In this Episode
Life can hit you unexpectedly but you’ll realize that God has prepared you for the situation you’re in. Ghesi Stojanov, a transformational coach, is a breast cancer survivor. Through her faith in God, support from family and community, and patience throughout her healing journey, Ghesi was able to accept change and to take control of her situation.

Highlights
02:09 Ghesi felt like it was God who told her to go to the hospital. Although she was not the typical breast cancer pitcher, all she asked was for God to give her peace throughout her new journey.
07:06 Breast cancer, or any health issue, is not only the problem of the person affected but of the family and community as well. God blessed Ghesi with an amazing husband and neighbors.
10:17 The struggle was not going to define Ghesi. Instead, she took control of the situation. Her husband was her voice of reason but also remained encouraging for her to prioritize her needs in order to keep her alive.
15:57 Ghesi had to learn to sit back, and reflect on her emotions in order to communicate better. She had to change my mindset into instead of saying, “Why me?” to saying, “Why not me?”
18:47 “I am rising because God has given me everything that I need. I just need to be still stop feeling sorry for myself, listen to the direction, and what I need, so I can get healthy and I can grow from it.”
20:56 Acknowledging your emotions when you’re going through a hardship allows your mind and body to align in order to create a to start a plan of action and know what you need. Rebbetzin Bat-Chen also shares how journaling can help you connect with yourself and God.
28:23 Every day is a process for healing and a chance to get closer to God and healing. If you really want to see some type of change, you really have to be willing to put the work in every day. It’s not always going to be happy, and that’s okay.
37:35 Learn about the Marriage Breakthrough Retreat! Sign up to be part of the waitlist.

Links
Be The Color
Marriage Breakthrough Retreat

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REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
Welcome to the Connected For Real Podcast! I’m Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman, a marriage coach for women in business, and my mission is to bring God’s presence into your life, into your marriage, and into your business. Let’s get started. The following is one of the many conversations I had with experts and professionals about real life and how it affects marriage. Let me know your takeaways on Instagram or Facebook, @connectedforreal. Enjoy. And we’re live. Hi everyone. I am Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman from connectedforreal.com. I am a God-centered marriage coach. Today I have Ghesi with me, and I’m so excited. She’s going to introduce herself because it’s just–she’s too awesome. I can’t even start, so Ghesi tell us who you are.

GHESI STOJANOV
Hi everyone. I’m Ghesi Stojanov and I’m a transformational life coach–all about balance and helping you own your journey.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
Yes, own your journey is exactly what we’re here to talk about. Let’s dive right in since we gave everybody a total spoiler by calling this title of this video Breast Cancer in Marriage. As you guys know, this is my show where I take everything in life and really just how it affects the marriage. So we talk about money and marriage, and career and marriage, and we talk about time management and organization in the house. We talk about everything because it all has to do with your marriage. It will all affect your marriage and I think that this was a perfect topic that we’ve never spoken before about, which is going through, specifically breast cancer, but really we could talk about any process like that where you have to go through a journey that is really almost, I guess, shocking and sort of pushes you out of your comfort zone and how that affects the marriage. Don’t forget, you’re not the only one going through it. Your husband is probably going through his own journey as well. So tell us a little bit about the story.

GHESI STOJANOV
I was not the typical breast cancer pitcher. Usually people with breast cancer–they’re older in age, in their 60s. I was 33 when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and I thought I did everything right. I made sure I breastfed my kids till they were two–not only for their support but also they say if you breastfeed up to two it lessens your chances of having breast cancer. I tried to have a clean diet. I didn’t drink smoke. I tried to live a healthy lifestyle. When I started having issues, more so it wasn’t even breast-related sometimes, I would get some soreness. I went to go to my doctor to say, “Listen, there’s something that’s just not right,” and I just felt like it was God just telling me, “Ghesi, you need to go check yourself,” and I’m like something’s not right. I was lucky enough that my doctor–she didn’t disregard my symptoms. She listened to me, and said, “Listen, let’s just go get this checked and make sure it’s nothing. It’s probably a cyst. You’re so young. I can’t feel a lump. You’re good.” I went in to go get an ultrasound, and I remember going in there and–just my personality, I love chatting, learning about other people, and what they’re doing. We were chatting, chatting, chatting. We were having a good old time when she was doing the ultrasound on my left side. As soon as she got to the right side, the mood of the room changed. I was like, “Oh, this is not good.” She went from laughing and being in a great spirit to all of a sudden being very quiet giving me yes-no answers. I was like, “Oh my goodness. This can’t be good,” and in that moment I knew that I was probably going to have to go on a breast cancer journey. I didn’t know what it looked like but I knew that this was going to change my life. It wasn’t even 30 minutes that I got a phone call from my doctor saying, “Hey, we have to schedule you in because they did find a lump and it looks suspicious.” I was like, “Oh brother.” At that time, I had an 18 month old, I had a seven-year-old, and we were living in Australia. My husband’s Australian. On the opposite side of where all his family were living, in Perth was where we were, and they were in Melbourne side. So we were by ourselves, and I was like, “How are we going to do this? I don’t even know how we’re going to do this.” I remember just praying–just asking God to give me peace. I knew it was gonna be okay but I just needed the piece just to get through the first steps because always the first steps with anything are the hardest right. I had an appointment to see my doctor at lunchtime, and you know it’s not a good thing when your doctor calls you in early. I was in the middle of grocery shopping, and they’re like, “Ghesi, you need to drop everything. You need to come in now,” and I was like, “Okay. Let me just leave everything. Let me go and see you.” I went in there and my doctor was so sweet. She was very quiet, and she’s like, “Ghesi, it’s cancer,” and just my personality, I was like, “Are you kidding?” She’s like, “Why would I kid about something–” It was just like, “You’re joking, right? This is a joke,” and she’s like, “No, I’m not joking.” I just felt all my feelings in that moment. I remember going into the doctor’s office, and it was beautiful. It was sunny. It was a nice, beautiful sunny Perth day. I remember then coming out of the office, and it was like God was weeping with me and for me because it started to rain. I just was just feeling it. It was just like a full moment, and I’m like, “What am I going to do?” Breast cancer of all things. I never thought that that would be something that would affect me, especially at 33. Literally, I had just turned 33 a month before, so I was like 33 by a month.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
And were you still nursing?

GHESI STOJANOV
I had just stopped nursing so that’s what triggered me to go in because I thought I had mastitis. The doctor was like, “Let’s make sure it’s not just a really bad infection. We might have to give you antibiotics,” so that’s what triggered the whole investigation thing and that’s when we found the tumor. That’s when I started to go on my breast cancer journey, and really tapping into my inner voice, learning to be my own advocate, learning just to push through, and really grow in a positive thinking and mindset because when you’re faced with something like cancer, it really pushes all the boundaries of what you think is possible and what you can do in your life. It was definitely a crazy time for me.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
Yeah, I can imagine that. How did you have him take it because he wasn’t there with you and along any of these appointments I don’t hear him there so–

GHESI STOJANOV
No, he wasn’t. He was the main breadwinner so I had to go to these appointments by myself, and it’s pretty scary when you’re sitting there with–you don’t have the comfort of someone to say, “It’s okay,” and kind of talk you off the ledge. You have to learn to talk yourself off the ledge, and really keep yourself centered. I remember telling my husband, I would say that I’m very much like happy and stuff. He’s very happy, but he’s very serious at the same time. So he’s like, “Okay. What are the steps, what do we have to do?”

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
What do we do next? What are the practical steps and how do we get there?

GHESI STOJANOV
Exactly. I’m like, “Oh my goodness. Okay, this is what it needs to be. It’s a, b, c, d.” The one thing we struggled with initially, more so my husband, was the getting the help factor. We were so used to doing everything on our own. We had to step back and realize I have to do six rounds of chemotherapy. We’re all by ourselves. I have a two-year-old, I have a seven-year-old. How am I going to do this? I was lucky enough that God placed me in a community that heard that I had breast cancer, and all the school moms rallied around me. I didn’t know any of these people, really, and they signed up for meal plans. They helped pick up and drop off my daughter to and from school. They were just–I will say the Australian spirit–it’s beautiful. When they really want to help their community out, when someone is down and out–so that whole journey was him trying to encourage but at the same time, he couldn’t really help me. He couldn’t help me go through chemotherapy. He could just try to help me with my emotions, and really help keep me centered when I was feeling like I couldn’t do it anymore. He would encourage me to calm–just, “You can do this. I can’t do this without you. You have to push through,” because what happens is with chemotherapy it becomes accumulative. The chemotherapy starts building up in your system and by the time you’re at your sixth round. That’s when you’re gonna feel the worst because that’s when it’s all built up in your system, and by halfway point is when most people just have that make or break moment where they’re like, “I can’t do this anymore. My body can’t do this,” and he would be the voice of reason saying, “Think about your kids. You’ve got this. You’re stronger than this,” and he would really encourage me just to push on and keep on moving forward. He was really my cheerleader.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
I’m thinking in the positive side of things. You were saying, “He can help me.” So thank God. When a woman goes into labor, this happens to me–well I’ve had it six times already. It’s like you’re going through all this stuff, and he’s just like helpless guy on the side, except he’s totally part of this experience except he’s not so there’s this really weird feeling about it. I can’t put the words to it but how is he handling being that awkward position of, “This is my life but I have no control over. There’s nothing I can do–”

GHESI STOJANOV
Right, of course. He struggled through the process as well because he wanted to be able to kind of share the load and take some of that pain away but he couldn’t. The thing that really was confronting to him, I think, were the physical changes that I had to go–I was going through. For me, when I knew I had to do chemotherapy, I decided that I was going to try to have some type of control of this whole situation, so I decided to shave my head before my hair started falling out because I knew that it would damage me more mentally–I would struggle with my hair coming out, so I wanted to have that control and he was there helping me shave my head, and just encouraging that process of me owning the journey. The one thing that I will say that he struggled the most with, and I struggled the most with too, was when I made the choice to have a double mastectomy without reconstruction. That is huge as a female, and that’s also huge for your husband who’s used to you looking a certain way. Then you’re going in, your body’s totally changing, and both of us are having then to reframe what it is to be human, what it is to be a female, and what it is to be married. That was one of the things that he struggled the most with. I remember that I had to learn to be patient as well. There’s such a thing when you’re going through chemo called chemo rage, and it’s just from all the steroids. You’re poisoning yourself to get rid of this cancer, and he was super patient because I was just like, “Why aren’t you understanding? I need to do this process. I’m not going to go and get reconstruction.” In my mind I knew–with the type of cancer I had, because I was triple positive, I was so young when I got diagnosis, that the reality is the doctors told me I have a 50-50 chance of it coming back, and the thought of it possibly coming back at a 50 chance scared me. I wanted to be able to feel everything because while you still get a mastectomy done, and they do remove most of the breast tissue, they can’t get it all without removing your muscle so I still have breast tissue on my chest wall, which is where the cancer can still grow from. So I was like, “I know that I would drive myself nuts if I had an implant and I couldn’t feel everything. It would not be good for me, so for me to actually make the decision for myself without really having the–not that you need the permission from your husband but getting that, “Okay” when you go through something big, you’re a team. So you talk it through. For instance I was like, “There’s no talking it through. This is what is happening,” and that was where kind of things started shifting as well in the marriage because it was more like, “Okay this is not about us. It is but really it’s about keeping you alive, safe, and what you need right now.” So it was kind of a shift in that dynamic where he had to take more of the back seat and it wasn’t a “we” it was a “you” at that time.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
Well I mean your nature is so nurturing, and making sure everybody’s happy in every situation–that that was really against your nature. There’s something really powerful about seeing someone get out of their comfort zone and saying, “This is really important for me.” It’s like, “Oh my gosh. She is not joking. It’s not like this usual “self.” It’s that she really means this.”

GHESI STOJANOV
Yeah, and we had to have something so–which seems so silly. ‘Breast’ was really the big topic in our house because it was like he couldn’t wrap his mind around it, and then I had to wrap my mind around–like, “Am I still a female? How do you–” Asking all these questions about myself and learning to really love who I was for who I was, not what I looked like on the outside was another long journey itself but that choice to not have reconstruction was the first shift kind of where, like you said, as a mom, and at the time I was a stay-at-home mom, where I would let him take the lead in a lot of things–that I was taking the lead in this instance and it really helped my journey for me to really advocate for myself and really speak on what is in my heart instead of holding it back because I feel when you hold things back that’s when a lot of things fester and turn into huge monsters that really don’t need to be there. I always say communication–you have to communicate, communicate, communicate. It’s actually worse for you to hold it in than it is to actually talk about the topic. Work it out and get through it but–

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
The most important thing–I think the prerequisite to communication is getting in touch with yourself connecting to yourself. You have to know what you want in order to communicate because just sitting around like communicating with a girlfriend. It’s like, “Help me think this through because I’m thinking all these things and I need to just blab.” That’s one thing and that’s great–just rant it out, get it out, listen to yourself, and sort of like get together your main points of what is really important to you but then when you go and talk to your husband that’s really when you come and say, “These are the things I process. These are the things that are important to me. These are the things that are non-negotiable, and these are things that I don’t even care about.” So you’re having an actual conversation as opposed to coming and just trying to blab to your husband about who knows what.

GHESI STOJANOV
Well and then to–just like you said, you need to be able to tune in and understand why. What is triggering you to feel these emotions? It may not even have to do it–it’s most of the time, it has nothing to do with your spouse but the way with how you’re living and expressing yourself through that journey. So I had to learn too to sit back and really think about why am I angry. I’m not really angry at him. I’m angry at the situation. I’m angry right now because I have to go through this right now and I had to change my mindset into instead of saying, “Why me?” to saying, “Why not me?” because I would not want anyone else to be going through this breast cancer journey. So I started to change my mindset and that’s what catapulted me into transformational coaching–is reframing the way I thought and then using every moment as a tool to learn, glean from, and really try to look for pictures of God because I had to ground myself during that process. I was still loving towards my kids. I could still get up and I could still have a smile on my face, and that I could use this moment as a teaching tool for my children because unfortunately, life is life. It’s not perfect here. This is an experience that they will have forever that I didn’t want them to–for it to leave a dark mark on their timeline. I wanted them to use this moment as a springboard to own their journey as well and understand what that process looks like. It was powerful for everybody.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
Yes, it’s just amazing that every person has their own challenges and the challenges are tailor made. We forget sometimes that God’s running the world but nothing is a mistake. It wasn’t like, “Oh I’ll sprinkle this here and sprinkle this there.” God knows exactly what I can handle, exactly at what time, and exactly what tools I need so I have everything I need before I even get this. That’s what really blows me away is sometimes we feel bad–sometimes I see someone going through something. I’m like, “I don’t think I would ever be able to handle that.” Yeah, you’re not supposed to. You’re not the one who got it, so to put yourself in their situation and then say, “I can’t–I don’t know how she handles it,” because it’s not you. You don’t know–you’ll never know and they’re handling it the way they were sort of set up to. So everything that happened to you until now is setting you up for what you need for the next stage. This stage is setting you up for the next stage so I don’t think that you could have become who you had become without that experience.

GHESI STOJANOV
Oh, most definitely. I couldn’t, and I think it’s really important to be able to, when you’re going through trials and circumstances, to get out of your own way and just take that moment and pause because one of the biggest things that we forget is everyone talks about a positive mindset–to be happy, and everything’s roses but what too many people often think what that means is you’re supposed to be happy all the time. That’s not the reality. What it means is you’re supposed to own what is happening to you at the moment. Own it. Feel those feelings, embrace it, then do something with it. That process was such a huge eye opening moment for me–that I’m like, “Okay, I am owning this breast cancer.” I was terrified. I came, I was terrified of radiation up to that point. I’d never had a surgery so I was–the whole process was terrifying and I chose to show up in my life. One of the these quotes that I love is, “Your life is an occasion. Rise to it. Every moment is a moment for us to rise and shine.” I really held on to that and I’m like, I am rising because God has given me everything that I need. I just need to be still stop feeling sorry for myself, listen to the direction, and what I need, so I can get healthy and I can grow from it.”

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
We talked about God, how everything is from God, and how He set us up. It’s all very like fuzzy, fluffy, and sort of up in the air. I want to get it really grounded for people. That’s the real part. It’s like I want to get really practical about what are things, even the little things, that can really help people in any situation, specifically in any health situation that is life altering like that, but any situation really. What would you say to someone that can–they could use as an anchor that is a practical thing?

GHESI STOJANOV
For me, I will always tell everyone–number one is to make sure you’re spiritually connected. That spiritual connection and anchor is so important because when you feel like you’re tapped out, you’re able to tap in, and you’re able to get re-energized. So for me, I have my morning devotion time, meditation time, and I still do that now. I make sure that I have a moment because we’re moms. It’s busy. We have a lot of responsibility where the house is still quiet, and I can just tune in when I can hear God speak to me because that’s the most important thing–is to be able to navigate the direction that you need to go and you need to be able to hear Him speak. So that would be number one. The second thing would be for you to embrace your circumstances. Embrace what is happening now and when you embrace it that means that you are in the process of then acknowledging what is happening. You have to be okay with what is happening now and not think of it as, “Why me?” and just get it down that spiral because all of us could be go, go down that rabbit hole.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
Once you’re able to, it’s fine. It’s normal if you fall into it. It’s just really important to get out of it. It’s a choice to say, “This is normal human reaction that I’m feeling,” that it’s not fair, that, “Why me, I don’t want this,” and saying it’s not supposed to be this way and then snap yourself out, be like, “It’s supposed to be this way because this is how it is.”

GHESI STOJANOV
Yeah, embracing it, embracing the emotions. That’s embracing everything because God created us with feeling. You have to go through that grieving process. It’s so important. You have to release it. Once you’re able then to embrace it all, then you’re able to acknowledge it, and that’s really important as well because I’m sure many of us know people, that maybe may not be their favorite, but you’re a kind person so you say your g’day, you acknowledge them, you say hello but to be able to really understand where they’re at and where you’re at, you have to acknowledge everything that is happening so then you can then start listening to what you need. So you have to acknowledge that moment. When you acknowledge it, it allows your mind and your body to kind of align to start creating a plan to action, to then what’s the next steps, and then you’re listening to what you’re needing then because if you’re not embracing, acknowledging what is happening, how do you know what you need? You don’t. so that’s the different thing. It’s so important and then once you acknowledge, you listen then you come into the understanding that, “Hey, you’re owning this moment. You’re owning your happiness. You’re owning your choices in your life, and that you can start creating,” then the space and start creating the direction that you want to head into to achieve that goal, to get you over this dark moment. This, in my situation, breast cancer–so I had to start listening then to what I needed and I definitely needed those moments where–just speak to me but I also needed my own space where I could just be sick and my morning’s broken, then if I needed to without waking up my husband–so I was like, “Okay, this is your space now.” We moved my kids into the same room, and I was able to have my own little space where I could just go to, just be me, and have my moment. Being able to tune in is so important as well in this whole process.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
I love that you said that. I think for me my personal practical go-to would be journaling. I think if I had to take anything on, because first of all, within journaling you can have prayer. You can have the emotion processing. You can have so much–I really think that it’s this one and all-in-one type of tool that if you get into journaling, and if let’s say you start every single day, you can some days do mindset work–question your thoughts, “What’s going on? What am I feeling?” then the next day, you can write about prayer and the next day you can have a whole conversation back and forth with your future self or with God or with I don’t know–a million other options. I found that when I’m able to be consistent with journaling, I get so much out of the experience because I prepare for the experience, I can go through the experience, and then I can unpack the experience, really learn it, and see–and my favorite part is going back and seeing where I was last time or where I was when I started or just being able to go back and say like, “Wow, that’s crazy that I said those things, that I thought that I think, that in any situation.” It really enhances the whole experience because you have something physical and practical to do about what you’re feeling about what’s going on. Like when you were saying, “I’m not angry with you, I’m angry with the situation,” I was I was thinking about those people–I get a lot of this where people will say, “I’m angry with God. Why did he do this to me?” and this is a natural reaction. I always say that’s a very good thing because at least you know who it’s coming from. There’s this baseline of “I know God did this to me. Now I just need to figure out–did He do it to me because he’s mean, cause He doesn’t like me, He’s trying to get at me for something, or does He want me to learn something?” You finally have a conversation of like, “Hi. I’m angry. I don’t think this is fair. Tell me what you want from me,” so then you could be open to listening, and you get answers about what’s going on, why I think you’re amazing. You need to grow, and you need to really go through this in order to make you who you are. It gives so much. I feel like being open about that and saying it’s okay to say it out loud and say, “Instead of being angry with people or angry with random things, just go straight to the source,” and be like, “Not here. That’s not what I expected.” Being willing to have that conversation because you’re saying, “Communicate. This is–” The ideal completion is like I’m willing to stand up to God and say, “I don’t understand and I don’t know if I need to understand.” My mother says, “Amazing talk. Thank you so much for being open.” Before when I was talking to her, she said, “You’re so brave for having these conversations,” and I was thinking I didn’t even think of it like that because–

GHESI STOJANOV
They’re great conversations because everyone’s on a different journey, and we can all glean because we all have trials we all experience things that feel like they’re bigger than us.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
Something that a person could go through, something completely different, and has nothing to do with breast cancer, even health, or anything and they can listen to this and say, “Oh my gosh, that’s such a good practical tool. I’m gonna pick that up,” or “That’s such a good point that she brought up,” or “I really like how she was able to ground herself,” and you can really hold on to those things and collect them for yourself. So I think that’s really why it’s so important to do this. Another thing is I want everybody to know that you’re normal. Nobody is walking around being like, “I’m perfect nothing bad happens to me and I’m just happy all the time,” because like you were saying, you’re happy all the time. I’m Mrs. Happy. I grew up I was all happy, happy, happy, and one of the things that you said that really resonated with me is being happy does not mean shoving all the other emotions aside and just making sure they’re not seen. It’s not really real. Happiness comes from being able to really lean into those things and process them so that you’re fully able to embrace the happy. Yeah, you could be grateful, in the moment, and just enjoy your life.

GHESI STOJANOV
Yeah, yeah. I agree because when you’re able to own your happiness. You’re able then to put the right emotion in its appropriate box then you can then work through–I need to fix this. Obviously, this is something that’s making me not happy and when you’re able to do that then you’re able then to go work in that area, and when you can find fulfillment, you can find joy. When we understand that we’re in charge of our own happiness. It’s not our children. It’s not our husbands. It’s not our friends. We’re in charge of owning, and what that looks like–it is a powerful thing because then you wake up every day with intention to make it a happy day. When something happens, you just roll with it. It’s like, “Okay,  today might be really like crappy but that is okay because there’s tomorrow.” You’re allowed to have your down moments and pick yourself back up.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
That’s amazing. Just today, somebody asked, “How are you doing with the whole lockdown and your kids being home all day?” and she’s like, “I hear it’s really hard on my listening ear,” I was thinking, “Honestly, I don’t even know if I want to start talking about it because it’ll just all spill out.” There’s some weeks that I don’t know if we can handle this anymore, and some weeks where I’m like, “Yeah, we could do this forever,” but there are some weeks like last week where I felt like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know what we’re doing. What happening?” I was feeling guilty about all the YouTube my kids were watching, and how I’m just not present, not enough, or– I was not in a good place so everything was not in a good place and I was able to like reground myself and find myself a little bit. So amazing totally in flow everything’s fine but you’re going to have those ups and downs and that’s why I did this so is I really want you to know everybody here watching and beyond, we’re all human and it’s really important.

GHESI STOJANOV
I agree. We can’t get in that thinking that the grass is greener on the other side because everyone’s got to water their own grass. That’s why it looks so green. They’re obviously doing what it needs, what needs to take place, and it’s not that you want what they want. You want that extreme experience but you got to put the work in.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
My neighbors had–a couple of years ago, they did their yard and they put in synthetic grass. It just made me laugh so hard because I thought some people look over the fence, and the grass is greener on the other side. It’s because it’s fake. It was such a good metaphor for my life. It’s just like, “Okay, breathe it in. We’re having a normal life. Kids, we got this. The house is a mess but it’s supposed to be this way. Everyone’s happy –“

GHESI STOJANOV
It is supposed to be this way because it is this way.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
Ah yes. Give us a little bit of the last punchline thing of–just the put it all together for us.

GHESI STOJANOV
Pull it all together–I would say communication is key. Communication to God, communication to your friends, communication to your spouse, communication to your children. I tell—communicate, communicate, communicate because when you’re able to communicate, you have the proper communication, you have to actively listen. When you’re actively listening then you’re able to come to some type of resolution. You can problem solve, you can work it out, and to also understand that you own your journey. You may not own the circumstances or how you like what happens, like breast cancer. I would have never thought that was something I was going to deal with but it was something I was dealt with, so I made the choice to make a royal flush out of it. Do you know what I’m saying? So it’s like you have this moment…own it. Rock it. Do something with it so it’s not a dark spot in your lifetime. it is something that you can be proud of because one of the things that energizes everyone is when they can look back and be proud of the journey and who they were through that process. So owning it, having pride, and knowing that God has got you–He’s got you. You just have to be willing to kind of loosen that grip so He can actually speak to you. Have a moment to let Him speak, and open your ears and your heart to receive what is being said. When He speaks, to then act on what He’s telling you to do because nothing worth anything comes easy. It takes work and when you put the work in every day, the change sticks and that’s when you become powerful.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
I wanted to say sometimes people who are in it, like a person who’s in the situation, is seeing a person like you, and on one hand it gives a lot of hope because, “Oh my gosh. I can turn my life around and use this as fuel to become who I need to become and to really lean into myself, my power, my gifts and everything.” On the other hand it’s almost like, “Oh my gosh–but right now, I’m so exhausted and it’s really like weighing me down.” How do I almost– They compare to you even though you’re not in the same situation. You’re there in chapter three and you’re ready and–

GHESI STOJANOV
I almost need the first thing because that’s the first thing I always say is, “I’m a normal person.” There’s nothing crazy. There was nothing that I was given a tool that you don’t–the only thing is that it’s been seven years since I am cancer-free so you’re seeing seven years now. Every day was a process and if you’re really wanting to see some type of change, you really have to be willing to put the work in every day. You’re training for a marathon. Your life is a marathon. You’re training so you’ve got to put a little bit of work in every day, and then over time you start seeing that compound effect starts building up. Things are multiplying, tripling. You’re like, “Wow, how did I even get here?” because you put little bits of time every day. No one’s asking you to change your whole life overnight because you didn’t get there overnight. To get time, to get to a place that you’re happy and you’re finding fulfillment. You’re not. So that would be the biggest thing that I would tell anybody going through anything we’re people. We’re all the same.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
How can people find you? So you can find me on Instagram–on Facebook.

GHESI STOJANOV
My business is called Be The Color, or on LinkedIn Ghesi Stojanov. I do a lot of posting and live videos on there, so you can follow me there. My website’s bethecolor.com because your life is your greatest masterpiece so be the color in it there as well. You can find me in those places. I’m gonna be rolling out a YouTube channel, so I will be posting a lot of my videos up there soon so you can see a lot of the content. Foremost, I will say the reason why I love coaching is because I use the tips and tricks that I’ve learned–I share with you so I’m my own guinea pig. I’m forever learning. I’m a forever student, so I love going on this journey and just empowering and cheerleading people to own their life, and be the best version that they want to be so they can find fulfillment.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
First of all, I did not know that your thing was Be The Color. I so resonate with that. Oh my God, you’re beautiful. Thank you. I have to tell you guys about the retreat. It’s going to be one hour of me every single day for seven days except we skip Friday and Saturday. You get the workbook, you get homework, you get implementation calls, you get the full experience as if it was a real retreat, except it’s virtual. Sorry I wish it was real. I wish it was in real life, and we could actually hug each other. I miss those days but it’s gonna–one day. It’s called the Marriage Breakthrough Retreat because we are taking women in business who are married and really just sort of leveling their marriage up to where it needs to be so that it can support the business because if your marriage is not supporting your business then you’re not really at your full capacity moving forward in your purpose and really doing what you need to be doing so I am super passionate about this. My biggest passion because I am a woman in business and I had to go through this journey just like you were saying you’re your own guinea pig I am. I’m just super excited about doing this because it’s been brewing for a while so it’s like, “Whoa, there’s like six days left.” I am so excited in case you guys weren’t signed up, it’s connectedforreal.com/retreat.

GHESI STOJANOV
Oh, I’m super excited to learn how to not only connect within what you’re doing business-wise but also level up in your marriage, which I think is so important. I think we kind of touched that even with what we talked about today, about being able to communicate and express what your needs are but in a way where you’re growing together.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
I think the biggest thing is I was a woman in business I was a graphic designer for 15 years and my specialty was packaging. So here I was growing, growing, growing my business and becoming this specialty-niche person about packaging. First for product lines, so it was like a whole family of products and it was really fun. Everybody was looking up to me and I was like that cool person and I’d get home and I’d be like just another human being-like normal. So it felt like a downer, and I felt like I liked work more than I liked being home. I didn’t like that. Thank God I’m very self-aware, and I was able to really put that into words and communicate that. I did a lot of work myself because I just—well, I didn’t think that my husband would go along with any of the couple things and I realized that really it was within me. I needed to figure out what I needed to do in order to make it work and so I think it’s just what worked for me. It’s been working now for other people. It’s just been amazing so since I had to go through it. You guys get to go through it too and it’s a free retreat, did I say that it’s free? That’s exciting. I think that free is just really fun because you can taste something, see if it’s your style, and there’s no commitment. Even things that are free, if you commit to them and really take them seriously, like print the workbook, do the homework, take advantage of everything that’s given, you can have such an amazing transformation. So I think that it has to do with you because–

GHESI STOJANOV
I’ll be there.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
Thank you so much for coming. It was heartwarming. Your whole story is just unbelievable, and it–I think just listening to it makes for gratitude, for seeing life as precious, and leaning into not waiting for anything.

GHESI STOJANOV
This is our one moment. Let’s create something beautiful.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
I love–there was this meme that said, “It’s either one day or day one,” and exactly that. You have these dreams, and it’s either you take action. Today’s day one. That doesn’t mean that now you’re perfect. It just means that you started.

GHESI STOJANOV
It means that it’s just taking an active role in your life, so go for it.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
I thought that was powerful.

GHESI STOJANOV
I agree.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
Thank you so much. Thank you all for listening. If you guys have any questions, you can find Ghesi, you can find me on social media and ask us. We are here for you. So thank you. And that’s it! Thank you for listening to the very end. I would love if you can leave a review and subscribe to the podcast. Those are things that tell the algorithm, this is a good podcast and make sure to suggest it to others. Wouldn’t it be amazing if more people became more connected for real? And now, take a moment and think of someone who might benefit from this episode. Can you share it with them? I am Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman from connectedforreal.com. Thank you so much for listening, and don’t forget, you can be connected for real.

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