Crystal’s Butterfly Effect - A Mother’s Journey from Loss to Transformation with Vickie Menendez

July 4, 2025·50 min·4 clips

Vickie Menendez lost four of her five children, two just 12 days apart, and shares how she transformed that grief into a memoir.

Grief is the center of the episode, and the show does not rush past it. The host introduces Vicki Menendez through Crystal's Butterfly Effect, naming a mother who lost four of her five children, including two just 12 days apart. That history stays in the room. Vicki's healing work comes after stillbirth, the death of a son, the death of her father, and more family loss, but the conversation does not turn it into a neat recovery script. She talks instead about paying attention to what actually helps. For some people that may be breath work. For others, yoga, a walk outside, or bare feet on the ground. Her own example is very specific: during the hardest stretch of grieving, especially after losing two children, she practiced yin yoga twice a day for about a month. Morning and night, for about half an hour, she had a place to feel what was there without being hurried into comfort. That is the most honest part of the interview. Healing is treated less like getting over sorrow and more like making room for sorrow and joy to live in the same body. The host mostly gives her space. The questions stay plain: loss, transformation, and what helped her get through the day. Vicki talks about long-held poses, heart-opening movement, nature, and emotional release in a way that feels personal rather than polished. The close is warm, with the memoir named again and listeners pointed to healwithvicki.com.

As heard by us

A quiet grief conversation that treats healing as a practice, not a revelation.

Vicki Menendez gives a direct account of losing four of her five children and of the routines that helped her keep going. The memoir leans into grief as something lived day by day, not resolved all at once.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you need a gentle room for grief and healing.

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