Ep 96 | Brent Scarpo

Death/Dying, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast, Spirituality | 0 comments

Brent Scarpo | A Secret Sign & Lessons from The Shawshank Redemption

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:

Fear can hold you prisoner, hope can set you free. – The Shawshank Redemption

This week’s guest, Brent Scarpo, was a casting director for one of the most acclaimed and beloved films of all time, “The Shawshank Redemption.” Through his personal love of the film, he shares a few of his favorite lessons from the movie.

These lessons served him well as he grieved the loss of his best friend and mother to cancer. But a chance conversation with his mother years earlier would be the catalyst for comfort after she passed. They had agreed on a red balloon being the sign they would bring to the other so the one left behind would know there is life after death. They also created very specific rules around this sign and sealed the deal with handwritten letters preserving this conversation and plan in a sealed envelope that wouldn’t be opened until after one of them passed away.

Through his grief, Brent found comfort and healing through group and one-on-one therapy as well. But, the Red Balloon has become a huge part of his existence, landing him on the Today Show, and soon a book releasing, very fittingly, on Mother’s Day.

Brent offers many tips throughout this episode but there’s one question you may be surprised to learn the answer to. What’s the question? How do we learn to laugh again without the person we used to laugh with? The answer? You’ll have to listen to find out!

RESOURCES:

• Brent Scarpo on The Today Show
• FindaGrave.com
• Tombstone Cleaning Tutorial
• James Van Praagh
• Ep 68 Ken Ross

CONNECT: 

• Website

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Victoria Volk 0:00
Hi this is Victoria of theunleashedheart.com and you’re listening to grieving voices, a podcast for hurting hearts who desire to be heard. Or anyone who wants to learn how to better support loved ones experiencing loss. As a 30 plus year graver in advanced Grief Recovery methods specialist. I know how badly the conversation around grief needs to change. Through this podcast, I aim to educate gravers and non gravers like spread hope and inspire compassion towards those hurting. Lastly, by providing my heart with yours and this platform, Grievers had the opportunity to share their wisdom and stories of loss and resiliency. How about we talk about grief, like we talked about the weather? Let’s get started. Thank you for tuning in to grieving voices if this is your first time listening, thank you. And if you’ve been listening for a while now, thank you as well and welcome back. Today. My guest is Brent Scarfo. He has over 30 years of experience as a national speaker, life coach, producer, writer, director, and casting director in Hollywood. He has worked on such well known films as The Shawshank Redemption, that thing you do Air Force One and Matilda additionally, Brent has presented 1000s of programs to high schools, colleges and corporate America, numbering well over 1 million participants. In addition, Brent was featured on The Today Show storytelling writing contest. Everyone has the story, where his story, the red balloon was chosen out of 100,000 entries. The red balloon story beautifully depicts the loving relationship of Brent and his mother and their fascination with life after death. Through many conversations, he and his mother created a plan to prove that in fact, there was life after death, the basis of the red balloon story, which has now become his book, The Red Balloon, how to transform your life one inspirational story at a time. Additionally, Brent is a life coach specializing in millennials, where he takes his years as a former casting director and marries it to his life coaching career and success pro in such programs as the 10 life coaching lessons, I learned casting the Shawshank Redemption. Thank you so much for your time and being here today.

Brent Scarpo 2:26
Well, thank you for that wonderful introduction. I so appreciate being here. And thank you for all that you do.

Victoria Volk 2:31
Yes, thank you for your time. Let’s I guess start with the red balloon and how, how this all came to be and about your mom. And

Brent Scarpo 2:42
Yeah, so my mother, I’m an intuitive life coach, Intuitive Life Coach is somebody that has a high level or we all have an intuition, but I’ve actually worked on it. So you know, it’s like anything else in the body, some muscle that once you flex it, once you strengthen, it just becomes stronger and stronger and stronger. So my mom and I are best friends. She’s a single mom that raised three kids by herself. Her name is Betty Scarfo. And I woke up at three o’clock in the morning one night, and I just I got a message, I got a message that my mother had had cancer. And she had just moved from Warren, Pennsylvania to California where I was living, she lived a few blocks away from me, actually. And I was so overwhelmed by that feeling that I didn’t even go to bed for the rest of the morning. So about eight o’clock, I called her and I said, Hey, Mom, I said when’s the last time you’ve had a physical? Right? I didn’t tell her about the dream. I choose not five years ago, when I left Pennsylvania to come here. And you know, we especially I think with women, we have this ability to take care of everybody else but ourselves. And I was like, Mom, you’ve got to look, I’m making an appointment for you. Right? Well, we made the appointment with my doctor, and everything was hunky dory, except for a chest X ray. And that’s when we found a dark mass the size of a half dollar. And unfortunately, my mother had lung cancer. So I listened to that voice. I listened to my intuition, right as an intuitive life coach, you know, I do programming with clients to help them create the best life possible, the best versions of themselves possible. And so I spent about two and a half years as my mother’s primary caregiver. I told her her only job was to eradicate cancer. And so, you know, I was really grateful because the doctor said, Boy, had you not come, you know, you probably would have would have had a lot less time. And so you just kind of went on this journey. And then, you know, it’s interesting. My mother was diagnosed in the end of 95. She had all of 96 and then on January 26 1997 13 days after her 59th birthday, and six days after my 33rd birthday, my mother unfortunately passed away. She her cancer just And metastasized to her brain. We did hospice, which is the greatest gift to mankind, I highly recommend for anybody who knows that they have to make a transition that you try to choose hospice is the way to make that transition. And years and years and years before that, my mother and I guess we were really good friends, we always talked about things very philosophical we’d ever break we are we call our weekly breakfast, or lunch, and I take her out, and we just talk. So we talked about death and dying, something that people really don’t talk about. And I think we need to talk about it. So I said to you earlier, I’m so grateful for what it is that you’re doing, because people don’t necessarily ties out your top 10 Though, in the last couple of years with COVID, we’ve almost been forced to talk about this. And so I remember, my mother’s one of our favorite bands, is the Beatles. And John Lennon, unfortunately, had just been assassinated. And I remember looking at the New York Times, and they talked about how Yoko Ono and he decided that they were going to come up with a sign so whoever would transition first, we’re bringing that sign back. And to them it was a yellow handkerchief. So I just happen to read the article to my mom and my mom goes, we should do that. Like we should. She was like, Yeah, I was like, Oh, I said, Okay. I said, we’ll we’ll How do we do? What are we going to do? She said, Well, you know, let’s pick assign, we’re just going to you and I, that’s it. And let’s just say that, you know, that person is responsible for bringing it back to the other person, it means that everything we’ve talked about that there is life after death, that there is a higher power of some sort, that there is an essence of who it is that you are, as far as your soul is concerned, when it leaves this earthly body is all true. I said, Okay, and so we decided on a red balloon. And primarily because when I was in second grade, there’s this wonderful French film

Brent Scarpo 6:49
Called La Rouge balloon, and it won an Oscar is phenomenal. And I said, let’s just do a red balloon. She said, Okay. And she said, but this is my mother. She said, It has to show up within 24 hours of the person’s death. Like none of this a month from now, six years from now, six months and now 24 hours. I was like, Okay, let’s, let’s do that. So we had always had this in the back burner for my we never shared it with anybody. And then as my mother was entering her transitional phase and hospice, you know, my grandmother came out my sister and brother and, you know, I kind of remembered it. And I, you know, finally as we’re getting closer, I thought I better sit everybody down and kind of tell them what we did, you know, X amount of years ago, just in case I’m not there when it happens. You know, the last thing I need is, you know, my grandmother who was 82 at the time to have a red balloon appear in front of her her have a heart attack, and I got two dead people on my hands. You know, I mean, it was really, it was getting close. So I sat him down. I said, Look, mom, and I did this thing. And if anything, just kind of quirky happens, the lights go on and offer just just know, it’s her. And I remember my grandmother saying, Well, what was the sign? I say, I just can’t tell you. I said I you know, I just, I just we’ve kept it for so many years. So I was in doing a play called the boys next door, where I played the part of a schizophrenic. Trust me, I had plenty to draw from. And I was really wondering, you know, when my mother passed in the middle of the run, you know, I told the director, I said, Look, I know the show must go on, but I might have just a few little hiccups. The final night. I was in Long Beach, California. I was living in Montrose at the time about two and a half hour drive. Curtain came down last show. I’m driving home. It’s one o’clock in the morning is pouring down rain. I remember, because it doesn’t rain in California. And this is back in the days of beepers. Remember those? And my sister paged me, right? And I pull it off to the side of the road because there’s no iPhones. And I called her and she said, Mom just passed away. I was like, wow, you know, the last curtain call. So I got home and walked in my grandmother, my sister were there. And, you know, I’m the oldest of three kids. So, you know, I think a lot of how we grieve is also based on so many factors, whether we’re men, whether we’re women, whether the oldest child, the youngest child, whether we had a relationship with the person that you passed, or didn’t What kind of relationship was there, as you well know, there’s so many factors. So, you know, I made sure that they were okay. And then, you know, you’re walking over to your dead mother, you know, 59 years old, my best friend, and I just didn’t know how I was going to handle this. I you know, this is my, my first experience with this right, as I said to many people, my mother’s never died before, you know. So, I’ve walked over and as it’s depicted in the today’s show, I leaned over to kiss her on the forehead. And as I went to do that, because she had the hospital sheet up to about her chest, I just saw this little flicker of color I don’t know why I noticed it. But I did. And for some reason I took my hands I pulled the sheet down. And they’re imprinted on my mother’s blue sweatshirt with this huge bouquet of red balloons. I literally went from pure pain, like I’ve never felt and grief that was about to feel to a static joy. And I was I was so taken aback. I was like, Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I said, Oh, my God, you did it. And I was screaming around the room. I was like, You did it. Oh, my God. Like my mother didn’t wait 24 hours. She Wait 24 seconds. Right? She didn’t. I mean, this was her personality. And I remember my grandma yelling at me. What are you talking about? What are you talking about? I said, the sign the sign. Remember what I told you about? She said, Yes. It’s a red balloon. Where did this sweatshirt come from? Right? Because I lived above my sister, my sister was the medical caretaker. So she did all the morphine and all that crazy stuff. And my sister said, Oh, my God. My mother been in hospice for about 36 days. And my sister got up that morning. And she had realized that she hadn’t really changed my mother in a few clean about three, four days. And my mother was just hideous about changing her clothes and being clean. So she’s like, Oh, he couldn’t do it by herself. So she called the nurse she says, anyway, you can stop by today, you know, this morning and help me change mom and bather and the nurse like, we’re so sorry, but we have a major emergency here at the hospital. I can’t. So my sister being my sister, got really frustrated. She walked into her bedroom, she picked up the first sweater that was on top of the pile that I brought 36 days ago from upstairs because she was living my mom with me. She just wrangled her top off, put that tarp on, decided that she wasn’t going to try and do the bottoms. And that was the shirt. And that night, as well. My mother passed away.

Victoria Volk 11:53
Wow I know. I had goosebumps.

Brent Scarpo 11:58
It’s just, you know, and I will say this to you as well. And I shared with you that my red balloon book, it’s a life coaching book has taken me 10 years to do, it’s going to come out on Mother’s Day. It’s official Mother’s Day 2022. Because I’ve been working on this, as I say bottle of wine for 10 years. So when will you uncork it is going to be delicious, that kind of deal. But I’m going to do an anatomy book on you step by step instruction on how you can do this as well, because one of the things that we did is just to prove all this. Because I said to my mom, I said well, you know, if we can’t say anything to anybody, how are they? How are they going to believe us? Right? And she said, Oh, no, no, she she brought that up as well. And I had this idea. So I wrote out the scenario, the red balloon and all that. I put it in an envelope. I mailed it to she and I and then it was post stamped. Right. So then after you’re done, and we’re going through that grieving process, and these are these tokens that you have, in an effort to get through the grieving process, I just at one point in time, decided to open it up and share it with everybody in my immediate family is like, look, this is what we did during the death of John Lennon. And we’ve been planning this for years. And it was really nice. And you know, there was a number of witnesses, which I’m really grateful for. And then my mother chose to be cremated. And I remember the crematorium saying, Is there anything you want in with her? You know, I guess you can do sir. And I decided to do that letter. You know, we’d all seen it. And so I said, Yeah, I had this letter died, like look like to give you. So it was I don’t know, it just gave me a lot of peace to help me with my grieving process. It was something that we did very proactive. And the beauty of this is that, you know, this is something anybody can do. Anybody can do. You know, even since then, I mean, there’s a whole book just on red blue sightings I’ve had since 19 9700s. You know, whenever I’m feeling a little down, I’ll say, Mom, if I could get a red balloon, this would be really great. Right? It just happened recently. You know, I was actually on my computer here. And I had asked for it a couple days ago and I turned around and you know, the TV’s on. And there’s this old show Hogan’s Heroes. What was my mother’s favorite one of our favorite shows, and there’s Schultz, literally, with a bouquet of red balloons in his hand and a teddy bear and thank God I grabbed my phone, and I took a picture of it. And I put it on Facebook I said for all my red balloon fans yet again, my mother proves that there is life after death. So it’s been a it’s been an amazing journey that I’m really excited about sharing with the overall public next year. So the goal is to have the book come out tour all over the United States raise monies for charities and just get people to be a little bit more peace with this thing called grieving a death and dying and that you can plan for it. You know, people just write a will and they think that’s all you can do. No, no, no, there’s so much more you can do.

Victoria Volk 14:53
And as an end of life doula I can say to that you have a lot of choice in that you because you can, there are things that you can do or add into the dying process as the person dying. I mean down to what you want the environment like who do you want to visit you or not visit you, you know what kind of legacy you can create a legacy project as a family. And in a way, like, that’s kind of what you did like this legacy. Not a project, but this legacy. That became a project, right? It was this idea that is now almost a legacy project in a way.

Brent Scarpo 15:30
Yeah, we were, we didn’t know what we were doing. You know, my mother was people. Yeah, we just kind of did. I mean, obviously, now you’re looking at here we are in 2021. And I did something well, nobody knows this, you’ll be the first to hear this. So I spoke to you earlier that I have this adoptive grandmother, and unfortunately, she passed away on Valentine’s Day from from COVID, and some other complications. And I’ve known her for 26 years. And as you will know, you know, the grieving process doesn’t have to be over a human being, it could be over a puppy, it could over be your 401 K just went down to zero. It can be you know, a best friend or, you know, so many different types of losses of divorce. And so, I came out here just because I promised Edna, who’s the adoptive grandmother that I would look in on their daughter, they have an only child and the two granddaughters. So I’ve been here for a couple of months. But it didn’t start out that way. Because I live in Palm Springs, and I’m from Warren, Pennsylvania. So I got here and I drove right, I drove all 2467 miles and I have been to my mother’s grave site, which is still a tiny little town. It’s got a hill, you know, the first year to your point, you know, we did the candles, you pay for the candles on her on the day she died her birthday. We did the wreath during Christmas. And I think we did that for the first two years. And then I’ve been back a couple different times because it’s you know, it’s on the other side of the of the United States. But my goal really was to visit it because I realized that January 26, will be 25 years, right? So to your point, not only can you plan before you pass away, then during the process, what do you want to what do you want that to look like or be like, you know, I was just flying off the seat of my pants, one of the your point, environmental things I did was she will never be alone, right? There will be somebody around her holding her hand 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the entire process until she dies, she will never she’ll I said that people volunteer, do not walk out of a cigarette, she can not be left alone for let know, for 10 seconds is 20 seconds too long, right? It’s just that was sort of the some of the parameters that I put together, not knowing there are other things that you can do. And so I realized I was about seven and a half hours away from here. So I just got back. And I went and visited my mother. And I’m going to actually put it on Facebook and YouTube and such on January 26. But here we are 25 years later, and I went to her grave site and it’s overgrown. You know, the bronze is all just as dark as dark as it could be. And I remember going on to YouTube, and there’s really great organizations that go to VA cemeteries and headstones. And they just redo them, you know, for the military. And so I got these great ideas. I spent three days and let me tell you, my mother’s gravesite is the bomb. It’s just beautiful. It’s like, but again, you know, cuz she was cremated. So her ashes are there. But for me, it was yet another way of being able to process my feelings. Here we are 25 years later, clearly, I’ve gone through the seven stages of grief. But I look at this now. And it’s I mean, might I say it is the most beautiful grave site in the entire War Memorial Cemetery. Because you know, you can do that. So there’s the before there’s a during and there’s an after.

Victoria Volk 18:51
I’m just curious, so she was a veteran?

Brent Scarpo 18:54
No so no. Question. No. So what I did was is I was just going to go visitor, that’s it, right? And then there’s this website called Find a grave.com. Right? So because I worked in the entertainment industry for many years, you literally can go on to this websites completely free of charge. And you can find, I’m telling you pretty much anybody’s grave, anybody’s celebrity or non celebrity. And so, you know, I’ve seen like, you know, different celebrities and things and I know there’s YouTube videos and I’m you know, this is me, but I love cemeteries I love walking in because I think it’s quiet. I’d love when it says 1609 to 17 something, it’s just I don’t know, there’s something peaceful for me, it’s my thing. So I thought well, I wonder if my mother’s is there. So it was somebody took a picture and they put it up there. And I remember seeing how dilapidated it was. So I was like, Okay, I’m going to drive out there. You know, so 25th Memorial, and so you God bless YouTube. I went on there just to see well, how, how do you clean the bronze? So there was this guy. And there’s these groups. And what they do is they travel all over the United States, and they specifically clean military headstones. And I saw that YouTube, and I just saw the techniques that they use. So it was that YouTube that sparked the idea for me, but I thought how wonderful. There’s actually organizations all over the country, and they just volunteer and they go to all these different, you know, vet that memorials and headstones. And I’ve seen dozens and dozens and dozens of them. So no, she wasn’t a vet. But that I was when I was researching and I saw you get this bottle of this stuff. You do this, use this scrub, if it’s bronze, you do this, if it’s a headstone, you do this, I’m like, Okay, I’m taking notes down. And I literally had all my stuff put in the back of the car. And it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful.

Victoria Volk 20:53
That’s, that’s a really good tip. And I’m actually going to if you can send me that link. I’ll put it in the show notes for others, too. Oh, yeah. Oh, great. But also that the tutorial on how to

Brent Scarpo 21:05
Yeah, yes, great. I’m telling you, I looked at probably half a dozen and this one, right before I left, because, you know, for the most part, it my mother’s is it’s a bronze plaque plaque that’s in the ground versus a headstone. But they have that. But I mean, they tell you, like, you know, you know, to get 25 years of organic matter off the concrete, there’s a certain formula you use, and then, you know, cutting it away. And then there’s this guy, he’s got the tombstone cleaner, starter kit. So I bought that off of amazon.com. And, you know, as you said, the before and after pictures, but yeah, I’ll send you a bunch of links. There’s, there’s just, I mean, it’s weird. You think that like, like, in my brain, I’m like, No one does this, I’m but I’m going to do it. And then because of technology, where we can use technology to our advantage versus our disadvantage, you go online, and I literally, I’m telling you, you probably saw a dozen people, there was these two ladies, they were funny as all Caboose, and they did a whole, like, you know, they had to edit it, right was step by step they had, they brought out a picnic basket, they did the blanket, you know, they sprayed the thing, they’re like, oh, my gosh, this really smells bad. No wonder it cleans everything off. I mean, really, for what is, you know, could be a very sad time, you know, and then the before after pictures, and there was this is one I looked at, oh, this was really, you know, again, for me, it was really nice to do this, because it helps me process my own feelings in regards to having her her been passed for 25 years. So I saw one more and the guy was doing the whole thing cut around the grass, take, you know, get a get a spatula or whatever, the garden, do all this. And then he was redoing his son’s marker, because his son passed when he’s like two or three. So it was like, Oh my gosh. So you know, and he’s just, it wasn’t bad. But he got rid of all the grass. And then he dug like a four inch trench around the entire marker. And he’d lined it with this netting. And then he put it in white gravel. And I was like, that’s what I’m doing. Like, it was so beautiful. And then I hear I don’t I don’t know if I can even do this. Let’s let’s just see what we can do with technology. If it’s even possible. All right. We’ll see. We’ll see if we can see. We’ll see if we can see this on. On the wonderful. You too. Right. So I don’t know if I can even be seeing probably a little bit Oh, I’ll link to Okay, that’d be great. And then it? Yeah, I’ll send you the pictures and such. And that’s, that’s what it turned out to be. Yeah, the before and after, but yeah, I’ll, I’ll I’ll send you the pictures. And you can post them however you likes as people use so people can see, this is yet another thing that you can do afterwards. And just the I was on a, an all time high for good three, four or five days because it took so much work. And it really was painful, but it also joyful at the same time. And it was arduous and but it just felt so good to be able to do that for her 25 years later.

Victoria Volk 24:15
Well, and I think it’s a good point to mention, just because the fact especially if you’re the caregiver, or caretaker of someone, and you know, grief and of itself is if you think of grief, it’s like a change in behavior, like a familiar pattern of behavior. And so if you wake up every day and your first thought is what you’re going to do or what you need to do to care for your loved one who’s dying, and then they pass away and you wake up the days after that it’s that is a change in your behavior. You’re no longer waking up to care for that person. And so that’s added grief, right? Like what do you do with you, you know, you just you took some may find some relief and then you also but then again that can be conflicting because you feel bad then because you’re relieved because that, you know that that responsibility is no longer there and you feel guilty because that responsibility is no longer there.

Brent Scarpo 25:10
Well and even to your point, I’ll be very transparent. So one of the things that I did is, you know, as my mom was going through hospice, and they were wonderful, they gave us the names and numbers of different grief groups, and I chose to, I made a conscious choice. And I, I don’t care if it’s a grief group, I don’t care if it’s a life coach, such as me. But you know, the greatest advice I can give any person that goes through the grieving process, I don’t care what it is that you lose is not to do it alone. Do not do it alone. I went to therapy once a week with this wonderful chaplain, I went to group therapy one to two times a week for two years, that was like my gift to myself, right? Because I spent two and a half years, you know, working with my mom, and then it was just sort of amazing what you find out to your point, you know, I had to have this job. This is a job for two and a half years caring for my mother day and night. Right. And then when it was done, I was like, What do I do now? Like, like, I had gotten a rhythm, I got a rhythm, I hardly slept, my immune system was an all time high. And I remember when she finally passed, and I got to the grave site came back to California about two, two and a half weeks later, never been so sick. My immune system just said, okay, you’ve been on this roll, dude, for two and a half years, we need to relax. And, you know, again, I just employ all your listeners that just don’t do it alone. I mean, I think the greatest emotional challenge I faced in my grieving process was, and I didn’t really know this consciously. But it came up and it was painful, painful, is that, I realized that in my mind that I had failed. See, as my mother’s caregiver, my unconscious, said to me, your job is to save her. Well, I failed, I failed. And I’m a man. So that just adds a lot of, you know, stuff and layers because, you know, we’re the, we’re the, we’re the, we’re the we’re the caveman that go out there, and we get the food, and we help out the family. And that’s our role. And I really struggled with the idea that I didn’t save my mom. And then through really great counselors and such I came to realize it wasn’t my job to save my mother from cancer. Well, my job was to love her as best as I possibly could. And then finally came to the understanding that in that job, I was quite successful.

Victoria Volk 27:48
That’s a very good reframe. Imagine, well imagine how many people are torturing themselves with that same, that same story?

Brent Scarpo 27:57
It’s, it’s when that came up, I mean, I can I can, I can see the chaplain and, you know, and she was just, you know, this quiet denier kind of woman and she’s like, What do you, you know, do you ever blame yourself for not, you know, that your mom died? I was like, Okay. Never really addressed that question before. Why is that coming up? Right. And then all these feelings just came up. But um, I was like, yes. You know, I’m the eldest child. I’m, you know, my mom’s a single mom. There’s no husband or father, of course, I’m supposed to save her. And yes, I failed. I failed, I failed, I failed. And then through working with her, we were able to reframe it in a way that that was my, that wasn’t my job. You know, is it? Is it our job to save the person who’s going through this process? Or is it our job just to love them and be with them as best as we possibly can?

Victoria Volk 28:48
Yeah. So growing up, you mentioned it was a single household and things and so your dad was never in the picture?

Brent Scarpo 28:58
Yeah so my parents divorced when I was four. We were I was born in Pennsylvania, raised in California, but my father was a alcoholic, unfortunately, and so a bit of a narcissist. And so my mom being, you know, this is the late 60s or early 60s rather. And so she took it upon herself that I have three children, you know, I need to, you know, be there and have their best interests in mind. And so then she moved all of us back to Pennsylvania where her parents lived. And so yeah, he was never really in the picture. There’s one story about him, which is probably another show, because he didn’t show up one time, which was a very interesting time when I was 21. But no, for the most part, you know, she was a single woman at three raised three kids by herself, you know, way before the internet way before you know all that stuff. I like to say that she paved the road for a lot of these women that you know, are trying to get child support from the various people that keep evading it for some reason and, you know, laying down the laws that were necessary so that you know, these women And men can make sure that, you know, they’re getting the support that they need both, you know, financially, emotionally, psychologically, physically, you know, from the from the relationship.

Victoria Volk 30:09
Did any of those feelings from that loss of not having him in your life come up when your mom passed?

Brent Scarpo 30:17
Yeah, that’s a great question. No, and I think so funny, I really have addressed this. You know, when I moved to California, which is in 1985, it was a couple of years after that, that my mother had called me and she said, I know this was a little strange, but you know, I got a call from one of the relatives and your father passed away. Right? And I was like, Oh, okay. You know, and so, you know, I, again, you know, I, I have memories of him from zero to four, but never really had any kind of time with him. And so, you know, I shared that with my sister. The interesting thing is that my sister just burst into tears, which that sort of blew my mind. And then for me, and we sat and talked, you and I, we processed it together. And, you know, I think, because she’s the only girl, there was never that daddy figure. There was no, that father figure that I know, girls really long for and I think her grieving process was the possibility that that could be. And now that was gone. For me. It was interesting, because I’m one part I thought, Should I be crying? I was like, because I’m not, you know, and, and I explored, and I said, Well, you know, I don’t have any time with you, I don’t have life experiences with this person. I don’t have memories of this person. So, you know, I don’t have the ability to grieve over something that did not exist. Right. Was I sorry, they died. Sure. But to answer your question, I don’t think so. Because he had passed. And because I reconcile all of that, there really wasn’t, he was so out of my mind. Now that I think about I mean, that was the last person I was thinking about, you know, my, my focus is really about this woman who, you know, left this man to take on the responsibility of raising three children as best as she possibly can. And for me, it was like, Okay, I’m going to, I’ll share this story with which I think epitomizes this, I think, you know, because there are two types of dying, as you know, the one we know that’s coming. And the one that’s a surprise, you know, I had a friend that died in the Twin Towers, that was a shock. That was a surprise, right? My mother had 36 days in hospice, we could prepare for that. So those are the two forms of dying. And I remember when the neurologist came in and said, Look, your mother’s lung cancer has metastasized to her brain. And there’s nothing we can do the worst sentence in the human language, I think. And so you wrap your head around what that means. It’s like, oh, oh, oh, she’s gonna die. Okay, you didn’t say it out loud. But I was, I got what you were referring here, right? So you go through the process of what you’re going to do. And so because of my mother’s insurance, and so I said, Well, you can do you know, we can put her in a nursing home that deals with this kind of thing. Or you can do hospice, I never heard of hospice before, right? So we get all the details. And I sit down with my sister and brother, because you know, this is where then it gets really sticky. Because depending on your family dynamics, depending on how much money there is, depending on what your morals and values and ethics are each person that comes to the table when you have this transition. So I remember sitting down with them and saying, This is going to happen, you know, how do we want this to happen? And I decided as the oldest that we just be very democratic and whatever, you know, the two out of three, you know, versus being my way, because I know me. So So what do you think my sister the whole nursing home? My brother goes a nursing home, I’m like, Oh, my God. Like, that’s the last thing my mother wanted. I mean, she I said, we, you know, mom never wanted to be in it. She said, If anything should ever happen, please, oh, God, don’t put me in a nursing home. Well, they, you know, just decided to forget that part. Right. So I sat down, we just had the dialogue and the dialogue and the dialogue about it. And I knew, right, just with my work, I knew that it wasn’t about my mother, going into hospice and or going into a nursing home. What it was about was the fear that they were going to face if she was going to be in hospice and actually being proactive in the process. So if you put her in the nursing home and somebody else does it, if you put it right, and I went, Okay, so this is what I said to them, and it worked. And I I don’t even know, this is my intuitive self. I said, Look, I’ll make you a deal. Because we were at an impasse. I’ll lead this you don’t have to be there, 24/7. But I want your assistance, I want you to be there because I want you to be part of the process all leave this, let’s just do this. Let’s do hospice, let’s do hospice this time. And then I said, and this Hi, mom dies, we’ll do the nursing home. And he just looked at me.

Brent Carpio 35:18
And he’s like, What do you mean? I said, because this is the first time she’s going to do this, we get one chance. And I’m just afraid we’re gonna pick the wrong one. And they decided that we would do hospice,

Victoria Volk 35:30
That’s a good reframe to specialize in reframing.

Brent Scarpo 35:35
You know, it’s just like, oh, you know, so? Yeah.

Victoria Volk 35:39
The reason why I asked about your father and stuff is because grief is cumulative. And it’s cumulatively negative. And I know you said that, you know, your grief experience with that was very different from your sisters. And you had mentioned something, and I just want to come back to it, because I think it’s important for anyone listening. And what you had said was, you can’t grieve something for someone that wasn’t there. To that effect, you had so

Brent Scarpo 36:04
Much well, and what I mean by there is that, you know, so much of our grief comes out of the memories and the life experiences that we had with the individual, right? That whole process, the good, the birthday parties, the vacations, the all that stuff, right. My father was in my life, like, I didn’t have those experiences I never talked to him. You know, I remember a form that says, so there’s this space that has no life experiences whatsoever with him. So there’s no memories of being able to say, oh, my gosh, I miss when he put me on his shoulders, and we went to the playground together. Now, I had already, I think, in my mind dealt with the grief of not having a father, right, and especially going in the 60s because, you know, look, when I was in first grade, there were 32 students, I’ll never forget this Urbandale elementary school, there are 32 students out of 32 students in 1968, I was the only one that came from divorced parents. Now, look at it, there’s probably one or two people that even have parents are still together the same number. So for me, I think I went through the grieving process of realizing that I was not going to have a father over the course of time of my teen years and early adult years. So by the time I learned the died, I had been through those seven stages, right? You know, the whole shock and denial and pain and guilt. And well, why don’t have a father and my mom and I, we had dozens and dozens and dozens of conversations about my dad. Right? So she was very open and transparent, authentic about that what it was about. So I think by the time I got to that I was good, because I had gone through those stages of what it meant not to have a father in my life. Whereas my sister hadn’t. You know, my sister was still holding on to the hope that he was going to come back. So when that hope

Victoria Volk 37:51
Yeah, and that’s what I wanted to mention. Oh yeah, please grief. Grief is the loss of hopes, dreams and expectations. And anything we wish would have been different, better or more.

Brent Scarpo 38:00
Well said. Yeah. My sister right there.

Victoria Volk 38:03
Yeah exactly. So that’s why I just kind of wanted to circle back to that. Why some. And because everybody’s relationship is unique and individual, right? So even, you know, that’s, that’s where two people in the same household can have very different experiences.

Brent Scarpo 38:19
I was shocked when she burst into tears. I was like, because the then my sister is a very controlling individual. She controls her emotion, very, very aware. Well, so not only it wasn’t that she cried, but I was like, you don’t cry. Like this is the Okay, I need to sit down. I’m sitting down. And, you know, she sat down. I said, Okay, we got to processes a little bit. So, but to your to what you just shared? You’re absolutely correct.

Victoria Volk 38:46
And you said something there. And I want to highlight this too, is that at some point with grief, either we implode or we explode. And so that is full expression that unexpected expression of grief could have been years and I were not analyzing or judging but I just to give people an understanding of why that could happen. Or where that comes from is when we spend so many years stuffing, stuffing, stuffing stuffing, we either implode or we exploit either our health deteriorates, or we outwardly express it with anger, turning to food or drugs or alcohol or relationships, things like that. And so I just wanted to, to highlight that too, for people listening.

Brent Scarpo 39:28
Yeah, I agree with you. 100% I think I think even in my two years of my grieving I there was not drugs or anything like that. But there. I think we all adopt certain behaviors and an effort to deal with, you know, whatever particularly is happening in our lives emotionally, especially as it relates to grieving. So I think we all have that. It’s just, you know, to our earlier conversation, this is why I say don’t do this alone, right to isolate yourself and sit in the dark with the lights off and just mourn over the person that you loved. I mean, I remember are, you know, it was so telling, I remember when my mom passed, right? And then you know you we have a number we call, you know, the come and pick her up. And it was just such a great experience because it was my grandmother, my sister and my mother. And the two gentlemen that came to take my mother’s body, you know, we’re just sitting there like, I’ve never done this before. And he said, Listen, you know, command make a suggestion. I said, sure. He said, Why don’t you spend some time with her, but then I’m going to suggest that maybe you go into the bedroom, because what we have to do to prepare her may not want may not want to be the last memory you have of her. And I was like, I got it. Right. I seen enough movies. And I was like, okay, yeah. So we did our thing went inside the bedroom, right sat there for about 10 minutes, he knocked on the door, he said, we’ve taken her and we will take care of her. I mean, he was so amazing. I mean, these are the two guys that take her to the morgue. That’s what they do. But how he did it was just so amazing. So by that time, then the nurse came in. And she was sitting us down talking all that. And so she said we’re which you know, again, when she said it was weird. She said, where is all the medicine and the morphine and such I said, Oh, I have it all organized over here, right? The next thing I knew, she took out this garbage bag. And she started going rifling through our stuff, what we’ve paid for in the bag, taking the pills and the morphine. And I was like I said, scuze me, what are you doing? She’s Oh, we have to take this. I said, No, you don’t. I said, that’s our stuff we paid for? No, we have to take it. When you sign that you are going to do hospice, this is part of the process. I said, Well, you really need to explain yourself. And she sat me down, she said, because we have so many instances where the husband loses the wife, and then they make the call. And we come back to two bodies. So we’re going to take away everything that may allow you to cause harm to yourself. And then she gives you the numbers of the counselors and the group therapy and the chaplain. Right? What a learning curve. What I was like, wow,

Victoria Volk 42:17
In my end of life, doula training, that was one thing that wasn’t said, actually.

Brent Scarpo 42:22
So I have a job, I would add that

Victoria Volk 42:26
The one thing that was said was as the loved ones, and the person that’s trans going to be transitioning, you can choose to wash their body, right? And you know, as a person dying, you can choose if you want your body washed or not. And do you want your whole body washed or just your face? Or you know, and I think that’s where it’s not. I think we’re so afraid of the dying process in general, I think hospice actually gives an opportunity to be a part of the process.

Brent Scarpo 43:02
Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think that’s, I mean, I, in the two years, I did the glue therapy and such I remember being on it was some kind of, well wouldn’t be a webinar, but they were able to put it together. But I remember whoever invented hospice, they were doing this talk, they were one of the guests, and it was just fascinating to hear this person back in the day. Because I was really in it to win it. Yeah, at that time. I was like, okay, you know, I’m going through this process, I, you know, didn’t become a grief counselor, per se, but we took courses to allow me to at least help facilitate and, and such. So it’s a well, it gives you that ability to be part of to be proactive, versus we can just come to a nursing home and we go and visit her for an hour each day. And then we come home and we live our lives. But to me that would just have added more angst to the grief process for us. Had we chosen that route.

Victoria Volk 43:59
I’m going to share something too, just because I have a podcast episode coming out soon with Ken Ross. And by the time this airs, I’ll link to it in the show notes. But Ken Ross is Elisabeth Kubler Ross is son. I think who you’re talking about is his mother. She Yes. She was the pioneer.

Brent Scarpo 44:19
Yeah yes, yes, yes. Yes, that’s exactly right. Your app. I love it. I love the synchronistic moment that we’re having right now. You’re I couldn’t pull it. You’re absolutely correct. You’re absolutely I remember so well.

Victoria Volk 44:32
She was the trailblazer for hospice and palliative care. But actually, you said to the seven stages of grief and she’s known for the five stage five stages. Exactly right. But it’s actually not five stages. It’s actually she talked about 10 different emotions, because really, they’re not even stages. They’re kind of like these, like an emotional scale that doesn’t go in like this linear.

Brent Scarpo 44:57
No, it’s yeah, you’re absolutely right. I You know, I mean, because of the two years I spent, I mean, so to your point, ironically, we were able to bring this all together. Yeah, it was the five. And then, you know, as I continued to do research, it was like the seven. And then you know that this is not, you know, this is more like, what someone would call it, it was a universal roller coaster where you go up and then to the side, and then you go back again. And then you then you get to the top and then the roller coaster goes in reverse and you’re one and then you go to seven, then you go to the three and yeah, it’s all individualistic.

Victoria Volk 45:32
She her work. And Ken and I talked about this, too. It’s there’s so much more to her work than that. It was talked about so much at one point, she just didn’t even want to talk about it. Like it was like, that’s all anybody like social, like the media. That’s what everybody latched on was her brand. That was her. And her work was just so much more than that. I can imagine. Yeah. So anyway, I just

Brent Scarpo 45:58
Want to listen to that. I’m excited. You have to send that to me.

Victoria Volk 46:01
Next, that’s next week, Tuesday. It’s coming out. Oh, nice.

Brent Scarpo 46:04
Okay I will be there. Actually, not

Victoria Volk 46:05
Next week. Tuesday. Today’s Monday, tomorrow?

Brent Scarpo 46:09
Yeah, okay, I got I got it on my list of things to do.

Victoria Volk 46:12
Okay so back to you. And I just, I’m going to share this because, and I meant to share this earlier when you were talking about red balloon. And we’ll circle back to that. Because I had had a medium psychic medium reading for the first time earlier this year. And, and it was my dad passed away when I was eight. So it’s been well over 30 years. And I have never had a reading. And so one of the things I’d asked for after that reading, which was I think in April this year, if I’m remembering correctly, just maybe two months after that. I had asked for a red balloon. Oh, oh, I did not get it. I did not get it or see it or be open to seeing it until you submitted your application to be on my podcast.

Brent Scarpo 47:08
Oh, my goodness Well, this, I curious if you’re open to this, you don’t have to share? Can I ask who your meeting was that we who did reading

Victoria Volk 47:18
Siri Bernsen? I did a podcast interview with her. She was on my podcast to.

Brent Scarpo 47:24
Okay, so so we’re really gonna have a synchronistic moment here. So one of the one of the reasons but so we’re in I live in Warren, Pennsylvania. And so we’re really close for about maybe 20 minutes away from the New York state border lines. And there’s this little town called Lily Dale, New York. Lilydale has been around for years, it’s considered one of the top 10 Psychic towns in the United States. And my mother and her best friend were always go there. You know. I mean, they’ve got the mediums, they’ve got the psychics, all that. And now they do workshops, and they have conservatory. I mean, it’s just incredible. So my mother was very much into it. So we share this. Fast forward, I moved to California. And, you know, I look, I’m a believer in many paths, you just have to prove it to me. I mean, seriously. And this is also featured in my book. So there’s a whole thread. But a really good friend of mine said she’s like, you know, look this guy, you know, his name is James from Prague. He is this evidential medium, and, you know, I met him recently. He’s, I think you really like him. And so long story short, you know, James on Prague, who’s written 10, New York Times best seller books, you know, in the late, probably 80s, early 90s. He was the he was the guy, he had his own talk show. I mean, just phenomenal. But he at that time was just, you know, this guy that was doing, you know, like, to your point, he was doing readings, and and she called my friend, she said, Oh, he’s doing this gathering, let’s go. And you know, it’d be these gatherings of, you know, four or 500 people, he would do samplings and then, you know, people would hire him to do readings at his home. So I signed up, I signed up what the heck, I you know, I was it was fascinating. So, this was in, let me see, if I get this right here, maybe for like three minutes, like around 1990. So I do my reading, right? It’s all tape recorded and such. And it was phenomenal. It was phenomenal. Because he’s an evidential medium, and there are cons and there are real people. There are scams, and I do believe people have gifts. But what was really interesting is that he I pulled up in front of his house in Hollywood, and he lived in a city area of Hollywood is in East Hollywood. And I just sat there I was like, Oh, this is going to be really, you know, kind of deal you know, and so, and my father had passed by this time and my mother had moved to California. So I saw go up. I knocked the door here. because at the door, he’s a short little man with a mustache. And he said, Oh, come on, can we can manage to get a glass of water? This is pre computers, right? Because now it’s a little difficult in terms of authenticity, because you know, everyone blames psyches for googling people, right? Because we have, we can do that. Now. There was no Google, there was nothing. There was no computer. I mean, very little computers. So we sat down, we’d like to kind of we do the prayer. And he looks at me, he goes, he goes, Are you a little nervous? And I said, Well, I said, I’m open to this. Trust me. He knew about Lilydale. He said, Well, your father’s here. Well, that was the last person that I thought was going to come through. I was like, you know, and he’s saying to you that you sat outside for about 20 minutes, because you’re worried about what would happen if your dad came? I sat outside for 20 minutes in the car thinking that very thoughts, right. And then he kept he kept saying things that, like nobody knew, like nobody on the planet knew but me. And to me, it was really interesting, because clearly in the spirit world, there’s no sense of time. Because your dad, he said, Oh, my God, your dad’s laughing. Was he laughing at? He says, laughing because, you know, he saw you sneaking out the bedroom window and sitting on the roof, looking at the stars. Will. I did that when I was seven. But they divorced when I was four. I said, Well, how does he know that? He said, Oh, time is, is there’s no such I was like, and nobody know I’d never even told my mother. I used to do that. Right? Well, then we get done. And he goes, we’re in the middle of and he said, Hey, do you need a job? I said, Excuse me. He thought my 13 foot Indian guy just got in the front of the line that the people are they’re here to see you. It sounds so sweet. Give you a job. Let’s talk about afterwards. I became James on Pogs first personal assistant for two years. So go read that. Yeah, my, my path has been very interesting. I mean, I remember the last. I remember the last appointment, because then I was going on to do Shawshank Redemption, right? And had to put my notice, and in the last appointment, he’s always nice, someone coming. It’s okay. I’m gonna go take a walk. And so there’s a knock on the door and I open the door and there stands shear. And she’s like, I have the right place is this changed on Prague? And I said, Oh, Michelle.

Brent Carpio 52:22
Dave, I said, Yes, you do. And she, she said, she had a jaguar. She said, It’s my, it’s my car safe out there. I said, Oh, I said, I’ll watch it. Don’t bother. So got her in Saturday down, got her some water. James came, took her upstairs did her thing. I watched a jaguar. And that was my last last time working with him. But for two years, you know, I worked with him. And, you know, he taught me and you know, I experienced all of that. So yeah.

Victoria Volk 52:53
So do you feel like, I mean, intuition, like, as a kid, like, did you have, you know, worked on it. But you know, so many of us, and especially when we’re grieving or in grief, we it’s really hard for us to tap into our intuition.

Brent Scarpo 53:10
Well, it’s okay. It’s not hard to tap into it, because it’s always there. Right? What’s difficult is believing that you have our brain gets in the way. Oh, we all have it. I do this with my life coaching clients all the time. So I’ll give you great examples. Because this is what I try to do is, is that they’ll hire me and I said, Well, you have all the answers. You’re just not listening to him. They’re like, What do you mean? I said, No, no, you do we all do. But how do we choose to listen to we choose? Look, I remember when James had a reading, and he had this guy. And what I loved about James is when he if he says it’s you, and there’s a woman here that has a pocket of coins that you use to collect, you know, and he will not deviate. Right? If the guy said no, that’s not me. He goes, No, it’s you. Right? And I remember this one time this guy Nope, it’s not me. It’s not me. It’s not me. It’s not me. We get done two hours, right? People are like, you know, all over James and such. And I remember seeing the guy off to the right. And he waited for probably good half hour and release. He comes over and, and you know, James and he talked he said, listen, all that really did happen. I was just afraid to say something. So to your point. Yeah, you know, this is in the book as well. I knew my mother was gonna die at a young age. I’ve always known. I’ve known since I was 13 years old. I didn’t share it with anybody. You know, it’ll be the fact in the book. And this podcast is probably the first time I’ve said it to a few people wanted to speak but I remember my mother and I got into an argument. And I could see things so since I was like six years old, like I could see the future. I you know, those those sort of premonitions. Like I would just like know things about people. I would it was just the scariest and oddest thing growing up in a small town in Warren, Pennsylvania, but I just kind of kept it to myself. of my mother and I was 13, we just moved to this new house. And I got a huge argument with her nice mad and I ran out the house to go across the street to play with some friends. And I got halfway across the street. And I remember getting to the other side to the sidewalk, and I just collapsed. And I just burst into tears, you know, and I knew I could feel this like, because I heard this message saying, you know, you need to be kind to your mother because she’s not going to be around long. And I like I saw her death I knew was gonna be young. And I literally that moment change. We had a good relationship, but my respect for her. And my devotion really to her had really changed because I really believed that she was gonna leave at a young age. So then at 33, when I woke up at three o’clock in the morning, and I said, I heard the message, she got cancer, I was like, This is it. Now, though, I will say that when I went through the process with her being a primary caregiver, I was fully believing that she was going to be cancer, because I don’t think anything’s set in stone. I think how we interact our energy what we do, can we change our destiny? Yeah, absolutely. Nothing’s written in stone, kind of deal. But, you know, that’s what I use. That’s why I talked to you earlier, I said, you know, I do these intuitive readings for clients before we do my four month program. And so you know, something I want to offer your audience. So, you know, if you text, the word voices, or voice with doesn’t matter, whatever works, just texted to me at 760-835-3327. Again, just text voices to 760-835-3327. As long as I’m alive and well, and six feet above ground, I said, I will text you back. And this is a complimentary intuitive reading. It’s what I do for all prospective clients, but just for people, because I want you to have something and I’m about I’ve plotted this Excel spreadsheet, I just did three this past two days. I’m about 86%. Correct, right. And what we do is, you know, it just whatever comes up, and for me, I share with clients or four things that come up the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful, because that’s our life. Yeah. That’s our life.

Victoria Volk 57:19
There’s so many different ways I could go from here. Not sure what’s to go. Maybe your intuition will lead you lead this conversation where it should go, because you’ve you’ve given you’ve given a tip, like don’t you know, for Grievers is to not grieve alone. And that’s not too long give somebody one of the best pieces of advice you ever received, while you were grieving was,

Brent Scarpo 57:44
I would say the best piece of advice that I received when I was grieving. Because I got so many I would say, here’s what I’ll say. I remember when I was doing the grief group and this woman, this was at a hospital in Glendale is a couple miles down the stream, this one was incredible. I don’t even know she’s still with us. But I went and I went for my first group, right? And so I’m fresh off the death of my mother, right? So a lot of you who might be listening are fresh off the death of a loved one or a person that you’ve lost. So I sat there and I was nervous. You know, I mean, I was a former actor and such, but I was like, this is the real deal. This is not acting, this is the real stuff here. And so she said, Hey, welcome, everybody. You know, this is our Tuesday night, you know, seven to nine lalalalala? If you’re new, if you don’t mind, can you just raise your hands? I was like, my hands, she says so we’re just gonna, you know, just gently I mean, her words wonderful. I mean, I’m an English major in communications major was in jelly go around the room, if you just if you’re open, just say your name, and maybe, you know, a sense of why you’re here. Right? I was like, Okay, so there’s about five or six of us that were brand new. And so I was in the back. And I just remember listing 12345 And they got to me, and I was in this trance, because I just say, like, all the feelings and emotions about my mother were coming up. And she said, you know, could you share your name? And I didn’t hear like, I didn’t even see her. And she said, Sir, could you mine? Are you okay with sharing your name? And I was like, Oh, I’m so sorry. I said, Yeah. I said, my name is Brian Scarfo. She said, Are you open to sharing with us why you’re here. And I took this moment. And I just went through the entire two and a half years of caring for my mother. And I said to her, I said, you know, I’m here to do on a full time basis. What I’ve only done part time and that’s finally take care of me. And just tears streamed down my face. And I remember she came over and she put her hands directly on my shoulders and he said that’s why we’re all here. We are here to finally have the opportunity to take care of ours. selves, and what this journey is about and to give permission to feel to give permission to look at the loss that you just went through. And so I think my advice to you is just to give you permission to go on this journey, to give you permission to take care of yourself full time, to give you permission to be able to seek out those resources and say to the people that are pulling you in different ways, no, no, mommy’s viewing, mommy, Daddy’s gonna go to the scoop. This is something I have to do. And give yourself permission to take care of yourself, and do for yourself, what you did so wonderfully. For the person that you cared for?

Victoria Volk 1:00:47
Well, and in the process, especially if you’re a parent and have children, you’re setting an example of how important that is,

Brent Scarpo 1:00:53
Right? All modeling the behavior.

Victoria Volk 1:00:57
What has what has your grief taught you?

Brent Scarpo 1:01:00
Well, it’s funny, because I was vacillating between two words of wisdom, here’s what I’ll share with you. What it’s taught me is, because halfway through the process, this is the private number two bits of wisdom, she said, and it’s just so true. And somebody was having a particularly difficult time. And she said, look, she said, this is hard work. I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna mess around, she said, but I am going to make your promise. She said, Because I know a lot of you’re feeling like you’re just this train going through this dark tunnel, you know, that has no light. And that just keeps going and going and going and going. And you come week after week, after week, after week, feeling pain, after pain, after pain, but she said, Here’s my promise to you. If you continue to do the work to get on the train, to go through the dark tunnel to feel the pain, I promise you, at some point in time, you will see the light. And then the light are the gifts. And those gifts are being sent by the person that you’re grieving over. And you’re going to open up those gifts, and it’s going to be pure joy. And it took about two years. But all of a sudden the train came out. And I saw the light. And I saw the gifts, and I opened them up. And I felt the joy.

Victoria Volk 1:02:23
I’m going to ask you a question. Just intuitively, I want to know the answer. But I think it would be helpful to others listening. If I would have known you then and even a year and a half a year into their group you’re going to and I’m not bashing group supports systems or group programs. And by any means I think you found support in it, it helped you. I’m not saying that. They’re They’re wonderful for people. But if I would have said to you do you want to work one on one with me and I can help you in eight, eight sessions. What you’ve worked through an eight year in two years, would you believe me?

Brent Scarpo 1:03:09
Well, I actually did it. So when hospice came, they said look, you we they give us all these kinds of resources. So there’s this group, and then there was one on one. And I here’s what I knew. Here’s what I did. So I was a casting director at the time I was casting Shawshank Redemption, Air Force One, the last movie I cast it for my mother passed away was Matilda. Right? I had 3000 children and worked with funniest guy named Danny DeVito. So during then, this is what I did. During the two and a half years that I was my mother’s primary caregiver, I opened up a separate bank account. And I put enough money away for every month that I was her caregiver and that she had cancer so that I could take that much time off.

Victoria Volk 1:03:54
I know another great tip,

Brent Scarpo 1:03:55
Another tip. Another tip, but I remember just saying you know what, because I thought if this should go wrong, I’m gonna have to be able to deal with some stuff. And I don’t know if I really want to go to work and pretend to cast children and materials commercial and be happy about it. So I had two and a half months of salary. And I took a year and I didn’t work at all. I took it when I say took care of myself full time I wasn’t playing, but I planned it. That’s why I’m telling people this is the biggest tip is you got to plan for this ahead of time. The red balloon was done years and years before she you know, I had the dream that she had cancer. I mean, all this can be planned and you can get the joy out of that. And so I did the group. We met once a while I did two I did twice, and then I was so impressed with her. I went to her once once a week right now. I went there once a week for about a year. Now if you say to me You know, in eight weeks if you meet with me, I guess it depends on what you’re saying to me and eight weeks you work with me your grief will be over I,

Victoria Volk 1:05:09
Yeah, I probably went over your grief won’t be okay. Okay. It’s just that every emotional thing that’s keeping you bogged down and keeping you stuck and keeping you from living your fullest potential because you’re, you’re emotionally incomplete in some way. That would be resolved.

Brent Scarpo 1:05:25
Yeah I would say. I mean, look, I have a four month life coaching program. And I specifically did four months, because, you know, I worked with a lot of people with addiction such and those these 90 Day and 3d programs, you know, scientifically, we’ve discovered that they don’t work, right, it takes at least 90 plus days to change a behavior. It just does. I mean, all the research is out there, whether it’s an emotional, psychological, physical, but whatever the case may be. So you’re looking at two months, I knowing back then maybe I would have said, Yeah, let’s go ahead and do this. But I would have gone on probably a while because I made that plan. But I’m of the proponent that, you know, if you’re going to do something one on one, just because of all the research I’ve read, you want to do it for at least excuse me four months. That’s why do my program is 21 sessions, right? 21 sessions, and I guarantee you’ll be transformed in some shape or form. I’ve got all the testimonials on my website, which is Brent scarfo.com. And because it just takes that much time to get you know, it’s like the onion, you know, you peel back the onion, there’s always layers and layers and layers and layers. So I hope that answers your question.

Victoria Volk 1:06:35
No, I personally was just curious what your answer would be. Because I find though, in because Grief Recovery, the Grief Recovery method is evidence based, right, Kent University did a study. And what I’m finding is that it can be really difficult for people to believe that it’s possible even that you can’t, you know, I mean, that you can’t even get to. So like someone who’s going through grief, like going to a support group, where there isn’t necessarily action, like you’re not taking action. And I some, and I think too, it depends on the facilitator. But if you because I’ve heard many people say to me about the group group group sometimes is that you almost feel worse when you leave, because it’s such a heavy

Brent Scarpo 1:07:26
Look. I agree with you. I think I’ll give you an example. In fact, I may, I may carry you with me, because I’m gonna go let the let the dog in, is, you’ve got to figure out what device works best for you. Right? It’s it is I’m working with a client whose mother committed suicide. Right? And so it’ll be a year two years ago, yesterday. And, you know, I said, you know, what are you doing to deal with your grief? Right? And so, she’s like, Well, I started this group, but I don’t know if I really want to go to therapy. I was like, Okay, gotcha, right. Well, I know him well enough, because I’ve worked with him three times. So if he does for him, if he does therapy, he knows he’s gonna have to get to it. He’s not ready. He’s not ready. Let me just sit in the back here, you know, that he’s also a man. Right? But he’s sensitive enough to where he’s open. Because, you know, men grieve differently. They like, you know, they’re, they lose their child. And two weeks later, they’re back at work. And the wife is like, what are you doing? Right? Because women grieve with expression and emotion and feeling and men keep it inside, they have to be busy and doing things so that they can process what is that they’re feeling? So I think you bring up a really good point, not only choose not to do it yourself, but choose the venue and the way that works best for you. Right, maybe it’s therapy one on one, and that’s it, maybe it’s great. It’s group because you like being around people and such. Maybe it’s a combination of the two. There’s probably modalities out there that I’m not even familiar with. I know. Well, no, I mean, I know. I know, people that have had Reiki they’ve had the, you know, the energy they’ve had, you know, I knew one woman who she really didn’t do therapy, per se, but once a week, she did something for herself. So I got a massage, I got a facial, I you know, I just did something to make me feel better, you know, because the other six days she was grieving, you know, so that was that self care that she was able to do for herself, rather than find herself plummeted in the depths of, you know, grief so low that she couldn’t get out of it. So yeah, I think, well, here’s a great example. So my client goes to group, right. And I said, How’s that gone? He said, Because I don’t I don’t know. You know, and he’s, you know, this is this is something brand new to him because he’s an only child. I said, What are you? Are you getting something out of? He said, Yeah, I said, But it’s just I just feel like I’m unique. So what’d he mean? He said, Well, other people, you know, they’ve lost a child or you know, the grandmother died or their grandfather died or the husband died or whatever. It’s like, my mom died. She killed herself. Right? I said, that’s all you gotta say. So then I Googled, and I found a group that is specific. Everybody, their, their, their lost, loved one had committed suicide. So he went to that. And he said, That’s a world of difference. Just a world of difference. He said, thank you.

Victoria Volk 1:10:33
Yeah, and I think there can be dangers in that too, though, because we can, we can definitely learn from all people, people that have experienced all types of losses. And I think that’s kind of what we do, too. It’s even if, you know, depending on what your loss is, you might say, Well, why am I feeling so bad? They lost their child or, you know, and so we naturally can do things like that to that. That’s where, again, I think it depends on the group and the facilitator.

Brent Scarpo 1:11:01
Absolutely Exactly. Right. I think I was lucky. I mean, when this one was, I mean, she was, I wouldn’t say world renowned, but she was state right now. Like she was it, you know, and so, to your point, I think you’re right is like, I mean, he went to the one group and didn’t like it. So I was like, Well, don’t stay here. But I’m trying to, I don’t know, if you if this is not working for you, we just there is a path, we just have to figure out which one it is for you. Because not all things work for all people. We just had to figure out what it was. And then through my work with him, we were able to find it. And you know, he did that for the first year. And then he was fine. He’s like, you know, I’ve done it. I’m doing this. And, you know, I’m working now with him for because I kind of worked with him at the tail end of that. And I’m working with him for another year. So I’m doing something much different, you know, because now we’re in year two, we’re this is second year yesterday. So one of the things I said to him, was gonna do with all my clients, no matter if they’re going through grief or not. And I said, Okay, he said, I want you to attend this class. And so I said of the class, he said, really? I said, Yeah, I said, just just go to it and see what happens. Well, I think the greatest class any human being can take for all things is an improv class. I’ve taken dozens and dozens and dozens. You wanted to learn how to do sales, take an improv class, you want to learn how to ask out a woman or a man on a date, take an improv class, if you want to get a better your communication skills, take an improv class. So he said, I don’t know. And I said, No, it just, it’s free. Just go check in on it. So he went, and they Brian, do they bring you up on stage? And I said, just text me when you’re done? Well, it was done. I didn’t get a text. So I text him to get nothing back. Then finally, like, two hours later, he texts me said I stayed for the two classes afterwards. I said, Oh, I said, Okay. And then we talked the next day. And I said, What do you think he said, You know what, thank you for sending that to me. He said, My biggest challenge is I don’t think I’m allowed to laugh without my mom. He said, and all of a sudden, I found myself laughing. You know, and I almost felt guilty about it. But then I was like, maybe this is okay. Well, that was my mindset from the very beginning that my wife sent him, you know, but I think couldn’t tell him that. So now he signed up for the class and the course and, you know, making those transitions as far as you know, the various, you know, for lack of better word stages that he’s in when it comes to grief insights, because, you know, how do we learn to laugh without the person we used to laugh with? Well, it takes practice. You gotta have the right you know, so that’s not a grief group. That’s not therapy. Right. That’s an improv class. And I’m all about it.

Victoria Volk 1:13:36
That’s another great tip.

Brent Scarpo 1:13:38
Oh yeah absolutely. Everybody’s taking an improv class. Everybody, everybody, I took him when I was an acting school. And then about three years ago, I decided to take him again, for some odd reason. I went to like some really, we got some famous ones in Hollywood. But it was funny because I went, I said, you know, I’ve been to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. I graduate for two years. He said, I probably will start like level five or level six. He’s like, Yeah, you’re starting all over? I am. He said, Yeah. It doesn’t matter where your past experiences. Are. We starting at the beginning, I was like, Okay, sir. So it was fine. I totally got it, you know, because the idea is to build this cohesion of a group of people that have the ability to speak and listen, listening being the most important part.

Victoria Volk 1:14:18
Exactly. And I just want to circle back to what we’ve been talking about with groups and programs and things like that. And I think that’s the most important thing to take away from this conversation is that to meet yourself, where you’re at, and what you’re ready for, and I think when you’re ready to hear it, you’ll be open to it, whatever it is,

Brent Scarpo 1:14:37
Yeah, there’s a lot of weight to what you just share. But there’s also then those people who, you know, maybe they’re by themselves or they’re isolated and such and so they just for some reason, the people places and things are in their lives to kind of nudge them along to the possibility that that’s the group that I worry about, you know, that may not have that support group or don’t have the ability to reach out or can’t ask for help those The ones I’m really concerned about the most. I mean, that’s the beauty of, you know, grief groups and grief therapy back in 1997 when my mother died, and now, you know, you can do this on Zoom, you know, with COVID. I mean, you know, when COVID happened, he was saying, is that no, we, we couldn’t get together, we had to do it on Zoom. And that was sort of his transition of not doing it anymore, because it just wasn’t the same. Right? It just was not the same. And a lot of people that, you know, especially people who suffer from addiction and are going through that COVID was, it’s been very difficult, because you and I are talking, we’re having a great time and such, but I still can’t hug you, you know, and having that one on one. So yeah, I, if you can, if you can get to the place of knowing that you need some help. And then you can get to the place of research in which we’re able to do in the confines of our home, which is great. We got this thing called computer, but then take the action step that I’m talking about, you know, to do the zoom or make the call or have whatever it is, that’s the most important piece, because that piece is what then tells you where am I in the process? What you know, versus I’m not going to do anything at all.

Victoria Volk 1:16:08
Yeah, and I think you’ll discover what you’re ready for in the process of taking action, right? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So what gives you the most hope, and joy for the future?

Brent Scarpo 1:16:20
What gives you the most hope and joy for the future? So it’s more of the word hope than anything else. So for example, this last year really, I’ve merged my life experiences in the entertainment industry with my life experience as a life coach. So you know, one of the greatest films out there is, you know, the Shawshank Redemption, I was one of the assistant casting directors when the best four months of my entire life. I’ve seen the movie over 1000 times. And so, you know, I realized there’s just so many great lessons from that film. And it’s the reason why it’s one of the top 10 films out there. And so, you know, I went through the whole film, and I came up with the 10 top lessons that one can learn from the Shawshank Redemption when it comes to life. So, you know, let’s go through a few of those. And because to answer your question, I remember when we had the 10th anniversary, and Frank had sent us a brand new poster. So I put it up next to the old poster that I’ve had for years, but I never really looked at it. And so I will tell you why. Shawshank Redemption is one of the top films that everybody to this day still loves is because of the caption of the poster. And this answers your question, the caption of the poster in the film was this fear will keep you prisoner hope will set you free. Fear will keep you prisoner hope will set you free. And so for me, it’s not what is it that I think is going to happen when it comes to what is it that I hoped for. But for me, it is the essence of hope. I think that’s why we’re having the difficulties that we’ve been having for the last 567 years. Right? If we’ve we’ve lost the ability to believe that there’s this thing called hope. And so when you lose that ability to believe in this thing called Hope, and what happens is fear takes over. Fear will keep you prisoner hope will set you free. I spoke at this one university one time and I didn’t know what the question was. But I remember responding saying, Well, the truth will set you free. Right. And I had this aha moment. And whatever the question was, you know, that was one of the answers is the truth will set you free. I said, But and let’s bring it back to the grieving process. Do you know who her cousin is? Right? I’m just saying this. This is like the Intuit I like I don’t know what’s about to come out of my mouth. And they all kind of looked at me. I said, the truth will set you free. But her cousin is the truth hurts. And typically the truth has to hurt in order for it to set you free. The grieving process, we’ve got to go through the dark tunnel on the prayer and the pain in order to receive the light and the gifts. Right. And so for me, it’s the the entity in the essence of hope to know that hope is always a possibility to know the hope is something that you can wrap your arms around to know the hope is always an option. And that you don’t have to live in fear. And you don’t have to bestow fear on other people. And you don’t have to generate fear, which I think we’ve been doing so much in the last five to seven years. Right that people have made their mantra about fear than their mantra about hope. So it’s not what I hope for. It’s that there is hope.

Victoria Volk 1:19:42
That’s a big part of this podcast is to show people that no matter what you know who you are in life, what you’re, you know, people of all walks of life have been on this podcast and the one thing that they every guest has understood didn’t want to at some point in their life was that hope? Like hope tomorrow could there is hope that tomorrow could be better, will be better, can be better.

Brent Scarpo 1:20:10
They all the above, right? It’s absolutely it’s it’s and we’ve lost that. And a lot of ways I think COVID exacerbated the situation. You know, especially when we want to be in sole control of our lives, right. And then something comes into our lives that you completely lose control. Right? That’s when you that’s when that concept of faith has been tested when your faith in hope is being tested. And if you lose that faith and hope, well, then you automatically go to fear again. Fear can hold you prisoner hope can set you free, one of the other. It’s a great scene in the movie. Right? And again, to your point I can because I remember sitting there watching the scene happen when Andy de France character, you know, is having a difficult time being in prison for all those years for something he did not do. Right. I didn’t sign up to lose my mother. This was not a group I volunteered for. It happened. Right? It happened. I’m part of a group that I did not volunteer for. I didn’t want to be a member. And I did not pay dues. But here I am. Right. And so his friend read, you know, starts to worry about him. And I remember just seeing, you know, the character attorney. So well, I guess it comes down to two things you could get busy living or get busy dying? Well, exactly. Right. I mean, when COVID happened, you know, two years ago, and I have a lot of clients, I look I freaked out on human just as much as everybody else. And then my clients were coming to me, my one client, she lost all three of her jobs in 72 hours that are all related to the restaurant business, three jobs in 72 hours gone. And I said, Well, you got two choices, right? And I said, you can either do the time, or the time can do you pick one. I did 168 projects on my place. And that two years, right, because my whole life like everybody else was just, you know, decimated on some levels. So you either get busy living or get busy dying, you know, you either get busy dying and live in the fear or you get busy and living and relish in the hope.

Victoria Volk 1:22:25
Yeah, and I think you turn on the news. That’s probably one of people’s biggest mistakes is turning on the news. First three minutes is nothing positive.

Brent Scarpo 1:22:35
And then another six hours of nothing positive. Yeah.

Victoria Volk 1:22:38
Right. One thing to chip away at your hope, just keep the news on,

Brent Scarpo 1:22:42
Right. It’s difficult. I know, I hadn’t watched the news for years. I’m not, I really haven’t. And then there was a certain time four or five years ago that I just I almost felt like I had to because there was so much change happening in such a high rate that I want to kind of be abreast of kind of what was going on. But I you know, I saw how it changed me but I also had to really modify how much I look at it now I’m back to not watching it. Because we can get it from so many other places and such but yeah, it’s um, you know, I always tell my clients, you create your own reality. Right? You create your own reality however, that reality exists for you and whatever choices and action steps you take is his what that reality is about. You know, one of the concepts of the the 10 Shawshank lessons is the opportunities can be seen everywhere. You just have to look and you have to listen, right? I mean, if you look at that movie, now, here’s a prisoner and he wants to build a library and the prison in 1947. The words like you can’t do that. It’s the wall write a letter to the state for the funding if you don’t have it. Right, he writes a letter for how many years? And then finally, they sent him a check saying please stop writing. Right? That goes back to for me, number three, you’ve got to be relentless, and you got to be tenacious in your life. Right took him 20 years to escape Shawshank Redemption with a tiny rock hammer. Right? He wrote one letter a week for years to get the books in the library. So we need to stay on course, find that support system, especially when we go through the grieving process because you’re going to have those peaks and valleys. This is why the two words exist in the English language. So when you find yourself down the valley, you have that support system that can help you and take you by the hand and get you back up on the on the hill or the mountain. I’ve only told this once in my life, this is interesting, but I’m looking at number nine, and that’s practice random acts of kindness. So for me, you know, my mother was having cancer and I just had to do something like I’d love random acts of kindness and but I was insanely busy. I mean, I was 24/7 with her. I was casting films. You know, we had ups and downs depending on what was going on in the process of her cancer. are. And for some reason, I’ve only said this twice, I decided that once a week, I would send money anonymously to a person that I found in the phonebook. Because my mailbox was down the street. And I picked up my mail there. And this is when you had, you know, you actually had phones that you put quarters in the US, you know, and I just, I remember, oh, no, it was inside, it was inside the post office site to look up an address. And I just had all these names of all these people. And I so I created this letter saying, You don’t know who I am synopsize And you don’t know who I am. You know, but, you know, I’m currently you know, assisting my mother with cancer. You know, we’re very hopeful. Again, I know that was in there. You know, I know this is not much, but I hope this brings a little sense of hope to your life. And I put it in $5 each time. And I did that once a week for the entire time she had cancer. And that was that was just a tool that I use for me. It helped me be hopeful. I was practicing a random act of kindness. It was something that I could do that was outside of being her primary caregiver. But you know, that’s just what I did.

Victoria Volk 1:26:06
Yeah, another tip. Yeah. Exactly. Is there anything else that you would like to share?

Brent Scarpo 1:26:14
You know, I would just say, you know, thank you for all that you do. Again, if you want an intuitive reading, it’s completely complimentary. I guarantee you that you have tools that you can take away from it about 45 minutes to an hour, just text me at 760-835-3327 voices. My website is Brent scarfo.com Bre N T, SCA rpo.com. You know, the book, the red balloons coming out Mother’s Day, I’m so excited about this. I’ve been working on this for 10 years, it is going to be a life coaching book. It’s about the relationship between my mother and I, it talks about how we prove that there in fact, was life after death. And if you’re interested in seeing the Today Show episode, you just have to go to YouTube and put in print Scarfo, the Today Show?

Victoria Volk 1:27:00
Well, I’ll put all of that in the show notes as well.

Brent Scarpo 1:27:04
Well, thank you so much for everything. This was wonderful. I really appreciate you and all that you do. And I know it’s really hard work doing this because I’ve been asked to do it. And I was like no, I feel like I just I know how much is involved. Maybe one day down the road because I think it would be something fun to do. But I You know, I’ve been on several and you’re you’re great at what you do. And I just want to thank you for what it is that you do for, for me and for us and for all those that are going through the grieving process.

Victoria Volk 1:27:30
Thank you and thank you for sharing absolutely all that you’ve shared. And remember, when you unleash your hearts, you unleash your life. Much love from my heart to yours. Thank you for listening. If you liked this episode, please share it because sharing is caring. And until next time, give and share compassion by being hurt with yours. And if you’re hurting know that what you’re feeling is normal and natural. Much love my friend.