My friend Julia got married a few weeks ago in British Columbia.

She and Richard dated 40 years ago. Went their separate ways. Found each other again. And standing there in front of a lake with mountains behind them, saying yes to each other — I've never seen anything quite like it.

Watching them, I kept thinking about love. Not the Hallmark version. The real one. What it takes to open yourself to it. What it costs when you don't. And what it looks like when someone is so fully in it that everybody around them gets a little elevated just being in the room.

This episode is about that. What love actually is, what it asks of you, and where you might have more room for it than you think.

3 Things You’ll Take Away:

1. Love is something you open to. It doesn't require a perfect mood or a high-vibe day. It can look like stillness. Presence. Paying attention. This episode helps you see where you're already doing it — and where you've quietly closed.
2. Love has more forms than we give it credit for. A hard conversation. A boundary. Showing up for someone. A month away because your heart told you to. Once you see them all, you start noticing love everywhere.
3. There are so many places to send your love. To the people in front of you. To the ones who've passed. To the earth itself. This episode leaves you with real, practical ways to give and receive more of it.

⏰ Timestamps

(00:00) Why we haven't talked about love much here — and why now

(03:00) Getting close to episode 200 — what's coming next

(05:00) Where the podcast is headed: artists, theologians, wisdom keepers

(06:00) Julia and Richard: a love story 40 years in the making

(11:00) Standing at that lake watching his joy

(13:00) What love did to everyone at that wedding

(16:00) Love as presence, stillness, and vessel — not just a feeling

(17:00) The Occupy Mind movement — and why we need to come back to the heart

(21:00) What crosses all traditions: contemplation, humility, love, the great mystery

(24:00) Trusting love through heartbreak, rebuilding, and the both-and

(27:00) The 90-year-old who just finished the Appalachian Trail — love as courageous action

(29:00) Mehdi in Greece — love guiding you toward what your body needs

(30:00) The tsunami of love — what Mimi Samus taught me

(33:00) Sending love through the roots of trees — the science behind it

(35:00) Worthy questions: who needs your love today? Where are you running low?

🔗 Connect with Robyn Ivy

🌿 Instagram – @robynivy

🧠 Website – www.robynivy.com

🎧 The Robyn Ivy Podcast – Listen on Apple | Spotify

💌 Email – robyn@robynivy.com

✨ Want to open yourself to more of this?

Book an Intuitive Clarity Session: robynivy.com/clarity

Want to connect with a loved one who has passed? Book a Mediumship Session: robynivy.com/clarity

Taking new 3-month and 6-month mentoring clients. Email me at robyn@robynivy.com

Business owners who could use an intuitive edge: same place. robyn@robynivy.com

About Robyn Ivy

Robyn Ivy sees people for a living. A trusted mentor, intuitive, and fierce advocate for a creative life, she spent over 20 years as a commercial photographer — honing her powerful skills as a witness.

She guides clients 1:1 through transitions, deep growth, and meaningful change. Her workshops, groups, and programs give you the insights and practices to live more confidently, creatively, and from your truest wisdom.

You'll often find her traveling in a camper van, sitting with the trees, or capturing the beauty of nature. Raising her now-grown sons Rook and Cole has been the greatest joy of her life.

I took a little sabbatical around here. An unexpected one. A grief sabbatical.

After a trip to North Carolina, we lost our cat Fiona, unexpectedly in the middle of the night to congestive heart failure we didn’t know she had.

A 14 year old ragdoll, who was beyond fluffy, fabulous and looked five years old right up until she didn't. She was beloved by our family. She died two days after the anniversary of my mom's passing. Of the same thing my mom died of. So yep, it’s been a lot.

But this episode isn't really about Fiona, or my mom, or even me. It's about the fact that grief is the elephant in the room for most of us, and we just don't have good ways to move through it together anymore.

We've lost the rituals. We've lost the ceremony. We're expected to, like, just keep going. And most of us do. And most of us are carrying a lot because of it.

Grief is about so much more than death or the loss of a loved one. It's about losing a role, losing your freedom, losing the world you thought your kids were going to grow up in. It's about the friend who moved away, the version of yourself you had to say goodbye to, the hope that quietly went missing somewhere along the way.

I've been in the world of grief my whole life. My dad was a pastor who did funerals. I've walked my parents home. I've sat with people who were passing. I've held the hands of an elder who had lost hope and let him cry. I know this territory.

And I think it's time we talked about it differently.

3 Things You’ll Take Away:

1. Grief has more forms than we name. Loss of a person, yes. But also loss of a role, an identity, a possibility, a version of the world you counted on. If you've been feeling something you can't quite call grief, this episode might give it a name.
2. We're missing our rituals for this. Other cultures and other eras built ceremony around grief. We largely haven't. And that absence is costing us more than we know. This episode is an invitation to change that.
3. Let grief do what it needs to do. It's a rock tumbler. Who you become inside it is someone you'd never want to give back. That doesn't make it less hard. It makes it worth staying for.

⏰ Timestamps

(00:00) The grief sabbatical — why we've been gone

(03:00) Fiona, the ragdoll cat, and what we lost

(08:00) Watching my boys bury her — and what that did to me as a mother

(13:00) Stewardship — a word you're going to hear more of from me

(16:00) The rituals we're missing around grief and death

(19:00) Anderson Cooper's grief podcast and why it took a CNN anchor to open this conversation

(21:00) The many forms grief takes — it's not just about death

(25:00) The mediumship evening — and the elder who had lost hope

(27:00) Sitting with him, holding his hands, letting him cry

🔗 Connect with Robyn Ivy

🌿 Instagram – @robynivy

🧠 Website – www.robynivy.com

🎧 The Robyn Ivy Podcast – Listen on Apple | Spotify

💌 Email – robyn@robynivy.com

✨ Want a fresh set of eyes on your lens?

Book an Intuitive Clarity Session: robynivy.com/clarity

Want to connect with a loved one who has passed? Book a Mediumship Session: robynivy.com/mediumship

Taking new 3-month and 6-month mentoring clients. Email me at robyn@robynivy.com

Business owners who could use an intuitive edge: same place. robyn@robynivy.com

About Robyn Ivy

Robyn Ivy sees people for a living. A trusted mentor, intuitive, and fierce advocate for a creative life, she spent over 20 years as a commercial photographer — honing her powerful skills as a witness.

She guides clients 1:1 through transitions, deep growth, and meaningful change. Her workshops, groups, and programs give you the insights and practices to live more confidently, creatively, and from your truest wisdom.

You'll often find her traveling in a camper van, sitting with the trees, or capturing the beauty of nature. Raising her now-grown sons Rook and Cole has been the greatest joy of her life.

Shannon Simmons just won the national championship in women's pole vault for the 50 to 54-year-old Masters division.

She took 20 years off from the sport. Came back two and a half years ago. And won.

But this conversation isn't really about pole vaulting. It's about what happens when you come back to something you thought was behind you. What it takes. What it makes possible. And why the thing you put down might still be waiting for you.

Shannon is one of my clients and one of my Ohio people — and I was lucky enough to be on the track with her and her daughter the weekend before nationals. I photographed them together. Her daughter is now learning to pole vault. Shannon looked at the photos and cried because she could see her daughter looking at her in a way she doesn't get to see on the day-to-day.

3 Things You’ll Take Away:

1. Your past is a blueprint, not a dead end. The skills, discipline, and depth you built doing one thing — pole vaulting, parenting, building a business — are transferable to everything else. Shannon calls it the blueprint. This conversation shows you exactly what that looks like in practice.
2. Being in a different place than everyone else doesn't mean you're behind. Sometimes you're just doing something different. Or ahead. This episode has a Tour de France metaphor that will reframe how you see your own path.
3. Coming back to something you loved is its own kind of winning. Shannon didn't pick up a new sport. She came back to the one that lit her up — and it became the thread that pulled everything else together. Her kids, her marriage, her identity. One reclaimed passion. Everything else followed.

🔗 Connect with Robyn Ivy

🌿 Instagram – @robynivy

🧠 Website – www.robynivy.com

🎧 The Robyn Ivy Podcast – Listen on Apple | Spotify

💌 Email – robyn@robynivy.com

✨ Want support coming back to something — or figuring out what's next?

Book an Intuitive Clarity Session: robynivy.com/clarity

Want to connect with a loved one who has passed? Book a Mediumship Session: robynivy.com/clarity

Taking new 3-month and 6-month mentoring clients. Email me at robyn@robynivy.com

Business owners who could use an intuitive edge: same place. robyn@robynivy.com

About Shannon Simmons:

Shannon Simmons holds a Master's degree in Christian Ministry and is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Ministry Leadership. She serves as the Director of Grace College in Akron, where she is passionate about equipping others for leadership and ministry. Her background also includes degrees in nutrition and massage therapy — a reflection of her love for whole-person health and wellness.

When she's not working or studying, you'll find her outdoors hiking or boating. She is a National Champion in Masters Track and Field in the pole vault. And above all, she cherishes her husband, their two children, and the joy of living in the woods of Hinckley, Ohio.

About Robyn Ivy

Robyn Ivy sees people for a living. A trusted mentor, intuitive, and fierce advocate for a creative life, she spent over 20 years as a commercial photographer — honing her powerful skills as a witness.

She guides clients 1:1 through transitions, deep growth, and meaningful change. Her workshops, groups, and programs give you the insights and practices to live more confidently, creatively, and from your truest wisdom.

You'll often find her traveling in a camper van, sitting with the trees, or capturing the beauty of nature. Raising her now-grown sons Rook and Cole has been the greatest joy of her life.