Ship's Log 10: Drop Anchor with Sheila Winter Wallace

“Intuition lives in the realm of the illogical.” - Sheila Winter Wallace

Episode Summary:
In this episode of Project Candor, Jeanne sits down with Sheila Winter Wallace, a lifelong healer and educator who has spent decades helping women transform pain into clarity and self-leadership. Sheila shares the moment in her early 60s when she realized that nothing about us is truly “broken”—instead, our bodies act as intelligent messengers guiding us toward deeper awareness.

Through stories from her nursing career, personal healing journey, and even a life-altering hit-and-run accident, Sheila explains how emotional states, unconscious beliefs, and intuition influence physical health and life decisions. The conversation explores how learning to trust the body’s signals, rather than fight them, can lead to profound healing, resilience, and personal transformation.

At its heart, this episode invites listeners to reconsider their relationship with pain, intuition, and the wisdom already present within their own bodies.

Guest’s Bio:

Sheila Winter Wallace has been self-employed since 1975, and learned through experience what it takes to thrive on your own terms.

She began her career as a Registered Nurse and, later, as a Certified Cosmetician, owning retail stores. After exploring a variety of healing modalities in an effort to heal her own health challenges, she set out to help other women heal themselves and become the best versions of themselves. In the process, she became certified and adept in a number of areas of healing, business and life.

As a Master WEL-Systems® Educator, a Certified CODE Model™ Coach, and BodySpirit Integration Specialist, Sheila continues to support women to take the lead in/for their own lives. Her mission is always to transform women’s pain into peace and possibility. That pain may be chronic physical pain or relentless emotional stress that keeps on looping. In either case, the solution is to lean into the pain to get to the other side of it. Sheila has a context reframe for who and what you really are, to do just that. Life changing!

Links:

Website - sheilawinterwallace.com

Offer: 

If you are hurting physically, emotionally, spiritually, I want to offer you my from-suffering-to-sudden-relief discovery call. Valued at $150.00, it is on me for the first 15 people  who click the link in the show notes.

Email: sheilawinterwallace@gmail.com

Phone: 613-292-4562

Calendly: https://calendly.com/sheilawinterwallace/from-suffering-to-sudden-relief-discovery-call

Who do you know who'd make a great guest for the show? Email: info@projectcandor.com

Website:   https://www.projectcandor.com

Social Media

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YouTube:    https://www.youtube.com/@ProjectCandorPodcast

Transcript

Jeanne:
Today's guest is Sheila Winter Wallace, a woman who has spent decades helping others transform their pain into peace and possibility. Sheila has been self-employed since 1975 and has lived a career path that refuses to fit into any traditional box. She began as a registered nurse, later became a certified cosmetician and retail business owner, and eventually found her way into the deeper world of healing and human transformation. First to heal herself. And then to help other women do the same. She's a master well system educator, a certified code model coach and a body spirit integration specialist, guiding women to take the lead in their own lives and reclaim who they truly are beneath the roles they've carried. Sheila has been married for 54 years, lives in the woods of Canada, raised two remarkable children and has rescued Rottweiler since 1987 weaving compassion, curiosity, and courage through every chapter of her life. Sheila, welcome to Project Kander. I am so glad you're here.

Sheila:
I am so delighted to be here and thank you for that beautiful introduction.

Jeanne:
Well, that is you, that's all you. So I want to ask you questions. I know we're talking about, we're gonna play Two Truths and a Lie, but first I'd like to get to know you a little bit and I know the listeners would too. So I'm gonna ask you a few questions. Are you good with that?

Sheila:
Absolutely. Rock on.

Jeanne:
Great. So you help women discover who they really are under all the roles they've carried. What was the moment you realized who Sheila actually is?

Sheila:
Yeah.
Ooh, that's a really, really good question. I don't think I actually realized who I was until I stepped into a colleague's program room. And she was dealing with a context shift and thinking about who we are as spiritual beings living in a physical world through tissue. And...

You know, intellectually, I've always heard people say, you know, you're not your body. I didn't really understand.

I didn't really understand what that meant, know, not viscerally. And I had studied trans-states, hypnosis, neuro-linguistic programming, I'm a highly advanced craniosacral therapist, among other things. And all of those things have to do with the nervous system. And I still was looking to help people not recognizing that the default that I was working from unconsciously was things are broken, we gotta fix them. Or this is what normal should look like and this doesn't look normal. And a lot of the time it would be based on diagnoses where clients would come in and nobody could figure out their pain. They'd been to the doctors, they'd been to the chiropractor practice they've been everywhere no one could figure out their pain and I did get some relief but I still you know when you when you

When you're cultural conditioning, and we're all in this way, our economics of scale have really been built on things are broken, we have to fix them, there's a problem, we require a solution. And so until I stepped into my colleague's room and actually heard a perspective of, viscerally, the thing that will save you is your breath.

Jeanne:
Mm-hmm.

Sheila:
to actually soften the body and breathe into the thing that you can't stand. So like if it was chronic pain, for example. I could just actually soften my belly and soften my jaw and start intentionally breathing, leaning into that pain. It gets kind of messy. There might have been tears. I might have been howling or yelling or...
whatever for a few seconds, but then something releases and you move through it. So, you know, I'll be 80 in a few weeks and I don't take any pills. So like, this is like amazing to me that at 80, I'm not a person on drugs. But to answer your question.

I think I had that realization when I was about 62, when I really got that there was really nothing to fix. The bigger question is always going to be, how's, you know, you don't like, you know, it doesn't mean I have to love pain or like pain. I don't like it. But if, if the body is literally a messenger for to get your attention and often here's how it works. We're all highly intuitive, but we've been culturally entrained to not believe it. And so you know those nudges you get inside when you think, hmm, something's not right here, but you put it down because everybody else is saying, no, no, that's not right. You should do it this way. So you do it that way. And then it always ends up a mess. So all the times that you actually press down that intuitive force, even though it seems completely illogical. You end up creating more pain and the body just intensifies. It's trying, it's using sensory cues to try and get your attention to just stop, take a breath and what else is possible here. But that's not the way we've been raised. So I've had, I would say, since I was 62, that's when I...

Jeanne:
That was your spiritual awakening, if you want to call it.

Sheila:
that, well, you know, I'd had all kinds of them prior to that, but nothing, nothing where I would let my body take the lead as the informer to let me know, hey, wait a minute, you know, you make decisions based on information. The information you have and then when you get another piece of information you might have to change your mind well that becomes a problem if you change your mind based on new information like signing a lease for a five-year lease for a retail store and you think you have all the information and then you don't

Jeanne:
Mm.

Sheila:
and you change your mind or something in your life changes and you have to change your mind and you have to you have to consider the consequences of what happens when I change my mind and what happens if I don't change my mind. So I don't look at any of it as good, bad, or wrong. I'm looking at it as really when I trust my body to inform me. My intellect can make a way better decision on what's going on, but they've got to work together. So intellect is very conscious. You're making a decision. It has the ability to choose. Your body is basically the library of information. It knows everything about you. And what we're really looking for, at least what I'm looking for when I'm helping people is to educate them into becoming the space for their own movement and their own flow at multiple levels of thinking. So that would be in the body. you know, when things, when things feel good in the body, clarity kind of reigns in your thinking and you, can feel pretty good. So

Jeanne:
Okay, well if I could jump in a little bit because you said quite a bit, but I have to go back to what you were saying. You're turning 80 soon. That's amazing. You look fantastic. I really, I really think you look beautiful. And you also said that you

Sheila:
Yeah.

Yeah, it is rather, I think.

Thank you.

Jeanne:
got to this point of who Sheila really was when you were like 62. So you had quite a lot of years of just finding, know, are perfecting yourself. Also, you did mention, I don't wanna forget this one for people listening, you don't take any medication at your age. You don't have to take any blood pressure, just the standard K and stuff that pharmaceuticals wanna dole out. You're not taking any of that.

Sheila:
Yeah.
you know.

No, I mean, if if I if I have something that's hurting in the moment, I might take a, you know, an acetaminophen or an aspirin or something like that, just just so I can keep moving through it. But that there I'm not on any prescription medications, nothing, nothing like that. So, of course, you know, when I

When I go to see the doctor, they're just a little bit shocked that, but same thing, I was in a really, really terrible car accident 12 years ago. Well, 13, yeah, was 13 years ago in November. I was out for a walk with a friend and,

A van came out of nowhere. She managed to jump out of the way, but I had, I literally had to roll over the hood of the van. And I can just remember saying to myself as I was rolling over the hood of the van, it was the most weirdest thing. I just said to myself, don't let my head or my neck be hit. Cause the nurse in me knew if I went down and my head and my neck were okay, I'd probably be all right.

Well, I landed in the opposite direction. I felt the van go over my leg. I had no idea of the damage that was done. But this is what I mean about paying attention to the intuition. I actually, some people, the van drove off, never saw the van again. It was a hit and run.

Jeanne:
Mm-hmm.

Sheila:
Some people stopped to help us because we didn't have our cell phones. Nobody had a phone to call. Anyway, some people helped us. And I remember at some point being sitting on my bottom and I pulled up my right leg and I thought, okay, that's fine. I guess I can stand up. And then I just went to move my left leg. I had no pain. And I just said, man, I deal with bodies every day of my life and there's something not right here. So I stayed down while it turned out if I had stood up, it would have been bad. It was, so.

I'm telling you that because that was one place where I literally paid attention to my body's signals inside, even though pain is a signal. don't, and even though I wasn't, I was in shock at the time, so I wasn't feeling any pain, but there was enough of a sensory cue there for me to go, something's not right here. And to stay put, like just to literally stay put.

Jeanne:
Mm.

Sheila:
I kind of...

Jeanne:
So let me get it right. You said that you had a hit and run, which I can't even believe people would hit someone right away. That's beyond, yeah, that's beyond what I, yeah, I thought everybody has a conscience. I guess some people's don't work. But then you said that's true or it could have been driving without a license, who knows? Driving without a license, a kid, who knows what.

Sheila:
I didn't believe it either, but they did. They're probably just scared.
Who knows? Yeah.

Jeanne:
But you said you sat down and you tried to lift your what? You said your left leg, your right leg. I don't remember.

Sheila:
Well, my right leg was okay, so I was moving it as if to stand up. But when I went to draw my left leg up, that was when I went, something's not right here. So the ambulance came, they took me off to the hospital. But you know, I don't know that I've completely answered your question because I used that point to that thing about the car accident.

Jeanne:
Okay. Okay.

Sheila:
to point out, to answer your question, which I don't know what it was right now. Took myself down the garr...

Jeanne:
Well, you're giving us so much interesting information. I'm fine with that. I I don't want hear it about you. The question was about how, Sheila really is. But then you actually started into my next question about working with physical, emotional and spiritual and guiding people through it.

Sheila:
But to share...

Yeah.

Jeanne:
But then I wanted to know what one belief about pain changed your life. So I think you're getting there with this story. You're reading my mind here.

Sheila:
Yeah, well, well, the whole point of that story was that when I had enough, I had enough education, re-education to change my mind and start paying attention to what was going on in my body first before I actually made the choice to stand up. Like I was starting and then more information. Better not and getting up. I had a lot of pain growing up. I had a lot of pain. I think that was part of, I don't know how I ended up in nursing. I actually grew up thinking I wanted to become a doctor, a chiropractor, but things being what they were, I went into nursing. I loved it. I was good at it. It was not an easy profession, it allowed me to deal with a lot of people in pain, and I kind of got to be known as the one who understood pain. And I was only in my 20s. But I'd had...I'd had a lot of pain and what I really discovered about pain in the body is that your physical body, and this is something that just through all the studies over the years from nursing to to natural stuff to, you know, all the modalities that I've learned, your physiology is actually dictated by your state. So the fact that

Jeanne:
Mm.

Sheila:
and your state, your emotional state, has a lot to do with what you're thinking. But it's not the conscious thinking, not just the conscious thinking that you're thinking about. It's all the stuff that you believe about yourself or the stories that you run about yourself that are deeply unconscious and driving the bus. And then there's the essence of who you are.

So I think the big thing, the thing that changed for me at 62 was the full recognition that I am not my body and my body is a field of intelligence unto its own. I happen to need the body if I'm gonna be having an experience on planet Earth of self-discovery and evolution of self for its own sake. And I, it's not an either or. find people will talk about allopathic medicine and surgeries and the medicines, you know, the pharmaceuticals, and then other people will talk about energy medicine and, you know, natural products. But if the context...is fix broken, which it can be for either.

Jeanne:
Mm-hmm.

Sheila:
then it's the Einstein theory where you can't solve things at the same level they were created on. You've actually got to change your thought structure, and thought does have a structure. So we have everything from the physical body right up into spirituality. And I'm not talking about religion here.

I happen to think religion is probably the politics of spirituality, but just the essence, the very being of who you are is a signal and your body is a series of signals and then we're dealing with signals outside of us. So, know, something happens outside of you, like a car shows up and drives into you. That was my experience anyway, and then drives off.

There's all the stuff that happens inside of you. I can remember thinking, who, just like you just did, who would do that? Who in their right mind would do that? Would you not stop? But on the other side of that, that judgment is somebody who goes, they're terrified. They've probably shocked themselves. I'm not trying to make it right for them, but they're gone.

And in my case, they were never found.

Jeanne:
Yeah, that's too bad. I get what you're saying though. I do. I remember getting mugged in college. It was crazy. So I probably shouldn't tell this story. It was bad. because I was skipping class and I was walking back to my apartment because I had to live off campus my last year and, here comes a motorcycle. I was just making sure I was

Sheila Winter Wallace (19:45.412)
Yeah.

Jeanne:
out of its way because there wasn't a sidewalk where I was walking so I was in the road in the gutter and I was just bebopping along and then all of a sudden I, the guy swerved and knocked me over and then I remember he kicked my leg and I was just laying there going, why did that guy kick my leg? He's a bad driver. That's what my first thought was. Then I realized that jerk has my purse.

Sheila:
Mm-hmm.

Jeanne:
And you're sitting there like what what it's so you so violated with stuff like that and for you to get hurt, you know Seriously, what is that person or what is that spirit? I don't I think he needs to get in touch with somebody

Sheila;
so we're coming full circle to now. Why I actually wanted to tell you that story was when you live this way, the way I've, it's literally been a choice for me and it's a choice every second of the day because the cultural conditioning. To not live that way, to live as a victim to yourself instead of, you I may not like the reality I'm creating, but at least I've got some cause for it, you know, like I can, it's not about fault and blame, I can be a cause for it. That was part of.

Knowing what I knew after that accident, when the doctor told me that I'd be four months in bed, and I was thinking, geez, I have to live. Like, how am I going to create an income? I just took it one day at a time. The generosity of people around was incredible.

Jeanne:
Mm.

Sheila;
But I was weight bearing, not in four months, I was weight bearing in two. And that was because of what I know. just literally, in everything, I saw physio and kept my medical appointments up and all that, and I saw the physio and everything that they, that I could take from them that I could adopt for my own purposes to be able to help myself, I did. And some of it was not easy. know, when your leg, the knee had been, the femur pushed down on the calf, they had to pull everything up. The meniscus, the kneecap was, their word, shredded. And...

Jeanne:
Oof.

Sheila:
know, plate and screws put in. So, you know, they said four months and I was weight bearing in two. and I, I, when you, when you're doing all the stuff that physio says, some of it, some of it was just so painful, but I trusted it and I did it. And, and I think that's really what living this way. It's, it's called well systems, working environments as living systems.

And I use it and the study of HUNA, which I believe underpins well systems to live my life as a spiritual being, living in a body that is a sensory device and takes demands from my choices, takes whatever I choose in the moment is how it's gonna respond. So much of it is so deeply unconscious for most of us that...

Jeanne:
Mm-hmm.

Sheila:
We don't know and there is a whole way to decode this through something called the code model creation out of deep energy. So energy is the framework for what actually shows up in tissue. So if, now people might wonder how does that work? You're out for a walk and you're in a car accident.

Well, I happened to be with another nurse friend. We were both getting our houses ready to sell. Thing is, she wanted to sell her house. I didn't. I was selling my house to alleviate a financial problem. I was fearful. It all wrapped around money. I was fearful of...

Jeanne:
Hmm.

Sheila:
Fearful of just metaphorically not being able to pay the bill. So it was like the universe and like I just kept plowing through. had an auction, I got rid of a lot of stuff and we've got the house up for sale. And my husband didn't wanna leave either but we didn't know how we were going to satisfy a bill that we eventually satisfied but, we're still in the same house. But it was like the universe, the universe, it was like the universe basically stopped me. Like I was in conflict about this move all the time. I was in conflict about the money and I was in conflict about the move. I was in conflict, conflict, internal conflict all the time, lying to myself that I wasn't.

Jeanne:
that's nice

Sheila:
So it's like the universe just basically, I wasn't listening so I got stopped literally right in my tracks. And I thought about that later and I thought, how did I create this? Because literally, in the world I live in, I create everything. So how, not about fault and blame, how did I actually know to create this? So I had a lot of time in those months while I was recovering to reconsider how I was going to move through the world. So within six months, you you signed for a while to have your house on the market. We took the house off the market and decided how I was going to live my life in a way that could honor bills. And when I say bills, I'm, I'm being metaphorical here that could honor everything in my life. And it wasn't easy. It wasn't easy. It...

It all got looked after. But that's that's that is a an immersion in trust. That's an immersion in self trust. And sometimes, boy, you can get kicked off your your trust stool, you know, and you just have to get back up again because I don't know, you know, like the the the car drivers, I don't know what was going on in their mind. I don't know.

Jeanne:
All

Sheila:
A lot of the time we don't know what's going on in people's lives. And sometimes it's just nice to, even as irritating as it is, it's nice to give them the benefit of the dope. And we can all, we...

Jeanne:
Yeah.

Yeah, well, I'm going to interject my crazy story back in here. So I just laughed because I was like, it was a violation. I just was offended. So I had to call my dad and complain. But then when I got back to the apartment, well, first I had to tell him I was hypnotized, but I had a good reason.

Sheila:
Yep.

Jeanne:
Not really a good reason, but I had a reason. Cause we had been out partying the night before. I didn't feel that well. But also I was a student. So this guy grabbed my purse. There was no money in it. Gosh sakes. I I never had any money in college. And then because we had been out partying the night before, my IDs were at home on the dresser. Cause I forgot to put them back in my purse. So he got nothing.

So I don't know who got the lesson told. I think I learned the lesson, don't skip class, don't skip it. It was psychology, I hated that class at the time. And also, I bet he learned this lesson, he just did all that mugging and then he got nothing. Didn't even, not a dime, there was nothing in my purse. Just a wallet, was it. Hairbrush maybe.

Sheila:
Wow, he got...

Well.
Well.

Here's the interesting thing. So you made a comment earlier about you were, you know, you weren't going to Jacksonville last, last night, you know, in a pub and it was, yeah, yeah. before the call. Well, well, the interesting thing is the first thing I thought of was that's a smart move.

Jeanne:
When we were talking, yeah, before the call before here and so nobody knows that nobody knows I was supposed to go to Jacksonville downtown last night

Sheila:
we're older women. I don't want to be out walking the street late at night either. only because, so, no, I don't think any of us have, but I remember my, yeah, I remember my own mother,

Jeanne:
I've never been a streetwalker, Sheila. I've never been a streetwalker. I'm sorry.

But yes, I get what you're saying.

Sheila:
My own mother died more than 30 years ago at the age of 69. And I just remember her saying, you know, I go outside and she said, I don't even carry a purse anymore. She said, she goes out for a walk and she said, because I can't move as fast as I used to. And she said,

Jeanne:
Mm.

Sheila:
I've seen too many guys walking past other women. She'd seen two or three in Toronto, know, have their purses just snatched from them and taken away. So if we take it back to you getting mugged on the side of the road, there will, you know, we're talking about neurological anchors. If your body has stored that information, that might affect your decision today about where you go and when you go. Yeah, because that's why people, I slept the wrong way and I've got a crick in my neck. But if the neck is about, know, inside it's the throat.

Jeanne:
I never thought of that.

Sheila:
It's a choice point. It's basically where you speak. For women who have issues with guitar at the back of the throat or they've had chronic sore throats or they've had all kinds of things, what is it that they've wanted to say but wouldn't say because the belief system was that it's inappropriate and we keep bounding on that.

This starts happening really early in life. think a lot of it before were even pre-verbal, but then we get to be 80 years old and, you know, we're still, it's all neurological anchors. aren't good, bad, or wrong. They just, you know, it's just the stimulus response that sets up information and you don't even know it's living there until something happens and then you're in some kind of pain and the pain may just simply be a looping fear that's hidden and nobody knows that you're fearful but you're tied up and not. You know, I don't mean you but it's just the way it goes. that, it, so it's like, it's like what, what we carry inside of ourselves.

Jeanne:
I understand.

Sheila:
is not, I'm really serious, none of it's good, bad, or wrong. It just, if we could just learn, and this is where at age 62 I literally learned to stop, soften my jaw, and there's a reason for that with the nervous system, to soften my belly, to literally open my hands, and to just look up and take a big breath, just.

And the minute you do that, the body starts to relax and I do it as often as I can in order to keep my body grounded so that when I do go to make a decision, and often, you know, something presents and I do go to make a decision, I'm going to make one that is a little more grounded or if I'm in...

Pain and my feel my body going tightening and going into collapse. I'm gonna open it up and The pain might get a little more intense for a moment Until it doesn't because you just keep breathing into it. So pain takes all kinds of forms It can be physical it can be emotional. It can be mental. It can be spiritual and the only the only way that I've discovered that actually works for me is

is to remember to take a breath. And like everybody else, I've been programmed, especially in my experiences as growing up, was the sarcasm that came with being called Speed Queen because I was slow and methodical and everybody was, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. So I was always running to catch up.

Jeanne:
You

Sheila:
To what? Like, to what? So...

Jeanne:
I have to apologize now that you said that to my son for calling him turtle all these years. Okay. But that's just me. He was slow. I don't know if he was methodical. He just didn't want to go places and would be slow.

Sheila:
well well we know well you know
Yeah, yeah, and Turtle's kind of a cute name, but it would be interesting for you to find out from, Mine came with, it was called Speed Queen, and all I could remember was that there were washing machines back when I was growing up called Speed Queen.

Jeanne:
I thought so.
Really?

Sheila:
And there's a humor in it. where I heard it from was often from my father, who was the king of sarcasm. And I didn't happen to like sarcasm. It was not my thing. And I'm very mindful of it because...

Jeanne:
Mmm.

Sheila:
I didn't like it. saw how, you know, I felt how it affected me and I saw how it affected others.

I know because I grew up alongside of it, I can go there. So I don't want to be that person with other people. So sometimes I attribute to sarcasm what probably really is not. It's just a perspective. So you can probably tell when it comes to

Jeanne:
Well.

Sheila:
to the whole notion of pain, I'm pretty fascinated with the nervous system and how it works. That's kind of been, I think when you understand how it works and that it's all brilliant. It is so blink and brilliant, even though you can't stand what's happening. If you really sit down and look at it and look for the patterns, it gets kind of funny. It's, yeah.

It's sad and paradoxically it can be funny at the same time.

Jeanne:
Well, we'll talk offline, because I have another guest that you would connect with really well, because he has the same kind of mindset. So I think you should connect with him. I want to keep going. I know we've talked a lot through a lot of my questions, so I'm just going to skip. But I did want to say something about Rottweilers and your Rottweiler. I can't even say the word Rottweiler rescue.

Sheila:
and that would be great.

Jeanne:
A Rottweiler. Can people say Lhasa Apso too? I mean, I've gotten familiar with that one. That's mine. Oh, good for you. They are. I love mine. So your Rottweiler and all the rescue, I skipped the word the second time. You've been doing this since like 1987. So it's an incredible and loyal breed. know how good they are, but I want to know one thing.

Sheila:
Lassa, Lhasa Apso. They're so cute. Yeah.
Well, I got...
Yeah.

Jeanne:
Is there one Rottweiler out of all the ones, maybe you can't talk because I know your current Rottweiler girl is beside you, but that still, I want to know if there's one that still plays, stays with you in your heart because it changed something in you.

Sheila:
my gosh.

Well, you just brought tears. just... Yeah, no, no, it's good. It's... No, my...

Jeanne:
I'm sorry. You don't let me ask about that.

Sheila:
I love them all. They were all fantastic. And some of them were funny, funny, funny. And some of them were...

My poop doesn't stink, just leave me alone. You know, like the Dowager Queen. They all, every last one of them had a unique person, has had a unique personality. But the one that brought tears, I love this one I have right now, and she's just turned seven. I've had her for about 14 months. But I had one named Max. And I got him in 2015 when he was three years old and he was to be euthanized on a Monday and on Sunday I said I would take him. So he saved him from euthanasia. The situation was that he had an owner who was moving to Europe and couldn't find a home for him. And somebody intervened and said, just give me the dog. I'll look after it. So she connected with an organization who connected with me and I said, I'm going to take him. So most of my Rottweilers have died at 10 or 10 and a half, but Max went to 12 and a half.

So he had nine and a half years and he kind of slowed down at the end.

Jeanne:
Mm.

Sheila:
But... he...

He looked up the stairs one day. I always took him outside and then we would travel these stairs. And he would go up once a day and he would come down once a day. the Monday before he died, he just looked up the stairs and he looked at me and it was like I could read his mind and he went, nope, I'm done.

Jeanne:
Hmm.

Sheila:
I'm not going up there. So I just kept traveling. Spent as much time as I could over the week with him downstairs and I just kept going up and down with him. And then he just stopped eating and then he slowly stopped drinking and I called the vet and the vet came and euthanized him on my birthday because that was the day we could do it.

He was the sweetest dog and I had women coming in for the hands-on work that I do, the coaching and the hands-on work. Were coming, I had taken 46 % of my home, it's become my big office.

Sheila:
They would cry and he would just go and sit beside them. He had the most gorgeous, the most beautiful face of a Rottweiler I think I've ever seen. And he was just so sweet and so kind. And I still, he's been gone for almost a year and I still miss him. So yeah, he was like, he was life changing for me. I don't know why it was just like he had

Jeanne:
Hmm.

Sheila:
He had such a close brush, like he could have been removed. And the thing is, it wasn't easy for us when we got him because he came from a Francophone household. His energy signatures were in French and were English. So he had to get to, you know, and he was separated from his people. So he had, and he had a lot of changes within. Three or four days of meeting different people and traveling different places. And so at one point, actually, I actually, he kept me with his canine, because he was, he just didn't know how to behave. So I literally called the organization. I said, you know, I'm not about to give this dog up. Need to, I need to give him a leg up. I need a coach.

So they brought a coach out and I spent one and that was just to help me get over my own fear because I'd never been cut by a rotty before ever in all the years that I'd had them. And that four hours I spent with the coach changed everything. The dog transformed overnight and so did I. So, and it was a lesson for me that as deep and as good as I believe my husband and I to be with dogs. Sometimes you just gotta let go of your ego and you've gotta ask for help. Because the ultimate intention is always to give a person or a dog a hand up, a leg up, just so they can live and trust and feel certain. And he became one of the most trustworthy animals I've ever had.

Jeanne:
That's beautiful. That's really a beautiful story.

Sheila:
It was tough in the beginning. Yeah, he... Well, I'm grateful to you for asking the question. didn't realize I still... I still... I miss him.

Jeanne:
Well, I'll give you something that might make you laugh. go ahead. What were you gonna say?

Sheila:
and Kira. Yeah.

No, Kira. So, when I got Kira...

Max had been without a friend for about 18 months, so I didn't know how that was gonna work, but just the situation that I got Kira, I brought her home. She was wonderful with him, and he was wonderful with her, and I said to my husband, he's either gonna get better and live longer, or he's going to settle in to leaving. So he had a good three months with her, and then he left.

I... I... She now missed him. It took her six weeks to get over him going. And so she's kind of... She's always stuck with me, but now she's settling in. And I might get another dog for her, but I think we generally rescue the older ones. And because we're older, they're a little slower.

Jeanne:
Great.

Sheila:
but I think she'd probably like a younger one. So that's just my read on it I don't know. Anyway, tell me what you're, we're gonna say.

Jeanne:
you

Project Candor Podcast (46:24.515)
I was going to try to make you laugh a little bit. you know, I've had a lot of losses. We talked about that before. And so my current loss, one of them is named Maximillion Kisses.

Sheila:
Yeah.

I love it. That was... I wonder... Yeah, yeah. Oh, I love that Maximillion Kisses. It's funny because I wonder if Max was named Maximillion. He just came as Max. He was a great dog. Yeah.

Jeanne:
I'm the dog namer around here.
I don't know. I don't know why I didn't, but he's actually more connected with my husband than with me, although he likes to sleep on the bed with me until he gets put up for the night. He started kissing all over us when we first saw him as a puppy. And so it just came to me, Maximillion Kisses. So there we go. We just call him Max.

Sheila:
It's

You talk about the dog sleeping on the bed. The first night I had Kira home with me, she came to my bed and she just looked at me and I went, I'm sorry, she's 110 pounds.

I said, you're not getting on the bed with me, because if you get on the bed with me, you are never getting off. She still comes in and looks.

Jeanne:
Well, my dogs don't sleep on the bed the whole night. They just do for a little bit before they get put up. Just a little bit.

Sheila:
Well, I would love that, but I have a feeling I'll never get her off because I've got one couch for her in the house and she monopolizes it. I mean, she stretches out to about four feet long. She's just a big dog. Yeah.

Jeanne:
That's that's tall. That's almost a person. It's a definitely an older child. Hey, so now we're coming to I'm sorry. What we can say friends that

Sheila:
you just...

I have friends

Sheila:
no, it was not important. It's all good.

Jeanne:
okay. Well, we're going to change up here. We've talked a little bit about you, so we got to know you a little bit better, but we want to dig deep into your vaults of information. And we're now going to shift the focus into playing our signature game, Two Truths and a Lie. The way you play this is that the guest has provided three headlines about themselves.

Sheila:
Okay

Jeanne:
And then we get to listen to those headlines or I'll read out those headlines and everybody listening can hear them or I'll display them on screen. And then I get to guess which one I think is a lie or which ones are true. I just guessed a lie. And then you'll go through those stories. Don't tell us as you do them, but at the end you'll tell us which one's a lie and see if I got it right. So.

Sheila:
Okay, all right.

Jeanne:
I'm going to read these story headlines out.

So Sheila, your headlines are, Sheila drove five days from Eastern Canada to Southern California alone to start a business. She set a temporal goal and arrived 10 minutes before the time. That is a long drive, Sheila. All right, number two, with a traveler's heart, Sheila booked 22 trips to the big island of Hawaii in 10 years to study Hawaiian huna.

She swam with the dolphins in the ocean, life-changing. And your last one, racing was a passion for Sheila who used to drive a high-powered race car. So after getting to know you on this call, I'm going to guess number three is a lie, but don't tell me, don't tell me. So let's go through these stories. Tell us about when you drove from Eastern Canada to Southern California.

Sheila:
That's a true story.

Jeanne:
Tell us! Don't you told us! You're supposed to not tell us. Not at the end so you can see if I was right or not. But that's okay. We know number one's true now. But anyway, tell us about it.

Sheila:
I thought, I thought, okay.
Okay, so I actually I actually Left Ottawa Canada at about five o'clock at night and started driving driving cross-country and I drove I I drove through

Anyway, I got into the States and just trying to think of the route and I went through Iowa and Nebraska and I went down through Colorado and Utah and Nevada and right into Southern California and my daughter was taking a course and I knew the course was going to finish at five o'clock that day. And I wanted to, and I knew the people who were giving the course, so I wanted to be in the hotel conference room by five o'clock, and I arrived in the parking lot at 10 to five after five days of driving, completely alone. It was a really an incredible experience for me, and I had a couple of cheerleaders on the way, and...husband who had been a national rally driver at one point in his life had written, written, you know, he'd done the itinerary for me. So I just followed his itinerary and stayed in touch with people and and yeah that was, when was, when I think that was probably August

Jeanne:
Hmm.

Sheila:
or so of 2000 and...

2002, somewhere around like that. Now that was a big trip.

Jeanne:
Did you have a lot of music to listen to?

Sheila:
I had a lot of music. had some interesting experiences along the way. The one that I remember the most was that I was driving through Nebraska and it just seemed so monotonous to be driving through, you know, and it was hot, hot, hot, and I had a glass roof. You know, and I had the sun shining through. And I actually think I got a bit of sunstroke because I just kept falling asleep. So I finally kept getting off the road and going into rest stops and throwing water on my face to wake myself up. And finally, because I was really concerned about my timelines, and I finally pulled in into a rest stop. went, I...I have a splitting headache. like it. My head was just pounding and I thought to myself, I'm going to have to lie down. So I literally lay down under a tree and put my car keys underneath my belly like this and fell asleep for a couple of, yeah, so nobody be able to take the car. And I fell asleep and I lost two hours of driving time, but in fact, I think that's where I would have gained the time because I literally fell asleep when I woke up. The headache was gone and the heat had dissipated and I was able to drive. So I drove through a big, I was in Nebraska when that happened, but then I crossed over into Colorado.

Jeanne:
Where did you say you were?

Shella:
Nebraska.
Then I crossed over into Colorado and it was unfortunate. I wanted to see Colorado in daylight, but I drove most of it in the dark until I found a place to sleep.

Jeanne:
Well, some of those Midwestern states or what do you call those? I don't know, Central America state like Kansas, for instance, you can be driving and it looks the same. So you think you might have gotten into the Twilight Zone where you just drive and then you're just in the same road and not making any crap. So I can get where you were there. All right. Tell us about number two about, oh yeah, sorry about that.

Sheila:
Yeah.

Yeah, was like that.

Jeanne:
With a traveler's heart, you booked 22 trips to the big island to study Hawaiian huna.

Sheila:
Yeah, started studying Huna in 1997. the mentor I spoke about earlier, the colleague, just, she phoned me up and asked me to go to breakfast with her one day in Ottawa. And she told me that she had just come, I hadn't seen her in 15 months, and she told me that she just made this trip to study Huna. And I started to vibrate inside. Like that was basically an internal call to go because years before I'd read this book by Dan Millman called The Way of the Peaceful Warrior. And it was all about, you know, the main character was a female Kahuna and some, really ancient wisdom. Anyway, I read that book. I loved it. And I had no idea that it was going to impact me when my friend Louise starts talking about Huna. And I think, my gosh, I've got to go. I have no clue why this was my intuition and never let me go. It never let me go. But it happened twice a year. And so I was gonna make the next trip, but I was waiting for money to fall out of the sky and it didn't. I had a new business. I had a business partner, so you know, everything was going back into that. And so I didn't, I didn't go. I'd been in business with her for a while, but I just, I didn't go. And then I was really upset with myself. So I called the organization that was teaching Huna and I booked the trip and I never looked back. And I continued 22 trips over 10 years and I went from being a novice student who knew nothing to actually becoming one of the teachers. And, over ten years I saw there was a lot of growth and was a lot of changes and then there came the day when I knew that
I'd not outgrown the body of knowledge, but I had outgrown the structure that it was being delivered in. And so I left, you know, it's just like you, and I'm grateful for the experiences that I had there. I met people from all over the world. That was the one thing I missed when I stopped going was the,

Jeanne:
okay.

Sheila:
continuing connections of meeting new people all the time. I got to swim in the ocean a lot. I got to, and I did swim with the dolphins and that was one of the most powerful experiences because it was in the wild. The dolphins, I met a woman who, she took people out.

And I just, she was looking for a craniosacral therapist. She didn't know she was looking for, she didn't know she was looking that I was doing that. But we just got to talking, yeah, she was looking for me and I didn't know I was looking for her. Anyway.

Jeanne:
for you.

Sheila:
I went out and

It was incredible and when I decided to come back in, I had spent a fortune on these fins and these shoes. And as I was swimming back in, when I was swimming against the current, and so I just kept going until I could get my feet down on the ground and then I got up on this big piece of lava.

And I'm standing there with my shoes, my swim shoes on, and I've got my two big fins in my hands. And this massive wave comes by and grabs the fin and takes it out in the ocean. And I went, my fin. And I immediately thought to myself, this is amazing. This has been the price of a great education. And the minute I thought that, the wave brought the fin and landed it right at my feet.

Jeanne:
that's great. That's great. So some questions.

Sheila:
no word of a lie, that literally happened. Yeah, so I had some powerful experiences.

Jeanne:
That's wonderful. Did you remember that old TV show, Flipper? Did you ever watch?

Sheila:
probably, but it's been a long time. I don't remember much about it.

Jeanne:
that was the guy that I don't know. He lived somewhere on the beach and he'd always, he had a dolphin flipper that he would come up to the pier and then he'd jump in the water and he'd swim with him. That was a cool shot. All right. You were on the big Island. Did you ever visit the volcano? Kilauea? Do you know that it just erupted? It just erupted.

Sheila:
Yeah, yeah, I remember, many times. Many. Yeah, Killaway many times. Yeah. Yeah, my husband was showing me pictures. Yeah.

Jeanne:
I could not believe it because I've been up there because there's a, there used to be a Navy base there, like just a little mini thing, cause they watched over the volcano. So I used to get to go over there sometimes and I, yeah, I didn't ever see it erupt, but I just saw that it did again. It is now December the 11th, 2025. And I saw, I think I heard them say it erupted on December 9th.

Sheila:
Well, it is
Mm-hmm.

Jeanne:
recently

Sheila:
Yeah, wasn't, but when I was going, could, if you took the helicopter, know, Blue Hawaiian Helicopter's fabulous to go, they'll take you right over top of it and you could just see where it was streaming down and then hitting the ocean and making new land. Yeah, and I've, so I've been to Kilauea many times and I've also,

Jeanne:
Hmm.

Sheila:
been through the lava tunnels many times that are up. Yeah, well, actually, yeah, it actually had some pretty interesting experiences going down into those tunnels and way down into the dark. yeah, pretty sacred, I have to say. was pretty beautiful and pretty sacred.

Jeanne:
Ooh, I didn't do that.
I did not do that.
Nice. Okay, we got one more story. Racing was a passion for you. So you used to drive a high powered race car. Tell us about when you did that Sheila.

Sheila:
Up a hill in a Toyota Corolla.

Jeanne:
That's the high powered race car.

Sheila:
at at that's a high that was a high powered race car taking taking my children taking my children to meet their friends to go out for halloween with a classical music blaring out of the car and all my all of their mothers with me and saying this woman drives like a hot rod actually i'm a pretty safe and good driver but

Jeanne:
Okay, not seeing that.

Yeah.

Sheila:
just having fun with the kids and making sure they were safe. So that was as fast as I ever got. And it was in a Toyota Corolla.

Jeanne:
Okay, so can I safely say that was the lie and I got it right?

Sheila:
That was a lie and you got it right. All the rest of it, all the rest of it is true.

Jeanne:
Yes!
that's wonderful. That's wonderful.

Sheila:
I love this game that you have. This is cool.

Jeanne:
Well, I just love to find out about people and I'm glad you shared this with us because it just puts you into the inside of somebody's life and so many people don't know that they're having these adventures and that they are fun and that they are memories and they're just fun, know, spectacular events. But then, you know, they don't get the spotlight for them. So now you've got the spotlight.

Sheila:
Yeah.

Jeanne:
You got to share your fantastic stories on Project Candor and I love it. Even if you weren't really a race car driver, that was something you remembered.

Sheila:
Yeah, I love the knit.
Yeah, and actually, my father started teaching me how to drive a truck when I was 13. I didn't actually get my license till I was 20, but I'd been driving curranty roads with his truck in the summer for years, and then finally I decided, well, he was always with me, but finally I decided that I would.

I would get the license, I did that when I was 20. I remember him walking out the front door in Toronto going to get my, take the test, and he looked at me and he said, best of luck, and I said, thank you, and if I don't get this, I'll never get it because you have been the hardest taskmaster when it came to teaching me how to drive. But I learned a lot from him because that was he. He owned a cartage business and he taught me how to see ahead, driving through windshields and all kinds of things. I did take some professional driving lessons, but I never ever got those tips from somebody who, that was his life. He drove a truck every day or trucks and had employees. yeah, exactly, exactly.

Jeanne:
Yes, expert advice from someone you love.

Well, I guess that's the end of our show. And I just wanted to say, I really appreciate you being here. And also I will hope that you will come back sometime. I know you have many, many more stories you could share with us, but thank you.

Sheila:
No, I would love to come back. This is, I love the name of your podcast, Jeannie. just, think Project Candor, I think it's wonderful. I think it's a great thing you're doing.

Jeanne:
thank you. Thank you.

Well, thank you so much. It comes from my project background and just seeking the truth. Go around the world to seek the truth and I'm ex-Navy so I'm just gonna put my hat on and show you. And I'm a pirate. I'm out there trying to find treasures in everybody's life. So thank you so much Sheila.

Sheila:
I love that, you write that, you're welcome, write that down. I'm seeking to find treasures in life. Treasures in life, that's awesome.

Jeanne:
Write that down. Well, I got it on here. Yeah, well, thank you. I'm going to see you next time.