Trusting Again: A Conversation with Jenny Kierstead on Grief, Healing, and Sisterhood
There are conversations that change you.
This week on Embodied, I had the honour of speaking with Jenny Kierstead — author, yoga educator, and Founder of Yoga in Schools and Girl on Fire Empowerment.
We recorded on a day that was deeply personal: the fifth anniversary of the mass casualty event in Nova Scotia, where Jenny lost her sister, Lisa.
It was Jenny’s first podcast appearance in over a year. And what unfolded between us was raw, vulnerable, and healing — for both of us.
Showing up, even when it’s hard
Jenny began the conversation by grounding herself and acknowledging the challenge of showing up on such a painful day. She shared, “It's a scary day. It's an eerie day. It's a painful day.” And yet, she came anyway — “totally messy today and imperfect with latte on my breast.”
She also told me, “For the first time in my life, it's like, I'm just giving myself permission to just be where and how I need to be right now.”
That courage — to speak while grieving, while anxious, while still healing — set the tone for a conversation that reminded me why this work matters.
The journey back to self-trust
Jenny spoke about how trauma had pulled her out of her body. “I want to crawl out of my body. Like just come up into my head, into my mind.” After the loss of her sister — and her brother two years earlier — she shared that, “The tools weren't working. It was too big. It was too big for a mindfulness practice.”
Her honesty about what it took to begin healing was profound. “The true healing started last October when I started on anti-anxiety meds… And for the first time, I trusted pharmaceuticals.” She went on to say, “This journey has been a leap into trusting… that I don't always have the answers, that the journey requires surrender.”
From comparison to connection
In one of the most heartfelt moments of our conversation, Jenny shared a story about the years she spent judging me from afar — and how, through her own healing, that judgment transformed into love.
She said, “I hated myself. I hated my own insecurity… You being so amazing reflected or shone a light on my shameful not enoughness.”
But everything changed the day she picked up my book: “I looked at it and I felt you differently. I saw you differently because I somehow saw myself differently.” That moment, she told me, marked the beginning of a new friendship.
Later, she said, “I had to love myself enough to let you shine.”
Sisterhood as a path to healing
Jenny told me that Lisa’s message to her, even after death, has been clear: “Learn to trust women.” And that trust — of herself, of other women, of her own voice — is what allowed this conversation to happen.
She said it simply and powerfully: “We need each other if we are going to sit at the important tables in the world.”
I’m so grateful to Jenny for her presence, her truth, and her willingness to trust me with her story. This episode is one of the most moving I’ve had the honour of recording.
🎧 Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.
And if this conversation resonated with you, I invite you to join me at The Alchemy of Trust workshop on June 14, 2025, in Fredericton, NB. Learn more and reserve your spot here.
