Episode #14:

Sustainability Bonus Episode Two: Determined Fierceness

We’ve just finished our four-part Sustainability series, but I felt that there was a need for an additional two bonus episodes to fully complete the series. In today’s bonus episode, we’re discussing gratitude – the quality of being thankful, and the readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness. It’s the attitude of being thankful and content with the result you’ve created from sustaining through difficult times.

This time at home has left me thinking a lot about the effects of quarantine and what it means in terms of gratitude. Having time to reflect has given me a much richer appreciation of what’s important in life, that I’m not sure I’d have had if it weren’t for these times of quarantine. But it’s also made me contemplate whether we can really have gratitude without having gone through suffering first?

In this episode, I consider my own experiences and how my profound gratitude has always succeeded a period of suffering. There’s a big difference between practicing gratitude, having lived through suffering prior to it, and knowing about it, and a lot of it is to do with your thoughts. Join me this week to discuss why your thoughts can change actions and how you can use them to see things differently moving throughout your life.

WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER

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What determined fierceness is and how you can tap into yours.

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The difference between victim and victor mentality.

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The choices you have in emerging from quarantine.

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Why every decision you make has a more large-scale effect.

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How to use intentional reset to emerge from quarantine.

FEATURED ON THE SHOW

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Check out more episodes of the podcast here!

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, the podcast with Dr. Susan Crocket. You are listening to episode number fourteen: Sustainability in Difficult Times. Bonus podcast, number two, Emerging with Determined Fierceness. This episode is dedicated to my Opa.

Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, where women learn to love their lives. Do you find yourself frustrated by society’s expectations? Looking for practice advice on how to discover your talents and level up your life? You’ve found the right place. Here’s your host, US News top doctor, robotic surgeon and certified life coach, Dr. Susan Crockett.

Hello, my virtuosas and my VITs, my virtuosas in training. I haven’t said that in a while. Welcome, I am your host, Dr. Susan Crocket, and you can call me Sue because here I’m not being your doctor. Maybe I am your doctor, I’m not being your doctor, I’m not giving medical advice. We are simply having girl talk and we are talking about becoming virtuosas, which means becoming the best version of ourselves.

I am so grateful for another day with you today. It is a gorgeous day in San Antonio, Texas. The birds are singing, we’re emerging out of quarantine slowly but surely, this coronavirus thing is turning its ugly head. I am actually going back to full time surgery starting tomorrow. I’m so excited. And the ORs in their reboot plan have us opening up an extra day on Saturday. So, we are going to be taking care of all of you guys who need additional surgery. For those of you who aren’t my patients, just know that this is a sign of reemergence. This is the reboot.

And I had planned on doing this podcast, actually thinking that the reboot or the emergence wasn’t going to be for another month. And then it turned out that it’s coming now. And so, this podcast, the timing is just like perfect, like God’s timing is just so good. And I’m so excited to be doing the show today. We are going to be talking about emerging with determined fierceness. And this is a bonus podcast, I had done a series on sustainability through difficult times through last month and then I’ve added on these two bonus podcasts. One last week on gratitude, which if you’ve missed it, if you haven’t listened to it, go back to Apple iTunes and take a listen to that.

But this one is about emerging from quarantine with determined fierceness. And as always, we’re going to have a lesson with an exercise. We’ll have a little section about what I’m listening to and reading at the end of this. This is going to be kind of an intense session, I think today, but hopefully you’ll find it very encouraging.

We’re going to end up on a high note and give you some ideas about how we emerge after we’ve practiced all the sustainability. All right. So, let’s get going. So, as I was planning for this podcast, I came across this quote this week from Eleanor Roosevelt, “A woman is like a teabag. You can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.” Isn’t that just perfect, y’all?

Isn’t that just perfect for what we as women have been through? What we as a society have been through with this quarantine? We’ve been in hot water. We’ve been having to sustain through difficult times and we’ve been learning lots of lessons about that.

So where does this topic fit in with the other lessons about sustainability during difficult times? Well, just to review, the first lesson was in resilience, which is getting up when you get knocked down. The second was in tenacity, which is the ability to hang on. Diligence is the ability to keep going or practicing. Legacy wasn’t the fourth part of it. And that’s what you get as the product after you’ve been sustaining. Gratitude is the attitude of being thankful for the result and the content that you’ve created during the sustaining.

And now we have the last part, which is fierceness, especially a specific type of fierceness called determined fierceness, is what I’m calling it, not fierce determination, but determined fierceness. This is the how of how we emerge from the cocoon that we have sustained through. So, at this current time, we are emerging from the quarantine, which has been our cocoon, just like a butterfly emerges from a quarantine of being in a cocoon. Maybe thought of similarly only in spiritual terms as how we emerged from under the water when we’re baptized. How are we going to go about doing that? So how now shall we be? That is the question.

So, I chose the term determined fierceness to describe a specific type of strength that I recognized over and over, particularly in extraordinary women. And since my audience is mostly women, this doesn’t mean that men, if you’re out there, you can’t listen to this. But there is a specific type of strength in undergirded determination that the fierceness of women has.

So, the definition of fierce – it’s got a couple different pieces of it. So fierce is an adjective. It can mean, “Displaying an intense or ferocious aggressiveness.” I’m going to say yes, I’m going to claim that is what we’re doing moving forward, but not in a violent aggressiveness, in an aggressiveness towards tending to ourselves and our businesses and our families in moving forward.

Another part of the definition is showing a heartfelt and powerful intensity, and that’s really what I’m getting at with fierceness and this word fierce is a very old word. It comes from the Latin, ferus, which means untamed.

And I really like that as describing me and the other virtuosa’s, the other women who are practicing being the best versions of themselves and having determined fierceness as we are coming out of this quarantine and building a new life. I’m not going to say rebuilding.

I don’t want to go back to what it was before. I don’t want to go back to being a caterpillar. This quarantine, this cocooning has reshaped me and I want to move forward into the next stage of life as a closer to my virtuosa self, as a better version of myself. And I’m going to encourage you guys to do the same thing.

So, that Latin-based word, ferus, kind of like a feral cat, right? Ferus came through old French, fiers, and turned into middle English; fierce. So, when we talk about fierceness or the property of being fierce, the noun of being fierce, I added the word determined in front of it because I want to describe a specific type of fierceness; our virtuoso fierceness.

You see, we have choices of how we emerge from quarantine. We have choices of how we emerge from cocooning. When a woman is pregnant and she is going in to give birth, she has no choice about giving birth, but she has choices about how she handles that. And I’ve seen a determined fierceness in women through childbirth.

So, the choices of how we emerge, there’s two different decision points here. The first decision point is, are we going to emerge with strength or meekness? So, have we been beaten down by quarantine? Have we been beaten down by our circumstances? Are we emerging timidly and shyly and peeking out and unsure? Or are we going to emerge with strength and confidence and optimism towards a new day? That’s the first choice.

So, if you do make the decision, which I hope you make, that you’re going to emerge with strength, there’s two more decisions here that you have to choose. Are you going to choose the strength of a victim or are you going to choose the strength of a victor; victim or victor? That’s the choice.

So, when I look at our news media and Facebook feeds and all of that, I’m seeing people emerging with vehemence and anger and justice and conspiracy theories, irrationality, jadedness, suspicion. Those are all victim mentalities. They’re driven by fear and impotence, helplessness, despair.

They are driven by the thought that things are being done to us instead of us being able to have thoughts to control how we behave in our circumstances. And I’m going to suggest that that is a weak and not optimal virtuosa type position to choose.

The victor position takes the same circumstance, the circumstance of having been quarantined all of this time or having regulations in place that we don’t necessarily agree with from our government and officials. But we choose to have thoughts of being the victor.

And the victor thoughts specifically and feminine victor thoughts, I think, tend to be a little less violent and aggressive than men. I’ve seen the calm strength of compassion and love and determination, that fierceness in women, and it underlies motherhood. It underlies childbirth. It underlies female leadership in government.

And this victor mentality, this what I call the determined fierceness, instead of being driven by fear or hopelessness or feeling like things are being done to us; is driven by competence, confidence, empathy, hope, love, compassion and determination. So, I’ve got a little bit of personal experience with this. When I was a little girl, I was very small. In fact, I got teased about it. I had a nickname about being so small. And I was raised to be very obedient and not talk back to my elders. And somewhere in all of that, there was a fierceness that developed in me.

And I can trace it back to when I was about three or four years old, even, where there was a switch that flipped in me and I was determined that I was going to be able to take care of myself, that I had value and worth and capability and something to contribute. And I don’t think at three or four years old, I voiced it in my head that way. But I do remember knowing that I would be able to take care of myself, that I could be fiercely determined and independent.

That fierceness came out as a little girl on the piano. I became a pianist, classically trained musician, and I ended my piano competition years when I was in high school. And the last piece I was working on, I’ll never forget it is this beautiful Grieg Piano Concerto in D Minor. Beautiful, grandiose, just gorgeous piece and I was working on it for competition. I loved Tchaikovsky and Grieg, the Romantics, and I ended up just channeling all my fierceness into music.

So, here I was, this little girl and I could still have that fierceness in music. And as I look around me to other examples of women and how we were raised in our society and where we learned this determined fierceness characteristic, I see it in women who do sports. I see it in women who are determined in their beauty, in their activism, in their education, in their drive to serve humanity. In school I had it as I was driven to become a doctor to go through medical school, which was grueling, and then through residency, which was even more grueling.

There was a fierceness that I had that was not this victimhood of fierceness. It was this determined fierceness of, “I am determined to do this and I am calm and I’m doing it in love and compassion. And I am my purpose and my meaning, and I’m moving forward through it.”

I used the same concept of determined fierceness when I was facing ultimately an unhappy marriage or an unhealthy marriage. And it was this fierceness that drove me to have the courage and the strength to be able to go against what I was previously trained in, which was this thought that within the church there’s no such thing as divorce. You’re married forever and you uphold your vows.

And what I realized in my marriage is there came a point where there was a definite unhealthiness which was unhealthy not just for me, but my children. And it took a lot of determined fierceness to face that head on and to make the choices to rebuild my life and to make that change, to get to the point that I am right now.

The same process, I used the same tool when I went through my growth in medicine, from going from a failed medical practice into a large group practice and then into my own private practice and all the fighting I’ve had to do to learn how to be a successful woman in business and to own my own practice.

Now, the interesting thing about this is this determined fierceness is the thing that gets you from one step to the next, right? So, going back to my piano career, which was very short-lived. The interesting thing about this is the reason my piano career ended the way it did is because my hands are too small.

So, I have these very small size-six hands, which, if you’re a gynecologist, is a great thing. And if you’re a surgeon, it’s a really amazing thing. But if you want to reach an octave and play with the big guys on the piano, I couldn’t reach it. I couldn’t reach the octave. I couldn’t reach the octave plus one.

And so, I ended up determining that I wasn’t going to be a concert pianist. I went the other way into oboe in music and then ultimately into medicine instead. And what happened was through all that fierce determination, God had put me in the place that I needed to be anyway.

And I’ve seen that over and over in my life. But the point was I had to take the steps to get to where I was going to be. It wasn’t just going to get laid out for me. I had to take the steps of sustainability to get there. I had to be diligent. I had to practice. I had to determine what legacy was going to be. I had to have gratitude and I had to practice this fierceness, this determined fierceness.

The other lesson that came out of my childhood is that there is a time when every little girl needs to learn to say, F-you. This is a lesson that I was not taught growing up. This was a lesson that I have had to learn way later in life. I was taught that little girls didn’t say that or feel that way.

You don’t have to use the curse word. That’s, you know, I don’t mean to offend anybody. But the point is, every little girl needs to know when to draw the line when something is violating her. When things are aggressive and not right against her, she needs to be able to stand up to the coronavirus and say F-you.

She needs to be able to stand up to an abusive person or an abusive situation or one in which she’s unhappy in and get some gumption and grow some, like my friend Jody likes to say, she says, “Grow some lady balls,” and get that F-you attitude in her. It’s part of what gives us our determined sustainability. And it’s not meant to be in a way that is denigrating to anybody else. It’s a fierce battle cry for the soul of ourselves to stand up with that determined fierceness.

So, when I think about my heritage, I was giving a lot of thought about it as we were getting ready for this, because as I was growing up, I was always taught that I was German. So, I had four grandparents, one was Scottish, and that was my mother’s mother. She was from a line that came from the McKay clan. And we can trace our roots through my maternal grandmother all the way to the Isle of Man.

And this was definitely a fierce people. These people did not live through what they lived through without that determined fierceness. Even the women.

My other three grandparents were immigrants from Germany. And so, I was taught that I was three quarters German, one quarter Scottish. And the German mix came from the northern part of Germany called Schleswig, which is actually on the Danish border, and goes back and forth, sometimes ruled by Denmark, sometimes ruled by Germany over history. Also, the German Austrian border and then Prussia, which really doesn’t exist on our European map right now, but was just East Germany and east of Germany, included that region called Prussia for a while.

So that’s where I knew that my roots came from. And it was an odd thing growing up because my grandparents immigrated before the World Wars, but it was kind of not such a great thing to be German because the Germans were on the wrong side of fierceness, right?

And then when I started looking into our heritage about two years ago, I gave my parents a DNA kit from ancestry.com for Christmas. And we ran their ancestry. And on both sides of my family, it came out very strong going all the way back up to Viking’s, like Norway, Sweden, with a little bit of Irish thrown in, which I think is hilarious because my Scottish grandmother would be turning over in her grave if she knew that there was Irish in that line. So funny.

But finding out that I was like hugely Viking was like this big mental shift for me. It was a paradigm shift because I had attached myself to Germans. And, you know, my Danish German heritage was a fisherman, which is a gentle type of fierceness. My Austrian German background was in my grandmother’s great grandmothers were seamstresses. And that doesn’t seem like it’s a very fierce type of woman until you have to make a thousand masks by her sewing machine for Coronavirus, right, helpers, health care workers? There’s a different kind of fierceness.

So anyway, I’m going back through all of this and I’m thinking about that DNA. Those DNA’s that are passed down through me. And I’m wondering like what part of that DNA is in me that I’m utilizing to get through this current situation? Where is my determined fierceness from my ancestors coming from?

And what I realized is we all have fierceness in our ancestry. It does not matter where you come from, what part of the world. Nobody lived through the early centuries without determined fierceness. Nobody propagated the species. Nobody gave childbirth. Nobody raised their crops, defended their lands. Nobody did without that fierceness. So, whoever you are and wherever in this world you live, you come from a genetic line, a determined fierceness.

Now, how do you tap into that? Well, recently I’ve been watching two shows. The first one is called The Viking Warrior Women, and it was published on National Geographic. I think it’s the U.K. version. But I found it on Disney Plus during the quarantine. And the interesting thing about this show is that they’re discovering Viking warrior women’s tombs. And previously archaeologists had assumed that all Viking warriors were male. That they were all men.

And what we’re discovering is about 20% of them were women. They were actually women. And they weren’t necessarily just frontline fighting people. Some of them were leaders and buried in places of honor.

And it’s so fascinating watching this documentary, because the reasons that these women weren’t identified as Viking warriors previously were because of how we had thought errors about them. So even though some of these tombs had been discovered where women were buried with weapons, the archaeologists thought because of the wisdom of the day that there’s no way they could be women because it didn’t fit together in their mind, or they thought, “Oh, the man must have been there and removed or something.” I don’t know, ascended into heaven or something. But in others, they had been identified as male warrior tombs. And just now have been identified as feminine or female.

And so, it’s opened up this whole new world and this whole new idea that there have been women through the ages with determined fierceness, even in the Vikings. And in the case of the Viking warrior women, a lot of them seem to have been very graceful archers on horseback. In fact, they were buried with the remains of their horses and their equipment. So, there is a determined fierceness of being an archer, which is different than being the violent fierceness of the frontline with the sword.

So, if you get a chance to watch that documentary, I think it’s very fascinating. It’s further validation that women are not all created to be the same way. We are not all created to be the model beauty. We are not all created to be the housewife. We aren’t all created to be mothers. We aren’t all created to be warriors.

But however, you are in your virtuosa self however you are born to be and your purpose is validated. It’s validated. And don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t be a warrior or that it’s impossible because only men are warriors because it’s just not true.

All right. The second show that I’ve been watching, I’ve been binge watching on this one. It’s on Netflix, it’s called The Last Kingdom, and it’s about the Danes fighting the English in the 800s for the development of England that we know today. And I just find it fascinating.

My Danish heritage really isn’t back to that. Like it’s in the fisherman village. But it’s still fascinating to see how England was settled and kind of the fierceness in them. So anyway, if you want something to binge watch, that’s what we’re binge watching this week.

The other place in my heritage where fierceness comes out is in my name. So, not so much in my maiden name. That is not a very fierce name. But in my married name to my first marriage, I was married to a Crockett who is a descendant of Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, died at the Alamo, coonskin cap and rifle settled half of North America. I’m just kidding. But anyway, a very important, fierce person in the history of the development of the early United States. And my kids are all descendants of Davy Crockett’s grandfather.

So, an interesting thing happened; I became Crockett right before I graduated from medical school. So, I’ve always been Dr. Crockett. And I had that name for 21 years and built up my reputation, my branding, everything I published was as Dr. Crockett, Dr. Susan Crockett.

And when we went through our divorce, even though there were a lot of things that I wanted to separate and let go of, the one thing that I didn’t was my name. I had already identified with it, and I wasn’t willing to change that. And so, you guys, you know me as Dr. Susan Crockett. That’s my prior married name, my doctor name.

And then as I got remarried again a couple of years later, I have another last name which shows up on my Facebook page, it’s Mason, but the name that I identify with for my fierceness is Crockett. In fact, I was sitting in a meeting with some executives for one of the companies that I work with last year, and we were talking about how medical practices were being bought up in the, private medical practice doesn’t really exist very often anymore. And how I had I continued to do it. And, you know, I better watch out because they were going to come and gobble me up.

And my statement was I looked them straight in the eye and I said, “I’m Dr. Crockett, come and take it.” They’ve got a big kick out of that, because here I am, this little woman telling them that, you know, with all this determined fierceness, they laughed, they thought it was great.

But I really have embodied that. So that phrase, “Come and take it,” is a phrase that comes from our Texas heritage, from the Alamo. When there is the cannon that Davy Crockett is famous for telling the enemy that if he wanted it, he would have to come and take it. And that’s how I feel about me and my things that I am responsible for in taking care of.

So, in our prior lesson on Legacy, the podcast number twelve, we introduced the concept of the butterfly effect, this butterfly chaos theory. There was a story prior that we talked about with the butterfly and transformation, where the butterfly goes into the cocoon and this little wormy self and it comes out after having his DNA all souped-up and mashed up and it gets reorganized and becomes this great butterfly.

I think this quarantine has been similar, this quarantine has been a time of us kind of getting disassembled and reassembled, the DNA of our fabric, of our society, of our families. It’s been a cocooning of sorts.

And as I thought about the music for this whole podcast, there was just one really obvious song. And it’s Butterflies and Hurricanes by Muse. And I’ve loved it for a really long time. It’s a mixture of really heavy classical piano music like back to that Grieg. I mean, it’s almost Grieg-esque or Tchaikovsky in its heavy romanticism and fierceness in the classical piano piece that’s in it, mixed with this heavy bass drums song.

And then as I was researching the song, I came across an interview that it is at a website called planckmachine.com, and it was an interview published with the band and they talked about that this song came from the idea of the chaos of the butterfly effect that we had talked about, where a butterfly could flap its wings in Mexico and cause a hurricane in China.

We talked about this in the legacy podcast – or perhaps it could flap its wings in China and cause a pandemic around the whole world, that this coronavirus pandemic started with one little mutation, wherever you believe that happened; in a bat or a lab or meat market, whatever. But it started with one viral mutation and it created this hurricane of pandemic across the whole world and back to the United States.

The band had these things to say about the song. One was that the song is about hope, about trying to find the strength to get through any given situation. And the lyrics really speak that. So if you’re looking for a battle song, a song of strength and encouragement. This may be it.

The lyrics go “Change everything you are and everything you were, your number has been called. The fights and battles have begun. Revenge will surely come. Your hard times are ahead.” So, it’s not that we have to produce revenge, but it will happen. And this is not going to be easy going forward, this determined fierceness. But that’s why we go forward with the determined fierceness, is because it’s not going to be easy. It is a battle.

But there is a single little thing that you can change and that is you can change yourself. And it starts by changing your thoughts. And it can start a change of events that ends in changing the world and saves it. This is everything that we are talking about in Becoming Virtuosa and becoming the best versions of ourselves.

The lyrics go on further. “You’ve got to be the best. You’ve got to change the world and use this chance to be heard. Your time is now.” So, the singer of Muse says that this is one of his favorite songs because it’s accepting that things are all over and we’re still going to go for it.

So, there are not very many songs that have this raw energy and strength to help you get through jadedness that combine it with the determined fierceness that we talk about in a butterfly. Every action causes a reaction and that reaction causes another.

Each and every one of us can change. One little change can have so many unexpected repercussions and that can make all the difference. And a small change you make in your life inspires someone to make a bigger change.

So, this is exactly what we’re talking about in becoming our virtuosa selves, the best versions of ourselves. We are practicing the process of transformation and emerging strong. Spiritually, this is similar to what happens when we go through baptism as a butterfly goes through a rearrangement in the cocoon and comes out regal and purposed and capable of starting a hurricane with just a flap of the wings. And in us, we can become the best versions of ourselves as we emerge from the cocoon of quarantine, we can become our virtuosa selves.

So, remember, the first choice is whether we are going to emerge with strength or meekness. A butterfly is not necessarily meek. If you’ve ever watched it come out, they come out and unfurl or rule their wings with ferocity and take off into the wind with courage.

The second choice is if we emerge with strength, is that the strength of a victim or a victor. Let us use this emergence, this quarantine, the cocooning as an intentional reset to emerge with the victor mindset, with determined fierceness. But ultimately, the choice is up to you. How do you choose to emerge? So that’s all I have to chat with you about this week.

I have an exercise for you. I want you to decide what emerging from quarantine with determined fierceness looks like to you in your life. And then for your exercise this week, I want you to pick a battle cry or a scripture or a song that encourages you in that determined fierceness, and I want you to write it on a sticky note or lots of sticky notes, and I want you to place them around your house to remind you.

I want you to put them on your mirror. Put one on your dashboard. Put one on your refrigerator. Put them all over, so you have that reminder in your face of the thoughts that you’re choosing to emerge from this quarantine with determined fierceness and that of the victor.

In terms of the transformation tool, which is what we taught in the first eight episodes, or the CTFAR model, which is what we use in coaching, this process that we’re teaching you here today, utilizing the emergence from quarantine is that of creating or choosing the intentional result. In other words, choose the ending result that you desire and then the thoughts that will get you there. So that’s kind of the psychiatric babble and background of what we’re doing here.

So, what I’ve shown you today is the sixth tool in sustainability, determined fierceness. This is something that doesn’t just have to be applied here in the emergence from the quarantine, but is something that is a tool that I hope you can use again and again in your life, just like I have, to build your own virtuosa self in your own best, most abundant life.

OK, so I’ve got a very special what I’m listening to and reading this week. Oftentimes I’ll add what I’m watching, especially since we’ve been binge watching while we’ve been home cocooning. So, this week I had so much information to put into the podcast that I didn’t have room for it all. But I really wanted for you all to see where I drew some inspiration and to share some of these resources with you, they are absolutely incredible.

So, first of all, what I’m listening to should be obvious from the podcast this week. It’s Muse, Butterflies and Hurricanes. This may be the theme song for my life. I hope it’s not too self-indulgent. I hope you enjoy it and get something out of it too that it inspires you. I love this music.

What I’m reading, I didn’t directly mention it in the podcast, I don’t think. But I’m reading Untamed by Glennon Doyle. Untamed as in the original Latin, ferus, for fierce, right? Kind of coincidental that this came out about the same time that her book has come out.

So Untamed is on my nightstand right now, but there’s a second book. In fact, I had this part all recorded and I came back three days later to add this really special book and the art that I’m going to share with you today.

So, a very special book by Kwami Alexander. And it was illustrated by an extraordinary artist, Kadir Nelson. And the book is called The Undefeated. This is a really special book. It was published this last year. It actually won the Caldecott Medal and the Newbery Honor book. It is a children’s book, but it is way, way, way more than a children’s book. It is a beautiful poem.

It starts by saying “This is for the unforgettable, the unafraid, the undefeated.” And the inside jacket of the book starts by saying, “This is a love letter to America, to black America, to the grit, the passion and perseverance of our greatest artists, athletes and activists, to the dreamers, to the strength and bravery of everyday people caught in the web of history.”

I’ll let you all read the rest of that. It is an incredible book and I would encourage you to take a look at it, especially if you have young children. This is a great example of our heritage and our history that I know is important to a lot of you.

All right, what I’m watching. I did mention I’m binge watching on The Last Kingdom, which is a movie about the Danes and the English fighting over unifying England in the 800s. The other thing I’m watching or I’ve watched is female Viking warriors, which you can see on the National Geographic U.K. or Disney Plus Channel.

So, there’s another very important section that I’m going to add today, which is art. And there are two really important pieces of art that spoke to me as I was preparing for this talk and thinking about what I was looking at and listening to and what I wanted to share with you.

And these two pieces are the other reason I came back into the studio to record and put my producer in a time crunch for getting this done. But thank you, thank you for getting it edited for me, it’s important. OK, the first one is actually an illustrator, a cartoon illustrator. His name is M.J. Hibblen, you can find him @MJHIBBLENArt on Instagram. We’ll put that link in the show notes before.

The art work is called Hero, and it’s a depiction of the coronavirus as this big, huge, angry monster. And this medical woman in scrubs and hat and mask just giving them the finger.

And I just love this piece. I went and looked at this artist’s Instagram page, I was unfamiliar with him. He’s actually from England. He does quite fierce artwork for cartooning usually, so be forewarned about that. But the work that he’s done on just honoring those who are fighting the Coronavirus is amazing. And this isn’t the only piece that he’s done. If you go to his Instagram, you can see, I don’t know, six or eight different pieces of beautiful cartoon artwork that he’s done, which is very inspiring for those of us fighting the virus. Go check out M.J. HIBBLEN Art on Instagram.

And then the other link that I really wanted you to see is a picture that was just completed by Kadir Nelson, the artist for the undefeated children’s book that I mentioned earlier. The piece of artwork is called After the Storm and it’s his response to the coronavirus epidemic.

It’s about emergence and it’s about interracial unity and it is breathtaking. And you can see this, I’ll also post links for this. I first saw this on CBS Sunday Morning last week. I’ll put the link to the show. You can actually watch the piece that they did on it. And then I’ll put the link to his Web page. You can buy a copy of the lithograph. It’s on sale there and I hope you enjoy it. I hope they inspire you as much as they inspire me.

Next week, we are going to begin coach interviews. So, this ends the two series of podcasts that I did for starting the podcast. The first series was on Becoming Virtuosa, the transformation tool. And the second series has been about sustainability through difficult times.

Next week, we are going to start doing a different format. We’re still going to have our end up with our favorite. What we’re listening to and watching. But I’m going to change the format of the show to interview the coaches that work with me at Virtuosa Coaching.

And the first one up is going to be really awesome. I hope you’ll join me. Her name is Dr. Noelle Nelson. She’s an internist, we’re going to be talking together about doctors and coaching and why this makes sense. Like why we as doctors have gone wholeheartedly in with this coaching, in helping ourselves and helping our patients. I’m really excited about that. I hope you’ll join me. Until then, let’s choose to emerge stronger together, #emergestrong.

The other thing I want to tell you all about, just real quick. It’s something I’m super excited about. It is a brand-new website for frontline health care workers. It is called Heal the Healers of COVID-19. This is a free online website for mental health.

Our coaches and a bunch of other amazing certified life coaches have decided to collaborate and come together to provide volunteer services, to do online coaching, to provide mental health services for our frontline health care workers. So, you have to be a health care worker to be able to get into the site and attend it. But we will have group coaching.

And if you know anybody that is on the front lines and just needs some support and some help, this is a great way for them to get it. They can log on from the comfort of their house with privacy. They can watch the videos anytime they want. They’ll be archived, super excited about it. The website is called www.HealTheHealersCV19.com. See you there. Okay. My virtuosas, have a wonderful week. Love always, Sue. I will see you next week in episode 15. 
Thanks for listening to this episode of Becoming Virtuosa. If you want to find out more, come check out virtuosacoaching.com. That’s virtuosa - with an A - coaching.com. See you next week.

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