And then there's also this centering practice that
helped me feel like my ancestors,
in spirit, have my back. It reminds me
of this lineage of courageous women. If I'm
nervous
about
whatever in the day, I can think about
what they did and just right size the
situation I'm facing and realize that I have
that courage in me too.
Hello and welcome to Love's Everyday Radius, a
podcast brought to you by the Hoffman Institute.
My name is Sadie Hanna, and in this
podcast, you'll hear real conversations and stories with
graduates about their courageous journey inward, and how
their love and light are living in the
world around them. Love's everyday radius.
Thank you for being here and welcome.
Please note that this episode references genocide
and the child's experience.
Please use your discretion as you listen.
Hey, everyone, and welcome to the show today.
I'm here with Nicole Olivier.
Nicole is a Hoffman graduate. Nicole, welcome. Thank
you for being here. Thank you. It's always
a gift to connect with you.
Nicole and I first met
at a q two.
A q two is one of our graduate
programs. It's a three day on-site
program where
you can come to deepen the work and
past childhood
into
your
current life.
Nicole, maybe we begin there.
What is something you'd like to share or
a highlight from your recent q two? I
think that the grounds that Hoffman
selects
is
just an example of every
choice
made to design the process is so
amazingly
perfected.
The site was
really ideal in regards to just having this
amazing setting for the work. And
I had been at the initial
site, White Sulfur Springs
before
a wildfire
destroyed it. And I would say the same
about that one. And I chose to go
a few months after
my dynamic French mother passed away. It was
a great thing to do
at the start of a new chapter. Okay.
So you were coming
after a process of saying goodbye to your
mother.
After a process of saying goodbye to her
in physical, but it's been amazing the signs
and connection I've continued to have since
she moved on to spirit. When did she
pass away?
07/07/2025.
Did you come into the Q2 knowing that
was some of what you were carrying?
I came into the Q2
just feeling like it was a new chapter
and
I did
feel like it was a great space to
tap into
some feelings
that as a person who is wired to
be pretty positive and optimistic,
seeing the bright side and everything,
It offered me the space to really tap
into
a part of missing her physically being here.
It's part of the process.
Yeah, I could see that. And how being
in a group setting
might
help create a container to really drop into
some of the grief or the loss of
her?
Well, every exercise is so brilliantly
designed to tap into different parts.
And so, yeah, there's definitely room for everything
to come up and it just
was so supportive.
So speaking of what you're carrying as you
come in, I know that you have
an interesting
history
and sense of
lineage and ancestry.
Where would you like to begin?
I think a good starting point is to
share a bit of background
that both
my mother and father's
families were part of the resistance
during World War two,
and my maternal grandparents
escaped the Bolshevik revolution.
So
I grew up with stories
about extraordinary moral courage
and the value of being service oriented.
And also
there's intergenerational
trauma from those wars. And they say
your issues are in your tissues, but the
issues from your ancestors
due to epigenetics are in your tissues too.
So you feel
a physical
sense of this living on in your life
now.
It's something that I've worked on
and somatics
and the physical part of the process
were really extremely helpful in this.
Yeah. But my father, he was
in
Norway during world war two.
He was
experiencing trauma from his father being away for
the duration of the war.
And his
mother passed away from scarlet fever when he
was seven,
his grandfather then passed away
from a heart attack. This is all while
his father's away. So at this really young
age, he experienced a lot of loss
and also a lot of scarcity.
So then
in my mother's case, she was born in
Nice and she was really
vivacious and dynamic out of the gates. But
she had two parents that
were
part of the
wave of people who escaped Russia during the
Bolshevik revolution. I learned
when I was 13,
when I asked my mother if she had
any secrets,
she finally told me that her father was
a count.
And his experience
passed on
through her nervous system as well. His terror
of basically
nearly escaping the Bolshevik revolution
by
running through the countryside,
hiding in ditches,
seeing thousands of people being killed
right before his eyes
as he's fleeing to safety.
And then her mother was also from nobility
and sent to
France
to a boarding school
so that her life would be stared
and ended up being orphaned because her family
was killed in Russia.
So she's got this mother and father that
have their trauma. They get married. They're not
together for long.
And
then there was world war two brewing.
So she was a niece during that time
and was staying with her aunts and uncle
who was this really kindhearted preacher while her
mom was in Paris writing for this French
resistance
newspaper.
She had the positive influence
of her
uncle and the faith
and their lives that were really focused on
service, but they're at risk daily because they
were hiding 12
Jews
for the duration of the war. And Nice
was one of the most dangerous places
in France to hide Jews because one of
the most violent SS officers was stationed there
three minutes away from their home. And they
also had traders that live next door
and kids
who were in families
that were part of the resistance
were recruited
for secret assignments because nobody would expect a
kid to be part of the resistance.
So
at this incredible risk of being stopped by
the Nazi,
my mom, as a little child in her
little child size shoes,
would deliver messages
across the countryside to other French resistance members.
So she's passing these stern
grown men in uniform
with rifles.
One of her friends was taken to a
concentration
camp. So, you know, the fear was real.
Here she has these shoes with messages to
resistance members.
So all of this is registering in her
nervous system.
How old was she at this time? Do
you have any idea?
Yeah. She was around eight. And again, she
was such an optimist and she created this
club with her cousins called Le Club de
Triomphe, which is the club of the triumphants.
And I really feel like child members of
the French resistance are unsung heroes
and her family. They had rationed food, you
know, the small amount they had with these
12 people that they were hiding without thinking
twice. And by the end of the war,
they were almost too weak to get out
of bed because they were starving.
Wow.
For many graduates, there's
a sense
of something
being
inherited, but it's not always quite so
explicit where you actually have stories.
What's that been like for you now?
How do those issues and those stories blend
for you?
Well, it's helpful, very helpful to have backstory
and we all have backstory
and we all have some kind of intergenerational
trauma too, but I definitely
noticed
that my nervous system would be more apt
to be jumpy if I was startled
and sort of you're, like, wired a little
bit more
nervously, really.
So I found that
I would need ways to just calm myself
and ground myself,
but it allows for a lot of context
and understanding and also self compassion.
Not only is there the nervous system part,
people who went through the history that my
parents had, they also are more apt to
be worried,
you know? So you have these people
that are both potentially
worrying about certain things that may be just
anticipated risk rather than real risk. But with
my mother as well, if you're running across
the countryside with messages in your shoes, when
you're eight years old during World War II,
when your child is eight, you're not too
worried about them going out to play and
just coming back when it's dark, like kids
were told to do in the seventies.
So it's an interesting combination of things.
And there are so many stories that would
just
make your jaw drop.
To me, that's also
what was normal. You
do things
to help others
when it is not easy
because
that's a value.
And
also
you're not always going with your plan a.
And I think sometimes we have an idea
of what our plan a is, but then
life circumstances
cause a reason to revise it. When my
plan a changes
so I can be of service, I noticed
that miracles and grace happen afterwards,
and it makes up for the time that
I was actually
setting aside to be of service. And aside
that, I really do.
When I put my hand on my heart
and I tap into my spirit self, that's
what I want my life to be about
as well.
You mentioned the need to come. When did
you know you needed that? What did you
do?
So
I guess that would probably take us to
the formative years
when I was growing up as a kid.
I was born in Palo Alto,
the first year the term Silicon Valley was
used as a nickname for the area.
And
I grew up in this very
French environment. My mom who knows six languages
herself
really valued knowing different languages. She taught me
French before English. Her accent remained just as
strong throughout her life. My dad wasn't home
much. He was working at IBM on their
first few things of AI,
though it didn't catch on at that point.
He worked a lot and
they separated when I was three and a
half. So that's when I started feeling
the freeze
and flight mode.
Those responses
to
a lot of fight mode, I saw in
my immediate environment just due to the circumstances.
It did
cause some fear of authority as well. So
if you look up the YouTube
videos of fainting goats,
even if they get excited about what they're
going to eat, if their nervous system feels
startled,
they freeze and they pretty much topple over.
They're pretty hilarious,
but I have compassion for the goats. So,
yeah, during the divorce process, there was a
lot of
change and uncertainty.
My
mom moved us to Seattle with our pet
rabbit, Peter, in the car,
and she was up against a lot of
challenges
in that time in the seventies. It was,
I guess, when we moved two years after
one woman could apply for credit and she
was trying to buy a house without credit
history and it wasn't until 1994,
that woman could legally get a mortgage without
a man in The US. So women were
up against a lot and she was the
single mother. And then my father had visitation
rights and they were going through this custody
battle.
And in the interim, during that nineteen seventies
era, young kids were put on planes alone
as unaccompanied
minors.
And I was sent from Seattle to San
Francisco at roughly five or six years old
with knots in my stomach.
You know, there's a reason that's not allowed
anymore.
It's not appropriate
for a kid to travel on a plane
at that age by themselves.
And then in the first full year in
Seattle, my mom who was amazing was looking
for a job as a French teacher
and it took a while and it challenged
her faith and it strengthened it.
What did it feel like to be
five years old and afraid on an airplane?
It felt really lonely.
And also
on a cellular level,
I felt
numb.
I
pretty much
had no feeling in my body.
I was
pretty much petrified.
And that is a feeling that when I
get into that
freeze mode,
flight mode, whatever might trigger it,
That's really the feeling that
comes back.
I could see how you and your mom
might have a similar experience, even though being
on a plane on your own at five
is very different.
That total
fear.
How did you come to manage that at
such a young age? How did you learn
to calm yourself?
Oh, okay. So with all the
upheaval and everything in the family
and my mother also,
because she was trying to accomplish so much,
she was getting her masters. She was working
full time. She was even writing a book
about being positive during a divorce.
I was left
to my own devices
a lot. And I was also
really overwhelmed with this idea since my mother
was
a single parent and a public school teacher.
I knew I had to pay for college
myself. So there was like this weight of
the world. And I started working when I
was really young
as a latchkey kid. Also,
I would sit by the stereo speaker with
the record player on,
And I always had this passion, this love
for writing. So I would have my face
so close to the journal that I would
see the blue
ink
just bleed into the paper through the crisscrosses
of the fiber of the paper and this
blue line that I'd be writing on.
And I would, in my imagination,
basically dive into this blue line as if
it was the horizon of the sea. And
then I would be in this other world
and these stories would just channel through me
and I would write them down. And so
that really offered me so much calm and
it was actually,
I think, a really positive
form of escape for a bit. And it
brought me a lot of peace.
So here you are holding presence,
holding
service
and heroic bravery,
and also
an overwhelm
response
in your adult life.
What happened for you
carrying that into your process week?
I guess maybe I also wanna cover a
little bit that the first time I had
terror without,
you know, this colossal
level in in regards to family
was when I was a junior in college.
And I recontacted
my father after twelve years of not knowing
him.
And I had no
tools really at that point, except maybe for
the writing.
That was probably one of the most
frightening things I've ever done in my life
to this day.
I just wanted to know who this man
was on my own instead of what I
was guessing about him.
He had his own emotional history and he
was quite guarded.
I would say that I see that love
is mainly a verb and that everyone is
doing their best at any given point in
time. But
to me, he was this, you know, very
scary person in my mind. So
I forgot he had a Norwegian accent.
He was this man who left when I
was three and a half.
So I share that because this is also
part of my process
about, again, goes back to this fear of
authority.
When I went into the process week,
I had these touch points, including when I
was in
advertising
and my career life.
I was there during a transition period where
the industry still had the glass ceiling and
it was 3% female creative directors to 97%
men.
And I really wanted
in my personal life to
get more strength and more courage. I had
some great
mentors along the way that showed me a
contrast.
So you you're saying you came to the
process wanting more strength and courage and knowing
you had this fear of authority.
Yeah, it really, it really could affect, you
know,
every area of my life. And so I
wanted to step into more strength.
The writing
showed up again when
I had this
feature script
that just channeled through me one day in
the course of seven days.
And I felt again like this was the
work that I was meant to do.
I submitted it to this competition of sorts
that Sundance has. I submitted twice projects and
it made it to the second round twice,
which is roughly a 150
submissions
out of 3,000.
And that gave me the sense of belief
that what I was doing was good,
but I wanted to have
the
courage
to
face
the
challenges that come ahead with making any project
come to life
and just in any area of life facing
authority. So
I came into the process because the universe
kind of hands you exactly the situations
you need to grow. At least it did
for me. And
I would just get really overwhelmed by strong
personalities.
I also needed to recognize that I was
being a willing participant
and that I needed to create better boundaries
and I could choose the people that I
was interacting with. And I do wanna say
that at the same time, I have a
lot of compassion for what people call the
bully, and I wish you know, that I
know that shorthand,
but it's really just a person in fight
mode that stems from trauma too. I love
this quote from A Course in Miracles.
Anything
is either love or a call for love.
But a few respected people that I know
in psychology
had recommended the process.
Dave Rico, who wrote this book, When the
Past is the Present, along with some other
books.
My somatic therapist,
Pawan Baresha,
she helped me with this nervous forest animal
feeling
and panic attacks.
So
if
you are nervous about authority, you tend to
also want to make sure you're in good
hands. So then I landed at the process.
So take us to your process week. What
happened for you there? What did you learn?
Gosh so much, but I wanna start off
sharing that one of the first things you
do with the process is to pick a
spirit guide.
I thought mine would be something
more angelic looking, but when I closed my
eyes, when I was tapping in seeing what
would come,
what came
was out of this mist
with these bushes that looked like I was
at white sulfur springs. And then I hear
these hooves
clopping on cobblestone.
And then all of a sudden I see
this goat,
it's a goat and his name is Louis.
And my spirit guide was Louis, the talking
goat. And whenever Louis would give me wise
guidance, it would be in the sound of
a goat, like, well, Nicole.
Like it was blind. So it offered some
levity.
I think people arrived to the process kind
of nervous. They're not sure what's
ahead. So that gave you some comfort. And
it sounds like also
a symmetry
to
that experience of the freezing goat when you
felt the sense of overwhelm and here's this
like talking goat of wisdom.
Yeah. Unexpected.
I was not expecting that, but for me
with basically
my wife's work
emotionally being about building courage.
Hoffman helped me
with so much. It's really hard to pick
one favorite thing because each exercise was so
helpful,
but the expression piece for what I needed
to work on,
it helped me to create better boundaries and
to tap into my strength. And
I also learned about bioenergetics,
how, if you have an intention, something you're
working on while you're doing a certain exercise
and bodied work to change it,
it really
has a more lasting effect.
And I also have these really viscerally
powerful
experiences
to look back on
that in a moment, if I'm feeling like
I'm facing challenge,
I just have this vision of the strength
that I tapped into. And so that really
helped me. And then there's also the centering
practice that helped me feel like my
ancestors
in spirit have my back. It reminds me
of this lineage of courageous women.
You know, if I'm nervous
about
whatever in the day, I can think about
what they did and just
right size the situation I'm facing
and realize that I have that courage in
me too. It helps a lot.
So
would you say
that you've found
a level of courage
that you didn't know before? What did you
discover?
A certain situation
that I faced post process
was
to me,
such a great personal triumph
and given my old patterns
that I had around fear and standing up
for myself.
And this situation
took an extraordinary level of challenge. I'd say
if I rated it from zero to 10,
it felt like a 20,
and it truly took all my courage. And
I connected
to my power
and my spirit guide
and prevailed.
And
that was
to me
really I'm speechless in a way, because I
would not have been able to do that
pre process
again. You know, it goes back to just
recognizing
from those
expression exercises, the strength I had
in myself.
And then also
in the process, there were exercises
that were about worth
and about
deserving your space on this planet.
And that just really underlined,
like I need to stand up for myself.
And since I was setting these
new courageous ways into being
the extra support of the coaching calls were
really
wonderful.
I mean, these are things that I'm trying
to change after a lifetime.
So that was really
so
reinforcing.
So fast forward now, as we begin to
wrap up
your with your mother, as she's
nearing the end of her life, We know
ultimately you end up at the q two.
Is there anything that you wanna share
around
integration,
around
your power
post process?
Well, it kinda circles back to a personal
example
of when plan a changes
and being service oriented when it isn't easy,
it can be a right road choice. I
mean, sometimes I think people feel like
being of service, if it's really a big
ask is
losing yourself, but not always for sure.
So not too long after I did the
process, first there was COVID. And then on
the coattails of that,
at the age of 89,
my
vibrant French mom had a stroke that impacted
her balance.
She was really lucky. You know, she had
this outlook that how lucky to have one's
balance affected instead of one's thinking, but
because of her high fall risk and the
blood thinner, she needed 247
assistance.
So I chose
to put my career on pause to help
her for another three and a half years
So she could stay in the comfort of
her own home. And she did until she
passed away peacefully at almost 93.
The daily wisdom she shared in her final
years that could only be developed after nine
decades
of
a life we'll live. They were such golden
nuggets and I jotted down at least four
quotes and anecdotes each day about faith,
courage, and a lot of dry humor.
So this time that I
put aside to help my mother,
it also is inspiring a film about her
life.
One example of her wisdom is when I
shared concern about current politics,
she said that
in her lifetime,
Europe was being overtaken by the Nazi, but
they were defeated.
Germany also went on to take down the
wall between east and west
and that so much can change in a
relatively short period of time.
Very, very comforting.
That's so comforting, especially given all that's happening
now.
Let's end on this. If there were a
message you were carrying in your shoes, as
you cared for your mother,
what would it
be? Trust in your inner knowing.
Absolutely.
And know that your angels do have your
back.
There was this one time since my mother
passed where
I get messages daily,
but during
the pandemic, we would go
walk up to Coit Tower.
So one of these days after her passing,
I'm going up to Coit
Tower and I see written in the cement
for the first time ever that I've done
this path so many times,
my mother's name, Tanya in cement on a
staircase.
And on the way down,
I said in my thoughts to her, I
love you.
And
not a moment later, I looked to the
pavement and in chalk
written out in all caps is love lips.
Oh, that's beautiful.
Nicole, thank you so much for sharing your
story
with listeners,
with me
speaking it out loud.
I appreciate you.
I appreciate you all so much. Every teacher,
really. You're all so amazing. Thank you.
Thank you for listening to our podcast. My
name is Liza Ingrassi. I'm the CEO and
president of Hoffman Institute Foundation.
And I'm Razi Ingrassi,
Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute
Foundation.
Our mission is to provide people greater access
to the wisdom and power of love. In
themselves, in each other and in the world.
To find out more, please go to hoffmaninstitute.org.