Today we’d like to introduce you to Mary Allard.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Mary. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I am a Colorado girl through and through. I was born and raised here, alongside my four older siblings in what used to be an old schoolhouse just outside of Greeley. The schoolhouse was built in 1910 when the area was known as the Auburn Community. The Auburn School was a small, three-room school that operated until 1960. It is also known for a great tragedy when a Union Pacific “City of Denver” passenger train collided with the school bus. This was the deadliest school bus accident in Colorado history, killing 20 of the 38 passengers. I mention this because the property felt very sacred and spiritual when we lived there. The house didn’t feel “haunted,” but it held a great amount of child-like energy which strongly defined my childhood as the youngest of five kids. It had the energy of an amusement park, without any rides or frills, just a farmhouse in the middle of Northern Colorado.
Being born into a family of seven people is the foundation of my story. I had a built-in tribe from birth. Many times the baby of a family gets a bad rap for being coddled and spoiled, though this is rarely the truth with such a big family. It was not my truth, anyhow. Being the baby of the tribe gave me grit, fed my extroverted and relational personality, and set me up to be a compassionate leader. It also called on me to be quick, sharp, curious, and able to pivot. To this day, I know it is the foundation of who I am and why I am now doing work in the support of the development of people on their personal and professional journeys.
Throughout my upbringing, I was quite the over-achiever, which came naturally to me. I was inspired by my siblings and driven to succeed and make them proud. The one box of stuff I keep in my basement from my childhood is filled with blue ribbons, trophies, and straight A report cards. My life was active and I thrived being busy. As a mother of one three-year-old now, I have NO CLUE how my mom and dad were able to juggle five extremely active children, but they did it with grace and ease.
As a family, we had our “stuff” like any family, but until Middle School, I mostly felt lucky and blessed in life. Then when I was 12, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was found early enough that her double mastectomy was considered curative. Regardless, her recovery is one that I will never forget. Witnessing my superhero mom go from juggling the five of us kids to being heavily reliant on our help and the help of her friends shocked my system. It was in that time that one of my sisters came into her own as my mom’s “nurse.” My sister later became a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner here in Denver, CO. It was around that time that I first heard the word “holistic” and would lay the foundation for how I would begin to move in the world.
In High School my world was rattled. After 36 years, my parents divorced. I was the only one in the home, with all of my siblings either in or out of college. I was accustomed to living in a space that was vibrating with people and energy 24/7 to feeling completely alone and abandoned. Around then my struggle with food and an eating disorder surfaced and because I was a kid that was always appearing to be many years older than my actual age (I mean: I was named Mary in the late 80s, for goodness sake): I sought out therapy for myself. It was at that time that I became obsessed with understanding the way we work, the way we relate with ourselves and others, the way we process, and the way we heal.
Like many 18 year-olds, I didn’t know what on earth I wanted to study in college, so I just went with the direction of my academic scholarship: Business School. Although I would eventually attend three universities, I first chose CU Boulder because of the scholarship and then found myself suffering with my eating disorder and deep insecurities. Unfortunately, I was housed in the dorms that are a mile away from the main campus. I transferred to CSU in Fort Collins to study Dietetics and studied abroad in New Zealand where I was exposed to my first naturopath. This was the beginning of my love for embodying a holistic life. Upon returning to my studies in Dietetics, I felt conventional school was missing a huge piece of the puzzle. We were pushing numbers to understand people’s relationship to food and diet and missing the rest of it. If we are body, mind, and spirit, then where was the body and the spirit in this equation? That is how I landed at Naropa University (finally) in Boulder, CO. Here I got my degree in Contemplative Psychology with an emphasis on Health and Healing. My academic journey was pivotal in my own healing journey and my thesis was on how our relationship to food impacts the way our body receives it. My three college experiences served me well, resulting in a combination of conventional and contemplative wisdom.
Throughout my higher education, I worked in the natural foods space, starting at Alfalfa’s Market in Boulder. I quickly advanced from a department manager to an assistant store manager. From there, I spent time working with and leading teams with different beverage brands until I had my son Sawyer and everything radically changed. Having a kid will quickly make you realize that you no longer can sustain 70-hour-weeks and no longer want to… The first year is pure survival, let alone returning to work at six weeks postpartum. I felt blessed and grateful to have any maternity leave at all, being that I worked for an independent company and not a large corporation. Not only that, but my husband and support system was bar none, all of the things you’re told will prevent any postpartum depression (PPD). But, despite all the cards stacked in my favor, it was at the time that I started to fall back into my overachieving ways that I was diagnosed with PPD.
The stigma around having postpartum depression is real. When you tell people you had PPD, they immediately assume the worst case scenario. For me, my PPD didn’t present in a dramatically severe way. Instead, I was in a constant state of adrenaline blended with depression – a confusing cocktail. While my relationship with my kiddo was unphased, my physical body was breaking down from extreme insomnia that would leave me without sleep or a lucky 3 hours for nearly two years. My son being chronically sick for the first two years of his life contributed to this some. I tried EVERYTHING, including conventional sleep medicine (which was an ego struggle for me personally, being so focused on a holistic way of being). In an attempt to use exercise to exhaust me, I got back into mountain biking. On a solo ride, I had the worst crash of my life, lacerating my thigh muscle and getting a traumatic brain injury (TBI). This was my wakeup call.
Recovering from a TBI was intense and humbling. Just as I began to make progress, my husband underwent back surgery. Earlier in the year, our son also had surgery at two-years-old. We experienced a good amount of financial stress from the compounded medical bills coupled with fluctuations with my work in the natural foods start-up world. This journey called on every ounce of grit I had developed in my 30 years of life. These few years of turbulence encouraged me to look closely at every part of my life and how I was spending my time and energy. I asked myself some of the following questions:
How does my current work serve me?
How does it deplete me?
What energizes me the most?
What micro moments in the day gave me joy?
Is there a way I could make my work complement my home life instead of compete with it?
How could my work become a vehicle to bring my innate gifts and full self to the world?
What were my innate gifts?
My discoveries encouraged me to take a leap and start my own business Five Element LLC. I held leadership roles in every position throughout my career in natural foods, leading teams of up to 130 people. It was in practicing servant leadership that I felt the most alive and full of purpose. It was finally apparent that my passion had always been right in front of me, to focus on developing people.
Six months into this journey, COVID hit. Like many, I was hit with another round of intense uncertainty and instability. That was followed by the unexpected and sudden loss of my father, only a couple of weeks into COVID. Change was happening at every turn, and I had just experienced the greatest loss of my life. The child me was being called to pivot over and over. We were unable to have a proper funeral or grieve in a way that resembled anything “normal.” I remember feeling so damn angry like I just couldn’t catch a break. But somehow, I wasn’t alone. People were losing loved ones all over the world and we’ve had to push pause on grieving in person with others. Not having experienced loss like that before, I still don’t know what it could have looked like in another situation. All I know is that three months later, it feels like it’s grieving for the first time every time I see someone that I hadn’t in months.
Amidst this great loss, came a beautiful creation. In April, a dear friend of mine asked me to help him lead a COVID relief discussion for the coffee industry. We felt it was our duty to show up for those that were also being called to pivot and pivot quickly. We turned to our community in the coffee world to record a call that was about making space to process the pandemic, the tall order and change that came from it, and potential tools to survive amidst it all.
Our call was rich with useful tools and information and the feedback we received from participants encouraged us to consider sharing more of our everyday conversations. Whether recorded or not, we would have had the conversation about surviving COVID regardless, as these types of dialogues came naturally to us. In sharing a glimpse into our everyday conversations, we hoped to help others feel seen, feel heard, and feel empowered to create The Third Place within themselves and for others. And so began The Third Place podcast.
Has it been a smooth road?
During the start of COVID, I was talking to one of my best friends who travels the world teaching yoga teacher training. I was in tears expressing that I felt every time I was close to getting a “flow,” it got interrupted by some sort of adversity. She was so brilliant and quick in that moment and said to me, “What if going in and out of flow, is the flow?” That has stuck with me every single day because it feels true and it resonates at my core. So while most would likely answer this question by saying, of course not! I am choosing and learning to go with the flow, more everyday.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Five Element – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of and what sets you apart from others.
Not even a year ago, I founded Five Element LLC. It is inspired by Five Element theory, which supports my values for understanding self and others. In looking at the way nature operates and finds homeostasis, we can understand how we function and how we relate with ourselves and one another. The way water flows through earth, or the way metal cuts through wood or the way fire burns wood represents a natural way of relating, as well as an easeful harmony in how we exist. In my business currently, I work as a consultant or in fractional roles with people and businesses where I use approaches which honor, mirror, and implement the ways of nature into the ways of being personally or professionally. My focus revolves around relationship practices, with a focus on conflict-resolution and tools to support productive communication. While I still get to work with natural foods brands for the time being, I am also focused on the foodservice and hospitality industry, working to empower and equip our customer service heroes with the means to interface in a world of heightened emotions and perspectives.
As an extension of Five Element, I co-host a podcast called The Third Place. I am so proud of it and it feels like the culmination of some of my greatest hopes for making impact in my community. The podcast is fairly new, having started in the Spring at the start of COVID. It’s an invitation to the grey space – a space that is safe where deeper connections are fostered through challenging, empowering, and engaging dialogue. Our listeners walk away with a deeper understanding of self, equipped to exchange with others in life’s complex conversations. We have explored topics like anti-racism, presence in the midst of chaos, and how anger can be beautiful.
We want to “go there” in a safe and compassionate way and help others to feel like they can “go there” too… We explore finding answers in the grey space, where things aren’t black or white, this or that. We tend to ask ourselves with each topic, what if it’s this AND that, and encourage others to consider the “and” space, as well.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
Being a Colorado girl, I am pretty biased. The thing I love the most is the easy access to the outdoors and how making nature accessible and maintained is a priority. People opt to be outside more often than not and having four mild seasons makes that a year-round thing. This is likely a predictable response to what I like the least, but it is undoubtedly the insane traffic. Rush hour is no longer just a couple of hours a day.
Contact Info:
- Website: thirdplacepodcast.com
- Phone: 9703974234
- Email: fiveelementconsulting@gmail.com
- Instagram: @coloradomtngal
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mary.kloberdanz.7/
- Twitter: @thirdplacepod
Image Credit:
Hope Kleist, The Joyful Jaunt
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