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.

I just got back from Ohio.

A week of porch sits with coffee, walks in the woods, long lunches, and the kind of deep conversations that only happen when you're not rushing anywhere. I had no idea northeastern Ohio had so much nature to give. The rock formations alone blew my mind.

And somewhere in the middle of all of it, the same conversation kept coming up. With my friend Shannon. With two friends both in PhD programs. With a client I was walking with in the park. All of it circling back to the same question.

What if you already have what you need?

Not someday. Not after the next certification or the next course or the next thing someone outside of you gives you permission to do. Now. With what you already have. What you've already lived, already learned, already survived.

That's what this episode is about.

3 Things You’ll Take Away:

1. You already know how to do hard things. You've solved problems, trusted your gut, asked for help, used your wits. That toolkit doesn't disappear when something new shows up. This episode helps you remember it's still there.
2. How to get your groove back when you've lost it. The staff exercise Robyn shares is simple, a little surprising, and genuinely works. When you feel disconnected from your confidence or your creativity, here's how to reach back for it.
3. What to do with disappointment. It came up in Ohio over and over. What happens when things go differently than you wanted, and it's real and it hurts? How do you talk to yourself? How do you recover? This episode gives you something to work with.

⏰ Timestamps

(00:00) Back from Ohio and stepping into summer

(03:00) What Shannon and I kept coming back to all week

(05:00) What the world teaches you about what you're missing

(07:00) The staff and why Robyn uses it to access her confidence

(09:00) The PhD friends and what happens when the identity isn't enough

(11:00) How to use a friend as a lifeline when you've lost your mojo

(13:00) The trick of agreeing with yourself to find out what you actually want

(14:00) The Airbnb kitchen and what it has to do with your resourcefulness

(16:00) You can do hard things because you already have

(19:00) What to do when you're in doubt, insufficiency, or your victim place

(20:00) How to handle disappointment and tell a different story about it

(23:00) Your resource bundle, your tool belt, your gathered wisdom

(24:00) What do you want to do with the next 90 days

(27:00) The staff exercise, closing practice, and invitation

🔗 Connect with Robyn Ivy

🌿 Instagram – @robynivy

🧠 Website – www.robynivy.com

🎧 The Robyn Ivy Podcast – Listen on Apple | Spotify

💌 Email – robyn@robynivy.com

✨ Want support 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 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.

You know that list in your head.

I should really get on that. I should be further along. I should be doing more. I should have that handled by now.

That list.

Here's what I want to say about that list: it's making you miserable. And the worst part? You built it yourself. Often from what you saw on Instagram, what your critical parent modeled, or what the self-help industrial complex told you was possible if you just tried a little harder.

This episode is a reality check. Not a permission slip to do nothing. There are real things that need doing and we're going to talk about that too. But there's a difference between what actually needs your attention and the impossible standard you've been holding yourself to. And until you can see that difference clearly, no amount of productivity hacking is going to help.

If you're exhausted in a way that sleep doesn't fix, this one's for you.

3 Things You’ll Take Away:

1. Your to-do list is lying to you. If it has 35 things on it and you did 15, you didn't fail. You made a list that was never possible to begin with. This episode helps you see that and build one that's actually human-sized.
2. What you're seeing online isn't real life. The woman with the perfect pool and the Hunter boots and the coffee and the garden at 6am? She has a team. Robyn breaks down what it actually costs to live that life and why comparing yourself to it is costing you something too.
3. Presence is the whole point. You can get it all right and still miss it entirely. This episode comes back to what actually matters: being here, in this moment, with yourself and the people you love.

⏰ Timestamps

(00:00) Personal growth shouldn't be another thing that burdens your life

(03:00) The should list and what it's doing to you

(05:00) The Sisyphus boulder you keep rolling up the hill

(08:00) Before social media, people didn't try to optimize every category of their life

(11:00) The garden metaphor: why front-loaded effort requires everything else to slip

(15:00) The Instagram woman with the Hunter boots and what her life actually costs

(22:00) The psychological distance between what's true and what's possible

(24:00) The 35-item to-do list and why you're beating yourself up for it

(27:00) What grief, a garden, a renovation, and a career change all have in common

(30:00) The mindfulness piece and why being here now isn't just a platitude

(32:00) The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving address and bringing your mind into the room

(34:00) The ADHD piece and why keeping up with anything feels impossible

(36:00) The fine line between what you get to do and what you need to do

(40:00) Was I present or just busy?

🔗 Connect with Robyn Ivy

🌿 Instagram – @robynivy

🧠 Website – www.robynivy.com

🎧 The Robyn Ivy Podcast – Listen on Apple | Spotify

💌 Email – robyn@robynivy.com

✨ Want to connect with someone you've lost?

Book a Mediumship Session — robynivy.com/clarity

Want intuitive guidance for your own life? Book a Clarity Session — robynivy.com/clarity

Taking a few new 3-month mentoring clients — email me at robyn@robynivy.com

Business owners interested in intuitive consulting — same place. robyn@robynivy.com

a home.

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.

Some conversations are so good they deserve a second life.

This is one of them.

I recorded this with Alisa Barry back in episode 20 — and I still think about it.

Alisa is one of the few people I know who has truly, successfully built a beautiful life on purpose. Not as an aesthetic — as a practice. She started a café in Atlanta in the early 90s because she loved food and beautiful things and eating as a ritual. That café became Bella Cucina Artful Food — an artisan brand that's been in Oprah's Favorite Things twice, carried in specialty stores around the world, and built entirely on the idea that what's on your table matters.

She's also a Japanese ink artist with a 25-year private meditation practice. A curator of objects sourced from around the globe. Someone who picks and chooses — products, people, design, art — specifically to illuminate and elevate your life.

In this conversation we go deep on devotion as a discipline. On what it took for her to claim herself as an artist after years of being known as a business owner. On the simple, powerful daily practices that brought her back to herself when her business started feeling like something she had to do instead of something she loved.

She does things in such a potent, spacious, simple way. You'll leave this one inspired — and probably a little more chaotic than you wish you were. Which, same.

3 Things You’ll Take Away:

1. Devotion as discipline. When Alisa burned out, instead of pushing harder, she came back to simple daily practices that grounded her day and reconnected her to what was beautiful and important. This is what sustainable looks like.
2. Claiming yourself as an artist. Even when the world knows you as something else. Even when you didn't go to school for it. Alisa talks about what it took to step into that identity and how it helped her feel whole.
3. How to curate a beautiful life on purpose. Not as a luxury. As a daily choice. What you put on your table, how you begin your day, what you let in, it all adds up to something. This episode shows you what that can look like.

⏰ Timestamps

(00:00) Why I'm bringing this one back — and what the peonies have to do with it

(05:00) The Eggplant Lady origin story

(09:00) How she ran a busy business and still lived slowly

(13:00) Burning out — and the artist retreat that changed everything

(17:00) Claiming yourself as an artist even when you don't feel like one

(20:00) Curation as a way of life

(23:00) Morning pages and what they revealed

(28:00) Devotion as discipline — the rituals that hold everything together

(35:00) Beauty as a daily practice

(45:00) Leading with curiosity

(55:00) What it means to curate a beautiful life on purpose

🔗 Connect with Robyn Ivy

🌿 Instagram – @robynivy

🧠 Website – www.robynivy.com

💌 Email – robyn@robynivy.com

✨ Want support in your own season?

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 a few new 3-month mentoring clients — email me at robyn@robynivy.com

Business owners interested in intuitive consulting — same place. robyn@robynivy.com

MORE ABOUT ALISA BARRY:

Alisa Barry is an artist, author, and entrepreneur. In the early 90s she opened a café in Atlanta to share her passion for cooking and eating as an artful ritual. From that café grew Bella Cucina Artful Food — an all-natural artisan product line now available in lifestyle, gift, and specialty stores around the world. Featured in Oprah's Favorite Things twice, and in Food & Wine, Martha Stewart Living, and Better Homes & Gardens. Author of two bestselling books, La Bella Vita and Il Piccolo Libro. A Japanese ink artist with a private practice spanning over 25 years, Alisa curates objects of affection from around the globe and calls Atlanta home.

🔗 Connect with Alisa Barry

🌿 Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/bellacucinaartfulfood

🧠 Website – https://bellacucina.com

I'm home.

And I almost immediately got flattened by some kind of virus that was behaving like pneumonia. I was actually mid-recording when I got super hot out of nowhere, sweaty, and passed out. Two weeks later — here we are.

Not exactly the re-entry I planned.

But coming home after almost two months away, in the middle of a completely different season than when I left, got me thinking. About what's here now. What's blooming? What needs to go? And what this particular moment in your life might actually be trying to tell you — if you'd slow down long enough to listen.

My backyard wisteria is doing something I've never seen in the decade I've lived here. A third of my yard is covered in the most extraordinary purple blooms you've ever seen. The irises just opened their faces to the sun 48 hours ago. The peonies are about to burst.

And I keep asking myself — what's the equivalent of that in your life right now?

Because here's what I know. Whatever season you're in, whatever's calling you or challenging you or scaring the hell out of you — there's a reason for it. You're being forged for something. And what needs you next will have you as prepared, capable, and whole as you can be — if you lean into what's happening now instead of running from it.

That's what this episode is about.

3 Things You’ll Take Away:

1. What's actually blooming in your life right now. Not what you think should be happening… what actually is. This episode helps you pause, look around, and get honest about what this season is asking of you.
2. What needs to be composted. The relationships, commitments, and habits that were right for a season that's now over. Letting them go more than loss; it's how you make room for what's next.
3. Why leaning in is always the move. Whatever you're being forged in right now is preparing you for something. I make the case, with real stories, for why avoidance costs more than it saves.

⏰ Timestamps

(00:00) Clarity, Change & Intuitive Growth

(04:29) Mastering Change Through Sisterhood

(07:59) Overcoming Decision Fatigue at the Gym

(11:45) Accountability and Personal Change

(13:16) Finding a Workout Routine

(19:26) Strength for Life’s Challenges

(22:12) Embracing Growth and Commitment

(24:04) Growth Through Support and Reflection

(27:50) Finding Your Right Fit

(32:43) Balance in Community Spaces

(36:56) Slow Down and Recenter

(39:58) Progress, Reality, and Adaptation

(41:42) Commit, Progress, Achieve Goals

🔗 Connect with Robyn Ivy

🌿 Instagram – @robynivy

🧠 Website – www.robynivy.com

🎧 The Robyn Ivy Podcast – Listen on Apple | Spotify

💌 Email – robyn@robynivy.com

MORE ABOUT ROBYN IVY:

Robyn Ivy sees people for a living.

A trusted intuitive, coach and fierce advocate for tree portals and a creative life, she spent over 20 years as a commercial photographer, honing her powerful skills as a witness.

Host of the Robyn Ivy Podcast, where she discusses how to be more present to our lives and create what’s next with today’s prominent thought leaders, spiritual mentors and creative guides.

Robyn mentors clients 1:1 through transitions, deep growth and meaningful change in a fun and inspiring way. Her workshops, groups and programs offer you insights and practices to live more confidently, creatively and from your truest wisdom.

You will 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 is her best work yet.

Change is constant but you know this.

And whether you chose it or it chose you: a breakup, a job loss, a move, a diagnosis, an empty nest. At some point you find yourself having to begin again. And beginning again, no matter how many times you've done it, requires you to go back to your fundamentals.

That's what this episode is about.

I've been in Miami for six weeks, way longer than I planned, and I've been thinking about this a lot. With clients. With my brother Dave. With myself. Because every single one of us, at some point, has to figure out what we actually need when the ground shifts. Not the dream. Not the five-year plan. The basics.

Are your essential needs being met? Do you have community? Are you leaning on what you already know how to do? Because you've done hard things before. You have more than you think. And that matters more than you know right now.

3 Things You'll Take Away

1. Return to Your Fundamentals: In times of change—chosen or forced—check in with your basics: Are your essential needs (health, community, stability) being met? What resources and experiences from your past can you bring forward to support you now
2. Be Willing to Begin Again: Transitions are part of life’s cycle. Remember, even if you haven’t faced this exact challenge before, you’ve weathered hard things before. Rely on your resilience and skills from other parts of your journey.
3. Intentionally Build Connection and Habits: Reaching out to new people, joining communities, or starting fresh routines may feel uncomfortable—but these small steps pave the way to bigger transformation and new opportunities.

⏰ Timestamps

(00:00) How I work with clients — readings, mentoring, and business consulting

(05:00) What happens when life forces you to begin again

(13:00) Getting back to the basics — what that actually means

(20:00) Making friends in Miami — and why it felt awkward

(22:00) Using intuition to connect with new people

(27:00) Embracing change even when you didn't choose it

(35:00) The fundamentals — shelter, health, food, community, faith

(40:00) Challenging yourself and leaning into discomfort

(43:00) Showing up for the people you love during big transitions

(48:00) Default settings — and how to change them on purpose

(58:00) Building habits that actually hold

(01:03:00) Pushing through when it's hard

(01:04:00) You already have everything you need to begin

✨ Want support through your own transition?

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 a few new 3-month mentoring clients: email me at robyn@robynivy.com

Business owners interested in intuitive consulting: Start the conversation at robyn@robynivy.com

🔗 Connect with Robyn Ivy

🌿 Instagram – @robynivy

🧠 Website – www.robynivy.com

🎧 The Robyn Ivy Podcast – Listen on Apple | Spotify

💌 Email – robyn@robynivy.com

MORE ABOUT ROBYN IVY:

Robyn Ivy sees people for a living.

A trusted coach, intuitive and fierce advocate for tree portals and a creative life, she spent over 20 years as a commercial photographer, honing her powerful skills as a witness.

Host of the Robyn Ivy Podcast, where she discusses how to be more present to our lives and create what’s next with today’s prominent thought leaders, spiritual mentors and creative guides.

Robyn mentors clients 1:1 through transitions, deep growth and meaningful change in a fun and inspiring way. Her workshops, groups and programs offer you insights and practices to live more confidently, creatively and from your truest wisdom.

You will 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, is her best work yet.