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.

Good things are happening for the people I love most right now and I feel so many different emotions.

My son just left for a new job out of state. A dear friend is buying a house and moving to North Carolina and though I am genuinely thrilled for each of them…I also noticed my heart ache with the missing of them just thinking about them leaving.

Turns out what I really want is for them to go off and live their best lives but also do that from my basement/town and be upstairs/over for dinner.

Good thing last week I did an episode about changing the lens on our lives lol.

So I've been feeling funny, a little off all week. Sort of fragile. It's the grief. Living underneath it all, amongst the change..even when it’s really wonderful change, which it usually is. Most of us just never learned to look for it there.

This one's for anyone who's been feeling a little off and couldn't quite say why.

3 Things You’ll Take Away:

1. Even good change has grief in it. The anxiety, the edginess, the feeling of being off is grief. Naming it changes how you relate to it.
2. The thing you're avoiding feeling is running your behavior. So much of our weird behavior traces back to a door we don't want to open (because feeling it means feeling it.) But the door doesn't disappear just because you closed it.
3. Check in with four parts of yourself: Body, mind, heart, soul. Each one needs something different right now. A hard workout. A good cry. Pizza with a friend. A poem. Asking separately what each part needs is a real practice — and it's something you can do today.

✨ Have something circling the drain of your brain and heart?

Join Ask Me and My Intuition Anything — live on Zoom, $35, first Friday of the month.

👉 robynivy.com/ama

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.

This week I'm bringing you something I'm actually doing with clients right now — because what's the point of getting on here and talking about transformation if I'm not living it and working it in real time?

The topic is the lens through which you're seeing your life.

Not just your own lens. The lens other people put on you. The parent who had decades of criticism on tap. The voice you internalized from someone who maybe didn't even know they were handing you a pair of dirty glasses. And the way that lens — scratched up, clouded, dropped in something you'd rather not think about — is quietly running the show while you wonder why things look the way they do.

Here's what I know after years of doing this work. You are always looking through a lens. The question is whether you know which one you have on. And if you do — you can swap it out.

3 Things You’ll Take Away:

1. How to identify the lens you're currently looking through. Robyn gives you the actual homework she assigns her clients — a simple exercise with a piece of paper and a circle that tells you more about how you're running your life than most things you could do in 10 minutes.
2. Where your lens came from and why it's still on. The critical parent. The voice you internalized at 7 years old. The story someone told you about who you are that you've been trying to outrun ever since. This episode helps you see it clearly so you can finally do something about it.
3. How to swap it out. The lens can be unscrewed. It can be changed. And when it is, what you see gets very different. Robyn knows this as a photographer and as someone who's done it herself.

⏰ Timestamps

(00:00) What we're doing today — and why it comes straight from client work

(01:00) The narcissistic parent and what five decades of that does to a person

(04:00) If you've spent your life trying to be good enough for someone — this is for you

(06:00) The voices we internalize and how quickly they take hold

(08:00) The staff, standing upright, and accessing the confident part of yourself

(09:00) Where your clients are when they come to Robyn — and what she works on with them

(12:00) Soul and strategy — how intuitive work meets practical next steps

(13:00) The homework: draw a circle and name your lens

(15:00) What does your lens feel like, look like, sound like right now?

(16:00) Drop your glasses in honey. Drop them in poop. What does that change?

(17:00) The phrases you say on repeat — and what they're telling you

(18:00) How the lens runs your life without you noticing

(19:00) Both parents gone and the strange liberation that comes with that

(20:00) You can unscrew it. You can swap it out. And when you do, everything shifts.

🔗 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/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.