pain about about some of these brief experiences, so I would love to know if this resonated at all with you and if you have anything else you want to share, of course, dm me as well. That's going to be it for this episode. I have a lot more coming up more with with instructors, instructor resources, studio owners, people in the world in the industry talking about indoor cycling and boutique fitness studios as well. So stay tuned.
Speaker 1:Please subscribe. It does help me with my analytics and knowing that people are listening, because it takes time to do this, of course, and there's a few freebies in the show notes on different things that I've been talking about recently on my Instagram page. Thanks, friends, have a wonderful day and remember yes you can. Thanks for listening all the way to the end of the yes you Can podcast. If you loved this one, I would so appreciate a rating and a review on Apple podcasts that lets others know that, hey, this is a good podcast and it's worthwhile to listen to. If you really loved it. Make sure to share with somebody you love who could benefit from a little magic and motivation in their lives. Thanks so much, friends, and have a great day.