Meg’s Story

Hello! My name is Dr. Meg Hanshaw and I am excited to share my WAVE story with you! My life has been a journey… a process, a path of trials and tribulations intermingled with magical moments which ultimately has lead to my clear purpose. On this journey, I have learned to love and accept myself while moving forward towards my highest and healthiest visions. With this pure acceptance of myself has come a pure acceptance of the moment no matter the challenge. I realize how significant this is having lived almost 40 years prior to this playing small, being in reaction to life, feeling unsuccessful and stressed, not trusting or living in the moment, and definitely not living an empowered life. As I searched for answers to take the pain away, I learned that the gift is in the pain and if I choose to “be with it”, “get to know it” and “give it what it needs”, I can enjoy the good stuff. After years of not feeling proud and successful, I have finally reached an understanding that life is in the moment to moment process of who I become while pursuing my goals, not the goals themselves. The WAVE Process® has become the icing on the cake of my positive transformation helping me shift the parts of myself that are blocking my joy, gratitude, trust, peace, energy, purpose and internal success. It has given me back who I am at my core which has allowed me to form trusting, supportive, connected, empowered relationships. I now feel resilient and can easily make clear, confident, and connected decisions no matter what challenges arise. I can say I am truly living an empowered life.

As the daughter of an army major and an art teacher, my early world juggled between a structured, “there is only one way”, “must be perfect to be loved” existence, and a creative, “go with the flow” existence. As a child, I remember living in the moment, being present and in the flow of nature – climbing trees, riding bikes, laughing and playing a lot with friends. My parents loved me very much and financially supported me in anything I needed or wanted to do. I lived in a great neighborhood with lots of friends, had plenty of food that my mother lovingly prepared for me every night, and traveled many places with them, from Disney World, a cruise in the Bahamas, to Hawaii. I had lots of freedom. I was allowed to explore and be curious in my life and try whatever I wanted. Both my mom and dad were natural teachers and taught me life skills and really tried to protect me from feeling the pains of the world.

At the same time, I also experienced the tougher side of being a child that was not so positive, having to combat adult rules and judgments, like “you have to eat this”, “don’t be like that”, “you have to go to bed at seven”, “you have to do it this way”, and “if you do that, no one will like you”. A strong-willed part of me was developed that had little problem arguing and manipulating to get my way. This didn’t work out so well as you can imagine, and by four years old, I’d learned to be a good little girl, holding back my negative words, feelings and behaviors, never crying, and supporting everyone around me so I would be loved and accepted.

Although I loved learning, I seemed to get punished for being myself at school too, so I continued to hold back layers upon layers of emotional vulnerability and my true self. At age seven, I lost my creative desire to write when I got paddled for not getting off the typewriter when my teacher told me. At eight, I was warned not to say a “peep” in line but I couldn’t help but say “peep” and lost my funny side on my way to the principal’s office. By nine, I was in the class of “not so smart” students, and lost my intellectual confidence as I sat in the back of class scared to raise my hand for fear of saying the wrong answer and sounding stupid. At ten, I had three different teachers in one year and learned to dissociate and became completely invisible. And in sixth grade, I watched all the pretty girls primp in the mirror to impress their “boyfriends” as I decided I would never be as pretty or liked as they were. By 7th grade, my inner fears, shame and lack of confidence began to dominate my choices and self-worth and I held myself back alot. But then I found something that lit me up inside…basketball.

At 12, Coach Beahrs put me on the basketball team not because I had any recognizable basketball skills, but because I had drive, heart and passion. With a lot of discipline and practice of the fundamentals, by my second game, I had found my zone and scored 16 points. I was hooked. Playing basketball penetrated through my soul and kept me “on fire” practicing for hours a day to be the best basketball player I could be. As I played I would lose track of time…hours seemed like minutes, the competition, the challenge, the great plays…I felt a rush of excitement when I picked up the ball and stepped onto the court. I loved the smell of the gym, and the feeling of my body and mind being healthy and smooth as I dribbled, shot, rebounded and played defense. I felt so confident and internally motivated to improve. I knew what it took to have a goal and reach it and love the process of getting there. It paid off because my team won 44 games in a row and I was one of the top players around.

But, somehow, it began to fall apart. I began to lose my passion for the game. Rules and regulations and beating others became the goal. I could not take the pressure. Every time I made a mistake on the court, I would fall apart even more. This made me feel like a failure, like I had let everyone down and that everyone hated me. If I didn’t play perfectly, I wanted to hide and run away. Finally, during my junior year in college, I couldn’t handle the emotional and physical pain and injuries which kept me from playing the way I used to. Shameful and depressed, I came to a place where I believed I wasn’t good enough and I’d never enjoy playing the game again, so I quit my basketball team my junior year in college. I never told anyone my negative feelings and blamed my departure on injuries. I still looked like a success on the outside, but on the inside, I didn’t feel like it. I got good at acting like I was confident, funny, smart, and pretty all the while I was in sheer panic of someone discovering my inner truth. I learned to numb out the pain with sugar, alcohol, sex and achievements.

After I quit, I knew I had find out what had happened to me. How had I gone from passion and joy to passionless and shame? This is not what I wanted. As I became a basketball coach and teacher and did my masters and doctoral research studies, I became well acquainted with leadership, motivation and peak performance theories and began to answer my question. I was determined to find out, “How can young people stay healthy, happy, successful, passionate and connected to their hopes and dreams no matter what?” I began to notice differences in athletes who enjoyed their sport, studies, and life more than those who didn’t. I began to discover the key ingredients for athletes to play consistently well, stay healthy and balanced, and be confident and successful. I stumbled MANY times on my way to becoming a successful basketball coach, but eventually I was turning teams around that had never won and was having winning seasons with passionate athletes that performed consistently well and gave full effort beyond their initial beliefs while maintaining a passion for the game and their life.

But I was still not feeling empowered even through my successes. I was still stressed and scared and getting sicker and more depressed. By 36, I was at my lowest point having battled with chronic fatigue and hyperventilation syndrome for years, heart palpitations and mitro-valve prolapsed, positive ANA test (auto-immune disease/Lupus) and chronic yeast infections. Over the next 15 years, I delved deeper into spiritual and wellness research in personal development and holistic/integrative medical practices. I was trying to find anything and everything to fix my health challenges and my fears and feelings of stress that were still there. I was very determined to make my life, my profession, my parenting, and my relationships work so I felt healthy, happy, successful and purposeful.

But the inner pain got worse. At age 40, I experienced an emotionally and financially devastating divorce after 14 years of marriage and two children. Even though it was crucial for our relationship to be over, the level of shame, stress and failure just added to my feelings of unworthiness. I felt abandoned, ugly, and a failure. I was on the brink of a breakdown. And again, no one knew. I kept it well hidden. I continued to teach my college classes and got the highest evaluation marks in my professor career.

So what was MISSING? I knew that from the outside that I had been so successful in my life; BUT I still ended up in divorce, not feeling good about myself and my life and began to wonder if my students and athletes were REALLY feeling successful or just covering it up like I was. I realized I had never asked them what they actually felt. I was motivating them to move forward and gain skills in an empowering way but was that really enough?

Finally, I “stumbled” onto what truly began to turn my life around. I met a woman who was a master wellness and life coach trainer, Bobbie Burdett, and she began to coach and train me in the science of wellness coaching. I was beginning to learn about how the body and mind could not be separated and what I was thinking, feeling and doing were all connected. If I ignored any part of my feelings, it would cause disconnection in my nervous system. I realized through Bobbie’s coaching and a few more years of research, that I had developed some negative behavioral patterns that kept playing out. I learned that the emotional triggers that I was having around my relationships with my kids and significant other were actually the gateway to my transformation to feeling good about myself. I needed to transform the trigger. I knew inherently, that you had to “nip it in the bud” as the emotion was happening inside of me to have the best results. I needed to find out what to truly do with the trigger.

In 2010, Bobbie introduced me to Kim Griffith, a parent coach that had created a tool to deal with triggers. When she told me about her coaching tool called The WAVE and when she explained to me what it was and what it did, I knew I had found the missing link to my blocks. Kim and I became fast friends and partnered in bringing the WAVE to life even more. I had the research background to scientifically support what the WAVE was truly doing in the body and mind to bring about empowerment. This led me to the study of neurobiology, epigenetics and trauma-informed approaches to helping challenged kids and adults thrive.

After 6 more years of research and upgrades of the now what Kim and I call The WAVE Process®, I am convinced that Kim had originally created the blueprint for self-love, acceptance, peace and feelings of success, no matter what the outside world was giving me! It was my missing link to living an empowered life.

Since The WAVE Process® is based in coaching science, it has everything to do with truly seeing myself and others as totally creative, capable and whole, and not broken needing to be fixed. It has given me the HOW to shift from my old ways of being into the new way of being that I want by accepting what is, even when it doesn’t feel good, or look good. Once I accept and understand why it is there, and build positive references (which I was already good at), I automatically move into empowerment. It is how the body and mind naturally transform into peace. Since the WAVE Process® is based in neurobiology, it also has everything to do with how the body naturally shifts the nervous system from fight, flight or freeze (the trigger) into higher levels of feeling, thinking and being. The WAVE Process® naturally builds resilience, -the ability to handle internal and external challenges and still move forward towards my goals, -clear, confident and connected with myself and others.

From my 6 years of researching the WAVE Process® with others and our over 200 coaching sessions between Kim and I, I have become clear about how forming an Empowered Partnership® with someone else and using the WAVE Process® communication and coaching tool and practice is the key to making the internal shifts we want. Everyone needs at least one person in their life who can hold space for them without judgment or negativity. When this happens, our bodies and brains automatically build nervous system references of saftey and begin to live from a heart-centered, trusting, authentic, intrinsic place where it is easy to connect to yourself and others as well as from your personal purpose.

Looking back at my life, I realize that all my trials and tribulations were perfect and brought me exactly what I needed to be able to share this with you right now. They allowed me to develop a non-profit, i.b.mee. (I Be Me) to bring an entire “personalized learning and resiliency process” into the school system to help students truly become WELL. The thing that was missing in my life was the resilience skills to handle challenges that brought painful feelings. I did not learn to deal with all the pressures and challenges in our “outcome-oriented,” non-feeling society. My parents, teachers and other adults didn’t want me to suffer and tried to keep me from feeling the pain of life. I got lost in the “never expose your weaknesses” syndrome. I actually got rewarded for being stoic. I had learned that the definition of success was to win or go home, play well or sit on the bench, do what your parents say or don’t be loved, be rich with power or be poor with victimhood, know the answer and get the good grade or be dumb, don’t express your weakness or be beat-up, and listen to the doctor and you will be healthy. These unintentional system philosophies created a lack of connection with myself and a disharmony inside of me causing physical, mental and emotional sickness. My whole life I had learned to keep my emotions and problems stuck inside; I was never allowed to express them and let them be heard so they had be be expressed as sickness, injury, and depression.

Nevertheless, the gift was actually in my sickness, for it brought death to my belief that success is measured by outcomes, and gave birth to defining success as the process of accepting and validating every moment on my life’s journey, building daily personal empowerment by being the expression of my feelings, thoughts, passions, gifts and vulnerabilities, and that learning comes from within as I gain respect and trust in myself and others as intelligent, successful human beings.

Please join Kim and I in learning the WAVE Process® as a part of your life’s journey. You will be glad you did and we look forward to being a part of your path!