Meet Gretchen Norling Holmes, Phd

 

We recently connected with Gretchen Norling Holmes, Phd and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Gretchen, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

It took me a long time to find my purpose even though it’s something I had been searching for since I was a teenager. Deep down, I had always felt like I had a bigger reason for being here, but I could never figure it out. Sometimes, I questioned why I was even looking, why I would even think there was anything special about me at all.

Ultimately, what I realized (when I was in my fifties), was that everyone has something very special and unique about them and that sometimes you have to let life unfold without pressuring yourself to figure it out. Sooner or later, it materializes, often when you aren’t searching for it.

For me, I finally realized what my purpose was after experiencing a number of devastating events. I am a 3x cancer survivor. I’m one of the lucky ones. At one point, I was stage four after we found my original cancer reemerged and spread to my lungs. I happened to be at a university pursuing my doctorate where a nationally prominent thyroid cancer physician practiced. After very high doses of radioactive iodine treatment, I was cancer-free. Twenty years later, I would get diagnose again for the third time with endometrial cancer. I thought to myself, “Who gets cancer three times?” I did.

Six months later, I was diagnosed diabetic. That scared me more than the cancers did. I had been watching my younger brother lose his battle with diabetes over the past few years. He had already lost a leg to amputation and was on dialysis. I knew that was my future if I didn’t make some changes. So, I did.

I joined a weight loss program and began rebuilding my life to focus on controlling the things I could: what I ate, how I moved, doing the hard internal work to ensure my changes would stick. A few months after I started transforming my life, I lost my brother to Covid. I was devastated but I kept moving forward. That’s when I found my purpose: I realized I could help others, support others, in their quest to transform their lives. It took a long time to get there, but all of my experiences have brought me to this point and provided the experience, knowledge, and insight to start my podcast, The Work in Between, and publish my book, The Work in Between: A Memoir About Stepping Out of My Shadows, available now.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I am so passionate about my life and what I get to do! I started a podcast, The Work in Between, in 2023. It was a first for me, but I had been working hard to transform my life inside and out and I wanted to help others do the same. In 2023 I reached my weight loss goal of losing 110 pounds and had been working with a transformational coach and a therapist to help me do the inside work I realized I needed to do if I wanted to sustain the outside changes I had made.

This was a huge epiphany for me. After decades of losing the same 50 or 60 pounds and then gaining it back, I finally realized whatever changes I wanted to so desperately make on the outside, had to start on the inside. I had to find out what was driving my eating behavior. Why I was self-soothing with food. I had to find out what needed to be healed in order to become a healthier version of myself. I also realized there was more to it than even that. There were a multitude of complex factors that contributed to my health: emotional, spiritual, physical, and mental. There were also, environmental, social, and other factors, some outside my control, that were contributing to my decision-making and I wanted to understand them. So, I started the podcast to explore all of those topics so I would better understand how they all worked in tandem. Plus, I knew that it was small, seemingly insignificant habits that caused the biggest outcomes, and I wanted people to understand that. The big, grandiose changes aren’t sustainable but tiny ones can be. I figured if I wanted to know more about it, then so would others. The Work in Between podcast was born.

The podcast has been a huge hit! I’m in over 30 countries and growing. Who knew so many people really want to understand how all these factors contribute to our health? I hear from my listeners often about how the podcast has helped them make simple changes that have created huge impacts in their lives. Plus, I’m a very transparent person and am incredibly open and honest about my experiences. I tend to talk about things that people find shame or are embarrassed about. Personally, I find talking about them empowers me and if it inspires or empowers others, I’m thrilled!

Since I was digging into my past through coaching, therapy, and the podcast, I started writing things down. That led to writing my book, The Work in Between: A Memoir About Stepping Out of My Shadows. Published by Page & Podium Press, I’m excited to announce that it’s out now! One of my listeners sent me an email that said because I am so open and transparent about my experiences, it helped her to be brave. Because of that, she made some decisions to do some things she would have never done. I am so incredibly humbled and honored by those emails; it just reinforces that I have work to do and I’m excited to see what’s next.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

The three qualities that have had the most impact for me are: resilience, transparency, and self-love. The first two were easy for me. Growing up in an alcoholic home, a lot was thrown at me and I developed numerous skills that created resilience. Resilience is a powerful quality that can serve you well throughout your life. It can also, like it did in my case, cause you to dismiss surviving or accomplishing hard things. I always tended to dismiss everything I did as “no big deal.” Looking back, many things were big deals.

Being transparent is what helped me get through much of my childhood and my adult life. I knew from a very early age that I couldn’t carry all of the heavy secrets and burdens that came with coming from an alcoholic home so I talked about it. I never felt it was my fault and while I was often embarrassed, it made me physically ill to keep it all inside. So I talked to anyone who would listen.

Finally, self-love. This came much later in life. I had to do a lot of work to get there but I did. It took me a long while to grant myself grace, learn self-compassion, and realize that I deserved to put as much energy into my own life to reach my goals and dreams as I did supporting others’ dreams. This was a recent realization and one I wished I had learned much earlier as a young woman.

Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?

I love this question! One of the coolest parts of my journey has been becoming part of an amazing community of people who are aligned with my passion of empowering others to design and live the live that is important to them. The people who I gravitate toward are those who also understand that in order to make the external changes we may desire, it often starts on the inside.

I would love to collaborate with others who are spreading the word about living healthier lives, daring to dream bigger, and helping people understand that they hold the power to do just that! I am searching for partners to build a Health Revolution and to help empower people to do the challenging inside work as part of the process. I offer no quick fixes, no easy acronyms but encourage folks to look inward for the changes they desire on the outside.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Madeline Simpson
Photos by Nate

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