144: Shawn Richardson: Through divorce, this amazing woman found her way back through the clarity she found in the mountains. Psst: Sounds like me!!

March 27, 2020

Shawn Richardson

Shawn Richardson is a super woman who found her superpowers through the transformative clarity that comes with her passion for climbing mountains. But before this metamorphosis took place, first Shawn was married for over 23 years to a successful man that graduated from Harvard and managed a hedge fund, with whom she had three sons in high school with. What happened in 2008 when his hedge fund was decimated and much of their capital disappeared along with it? “It’s five years after 2008…I’m not seeing it happening and I’m not thinking about the end of our marriage. But, I’m getting resigned to the fact that life doesn’t feel so great. So, anyway, we are still very married at this point. He goes on a business trip to check on some residual investments in Thailand and came home and immediately told me that he wanted a divorce, and I was so surprised by this news, and I thought that it would pass, that it was just a moment of fear or something, a reaction that he was having and he would come down in the following days and come to his senses so to speak. It never happened. He kept saying every day, ‘I want a divorce. I’m actually moving to Thailand.’” 

On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Shawn Richardson, life coach for parents of special needs kids and an avid mountaineer. Shawn discusses what pushed her to step into the fear of her situation and face it head-on. “I was trying to repair and prevent the divorce from happening and there was a very clear moment when I made the decision to not protect the marriage but protect myself and my children. So, that was a clear decision. I think a lot of people may face that moment when they’re trying to prevent a divorce from happening. Then there is that moment when they say, the divorce is going to happen, and I must think and make my decisions accordingly.”

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How did mountain climbing play a role in Shawn Richardson’s revitalisation process after the pain of her divorce? “I’m a big mountain climber like you. So, I grew up in Montana and climbed a lot during my college years. But, then I stopped all throughout my marriage, and after my divorce I ran into an opportunity to climb Whitney, and I just did it, just to get back into the mountains. No particular drive. Just to pursue the experience. I got on the summit and I stood up there and I was reminded after 25 years or however long it had been, how great it is, how amazing it feels to be on top of a mountain, and I said, ‘why aren’t I doing this all the time?’” 

What was a pivotal moment in Shawn Richardson resetting her mindset into a more positive direction? “I studied spiritual psychology in L.A. for three years and the very first night of my very first class the teacher said, basically, that we are all divine souls using human experience for our learning and that everything happens for us, not to us, and that, in fact, we have chosen these experiences for our learning. That whole reframing, moving from victim consciousness I’m here to heal from a divorce, into how is this happening for me? What is my opportunity here? Moving into empowerment. That night was the moment, I drove home and I said, I can build whatever life I want for myself, and I set out to do that, and I have been doing that.” 

Shawn Richard talks about the tumultuous elements of fear that bubbled up to the surface during her shock of divorce that she would later face directly. “I saw a very large transfer of money, six figures, leave our account and go to Thailand, and it was in that moment where I was WTF, yikes. So, I got to get a lot smarter here and I need to protect myself and my kids. I don’t know what is happening. I don’t know what is going on. So, that was the moment. You know, I didn’t even know how divorce worked. I knew nothing. While processing all the emotions of what was going on, my children not knowing what was happening at all. They knew nothing at this point. I also had to do the legal study of, what do you do? How do you get control over money so that it doesn’t all disappear?” 

What is it about mountain climbing in particular that makes it such a force of healing for Shawn? “For me, the whole physicality of climbing, it is just a massive movement of energy. You are moving and processing so much energy when your body is traversing a mountain. Just that alone is an incredible experience. Anything stagnant in you, any feelings that are stuck, you just get agitated and move. So, I also find in the meditative movement, the step after step after step and the beauty of Mother Nature, just clarity, descends in my thinking. I am so clear in my priorities.” 

Shawn Richardson has a 25-year-old son named Charlie that is autistic who is the lead singer in a band where every member has autism. What has this experience been like for her? “I think part of the reason that happened, my divorce, and everything that happened in my life actually, was to set me up for the new way in which I see Charlie and experience Charlie and know myself as his mother, and it is a way that I want to help others that are parenting children with special needs, if they are interested.” 

Charlie’s Diagnosis

Shawn walks us through that moment in her life when Charlie’s autism diagnosis became a reality. “There was very much a message given to me that I needed to fix him, and I actually had a very successful business that I was running, and the day that he was diagnosed, I closed down my business to fix Charlie. Nobody really knew what autism was or what you could do about it or what caused it. So, I went into a big learning mode, which is my M.O.. I went to work fixing him, pursuing every kind of therapy, trying everything. We homeschooled. It was insane.” 

Projecting Unhappiness 

During this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, Shawn Richardson also talks about the work she does as a life coach for mothers and fathers of special needs sons and daughters and how she realised that she was projecting her own unhappiness onto Charlie. “I started thinking, why did his soul choose such a difficult existence? I was awed. Then I spent several weeks thinking about that as I was hiking, training for my next climb. I really came to the awareness that in fact, Charlie is not unhappy at all. He is a very happy person, and the happiest person I know, and that all the unhappiness that I was perceiving was frankly and quite truthfully was unhappiness that was living inside of me., and that is called projection. It is a psychological defense mechanism and it is when you take things that you cannot or will not accept inside yourself and you place them on others.” 

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