Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Healing, Podcast, season 5, Spirituality |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Helen Gretchen Jones, a death doula and intuitive channeler, shares her inspiring journey into shared death experiences and spiritual consciousness. With a rich background in art history, theology, sound therapy, Reiki, hypnosis, and past-life regressions, Helen now dedicates herself to supporting the dying and those they love in life and after death.
The innate gift of connecting with those who have crossed over has profoundly shaped her understanding of life and death, despite those around her not nurturing her gifts when she was younger.
Helen’s personal experience with grief began when she foresaw her father’s passing months before it happened—a vision that propelled her mission to help others find closure before dying. As a death doula influenced by such personal loss, she emphasizes the importance of addressing unresolved issues for smoother transitions at life’s end. Her stories illustrate how healing through vulnerability supports forgiveness and transformation.
Key Takeaways:
- Trust Personal Experiences: Embrace signs as validations from spirit teams.
- Open Dialogue About Death: Encourage authentic communication even amidst difficult conversations.
- Healing Power in Vulnerability: Allow raw emotions to foster collective healing.
- Community Support Matters: Initiatives like No One Dies Alone (NODA) highlight crucial human connections at the end of life.
This episode weaves together insights about grief’s somatic manifestations alongside practical advice for processing loss—including meditation practices—and explores how openness can transform entrenched narratives hindering healing journeys.
This episode invites listeners to keep an open mind and heart and allow curiosity beyond skepticism to take root so that healing can occur, which is often experienced unexpectedly and in the most delightful ways. The universe (and our guides) have our backs and are waiting for us to co-create with them!
RESOURCES:
CONNECT:
Embracing the Journey of Grief and Spiritual Connection
In a world where life and death are often viewed as polar opposites, there exists a unique space that intertwines these experiences into one cohesive journey. This is the realm explored by Helen Gretchen Jones, a death doula whose work focuses on shared death experiences and spiritual consciousness. In an enlightening episode of “Grieving Voices,” Helen shares her profound insights into how we can foster loving connections with our spirit team while navigating life’s inevitable end.
The Role of Intuition in Understanding Life’s Transitions
Helen prefers to call herself an intuitive rather than a medium, highlighting her comfort with this term which allows her to connect deeply without preconceived labels. Her childhood was marked by interactions with deceased individuals and what she describes as her spirit team—an experience not commonly shared among peers but one that shaped her understanding of life’s transitions early on.
Techniques for Recognizing Signs from Beyond
A significant aspect of Helen’s work involves helping people recognize signs from their spirit teams. She encourages openness to subtle synchronicities in daily life—a feather at your feet when you’re thinking about someone or an unexpected song playing just when you need it most. Trusting these signs can lead to deeper spiritual awareness and personal growth.
Navigating Grief Through Personal Experience
The catalyst for Helen’s path was the sudden loss of her father—a vision she had months before his passing spurred her commitment to help others find closure before death strikes unexpectedly. As a death doula, she witnesses firsthand how terminally ill individuals transition through stages—from anger and control struggles toward acceptance aided by visions of loved ones who have passed.
Providing Peace at Life’s End
Death doulas like Helen play crucial roles in ensuring peace for both those nearing the end-of-life stage and their families left behind; they address unresolved issues creating smoother transitions filled with healing opportunities rather than fear-driven chaos often associated with dying processes today.
Insights Into Afterlife Beliefs & Their Impact On Living Relationships
Helen believes strongly in structured afterlives where learning continues posthumously akin schooling systems here earthside – helping souls understand past actions’ impacts better thus facilitating reconciliation even beyond physical existence itself! Ignoring such possibilities only frustrates spirits trying desperately communicate important messages back home again…
Her narrative suggests interconnectedness between living-spiritual dimensions urging listeners shift skepticism towards embracing creative mindsets co-creating realities alongside unseen allies guiding us every step way forward together united purposefully always onward ever upward!
Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk: Hello, and welcome to another episode of grieving voices. Thank you for being here and listening to today’s guest, Helen Gretchen Jones. She is a death doula, intuitive, and channeler, who writes about shared death experiences in the essence of spiritual consciousness. Her writing focuses on fostering loving connections with oneself and others, and her work emphasizes, trusting, per personal experiences and the teachings she channels from her team and spirit known as the a team. Ellen holds a dual master’s degree in art history and theology from Saint Edward’s University. She’s a certified and soundful therapy, rakie, hypnosis and past life regressions, and when she’s not working with hospice patients, writing or teaching how it can be found on the family ranch hanging out with her husband, Taylor, their children, Ty and L, and managing all of their many animals. Thank you so much for being here.
Helen Gretchen Jones: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here today.
Victoria Volk: It’s been a little while since I’ve had someone who well, you didn’t say you’re a medium, but I kind of feel like that’s a little bit of what you’re talking about. Is that true?
Helen Gretchen Jones: It is. My friend gives me a hard time. She’s a medium, and she goes, hi, can we just use the word? I use intuitive because I don’t I don’t know why. I guess I’m more comfortable with the word intuitive.
Victoria Volk: Okay. That’s fair enough. It’s been a while since I’ve had a medium on, but it seems like I was just telling somebody this not that long ago. I’ve had so many instances. Almost I I think actually almost every instance of recording with somebody, I go listen back to edit, and there is always this third voice.
Helen Gretchen Jones: Oh, how nice.
Victoria Volk: Comes in. And I remember one in particular. It was Becky Ellis. And she was talking about her dad, and there was she was sharing a story about her dad. And this very distinct male voice was in my recording that said, no.
And so when it happens, I share it with the guest, and they’re never surprised. It seems but she’s not a medium. And so but usually, it’s been when there’s been a medium. And so I’m kinda curious after I edit this one or when I go to edit this episode if there’ll be somebody making their appearance in the recording. And I don’t include it when it goes live. Actually, no. I do. It is. And when it goes live, but you don’t hear it, I’m trying to think. You know, I’m I don’t usually play back my recordings.
Like, I don’t listen after
Helen Gretchen Jones: They better them. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. I do take out the piece and I save it to share with the guests, but yeah, I don’t know if people can actually hear it because you know I think you’ve got to be because I don’t hear it of course when we’re recording and the guest doesn’t hear it. Right? It’s only when I play it back.
Helen Gretchen Jones: And, you know, I’ve done experiments with the voice recording where you listen for the voice through the editing process, and I’ve had voices come in during editing that I did not hear when I was recording.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. So you’ve had that experience.
Helen Gretchen Jones: Of
Victoria Volk: course, you’ve probably had that experience yourself. Yeah.
Helen Gretchen Jones: Well, I was intentionally testing for that, you know, just running experience and seeing. And on one, it was quite a lot. And some, of course, I don’t hear anything. But
Victoria Volk: so when did this? This is a great lead to to when did you realize this gift that you had? And does it I was listening. I was watching this I don’t know what it was on. It was a Oh, it’s unsolved mysteries. Mhmm. I think on Netflix or whatever, and there was an episode about a guy that had this has this spirit that’s been always with him since he was a child named Becky. And Like, she’s, like, his a team. Like, you were kinda talking about, like, she’s, like, on his team and helps him help people. He’s only heard her actual voice one time and it was in the presence of somebody else and it was documented and it’s pretty incredible episode actually. But when did you realize this gift that you had?
Helen Gretchen Jones: So I have been able to tune in for lack of a better word. I I would say connect. I’ve been able to connect to my team and spirit and to other spirits when I was very, very little four or five. I remember, I didn’t know it was unusual at the time. It just felt like it was, I don’t know, normal or commonplace, but it wasn’t until I was probably twelve or thirteen. When I started realizing that it maybe wasn’t normal when these experiences were shared. Like, people would be like, no. That didn’t happen or no. That person wasn’t actually there or I believe you believe that’s what you saw. So then you start to kind of put it together that maybe other people aren’t experiencing the same stuff and you have a you’re out of fork in the road at that point. You can either believe that you’re making it up and it’s imagination completely or you can trust yourself and maybe recognize that not everybody is living or having the same experience at the same time. That’s a hard age. It’s a tough age. But for me, the experiences with my team and spirit and with spirit in general were so beautiful, so transformative, and we’re desperately needed in challenging times. They made everything feel okay that when I would share it with my parents and they would say, I believe you believe that’s what you saw. It didn’t make me question my experience. It made me question the wisdom of my parents. And anyone else I shared. So I was the experiences were so transformative that it made me wonder if I could believe what they were saying. And also middle school, you know, that’s also around the time when you’re experiencing, you know, all your childhood make believe, your Santa Claus and your Easter bunny, and all tooth fairy, and all of those things. And so you start to see that maybe things that your parents are saying, maybe you need to trust your own experiences first.
Victoria Volk: Well, and how did that change, like, your friend like, did you have friends that you could share that your experiences with? Or were they, like, no. Just don’t tell me about that stuff.
Helen Gretchen Jones: You know it’s so funny. Most of them were a little more fearful, I think. And so I would keep it to myself, but what I couldn’t understand was it wasn’t fearful at all. It was beautiful and amazing and awesome. But I have some I have a high school friend that I’m still friends with that we, you know, kind of keep up through social media and on occasion when we see each other through big life events or something. Her name is Donna, and she told me recently, like, in the last couple of years,
Victoria Volk: she goes, yeah, I used to
Helen Gretchen Jones: say the weirdest things when you were little. My mom remembers it, like, when we so I guess I must have said stuff that they didn’t make me feel uncomfortable about even though it struck them as odd.
Victoria Volk: Mhmm. When did you realize who your a team was? Like and when when you say when when I hear a team or when I read read a team, I was like, oh, yeah, mister t.
Helen Gretchen Jones: I know. No.
Victoria Volk: If you’re that generation, but you know, is that how you came like, how did you come up with a team? First of all, I’m just curious.
Helen Gretchen Jones: That’s so funny. So when I was decided that they were always a collective and certain personalities or voices would emerge from the collective, they always felt a bigger part of something, but sometimes I think humans need a physical appearance or a name or something that they can more readily connect to to make the, you know, bigger collective feel more approachable. So and relatable. So my collective is I they’re a collective for sure, but sometimes individual personalities will kinda pull through like a wave pulling up from the ocean before coming back in to the collective. So I decided to call them a team. It was something that popped into my mind fairly recently. I think it might have been twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, just to give a name to the collective. And my husband was like, oh, the a team. Like, the, you know, the crime fighters from the nineteen eighties or something. It’s so t. Yeah. So t. I’ve been in full. Right? That’s what he would say. So I was like, what? I named them after, you know, like, I and I thought it was so lame after that. And I wanted to be something that was like, you know, that meant oneness or that, you know, that was more singular and that represented a collective. And so I told in a meditation, I was like, alright, guys. I chose a a lane name for you guys, pick something else, and I’m throwing the ball that’s in your court, and I’ll be waiting for that really great name that’s gonna come through. And I went I left the house to take my cat to the vet and all the parking spot were being temporarily blocked by a dumpster that was being delivered to the vet clinic and it was olive green and in big bold white letters it said a team on the side. And I was just like I just left the house like ten minutes before So I was like, what? And it was in that moment that I had the knowing that a does mean singular or one in the English language, and it also infers that we are a team and they need me as much as I need them. So a team just stuck after that.
Victoria Volk: Oh, I love that story. I’m so glad I went there. But it brings up the synchronicities that we experience in life that we really don’t often pay attention to and unless you have like this tuned inness Mhmm. About yourself. You probably will miss a lot of these synchronicities. What do you say to people who want to tune in more and learn who their team is and who their guides are? Like, what are some steps that people can take?
Helen Gretchen Jones: So I have a small group of women who come and sit with me and I co teach with another woman here in my town of Austin. We have a little thing that we kind of put together and we just talked about this. How can we receive signs and synchronicities more clearly because I receive them literally. They come in like there’s no doubt, whereas my friend who’s the medium, who gives me a hard time for not using the word medium. Her name is Keisha.
She doesn’t get them like that. She doesn’t get them like in your face signs, but she has she has a sudden knowing or a feeling of that makes sense when she sees something. For me, I ask for a sign in advance. So it’s gonna be different for different people. For me, I say, okay, guys. I believe I just received a message from me that was pretty clear, but this is a big one and I need validation for this. You guys are gonna need to send me a sign. And then I just take a deep breath and I say, okay, and the sign is gonna be, and I let them place a sign in my head. It’s usually comes through as a thought or an image. I let them pick it because they have a very broader perspective, like a a a bigger vantage point to see what I’m going to be experiencing in the next couple of days based on the choices I’ve made so far and the intentions behind the choices I am currently making.
So they’re gonna place a little something in my mind. So if I chose, for example, I saw a symbol of a rose. Well, it’s not gonna be some random person. It’s gonna come and just hand me a rose on the street. I suppose that could happen.
But more likely, I’m gonna go through Starbucks and the person who’s scanning my app is gonna be named Rose. Or if I go check out something at the grocery store, the person’s gonna have a Rose tattoo on their arm. It’s really not being dismissive of the little things. And when you can be that aware of those subtle synchronicities, Well, spirit gets real excited. They’re like, yes, we got through.
Now, what else can we deliver? What else is she willing to see and recognize as part of, you know, a greater whole of what’s happening around her? My friend, Keisha, She is different. She says, okay, I’m gonna wait for a sign. She doesn’t ask them to tell her what it is. She’s just going to go about her day and all of a sudden she’s gonna feel, I think that’s my sign. I think that’s my knowing that this is validating the information that was coming through earlier. So I think it’s gonna vary by person. I always tell my team I need a huge sign. Don’t make me guess or second guess it. So I look for those very, very literal signs and I get them, which is amazing.
Victoria Volk: So I I’m a Reiki master. I do energy healing work. I work with Grievers. You know, I’m I I should be I feel like I should be more entuned. You know? I I feel like I’ve been frustrated because it’s like I ask for specific signs, but I like how your approach is where you’re just asking for the sign to be given to you. Like, what will be the sign? Yes. I like that approach and because I feel like it’s it’s caused me to feel doubtful of myself. It’s caused me to feel unsure. And so but when I’m in a session with somebody and I’m working with their energy field and that feels very sure to me. You know, at the moment, you know, so that I can’t it’s difficult for me to reconcile, like, the stuff for myself. Like, what what you just talked about, that’s where I’m struggling. And so I like your approach that you shared in how you do that. Mhmm. I might might try that for myself, so thank you for sharing that.
Helen Gretchen Jones: Sure. It was actually taught to me by someone else. By the way, I’m glad it’s working out.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. So let’s change the subject to grief because that’s what whole podcast is about and what your work is about as I’m a death doula too, trained death.
Helen Gretchen Jones: Oh, fantastic. Okay.
Victoria Volk: But I have yet to figure out what that’s gonna look like for me. And so I’m very anxious to hear how you’ve incorporated that into your work and how you support the living as a death doula. Right? So Yes. A lot of questions, a lot of things there. Let’s put a pin in some of those. And hopefully, we don’t forget what we want to talk about now. But so as a child, you mentioned that you very young age, you recognize this gift, but had you had a lot of death in your life and in your family? Around that time when you first discovered this? Was it family that was coming to you who had deceased? Or
Helen Gretchen Jones: It was in some cases, it was my for example, some of my grandmother’s deceased relatives. She had a lot, you know, know, during the Great Depression, there were a lot of people having a lot of kids, and it was a different time back then. So she had lost some of her siblings. And I do remember some of them coming through. So even now, it’s confusing to me when I insist in my memory that they were there for a family event, and they’re like, no, they were deceased. But in my mind, they were there. I think when you’re little, sometimes it’s hard to differentiate. But I didn’t start working with dying people until I didn’t feel the need to, until after twenty fifteen. Twenty fifteen was when my father died. He was young. He was in his fifties. And it was relatively unexpected for the family. It was not unexpected for me, five months before his death, I had been given a vision of his death. And he was he had cirrhosis at the liver that was health related. And I think his death being so unexpected for specifically one of my sisters and for some of his siblings even. There was a lot of closure that didn’t get a chance. There was so much stuff that was left unsaid and there was a lot of hurt and pain that people were holding on to from past actions. And and I thought, gosh, if when I heard about a death duel, I thought if there was any way that I could navigate someone else’s deep loss like that and and help them not have all these things left unsaid. If I could help them to find closure, then that’s what I wanna do. And so that’s what led me down the path of being a death doula. And once I chose, went all in, I committed, this is what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna help the people who are dying and the families. My gifts started to change and evolve towards that. Because before, I was doing more raky and sound bowl and it was a little bit more dealing on an individual basis what that person needed, especially some shock work, things like that. But once I moved into working with people who are dying, my gift started to evolve towards the people who are dying. So it shifted for sure.
Victoria Volk: So when you’re so you work with the people who are dying,
Helen Gretchen Jones: I do, specific. And their families and their families and their family stuff.
Victoria Volk: Okay. What does that look like? I’m just curious for myself personally. Like, what does that look like? Is it, you know, helping them, yeah, I’ll let you explain.
Helen Gretchen Jones: Sure. So it depends on who hires me, or I also do volunteer work. So it’s both of All of that matters based on what you’re working with. So if the family hires me, then usually means that the patient’s a little more close minded to their process that’s coming up for them, their dying process. If it’s the patient that hires me, it’s usually because they feel like the family hasn’t come to terms with what they have come to terms with. And so it really depends on what direction I’m going to be going in, but ultimately you’re working with both family and patient. It has been my experience so far that when the patient first receives a diagnosis of a terminal illness, then you’re they’re gonna be first able to fight it. What can I do to to live longer? How can I keep death at bay? Nobody ever wants to talk about death. It’s such a taboo topic, especially in our western civilization. So we’re looking at it’s unlucky. Oh, don’t say that. Oh, you know, that’s not being positive. That’s being negative. When in reality every single living being has to die. Every plant animal person, it doesn’t matter, cells, molecules, everything transitions to a different state. So instead of focusing on it being a negative thing, a bad thing, a horrible thing. If we were to shift our perspective and really make it about this is what’s happening, now how can we make it the best possible? You know? And yes, we’re all gonna grieve. We’re all going to feel sad about the physical loss of our loved one. Of course, that’s part of the process. Nobody on this planet will not experience that. But knowing that we have to go through it, what’s the best possible way to go through it and how can we heal hearts beforehand so that any of that pain and hurt doesn’t have to continue to shape the lives of those left behind. So that’s really what I’m doing. And that’s on a case by case basis. So sometimes when a purse oh, I guess I go back to what I said. I’m so sorry. I kinda got off topic a little bit. First, we’re really angry, and we try to fix it and keep it at bay. And But once we accept that this is happening, that’s when fear sets in. People feel fearful over the process of dying. And they they then look for a little bit of control. What can I control now? So they start to do their paperwork. They start to I want you to have this, I want you to have that, I want this person to come, I want this, you know, they start to try to control their environment. And then in the last week or two before death, that’s when we start to see some pretty amazing things. We start to see Our loved one who’s dying starts to see people who are coming that have already transitioned. They start to see beings of light. And the reason that this is important and should not be considered something to be medicated or that we need to convince them is not actually happening. The reason this is important is because that removes the fear that people have around death. When they start to have a foot in both worlds, they start to see that they’re not alone, and it’s okay for them not to be fearful of the next space and someone’s coming in and slowly introducing the next phase to them so that they’re comfortable when the time comes. It’s really a really amazing important phase. And in addition to that, it gives the loved ones hope that there is something more.
So All of these phases are really important in the in the dying process. And as a death doula, when you’re there, you’re navigating each individual phase and meeting the person right where they’re at with the ultimate goal of peace.
Victoria Volk: Had a guest. His name is Chris Kerr, and he had written a book. He works with hospice patients. And he had has done a lot of research on the dying process and wrote a book. Death is about a dream, and he had a very interesting take on it. And he was actually part of the Netflix documentary or series surviving death.
Helen Gretchen Jones: Oh.
Victoria Volk: So I’ve had a lot of different types of people on this show. But in your personal experience though with your dad, when you learn that information, like, did you keep it to yourself? Did you share it? Or
Helen Gretchen Jones: So when I my dad’s death was the first close family death because it’s your parent. And when I received that vision, it was my first vision that I’ve received as someone dying. And I journaled it because I was, you know, always journaling and meditating doing doing doing things like that. I told my husband and a neighbor about it, and then I let it go. In the vision, me, my dad was in a hospital bed, And he was his by the way, let me just say, my dad was a good old boy. He lived out on a ranch all alone with his dog. You know, he didn’t want any kind of he wanted to be off the grid. I mean, he was you know. Okay. So he was buried Texan, buried. And so his biggest fear, one time he told me, I found out that he hadn’t told his sister or any of my sisters about it either or his mom or anybody. Was that he feared dying alone and that nobody would find him for days. So when I had my vision and he had die was dying in a hospital, that was an unusual thing for him because, yeah, my dad would not have just gone to the doctor of the hospital. He was out on the land. So he was in the hospital. There was a number five flashing above his head. The hospital walls were this bluish green color, and he he was young still in in that vision. And my daughter who was just a baby. I mean, she was a little at that four or five, I think. And she was holding my hand and she looked to be the same age and I thought he’s gonna be dying soon. So I journaled it he’d been he’d been staying with me in Austin, which is where I’m at, and he he lived down South Texas. And he’d been drinking all day. He kept extending his stay because he couldn’t get behind the wheel to drive. He was watching politics really loud. He was a smoker. My backyard was littered with cigarette butts. He brought his dog. I had cats. It was just kind of a chaotic mess and I didn’t want him to feel unwelcomed, but it was very, very frustrating for me at that time. Of course, I love my dad, but it wasn’t an enjoyable experience, I should say. So by the and that’s when that vision happened. So I was really kind of focused on how can I get my dad to go back home? And this is, you know, really certain that the quality of that of of my family, now my children, my husband, it was I mean, it was a chaotic time. And the holidays were coming. The kids were starting school. I had a lot going on, so I just pushed that vision aside. It was my first vision. How do I know if it’s right? I wrote it down, told a couple of people that was it. Well, five months later, on February fifth of twenty fifteen, all those fives, while he was in his fifties, the whole thing started at five o’clock in the morning. He was in rehab. He’d agreed to go to rehab at Christmas, and he was in rehab, and they found him kind of out of it in his room, took him to a hospital. And that’s the only way he would have ever been in a hospital. And sure enough, we get there. The hospital has blueish green walls, and it’s all unfolding exactly as the vision. And I needed someone to watch my daughter because it was a two hours away and my neighbor called my neighbor said, can you get my daughter for school? And she was like, remember that vision you had? I was like, oh my gosh. She was the one that reminded me about it. And so since then, now that I work with people who are dying, I do get ballparks on on people’s death. Ballparks, not like February fifth at five AM, nothing like that. It’s gonna be it’s just like three weeks. You know, approximately two and a half years. I’ve got one that’s approximately four years. So I do get these ballparks on people now, but that gift is new since I started working with people who are
Victoria Volk: dying. Wow.
Helen Gretchen Jones: But when I first got it, I just wanna share. When I first got it, I thought, am I supposed to stop it? Now I felt this responsibility. Was this but that’s what movies teach you. You know? They’re just like, oh, someone got a vision. They have to go stop. Someone’s No. It’s my belief and that could change, right, based on experiences. I’m always trying to see what what I’m interpreting is correct or not. But it’s my belief that when a soul decides to die, then I’m able to pick up on that wave or that packet of information that’s already out there. When that soul has decided. So while the personality of my dad may not have decided to die, he wouldn’t have wanted that. On a soul level, he did. And so when that soul made that choice, that’s when I was able to receive that information. So I believe someone that is close to me now when I got I was cooking spaghetti and came right over me four years. I’m just like, so on the soul level that person has made the choice even though their personality has not. So, yeah, that’s I hope I answered your question.
Victoria Volk: I feel like I’m in a trance just watching and listening. That’s fascinating. I don’t know how I would feel with that information, like, what do you do with it?
Helen Gretchen Jones: What’s so interesting is his mom, my grandmother, after my dad died, I told her about the vision. And she was like, if you ever get one on me, you better tell me. Most people tell me if you ever get one on me, do not tell me. Right? So shortly after that, I did get one on her. And I I got it in December, and I was like, oh my gosh. Do I tell her, you know, do I I had a real knot in my stomach about it. And she’s a loved one too. She is. She is. And she told me to tell her. And so but I was really struggling with this because at that point, I was believing that by telling someone to you then, is it like, like a Shakespeare play? Are you making it happen? Because now you’re putting it in their their field and it’s gonna You know what I mean? So I was really struggling with what does it mean to have a vision. And so I went ahead and told her and she she did die within two and a half years just like the vision. I think it was eighteen months. I think now I can’t remember what the vision was. I’d have to go back to my journals and look. Was it two years or eighteen? I said maybe eighteen months to twenty four months. I can’t remember now, but she hit the mark. And I was just like you’ve got to be kidding me. Is it because I told her? Is it because And so I struggled with that.
Now though, like I mentioned earlier, I believe it is when a soul decides that’s how I’m It’s not my responsibility
Victoria Volk: Mhmm.
Helen Gretchen Jones: At all. But what it does is allow me to prepare the people around them and that person or their big transition. So what would have been nice had I insisted one of my sisters come with me to family weekend when my dad was in rehab and knowing that my dad had a shortened time and really allow her to express how she was feeling and her hurt and pain and allow him to at least have the opportunity to work through some of that. Same with my grandmother because we knew she got cancer shortly after. We were able to work through that.
She had all of her stuff, her all her ducks in a row, she said everything she wanted to say, everybody said their final good buys because they were expecting it. So I think that’s why I’m given that information now is because on a choice I’ve made to work with people who are dying. So now it’s like, I don’t have to tell anyone what their ballpark is. That’s not the important part. The important part is to allow me to have a time frame in which to work with them or their families bring about the greatest amount of peace for the transition.
Victoria Volk: Full body chills. Let me ask you this. So having this gift as a child and growing into your teens in adulthood, so your perspective of grief is obviously very different from everybody else around you. And you said that, you know, it was like it challenged you to believe your parents and what they were telling you. Like, I believe it happened to you. But, you know, what were the things about grief that you that people were telling you that you didn’t believe and what has your grief with your father and the work that you’re doing, what has that all taught you now?
Helen Gretchen Jones: So I’ll start with my dad and then I’ll talk about my childhood. So my dad’s the grief around my dad was profound and that was I probably was I call it a funk. I wouldn’t say it was a full on depression, but after his death and parents are supposed to go before their kids. I felt like I had a good relationship with my dad. Like, there was no reason for me to feel that way.
But I think I was also processing the grief of the family. The grief of the family was deep, and my grief was profound, but I have to say that his death was the catalyst to me helping other people through their grieving processes. So it’s been a very important of death that has and he comes through, you know, he’s a better communicator in death than he ever was in life. Mhmm. So this has also been a process for him. So even though he has transitioned to a different state, of being his molecules or moving a little different faster rate than ours. I think this has given him the opportunity to move through his process. We don’t just it’s been my experience so far that we don’t just die and suddenly everything’s fixed. Everything is perfect and we’re suddenly all knowing. It’s nothing like that. We have a higher perspective. We have a greater understanding. We recognize how our actions affected those around us. And I think that working with me now, my dad has the opportunity to sort of work through what he feels was maybe causing grief to the people he’d left behind based on his action. This is an opportunity for him to sort of heal some of that with us left behind. And so in that way, my grief and the grief of the family has been very important into serving other people who are working through grief, growing up. And I think that this is not uncommon. I hear it all the time. People who have had challenging upbringings, you know, moved around a lot. Maybe my mom got married a lot, and we lived with our grandmother half the time. And so there was a lot of emotional and mental patterns that needed to be broken, a lot of cycles that needed to be broken through my my mom and her parents and different things like that. So they were dealing with constant grief, regrets, and and challenges on their own, which affected how their children were being raised. Luckily for me, I had my team in spirit who would come in because, you know, in order to get a little bit of peace, I would go sit in an empty bathtub and close the door as a little kid, and that’s where I would find a loan time. And I could just focus on the silence. And it was at that time, sometimes, not every time that my team would come in and they would they would never tell me, you know, they would always tell me everything’s gonna be okay, but they would never tell me what I was seeing or witnessing, but they would suggest other perspectives to help me understand perhaps. The decisions behind my parents and grandparents. And that would help me realize that maybe it isn’t all about me. When when you’re a kid, everything’s about you, you have to be or you wouldn’t survive. Right? So and you start to recognize their own hurt and their pain. And it was maybe more of a gift for me to be able to see that early on because of the suggestions from my team and spirit. But there’s a lot of grief in my family that needed to be worked through. And so I feel like maybe perhaps there’s a lot of just grief that is around me, and so I’m being given an opportunity to help other people find peace in that.
Victoria Volk: I had another guest. She was a medium. That once said that there was a parent that had lost a child and the child had died by suicide. And the child came to the parent through this medium. And she said, you know, told this mother that he’s in school. Like, that’s how he described it. Like, he was in school. And so when you were talking about how your father is, like, he’s through you. Is that right? He’s kinda working through his transgressions as in things that he did maybe to others in the physical plane. Like, it’s his school. Like, that makes me think of that. Is that how it comes to you or how you would describe those on the other side kind of describe it as well?
Helen Gretchen Jones: Yeah. Actually, when you mentioned that, so when I sit with other people for an intuitive reading and their loved ones come through almost every single time, they show me classes. And it’s such an interesting thing because you’re thinking, oh, like, classes, but you that’s literally what it looks like. It looks like classrooms. It looks like gatherings on green lawns. Even like it’s gatherings of people with an instructor or some person who has experience in that one field. So one of the things my dad has shown me would be communication. And working with how to communicate more effectively, how to communicate cross, you know, more I don’t know what that would be, like, from physical to non physical dimensions. People have shown me I have one client whose mom showed me that she was studying the stars. And I know that sounds kind of silly or just like the like astronomy or, you know, like, but yes, apparently there’s some there she’s showing me studying celestial bodies of some sort. And this was an interest that she was kind of moving her soul into that direction for a little while. And I do, I see it as classrooms. But these are not like our classrooms that we have here. They’re just so much more hands on and they’re they feel huge. And they feel connected and they feel just expansive. So, yeah, it’s like a school even over there, classrooms and learning potentials and how awesome is that, or we’d get so crazy bored just playing a harp on the cloud somewhere.
Victoria Volk: So what do you think is the most frustrating in your experience that people who are trying to communicate with us on the physical plane? What what are the frustrations that you receive?
Helen Gretchen Jones: That people in spirit are having?
Victoria Volk: Yeah.
Helen Gretchen Jones: That we’re dismissive, that we dismiss signs, that we don’t allow. There’s okay. Well, here’s another thing. That we don’t allow. We dismiss imagination as make believe instead of allowing our imaginations. Like, we’re here as humans on this planet. We came here to experience this physical reality And part of the best thing about being human is we get to create and co create our experience on this planet. That is like like, that’s like the best part about being here. So your your mindset, your thoughts, your perspective, your choices, your everything is co creating your experience here. So in order for that to happen, you have to come up with an idea or set an intention or imagine it. But when you we have the setup thing that imagination is pretend and it’s not thoughts create things. They create worlds. So when you’re sitting here wanting to connect to spirit and you’re imagining sitting on a park bench in New York or whatever you want to do through a guided hypnosis or meditation, and you say, okay, I like a loved one or one of my guides to come sit next to me on this bench and then they do and then they give you a message and you’re like, that’s nice, but I imagined all of that because I wanted it and I created it and we dismiss the cocreation with spirit. Spirit’s like great. She’s setting up a bench in New York for me to come sit on. I’m gonna do it and now she’s gonna dismiss it because she thinks she’s completely imagining it instead of reframing imagination instead of his make believe but calling it co creation with Spirit.
Victoria Volk: I love that. I love that. Got it. Maybe you think of something else and then it slipped my mind now. Maybe you know what it was.
Helen Gretchen Jones: I just I just I I hope that anyone who hears this would consider doing a guided meditation or a hypnosis session, whatever works best for you. And to realize that all these words that we put on it, like, it’s a hypnosis session, it’s a, you know, raky event, which is, you know, an energy healing, doesn’t matter what you call it. It’s what the intention you place behind it. Words can be just semantics because once we put a label on something, we limit it, you know, anyway. So just know that you’re here creating this world And if you choose to connect to your team and spirit or to god or to angels or whoever, then do it and don’t dismiss it, write it down. And you’ll start to recognize that discernment will strengthen. You’ll start to be able to interpret messages more strongly. And less through the filter of your human mind. It’s a fantastic way to connect.
Victoria Volk: So how can we connect to our team? How do we know who our team is? How do you
Helen Gretchen Jones: think about that?
Victoria Volk: Who is your team?
Helen Gretchen Jones: So okay. So my team is a very large collective, and it’s a group of, you know, angelics, ascended masters, ancestors, alternate dimensional beings, aliens, like it doesn’t matter. It’s whatever physical body you wanna put them in, it doesn’t matter. But for me, I like having a physical archetype body that can step forward in my thoughts as a way of connecting. So there’s a few that have come through pretty regularly more than Sometimes I’ll just see one one time and that’s it. But I have one whose name is LIRA. I heard her name LIRA or LIRA LIRA LIRA and she always comes through as this blue light. So sometimes she looks elderly, sometimes she looks young, but she’s blue. I was like, okay, I just focused one night on meeting one of them, and she was the first one that comes through and I’m like, okay, well, I’m gonna need sign this week. I’m gonna need to hear your name three times for me to know if that’s really your name and that’s gonna be something I can all week long. That’s what I’m gonna need. And it happened. So I had a friend come up and talk to me. Guess what I just learned about the constellations. There’s constellation. They mentioned the Leerink constellation or, you know, something like that. And I was like, I didn’t really need to hear that whole conversation about the constellations, but it was important that I heard that name mentioned. Then there was another someone said, hey, I’m sending you an audiobook you need to listen to was my neighbor. And the opening credits was talking about someone named LIRA. And I was just like, oh, okay. There’s never I didn’t even read the book. I only think I needed to hear the opening credits. And then a third person was I was having a session done, and she goes, you have a guy named LIRA. So I know that now that’s like an actual intuitive coming in. And but it was and I was like, I do. And you’re the third third validation. And then another one, and this is a strange one. It’s a guy named kissinger. K? I only know of one kissinger, and he’s still alive, and he’s a political figure. And but that was the name that I heard. And I was like, okay. That is so lame. Like, I even looked at what kissinger meant, and it’s like farm or bOG or something. It wasn’t something that meant like, you know, I don’t even know what I was looking for, but kissinger was not it. But I was like, alright, guys, three times you know the rule. Right? Well, I got it three times in one night. I had gone before bed, I’d gone to Barnes and Noble’s. And apparently, there was a right when he walked in a whole display.
I guess, kissinger had done a book or something fairly, like, in the last seven or eight years or something. And there was a display right when I walked in. I wasn’t even gonna go to Barnes and Noble’s. It was right by Old Navy, and I just swung by because I had some extra time to kill. Okay. So anyway, so there it was. Okay. And then I go home, I’m like, fine. Okay. I go home. I literally lay down in bed and just turn on the TV person that pops up is a is a documentary on. Kissinger. I was like, that’s two, you guys. And then my husband and I run a photography rental business. I’m I’m in the studio now. And somebody texted me, hey, do you have this and this and this equipment? And one of the words was kissinger. And they said, that’s so weird. It corrected. Auto corrected it. I meant the word to be profoto, which is nowhere near the word kissinger. Yeah. So I was like, that was my third one. So I got kissinger all in one day. So I’m like, okay.
I called one of my guys kissinger. So anyway,
Victoria Volk: that’s very unique names too, by the way. Like, very unique, like, LIRA and kissinger. Like, under so weird. You know.
Helen Gretchen Jones: Right. But I asked for validation, and I said I needed to hear it three times in the week. And then I didn’t start trying to connect to an individual guide until the other one was confirmed. So that’s how I did it. And there are people I frequently see people’s guides, and so I can connect people to their guides. And I have several people who are intuitive to do the same thing with guides. But my thought is to come up with your own name. You can call them whatever you want. Call them Frank. And then they will make sure Frank is validated three times because they don’t care what you call them. The most important thing is that you’re willing to connect to them and that you interpret their message and their messages are always beautiful.
Victoria Volk: So is your dad part of the a team? Or is he just kind of a special guy that just that you choose when you connect to? Or is he kind of like, no, I wanna connect with you now. This is we would need to have this conversation now.
Helen Gretchen Jones: That’s really interesting. And I would be I would love to hear other people’s feedback on their experience around this. I have found that when people transition, they’re really loud and clear and available very frequently the first year. Then after that, it’s like they’re kinda like, alright, I’m ready to go start my own class, my own stuff, you know, which I know time isn’t linear over there. So at least I understand that to be the case. So in that, why is it a year? It just seems to be that people tend maybe because weren’t they don’t they’re not needed as much. That first year after someone dies, we’re constantly reaching out to them on a heart level, you know, grieving them. And so maybe that’s why they’re around so much. So if my dad pops in, I call them a part of a team, but he’s he comes and goes. I have some that are more static. But for the most case, a lot of my collective that’s why I like to call them a collective is because they’re not they come and go as as as I need.
Victoria Volk: Just this morning, I was watching the news and Well, last night, there was the Dodgers and Yankee’s game. And so on the news this morning, it was all about the Dodgers player. And I don’t know all the names. I don’t even remember, but it and it doesn’t matter. I wanna speak to the synchronicity of it.
And I was just, like, sitting there, like, And I’m wondering if anybody else is watching this like, wow, that is really crazy and synchronistic. But I picked up on it. It’s the the dodger that he hit a grand slam home run run through like last night. First time in is it the first time in World Series history? I’m not sure. I don’t think so. Because the last time it happened, I think, was another dodger. However, many years ago, many, many years ago, who had a limp leg just like this dodger. And it happened at I can’t even remember the time right now. I should have written it down, but it was, like, a minute, within a minute apart.
The grand slam, like, both of them. Like,
Helen Gretchen Jones: this domestic.
Victoria Volk: And it was like and I don’t know if the other dodger is passed on by now. I I would assume he has. I’m not even sure. I’m gonna have to go down rabbit hole on that. But it just was fascinating to me. Like, there there is something about that that just caught my attention. You know?
Helen Gretchen Jones: I think if it catches your attention, then you should go down that rabbit hole a little bit because I think that plays into your general awareness of synchronicities. And so maybe someone’s trying to get your attention as well.
Victoria Volk: That could be interesting. So have you gotten a ballpark on yourself?
Helen Gretchen Jones: I have not. That’s a really good question. But when I sit down to do meditations, they tell me that this is a short life. This is a they always say, dear one, young one, something like that. They Dear child, whatever.
They But they tell me that this is a short life for me. So I either have to acknowledge that it’s a short life because I’m human. And this relatively speaking is a short life, or I could go tomorrow. So knowing that this is a short life and that perhaps on a soul level, maybe I’ve already made that choice and I’m not aware of it. Yeah. I mean, it could happen. I can get diagnosed next year, like who knows tomorrow? I don’t know. So I I try to live each day in the flow. I ask myself, am I in the flow of where I wanna be right now? What is the most exciting thing that’s lined up for my day? That’s what I’m gonna choose first. And so, like, if you’re at home, like, I got to have a day, I think, last Thursday, which was housecleaning day, that sounds kind of lame, but gosh, I feel good when it’s done. And so I just kind of looked at all the chores which one do I wanna do first? Which one excites me the most? You know? And I would just do that one first. It doesn’t have to be like you’re always going to the club or, you know, doing something profound like writing a book or reaching out at a seminar. It didn’t have to be that way to seek excitement your day. For me, laundry was the least exciting thing it got saved at the end. But but what was most exciting was for me, unloading the dishwasher and loading it. That was the first thing I started with. So it can be even the little thing. So if I find that I’m in the flow of life, that sort of dictates where I’m going because I do believe my life here will be short.
Victoria Volk: So how have you utilize this gift in your life personally? Through personal endeavors, careers, relationships, and how has that shifted from probably your teen years? Well, even maybe young adult years to to now.
Helen Gretchen Jones: So it shifted a lot actually, but I’m going to give a lot of credit to my team and spirit, or I’m going to give credit to myself for being open to the teachings from my team and spirit. I can say that as well because it’s easy to dismiss. That can be subtle sometimes. But when you’re first born and you’re a kid and you’re a teenager, you are so self centered. You have to be for survival. You are recognizing the patterns of your family. You’re looking to see how you can fit in the most how you could stay out of trouble the most, you know, what what lies is an okay thing to do and not everything is based on observing your surroundings, changing your self to fit in both at school and at home and on every level. And all of that is part of the growing up process and trying to figure out who you are in this big old jumble of personalities. So it wasn’t until I was a young adult doing everything I thought I was supposed to be doing. Because what everybody else told me I should do, which was, you know, graduate high school, go to college, get married, have kids. I mean, it’s just kinda like you do what you’re told, what everybody else’s dreams are. And if something happens in your early adulthood, where you start to recognize that you’re different than how you’ve maybe allowed yourself to be this whole time. And my team and spirit, that’s when they started coming around when I was in my early twenties and trying to really force compassion. And compassion is something that’s really hard to have unless it’s like a beloved person or animal that you’ve lost in childhood because you are so self centered and you have to be in order to survive and thrive. So when my team started pushing compassion, they would say, put yourself in their shoes, but not how you would do things differently, not how you would change it, not what you would have done to fix it, or what you could do to fix it just be. Just be in their shoes and experience what they’re experiencing. And that quickly takes you out of that me me me mindset. You know? And so I think that was important to moving me through upcoming grief understanding other people’s grief and having sympathy for that and helping me to navigate who I am as a person and be more understanding to who everybody else is and less judgmental because man, it’s easy to judge others because you always think you have the I wouldn’t have done that. I wouldn’t have done something differently, but that is the mindset of someone who is twenty five and younger. No. But it’s time to move past that when you’re no longer a child. And you can make your own choices and it’s important to consider how you fit in the other part of this world without having to compromise who you are.
Victoria Volk: Would you say that as a child and as an adult, you as a person are an empath or highly sensitive because I I always thought they were kind of the same, but they’re not, like in a highly sensitive person isn’t necessarily an empath, but an empath is always highly sensitive is what I’ve learned. What are your thoughts around that? And I think as a child for me personally, and because when I was listening to you speak, that was something I think that came natural to me. Like, I felt everybody’s stuff so much. Almost too much. I didn’t know what to do with it. I had to I lost my father when I was eight. My grandmother the year before that, there was just a lot of stuff and chaos in my life. And so it was like I needed a lot of sleep. It was like a curse to me. It was really was a curse. And so what what would you say to that? Like, what was your experience around that? And, you know, would you consider yourself an empath?
Helen Gretchen Jones: I wouldn’t have my sister was extremely empathic and sensitive. I would say she still is. And like you, she slept a lot. She couldn’t it made life feel so overwhelming sometimes for her, and she’s still very much that way. And she kind of scooby doo’s. That’s what I call it when you’re just kind of running in one spot, but don’t go anywhere. You know, you’re kinda like in a rut a little bit. So she has a tendency to do that based on her feelings and the feelings of everybody else around her can be so overwhelming. She’s extremely sensitive in that way. I was more walls up, put up walls, put up shielding and really kept myself from being overly involved because I couldn’t trust. I couldn’t trust that we weren’t gonna be moving tomorrow. I couldn’t trust that the person that my mom recently married is gonna staying around. And so I never allowed myself to indulge in the feelings of other people and hardly let myself do it for myself, you know. And so luckily allowing my team to come in and help me better understand the perspectives of why choices were being made when I couldn’t understand, kept me from some of that. Also, I don’t know, but I wonder if having a sibling who I was close to and living with, who was processing everybody else’s emotions along with hers. If that gave me the grace to not have to. And I think that frequently with healers, I find that many of them are sensitive and empathic because they are able to clear other people’s energy by kind of processing it through themselves also. When they don’t know how to move it without processing it when they’re early on. And I think my sister’s probably a healer who doesn’t do anything with it because it she’s so kind of overwhelmed by her stuff. I’m more of a teacher. And while I think everyone’s a teacher and a student, I think that you’re not always a healer if you’re a teacher, and you’re not always teaching if you’re a healer, but you can.
Victoria Volk: I love that. Yeah. And that’s where energy healing you know, I have I heard Ricky three times.
Helen Gretchen Jones: Oh, and you’re like, that’s what I’m doing.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. I I’m gonna look go down that rabbit hole. Yeah. It’s been a series of rabbit holes in the last, probably, six years. And the exponential growth I’ve had because of it of being open to hearing things repeatedly or going down these rabbit holes. And I always think of it as like this download or intuitive thought or curiosity that, like, drops in and then I follow it. And that’s just how it has appeared to me, but it’s never been, like, this direct it hasn’t felt like a direct communication. I think that’s what’s lacking for me. And that’s where my frustration is.
Helen Gretchen Jones: I mean, that’s pretty direct to hear Ricky three times. How does he do it?
Victoria Volk: That is that I guess I want more of it. You know, I want to be able to utilize that openness for myself as much as I’ve utilized it for other people. And I think that’s kind of I think I’m at the point where it’s like, okay, I want this from my own self. I want You know what I mean?
Helen Gretchen Jones: Because I didn’t
Victoria Volk: grew up as being an emotional caretaker for everybody else, and I’ve always often been that. And so now it’s like, alright, let’s go. I want I want I
Helen Gretchen Jones: that’s so funny.
Victoria Volk: I mean,
Helen Gretchen Jones: Do you have siblings?
Victoria Volk: I do. I’m the youngest.
Helen Gretchen Jones: Do you feel like I’m just curious now. And do you feel like you were more sensitive than the rest of them? Yes. Do you feel like you possibly processed some of the family’s emotions through some of those challenges and trying times, whereas they didn’t have to because you were doing it for them.
Victoria Volk: I never thought of it that way, but
Helen Gretchen Jones: some didn’t think about it. I don’t know. I feel like my sister may have done that for me and unknowingly, and I hadn’t thought about it till today. Actually, but I feel like that’s maybe something that happened.
Victoria Volk: Why else can we go with this? Because I I could talk all day. Are you how are you on time?
Helen Gretchen Jones: I’m good. I’m good. We’re just I don’t know. We’re just kinda going back and forth.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. I feel like we’re talking about a lot of different things. I have a series of questions that I have on my form, and I do wanna get to I wanna I wanna ask these because I feel like I want my listeners to get what they need to receive to from this. And from your experience of your own growth in grief, in working with others, in theirs. What would you what would be the piece of advice? And you you’ve shared a lot, but what is one thing that you were feeling guided to share in terms of I just received this diagnosis or my loved one just received this diagnosis or the flip side of that, there was no warning at all. What is the approach that you would suggest for both of those scenarios? I don’t even know what the question is. Really, what do you wanna say about that? Because it’s like, how do you connect in those circumstances? I don’t even know what the question is. So however you interpret me at I don’t know. I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore.
Helen Gretchen Jones: So here’s how I would interpret that. If someone is given a diagnosis and they’re like you’re it has spread everywhere you’ve literally got weeks, that’s a very scary thing. And if there’s someone out there who has a family member or the they’re themselves have they’ve just been given that diagnosis or that prognosis, then I would suggest with everything that you are to open up that bag and just say I’m going to just for one week allow myself to do this and I’m going to I’m going to say the things that I need never said, that needed to be said. And I’m even if it’s hurtful, I’m gonna say it in the kindest way possible. And I’m going to clear the air. And a lot of people find that it’s really hard to do that because they don’t want to say it to someone who is dying. They’re about to die anyway. You know what I mean? That’s what they say. They’re about to die anyway.
Why would I hurt them? They don’t have much time left? It isn’t about hurting. It’s about processing those emotions beforehand. And in my experience, whenever someone has been giving it any kind of diagnosis, whether they have months or weeks or less than that, when they allow themselves to say what they really need to say or they allow themselves to hear what hasn’t been said yet. It’s like a wait is lifted. It hurts in the moment because there’s some regrets usually around that, but quite honestly, There’s regrets around it because it’s been hurting for a long time. And it’s being pushed down and pushed down and people think that they ignore it, it’ll just eventually, you know, smooth itself out. It doesn’t. It lingers. But once they say it, it’s like They can exhale, they can breathe again, and it’s sort of like giving permission to the person who’s dying to go, that when they do die, it’s okay. I used to think that when I was there helping these families who are really navigating hurt and pain and resentment through their grief and loss, then I needed to be the strong one. And so I I thought I needed to not cry. And I needed to hold it all in and push it down and be the strong one like I’m some kind of amazing emotional person that could just process this and then everybody just, you know, I can just direct how everyone else needs to behave. But I found that one time I couldn’t do it and I broke down and I cried. I I couldn’t. I loved this person they were with me for a long time. And I broke down and I cried. And when I did, it’s like it was permission for everybody else. The family broke down and cried. And we think that we have to hold it all together. I mean, just imagine that holding it all together is so so much resistance. There’s tightness. There’s there’s no flow in it. But when you let it go and you let go of whatever you think people are gonna think about you for crying, for being vulnerable, for being open, it never works that way. People actually open up and become vulnerable themselves. And these people cry, they release whatever that pent up stuff is, that energy, and it makes it easier for them to say the things kindly that they always wanted to say. And so if you allow yourself to be authentically vulnerable, in those moments. That’s where you can flow through the grief, the hurt, and the pain in the resentment, no matter how much time this person has left. And I encourage everyone to allow themselves even if it’s just one day. Today is my vulnerable day. That’s what I would suggest.
Victoria Volk: And what about for those who didn’t have that opportunity?
Helen Gretchen Jones: Like my sister, one of my sisters. So for people who didn’t have that opportunity, if they’re okay. So this has happened or with with many of my clients actually, people who refuse to come in with the rest of the family, this this has happened before. And first, I would take into account what their religious and faith based belief systems are. So unless they’re atheist, including agnostics, they’ve leaving something, they just don’t know what it is. So unless they’re atheist, every faith based belief system believes that there is something more after death. Some know what it is, some don’t. K? That’s their belief. So I would navigate the grief through their belief systems. So if someone believes that there is an afterlife, then we start there. We start with this is not the final goodbye. We know that there’s something more. Years what you missed bedside, oftentimes there’s some spiritual experiences with beings of light, angelics, whatever it is. I would teach that oftentimes our loved ones will come in dreams and to be open and available to that. Depending on the person that I’m working with, I would also suggest a medium. And I know this is a nontraditional approach, but there are some pretty fantastic certified triple blind tested through university studies and there’s lists of these people. It’s a short list, you know, but, I mean, maybe a hundred, but they’re out there. These people are so phenomenal. And you get on their waitlist. There’s usually waitlist that could be six months, it could be a year, but here’s what I know. You’re gonna have to go through that six months or that year anyway. And all of a sudden, this opening shows up at the right time when you need it the most and sometimes there’s cancellations to move up the list, whatever. But you put yourself on that list and all of my experiences. And I know this sounds to say all, but I mean all of the people that I’ve worked with who have also worked with a medium. Say that the medium was able to bring them more closure, more more joy, more hope, and more connection than months with a therapist. So and I’m not there’s a place for therapy of absolutely especially processing your emotions through the physical body, it’s very, very important. But having that connection with your loved one and spirit authenticated and validated and being able to feel like they’re right here with you once again because they are and there are people out there who can perceive those energies. It’s very very healing, and it really moves you through that grief process, a little more lighthearted and a little bit more expansive than you were going into it.
Victoria Volk: What about those? Because you you kind of interpreted it as like someone who didn’t come into the room? But what if they’re in an event of an accident where nobody had where there wasn’t a chance, there wasn’t a diagnosis. It was very sudden,
Helen Gretchen Jones: like an accident. In that case, I would recommend the same thing. I would say, there’s so much healing. I know you probably know this, but if there’s anyone who hasn’t ever seen a medium, a really good medium, and I know that there are scammers out there, but there are scammers in every field. There are really bad doctors. There are really bad lawyers. There are really bad salesman and businessman. And there there’s going to be people who take advantage of people in all every field of work in industry. However, there are some really good ones out there who are on amazing websites that can really get you involved. There’s a Actually, this is kind of important to share. It’s a healing thing. There is a website, an organization called helping parents heal. Have you ever heard of them?
Victoria Volk: I have not.
Helen Gretchen Jones: Okay. Helping parents heal. It’s for people who have lost children. And it doesn’t matter the age of your child. But they have incredible gatherings. They have they’ve even done little branch off groups for fathers who have lost mothers who have lost siblings who have lost these people who are processing the grief of losing a child. And they bring in these big events that are just for helping parents heal families and they bring in mediums, the certified authenticated mediums who do group readings for these people and all of them say, my child was there. They knew things about my child that, you know, and then they tell you what the child’s doing now. And, you know, you get these experiences are often validated by the children in spirit. If you’re open to those signs, you know.
So it’s some of the most beautiful experiences, but they have a website with a list of mediums. So if anyone’s out there interested, I know I’m pushing the medium route, but I can tell you I know how non traditional it is, but how healing and processing that grief it can be. Even for people in accidents.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. I’ve heard that myself from people who’ve experienced mediums too. Yes. So you have this gift. Certainly, it helped you process your grief.
But what were some of the other ways and things that you discovered that helped you and worked for you, spirit guides aside? And maybe they probably actually came in and said, hey, you need to do this or you need to do that or this might help you or
Helen Gretchen Jones: Yes. And I do have some things that I do that are self care that help me move through grief because when you’re working as a death doula, you grieve the loss of the people that you formed connections with. I had one patient. I had he was on hospice for five years and I worked with him for four of them. I loved him deeply.
So you do. You do process a lot of grief as a death doula. And it’s kind of hard for the course, really. One thing that really helps me process that grief, and I don’t know what it is, but submerging myself in water, so like a bath. It’s like the field or the energy field around me. It’s like when everything gets submerged, it’s like it stops crackling or it stops. It’s like it all those little molecules or something. I don’t even know because I don’t know science. So I majored in art and religion. So it just all it’s like it somehow thizzles everything out. So for me, it’s submerging in water and that really, and it resets me, it grounds me, and it sort of helps me to take a breath, reevaluate where I am in this very present moment and recognize that everything is okay in this moment. It doesn’t take away my grief. But it certainly helps me to feel more in my body, grounded, and just present. And that helps. Another thing that I find is really really helpful is when I feel it in my body almost like anxiety like they’re too much moving through me is to move my body.
So I go on a brisk walk because if I run, I will I’m, you know, I’m not that fit. So I don’t need to be running, but I do a brisk walk or something and it feels like it shakes it out of me. And that’s really helpful too. So I encourage anyone to physically move. I don’t do this, but I’ve had several people say that this has been very helpful for them. And it’s something called, I’m a get I hope I’m getting it right, a screen pillow. It’s a pillow that they scream into. It’s like they put it over their face, like they’re smothering themselves, and they just scream, and they let it all out, and they have to do it a few times, and that’s sort of like purging that energy that’s been pent up through that kind of throat and solar plexus area of the body where it can feel like you’ve got knots through this grief. You know, how do we get it out you know, and so sometimes screaming is like a level of communication because you’re using your voice, but it’s a way of moving that energy out. I haven’t tried it, but I’ve heard good things about the screen pillow.
Victoria Volk: Well, I think, you know, in terms of anger, it’s very effective, probably, and safe, and non harming. Right. I recommend, you know, why not? You have nothing to lose. It’s worth a try. Actually, I found myself just doing that not that long ago. So, you know, when you’re
Helen Gretchen Jones: with the
Victoria Volk: yeah. When you’re angry, I mean, yeah. You know, even if it’s a cuss word, you know, which may or may not have been my the case for myself.
Helen Gretchen Jones: Like, password or two.
Victoria Volk: Just see what you gotta do. Right? No. That’s a great actually, that has never been suggested in the podcast. So
Helen Gretchen Jones: I will say one more thing. For me, one thing that really really like resets me and this sounds I’m sure cliche or cheesy, but it’s when I go outside and there’s a breeze. Feeling the breeze I close my eyes. I don’t know what it is about a breeze, but it’s like it’s carrying away things.
Victoria Volk: If you can set that intention. Right? Yeah. Set that intention. Yeah.
Helen Gretchen Jones: When the breeze really resets me, I’d love a good breeze.
Victoria Volk: Come to North Dakota, we got plenty of that.
Helen Gretchen Jones: I love
Victoria Volk: it. Flat, and there’s nothing but wind.
Helen Gretchen Jones: That’s good.
Victoria Volk: So you have written a book which we have not talked about yet, healing whispers from spirit guides. And you didn’t even mention it in your bio, which have found interesting. Oh, oh,
Helen Gretchen Jones: you know, that’s how interesting.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. So when did this book come about? And What was the intuitive hit or inspired hit or the guidance that you received around that?
Helen Gretchen Jones: So it was June three years ago, and I woke up and then it was kissinger actually who we talked about already. Normally, when I hear my team in spirit, I hear them inside my head so very subjectively. This time, Kay came across very objectively. I felt like it was right in front of my face. And he said, you’re going to write a book. And I have never had an interest in writing a book. I can’t imagine I am a mom. You know, my I helped my husband with the family business like I seemed so incredibly normal that I didn’t feel like I had anything interesting or valuable to say. And I was like, well, what would I even write about? And they said, write what you know? And it would take you about two and a half years to complete. I took they said two years to complete, it took two and a half. Ballpark. So I started to think about what is it that I know. I know a little but a lot of things, but I didn’t feel like I was an expert in any specific area. And then it did occur to me that I had all these journals. I had all these journals that I’ve been journaling every single time I went to go visit a patient. I talked about what they were going through, what their families were going through, and then I would journal there, when I would be there, when they were dying, and the shared death experiences that I had. So I get to go part way in the spirit world with them. And I journaled these synchronicities and these teachings where my team and spirit would come in and say this is what he’s experiencing, this is what the doctors are saying, and this is what’s actually happening. And so I have these really great journals, and I just referred to those, picked out a few of my favorite patient stories, put him in the book, and then I preceded each patient’s story with a what I learned through the grieving process, through the healing process, what I’ve learned working with Spirit. One one of the chapters is called signs and synchronicities. Right? So what to look force that you understand when knowing that you don’t have to be bedside when someone dies, you can be in a whole another part of the world. Time and space does not matter in these moments. So all these teachings followed by a patient chapter and I end every single chapter with a a channel message from my team and spirit. Usually, it’s kind of beautiful message that they that were already in these journals, actually, that I’ve been put together with these chapters. So so, yeah, it’s it’s It’s just, I think, a book that talks about healing and grieving and the dying process and and how beautiful it can be.
Victoria Volk: And I’ll put the link to that and the show notes, of course. Yeah. What is one of the stories that has touched you the most and has really just stuck with you.
Helen Gretchen Jones: I’m trying to how do I pick one? I guess I’m gonna talk about mister Rob Robinson. Of course, I’ve changed their names for their privacy with the HIPAA acts and stuff. But mister Robinson was an older man. He was put in a nursing home. He had failure to thrive. He was very, very skinny, and he was on oxygen. And did not wanna talk to me. I was like, he was he was very grouchy. But I insisted I showed up every time when I would sit with him.
Victoria Volk: as a volunteer.
Helen Gretchen Jones: I was a volunteer. Yes. His family actually asked for a volunteer through hospice, and he didn’t want one. And so I was volunteering through hospice at this time. And he all he wanted to talk about was his very minimal but still important contribution scientifically in engineering wise to a specific car part. Okay? So, I mean, he was very much caught in because he was so worried about what am I leaving behind. What has my life amounted to. This is where he he didn’t family. He has a couple of kids, but they were living their life with their kids. They weren’t coming to visit very much. And he felt alone and he was trying to figure out what was the point of all this. And so we started just him and I. We were we would work talking about how great it was that he had his discovery But what do you think is most important now? We kind of really worked around that. And eventually and it took a couple of months actually. He said, you know, one thing that I really missed out on is I didn’t travel until I was after age sixty five. And I was told that you do and as we all were told, right, probably growing up, that that’s what you do. You work really hard. You get a good job.
And then at sixty five, you retire, and you travel, and you do all the things that you really wanna do, and you golf, or whatever it is. And that’s what he said he did. And he said, but shortly after sixty five, I my health vaded. And I couldn’t go do all the things. I always knew I was going to do because I wasn’t capable of, you know, walking that. I couldn’t hike anything anymore or my knees or, you know, whatever it was. He had all these ailments. And he’s like, I really feel like I missed out on the good parts of life. And then he said, he would tell me about how his children were sort of problems, how they had all these problems. He doesn’t know how they’re gonna get out of their problems. There was all these different problems. Children were having that in his perception. And then I would say, why are those problems? And I would say, tell me, what’s so wrong with that choice? What’s so and we would negotiate sort of through those stories? And then when I would say something mister Robinson wouldn’t like he would pretend to fall asleep. He would all of a sudden I mean, he would just check out, and that was it. That that’s how he ended our our conversations all the time. That was, like, nope, done, honestly. Well, one time I came in and his daughter was there. And we Mr. Robinson and I’ve been really working through how it was important to share how you’re feeling with your family when they’re here and he’s like not gonna happen, not not gonna do it. But I guess something got through because I walked in and his daughter was crying and he was asleep. I don’t believe he was really asleep. Think that’s how he ended the conversation with his daughter. He’d take to sleep. He basically she had recorded the whole thing. He said she said I had never had a conversation with my dad like this before. It was the most healing experience, and she’s like, I can’t She goes, everything’s okay now. Basically, he told her that he loved her so much, that she’s doing such a good job as a parent, and he recognizes now that he lived his life based on how society wanted him to be a dad, how society wanted him to provide, how society wanted him to he he realized that he didn’t he made choices based on what he believed society wanted him to to live like, and he didn’t want that for her. And that she was more free spirited. And, you know, I guess, she’d had children with multiple dads and she never went to college. These are things that really bothered him. And he’s like, now I see you’re a free spirit and you’re finding love where love is. And you’re a good mom. And so he said, all these amazing things that she really needed to hear. And he said, you know, he was atheist because he’s a scientist. He said, you know, but I do believe there must be a God because he brought me you and I can’t believe that he would bring me one of the most joyful people in my life and then take take her away from me and say I could never see her again. So I know I’m gonna see you again and so all of these beautiful things. So working with someone right where they are. Not telling them they’re wrong, not just giving them suggestions and letting them process that information on their own was enough to give her closure, to give him closure, and for them to both leave feeling that there was hope that they were connected, that there was love, and that there was so much more than what their physical eyes could perceive.
Victoria Volk: And if that full body kills, it reminds me of my own story of going to see my uncle. I hadn’t seen him. He was the only living well, he was very close to my dad. And when my dad died, he, you know, he said that he was gonna take care of us and watch over us. Well, apparently, he didn’t. And that was a really strong resentment towards him from my mother and and, you know, we were told these stories growing up. And so my dad’s family pretty much were not in my life after he passed, and my uncle wasn’t either. And my mother I was in the writing phase of my book and her the editing phase, and my mother had called me and said that he had terminal brain cancer. And I decided that same day that I’m gonna go see him. It had been almost pretty close to thirty years to the day. And I went to go see him and we had about six months of reconnection and it transformed, I think, both of us for both of us, it was transforming because he hadn’t seen me since my dad’s funeral. I hadn’t seen him. And I just felt like I had to do it for him. Like I had to go for him. Unbeknownst to me, it was actually very healing for me too. Yeah. You know. So it reminds me of that, you know, of of how really truly healing it can be to just set aside whatever stories Yes. We’re told and whatever stories that we’ve been led to believe. That you can
Helen Gretchen Jones: or that we’ve created,
Victoria Volk: yeah, or that we’ve created, and that you can choose a different story at any moment.
Helen Gretchen Jones: And if you can just be brave enough to just take that step and do it, and vulnerable, brave and vulnerable. And it’s the hardest part is leading up to it. Once you’re there and you actually do it, things unfold so beautifully usually.
Victoria Volk: Yeah, I knocked on the door. I didn’t know he’d bring cancer. Was he gonna remember me? Did he wanna see me? I had no idea.
Helen Gretchen Jones: Wow,
Victoria Volk: but I didn’t care. It was like this mission that was given to me, you know. It was like I had to be there. And within ten minutes, my two cousins knocked on the door and came in. Who I hadn’t seen either in just as much time.
One from Connecticut, like states across the country, you know. So it was really crazy how that all came to be and turned out, but Yeah. That reminded me of that.
Helen Gretchen Jones: How did your mom take that? Can I ask?
Victoria Volk: Not very well, actually. My siblings didn’t either. And then my sister actually ended up going to see him herself Or, yeah, she went to see him herself and she did not have the same experience. And, you know, I was just like, well, you know, my intention was maybe different than yours You know? I don’t know.
Helen Gretchen Jones: But then if you were open to change and connection.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. Even my book that wasn’t received very well either by my mother, but Fortunately for me, like doing the grief work for myself, like going through grief recovery and doing a lot of personal work, I’ve changed that story. You know, I’ve been able to rewrite that story. And I feel like my mom’s eighty two, she could go at any time. Right? I feel like because of the work that I’ve done, I feel like in just the personal knowing that I have about what the importance of end of life. Right? Like, having conversations on this podcast in particular too have have been healing for me just to understand that whatever I need to say I can there is a way to work through it without having that conversation, but there is also a lot of healing that can happen when you have that conversation with the other that can happen for them.
Helen Gretchen Jones: Yes. Right?
Victoria Volk: And it’s saying we’re all connected. Yeah. It’s discerning what’s mine and what’s theirs and what is meant to be shared Yes. That can be healing for both. Yeah. So how do you discern that? Like, do you share everything that comes through? Or is it Yeah. Probably not.
Helen Gretchen Jones: No. I want to. I’m excited about messages that come through, and I am always eager to have them validated. And I can be a little impatient. But as people can be, I suppose. But I don’t share everything that comes through at all. I do try to write everything down. And the reason I don’t share is because I think sometimes the information is more for me to guide, yeah, because you can tell someone something all you want, you can teach them and and preach to them all you want about a specific thing. But instead, if I were to take that information and suggest come around the edges a little bit, and then they have their own aha moment and they come to that on their own. Oh, that’s what’s healing. That’s what sticks. So you can, you know, say whatever you want to someone, but all you have to do. So I think when the information comes in, I’ll sort of come about it in a roundabout way so that they come up with the idea or they process that information without me having to say aha. But once they do, then it’s validating for me. And I don’t have to say, oh, it was validated for me because it isn’t about me. Mhmm. But it does tell me that I’m on the right path when that information is validated and that I’m doing something for them or I’m helping them come to terms on their own. Because I know I as a healer, I’m sure you know, you can’t heal someone, but you can start the process of having of having them heal themselves. You can be that catalyst for them, but you you can’t heal someone who doesn’t wanna be healed.
Victoria Volk: That’s me. Absolutely. I learned that the hard way. You know, I’m curious if you were as a kid, were you like a questioner? Like, why why why?
Or were you a questioner type of kid?
Helen Gretchen Jones: So what was interesting is I would say, yes, I was very curious and I wanted to understand things. I’m also a first born, so I think that feeling in control, if psychology has anything to do with it, being in control and understanding what’s happening around you is important for the first born because they feel like they need to, you know, take care of the younger ones. So I guess that was a questioner, but for the most part, if someone would tell me something and this is true to this day and they talk with their hands, so that has to be both, I don’t know. And they’re talking with their hands and they’re it comes right here in front of their chest. Okay? If they’re saying something that is heartfelt and true, it’ll be like this kind of shimmer of light behind it, but only if it’s in front of their chest. If they’re saying something that is not quite true or they are exaggerating or they’re trying to convince the people who they’re talking to that it’s truth, when it’s not full truth, that kind of thing, or a flat out lie, I guess, could also be the case. But most people try to, you know, embellish the truth. You know, whenever that happens, there’s like this little shadow that comes up. And I only see it in front of the chest, and I only see it come from the hands. So sometimes when people would say something even in childhood and I would see that, I wouldn’t have to question. But in my mind, I’d be questioning why they felt the need to say that if it wasn’t true. So I wouldn’t ask them, why are you lying? Because I was watching to see how it would play out between the adults. But it was an interesting dynamic and under any truth and exciting it’s coming from my heart truth.
Victoria Volk: That’s fascinating. What do you feel like you need to share or want to share that you maybe haven’t gotten to yet?
Helen Gretchen Jones: I think, Beth Dula, I’m going to maybe if I could talk a little bit about that. It’s a relatively new position, and I think it has come up about with our changing healthcare system. Nurses have so much more responsibility in paperwork now that they have to adhere to, and they just can’t spend time with patients like they used to. And so there is a need for people in hospitals to have people sitting with them, those who are terminal. And that’s where a death doula kind of fits in. And when I’ve talked to people in the past, there are death doula who typically are very spiritual in some way. But I think that it’s important to note that The most important thing I believe about being a death doula is to meet people where they are. I have helped people of all religion, of all different faiths, of all different cultures, And I’ve even had them have their faith contradicted near death. And when someone’s dying, they take comfort in their faith, and it’s not the time to really play up those contradictions. No, it’s time to figure out how those contradictions, how can you make them okay? Because it’s all about finding someone peace. It’s all about peace being a death doula. At least that’s my belief. So if you’re a death doula or you’re interested in working with people who are dying there are organizations such as hospices. Also, there’s an organization called Noda, which I volunteer for. It stands for no one dies alone. It’s a hospital based program throughout the country. And it’s for people who have no family. Maybe they never had kids, maybe family lives out of the country, or out of the state, and can’t afford to come in. Maybe they were total jerks and burned all their bridges, and nobody wants to be there. It doesn’t matter. There are people everyday dying alone in hospitals. And they don’t have anyone to sit with them. So a note of volunteer, it’s a weekend training, that’s all it is, and a flu shot. And you and they send out this email blast to all their volunteers, and you sign up for three hour shifts. And these are people who have already entered the actively dying phase, which means the last seventy two hours or less. Most of the time, they’re already unconscious. You go in to sit with them. You are going in and you are doing what you believe is best for them in that moment unless they have a bio sheet and sometimes they do which tells you their faith. So if you’re working with someone who’s a devout Baptist, which happened to me, then I put on I played some hymns from my phone, you know, that I thought she would enjoy. And I put my hands on her and I did a little bit of energy work and things like that. I’m healing from my heart. I’m forming that connection. So there’s a need for people to be with those who are dying, especially since nurses aren’t able to do it like they used to be able to. So I would encourage anyone who feels like this might be something to absolutely pursue it. It’s very rewarding.
Victoria Volk: You know, that brings up something for me because I have, you know, nursing homes in my area and we have a hospital, but I’m very rural. There’s a high likelihood that my nearest hospital is not a participant of this and I mean, I’m I believe I’m probably the only train death to Dula in my entire county probably for ninety miles around me. Yeah. I’m gonna I’m gonna consider that.
Helen Gretchen Jones: It’s a quick phone call or email to let people know that you’re here and to help them understand how you’re valuable and you are. You know? And I think that anyone who’s working in those areas under stands that there are families who are already grieving before their loved one has transitioned, who are processing so much, am I doing the right thing? Am I putting my loved one in the nursing home? Am I, you know, are they getting their needs met?
There’s all these questions people have if they’re doing the right thing? Around their loved one. And if you’re there to consult with them and to help them understand, in most cases, nursing homes are understaffed and underpaid. And so it’s been my experience so far. That you do have to be still very, very present as a caregiver even when you have them in a nursing home. And it isn’t about doing right or wrong because it really doesn’t matter in that way. But understanding that just because you have them in a nursing home doesn’t mean you’re completely you can let go. You still need to check-in on them and make sure they’re being monitored in the best way possible and being an advocate for them.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. My dad had passed away in a nursing home. Yeah. I wasn’t there. Imagine, you know, it’s like most people, like your passions, become come from a place of your wounding. Right? Just like you’re what you’re doing now, the experience of losing your father, like, was this catapult and what you’re doing today? And so what do you what gives you hope for the future?
Helen Gretchen Jones: I don’t know. I think I’m eternally hopeful all the time.
Victoria Volk: That’s good. No. It’s actually a very different answer than I’ve ever received. So thank you.
Helen Gretchen Jones: Oh, I I just I guess I choose the story where I see so much love and hope on this on this entire planet, and I am so aware that I get to create and co create my experiences. With my team and that’s what I want. And so that’s what I make choices around. So like when we hang up here, I will be doing a meditation sometime before nine o’clock tonight and I will be attempting to connect to my team because when it does have a feel connected, I feel inflow with the world around me and that is hopeful and that is loving and that is connected. But I have to do the work. If I go days without meditating and it does happen, I start to really get into my human. I start to really focus on all these physical little challenges that can I can blow up to be bigger than what they really are? But when I do the work and I say, today’s, you know, I’m gonna I’m gonna take five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes, and do my meditation. That’s how it started. I mean, now my meditations are often over an hour, but because I want them to be.
I feel so good. But initially, it’s five minutes. I’m like, wow. Five minutes was nothing. And I just feel so much more connected to this world and to myself.
So, yeah, that’s I’m hopeful because I choose to be.
Victoria Volk: Like you said, we have to do the work.
Helen Gretchen Jones: Yeah. And it’s really not that hard of work to connect.
Victoria Volk: Was there anything else we would like to share?
Helen Gretchen Jones: Yeah. I feel like we covered a lot of information. I just I just want people to know that they’re not alone in their grief and that every single person goes through it and finding a way that is most helpful for you is beneficial not just to you but to the family and the people that you surround yourself with because they can feel your grief as well. And I encourage, like I mentioned earlier, if people are open to it, to consider even if it’s out of curiosity, a medium. Because so much screen, they could go through one thirty minute, forty five minute or hour session with the medium and come out of it feeling I mean, you process it for days, but you feel like you’re on CloudNine. And it’s it’s sort of like this beautiful high of being connected again to your loved one. And so I encourage if your grief is around the loss of a loved one and not the loss of, you know, a job or a, you know, a home or anything else like that if it really is a medium can help in that way.
Victoria Volk: And I would piggyback that to challenge your stories and beliefs that you have because they could be the very thing that’s handicap handicapping your healing.
Helen Gretchen Jones: Absolutely. And it is one of the hardest things that we can ever do, which is self reflect. And people who don’t self reflect always think they’re self reflecting. But one way to know if you’re genuinely self reflecting is if you come up with a defense. For your actions in some way. You know what? I behave this way because of this. If there’s a defense to your thoughts, then you’re not fully self reflecting. You’re still trying to make right your choice. And so I would suggest that. So if you’re truly being self reflective and trying to bring in that self awareness, you’re not trying to defend in any way your actions or your choices.
Victoria Volk: That’s juicy. I love that. That’s good. What was the website that you would recommend that people go to to find a qualified vetted medium?
Helen Gretchen Jones: Yes. Okay. So I know helping parents heal has one. Has a a list. And there are other lists out there. And I’m trying to remember the universities that do it. I feel like it might have been a university. I I see I don’t wanna give the wrong ones, but I feel like if I had to and I could be wrong, I think that there was one in Arizona, one in North Texas, and one in Virginia that have qualified, had done research studies on these vetted mediums, and have put out a list of these people. So I could be wrong on those. I feel like maybe though that those are correct, but you can even Google certified mediums, things like that, and there’s some really good ones out there. A lot, actually.
Victoria Volk: Okay. I will do some research or if you want us if you find know of a link that you have, send it to me and I’ll add it to the show notes. And then also where can people find you if they wanna connect with you, read your book, where can they find that, all of that good stuff?
Helen Gretchen Jones: So my website is helen gretchen jones dot com. And on there, you can find information about the book and the services that I offer. My book is sold on barnes and nobles dot com and, of course, on Amazon. And it’s both in it’s in three ways. It’s in paperback, Kendall, and an audiobook.
Red by yours truly.
Victoria Volk: Awesome. And where on social media are you? People listening.
Helen Gretchen Jones: Oh, I’m so bad with social media. Like, it is not my favorite thing. I am on Facebook under Helen Gretchen Jones, and I am also on Instagram under Helen Gretchen Jones. I did get banned from TikTok because I said death too many times and I you’re supposed to say unalive. But that’s really difficult.
I know. I know. I On a live
Victoria Volk: What is this world coming to? This is why we are so uncomfortable with death and dying. Right.
Helen Gretchen Jones: Exactly. Exactly.
Victoria Volk: Oh, you can’t say death now or dead or dying? Like,
Helen Gretchen Jones: And you can’t and I don’t it just seems so silly to me because death comes for the old as well as the young, the sick, and the healthy. I mean, it’s it comes for every single being and yet the longer that, you know, and whenever I think it started probably if I had to really do some research. I think it’s probably around the civil wartime when we started having to involve our soldiers in order to get them home. You know? And once that started happening, there became this new culture for us where we when someone dies, we have someone else collect the body, someone else cleanses the bot cleanses the body, someone else puts the body, you know, goes through the embalming process, someone else lowers the body into the ground like it’s so distant. You know? So we’ve we’ve created this for ourselves. And so now death is something to be feared. It’s the unknown. It’s distant from what we have to deal with. And we fear the unknown when that happens. And so we’ve created this culture of death as a taboo topic. And Certainly, I think with the book and with interviews, like the one I’m having with you now, one of the goals is to normalize talking about death and to also normalize talking about the spiritual experiences around death.
Victoria Volk: And how healing it can be when we open ourselves to a different possibility.
Helen Gretchen Jones: Don’t shut yourself off. That’s right. Allow yourself to be curious always and be open. You know, it’s the best.
Victoria Volk: Just got full body chills. That was the main message here today, folks. Thank you so much for being here, Helen, for sharing all that you shared. It’s I just I felt like this the whole time. I’m like, let’s like in a trans listening too. You have a beautiful voice too by the way. Do you have a podcast?
Helen Gretchen Jones: I don’t.
Victoria Volk: Oh, really?
Helen Gretchen Jones: I’m not in the flow of that yet. We’ll just have to see how it unfolds.
Victoria Volk: Oh, maybe maybe in the future. Six months to a year, ballpark. Because as many times you said ballpark, and then I was thinking about the dot the world series game, I’m gonna ballpark in my head for probably
Helen Gretchen Jones: That’s so funny. That’s true.
Victoria Volk: There’s a rabbit hole I’m supposed to go down apparently. So thank you so much for being here and and remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life much loved.
Grief, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Healing, Podcast, season 5 |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Amidst the challenges of her daughter Dahlia’s rare condition, MERRF Syndrome, this week’s guest, Jessica Fein, also faced the crushing blows of losing her father and both sisters during the same trying period. Her story is a tapestry of sorrow and strength, woven with threads of love and loss that resonate deeply with the human experience.
The uncertainties surrounding her daughter’s diagnosis added layers of complexity to Dahlia’s health, making it a daunting task to predict her future. Jessica’s unwavering determination to advocate for her daughter, alongside the weight of her losses, paints a poignant picture of courage in the face of adversity.
As Dahlia’s health declined, necessitating intensive care and tough decisions, Jessica grappled with the harsh reality that not everything could be fixed. Her transition from seeking a cure to enhancing Dahlia’s quality of life reflects a mother’s boundless love and commitment to her child’s well-being.
Throughout the episode, Jessica’s reflections on witnessing her loved ones’ pain and her journey through grief and healing resonate with a profound sense of vulnerability and resilience. Her ability to find glimmers of joy and connection (with herself, friends, and spouse) amidst the darkness speaks volumes about the human spirit’s capacity for hope and strength amid hardship.
Jessica’s story reminds us of the intricate dance between love and loss, woven together with threads of grace and fortitude. Her journey embodies the transformative power of facing life’s most challenging trials with unwavering love, compassion, and a resilient spirit that shines through even in the darkest times.
RESOURCES:
CONNECT:
_______
NEED HELP?
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
- Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support via text message. Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a trained Crisis Counselor
If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Embracing Joy Amidst Grief – Lessons from Dahlia’s Story
In our fast-paced world, the juxtaposition of joy and sorrow often leaves many bewildered. We tend to compartmentalize emotions, believing that happiness and sadness are mutually exclusive. However, life’s complexities defy such simplistic categorization. This profound realization came to light through a remarkable individual named Dahlia.
The Essence of Dahlia
Dahlia was an embodiment of joy despite her battles with MERRF Syndrome (Myoclonic Epilepsy with Ragged Red Fibers), a rare degenerative mitochondrial disease affecting about 2 in 1,000,000 people. Diagnosed at five years old after showing early developmental delays, she lived until seventeen radiating spunkiness and charm even as her condition worsened over time.
Her mother Jessica Fein shares how Dahlia taught her invaluable lessons on navigating life’s dichotomies—how it is possible to feel immense pain yet still find moments filled with laughter and love.
Balancing Joy And Sorrow
Jessica observed how seamlessly Dahlia managed to intertwine joy amidst suffering—a lesson reshaping our understanding of emotional coexistence:
“She was able to feel honestly everything there was—to feel like sadness or anger or jealousy—and still be joyful.”
This revelation underscores that embracing all facets—fearful anguish alongside fun-filled meaning—is essential for holistic living rather than viewing them as opposing forces.
Compartmentalization As A Coping Mechanism
One effective strategy shared by Jessica involves ‘compartmentalizing’ overwhelming situations into manageable parts akin to pointillism art technique focusing on specifics without getting daunted by the bigger picture:
“I consider myself proficient at compartmentalization which I view essential functioning amid overwhelming circumstances.”
Such mindfulness helps navigate daily challenges while preserving mental sanity during trying times like caregiving responsibilities coupled with work commitments simultaneously balancing personal aspirations too!
Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk: Thank you for tuning in to this week’s episode of grieving voices. I’m excited to share with you today my guest, Jessica Fein. She is the author of breathtaking, a memoir of family, dreams, and broken jeans. And hosts of the podcast. I don’t know how you do it, which features people whose lives seem unimaginable and who triumph over seemingly impossible challenges. Her writing has appeared in Newsweek, Psychology Today, The Boston Globe, Huffpost, scary mommy, zippy zippy Maeg, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler,
Jessica Fein: kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler,
Victoria Volk: kebler, kebler, kiabler, and and, and more. And, more. And more. And more. Jessicaiahiah, and to a rare disease in twenty twenty two. Her work encompasses hope and humor, grit and grace, the tools that make up her personal survival kit. And thank you so much for your time today and sharing your story with my listeners and myself.
Jessica Fein: Thank you for having me.
Victoria Volk: And so I actually would like to start out by taking us back in time to how this rare disease came about? How you learned about it? What your daughter’s name is? First of all,
Jessica Fein: My daughter’s name is Dahlia.
Victoria Volk: Oh, what a beautiful name?
Jessica Fein: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So I have a mama three, three children. My husband and I adopted from Guatemala. So we had had kind of a long and twisty road to parenthood and ultimately landed in Guatemala. And we adopted three babies, not all at the same time. Two years apart, and then two years apart. And Dahlia was our middle child. And what happened was in terms of your question regarding the rare disease diagnosis, she, from a very young age, seemed to be developing a little bit differently and a little bit slower than I thought was probably developmentally appropriate. Let’s put it that way. So her speech was garbled. She was having balance issues. You know? I had that mother’s instinct and tried to get people to pay attention, doctors, early intervention. But, you know, I was told just give a time, she’ll catch up. And it wasn’t until she was four years old that I finally got the attention of a doctor who said let’s do a hearing test. And at that time, she was diagnosed with mild to moderate hearing loss. And that was a condition that would be able to be corrected by hearing aids. But there was a question which was why? Why did she have the hearing loss? Did something happen in utero? Did she have a virus early on? We brought her back to the Boston area from Guatemala at six months. So there were a lot of question marks. And we were sent for genetic testing, which really is a blessing because so many families have to fight for a really long time to get genetic testing. In this case, we got it very quickly, and that genetic testing led to a very clear diagnosis. Another thing that doesn’t always happen. And she was diagnosed at that time with a rare degenerative mitochondrial disease called MIRF syndrome, which stands for myochronic epilepsy, ragged red fibers. Again, she was five years old, and that diagnosis seemed like crazy to us. We couldn’t understand it, couldn’t wrap our heads around it. She, you know, while I had been concerned, never my wildest dreams? Did my concerns lead me to the possibility even of something that grave? And she was the same person she had been, you know, before the diagnosis. So it was very hard to understand. And and even technically, Nobody had heard of this illness. We didn’t know what mitochondria were. We didn’t understand what a degenerative disease meant. And so then we took off on a very lengthy journey that lasted until she was seventeen. Daria died one week after her seventeenth birthday.
Victoria Volk: Wow. And do children typically I mean, what is the life expectancy generally of this
Jessica Fein: Yeah, well, so to begin with MURF syndrome is extremely rare, it’s two in a million, so there’s not really much data to go on. Also, Dahlia had a secondary diagnosis later on, which made her one of six in the world. So the thing with a rare disease is you just don’t know. Now, when we look at MIRF syndrome, what we understand is that people can be impacted even within the same family in really different ways. So, for example, when I googled it that night, there was this long list of possible ways it could manifest. And it went everywhere from short stature all the way to death. So, you know, I did what any mom does, which is two things. Number one, I read the list and I decided it was a menu and I would choose, okay, she could be short. You know, I’ll take that one. I’ll take the hearing loss that I could deal with. But when it got to things like dementia and obviously truncated lifespan, those I wasn’t I wasn’t go anywhere near that. And I felt like, you know, look, I’m the mom. I’ll solve it. I’ll fix it. Right? Because that’s what we do. We think we can fix things. And that was a big transformation for me. One of the ones I cover my book, which is understanding that there are things we can’t in fact fix. What what do we do with a world that seems so wildly out of control? And how do we create any kind of meaning in that in that situation?
Victoria Volk: How did you do that?
Jessica Fein: Yeah. Well, it was a long it was a long journey because like I said, I decided I was gonna it. And remember, I didn’t even know what mitochondria were. So, I mean, the idea that I would fix it was totally fantastical, but and I really did try to do everything I could and I became a big advocate and I looked for every study, and I wanted to, like, travel the world and look for some kind of, you know, miracle. But ultimately, what happened was Dahlia’s disease being degenerative, was getting more and more serious. When she was nine, we were in the hospital for three months. And at that point, she had a tracheotomy which meant she had a hole in her neck with a tube that she began to that she could breathe out of because she had lost the strength in her lungs to breathe and she was ventilator dependent and she had lost her ability to speak and to eat and to move it walk it all. Ultimately, she lost her ability to move it all. But at that point, she was just in a wheelchair, she could move her arms, and she could shake her head in point and things like that. So she became too weak to participate in any studies. And I had a choice at that point because here was Dahlia, who just wanted to be a kid. Like, she wanted to have fun and snuggle and read and bake even though she couldn’t need and live a life and have a childhood. And as the mom, it was my job to facilitate that. And I learned from her in that respect, and I decided that I could not cure this disease. I would do everything possible to try to make the symptoms less to try to understand the nuances of how she could feel better with everything she was dealing with, but also to understand that I had three kids who wanted to be kids?
Victoria Volk: I’m sitting here and I’m just thinking putting myself, trying attempting to put myself in your shoes. And as a mother parent, it’s so difficult to watch your children like you said, the grief of wanting to give them their childhood, them wanting to feel like a child.
Jessica Fein: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: What were some of the things that I mean, I know you did your own research and what did that look like? How did you do that? And what were some of the things that helped you advice that people gave? I mean, did you connect with other parents who Yeah. Paid full time caregivers and you know, of
Jessica Fein: Right. So and first of all, yes. We seeing your child suffer is unbearable. And let look. Yeah.
I have a seventeen year old. And yesterday, I got a text a very healthy mainstream seventeen year old. Okay? And so he was at school yesterday and something happened in one of the classes and a couple of the kids were mean to him. And he texted me. I mean, he was not even that upset about it, but I was, like, wait, are they being mean to you? And and he was, like, kind of. And I was, like, you know, totally devastated if my stuff occurred. And I was, like, you know, wanted to, like, run into the high school and be, like, stuff. You know? So so that’s how we are as parents. Right? So what do you do when you have, you know, this this very serious, serious, as serious as it gets situation? And, you know, I did not at the time connect with too many other people. I did become part of my do action, which is the mitochondrial disease advocacy and research education group. And I’m actually on the board of that, but I didn’t at the time connect with too many other parents. I have since my daughter died connected with way more people in the community, partly because of my own podcast, partly because of my writing, So I now know so many people and I do know what a lifeline other people going through it can be. And it doesn’t need to be people go, you know, it’s not going to be in my case, other people whose kids have MRF syndrome. It’s too rare. But it’s other people whose kids are medically complex or have rare diseases, who are child loss, who, you know, have intense special needs, all those things, parents whose lives look so dramatically different than what they had envisioned. But at the time I didn’t, and there were a few reasons. Number one, I didn’t have time. I was working full time. My daughter was an eyes on patient from age nine to seventeen, which meant she was home but our home was an ICU of sorts and myself or my husband or a nurse trained specifically in her care had to have our eyes on her twenty four seven. He was very intense and I became a highly skilled medical provider of her medical needs. I mean, it was intense. And so between working full time and then being a full time caregiver and then trying to create this childhood and this environment for my three kids and also writing a book at that time, I didn’t really have time to connect with many people in the community. So to your question of, what did I do? I first of all, so, so, so lucky to have a great partner and my husband. And that’s not always the case. I mean, you have single parents going through something like this, or you have parents who aren’t on the same page. And we know that more than fifty percent of couples who have a kid with special needs, let alone living on the precipitously, split up. So that that was a real blessing, you know. And for us, that we had each other. And I have some other, you know, really close friends. I couldn’t I didn’t see people very much, but people that I knew were there were my corner. And also my husband and I try to give each other some space to have some time to ourselves because that can so easily get lost in this situation. And I will say, because I know we’re talking about grief in general, that a couple of things along this journey, I did lose all of my family members in terms of my family of origin. And that is part of my story in my book, which is losing two sisters and three parents, which happened a lot in the way. And so I’m very reluctantly familiar with all kinds of grief. And it’s not just the grief of losing somebody, but it is other kinds of grief, what I call non hallmark kinds non hallmark card kinds of grief. Right? So ambiguous grief, for example, was something that I became very familiar with. I’m not sure if that’s something that you’ve talked about much on your show, but, you know, there there are so much loss that can even precede or surround or be separate from loss that comes from a death. Howard Bauchner:
Victoria Volk: Yeah, I I just talk about grief. Whether it’s I the labels might be helpful, you know, to understand it, but Yeah. As far as, like, healing and stuff like that, I don’t know that I yeah. It’s just all grief to me. Yeah.
Jessica Fein: But for me, it was a real eye opener because I didn’t under stamp that there were other kinds of grief. And I didn’t feel like it was appropriate at the time to be grieving when my daughter was here. It was in front of me. It was alive. And I really, for me, it was such an important thing to understand that there are other kinds of grief. And it is okay. And we can grieve a life we had imagined. And we can grieve a voice we’ll never hear again. And, you know, all of these other kinds of things. We can grieve for somebody who’s still alive. And for me, That was very helpful because once I understood that this was valid and that this was real and that this had a name, it took away some of the power and it allowed me to integrate that grief and to move forward more effectively.
Victoria Volk: So you lost three parents and your two sisters during that eight year span that you it was twenty four seven.
Jessica Fein: Well, my I lost I mean, my my first sister actually had died when she was thirty. So that and I was twenty seven. So that was the first major major loss. And then my mother and my father and my father-in-law died during that time as well as my older sister. That’s a lot. It’s a lot. And, you know, it wasn’t like they were all together. It wasn’t like everybody you know, sometimes when you think about a whole family dying, it’s like, though, they were all in a car. Mhmm. I’ll take that. It’s not like a hierarchy. It’s not better or worse
Victoria Volk: than ever.
Jessica Fein: But this was like one one offs. And it was also not like there was something that was running in the family. This was like just, you know, all all different kinds of things. So it it’s it’s pretty inconceivable. And yet, that’s what happened.
Victoria Volk: And yet, here you said,
Jessica Fein: And yet here I sit and it’s interesting because I know it sounds, it’s like when I’m telling my story to somebody who I’m just meeting, it it’s like I now I have written about it. I can speak about it. And it’s so much to take in. And I have two friends who are therapists who said to me, my goodness, if you were to come and just be telling me all this, I’d be like, oh, she’s I don’t even know there were some like a diagnosis of like that can’t possibly be true, that can’t possibly be with that because it seems so crazy and yet when you’re in something like this and underlying all of it is this intense care and intense situation and this life on the precipice, you you integrate it and and move forward. Like, there’s no time to be to lay in the fetal position. Like, there’s no time to be on the bathroom floor crying. Twenty four seven. You can’t. You cannot.
Victoria Volk: One of the things that tends to go to the wayside when the life life, like, just throws, you know, the shit our way, basically, is our self care and just caring for the self. And so how what did that look like for you amidst all of that?
Jessica Fein: Was I’m really glad you asked that because and I actually talked about this in the book. Working outside of the home was important to me, and I did get judged for it because there were people, even medical caregivers in our home, who felt that it wasn’t appropriate for me to continue working. And to be clear, I was the primary breadwinner and this life was expensive that we were living and nobody questioned my husband working. But I will say that when we talk about self care, Part of that to me was getting out of the house and working in a job that I knew how to do that I had been doing before I became a mother. That was very helpful for my identity. And that was also I think an important break during the day. Mhmm. And I think it was able to make me more present when I was home. So that was one thing. Another thing for self care for me was I’m I’m not like a big exerciser, but I did start to do pilates and just having this like twice a week that I would get out of the house and do this thing. Was also a nice break. And then also when we talk about self care, I think that the writing was important for me. You know, I wrote the book while at my daughter’s bedside. And I think that that was a really important outlet. And it allowed me to tell my story my way, which meant I was able to make some order out of the chaos. So I think those were things, oh, the other thing for self care is that my husband and I as much as we could did a date night until COVID hit, we really kept that up. And it was complicated because in order for us to go out together, we needed to have two people at home, a nurse and a babysitter because we have these two other kids and also the nurse was not a babysitter. She does not be hired to entertain. So we would need a team of two. Which first of all is an expensive proposition. But second of all, we needed to make sure that they got a lot. I mean, I remember we had this one nurse and babysitter and the babysitter was like part of our family. And afterwards, she was like, I was really uncomfortable with that nurse. You know what I mean? So that’s like a whole other dynamic. So it was complicated, but getting out of the house for about two hours on a Saturday night was such a sense of normalcy for us because our lives were so abnormal. So to be able to do that. And every night, every Saturday, we’d get in the car, and we’d look at each other, and we’d say, we’ve never needed a date more. And every Saturday night, it would be true, even more so than the week before, you know? And so So there were those things. I think it was having I think what all of these things did, whether it was the writing or the Pilates or the date night or whatever is my work. It gave me an identity separate from being the mom slash caregiver. And I think that’s important, you know, for anybody in any situation.
Victoria Volk: When you were describing you and your husband getting into the car and recognizing that you never needed to date night more, I physically, like,
Jessica Fein: I just had this That is what we would do. Literally, it was that huge exhale and the looking at each other. And I always you know, it didn’t even matter, like, if we were engaging on that date night or if we were just sitting there in if we had the one restaurant, it was close by, so we knew we weren’t, you know, we do what we were gonna do. We would go there. We still go there pretty much once a week. And, yeah, just to have that that ability to be outside of all the other roles that had become such an integrated part of our lives.
Victoria Volk: I think that’s a key point what you said is to put yourself in a different role. And in that moment, you too could be husband and wife.
Jessica Fein: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: And connect.
Jessica Fein: Mhmm. Exactly.
Victoria Volk: And one thing too, like, people may be listening and something that comes up for me as I’m hearing you share is many people who experience a child that is a lot of care or what have you. They have that support system around them as in the parents. Sometimes even the grandparents move in to help support and care and you didn’t have that either.
Jessica Fein: We didn’t have that either. And I will say that That was another thing I was dealing with. So my eldest sister had lung cancer, and she was diagnosed in the middle of all this. And I was kind of her primary person, and it was insane. It was so out of the blue and that was a whole other ride. So I was really torn. I mean, we talk about the sandwich generation caring for our children and our elderly parents at the same time. This was like triple decker sandwich or something because I had the sibling thing too. And it was really hard and I did I did, you know, I think that what I was going through may just compounded, was compounded by the other losses and those became so much more present for me because I so wanted to be able to just like you know, cry to my mom and and, you know, be be parented. Right? And and when for a while, I was taking care of my parents. And then when they weren’t here, it was incredibly lonely.
Victoria Volk: And that brings me to the topic of friendships. I mean, you probably didn’t even have time for friendships, and maybe the friendships you had fell away because you know what happens too.
Jessica Fein: I will say, I’m very lucky that I have a circle of friends, people I’ve been friends with since I was a kid. And the reason I feel so fortunate about that is because I feel like meeting new friends when you’re going through such intense things. Is so hard. Right? Unless it’s people who are also going through intense things. But it’s too much to catch somebody up on. You know what I mean? It’s just like it’s a lot. So what we were going through was so unrelatable that people who knew me before, that became very, very important for me. Even knowing they were there, they weren’t in Boston, you know, they’re all over the place, but knowing that I had these people was important to me. And I think that we see in grief, right, how hard it is to maintain friendships because people are so awkward and they’re so uncomfortable, and they don’t know what to say. And God forbid, they bring up your kid’s name, which is all you really want to talk about. You know? But they just don’t know what to do, and this is such a problem is that we’re just, as a society, so uncomfortable. And it always blows my mind because I feel like grief is the single most universal thing.
Like, every single person is going to be a grieffer. And yet, we’re so awkward. We’re so weird about it, where it should be the great unifier.
Victoria Volk: That’s what I talk about. On the podcast, like, that’s what I talk about. It is the one thing that unites us all that none of us differ on. Like, we all like, we are all creepers.
Jessica Fein: We are all creepers. Every single week of us
Victoria Volk: at a
Jessica Fein: hundred percent, like, And and with all other life cycle events, we understand how to be there, how to show up, how to sit with somebody in all other life cycle things, and yet when it comes to the thing that is the loneliness. And the thing that is the most universal, we don’t know how to do it. We don’t know how to show up. We don’t know how to sit in the silence. Right?
Victoria Volk: And that brings me to the question of how were you taught as a child to grieve and express grief, and how was it what beliefs were passed down to you about grief in your household growing up?
Jessica Fein: You know, I don’t really remember too much from growing up. What I remember with every cell of my being is the sudden death of my sister when I was twenty seven and she was thirty. And she was my best friend and we had been on the phone this morning, that morning, excuse me, and she died suddenly that afternoon. And that changed my worldview, more than any other loss. Even more, I will say, than the loss of my child because by the time that I lost Dahlia, which everybody will say, the worst thing that can happen is losing a child. And I’m not saying what’s worse and not worse. I’m just saying that that first loss changed my worldview. Because before that, I saw the world through a bubble. Right? I was looking at a bubble every, you know? And that loss punctured the bubble. Then I saw the world through the clarity of the puncture, not through the hazy sheen of the bubble. Right? It changed everything for me. And I think that I probably then I was not living with my parents at the time, but I had them as models of how it is possible to carry on, which they both did. After losing their child. Right? And so it was forever altering for them. And they were absolutely different people on the other side of it and they carried on and they engaged in the world and they had lives, you know. And and I think that probably that somehow sunk in that it was possible to have an other side, to have, you know, life on the other side of what seems like, how can you continue on?
Victoria Volk: Is do you what’s your sister’s name? Both sisters.
Jessica Fein: Yes, my first sister and thank you for asking. Her name is Noomi and my other sister who died of lung cancer more recently is Rachel.
Victoria Volk: Do you speak about them in your book too?
Jessica Fein: Yes. Yes. I mean, you know, the book opens with the with the sudden death of my sister, Noomi. It’s not a big piece of it, but I couldn’t tell the story without starting with that because it was a life changing for me. And then Rachel’s a character in the book because that happened much more recently and so out of the blue. I mean, they were both out of the blue, but one was like totally out of the blue sudden and then of course lung cancer we know can happen you know, when you’re diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, often that means that you don’t have a boatload of time.
Victoria Volk: What were the lessons that you learned from the loss? Of the grief of your sister your first sister. Know me since that was the one that kinda cracked you open. Yeah. What are what are the things that Dahlia taught you about grief then too?
Jessica Fein: Oh, two very different answers and so important both of them. With know me, what I learned was I never would nor would I want to get over the loss of my sister. This is not something I was trying to put behind me. It was something I was trying to figure out how to bring forward in a healthy way with me because she is such a core part of who I am and it was very important that I mean, I I would never want to not be grieving for her. Like, I can’t even imagine that. So it was not how are you gonna get over it. It was how are you going to move along with it? And And that was, you know, a learning because I didn’t know much personally about grief before that. Dahlia, I learned everything. I mean, here was a kid who lost everything that a kid has. She couldn’t move at all. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t eat. She couldn’t run. She couldn’t, you know, she couldn’t do all of these things.
And she did not become bitter, angry. You know, all the things that I think I would become. She wanted to continue to have have joy. And and not in a, like, kind of denial kind of way, but in a like, this is my life. Like, I want to be out there. I want to be experiencing it. So so watching her do that made me realize that joy and sorrow can live side by side. They can hold hands. You can have grief and you can have beauty. And all of these things that I would have thought were mutually exclusive, fear and anguish and anxiety and, you know, moving or all the things. And then on the other side, you know, joy and fun and meaning and all these things like they can all be intertwined. And in fact, I think they become stronger in the presence of the other.
Victoria Volk: I’m just trying to imagine how, like, did you compartmentalize, like, when you would come into the room and, like, just I mean, because you essentially have to, in some respect, like, set your your stuff aside, right, to fully be present with her
Jessica Fein: Okay. I think I’m the queen of compartmentalization. I think I’m like, I don’t even know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing or whatever, but I do think it’s key to for me to being able to function because, you know, here, the the situation was too big to take it all in at any time. It would have blown us down. We couldn’t do that. I compare it to a pointalism, you know, the the kind of art where when you’re standing up close, you just see the the dots. And you have to back up to be able to tell that it’s, you know, a canoe or a field or whatever it is in the picture. We couldn’t back up. We couldn’t take in the big picture. It was too big. We had to be real up close and understand what each point was and and be attending to each point. And it wasn’t until after Dahlia passed away that I felt that I could back up and begin to take in the enormity.
Victoria Volk: One of the things that I had a previous guest on, she is the author of always a sibling.
Jessica Fein: Yes. Andy Orangestein.
Victoria Volk: Yes. Have you read the book?
Jessica Fein: No. But I have it, and I’m about to speak, I I have an upcoming thing where we’re gonna be together,
Victoria Volk: and she’s coming on my show. So Awesome. Yeah. She is wonderful. And one thing that I didn’t really think about until reading her book was that and she came on my podcast, was that our siblings are the people that know us the best who they’re the longest relationships that we have. And so for you when you shared about Nomi and how that grief was harder, in some respect.
Jessica Fein: That’s right because I have never been a day on this earth without her. Mhmm. Twenty seven years she was by myself. For, you know, the second that I came into the world, she was, like, celebrating me. And we, you know, they’re they’re that connection.
There’s nothing like it. And I remember at the time and I will say, she had been married for five years when she died and she had been with her husband three years before that. K? So I remember so vividly thinking even right then, his goal will be ultimately to move on. Right?
His goal is going to be you know, here’s a young guy and they had a baby. And ultimately, I mean, he’d always remember her, but this would end up being an eight year chapter of his life. And his goal would be to move on. And I say that with all the love in the world for him, but that that was the situation. Whereas my goal was to hold on, I’d never wanted to let her go. And, yeah, I mean, a sibling relationship, I think it’s interesting that that, you know, Annie said that and and I understand it because you it is the longest relationship that they know you in a way nobody else will ever know. When you have a good, healthy, great, and in my case, when you have a sibling who’s your best friend. And also like she shared too, they fill the gaps of your childhood. Like, totally. There’s they know your childhood, like, nobody else. And that’s why, you know, earlier when we were talking about my friendship circle, I’ve got some friends that I’ve had since, like, eight years old. And so I think they now have stepped into that role, and they know all the players you know, and they’ll remind me. Remember when your mom, you know, because we all grew up together. And that’s why those friendships are so important. I mean, you know, for other reasons too, but but right?
They are the the safekeepers of your history.
Victoria Volk: That’s so true. Like, I have friendships since I was in five kindergarten. Like, we’re still close and I cherish those. Yeah. For sure. What is the one thing that you would say to parents who and I know we kind of alluded to it or kinda started this podcast talking about how you have three children. But so many parents I know we’re jumping around here a lot because you’ve had, you know, such a variety of losses, but when parents seem to struggle with the question who have lost a child, how many children do you have? And, you know, I
Jessica Fein: was like, well, do I say, do I even get into it if I had a child lost? Like, you know, if I have my kids with me and there’s there’s four, but I actually have five. And do I say I have five? Or where’s the fifth one? You know? Like, how how do you navigate that? Yeah. So what I would say is to every parent, It is entirely up to you at any given moment. How you want to answer that question? If you are in a place where you don’t feel that the person asking it is a safe place or if you’re with other people or if you just don’t want to get into it, say what you want. Say to if you’ve lost your third. That’s fine. You don’t have to feel guilty about that. This is up to you and it is how you are going to feel best and safest. I will say I am the mother of three. I believe I will always be the mother of three. I often think about it with somebody who had one child and lost one child, but But the inevitable next question always is how old are they? And then what happens is you find yourself apologizing to the person, listen, I’m sorry, this is gonna be really hard for you. Right? But I got because you know you’re about to make them so uncomfortable, So it is a total minefield as is so much else.
The question, how are you? Is a total minefield? Right? Like, what am I supposed to If I’m feeling okay in that moment and I say, oh, you know, things are good, then you feel totally guilty. Like, how could I answer the question that way? Mhmm. Right? And I mean, there’s so much we just there’s so much we make ourselves feel bad about, and we don’t need to do that. We need to do what’s gonna be in that moment. And you can run into two people in the grocery store and feel like you wanna answer that question two different ways.
It’s okay. It’s up to you. You know? I will find myself I I I for me, I just can’t imagine saying, I’m a mom of two. I can’t. Dahlia is such a huge part of who I am, you know? Just like it’s very, very hard for me when people say, oh, do you have siblings?
Victoria Volk: Yeah. Exactly. I was just I was thinking that too. It’s it’s kinda nice sort of thing.
Jessica Fein: Yeah. I always will have to I mean, I’m always I’m the youngest of three.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. Well, that actually brings up another question because I didn’t assume you had more siblings, but I thought maybe there was a chance you had more siblings and I didn’t ask. And now you’re in now it’s I
Jessica Fein: am orphaned. Yes. Yes. I know. And when my eldest sister was diagnosed, we had lost our parents and our other sister. And she said to me, I’m gonna be okay because no god would ever do that to you. And that’s what she believed. It would be There’s no way that reality that is my reality now that that could happen. And I suppose as I get older, it will be less shocking because it’ll be more in the natural order of things. But I’m nowhere near the age yet when one would expect that, you know,
Victoria Volk: That just made me well up. Yeah. I know on your website, you talk about you mentioned the personal survival kit, and you’ve talked about I think you have alluded to Grace the grace you give yourself, the grace you give others. But what does hope and humor and grit look like for you in your healing?
Jessica Fein: Yeah. Well, hope, I’m I’m a big believer in hope. And I think what we hope for changes all the time, for a while I hoped for a cure, and then that wasn’t going to happen. Then I hoped she wasn’t in pain, or I hoped we’d be able to have a successful outing that afternoon or I hope, you know, but but the idea of living without hope is not compelling to me. And I think that we get to choose if we want to be hopeful about things.
And we get to choose what we want to be hopeful about. As for humor, I think you can always find humor. I mean, as long as you’re willing to open yourself up to dark humor, there’s there’s humor. I mean, life is ridiculously humorous and, you know, ridiculously punishing and all the other things. But but I I feel like humor is important too. And and in my writing, I mean, that is probably one of the things I hear most often is, oh my god, I did not expect your book to be funny. You know, people will say, I expected to cry, I didn’t expect to laugh this much. So, you know, fair, fair, you know, warning or promise to anybody who’s gonna pick it up, hopefully, you will feel an array of things when you read the book. You gotta have grit to carry through. I mean, you have to be able to pull on the the the rain boots and get on, put yourself in the muck every day. And that to me was the grit. It was getting up and doing it again day after day after day.
Victoria Volk: And I would also want to ask because I I did think of another question. I’ll circle back to that. But were there any books that you because you had books on your thing too and you’re a avid reader and you’re a writer. So are there any books that you would recommend that you found most supportive to you as you were going through all of this?
Jessica Fein: Yeah. Well, I’m a huge reader and I would say that for me. And, you know, when you talked about self care earlier on, I didn’t mention, but reading for me. And and at the time, in particular, I just wanted to read fiction. Anything that’s gonna take me out of my situation. So I would say that for me. And then in the book, I do talk about three other books. One is or or three other authors who meant a lot to me. One was James Baldwin, who whose life situation couldn’t have been more different from mine, but wrote so much about people meeting tragedy and standing up to tragedy rather than letting it blow them down, and that was very important to me. Also Mary Oliver is an amazing poet, and her work just really, really was was very important to me. And then my father was a writer in reading his his words and understanding what he had to say about loss, having he had written a book about the loss of my sister. So that was very important to me as well. Yeah. It was and and I quote him quite a bit in my book.
Victoria Volk: That’s beautiful. You also have on their cores cores corners of beauty? What is that? Yeah.
Jessica Fein: And that’s a big part of my book as well, which is this idea that I’m talking about a letter that I received from my father. I he had left me some letters to read after he died. And we talk about creating a world of beauty and where that’s like a really tall order. And none of us really can do that effectively. We’re not that powerful, but we can create corners of beauty. That’s something that’s within each of our control. And that can be how you respond to somebody you see out in the world who maybe needs a hand. That can be how you make something out of a lousy situation, a horrible situation that can be having a candle light dinner in your daughter’s room next to the beeping monitors. You’ve created a little corner of beauty. So corners of beauty is something that I think is in all of our control.
Victoria Volk: That that’s juicy. That is really juicy. I think there’s something there for you to really dig into and elaborate on if you haven’t already. I’ve I’m not assuming you haven’t, but if you haven’t, like that that’s very intriguing to me. That’s I love that.
Thank you for
Jessica Fein: Thank you. Alright. So maybe that’s book maybe that’s the follow-up.
Victoria Volk: And also writing it down. And of course, because you had that on your website as well, writing it down, and writing was very much therapeutic for you. It sounds like at the bedside of your daughter. And Yeah. And having that emulated for you too by your father, I bet that was such a gift.
Jessica Fein: It really it really was. And, you know, one of the things that I learned from it was that his book was not a book about my sister, but he handed me the manuscript. He said he wrote a book about Noomi and I read it, and I said, this isn’t a book about Noomi. This is about your know me. If I were to write a book about know me, it would be a totally different book. And that was really important to me. I’m sure if my husband were to write a book about what we went through, it would be a totally different book. Right? I mean, people are so different for each of us. And even the very same loss or the same situation, you know, two parents of the same kid or two siblings of the third sibling. It’s a different loss.
Victoria Volk: Because all relationships are unique. Exactly. And so how can I ask this is my last question and because I you brought it up and I I actually wrote it down? Husband grief. Like, how Yeah.
Jessica Fein: He it’s totally different. I mean, he would never in a thousand a million years have a conversation like we’re having. Right? I find it I would talk about this all day long because for me, it’s an opportunity to bring my family, my losses forward, to have them be present, to tell their stories, to allow people to get to know them, So it’s very, very important for me. And I am so grateful for the opportunity to to do that. My husband is much more private, so he’s very supportive of me doing what I want to need to do, but think he doesn’t even like to come to my book reading. He still likes it in the background and maybe, you know, so he can sneak out if he needs to because he’s a much more internal private person. And I think that that’s, you know, we need to be able to respect that we’re all gonna go through it in our own way. And there’s no wrong way. And there’s no timeline. That’s a big thing. I see a lot of people. I see a lot of people out there who say, well, jeez, it’s been x number of to, you know, why isn’t that a person over it yet? And it’s like, no. No. That’s really why
Victoria Volk: I started this podcast was to, you know, banish the misinformation and the myths of grief and all these things that were taught like time heels and grief alone and replace the loss and, you know, these behaviors that we find ourselves doing to bypass our feelings and not feel them. Right? And to feel better in that period of time. And so, you know, what may have destroyed another couple sounds like it really just brought you two together and allowed you each to honor each other the losses and the way that you found helpful for you as individuals, and I think that’s a beautiful thing. Is there anything that you would like to share that you don’t feel you’ve got too that you feel is important?
Jessica Fein: No. I think that this this covered it. And you know, I love, as I’ve mentioned, connecting with people on these topics, and I invite people to connect me on social or well, first, please check out the book. You know, wherever you get your books. Whether that’s Amazon or BookShop dot org, Barnes and Noble, breathtaking. And, you know, I’m having some really interesting conversations with book groups who are reading it together, and I’ll go to any book group I’ll zoom in or whatever if if people choose to read it with with some friends. And then, you know, yeah, my website is where I keep up to date on everything in terms of, you know, other writing I’m doing, events that are happening. So, yeah, you can check that out at jessica find stories dot com and that’s fine at the EIN because post people hear it and think it’s the other way. So just the fine stories dot com.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. And we say fine and grief recovery. We say fine as feelings inside not expressed and that is not you.
Jessica Fein: So That is that’s alright. That’s very funny.
Victoria Volk: I look forward to checking out myself. I love me some dark humor. So thank you so much for being my guest. I will put all of the links in the show notes and thank you for sharing your warrior story. Really? It’s a warrior through grief. And, you know, we all don’t have to do some grand things with our grief and share it with the world. But if you can connect with other people, like, and create those corners of beauty like you shared, That’s healing. So thank you for sharing your story because storytelling is healing too. Storytelling is healing.
Jessica Fein: And I also, you know, I didn’t mention I do a column in psychology today called grace and grief. You can find that online. I write a lot about not only our own individual grief, but how you can support others in their grief. So if people wanna check that out. Thank you so much. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life, much love.
Emotions, Grieving Voices Podcast, Healing, Mind/Body Wellness, Pet Loss, Widowhood |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
In the quiet aftermath of a personal storm, Scott Forrester found solace and strength in the Feldenkrais method. His journey is not just about physical recovery; it’s a poignant narrative of resilience amid life’s harshest trials – loss, grief, and reinvention.
Forrester’s story began with an accident that challenged conventional healing methods. Physical therapy couldn’t mend what was broken within him. Then he realized that our struggles often lie deeper than muscle or bone—nestle in the intricate dance between mind and body.
Through Feldenkrais, Forrester teaches us to listen—to really listen—to our bodies whispers before they become screams. This method isn’t confined to those seeking physical relief; it extends its embrace to anyone yearning for emotional liberation from grief’s heavy chains.
His tale weaves through his own tapestry of loss—of loved ones who have passed on but whose presence still guide him like unseen stars guiding sailors home. He speaks candidly about embracing life as a way to honor those we’ve lost rather than being anchored by their absence.
But this isn’t just a story about coping with sorrow—it’s also one of profound love. Over 50 years married, Forrester learned that marriage thrives on more than promises—it blossoms through unspoken understandings, shared growth, and enduring friendship.
Scott Forrester stands as a testament to living fully—not despite losses—but because of them, transforming pain into purposeful strides forward…into awareness…into hope.
RESOURCES:
Book | The Aware Athlete
The Faldenkrais Method
CONNECT:
Website
Facebook
Instagram
_______
NEED HELP?
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
- Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support via text message. Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a trained Crisis Counselor
If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Unlocking the Healing Power of Movement: The Feldenkrais Method with Scott Forrester
In today’s fast-paced world, we often overlook the deep connection between our physical bodies and emotional health. But what if there was a way to harness this connection to heal both body and soul? Enter the Feldenkrais method—a transformative approach to somatic education that has helped countless individuals improve bodily function and awareness without strain.
A Personal Journey Through Injury to Insight
Our guest at Grieving Voices, Scott Forrester, didn’t just stumble upon the Feldenkrais method; it found him in a time of need. After falling off a roof and facing an unsatisfactory recovery through traditional physical therapy, he embarked on a quest for healing that led him straight to discovering how muscular issues are often deeply intertwined with our nervous system.
Forrester’s revelation—that changing movement patterns could vastly improve overall function—didn’t just apply to his injury recovery. It became clear that these principles were universal, extending their reach into managing grief and emotional trauma as well.
Beyond Physical Therapy: Embracing Life Through Movement
The beauty of the Feldenkrais method lies in its accessibility. It doesn’t matter if you’re an athlete striving for peak performance or someone grappling with neurological challenges—the practice is designed for all who wish to explore their potential through gentle movements and heightened self-awareness.
Scott Forrester’s own journey through grief after losing his mother, beloved dog Stealth, and wife Leanne serves as a poignant testament to these practices’ power. He shares how accepting death isn’t about giving up but rather embracing life more fully—a profound way of honoring those we have lost while continuing our paths forward.
Somatic Wisdom: Listening To Your Body’s Story
When practicing Feldenkrais exercises—whether in group Awareness Through Movement sessions or one-on-one Functional Integration—you embark on an intimate dialogue with your body. This conversation can reveal much about your habitual patterns not only physically but emotionally too.
As Forrester delves into his personal experiences—from adventurous hikes with Stealth to navigating life as a widower—he uncovers lessons learned from love itself. His insights touch upon marriage longevity rooted in communication, understanding, empathy—and most importantly mutual growth beyond individual interests.
From Loss Comes Learning: Writing As Reflection And Connection
Filling days teaching Feldenkrais classes or writing provides structure amid loss for many like Scott Forrester. However, it also opens avenues for new connections—friendships that blossom from shared experiences of grief or simply seeking companionship after significant changes in one’s life narrative.
Marriage requires nurturing akin to tending a garden—it thrives on attention paid not only when convenient but consistently over time. Reflecting on over 50 years together with Lee offers invaluable perspectives on partnership dynamics where unresolved issues might be accepted rather than conquered—an echo of John Gottman’s teachings emphasizing collaboration over conflict resolution alone.
Choosing someone who will walk beside you—in sickness and health—is no trivial decision; values such as family history play roles larger than anticipated initially yet resonate throughout shared lives together.
Aging With Agency: The Philanthropic Method In Action
Discussing philanthropy usually conjures images of generosity toward others—but what about self-care? Actively caring for oneself ensures we remain capable supporters within our communities—as demonstrated by engaging activities like hiking regardless of age milestones looming ahead.
If intrigued by Scott Forrester’s journey or interested in exploring how the Feldenkrais method may enrich your own path towards wellness (both physically & emotionally), consider visiting awareathlete.com where resources abound including access points towards works like “The Aware Athlete.”
Remember—if movement is medicine then let us learn its language fluently so we may converse heartily with every step taken toward healing ourselves wholly!
Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk: Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, whatever time it is you’re listening. Welcome to grieving voices. Today, my guest is Scott Forrester. He is an author, a Felden Price practitioner. Yep. Podcaster, when licensed physical therapist assistant, and I can’t believe if I pronounced that correctly. Is that right?
Scott Forrester: That’s correct. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Is there anything let’s start there. What is a filled in Christ practitioner?
Scott Forrester: Alright. So a filled in Christ practitioner. That’s a form whenever you have a method that gets named after someone, you have to put up with the name. So that is a method of somatic ed education. Pulmonic education, soma refers to the living body. So it’s a form of learning with or through the body. Okay? It’s so I’m actually teaching a class a couple classes a week. It’s taught in two different modes. Awareness removal and is their group class name. And functional integration is the name for the one on one work. It’s the same work, but just done either verbally or verbally and with a hand.
Victoria Volk: Okay. Can you just explain a little bit, like, what it looks like?
Scott Forrester: What it looks like?
Victoria Volk: Yeah. Okay.
Scott Forrester: So in the classes, these particular classes I’ve been doing since January and almost none of the movement lessons have been the same. There is really only one lesson that’s how you move your attention around and within yourself. But so the last the last lesson, we do them on Wednesdays and Fridays. So on Wednesday, we did a lesson. And the the class is really good. The people I had Friday, I knew know how to take care of themselves. So we did a lesson that that involved one person at the end of the lesson, being able to put surprise themselves, being able to put their foot on their head. And we did that with no straining, no stretching. And then so we did that on the on the right side. Then on the left side, we did hardly any movements, and that was even better because we we used a lot of visualization after you know how to do it on one side, then you also know how to visualize it. And then Some of the lessons have involved no movement at all. If you are watching them, we’ve done lessons where you just cover the eyes. And improve your vision because the eyes are doing things while they’re covered. And so there’s a tremendous variety. A lot of the lessons focus on most of most of the ones we’ve been doing are awareness for movement, focusing on awareness. But they have a heavy emphasis on function also. So you end up with a lot of movement surprises.
Victoria Volk: So people unless you’re watching this, you can’t see my face. And so I am, like, A little bit and, you know, kinda turning my head to the side because it’s fascinating to me. I find it fascinating and interesting. And I can tell you, like, because I’m an energy worker. I Uh-huh. Bio field tuning with Jeff or raki master and and all that. And I can tell you just living where I live heavily, like, old German country. Right? Like, I’m, like, the unicorn around here. Like so at least I feel like it. Although Yeah. I know that there’s probably people that are interested in the Wu’s stuff like that. And are kind of in the closet of it too. Right? Like, they’re interested in these things that you can’t really explain
Scott Forrester: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: But you have to just experience. And that’s what I’m gathering from you is that this is just something that you have to experience and that before you can really wrap your head around it. Is that
Scott Forrester: it is? It is well, it is. Philadelphia wrote a number of books and so you can’t because he was a scientist, you can, if you understand the book, books, you can absorb his contextual framework. So you could kind of understand it that way. His book, body, and material behavior, he wrote in the forties. And so it has archaic language in it. And if you read the introduction to that and pay attention to that, then you might be able to understand what he’s talking about. Baby.
Victoria Volk: How did you land into this practice?
Scott Forrester: Okay. So this This has made a huge difference in my life. I fell off a roof once. And I only fell seven feet, but it was far enough to break it ankle. Your body weight is seven feet, if you’re not dull lines, man, quite quite right, is still some force. And I eventually had that surgically repaired that was successful. But in the meantime, I had developed a movement pattern with my knee that wouldn’t allow me to run very well any any more. That was about twenty five years ago. So I went to physical therapy and they made it worse. Yeah. I knew they made it worse, so I didn’t go back. And very sincere, nice people. Then I went to another physical therapist who was an ultra runner. He’s about my age, actually. And he had won his age group in the Lenville one hundred more than once. And he was familiar withothelin Christ, but he wasn’t a practitioner, didn’t understand everything about it, but he did apply some some of it. And I had been very interested in the in the method. I I tried to research his online at that course, the in twenty five years, what you can do online is increase dramatically. But So I became very interested in it, and I sensed that, for instance, the first person who made me worse, physical therapy, And I I am a physical therapist assistant. So and I’ve worked in a quite a bit, so I understand it. And and if you wanna get very generalized, every physical therapist is different. But if you wanna really generalize it, strengthen stretch. So if you have a problem, you just have to strengthen the muscles around the area. Well, I already had been relatively at the same time. This is not astounding, but I I was able to deadlift four hundred pounds. So obviously, I was strong enough to run. But the problem was all your movement patterns are not in the muscles. Talk about muscle memory. We understand that, but the memory is not in muscles. It’s in the nervous system. And in the central nervous system, in the brain, that’s where you have your your your movement patterns. That’s where they reside. And you may have even had the experience of forgetting how to do something But as soon as you pick up your hands to do it, you can remember how to do it. Anyway, So that was the first thing. But the real problem was just change your movement pattern a little bit. Now you could do it. I could go into detail about that, but The way we do things, this is profound because it doesn’t just apply to to your body, but the way we do things, the quality of the way we do them. The details of how we do of how we do what we do our makeup profile differs. So this is something that you would have to experience. However, it does have a huge conceptual framework, and you could understand that. The the difficulty with doing it just from the books is you don’t understand the person at first. So you don’t quite understand I could say a sentence. And if you don’t understand the context of what I’d say, words are always always limited. So you always not so you get very little out of it and unless you understand what the person is saying. And he writes in sentences that are paragraph long. So Yes. You could do it either way, but but you do essentially have to experience it. And even in the training, I was myself and others were getting about halfway through it, and we were saying, what if what is this? Eventually, you understand. But it is, you have to experience it. So it became something that with somatic education is making big inroads into therapy too. Felding Christ, didn’t want to. His method is so large as to become unwieldy in in some ways. So you’ve heard the somatic experiencing maybe Peter Levine and there are so many so many techniques and methods that use that. But and so if ethics and ethics can be applied exactly to that. To therapy. The beauty of what he did is that it’s it has great therapeutic yeah, advantages. But some of the some of the the results that you obtain are partly because you don’t focus on the problems, that you don’t focus on therapy. If you have a problem, if you focus on the problem, you have a problem for the rest of your life.
Victoria Volk: Welcome to politics. Right?
Scott Forrester: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Focus on all the problems all the time. And Yeah. Everybody’s always talking about the problems, but there’s Where are we talking about?
Scott Forrester: It applies to everything. So I Yeah. Made a profound difference in in my life and even how I respond to. Everything. In my class, I I’ve had the greatest compliment lately because people are beginning to say, you know, my whole this is influencing and changing my whole life because I approached life in a different way. You could either I don’t know. I often say you could either do what you always do and do what I what I tell you to. Or you could do what’s right for you and and learn how to take care of yourself and how to move from that place.
Victoria Volk: So who who who is this for? Who is a good candidate for?
Scott Forrester: Okay. So if you if you want to advertise it, as you know, you need to well, you probably know the difficulty of advertising what you’re doing in your location. You suggested that Yeah. But if if so if you want to advertise it, you kind of have to appeal to someone. Some particular group because the problem with it is that it can help anybody that you’re familiar with basketball?
Victoria Volk: Mhmm.
Scott Forrester: So everybody knows Michael Jordan. But just before him was doctor Jay. Julius Irving.
Victoria Volk: Okay.
Scott Forrester: Fellow Christ worked with him. Oh, he he worked with ballet dancers. He worked with children with cerebral palsy because you’re working with the nervous system. And So it it really applies to it would apply So a lot of people that think they’re doing fine and are moving through life. Maybe they’re in in the maybe they’re fairly young, thirties and forties, they probably wouldn’t be interested because they think they’re doing fine. They could improve them tremendously. But if you had cerebral palsy, or if you have neurological difficulties or if you were an artist or an athlete and you have some reason that you really want to improve your skill level, the skill level that resides in your nervous system. Then it’s for you. So the problem is it could help anybody.
Victoria Volk: Well, and what I know about emotions and grief and trauma is that these emotions like that these heavy emotions that we our bodies remember. Right? Our bodies hold on to
Scott Forrester: That’s exactly
Victoria Volk: He’s in the nervous system.
Scott Forrester: Right. Right. So you know if you’re doing energy work. Mhmm. There’s nothing. Fell in Christ to him. There was not a mind body connection. They’re exactly the same thing.
Victoria Volk: Oh.
Scott Forrester: So if if you have a that’s a huge difference between saying a healthy mind and a healthy body. So if what you were saying, everything that happens to us is hell in the body. Well, that’s because it’s Also, all held in the emotions and in the mind. It is held it tells everywhere in the person. Mhmm. So Franklin Christ did feel that working with the with movement was the fastest way to access the entire person. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: There’s a question that’s kinda noodling at me. And so I’m gonna ask, is this, like, similar to like, Thai chis, like chigong, like those types of practices?
Scott Forrester: Yes and no.
Victoria Volk: Okay.
Scott Forrester: It was very similar in in that it, you know, it it emphasizes the mind mindfulness the same way.
Victoria Volk: Okay.
Scott Forrester: It’s very dissimilar in that in Chaiti, you learn a formula and you can improve and improve and improve and improve and prove in that form. Falcon Christ had hundreds. There’s even literally thousands of blessings. Over a thousand. So you come into the class. If you understand that you’re doing the same lesson every time, but it has a different flavor, would you like to improve your eyesight? Would you like to improve your balance, whatever? It was it’s heavily it’s unique and that it’s heavily oriented towards function, but also in that every time you come in, you’ll be doing something non habitual.
Victoria Volk: I have a question. Have you seen people with conditions? Maybe even rare that have seen improvements in their condition using this method.
Scott Forrester: Yeah. Yes, you have. I’ve worked with people who had late stage cerebral palsy and and so on. So yes.
Victoria Volk: Or near blindedness.
Scott Forrester: Yeah. So I think it’s David Webber that develops filled in Christ knew everything in his side. He knew all the all the scientists, and he was a black belt at Juno, so he understood martial arts, and he even understood them to the extent that he wrote a book on the Physics of Juno. So okay. So I lost my check. What was the question again?
Victoria Volk: Vision. Near blind.
Scott Forrester: Vision. Yeah. So that means he knew a number of things about vision. I think it was stated whether that’s developed a lot of exercises there. And they’re I can’t remember the source, but there’s a case study on a person who was legally blind. And he decided to do these eye exercises. And he was prescribed, you know, you should you should do them an hour, maybe even two hours a day. He did him thirteen hours a day. And he went from legally blind to perfectly acceptable vision.
Victoria Volk: I just got goosebumps.
Scott Forrester: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: I am just fascinated with this falling Christ’s guy. So
Scott Forrester: He had completely destroyed knees. And he was born in nineteen o four, lived till nineteen eighty four. So back when he did that as a twenty year old, they didn’t have the knee surgery we do now. But he figured out how to rehabilitate the function of the knees enough that he could practice you. Which Mhmm. With with no meniscus and no legacies. Pretty astoundingly.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. You would go to a physician, maybe, like, that’s impossible. Don’t do that. You’ll just hurt yourself further, you know?
Scott Forrester: Yeah. He was he was cognitively and physically in the body, very aware of what he couldn’t couldn’t and couldn’t do. You know what? He could move fine if he moved in certain ways, which we can, and not fine if he moved in other ways. He had to he had to move within the stability of what he could do, but he understood that and felt that.
Victoria Volk: It’s almost like connecting with the energy within the body to understand it and manipulate it where it can be manipulated, but then almost surrender to it where it can’t be.
Scott Forrester: Yes.
Victoria Volk: That’s a good question.
Scott Forrester: That’s very understandable. That’s very profound. If I I’ll probably butcher the quote, but Find your greatest weakness and surrender to it. Mhmm. He said most people spend all their life either covering up their weaknesses or trying to improve them. Sent those that surrendered to their weaknesses are rare. And he said they actually lead every generation. So obviously, you can understand why he would say that. He has no knees. No functional knees. But in surrendering to that, he found what he could do. He found his whole person. So that applies really to everything.
Victoria Volk: Well, I’m gonna have to look into this guy. He sounds like a true trailblazer in Renegade for his time And
Scott Forrester: He was a pioneer in neuroplasticity when that term wasn’t even used. And there was a brain researcher, Aileen Bakirida, I think, came to some of his classes. Her husband, Paul, Aker Reed Award, won a Nobel Prize in the I believe he won a Nobel Prize in Nobel Prize in Nobel Plastic Research. I think he was the man who took a blind man and hooked sensors to his tongue and hooked that up to a camera. And the man could see. Yeah. He’s done that with us. He he proves a lot of things, sensory substitution that way. You’ve done it done it with a person with a very poor vestibular system. And and he put a helmet on the head so that he could I don’t think he may have used the camera there too. I’m not sure. But then then the in fact, in that case, the person eventually didn’t need the device. Because the brain had been trained to be able to stand in. So
Victoria Volk: Well, listen.
Scott Forrester: So anyway, when when his wife came to the classes, she said, you are able to do more here practically. And our research is allowing us to do in the lab.
Victoria Volk: Well, this is fascinating. And I do want to get to your grief story
Scott Forrester: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: But so I’m sorry I kind of derailed the conversation in my curiosity. But I think it really is a good context into how it changed your life because you’ve got a lot of grief experiences and a lot of loss
Scott Forrester: Oh, in one year. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. You were already practicing this, I imagine, for years. Yes.
Scott Forrester: Yeah. Yeah. It made made a big difference to my wife and I. I was finishing PTA school, and I ran by a laundromat where my wife was doing the clothes. And we I had thought about doing this, but it was very expensive In terms of you have to not work for seven weeks a year, you have to find a place to live in another city for that long. Then you have to come up with a tuition and and it takes four years, so it’s quite a commitment. And but there was no training offered near us. So I kinda shut down.
Victoria Volk: You’re talking about the folding price?
Scott Forrester: Yes. And so I I stopped in to see my wife, and she pulls out an ad paper. In the line of math there. And there wasn’t there was a train that’s gonna start up within a reasonable distance. And she said, you have to do this. And as difficult as it was, her that was her attitude clear through the training. So it did make a difference with this.
Victoria Volk: So tell us about your what followed?
Scott Forrester: So I I Our training started in twenty ten, finished in twenty fourteen, so it was much later in In twenty twenty two, in August, we celebrated our fiftieth anniversary. And we came back. So in September, it was, you know, it’s almost twenty twenty three. And two weeks or so after we got back. Yeah. I she had I worked in physical therapy and she had a very tight calf. And I said, you need to go to the doctor right now. So she did and she had a blood clot, but and and it was removed. A lot forty five centimeters. And in the meantime, at at the same time that they, you know, did a scan for the blood clot, they did scan at the aggregate and the physician came back and said, you have stage forecast for her. And So early in twenty twenty three, she began chemotherapy.
Victoria Volk: And
Scott Forrester: she after about three treatments, she had a clean scan. So we were We were happy about that, but it was in the lymph system that it came roaring back. And after three treatments has sensitive as she was to that. She they couldn’t give her anymore because her white blood cell count was way too low. And eventually, they she tried radiation and another form of chemo that was probably not as effective. But, anyway, so my dog whom was not only a family member, I almost got a telepathic relationship with him. The only dog I’d ever had, I got over at sixty. You know what I mean? And he was very important to both my wife and myself. I won’t go into downward, but he died in August. And we’re both here for his last last day. Well, I didn’t say that my mother died January. She was ninety nine, so it was expected. She was very highly functional until the last couple months of life. So my mother died in January, my dog. My wife and I both sat there for his last day, and he was kind of a pioneer for us because he lived his he lived his life every day. And he had wait. He’d had a couple surgeries and they couldn’t do any more for him. And their mask came back on his mouth and other places. And I was building my son’s house down in Chris’ Valley, and it was hot out there. And so I left him with my wife for a few days. And I came back. And she said, yeah. You’ve gotta take him with you. He’s more of us here. So as high as it was, is uncomfortable for for him as it was. He wanted to be out there with me. And, anyway, in in August, he could no longer he he reached the day where his fever came back and and he couldn’t get up. He could barely walk, and he just wanted to sit and look. And he couldn’t get in the car anymore. And he never liked me to pick him up unless he was really weak. And but he was afraid to get in the car because he tried it a couple of times and couldn’t couldn’t make the jump anymore. So I picked him up. He was finishing and he scratched me. Yeah. But once he was in the car, it was fine. And then when he got out of the when we reached the vet, he likes vet because they’ve always helped him. So he hopped down the car and walked in on his own. And then they took him into the bathroom and put it IV in his in his, like, and he was fine with that. He he done it before and then and he and then Dave would do something, you know, do a surgery. He’d come back and be fine. So he was fine with that. He walked in on his own, walked to the waiting room where my wife and I sat with him. And laid down because that’s all I could do. Energy was gone. And then they gave the the shot that you know, slug him down, and they gave him another shot that stopped his heart, but it is extremely peaceful. And so that was a role model for my wife and I. She actually she actually lived a year after the diagnosis. She she made it through September of twenty twenty three. And and passed in in the very first hours of October first. My wife had gone through quite a bit of trauma. And my mom died when she was nine, dad’s bad enough, but her dad was an alcoholic. And so he married another alcoholic. And so her stepmother hated her and and hated her father because she was a terrific alcoholic and didn’t know how to love anybody. Yeah. So she grew up with first the loss of her mother and then people saying, you know, you you gotta be strong for your father. Right? Yeah. That’s backwards. That’s so and through your early teenage years and and later teenage years, you hope. In a family that’s not your family. So she grew up highly sensitive doing due to needing to know every night. Her father was a stable alcoholic. He held a job. But you need to know what Moody’s coming home in every every night. Mhmm. And so she actually suffered from depression quite a bit. And then that last year, she was never depressed. We were both really accepting of death, which is a good place to be because in our culture, we just kinda put it off into a corner. I’ll deal with that in fifteen years. Mhmm. It really could enhance life. To understand it. Anyway, so she would she never had time for that and was never depressed. And she lived every single day Even when she was getting weaker, she got up and did something that was life every day. And that was true for her last day. My son visited and he brought pictures from the grandkids, and she held a nice video call with them. She was fully into that call. And, no, ma’am. I didn’t know. She didn’t know. That was her last day. She was magnificent. And she’s my hero. She did not want to spend one minute in a facility, and she didn’t And and the timing was the whole thing was amazing because I spent a little bit of extra money to have some help. To finish to finish John’s house. And I couldn’t be in two places at once, but when I got it finished, that’s when she really needed vehicle. So it’s a huge it’s it’s a bigger thing than you think. But, you know, in the first week, when you lose somebody that closely, you’re holding their hands when they take their last breath, which was beautiful. But when you do that, a presence tends to be really strong, especially for the first week or two. And I got up one morning, he’s walking down the hall, and I It’s a knowing. I related to hearing your voice. She said, I will always be with you, Scott. Not too much later. I was sitting down at the breakfast table and I said, how was it with you? What are you arguing? She said, Sky is so beautiful. So wonderful. Wonderful. Actually, the word, whether anybody thinks that’s a voice or not, some people understand some it’s a great truth because it says that life is sacred. The right way to grieve is to remember someone as your hero and embrace life. You know, you could think and it’s reasonable to think that the right way to agree with us to be unhappy. But counter intuitively, it’s not the the loss is bigger than you think. Because if you’re orientated correctly and you live day by day, you think you can deal with it. But you find there’s more layers to it because she wanted to be a lie a wife that was actually her goal. It’s not everybody’s goal. Wife, a mother, and a grandmother. And she did that her entire life. I matter when she was maybe eighteen. We spent a lot of time together when she was nineteen. She was married when we were twenty. So her entire lifer, she did that. And that’s all I did or don’t either. You live day by day or do it fine. And then you find out the the loss in the hole is bigger and you thought and you find yourself, you know, searching for something to fill that. So I recently hadn’t aware of this. That you have to relate to the past in a certain way. If you relate to the past as the beautiful blessings that you had, the fun times you had, or as the things that weren’t right but what you learned from them. You’re on you’re on a good path. As soon as you say, as soon as you begin to grasp and say, I wish I had that back. It brings you down, like, falling off a building. So never go there. The first time I had that realization, it was kinda like oh, that’s a good realization. I understand that. I see that. The second time I was, like, I’m never going there again. Then I understand. It was beautiful, but I I still am in touch with her. But after seven months, you have to be very quiet and just I could still ask for questions and feel and answer, but So I felt in Christ this thing about that was the beginning of really developing some awareness within yourself. You can use a method to improve your function, or as you were talking about, you can move that use that method to actually notice exactly how you are functioning. There are places that you can go to as a method that improve your your sense of yourself, your standing, your connection with the ground, just how you feel it in in an overall way. You talk about posture. There’s there’s some ideas about posture and the method. But there’s a certain way of standing in which you’re totally comfortable. And I couldn’t quite go there. I thought that we had experienced a whole year of both joy and grief together, and I realized that there was even another level that we could have experience. So you can tell that in your body, you’re not quite ready to go to that place. After you’ve experienced it and know what it is. And then later you are. Yeah. The whole idea of self and self awareness has been expanding. You know, throughout these entire last ten years.
Victoria Volk: What’s your wife’s name?
Scott Forrester: Namely. But her name was always Leanne and was her Italy.
Victoria Volk: And your dog?
Scott Forrester: Stealth.
Victoria Volk: What time was he hold? Was he?
Scott Forrester: He was a lab shepherd mix, and he didn’t quite make thirteen years. He if I had a dog now, I would have known their limits, but he’s a very strong, strong dog. So I felt like he could do anything I could do. So when he was about five, I took him on a hike through the desert from Walker Pass to Kennedy Meadows. Mhmm. I was lost one day too. So we were probably out there by sixty miles. And, yeah, he was totally exhausted when we got done. He couldn’t even walk very far. I mean, we’d really get through it out there. And my wife picked him up and, you know, picked us up. Actually, Actually, she I was a kennady medalist store, and she was up to the campground. I didn’t know that. And I I couldn’t get in touch with her cell phones for her working. And eventually, I had somebody I could have walked up there. But still is good. So I’m gonna leave him with the campground. I I was gonna leave him with the campground manager, but it said he took us up there. That’s how tired stealth was as strong and tough as he was carrying his backpack and and always leading the way. And I’ve taken him on hikes through the wind river range in Wyoming. And Well, one one day we did from Snora Pass to Echo Pass or whatever it was in the Sierra. And we did thirty one miles in one day. The last part of it, it was actually getting dark. So you’re walking up the steepest part of it to ten thousand five hundred feet. The rock is part of it. And you can’t see the trail. So every time you go to a rocky spot, you can’t find the trail. Because now you have to negotiate out of this Rocky area. Which way did it go? My GPS did that for us. But it took a minute to find the trail each time we were crossing streams at night twenty hours and he was right up right here. I had no estimate for a vehicle. Yeah. Yeah. So Yeah. We did some big adventures together. And then finally, he got to the place where I wouldn’t do that with him anymore. It it didn’t have quite the stamina for it. It was too dangerous for him.
Victoria Volk: So growing up, had you had any loss experiences? And and how did how did what did you learn about grief growing up?
Scott Forrester: Okay. So basically, no. I mean, we’re We’re it was pretty isolated from everything. But I both of my grandmothers did die. We weren’t there for it. You know, further passing or anything. We they both had funerals. And then that was way back in my childhood. The first one, my my dad’s mother. The second one was was actually actually after I got married, and she was way up in her nineties. And she passed the way she wanted to. So those are significant. But then my father died when I was I think I was young, but I was forty three. So it’s not a childhood loss. But that one was in such great contrast to to my wife later thirty years later because that one I couldn’t accept it.
And I couldn’t even say that my father had died. I couldn’t use that word. He was so strong. And you know, to a kid he seemed invulnerable and then he had Parkinson’s disease in every a piece at a time what he could do. Went away. I couldn’t even say Parkinson’s for years. And, you know, five years later, I could I had trouble accepting it. And for thirty years, he’s always been there. With me. That was a completely different experience.
Victoria Volk: I noticed you didn’t even mention that in what as one of your losses.
Scott Forrester: No. I I was pretty much focusing on on what happened within the space of the year as pretty dramatic. And I think my wife knew she knew how much she meant to me. Even more than I knew how much I meant to her. She knew what what it would be like. And I think she guided me through a lot of it. But, yeah, there’s a thirty year difference between those two and in the intensity of you losing three, actually four. In one year because I I’m by myself, so I adopted another dog. And my son said, that he would help with it. But in reality, it turned out he couldn’t. And so I found that I couldn’t really take care of but I kept him long enough. He was potty trained, and I kept him long enough that we found a really good home for it.
Victoria Volk: Why do you think you couldn’t take care of him?
Scott Forrester: Because I did what I usually what I wanted to do was get a dog who is full of energy. And so he was like a border collie, and he was only about seven months old. I could take care of him. But if I did, that if I were retired and didn’t have anything to do, I could take care of because it took the entire day. I had to take him for a life.
If I took him to run for two hours, he’d go quite okay kind of for one day. But I couldn’t do that every day. So I had to take him for, like, five walks a day. And and I had to keep an e eagle eye on him to make sure that the project training was holding, and I had to do all kinds of things like that. So I could have taken care of, but I wouldn’t have any relationship with people outside the home. You know, drive to bed there. So it was either the dog and you and you stay in the house with a dog for the rest of your life or, you know, you can you can work with other people.
Victoria Volk: Is there a part of you that feels it was maybe just too soon?
Scott Forrester: To seem to get the dog? No. I just I just couldn’t. I don’t I don’t have a fancy yard. And I don’t have anybody having your wife at home that can watch them while you go to work and while you do something.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. That’s yeah.
Scott Forrester: Yeah. I couldn’t I just didn’t have the ability to do it.
Victoria Volk: So earlier you mentioned you just kind of made a statement about trying to fill the void. I that those weren’t your words, but to that effect, trying to fill the space and time and
Scott Forrester: Not not so much the time. I’ve been pretty busy with with the space.
Victoria Volk: I’m actually trying to keep busy. I suppose is maybe the good a good way to say it. Like, you’ve been trying to keep busy. Is
Scott Forrester: that No. No. I’m just no. It’s easy for me to keep busy. I I have things that I wanna write a book. I’ve read written a couple of books. I wanna write a book. About this. I think there’s some useful things in it. And at least there’s some at least your story needs to be told.
Victoria Volk: What were some of the things though that you found that you have found yourself doing since your wife passed away that Oh. Are out of character lead.
Scott Forrester: Well, she loved to cook, and I had no interest in it. So I I don’t know how to cook. So now you have to take that up, and she gave me some hits before she passed, and I’ve been feeding myself quite well. But so now you have to do that. And you find out that it took a lot more time to do some of the things that you thought. So now I’m it’s only me here, so it’s not a big deal, but I’m cleaning the house. I’m teaching my classes. I am I want to write that book. Trying to find time for that. Eventually switching over the cell phone, you wouldn’t believe how much trouble that was. I keep sending you the bills for the person who’s not there anymore in front of the plan and switching insurance and say doing all the paperwork and she paid the bills, so I had to figure out what she was doing there. And then my son needs help. I have two sons. One’s an engineer in Arizona. The other one is not this ability. And he needs some help. Although, I’m proud of him. He’s needing a little bit less as things go. But so I had to figure out his finances and that was and we have to make trips down to Social Security, and then that does get you know, you have too bad. I was totally busy with that stuff for a long time. So during the during these classes, I put quite a bit of work into you’re doing two a week and I’ve I’ve actually kept them so I don’t do the same class every week every twice a week. I could. But so I put quite a bit. Excuse me. I didn’t. I can’t think. I’ve been doing so many things. I can’t I can’t really
Victoria Volk: do you feel like now, like, the dust is settled a little bit? You’ve gotten a lot of that administrative stuff that, obviously, when some when your spouse passes, there’s so much paperwork and you’d kinda hit on that a little bit. Do you feel like now is when you you finally maybe have time to, like, sit with how you’re feeling and sit with your grief and kind of maybe just now being able to do that? Yeah.
Scott Forrester: Yeah. It’s getting a little bit more like that. So something that’s, excuse me, have been crying. I mean, crying a little bit.
Victoria Volk: Okay.
Scott Forrester: Yeah. I wanna get back to the right. See, I still my time will be filled. I I if I have enough time, I would like to get back into painting. But something that takes a good chunk out of my day every day is that, you know, I have to get outside I have to do.
I have a friend that finished a hundred mile race not too long ago, and it was one with a big cut off. And so I get together with her and we’ll do eight, ten, twelve miles. And, you know, you know, we’ll go up we We did Smith rock the loop around that the other day for about eight miles, and it has something in it. They called Missy Ridge, which is just a big steep climb. And then we can jog back down a lot. But every day, so I want to spend if I’m really busy, I only get outside for half an hour. But I I like to spend an hour or two every day and, you know, to start the day doing something that’s movement or exercise. And I do a lot of movement preparing for the lessons. But see there’s that is so important to me that I make time for it. So there’s an if you if you go outside and do heart rate training for two hours, it takes more than that. You had to make sure you had to do whatever things are necessary to prepare for it. Then you’re a little bit more tired, sometimes even requiring a nap. So that’s a foundation to my day. Because if I do live to ninety or ninety five or my like my mother about a hundred, I wanna be fully functional at that age. So
Victoria Volk: Don’t we all?
Scott Forrester: I don’t have any trouble being being busy. But, yes, the other day, I was able to sit down in the sun, and there’s been a I mean, seven days a week, I’m busy. I’ll go out and see my son Christmas valley here. But I have had a couple times where it’s been very wonderful to sit outside and just reflect. In terms of filling the void, it’s a it’s a little embarrassing. But I found myself. So I I didn’t want to just put myself in a closet, turn the light out. So I found myself reaching out in a lot of different ways and making trying to make new connections, which I have. And that’s good. I found myself making new friends on Facebook and trying to find people that live in the area. And it was not obvious to me. Believe it or not that I was searching for somebody to fill that gap. And because it’s not what I was doing, but it was. It’s not what I was doing, but it was in there. It’s all I’ve ever known. So you’re I talked about a habit that’s in the body and an entire person. Yeah. I I went to the store the other day. This has been a little while ago. All of a sudden, that became kind of clear that happened in that in that looking error. And I actually kinda cried because isn’t that obvious that you would do that? Right? It wasn’t completely obvious. It became obvious. So I’ve I I think I’ve kind of indicated that all my friends are twenty years younger. Not all my friends, but but my close friends, Laura is twenty years younger, but a friend that may visit that I used to run with in Cheyenne. He’s twenty years younger. My friend Carlos, and his and his partner, Monica, are twenty years younger. Somebody I did go to visit some people at at the senior center the other day on invitation. And I like the people great. But I couldn’t go there again.
Victoria Volk: Well, I think what I mean, just based on how physically active you are, Yeah. And your background knowledge and stuff, is it accurate to say that you are a bit of a unicorn in the population of your peers?
Scott Forrester: I guess so. I mean
Victoria Volk: And that I
Scott Forrester: don’t think there are
Victoria Volk: other people are is not where you are.
Scott Forrester: They don’t do that some of these things that I do.
Victoria Volk: Exactly. And
Scott Forrester: so I love to talk to.
Victoria Volk: It’s how do we improve our lives, how do we better ourselves, it’s by surrounding ourselves with people who are doing what we who are where we want to be. Right? Yeah.
Scott Forrester: Right.
Victoria Volk: Where we’re at? Does was your wife very active with you as well?
Scott Forrester: No. She was always physically weaker than I was on it. She on her honeymoon, we hike eight miles in and eight miles back to the old mill the crystal mill in Colorado. And on the way out, I care I used to carry her backpack. She was only twenty, but she supported me.
Victoria Volk: And that’s what I was gonna say too is, but she never took that she allowed you to be you fully you?
Scott Forrester: She did. She supported me so much. In fact, there was a time when I I get lost all the time. She was a navigator. But I do have some sense about where I am when I’m when I’m outside.
Mhmm. And but I had no experience to do this, and I was backing very light. And by the time I just lost a couple days.
Victoria Volk: A couple days?
Scott Forrester: Anyway, I I just lost a lot out there. And Let’s see. So it was between fifteen and twenty years ago that I decided I was going to be in the wind river range and go from Green River lakes campground to Big Sandy, which has totally changed now. And they were keeping it kind of wilderness, so they weren’t a lot of sides out there. So you can imagine that was, you know, maybe seventy eight miles or something.
It turned out to be more than that for me. I didn’t know if I didn’t receive it again because what happened was An hour in, I dropped my GPS at the stream, and it was supposed to be waterproof, but it dropped it to a deep part of the stream. And It took me a lot of fishing out there. It worked. It was full of water. It worked well enough for me to find the trail one time. And then it never worked yet. So I’m out there with no GPS. I did have good maps in a compass. And I thought maybe I should go back. And then I thought, well, I might never have the opportunity to do this again, so I’ll go a little farther.
Victoria Volk: Man, you got gumption.
Scott Forrester: So I I know she would be at the campground for a better hour or so, I mean, probably that day. So I could have gone back, but I didn’t. And five days later, I walked out and I’d lost so much weight that she didn’t recognize me. I made a statement.
Victoria Volk: You ran you ran out of food, I take it.
Scott Forrester: I still had two or three hundred calories left, but I had
Victoria Volk: Futch hell from her when you finally met up with her.
Scott Forrester: Well, when I yeah. When I approached enough to talk, you know, but because I was walking towards her, I’m wearing the same clothes, but she didn’t recognize me. And I’m I’m but anyway, that night before the seasons were changing in the melons. I had a one pound sleeping bag. And It was getting too cold. I tried to get out of the wind because I didn’t have a tent. I brought my rain poncho that I strung up over myself, which actually protected me from the rain, but not the wind. And last night, I tried to hike the ice boulders there. My bag wasn’t doing it. I was I was shivering through the night. My my shoes were icy and frosty. In the next morning when I put them on. So I I wasn’t I was thinking, you know, if it gets more be more than shivery, I’m gonna have to get up and start doing jumping checks or something. Anyway, we made it through the night. But that night, I was I was sitting up and I felt her beside me. And I said, she’s here. No. She’s not here. I kept going back and forth before I she’s not here, but she is. And when I the next day, It took me four hours to find the trail. It went through a rocky area, and Anyway, so when I got out, she told me that she had taken, and this is not something she did all the time. She had taken my wallet and held it held it closer to her to her heart and projected herself out. Out beside me. She knew she knew that it was getting it was getting cold where she was. So she knew. So she wasn’t very active, but she she supported me in so many ways.
Victoria Volk: So you could have died. Were you not were you not fearful? Were you not? Like, what was going through your mind?
Scott Forrester: Their last day, I had let myself get dehydrated or and and the lack of food, which you know, you can go coin ways without food. I I knew that, but I didn’t know it in my body yet. In five days, it’s enough to get hungry if you’re not used to what you’re doing, not prepared. Right?
Victoria Volk: Well, when you start hallucinating?
Scott Forrester: I wasn’t to that point, but I was to the point where I didn’t have any extra energy to think to to think about worrying. Mhmm. So I was I was just pretty pretty steady to just kinda do what you go back, come back. I make it or I, you know, I find it or I don’t. You do get to the place where you’re at where you say, oh, somebody help me.
But, yeah, I found the trail. And once I did, I was up to three or four miles an hour again.
Victoria Volk: What I’m hearing in this story is it is a a metaphor for grief. Right?
Scott Forrester: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: We’re you can feel so lost. Like, can you see the parallels of getting lost?
Scott Forrester: Oh, yeah.
Victoria Volk: Not knowing where the trail is, not like losing your path, losing your self identity?
Scott Forrester: I did lose my identity. I’ve been a husband all my wife, life. And she was my everything, and she said to me before she passed. She said she said, yeah. We both wanted her to go first because I wanted to take care of her. That’s always been the case. She was weaker physically. And Yeah. She said you you were in my rock. So you you lose that identity. It’s gone. She no longer needs my help. You’re right. And then it’s every day at a one day at a time, and so you learn and you learn new things. It is a metaphor for them. I could.
Victoria Volk: I see a book along those lines.
Scott Forrester: Yeah. I I really would like to say some things that I think will help other people because I’d like to tell her story. So you know that all my friends are twenty years younger. And I’m not I wasn’t looking for anybody. But I found somebody who I knew I could I knew it was worth with, but I’m I’m not gonna tell you the whole story.
It’s just too funny. But I so this person was actually twenty nine years younger.
Victoria Volk: Okay. So
Scott Forrester: I went way out of him and and asked her to marry me knowing that. Very likely he was gonna say no. So she did say no. So anyway, I wasn’t looking for it then, and I’m really not today either. But that that all is there. It’s a good thing because it’s what I’ve really needed. I recently talked about the difference between being alone and being lonely. Mhmm. If you’re if you’ve never done it before and you’re forced to be alone, you have to learn some things you’ve never learned before. And it’s exactly what you need.
So that’s my story. For the pilot.
Victoria Volk: Thank you for sharing.
Scott Forrester: Thank you. Thank you for being a great host.
Victoria Volk: I would ask you what your grief has taught you, but I feel like you’ve fully answered that question. Do you feel like you’ve answered that question?
Scott Forrester: I have. But in looking over her wonderful marriage, and it was. I saw I saw in retrospect, I saw areas where I really wish I’d been more for and then I got carried away with that to the point where, you know, boy. You could look back and and and say, I was so selfish in in some marriage. When you’re you’re twenty years old and you get married, you don’t know We just had dumb kid. So you asked everything you learned in life. Everything we learned, we learned together. And so you you can get you can kinda get out of focus on that. Yes. I do wish I’d done some things even more for, but you can’t say, I wish I’d known fifty years ago what I know now because it’s impossible.
It’s so it’s always a very beautiful thing and then I I for a while, I got so carried away with. Which I I do acknowledge and I do want to bring into life and other people’s lives. What I learned there how much how much freedom is encouragement that you want to give the woman your a r I two? So that’s there. And I’m working with that. But for a while, it overshadowed what was something that was really beautiful even though it was very imperfect because it could not have been anything else. So, yeah, that’s another lesson.
Victoria Volk: So what his love taught you?
Scott Forrester: What his love taught me? Yeah. I understand the commitment. I understand what it takes it takes a whole lifetime to build that kind of a relationship. The amount of comfort that we had with each other, the we really were one person.
And she has she has guided me through all of this. And love love has taught me, you know, look look at the love, don’t and look at whatever lessons you can learn, but But don’t forget that there was something there that was beyond anything that was done. It’s you can’t encapsulate it all in one mistake or one love is something that goes beyond. It’s more than the sum of the parts. The whole of the whole relationship if it works in the marriage is more than the sum of parts. It works better than it should. It can work better than it should.
Victoria Volk: And what do you think is the key to it working? For fifty years?
Scott Forrester: So I don’t wanna be too tried, but we we were careful to be committed to that idea at the start. I’ve been kind of astounded if I look back, I see. I guess, you know, there were places where it could not have worked. And then I’ve been kind of astounded when I’m getting a better view of what marriage is for people overall. And and there are a lot of divorces. Yeah. So I’ve been kind of astounded by that. It’s so logical that it wouldn’t work. So I I really have gained no understanding of that. From a perspective of what? You know? Because okay. So a couple of other things that I know even when in my wife’s journal that she said I could read shows up is that commitment’s not enough. If you don’t know how to make the relationship work, commitment is not enough because you’re committed to something that doesn’t work. So then the thing of communication is really essential. And you should develop the skill of nonviolent communication. Of being able to communicate without blaming. But even but we always communicated but we didn’t even know that skill sometimes. The person that can hurt you most in the world is your spouse. And if you have not shed a lot of your ego, everybody wants to be hurt and everybody wants to be loved. And if you have a very strong egoistic way of doing things, which we all do, then somebody gets hurt, and then they say, but you did this, that as a matter of self defense. There’s various ways that can happen. I just listened yeah. You’ve been very patient. I just just listened to an interview with I think his name is John Cotton. And he was saying that after all the studies he’s done, you could predict whether a couple would stay together in as little as fifteen minutes with eighty five or ninety percent accuracy. Because we talked about the fellow Christ method that it’s the quality of what you do dictates what you learn, not the quantity. So you can do a lot of quantity and you end up with neck pain or or hurt because you’re doing the same thing the same way and you and you increase the intensity, but you’re using the same habit. So because of the quality of couples interaction, they can tell just a short period of interaction would typify the quality of what you’re doing. So do you do you still enroll? You don’t even listen and they know you’re not listening. So they upped the volume. I mean, do you do that or or do you even when you hurt one another, are you really seeking for something really knowing It’s not even compromise. There’s some truth somewhere. And are you really pursuing this? Which we did as a friendship? Or are you trying to be right? And those those little things and you can eventually to be learn to communicate much better. But then So that brings you to the other thing and you can’t up your what’s the quality of your communication in the first place? Are you trying to be right or and that comes you know, you have to learn that because that comes through. But but the friend aspect of it, you know, is that the most important thing? And like I say, in beyond compromise, are you looking for something together? I we weren’t great at it. Just I mean, and and and listening with a high degree of awareness. If you bring complete awareness, complete observation to that in a non bias, non passionate way, then you are you are observing your own self in my con. You are observing your wife’s body language. You are observing her words. You are observing hell around. She holds your head, and and you are seeing the meaning behind it. And if you don’t, you ask that’s a high level of communication. And we didn’t always have that, but we we did have this basic belief in. What we were doing. So you need that communication and then you need that continued growth. That self growth. If you don’t have that, that’s a well, that’s a hard place too. But but if you have that friendship aspect, if that’s really what you’re what you’re after, you you can keep going. I mean, you you’ll probably make it. What what was very interesting? And John Gottman’s speech I was listening to was he said, most married problems don’t they don’t ever get accepted or changed. Resolved, but they get accepted. So the friendship, the aesthetics really what determines it all. If you want to go farther, you can. And and you show that it might be dangerous not to.
Victoria Volk: Well, that’s the foundation. Right?
Scott Forrester: Yeah. But that’s the foundation. Mhmm. You can learn better communication skills and you can learn learn not to to put that ego first and you can learn to do that. And then something that you should have learned that is it’s becoming more a possibility in a in a country you can learn. We throw the word partner around. It’s a good work. But it loses some of its meaning if you throw it around too much. Like so to add to that, you can say, you collaborate with your wife or your colleagues or and then you can go back to use the word partner with a different meaning. As equals.
Victoria Volk: I had a conversation yesterday with a minister. Mhmm. He said the most important decision you will ever make in your life is the person you choose to spend your life with.
Scott Forrester: Yeah. Liam was eternally kind. That was so important. So Yeah. You’re you’re right.
That is and so you should be a little nervous about it. And take your time. I actually I asked, actually, after before he got married, we were a kid. I said, what makes you think you can stay better?
Victoria Volk: What’d she say?
Scott Forrester: She told me, you know, she’d never experienced. Divorce in her family. Her mother was always there. Even her father was there. Even though her father invited to a horrible marriage, he never left his wife. And then I thought that was a pretty good answer.
Victoria Volk: What is it that you would like to scream to the world? You were on a long hike and you were out in the mountains and you’re at the top of the mountain, what would you scream?
Scott Forrester: Well, in a book, I would like to scream, scream, her her story. It’s amazing. Overall, I would I would just I would just like people to know how how great marriage could be even though it’s it’s a process to see through. It’s not great every day. It can become great every day, but that’s a that’s a long story. I would like them to see how wonderful it could be. I would like to I would like them to see two things. One, the beauty of how how much my wife or a woman can give, and then I would like them to see the wonder of what the husband how he can lay himself aside. That I’m I’m not talking about wear yourself doing a wear yourself out doing everything for for your old wife, but you give your entire heart to to her elevation. Those two aspects. I mean, what she gave is astounding. And it’s hard to put it into words. But I would like I would like so I would like overall people to know, you know, what what marriage could be. How you could get there. What a wife really? What a gift a wife could be? And And I think there needs to be more a lot more knowledge of of how a husband needs to function in terms of putting his eagle down and and any leadership comes from my my entire heart is in elevating my partner. I yeah. So the the beauty of the whole thing, I can I cannot overappreciate the gift that she gave? Her entire life.
Victoria Volk: That’s beautiful. Is there anything else that you would like to share that you didn’t get to?
Scott Forrester: No. I just appreciate the opportunity to talk about even. I I guess Yeah. The fact that I can still I can still ask her questions and I feel a response just in the smile or It is it’s never it’s not really a loss. I only lost the physical things.
Anyway, I I thank you very much for the chance to share all that even some of the most embarrassing things.
Victoria Volk: It was my pleasure to have this conversation with you, and thank you for describing this new Well, it’s not new, but this the method.
Scott Forrester: Oh, the the film price method if you
Victoria Volk: Yeah.
Scott Forrester: If you didn’t any help understanding that get in touch with me.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. So thank you for bringing that to my awareness, to my audience who Yeah. I mean, there’s so many neurological issues out there. And as we talked about grief and emotions and how they get held in the body and I see that it’s something that could be very beneficial for everyone just as you shared and It’s obviously been helpful for you in navigating your grief and bringing a sense of awareness to your body and being within the body and Okay. Has allowed you to live an exceptional physical life.
Scott Forrester: Yeah. Without that, I wouldn’t be doing some of the things I’m doing right now.
Victoria Volk: And isn’t that the whole goal of I think all of us, you know, I’m forty five. I’m thinking, oh my gosh, I’m gonna be fifty. And you’re thinking, oh my gosh, I wish I could be fifty. Maybe, you know. But that’s the goal. Right? To get to as we get older, it’s not to view it as a death sentence or slow progression of debilitation and weakness and all of these things. And so I try and take care of myself so that truthfully. I can probably take care of my husband because I feel like I’m the stronger of us too, you know.
Scott Forrester: Really? Yeah. Yeah. I can still lift my wife. It’s That’s incredible.
Absolutely. That’s we wanna live our best life and we we don’t wanna accept unnecessary rehabilitation.
Victoria Volk: And that’s the key unnecessary. Right?
Scott Forrester: And so when you get out of the Pacific, unnecessary, exactly. And if we have the necessary, then we want to incorporate that into our life the best we to be the best that we are. And if you get on the Pacific Crest Trail, you find, you know, you hike all day. Entire day, you take your breath, breaks, so you make sure you eat and drink enough. But that’s all you’re doing. The entire day from when you get up in the morning to when you when you need to allow enough time to set up your tent. But there’s old people out there. And they’re in shape you wouldn’t believe. There’s, you know, there’s a lot of twenty, thirty, forty, fifty year olds out there, but there’s older people out there.
Victoria Volk: Well, in thirty, forty year olds that can’t do what you can do, wouldn’t even dare do what you’ve done?
Scott Forrester: Yeah. I throughout my life, I have shunned any job that involved eight hours a day of sitting.
Victoria Volk: Oh, Yeah. Sitting if they face sitting as the new smoking.
Scott Forrester: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No. That was the same.
Victoria Volk: Well, thank you so much for your time today and sharing about Lee and stealth and your father and your and your mother and all the wisdom that you brought to our conversation, I I thank you for your time.
Scott Forrester: Thank you. You are an an excellent host to enjoy talking to you. Get in touch with me if you wanna learn more about the fellow price benefits.
Victoria Volk: And where can people find you if they would like to get in touch with you?
Scott Forrester: I’m actually reworking my website, but you can get all my contact information off of the aware athlete dot com.
Victoria Volk: K. I will put
Scott Forrester: a link. Not the aware athlete. Aware athlete dot com.
Victoria Volk: Aware athlete dot com. And I will put a link to that in the show notes as well.
Scott Forrester: I’m actually yeah. I’m I’m I’m actually working on a website that’s not really live yet, the aware human.
Victoria Volk: Okay. I like that.
Scott Forrester: Yeah. And you can find my books. You wear athlete book. Your warehouse to find that you should put in the warehouse, the entire title I won’t give you the subtitled now. But the awareness, like, by Scott Forrester, you can find that on Amazon.
Victoria Volk: And I’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well. Yeah.
Scott Forrester: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
Victoria Volk: Thank you. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Watch your growth.
Grief, Grieving Voices Guest, Healing, Spirituality, Suicide |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
- On this episode of Grieving Voices, I welcomed David Chotka, founder and director of Spirit Equip Ministries. With four degrees and extensive experience as a pastor and conference speaker, David shares insights from his journey through grief personally and within his community.David discusses the challenges pastors face daily in dealing with grief within their congregations. He recounts his first funeral service—a daunting task for someone who had not yet experienced personal loss—and how that “baptism by fire” shaped his understanding of mourning.Our conversation turns to David opening up about a pivotal moment when he lost his brother to suicide. This tragedy occurred just as he was adopting a daughter, adding complex layers to an already emotional time. Despite having to maintain composure for important church services amidst this personal crisis, David candidly describes how the event left him grappling with questions about faith, forgiveness, life after death, and God’s mercy.
In a powerful account of healing in nature two years after his loss, David shares an epiphany that brought peace back into his soul regarding eternal destiny while walking through the Heartlake Conservation Area and reading Psalms 130.
The conversation also touches on navigating sudden losses like suicides within families—emphasizing compassion over judgment—and offers comfort to those wondering about loved ones’ fates after such actions.
Finally, David speaks on divine appointments—the idea that God orchestrates encounters where we can give or receive something significant—and gives listeners insight into finding meaning in seemingly random moments.
This heartfelt discussion provides solace for anyone grieving, highlighting the importance of spiritual guidance during one’s darkest hours.
RESOURCES:
CONNECT:
_______
NEED HELP?
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
- Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support via text message. Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a trained Crisis Counselor
If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Finding Peace and Understanding in the Midst of Grief: The Journey of David Chaka
Grief can be a bewildering labyrinth, often leaving us grappling with profound questions about faith, life’s purpose, and our own resilience. In this heartfelt episode of *Grieving Voices*, we were graced by the presence of David Chaka—a man whose personal journey through loss and his role as a spiritual guide offers both solace and insight into navigating the murky waters of sorrow.
David is not just any guest; he brings with him an extensive background as the founder of Spirit Equip Ministries, an authorship that spans five books on spirituality, decades spent pastoring souls seeking comfort, and a voice that has echoed internationally across podiums dedicated to faith. His tenure as chair for the Christian Missionary Alliance’s prayer team in Canada has shaped countless lives—including his own.
Personal Encounters with Grief
When grief knocks on one’s door personally, it carries a different weight. For David Chaka, losing his brother to suicide was such an encounter—one that shook his beliefs to their core yet also led him down a path where he found deeper roots within his faith. He shares how these moments have been pivotal in understanding salvation—not as a checklist but as an intimate relationship with God—a concept offering great comfort to those mourning loved ones lost under tragic circumstances.
Unplanned Moments Leading To Life-Changing Outcomes
In what could have been seen merely as logistical frustration—the no-show moving van—David found friendship and vulnerability while stranded in Elizabeth’s empty apartment. This unexpected delay blossomed into marriage—a reminder that sometimes life’s detours are divine appointments in disguise.
His education under Dr. Gordon Fee further exemplifies this theme—unexpected influences shaping one’s spiritual perspective profoundly. And when called upon to pray for healing against all odds for a fellow student facing deathly illness? The result was nothing short of miraculous—an affirmation reinforcing David’s belief in being open to divine guidance despite personal doubts or hesitations.
Faith Amidst Everyday Life
The stories shared by David resonate deeply because they mirror everyday experiences where faith intersects ordinary moments—like Peter, James John catching fish beyond their wildest dreams at Jesus’ bidding or like ‘Bible-thumper Bob’, whose cancer recovery showed glimpses of heaven before its eventual return grounded us back to earthly realities.
These narratives aren’t just tales; they’re testaments reminding us about responsiveness towards God’s call—even when it seems illogical—and maintaining hope amidst uncertainties inherent in human existence.
Healing Pathways & The Presence Of God
In discussing pathways outlined alongside Maxie Dunham regarding healing prayers—from instantaneous miracles to enduring suffering—it becomes evident that encountering God isn’t limited by specific outcomes but rather defined by walking alongside Him through various journeys toward healing or closure.
David emphasizes experiencing God not only through words but also through non-verbal communication—the peace and joy brought forth even during tribulations signifying His ever-present Holy Spirit guiding our steps towards righteousness irrespective of surrounding chaos.
Extending Love In A Troubled World
As listeners absorb these powerful insights from *Grieving Voices*, it reinforces the notion that living out our calling involves extending love amidst imperfections—not allowing negative church experiences or disillusionment obstruct access to what lies beyond hurt: unconditional love from our Creator capable transforming pain into purposeful engagement within His kingdom here on earth.
For those inspired by this conversation who yearn for more depth within their spiritual walk—you’re invited over at spiritequip.com where you’ll find resources bridging denominational divides while nurturing your inner self for an enriched communion with divinity.
We leave you pondering 1 John 3:2—the promise transformation upon truly seeing God—as we await future content including audiobook chapters promising continued nourishment for your soul-searching quests.
Indeed embracing oneself leads towards fulfillment—but let us remember it is often intertwined intricately with embracing faith even when faced with life’s inevitable grieving voices.
Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of grieving voices. Today, my guest is David Chotka. He is the founder and director of Spirit Equip ministries, an organization devoted to developing training resources. Author of five books, a season pastor, and a conference speaker David has four earned degrees and travel has traveled and taught in countries to groups large and small. He has served as chair of alliance pray, the prayer equipping team of Christian missionary alliance in Canada for more than twenty years and is now committed to serving those who want to develop Their spiritual disciplines one small step at a time. David is married to Elizabeth and together they have two adult children and for fun he plays the piano. Thank you so much for being here.
David Chotka: Thank you, Victoria, for having me on your podcast. I it’s a delight to be here. And
Victoria Volk: I think you are the first pastor I’ve had on the podcast. I’m pretty sure.
David Chotka: Wow. On a topic like grieving, that’s really quite amazing.
Victoria Volk: I think so.
David Chotka: Well, because
Victoria Volk: meetings Two hundred episodes in.
David Chotka: So Wow. But listen, pastor, every day of the week, somebody’s grieving in their churches. Yeah. And they’re coming alongside people, you know, somebody’s died young, somebody’s died old, somebody’s died in between, and that grieving’s reality, left right and center for people like me.
Victoria Volk: I could be wrong. I’m approaching two hundred episodes, so that’s quite a few to go to remember up here and my memory isn’t as sharp as it used to be either. So just going off my memory, I think so. And I think, you know, initially, this podcast did start for grievers who are open to sharing their grief stories.
David Chotka: Mhmm.
Victoria Volk: And, of course, as a pastor and a minister, you have grief too.
David Chotka: I do. Yes.
Victoria Volk: And that’s really what is that what led you into the work that you were doing? Or What can
David Chotka: I What what led me into the work I’m doing was that’s there’s a remarkable call story that that didn’t actually I should tell you about my first experience of doing a funeral because I had had no losses? So my when I it was the call to the ministry was because I suddenly realized that that was what the Lord wanted me to do. And there’s a long and convoluted story attached to that that and some of that some of those details are just being written now into a little sample that I’m creating called the call. I wanted to put that out. But actually, I haven’t told this story in a podcast. So let me tell you about the first time I wind up doing a funeral. So the denomination I was in, you’re in the states, you’re American. Right? Okay. So it will be like being a night methods down the state. So I was and the in the trajectory there, we were sent to to churches that would have us over the summertime. We we go to school for eight months that we’d be under the tutelage of a pastor locally over the summer season. He’d take a little vacation. We’d spell him off. That kind of thing. But most of his time would be spent teaching in mentoring us. And so I got to my very first ever summer field. And the the pastor there had decided to take his vacation, and there was a methodist lay preacher from England in his congregation. And he said, look, if you’re in trouble, you can call up Ray over there. He’s he’s e stepping in for me all the time when there’s trouble. And so he said, but just in case, you need to walk down the street and there’s a lady there named Joyce. We haven’t had a funeral in this town. It’s a young town. We haven’t had a funeral list down in four years, but Joyce was the one who always does all the arrangements. And if something should happen, if there’s a car accident or something like this, You can always just call up Joyce and she’ll make sure everything’s good. So I went down the street, and I visited Joyce. And her and her husband were very cordial and very kind and nice to me. And we had a wonderful evening visit. And then then I I went to meet Ray, and I had a great chat with Ray. Ray took a one week vacation and enduring the one week vacation when the other passenger was on vacation, Joyce died. So I had to I had never had a loss. So my very first ever experience of doing a funeral was the lady who took care of doing funerals when both the pastor and the late preacher were weighed. So I wound up talking to one of the elders and there’s a lady in that church who was a leader in the congregation. And she worked like crazy to try and figure out what to do. And, you know, they call different pastors from all across the region. And in the end, you know, we figured this thing out and got it done. But, I mean, it was really hard for me because I’d never personally, at that point in the game, I’d never had to face death. It wasn’t until years later that I had a personal loss. But So it was a bit of a comedy of errors to get started like that. But that actually, there were four funerals in two weeks. Four funerals in two weeks. And they hadn’t had a funeral in that church in four years. And when the lead guy was away, the student minister got four funerals. So It was a crazy kind of a thing. Anyway, the day when the day was all said and done, I learned a lot from people who were on the other side of grieving, and that was, of course, my first experience. Of burying someone. I’d never done that before. And you can see the change in expression that there was a moment. And all four of those, and these are my no. Within two weeks, I watched this. Every time the body was lowered into the ground, that was the moment. Where the loss became real, just absolutely crystal clear clear real. And that for me was the moment when I realized that if you’re gonna extend care, that’s the time. You come along and you stand with somebody who’s in trouble when that when that casket goes down and they’re still there and they start to cry. Sometimes they want you there, sometimes they don’t want you there, sometimes you you touch their elbow gently. Sometimes you just hold off and wait until they want to say something. I agree. The way I describe it, you can is this an audio visual one or just visual is this just audio?
Victoria Volk: It’s both.
David Chotka: It’s both. Okay. So I’ll I’ll describe it for the audio people. It’s like you put your hand on their their waist and pull them close while you put your hand on their face and push them away. There’s this They don’t know if they want company or if they want to be alone. And sometimes in two seconds, their view changes. Right? Because grief is a weird animal life. I described it as a strange animal. Never know when it’s gonna purr where it’s gonna bite you. You’re just not sure. So that was that was my very first ever experience of dealing with death and my own my own personal loss came when my brother took his life. He was I I just adopted my daughter. We discovered that we could not my wife would be in danger if we had a second child. We had one born biologically.
And then it just became clear that it almost killed her. Just about killed him too, that both of them just about died. So I guess you could call that grief too because I realized we could not have another. And there was a long journey toward adopting that to happen in the middle of that. And, you know, and we actually vastly I’d be ready to adopt a she wouldn’t. And my wife would be ready to adopt and I wouldn’t. And it was this kind of up and down kinda crazy thing where we were navigating our own emotions, not quite sure what to do with this. And then in the course of time, We adopted her daughter. But just as we adopted her, my younger brother, who had been unsettled all of his days, we we were told in the adoption, what you have to do is you have to, you know, you know, how to say this. You close the doors to everybody except your nuclear family so that you can bond to the child for a good month, a month and a half. We adopted her when she was a year old and she had to rebound to us. And so we had there’s a whole bunch of adoption strategies that you do in order for that child not to feel abandoned by the foster family that they had, etcetera, etcetera. And we had to do that. And so we didn’t see anybody for a month. And then then the social worker told us that the best course of action after that is to introduce your new family member to your immediate family and my parents and my brother lived about an hour and a half away. So we got in the car, we drove down. And we had a beautiful magical, wonderful, glorious day with my brother who had been pretty troubled about lots of things. It was it looked like the the the page had turned and so on. And I was in a new church. I had been the pastor of that church from September right through to that time, which was March. It was the day before a good Friday. I don’t remember the number of day. I just remember the emotion of the event when my dad called and said that my brother had killed himself. Inside my parents home. Mhmm. And I had to get in the car and cancel my Thursday night service. It was gonna be my very first one in that congregation. I had to help my dad grieve while his dead body was in the house, and then they called the police. I had to call the police to make this thing happen. And I watched them take the body out of the home. And that oh, man. Then I had to do good Friday, then I had to do a resurrection Sunday because I didn’t have a capable associate to be able to handle those services, and then I hit the wall and just began to cry in. No pastor wanted to be a guest on Good Friday or you’re sending because they were all busy. Right? These are they’re all that’s the highlight of the church here. And I had to moner on through this kind of awful shock and did. I did what I had to do and thank the Lord. I had already prepared my messages and I simply had to work through whatever whatever was happened. I did tell my church, I just had been through this traumatic thing. If I get crazy here, if I do something odd, forgive me. I’m gonna molt I’m gonna get through these these two services. And then I’m gonna find somebody to take that service a week after, and I just need to stop. And to old man was it hard. It was just hard. But the the hard thing about that one was the suddenness. He was thirty nine. And he he played you know, I got a little son at that point, and he was picking up my son and wrestling with him and putting him in a tree and climbing a tree and walking along the fence tops. And We went to a baseball diamond and threw a ball back and forth with him while we were wheeling our new daughter up and down the the sidewalk as she was getting used to this beautiful spring day. It was a gorgeous lovely memory. Suddenly destroyed by this experience of somebody taking his life. And oh, and and then I and of course, in in the context that I’m in, I had no choice except to speak well and highly about, you know, about the the the the violation of Jesus on the cross and then the joy of the resurrection. While I’m in this anguish about what to do with my brother who’s who’s left a son behind and a wife and and he’s dead. And my parents who don’t know what to do. So that was my first significant loss. That was the first one that we I mean, I had friends who died and I had buddies who died and I had lots of parishioners who passed away and I had to bury a little two year old who died in a wounds tumor.
That was the first one that really hit my heart, but in terms of my personal life, that one. And, you know, it was like, I I I just and listen, I the last two funerals that I have done, and I’m a pastor and you do them every now and then, And the last two in a row were were her suicides. One of a guy, twenty nine years old, left his beautiful wife and son. And the the kid was, like, six months old. And the other was of this family that I knew from years ago, I was visiting Vancouver. And this funeral was gonna happen, and the widow asked if I do it because I had been significant in their lives back in the day. And both of them were, you know, it’s irrational when this kind of thing happens. It doesn’t make any kind of sense. So how do you navigate that? How do you how do you I’ll just tell you that with the with the suicide personally, it was like the sky was gray for the next two years.
Even if it was a beautiful warm, sunny, gorgeous day. And my home was about two blocks from a conservation area, it was kinda nice to be there. And I I started to do what I, you know, long walks and I started and I I don’t know what you do with with grief. For me, I have to speak. I can’t just sort of sit there and stuff it. I can stuff it for a week and then I explode with speech. That’s what happens to me. So I would go for these long walks and make sure that nobody was around that that I’d talk out loud while I was doing this walk in this conservation area. And for me, faith is is part of the answer, but it didn’t answer all my questions because, you know, I I said Is he gonna have it? Is he gonna have it? He took his life. That’ll shout not kill. Is that real? And what about it? Did he throw it away? Did, you know, did this is this is the stuff that goes through the brain with somebody who’s had a sudden loss like that. And, of course, if you’ve done two hundred podcasts, you know, people from all different stages and stages, whether they have faith or don’t have faith. They they wanna know what’s the destiny of the lost here. Is is there an afterlife? Is is it exists or is it just illusion? Is it real? Well, what about? Is there a god? What is this guy in the presence of that god? Or is there a devil?
You know? Why did this crazy guy do this crazy thing. And all those crazy thoughts, I’m sure you’ve heard them in two hundred podcasts. But I remember the moment, I was walking through the Heart Lake Conservation area, two blocks from my home. And I was reading the psalms, and I got to Psalm, I think it’s one hundred and thirty, and the the text of the psalm was this. Lord, if you should count sins, no one could stand. I thought to myself, absolutely right. You know, as I’m I’m walking and refreshed and and I’m trying to get two things. I’m trying to get my head cleared. I’m trying to get past my emotional fog.And the sky was still great even though it was a beautiful glorious day in early spring. And there was just traces of snow in in the parts of the of the woodland where the the leaves had covered the snow, that kind of thing. The day was brisk and sunny. And I remember I was reflecting on that verse from that song. And my foot broke a stick in the pathway, and it went snapped like that. And my brother died by hanging. And I know that he went snap like that too, and it was an instant death and that kind of crazy thought was going through my brain. And then suddenly as that thing went snap, I said, well, life is just like that. You don’t know if you’re gonna be living or dying. You could step in the street and get killed by a car accident in a second. You know, not even be aware this crazy things happen. And then that scripture popped back into my head. And I thought to myself, do you know? When my brother was an idiot. It would take me two weeks to forgive him. And so and and then but I know this about God. If you were in the middle of a crazy, ridiculous, and even awful action like aptic suicide and you realized that you were wrong as a help, in a second God hears. And then I realized, God’s hands were better than mine, much better than mine. And then I said, alright. I can commend his soul to you. And, like, you know, I was participating in his in his burial. I mean, I did the service with the pastor from my parents’ church. And I I mostly said, but I read the scripture and participated in that thing. And then I, you know, but I had not it would that that the issue wasn’t closed for me. It wasn’t done for me. Until the moment when that twigs snapped. Two years out, walking through a conservation area, I realized in my hard heart, that it’s the the rest of the verses this. If the Lord should count sins, who could stand? Nobody. But with you, there is mercy. That’s the next line. And I said, okay, Lord, I get this. He called himself a believer. He was a lousy believer, but he called us a believer. Right? And so and so listen. He believed in the same God I knew. I am I know this about you God. I know your nature. If in a second somebody says help and cries out, you do. You’re like a dog with a bone. If somebody cries out to you for mercy, your mercy gets sent in the next fraction of a second. That’s not true for me or for most humans. Most of us need time to forgive. Most of us need time to work through the reconciliation steps that are involved in that. Not so with the god I love. And so that was the moment when suddenly the peace turned back inside my soul. When I realized that I’m not God and I’m not the judge and he’s a whole lot better at it than I am. And now I will make a comment because I want people to hear me loud and clear about this suside thing and the thing that I just raised. People wonder if thou shalt not kill this violent and if that ruins somebody’s salvation of them. Let me say this as tenderly as I can. In the Christian faith, actually in Jewish faith too, I can’t speak for the other ones. I’ll just speak for the two that I know well. Your relationship with the God that you love is the basis of your salvation. Not whether you’ve been an idiot at the end of your life.
Alright? Now let me be as clear as I can. I think suicide is the wrong thing to do for lots and lots and lots of reasons. I have stood with families. I just I’m standing with two right now, who just did this. And the person who takes their life usually thinks they’re doing somebody in favor, It’s not true. The whole chaos just sort of explodes. All around the husband, the wife, the son, the daughter, the cousins, the uncles, the aunts, the parents, the friends, the workplace, everything. Just spins out of control for a very long time, varying degrees depending on how much you were attached to the person. But when the day is done, it is not the answer that you want to embrace. That being said, for all the listeners out there who have lost someone through their speech. It is not the fact that somebody makes a snap decision and chooses that or even if they make a plan when they’re in some sort of a weird state of mind. It is the relationship you have that you got, you serve. That determines your internal destiny. So I that for what it’s worth, I I put that in front of your audience because I know people who listen to this particular kind of podcast are trying to figure out how to make sense after a loss.
That’s what they’re doing. So
Victoria Volk: Very well said. Very well said.
David Chotka: Well, listen, I live through it. It’s it’s I live through it. If it’s yeah. So in the last two services that I did, where I did these two burials for and and actually because he was young, and because he was married, because he had a son. I could speak to that.
In fact, I just I had what I call a divine appointment yesterday. It’s funny because, you know, I have things to do, places to go people to see the world to win all that kind of thing. And I have done this general for this lady. Her name is Shentel. And she was a friend of a friend of a friend who called me to do a funeral because they thought it was the right thing to do. And I didn’t have proper contact information for her. And so I wanted to do a follow-up and I had not been able to because I couldn’t And so, actually, this is a crazy thing. On Friday, I said, God, I need to follow-up with this woman. Shentel needs pass through care after the after the thing. She I I’d be in touch with her.
How do I do that? Amen. And the next day, I went to a little free show that was being offered down at the event center down the street. And I walked in and I didn’t even wanna be there. My daughter wanted to go that thing. And I went because I had to go, you know, like I said, and I sit down and Shatjel sits down beside the high pastor, Dave. And that’s in a city of two hundred thousand. Wow. So I made the connection yesterday. One of the things I teach is I pray for a divided appointment today. I asked the Lord to shape my circumstances so that I walk into something that I could not and did not plan. Where God gets the glory or where something is needed that I can contribute to or where I need to receive what I cannot receive unless I have the divine point. Because I know this. God is at work everywhere, absolutely everywhere. And when we can see one or two things happening, God is doing millions. God. But if I could if I could see one thing that God is doing and enter Internet, I know that I’m on the right track. And so when COVID started, I I started to pray that, okay, God, I want one divine appointment a day, at least one. And sometimes I’ll get three and four. But I don’t feel the day is complete unless I’ve had one of those because I’ve prayed that prayer. So that was my divine appointment yesterday. That’s what happened yesterday.
Victoria Volk: I love that. I absolutely love that. You know what? And you might call it synchronicities or what have you. Right? We don’t we often have these things these moments like you said like you shared that happen throughout our lives and maybe in our days. And we maybe pass them off as insignificant or might think of but they’re not.
David Chotka: You know, just they’re not old. No. It’s true. It’s
Victoria Volk: Or you might not even give much thought in the moment, but then later, like, that’s really kinda cool if that happened, but we we don’t think about of it just being, like, this
David Chotka: Divine in nature. I’ll I’ll just say, yeah. Yeah. That’s right. That God did that. I’ll do that. That’s right. I can just say with you. Every significant thing I’ve done in life, every single significant thing that has happened was not my idea. And including the girl that I married. So here’s you’re gonna have with the girl I married. This this is the craziest thing. My heart was broke when the girl that I wanted to marry married somebody else. And I was in tremendous grief. That was another grief that happened there. And so I wound up saying, God, oh, God help me. I’m I’m in a mess here. And so So I wound up going to a a bible school called Regent College in Vancouver to you. It’s a graduate level of seminary. And it had a training component for people who were in careers that didn’t have theological education wanted to do a year out. And so, and I was a pastor and I had I had two degrees before this and I had my third degree there. Anyway, it looked like I was going to school because I wanted to improve my myself. But the real reason I was going there because it was a safe place to be a wreck. And as it turned out, when I was gonna move, I was living in Alberta, and the school was in British Columbia. And there was a good twelve hour drive from one place to the other.
And moving costs are expensive and students don’t have a lot of money, you know, that kind of thing. And I was a pastor and they didn’t pay much, you know, so it’ll just be blunt here. So I was looking for the cheap skateway to move that one of the things across the country. And there was a lady in my congregation who was also moving to the to a different school, but she was going to Vancouver. And she knew somebody in Edmonton that she was gonna be a roommate with because she was moving to Vancouver.
And we started asking about costs, you know? And how can we, you know, how can we pay this thing? And I I I did three or four quotes, and she got three or four quotes. And I said to this lady Ruth, why don’t you find out what it would cost if we put our two households together? I don’t have much. I could shove it in your garage. And it was the same price. And so that meant half price for both of us if we did this. And then she talked to the third person, and it was about ten percent more to move three than it was to move one. And so that’s a significant savings. Right? So I put all my stuff inside Ruth’s garage, and then Ruth had it moved down to Edmonton, and then we, you know, then we moved from Edmonton to. And I and I what I did. I got myself a tent and a sleeping bag. And, you know, and I I tented across British Columbia because it’s beautiful.
You know what? Then what that was it was a solo vacation, but it was great people. Oh, men’s. It’s a gorgeous province. Beautiful lakes and rivers and streams and mountains and trees and all gorgeous outside. So anyway, I get all the way to Vancouver. And the plan was I would show up on the day of the move at ten o’clock in the morning, and I would help the movers get stuff into their their their share department. And then I would direct the driver across town to help move in my stuff. And We save a lot of money and praise the Lord. You know? So I show up. Ruth isn’t there because she has to finish her her teaching issues you teach her up in that position. And she had to finish out this thing. She had a summer school course, she was teaching. But Elizabeth and her cousin were there cleaning the apartment out, getting her ready for the move.
And I show up, and I walk in, and we shoot the breeze, and we wait all day, and the moving van doesn’t come. And we’re hanging together. And, you know, in those days, there were no cell phones. Right? And they had in Vancouver, they didn’t have closed in phone booths. They had little round things that you put change in. And if you wanna do a long distance call, that was a lot of nickels and dimes and quarters. So so she calls from that phone. It gets her dad and said, dad, did you call the company? And he said, okay.
And they said they had he had a breakdown. He’d be there the next day at ten in the morning. And, okay. You forget one day. You know, and they’re gonna pay her hotel cost, and I have a room to stay in with my cafe stuff, so I’m fine. Come back the next day. There’s no moving van. Third day, no moving van. Fourth day. No moving. Yeah. Now we’re in the better business bureau after these guys, you know, trying to track down where this truck is. And so then her Elizabeth’s cousin had to go back to work. I mean, she had she had four days off and she took the four days. And I’m sitting in an empty apartment without so much as a tea bag. We’re saying, you know, there’s we’re there’s nothing to sit on. There’s a stairway in what we took turns sitting on that. I had a camper chair that I brought in. And I’d sit in the camper chair or on the step and we’d alternate this. And we spent all day a single man and a single lady inside this part. And my heart was broke because the girl I wanted to marry married somebody else, you know what? And after about three days of this, of course, we don’t know each other with strangers. And I said to her, look, just for the record, I’m a pastor. No, by the way, anything with a high voice and discouraged. I am not interested at all. I am no desire. My heart is broke. I just don’t wanna do this. And she heaped a big sigh of relief, and she said, well, for the record, I had an old boyfriend and he stalked me. And it was terrible. We had to get the police after him. I said, oh, brother. Well, look, I have two brothers. I had two brothers. That I no. I’m really my stolen. I have two brothers. And I don’t and my mom comes from a very conservative traditional Ukrainian household. She wears a head covering and walks behind my dad. Canadian girls aren’t interested in that. Neither American girls and most girls on Earth aren’t anyway. And so she said, I said, look, I don’t understand females at all. And she said, look, I have two sisters and my dad’s quiet. My mom ran the house and, you know, I don’t understand males at all. I said, look, I need a sister.
And she said, well, I need a brother. Thank you very much. And so we decided to become friends because we’re stuck in this apartment. We were there for ten consecutive days, ten days in that empty apartment. And finally, the guy showed up. And as it turned out, he had decided he was a casual driver who was hired by the moving company, and he put his son in the in the van to go through the BC interior. And he said, this is beautiful. I’m going fishing, and he took his son fishing for ten consecutive days with our stuff in the back of his And so I wound up meeting this lady and getting to know her. And, of course, by the time you get to day four or five, you start sharing deep things. See?
We have no choice. We’re stuck in that room. So in the course of time, I married the girl. But it’s that that’s how it started. It wasn’t even a planned thing. And every and listen, that’s the most important decision in life you can make who’s gonna be your life partner. And I I wasn’t my idea to be stuck in an empty apartment for ten days, you know, waiting for a moving bed. Being forced to have a conference when I was not I was still tender and broken over my own thing, you know, this this whole thing with this girl with married somebody else. And she was in the same as it turned out, this this whole thing turned into. First of all, who are you? To, oh, I guess we’re gonna be friends. Oh, let’s let’s get each other’s back while we’re in the middle of this. I actually prayed with the girl about girls I could take out when my heart started to saw. And then the course of time, she got mad when I gave him one of those names, and she picked dandelions out of the front yard for four hours while she realized she loved me. Then she told me, and then we got married and so on. But regardless of this, it was this it that and, actually, even the school that I wanted to go to, I didn’t so I wanted to go going there. And I had this desire to study your particular book of the bible where there’s a high concentration of holy spirit and unclean spirit language. And I discovered to my great surprise nobody had done the research on that. In all of scholarship, from, you know, five hundred years out, did nothing in French, German, or English. And I wound up going to that school because I like the school, but the guy who was assigned to me was writing the very first book in human history on that topic. And I didn’t choose the guy It was doctor Gordon Fee who wrote this anthology on the holy spirit in the Pauline literature. And I am in that book, but again, I didn’t know who the guy was I was looking for a competent scholar in a good school. That’s all I was doing. And the next thing, you know, I’m with the world’s finest, Paul and spirit scholar, best one on the planet. He’s gone to his reward now, but I will tell you his works are groundbreaking. We wind up being the head of the new international commentary series of the new testament. He wound up writing a huge anithology and holy spirit and a smaller one, they became standard reading in every seminary across the earth. And but I I didn’t try to do that. It was it wasn’t my idea. You know, anyway, the point I’m making here is that in the realm of faith, the intangible is always around us.
Always. You can cooperate with god’s movement, or you can fight it. Now, actually, the the helium prayer book that I wrote, I didn’t make up plan to write a book on healing prayer. It wasn’t me. In fact, the way I wind up doing my first ever healing prayer wasn’t my idea either. And so let me I’d love to tell you that story. Can I can I tell you that story? Sure. Okay. Well, here’s what happened. So I was a seminary student in my tradition. And and and my tradition was a mixed bag of people. There’s some who are what they call supernaturalists and some who are our cessationists believe those gifts of the spirit of cease. And some who said, oh, by the way, that was a pre scientific culture. And they didn’t know how else to describe it. So they attributed to God what was, in fact, a natural phenomena, that kind of thing. Yeah, these three streams going into the school. And I remember going into and we’re a new cohort, you know, and there’s a whole bunch of us that are all excited about going into the ministry and training. About thirty five of us who were swapping notes. And then after about two weeks to figure out who’s in which camp. Right? So, anyway, I I go into the class, and one of the props says this thing about Jesus walking on the water. He said, oh, as a pre scientific coach, and we know that Jesus didn’t actually walk on the water. And I said, wait a minute. I wanna just take a moment here and tell you, I really do believe that he did. It’s it’s I know it defies science and logic. And I’m a science guy, my best marks for science and physics and math and biology and so on. But I believe in the miraculous. And there was a guy in the class who was a first class jokester that the guy was hilarious. All you’d have to do is look at your sideways and the whole room would explode and laughter. And if he told a joke, then it was, how do I describe it? It’s like throwing a humor grenade into the room, waiting for the explosion to happen, and everybody would laugh so hard, it would hurt. You know? So I I say this thing about the miracle being true. And this guy cracks a joke, and everybody in the room starts to laugh. But the joke was at my expense. He was making fun of my believing that Jesus walked in water. Right? So anyway, whether you believe in that or not, this is beside the point for the sake of the story. So here we go.
So I go into one class after the class after the class. And whenever there’s one of these moments where the scripture is being said, it’s it’s not really true or it’s not historically accurate or this is primitive culture or whatever. I would defend scripture and the guy would tell joke. And this went on. It’s been on for months. Right? And I I then there came a defining moment and I said to myself, Yep. I’m never gonna be his friend. It’s not gonna happen. And I had a great class three times when we had to cross the class and was held at a different school. And one day, I was walking across this plaza, and there was a lovely classmate. And I called her Susie in the book. I’ve lost touch with her, but I I grew up in in I don’t have a permission to use it really, but she stops me and she says, David, how are you doing? And she and I’ll just tell you about this girl. She was a very sweet kind, other centered person. You know, that phrase do what others should have them do what to you. That was her write down to the toe nails. Always always others centered, always kind, always consider it. Always well mannered, always, you know, how do I say this?warmly caring. That’s the best way to describe it. Anyway, I’m walking across this class and I said, hey, Susan. How you doing? Said, I’m fine. I’m going to my Hebrew. I said, I’m going to my Greek. And she said, oh, okay. Hey, you know the class committee. I said, oh, yeah. I know. And she said, well, you see that hospital? Six blocks down. And I said, yeah. She said, well, he’s in there. And actually, I I just have to say this victory. I didn’t feel bad for about two minutes. So I had to abandon my stinking Ozzie attitude. Right? Now she didn’t see that, but it was going on exactly. Anyway, Finally, I looked at her. I said, oh, listen, what’s up? And she said he has phlebitis. I said, what’s that? And then she described it. She said, he’s got a clot in his arm. It’s in his vein. If the clot breaks free, it’ll travel to one or three places, the brain, the heart, or the lung. If it gets to any of those, you’re dead ninety five times out of a hundred. And I thought, oh, man, that’s bad. I said, I’m so sorry. Is he getting good care? You know, in Canada, healthcare is free. So I said, is he getting good care? He said, yeah, he’s in the hospital, now it’s university hospital. It’s a good one. I said, oh, okay. And I said, well, okay. Thanks for telling me. And she said, wait, I have something to say to you from him. Yeah. I went to see him and he asked me to ask you something. I said, oh, what do you ask? She said, he wants you to come and pray for it. I said, what? What kind of craziness is that? And so you know, and I said, I’m not going. And she said, why aren’t you going? I said, you have seen it. He’s been cruel. He’s mocked me in front of our peers on a regular basis. Every time I just say anything about the scripture being historically accurate, you know. And so and so she said, you know, he has been cruel. I said, yeah. Said, okay, I’ll talk to him. I said, well, I’m not going that way, I went to my class. And the next day, I see her in the coffee lounge in school.
Right? And we’re shooting a braze about this type of thing. And she said, well, listen, I I went see the Canadian in the hospital. And he’s terribly sorry that he did what he did to you. Would you go and see him? I said, I’m not going. Because now, There were three reasons why I wasn’t going. Number one was the one I’ve made to you. He mocked me in front of our peers, and it it it hurt. It really did hurt. The second was that I had never met anybody healed by what the Bible calls the prayer faith. I didn’t know anybody. I’d seen the crazies on television, slapped people on the forehead, screaming. And throwing hankies in the air. But I think that was a helpful model. Now the third thing is, I did I had not been trained in this. I didn’t I received no training. I didn’t know and I didn’t know if it was for today or not. I just didn’t know. But, you know, so I I I just told her I’m not going. And the next day, I’m walking across the same three times a week Plaza. And there she is going to her class. And she said, oh, by the way, did you go and see our friend in the hospital? I said, I’m not going. Now, Victoria, have you ever been told off by your mother? This is what the girl looked like. You know what I’m saying that you you get the fire in your eyes and you get the anger. Coming out of your pores and, you know, this girl outside in front of a crowd of people who are walking by, yelled at me at the top of your life. So he stopped her foot. The fire came out of her, you know, her visits, you know, and she gave that meeting. She used my middle initial. She knew a middle initial. She said David, our shotgun. Aren’t you gonna no. Aren’t you going around this school saying that the Bible is the word of God that’s supposed to be obeyed? I said, yes. She said, well, how about this? I was sick and you visited me. That’s what the Bible says. That’s what Jesus says and I thought, oh, No. We’re gonna have to go and see the guy. I’ve fell below eleven in my center. And I thought, okay. I’ll go. But it says sick and visit.
It doesn’t say sick and prayed. She said, whether it’s visitor, whether it’s prayed, he asked for you to go. So go. So I finished my class. Then I walked to six blocks.
I got to the hospital many times. And he was in a bad way, just, you know, he had monitors on him and, you know, the the tubes were going into his arms and and the sound the beeping sounds of the monitors were happening every couple of, you know, couple of minutes and The nurse chargers walked in drop, so medication watched him take it, you know, in the short time I was there. Anyway, he’s why does it go? He’s obviously terrified. And, you know, he and he told me that the clot had not shrunk.
It was still large. And I so I talked to him about the weather. Because I didn’t know what to do. I’d never done it before. Greer than your average rookie, you know, just just did not a clue. So I did the visit thing. I I talked about the weather. Then I asked him about his coursework and he was keeping up. And I said, well, I visited you now. I can go.
And he stopped and he looked at me and he said, wait. Aren’t you? Aren’t you gonna pray? And I said before I even consider that question, I have to ask you one of my own, why? Every single time I’ve said anything about the miracles of Jesus and healing or about the Lord’s miraculous life or about the cross being serious about the resurrection or anything to do with the faith. You have made me a laughing stock. Why? Do you want me to pray for you? And he burst into tears and he began to weep and he said, I’m twenty seven years old, the clock is big in my arm. If that clock breaks free, I’m dead.
That I don’t want to die. Won’t you please pray? Let your god heal me. And I mean, what are you gonna do? I mean, it was obvious the guy really didn’t mean it. But I still had not a sweet clue. What to do? I’ve never been dragged. It’s only way. What I then I remember, oh, the Bible says Jesus put his hand on people. Right? They did that. So I said, well, look, can I come or can I put my hand over you? He said, yeah, you could do that. I said, which arm is it? He said left arm above the elbow. So I went around to his side, and I put my hand over his left arm. Right where that embolism was he said was located. And I put my other hand on his yet. And then I don’t know, honestly, to this day, I can’t remember what I prayed, Victoria. And I’m sure it was an honest prayer. But it was pretty pathetic. Oh, God helped something like that. And I but here’s what happened in the middle of that prayer. Well, I don’t remember the words, but I remember the defining moment. The room filled with presence That’s the only way I can describe it. It was like compassion, filled the air, married together with love and fire. And both of us looked because something had happened, you know. It’s it’s one thing to just have a little prayer and lead the robot. We both locked eyes and we knew something was happening. And then that fire filled my soul and I cried a hot tear in the corner of my right eye. And I felt this energy rising inside of me and focus. The only way I can describe this, total complete focus on him and on God’s love freedom and how the Lord wanted him to receive a miraculous healing. And so then I said, oh, God healed this, something like this. God healed this man, and while I had my hand on his arm, that energy float down my arm and went into his. He looked at me and he said, what is that fiery presence? I said, spirit of Jesus, he’s making you well. And I ran out of the room right after that. For a lot of reasons, never one and never my life felt anything like that. Never.
Secondly, I didn’t know if I was even supposed to pray that way. Because I’ve not resolved the issue theologically. I I just didn’t know. And thirdly, I was terrified he was gonna make be. And I didn’t know if he’s gonna be. I mean, all these reasons are floating in my head to run out of the room. The next day, I’m in the school. And so is he? I said, you’re here? He said, I am. I said, what happened? And and then he he he it it was a nineteenth century stone building and he shoved me in one of these stone corners behind the column, and he looked in every direction, you know. Therese the floor hard everything. And then he said, that prayer. Changed my life. I said, thank you, and I ran away because I still I I I had the time to process it, you know? And then I went to my next class that he was in, we had three classes in common. And I said something that defended the scripture and he stood up to tell the joke. And he made fun of not believing. And the whole class exploded in laughter but the laughter was at the expense of unbelief, not faith. And he did that in rig class. I was with him, and then I heard from classmates that he was doing that in other classes where I was not present. And I didn’t know. So that story that I just told you, that’s in the healing prayer book that that prompted the conversation between you and I get on the the podcast here. So anyway, we had the summerfield thing and he I had to go away for four months and he walks up to me, he passes me a piece of paper with his phone number on it. And he says, if you’re in trouble, you’re trouble. You call me. You call me. I said, whoa. Okay. So I went to wait to wait to interview. Had a marvelous time, because it’s one of those times where you’re you’re looking at the new thing and you’re learning all kinds of marvelous things. And I learned how to preach a sermon, I learned how to visit people. I did I participated in a wedding, you know. Then I had four funerals. I had those four funerals. But the pastor wasn’t there and I learned how to do that. And then, of course, he came back from vacation way unpacked all the learning I discovered how to do various things. Anyway, I get back to school. And he walks up to me and he says, you didn’t call me. I said, I didn’t have any trouble. And he said, if you’re in trouble, you call me, you know, it’s always a little okay. Anyway, a couple months in, there’s a party for the students. Right? And we’re all gathered together, and we’re talking this and that. We’re just shooting a breeze. About nothing because if you do it apart, you have a little laugh, you know what? I was standing with him and his wife and this girl who had asked me in the first place. Because that girl and this man’s wife were great bunnies. Anyway, the two girls look at him and begin to get me elbow. You know, you’re you’re gonna have to tell Chuck what happened. Tell Chuck. Tell Chuck. Tell Chuck. He said, oh, I don’t wanna tell Chuck to what happened. And then eventually, he did. And he said, right after you left, the charters walked in. And I said, I can go home now. My friend from the bible’s book, he’s come here. He’s prayed in Jesus’ hand. And the charge nurse says, we don’t do things like that around here. We gotta run tests. He said, well, run the test then. And so they did because it was it was actually due for them. Every trace of phlebotis was gone from his body. And it had been big the day before every trace was gone. His wife picked him up. He was discharged from the hospital after all the tests confirmed that he was well. He went home and, of course, he’s thankful. Right? I mean, we’re we’re talking and he could have died and he’s well. And he kneels down beside his bed and he thanks the Lord. They go to bed and he prays before he sleeps. And he has a dream and in the dream, he hears a voice. And the voice says, my servant David defends the integrity of my word, and no one defends him. I’m gonna cry when I tell you this, when he defends the integrity of my word. You defend him. And he did for three years, all through that theological education. Thirty years later, thirty years after that event, he we changed I changed the nominations. He’s still in the scene over, but he contacted me.
I lost touch with him. And he said thirty years ago, he prayed for Jesus to heal my arre. Thank you that you did. I’m well. Three kids. Happily married. Finish she enters now retirement. He finishes ministry. Anyway, I I just asked you. Healing prayer was not my idea. It was a kiss so the reason the book is called God’s idea because it wasn’t my idea. It wasn’t this is not something that I decided that I wanted to learn how to do. It was something that I tripped into together with every other major thing that I’ve ever done in life. And actually learning how to breathe for the die. Wasn’t my idea? That the four funerals were of the late first one with the lady who was supposed to organize this, you know. So mean, it’s hilarious when you stop and think about it, but it’s it’s to deal with what you call pathos, this kind of strange emotion where you know you’re in the middle of something bigger than you. Much bigger than you. So, yeah, that’s and so the design appointment a day is an extension of that same principle. I want to be in something that I have not ordained, not established, not built toward. I mean, I want to do that too. I want to have a successful trajectory in what doing, etcetera, terror. That’s just ordinary life. But I want to know God’s involved in something. And so I ask him for those divine appointments each day. And he sends them. So I do believe in the power of faith to heal the breathing heart. I do. And the way that I describe the way God speaks is that he speaks nonverbally by presence. And that heals the broken heart. Let me tell you what I mean by that. There’s a text in the book of Romans. That’s, by the way, that’s the famous book from the from the apostle Paul, everybody who’s any kind of Christian reads Romans. It’s the if they call it the capital, that’s what because it’s the one that everybody refers to for all kinds of teaching. That is standard procedure in every branch of the Lord’s Church, whether you’re protestant or orthodox or evangelical or charismatic. They all say the capital of Pittsburgh’s Romans fourteen says this. Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking. Because they were arguing about eating and drinking. The kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy. In the holy spirit. And so the experience of knowing the lord through an encounter with the spirit produces three identity murders. Righteousness is a sweet walk with God, and peace is internal serenity despite external circumstance. And joy is internal celebration even when the world is flying apart. And when those three things wax large, and you find yourself in something you have not expected. That’s God talking. When you are praying find yourself in when those three things wacklired, and suddenly a stream of consciousness comes into your brain. To go and see so and so down the street. And you go when you discover there in a crisis moment. That’s God talking. When those three things diminish, that’s the hand of warning. Pay attention. And when they’re jarred, get out of the room. You’re about them correct. You’re about to walk into a disastrous business meeting. Get out of the room. This is God talking saying, this is big trouble right here. And I teach people how to pay attention to those three markers. And actually, to do more than just say, isn’t that a nice little coincidence? But to attribute that to God’s direct involvement in her lives. Because healing prayer is God’s idea. It’s not ours. Buraculous intervention is God’s idea, not ours. And it’s this is how scripture works. So, I mean, Can you imagine what it was like for Peter James and John and Xevity when they got called? I mean, they’re working in the boat. Jesus of Nazareth shows up there’s a miraculous catch of fish. You know, and let us I just wanna put I wanna illustrate that right in the sketch for you. They have found boats from that era owned by fishermen. That on average, they’re twenty seven feet long, they’re eight feet across and they’re four feet high. And two of those boats were sinking with the fish because they were filled to the brim. And so imagine you’re out there. You’ve worked hard all night. You’ve got nothing. You know you gotta pay your bills. You haven’t got enough money to pay the bills. And you’re washing your nets, repairing them because, you know, you gotta pay the bills. This is just not helpful. I know. So anyway, This guy shows up and says, throw your nets over there. Right? So they do and that they didn’t want to do that, but they did. And there were so many wrinkling tilapia in those two boats, then it touched their toes, it touched their ankles, it touched their knees, it touched it went up to four feet. I mean, I’m here. That much, and the boat is right at water level, and the other boat over there is doing the same thing. And then Jesus says, I want you to follow me. I mean, That was the Simon Peter’s idea. It actually says he throws himself down, but actually this is a tale of people who don’t know this. He has to throw himself down in the fish not on the shore because the boat had not yet come to shore. He throws himself down into a massive wriggling tilapia and he says to Jesus of Nazareth. I am not worthy of this. You are God, and I am not. And Jesus said to him, don’t be afraid you’re not gonna catch fish. You’re gonna haul in humans. That’s what you’re gonna do. Wasn’t his idea. Thank you very much. So that’s how that’s how I understand. Ministry. That’s how I understand care for people in grief.
Victoria Volk: I had a moment quite a few years ago there was a gentleman that died in my community. Okay. I think he was, I don’t know, late eighties, maybe even early nineties. A plumber by trade, new everybody, right, in the community.
David Chotka: Yep.
Victoria Volk: And I remember sometime before I passed away, we were sitting outside the bar.
David Chotka: I was
Victoria Volk: just sitting outside. It was a nice summer night evening or whatever, and I never really had a conversation with the guy before that.
David Chotka: Mhmm.
Victoria Volk: And he told me, I’m not even sure why, but he told me that the best thing he ever did was choosing to adopt his wife’s children as his
David Chotka: own. Okay.
Victoria Volk: Fast forward, I’m not sure how long after that, he passed away. Mhmm. But when he passed away, they had a celebration of life in the bar just, you know, everybody got together and things like that. And I just had this poll to go to the bar. I didn’t know who his kids were, didn’t know what they look like, to tell them what he said.
David Chotka: It changed their life. Right?
Victoria Volk: I don’t know. In the moment, I you know, I I did go and I did share what he shared with me.
David Chotka: Yeah. I
Victoria Volk: don’t know if they reflected on it after the fact or whatnot, but, you know, it was one of those things, like, it wouldn’t leave me alone. You know, like, I came home and
David Chotka: That’s him. That’s good. Yeah. Yeah. The fact that he should tell you in a happenstance, and that you that you should pass away shortly thereafter Mhmm.
And that you get commanded to go to that place, to say this, to a bunch of people you do not know.
Victoria Volk: Mhmm.
David Chotka: That’s him. Yeah. That’s hearing the voice. So you have heard the voice of Jesus. You’ve heard it.
Victoria Volk: I have several there I’ve had a lot of moments in my life. Even my marriage with my husband, like, we were friends for seven years. I was heartbroken and And I I’ve asked him, like, what made you, like, decide to pursue me? He really can’t answer that. Kind of funny because we hadn’t looked at each other, like, that way, you know, in a, like, in a the romantic way.
You know, we were friends for seven years.
David Chotka: Yep.
Victoria Volk: And and then all of a sudden, he was like this relentless consumer night and shining armor, you know. And I’d I’d I’d said one prayer. I just bring someone into my life who is good for me.
David Chotka: And the Lord heard you prayer.
Victoria Volk: And he heard my prayer. Yeah. Twenty plus years later, here we are. Three kids.
David Chotka: Well, so listen, though, the whole point of this podcast is to bring comfort to people who are distressed or in trouble. That’s the whole point of your podcast. I will say that the most important thing you can do is to straight up, some people have stroke trouble with faith, some people may break
Victoria Volk: down church. I did myself.
David Chotka: Yeah. Some people who had a bad experience in that catheter, some priest abused them or or maybe they’ve heard about that priest abusing their best friend and or they they were turned off by some bitter bibles number, you know, showing up pro bar in somebody. So nothing worse than that. Oh my heavens. Anyway, That the the point is it doesn’t matter where you are. The point is that don’t let a bad experience of some idiot. Get in the way of your accessing what is freely available to anyone who asks for it. One of my favorite scriptures is is found in the psalms. It says this God is near to the broken heart. So if you’re broken hearted, pray this very simple prayer. Okay? Your word says, so please send it. Please please come here. I’m Broken Heart. And the way that he shows up by presence is to manifest himself within, with this velvety smooth assurance of war, and behind your physical estate.
And I’ve I’ve tried to put words around this. And if you can say this better than can’t I will lift your quote. I’ll give you credit, but I’ll tell I’ll use it. This is so the way that I feel to mind presence, there’s this cognitive thing where you choose it and you say, oh, yes. Is fine and you make the decision that isn’t that nice, but that’s not that doesn’t cover the ground. There comes this moment inside where the believer knows inside their door. That’s the only way to describe this. Mhmm. There’s this awareness and it is other than you And it is something that is separate and distinct from you, but intrinsic to who you are because you said yes to him. And you sense this rising sense of fiery gentle presence and it’s a velvety smooth It’s assurance, it’s grace, it’s love, it’s yearning for more of him, and it’s settled contentness in who he is. Even if your circumstances are terrible. With the peace of God, which passes understanding, keep guard over your hearts and minds, In the knowledge and love of Christ, Jesus, so says the apostle Paul in the book of Philippians when he was in jail of all things. He was in jail when he wrote that he had a Roman guard chained to his wrist while he’s writing this stuff. I wonder what that Roman guard thought about the fact that the Apostle was writing this of just this. And he didn’t know he’s an apartment. He thought he was some guy who was upfront charges, you know, that kind of thing. And he writes about this experience of the internal presence with peace Staying like like a guard keeping watch over your door of faith. It’s like a soldier, a century standing at your door, walking back and forth. Making sure that the prisoner inside that space is content. That’s what I would ask people to consider doing to. Open their hearts up to that. Now, if there’s an atheist out there, my dad was an atheist. He became an agnostic, and then he became a Christian believer. He became a Christian believer because Jesus of Nazareth appeared to him. It was the most amazing kind of thing. And he’d suffered much. He had he’d lost a lot of his eyesight because of the childhood thing. He had scoped cold bottles in glasses. He then was treated by friends and family. And he didn’t believe that it was possible that people out there were actually kind of a gentleman’s suite. And then I became a believer. I was the first one in my family. Again, that wasn’t my idea. That wasn’t my dad’s idea either. Right? It was my mom’s idea. And when it was all set and done, my face impacted his existence course because that’s your kid. You got what he can do with this. You know, what school of the ministry is. What’s this crazy kind of thing? Be a dentist, be a doctor mix a month, you know? Be a lawyer. That’s that’s the immigrant story. So what there’s a Jewish joke or what’s the difference between a tailor and psychiatrist? One generation.
Anyway, getting back to this. He he couldn’t believe. And I remember praying for him three years. And then there was one critical moment where suddenly this whole thing changed. And he banging his head on a on a on a beam in one of our storerooms area and east war to jeez, his name to date. And the Lord behind him said, yes. And he turned around and he was eyes to eyes with the risen Lord. In the doorway of that storeroom, And my dad had agreed three education. And since because his eyes were bad when he was a little kid, but as they locked his eyes together, I he’s telling me the story is towards what is she and hardly speak and said, dad, What was that like? He said it was like I was looking into wells of love. He never talked that way. Grade three education, you don’t read Edison for fun. You’re not a Shakespeare fixinato. You’re not reading, you know, lawn failure. You’re not reading the wallwood or anything.
You’re you’re not you’re
Victoria Volk: I mean, he was an atheist.
David Chotka: Yes. Well, at that point, probably an agnostic. At that point, he kinda thought because of growing things regardless. Didn’t believe in that. And So apparently, he was looking at the Lord and I I’m he’s telling me the story about a week after it happened, trying to give words to this. Physically shaking. And then he I said, dad, what did you say? So if I told Jesus that I loved my son and he met me because I was the pastor, you know. And then Jesus said, I know this. And then he said to the Lord, I’m a sinner. And Jesus said, I forgive you. And he vanished. That’s how my dad came to faith. Wasn’t his idea. He banged his head on a beam. Took the Lord’s name in vain and the Lord appeared to him. I haven’t had a crazy kind of thing. So I’m a supernatural I believe from the power of the Lord to intervene in the flow of history, but I’m also a horse stance guy. I don’t believe that everybody you pray for sealed. I do believe that people die young. I do believe that sometimes people make bad bad bad mistakes and do terrible things they shouldn’t do. I do believe that crazy people kill others and so on and so forth. And there’s this thing where I do believe in the scientific enterprise and I do believe in the power of God in your v. And they flow in different channels. And some some faith traditions say you can never put these two channels together, and I completely disagree with that. Science works inside the framework of a world that is created, and God established those rules of creation. And so we, scientific enterprise, is only uncovering what lies fallow under the surface of the soil, and they endeavor to discover a trajectory of a particular sickness or affliction they find a cure or they find an adaptive therapy, you should take the gift. And every now and then there’s a miraculous intervention. And sometimes the two of them overlap like this beautifully. And sometimes they separate out and run-in different pathways, but regardless of this.
What I teach in the book and the reason I wrote the book, it’s a co write by the way. Co writer is a million selling author by the name of Dr. Maxi Dunnham. Have I got his yeah. Here’s his book. This book is the one that trained me in Huddl. Ford quicker living prayer. Maxi wrote this. It’s a million seller. And it gives it the the structure of this book is inspired. It’s the structure is the thing that that was amazing. He would give a little bit of teaching, a little bit of scripture, a little bit of reflecting, recording, a little bit of a challenge. You do that for seven days in the week. He learned how to pray. It’s just this and you do it by praying, not just by reading about prayer. Well, I met him and he and I wrote wrote together this book called healing prayer, and then I’ve that I’m on your podcast to talk about. And, of course, it includes stories of people dying before their time and grieving. It includes stories of people who who who prayed one way and who ended up getting something else. And it includes miraculous accounts of divine intervention. So there’s five pathways made in this book. The first one is the instant heal, and I’ve told you a couple of those stories now, and rackets integrations. The second is a pathway to a remedy. Somebody does research, well, and you wind up meeting the person who’s got an adaptive therapy for what you’re discovering you need. Well, take it. They spent thirty years because their kids’ sister died in leukemia and they’ve studied cancer. Well, why would you resist taking the fruit of someone’s labor when their intention was to make this this cure possible. Take it. That’s from God too. Third is an ordinary healing. Now, I will tell you something about this. My wife was miraculously cured of muscular dystrophy. That stories in this in this book about halfway through. It was incredible to watch. Before she was cured. If she damaged a muscle, the muscle was damaged forever. After she was cured, if she damaged a muscle, the muscle healed. So natural healing is also part of the equation. Then there is suffering that we don’t understand. And for some reason, it’s there. We wait through it. We don’t understand it. Sometimes somebody dies young. And last is the miraculous crossing in the end of your life. All of us have a purpose and all of us completed. And all of us have to face our maker. All five of those are legitimate means by which God leads us in this journey called healing prayer. That’s God’s idea.
Victoria Volk: So what about that with your wife and your daughter? The polarity of
David Chotka: Yeah. I live between the two. Like, I I do. I live between the two. Now, before I go any further, I I do have a two o’clock coming up.
And it’s it’s one fifty one.
Victoria Volk: Well, would you briefly share that how because your daughter has
David Chotka: Yes. So the way I say it is this. My daughter has my tonic dystrophy. My wife was cured of curing FSH. She’s adopted.
My wife was was hesitant in her family life. Mhmm.
Victoria Volk: And
David Chotka: we’ve when we adopted the girl, we didn’t know. And so part of the miracle of providence. Is that she was adopted into a family that could accommodate her and muscular dystrophy, and we knew it. Now I hope that in my mind, that’s not enough. I want the rest. Thank you very much. And so for about twenty years, we would pray for her to be well. And now we pray for her to be a peace. That’s how we pray because the the answer hasn’t come. So the way I describe it in the book is God initiates and we respond. Not we initiate and God responds. It doesn’t work that way. Thank you very much. So I teach people how to pay attention to the mind leading in that. Howard Bauchner:
Victoria Volk: What I kind of want to touch on now then is what you kinda said was how people can feel like their prayers are not being heard. Like, prayers are not being answered and
David Chotka: Yes.
Victoria Volk: And I have this thought or belief within myself that yes, pray, but you also have to move your feet.
David Chotka: Actually, the bet I heard heard of this bet this way. If you pray for potatoes, put your hands in plow. Yeah. I’m listening to this little kid. Right?
And it’s actually really that’s an important principle. And when it’s all said and done, The the principle behind that is not what it called passively. You don’t sit in your button with for God to take care of everything. You are born to work. And the reason why Adam was given the assignment of the garden was because he wasn’t just supposed to sit there and watch the animals. He was supposed to tend soil. You are created in the image of God in order to be creative and to do enter into the acts that God would have you do. Now, what do you do with unanswered prayer? There is this I have a chapter in the book where I talk about medicine, miracle, and mystery. And how all three of them intertwine. And the thrust of the book is to say, we are not god. We are those who are in submission to the movement of God’s spirit. And we cannot manipulate the Lord to accomplish all that we want because we we only have a little three pound brain. And the best that you and I can do is to use the three pounds and train it. But you can’t tell it’s around the corner. In fact, this lady that I was just gonna see just canceled and I wasn’t expecting that. Alright? So I didn’t know that. I had organized my time since I’d be done according to your timetable and then pick up my coal. So I I can’t tell that, but now we have more time to be able to to navigate this because we’re in the middle of an important cover that isn’t completed. You can break this up into two episodes if you want to do that, which is what you might do. But regardless of that, God initiates and he leads us in paths that we do not understand or know. And when it is all said and done, we’re always left with holding history. There are seasons where we see miraculous breakthrough, and there are seasons where we see partial breakthrough. And there are scenes where we see no breakthrough at all. This one came to a head when I had a buddy who was in his fifties. And I was pastor in church forty five minutes from here. I was serving in Chad and Ontario, now serving in Windsor. But it’s but that church was a really solid place. My very first ever visit was to this guy. So I arrive in my office, and the secretary walks in and says to me, you gotta go on see Bob. He wants the new passenger to come and see him. So we’re talking The books are not out of the boxes yet. I mean, I put the books in the office. The bookshelves are being constructed. And I said, well, I guess I can go down the road and see this guy, so I get in the car and I do my first ever pass through a call in that church. I walk into this house. He’s on an oxygen oxygen mask. And he’s carrying this tube with him and he’s full of cancer. And his godly wife is caring for him and they’re sweet people, but I know his skin is the wrong color.
His eyes are the wrong color. And I have been around the block enough to know when somebody’s tied days your number. So I pray a prayer of comfort with him. That’s the way I prayed. And I get back in my car and I drive home, but it was the end of the day.
I said to my wife, look, I think I got a funeral coming up. It’s a guy named Bob. Apparently, he’s a godly fellow. I just met him. I was in his home. And I think I’m gonna do here. What I didn’t know was that the elders of the church had already booked in to see him that night and he didn’t tell me that. And the elders went to pray for him, obeying James chapter five where it says that the elders of the church and like the with the royal prayer phase, etcetera. And he went into a miraculous recovery. And three days later, he’s down in South Carolina at Myrtle Beach. Gulfy. Exactly. He’s had this astonishing recovery in the board chair, Hal Norton, and him, Bob Roberts, they’re out there down there. Galtham, because he had this amazing recovery, happened instantly in front of those elders. And so I had witnessed amazing. This is incredible. In the in the course of time, Bob became a friend. Bob and Marlene and and was one of a a group of four couples and we all got together and we should reason laugh. He was one of the fun he was a delightful guy and there was a guy named Bill and Bill and Bob would do these back and forth kind of hilarious things. And if you were in the middle of that that rep r t, you’d laugh until you were done. It was just this marvelous fun and whenever I wanted to blow off steam always with Bob. He became one of my elders, and I remembered having significant prayer times with him. There was one that happened just before he became my friend. He said, I wanna go to a a church in Toronto that has a reputation of of being one of these healing places. I said, that’s a three and a half hour drive, Bob.
You wanna go? He said, yeah. I wanna go. I booked my associate in preaching because that was my sermon prep day. And he and I together with our two wives drove down the highway and it took us four hours because the highway was busy. We pull up at this place, and we show up at this place, and nobody prays for him, nobody prays for me. It doesn’t happen. You know? And we’re at the door of the place. And I said, this is crazy, Bob. We’ve gone four hours. One way, we gotta go four hours back. You wanna pray now, but he said, well, we better. So I put my hand on him. His wife and my wife put their hand on hand. We started to pray. Bob started to laugh. Heart filled joyful laughter. It just bubbling from inside of him. It was it was honest joyful laughter. Hilarious. And so he didn’t stop laughing. What what we got in the car to drive back home. And for the four hour drive from Toronto to Chatham, he kept laughing. And I had you know, then he gets in his car and his wife, Marlene, had the drive home because he was still laughing. And from that point forward, the man that I knew was full of laugh the laughter subsided when he finally went to sleep. But he started to have a crazy hilarious sense of humor, and it became part of this for some couple of things where we’d always have fun. And he became an elder in my church and we did all kinds of amazing things together and he was what I called bible from where Bob. He was the guy who called the elders to account when they were being a pack of idiots. When they were when they weren’t gonna do something that was the right thing to do because it caused too much.
He pulled the bible out, and he’d tell us off. You know, and then he make a joke and everybody in the room would crack up laughing. And then we’d we’d adopt the expensive decision and do the right thing and the money would come. And he was that kind of a guy. And then the cancer returned. And four years later, I was in the hospital room when he died. His daughter was with him. I was in the room. It was two o’clock in the morning. I got called up because it was pretty, you know, severe, and I was holding his hand. And his daughter was holding his other hand. And he breathed his last. I did the funeral. And when I was doing this funeral, I did my very best to put best foot forward, but this was not just a parishioner. This was a very good friend and this was someone who had seen healing and it ended and he died. And I remember so I did this service. I don’t know. I did my best to present a positive take on this. I watched his body descend to the ground. I went back to the office. I closed the door. I put a cover over the window. I sat in the corner and I cried like a baby, because that was my friend. Three weeks later, I was with the other three couples plus the widow. And they were thanking me for doing a beautiful service. And I said, okay, thank you. I appreciate that. And they said, yeah, it was so amazing to see Bob healed. I said, healed. I just buried and he was fifty five. He died. What are you talking about? And they looked at me and they said, you didn’t know him before. Did you? I said, no. I moved here. My first visit was him. He was on an oxygen tank, and there was this amazing recovery, and and they said, well, He was clinically depressed for a dozen years. He hadn’t laughed in a dozen years. And you drove him to that church in Toronto and nobody prayed for him. And then you and Elizabeth and Marlene prayed for him and he started to laugh. And the clinical depression vanished. And they were given three and a half years of blissful married life. Before he died of the cancer in the last six months. Jesus healed them of clinical depression. Even though he died at fifty five young. So what I say in the book is there’s this thing called already, not yet. We’re already participants in the powers of the next age. We are not yet as we should be. And those two realities overlap just like that in every life, in every family. And so I saw my wife healed. I’ve actually been physically healed. I had a paralyzed face. I was told I’d never speak again when I was fifty three. And the Lord healed me, and that’s a long story as well. I don’t want to tell a long story. It was so remarkable. It got recorded by the Christian Broadcast Network and there’s been a hundred and twenty thousand views of that story. I had a face that the doctor told me would never heal, and I was completely healed in a process that was just absolutely filled and wonder. And my daughter’s not. So I’ve been healed. My wife’s been healed. My daughter’s not. And I live between two ages that overlap, the age of life and the age of death. And the victory is partial until Jesus returns at the end of time.
Than what God would have us do. It’s live between the times and celebrate his presence in this fallen and broken world. Do we people who extend love and grace to those who have none? And to walk with them through all their struggles and all their difficulties, trusting that God will intervene in their lives.
Victoria Volk: Amen. That is a beautiful place to end this podcast, actually.
David Chotka: Well, thank you. That’s it. Yeah. There’s a scripture that has both of those in it. I’ll I’ll just say it to you. I think that’s a good way for me to close the sentences. The loved now We are children of God. It does not yet appear we should be. But when he appears, we shall be like him. For we shall see him as he is. Now, not yet. First John chapter three verse two. That’s where the believer lives.
Victoria Volk: Thank you so much. For all of your stories, for making what you shared relatable to people who may be struggling with their faith. I know I did personally for many years
David Chotka: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: And, you know, you you some people go many years blaming God for their circumstances and I think he lies in wait. Just waiting for us to awaken to his love for us, I suppose.
David Chotka: Yeah. Now the love’s unmerited. We don’t deserve it. Absolutely don’t deserve it. It comes because it comes. And it isn’t our idea. It isn’t our idea. It’s it’s God’s idea to love us. We just got the your guy. He woke up and he pursued you.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s it. Wasn’t your idea? Wasn’t it? Yeah. Look, that’s why. Why did she do that? Oh, because I love you. I just he just did that. And you So it’s the same with with the love of God toward us. We don’t deserve it. They even know why he wants to bother, but he does. So if you can awaken to that, it becomes something beautiful. And that’s where we live.
Victoria Volk: I love that. Where can people find you?
David Chotka: I have a website that’s the easiest way spirit equip dot com. And I think you’ll I think I sent the links to you, if I’m not mistaken, I believe. Yeah. Anyway, it’s the the word spirit is the same as holy spirit, s p I r I t, and a word equip is the same as the beginning of equipment, EQU IP. Put the two things together, spiritequip.com.
That’s my website. And it has links to all my social media, so my Instagram thing is there, my YouTube channels there, my blogs are there, my Facebook page is there, and so on and so forth.
Victoria Volk: And my In your books?
David Chotka: My books are there too. And, yes, all the things that the the ability to book me, I do three day events in churches. And if people want me to come to their church, I’m more than able to do that. You just have to give me some lead time. Pay my hair fair and take up offerings. That’s what we do. It’s it’s not expensive to do. Find me a place to stay as long as it’s not some scsi dive. You know, find me a private room with Matthew. And then I’m more than happy to come into churches. I teach principles. I’ll tell you why I the the organization is called Spirit Equipment. Because nobody equipped me in the spiritual disciplines. I had to learn the hard way. And my goal is to make spiritual disciplines one small step at a time, simple for people so that they know what steps they can take, so that they can learn to enter into the things that God would have us learn. And so I have five books out. All of them are books that teach spiritual disciplines one small step at a time. And so spirit clip dot com is named after the activity that’s involved in my ministry. And and I do it all cross denominational line. I’m gonna be speaking to a bunch of methodists in a few months. I’m gonna speak to a pentecostal group after that. I’m I’m working with the Christian missionary alliance. I have preached him back to churches and men and night churches. I have spoken trans denominationally to Catholics and Africans and Baptist and Presbyterian and many Knights. You name it, they’re all there. Either my own denomination, sometimes they’ll let me speak in my own too. Anyway, I am an orthodox believer. I believe in, you know, the classic statements, the creed of the church, and so on. And I’m looking for really three things when I’m going into a church. I know that I can work with you. And number one, you have a high view of the bible as final. That you believe that Jesus is in fact God the sun and that you believe that that the new birth is essential. If those three things are there, I don’t care which background is I can work with you. And that those are the groups that I go to.
Victoria Volk: And so I will put your website in the show notes, and anything else you would like to pass along with me to add?
David Chotka: You know, right now, I’m trying to figure out some way to get the first chapter of the book and audiobook. Available. So I’m talking to my publisher. So God willing, I think it’s really important that you actually it’s it’s in my voice and in the voice of the other co writer. And so both of our voices are in the first chapter. And we both tell a story or two. And it’ll be I’m trying to get that done. So If I don’t get it done from my publisher, I’m gonna rerecord it myself and send it to you. I’d like to make that available to anybody who’d like to receive that.
Victoria Volk: Sounds good. And anything else you’d like to share that you don’t feel and you got to?
David Chotka: Oh, listen. We covered the ground here. We went long. We waxed long so that we could cover all the ground. So I think we did. There’s lots I could teach and talk about. I’ve written five books. I have a book on hearing the voice of Jesus. I have a book on dealing with the key phrases and words of the Lord’s prayer. I have this one on healing prayer. I’m writing I’m rewriting the Lord’s prayer book, and I have a book where I am where I’m teaching on the Holy Spirit, how Holy Spirit works. I’m a I’m a sessional lecturer in the Pathways School for Ministry on the Holy Spirit’s baptismal, what it looks like, how it works. So these are the areas of my expertise. And I’m more than happy to to talk. In this case, I believe with your podcast, your audience, the Healing Cray book was the best book to to put forward. It was the one that speaks to the constituency that you’re in.
Victoria Volk: I would agree. Yeah. And thank you so much for everything that you shared today and to my listeners and I enjoyed our conversation.
David Chotka: And likewise, it was been it’s been easy to have the conversation with you. Thank you, Victoria.
Victoria Volk: And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life, much love.
Grief Tips, Grieving Voices Podcast, Growth, Healing, Mental Health, Mind/Body Wellness, solo episode |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Today’s episode is about navigating significant dates and other reminders after a loss. Anniversaries, birthdays, holidays—these milestones can be poignant reminders that reopen the chapters of our grief, not to mention the special places that flood the heart with memories, and then the waves of emotion follow.
But here’s what I’ve learned: While it may seem like these days are there to test our resolve, they also offer us an opportunity for reflection and honoring memories. Consider this—what if you could transform your pain on these dates into acts of remembrance? Lighting a candle or playing their favorite song isn’t just about ritual; it’s about keeping a part of them alive within us.
Key Points Discussed:
- Acknowledging the Weight of Memories
- Permitting Yourself to Feel
- Creating New Traditions
- The Silence Around Grief
- Finding Support That Moves You Forward
- Planning Ahead for Tough Days
- Self-Care & Communication During Grief
When my father passed away, my family chose silence as our coping mechanism—a choice that left little room for healing. It taught me an invaluable lesson: acknowledgment is not only necessary but vital, especially when young eyes are looking up at us to learn how to navigate their own emotional landscapes.
The power of community in times like these cannot be overstated. Surrounding yourself with people who understand your journey is more than comforting; it’s healing. But remember—finding spaces where growth is nurtured over stagnation is crucial. As you approach those tough calendar days, plan ahead. Honor your feelings by allowing yourself to say no when needed and yes to self-care and tenderness towards your heartache.
To everyone walking through seasons of grief: know that every step taken is progress made toward healing—even on those dates marked by absence rather than celebration.
RESOURCES:
_______
NEED HELP?
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
- Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support via text message. Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a trained Crisis Counselor
If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Navigating the Waves of Grief: Honoring Lost Loved Ones on Special Dates
Grief is an unpredictable companion, often intensifying during significant dates that remind us of those we’ve lost. In this episode of *Grieving Voices*, we delve into how these poignant reminders—birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays—can reopen healing wounds and what strategies can help us cope with the renewed sense of loss.
The Ebb and Flow of Memories
Special dates act as powerful triggers for grief. They are stark reminders that life has irrevocably changed. Whether it’s a birthday without the celebrant or a holiday missing one key participant, such days highlight absence with an acute sharpness.
It’s crucial to recognize that feeling overwhelmed by these occasions is not only common but entirely natural. It’s part of the grieving process—one that doesn’t adhere to timelines or expectations. Be gentle with yourself; allow emotions to surface without self-judgment.
Crafting New Traditions in Remembrance
In my own experience following my father’s passing, I learned that ignoring these important dates wasn’t beneficial—for me nor for my siblings who were also grappling with their grief journey. Instead, creating new traditions can be a therapeutic way to honor our loved ones’ memories while acknowledging our ongoing lives.
Lighting a candle might seem simple yet symbolizes so much more—it’s a beacon of remembrance casting light on cherished moments shared together. Playing their favorite music allows melodies to fill the silence left behind—a celebration of their tastes and preferences even in absence.
Cooking a meal they loved serves as an homage through flavors and scents—an intimate connection maintained across different realms. These acts don’t replace presence but rather intertwine memory within current experiences, ensuring our loved ones continue to influence our lives meaningfully.
Seeking Supportive Communities
The importance of finding understanding individuals or groups cannot be overstated when navigating grief’s complexities on special dates. Sharing stories about your loved one can provide immense comfort—not just in expressing your feelings but also in hearing others’ accounts which may echo your own experiences or offer fresh perspectives.
Seek out environments where you feel genuinely heard—a space where progress towards healing is encouraged over stagnation in sorrowful reflection alone.
Preparing for Tough Times
Planning ahead for challenging days involves recognizing personal needs amidst societal expectations surrounding social gatherings and festivities—the right to grieve authentically should always take precedence over conforming to norms if they do not serve your well-being at heart.
Declining invitations needn’t be seen as rudeness but rather an assertion of self-care; prioritize activities conducive to your healing journey whether it means solitude or seeking company depending on what feels right at any given moment.
Healing from loss isn’t passive—it requires openness towards moving forward despite pain lingering beneath surfaces readying itself especially during significant times like anniversaries and holidays.
Taking small steps each day towards acceptance can gradually build resilience against grief’s harsher waves when they come crashing down unexpectedly around these sensitive periods.
As we conclude today’s *Grieving Voices* discussion remember: care deeply for yourselves because through unleashing hearts comes freedom—and ultimately life itself becomes unleashed anew albeit differently shaped by love enduring beyond physical presence alone.
Until next time cherish every heartbeat knowing each throb honors those gone before us guiding lights forevermore along paths trodden under starlit skies filled with memories everlasting… Much love always 💖
Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk: Welcome dear listeners to another episode of our journey together through grief and healing on this episode, one ninety, holy cow of grieving voices. So thank you so much for being here.
Victoria Volk: Today, I’m addressing a topic that touches the heart deeply, navigating special dates and reminders after the loss of a loved one. Whether it’s the anniversary of their passing, their birthday, or the first holiday season without them. These moments can reopen wounds and challenger peace, quite frankly. Let’s start by acknowledging that these dates and reminders like the empty chair at the holiday table or the quiet of a bedroom once filled with laughter. Carry a weight of memories and emotions. And it’s entirely okay to feel a surge of grief, and it’s okay to seek ways to honor and remember those we’ve lost while nurturing our hearts. Firstly, I want to tell you, give yourself permission to feel. I didn’t for over thirty years. And that’s a form of suffering. That’s a form of self suffering. Grief doesn’t follow a schedule and emotions may come in waves. It’s important to allow yourself to experience these feelings without judgment. I can tell you, I wish I would have allowed myself to feel much sooner and earlier in my life.
Victoria Volk: Creating a new tradition can be a meaningful way to honor your loved one. Light a candle for them. Play their favorite music, or prepare a meal they loved. This act of remembrance can be a comforting way to keep their memory alive. I remember when my dad passed away and on the anniversaries, there was no talk of remembrance or honoring quite frankly, it was not even really acknowledged. It was something that we held closely to the vest individually. And that’s really sad to me. And I don’t wish that for anybody, especially children who grow up learning that that’s the air quote, right way to grieve. There is no right or wrong way to grieve. There’s your way, but there are healthier, more proactive ways. That move you forward, but don’t keep you stuck. That’s what I’m all about. And so in order to do that, Oftentimes we need to reach out to for support. Surrounding yourself with understanding, friends, or family, or even joining a support group. Be careful though. Support groups can be a place that make you feel more miserable after you leave.
Victoria Volk: So it’s important to find a support group that you feel comfortable with, that everyone’s voice feels heard and honored, and quite frankly, that maybe has some action that moves you forward, not keeping repeating the same story week after week. But it can be a great place to connect with other people who have experienced a similar loss as you. And even if they haven’t experienced a similar loss as you, we can all learn something from each other. But spaces like these and people that we trust can often provide us comfort It enables us to share stories and memories which can be powerful way to feel connected to your loved one and to others who understand your pain. Again, this wasn’t something that was demonstrated for me growing up as a child. And I don’t think that is the case for many children, even today, I don’t think much has changed in in the ways that we grieve. Which is why my mission to share what grief is and my understanding, my new understanding, my new knowledge, what I’ve learned about it, has become an important mission of mine.
Victoria Volk: So thank you for joining me in this episode, and I hope that you share it. And share any other episode that you feel could be insightful or helpful to someone else you know or love. Coming back to the episode and what we’re talking about today, it’s important to plan ahead for those tough days. Knowing that a difficult date is approaching, consider planning a day that balances remembrance with self care. It might be a day for quiet reflection or doing something that brings you joy or peace. I recently had the deversary of my father. And quite frankly, I spent the day doing what I love. And that’s putting together and working on a pet loss program. And working on my mission, that was a way that I could honor my loss. In the memory of my father. And so whatever that means for you, that is a form of self care.
Victoria Volk: Moving on for those reminders that come unexpectedly, like an invite to an event your loved one will never experience. Like a wedding, graduation, baby shower. It’s okay to give yourself grace. It’s okay to decline invitations if you’re not ready. And it’s okay to take moments for yourself when memories flood in unexpectedly. Perhaps you wish to attend these events, and create an exit strategy for yourself if it becomes too much and emotionally overwhelming. One more thing on that note, if it’s been several years. Now again, grief doesn’t follow a timeline. If moving forward and being able to go to events like a wedding or a baby shower or graduation is something you want to do without feeling this pull to the pain of the past? That is an indicator for you, that it’s time to take action, that it’s time to address what is emotionally incomplete for you.
Victoria Volk: And I’ve shared it in other podcast episodes, and I’ll share it today. I do have a program that’s one on one working with Grievers. Twelve sessions. It’s called do grief differently. It’s just you and me. It’s not talk therapy. It’s an evidence based program that is specific to you and your life experience and your specific grief. And that’s why it works. It may appear to be like this cookie cutter thing. And I know a lot of people might think, well, it worked for you who you know, it’s not gonna work for me. How do you know unless you try? And if you tried everything else, what do you have to lose? But more years of a joy filled life. That’s my challenge for you today as you’re listening to this, to consider that. Moving on to my final recommendation for Grievers listening to this. Is consider creating a memory box or a dedicated space in your home where you can display photos, momentos, or anything else that reminds you of your loved one.
Victoria Volk: Visiting the space can offer a sense of closeness and a personal sanctuary for your grief and love. There is a caveat to this though. Sometimes we can enshrine people. We can create an enshrinement in our homes. Of the person we we lost. And these enshrinements where we view the person as never having any humanness to them, like never having any faults, never doing anything bad and we just we we think only the positive about this person. But if you really dig deep, You have to ask yourself, how true is that? Because even the closest people we we love who have passed away, hurt us in some way, caused us suffering or pain, or stress or frustration, maybe we were estranged. We need to get to the emotional truth of the relationship and if we entrying people. And never become emotionally complete with those those hertz that we’re holding on to. But we’re over shrouding and over simplifying and probably even minimizing or not even addressing the other things that hurt us. This is where we remain emotionally incomplete. And remain stuck in our pain.
Victoria Volk: So it’s important to consider that when you’re creating this space in your home for someone who is passed away. On the flip side of that, we also call the opposite, be devilment, where you only think of the negative about somebody or only hold on to the negative aspects of the relationship. And you have to ask yourself that as well. Like, is that completely true? Is that one hundred percent true of the relationship? Relationships are dynamic and complicated and complex and layered and and we have to address all of the emotional stuff on the positive and the negative side to become emotionally and we can’t do that if we’d be devolving someone or if we’re enshrining the relationship. And maybe that’s the first time you’ve heard any of that.
Victoria Volk: And Maybe you’re asking yourself, oh, do I have an enshrinement? It might be devilish someone in a relationship, and only you can answer that. But take some time with this episode and reflect on the things that I’ve shared so far. Listen to it again if you have to. But remember, dear listeners grief is a journey that is uniquely yours. And there’s no right or wrong way to navigate these moments when they hit. But I wanted to share this episode as a way to support and bring some lightness to the dark, and to let you know that it’s okay to have days where you don’t feel okay. And being able to communicate that to those around you saying, you know what, I need space today. Thank you so much for the invitation, but I’m going to have to decline. That’s all you need to say. You don’t need to go into the long story, an explanation. You don’t owe an explanation. Just I need to tend to my heart today. That’s it.
Victoria Volk: And so what’s most important is that you do what feels right for you allowing yourself to heal. Again, allowing yourself to heal. You have to be open to receiving that healing. And I also think you need to be ready to want to heal. And remember in your own time and in your own way that will happen. Might not be today, but hold the hope that it could be tomorrow or even two months from now. If you take little baby steps every day, I promise you you’ll get there, but Time is not gonna wait for you to figure it out. Didn’t wait for me. Over thirty years, it did not wait for me. Trust me on that. It takes action to move your life forward in the direction that you want it to go. Thank you for sharing this time with me today. May you find comfort and strength and healing in the days ahead?
Victoria Volk: Until next time, take care of your hearts. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Childhood Grief, Divorce, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Growth, Healing, Mind/Body Wellness, Podcast, Spirituality, Where Are They Now? |
Phoebe Leona: Where Are They Now? | Magic in the Mess
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
This week, we catch up with previous Grieving Voices guest Phoebe Leona.
I had received a newsletter from Phoebe providing some updates that, I felt, would be a great episode to talk about the potential/impending loss of something she had built with love, sweat, tears, and probably plenty of finances, too.
Sometimes to grow and evolve, we need to close one door so another may open. Little did I expect that as this episode goes live, I feel we could record a third episode – stay tuned…
Back to this episode; this is for you if you are feeling stuck in a mess and having difficulty feeling the magic of the situation and your experience. As Phoebe shares in this episode: “When it is meant for you, you cannot mess it up.”
Be a fly on the wall of this conversation about growth, hard transitions, finding love again, and perhaps more importantly…finding yourself and the magic while in the mess. Or, as I like to say: the thick of the ick.
RESOURCES:
CONNECT:
_______
NEED HELP?
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
- Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support via text message. Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a trained Crisis Counselor
If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.
Are you enjoying the podcast? Check out my bi-weekly newsletter, The Unleashed Letters.
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Victoria Volk: Thank you for tuning in to grieving voices. I’m so happy that you’ve pushed play on this episode. And today is a where are they now episode. And I’m following up with my previous guest Phoebe Leona, where we originally had our episode. The first episode were recorded, went live on March twenty-ninth twenty twenty-two. It’s episode ninety two. And it’s titled, I’m only grieving Fridays. And it was all about her experience of losing her father and how that was the catalyst for all of the change that she described in that episode. And now we’re back for Phoebe 3.0 because there’s been a lot of change in transition and a new evolution to Phoebe’s life that I came across because of her newsletter. If you don’t know, when people become guests on my podcast, I often tried to keep up with them and whether that’s on social media or their newsletter or I think a lot of my guests become friends. And so And I’ve always been the person that, like, loves to, where are they now? Right? Like, the eighties pop stars of the one-hit wonders. I’ve always looking up, like, wonder what happened to them, you know. So today is the I wonder what happened with Phoebe. So here she is ladies and gentlemen. TV, what brings you to the podcast? Actually, I asked you to come back on the podcast. So let’s get that great. But I would love to have you share with me what has transpired since we last recorded.
Phoebe Leona: Oh, yeah. Well, first of all, thank you so much for inviting me back, Victoria. It’s such a joy to be with you, and I was before we press record, we were thinking about when was it that we sat together. And I think also, since then, you came on my podcast, so that’s where I was getting my dates confused. Where are they now? Where is Phoebe Leona now? Before, I think you said March twenty twenty-two. So my book did come out. We did talk a bit about that and how is about to be burzed out into the world. So the book was launched April fourth, twenty twenty two. So it’s been officially out for more than a year now. And it’s my little baby. It’s out in the world doing its thing. I did a bit of a book tour. It was on many podcasts. I also created this live experience called the rating experience where I brought together because when I and I don’t know if I talked about this that day, but when I was called to write the book, I knew it wasn’t just going to be a book, I knew it was something that was multidimensional.
Phoebe Leona: So with the medium of having dance being a primary part of my life and also was part of the book too because I talk about how dance really saved me and was a huge healing modality for me as I was going through all of the trauma and all of the grief throughout my childhood and my adulthood when I was dealing with the loss of my father and my divorce. So I wanted to bring that element to life. So I created this thing called Radian Experience, where it was a book reading essentially, but I was also dancing and I also had a friend who’s palette who brought some of the letters that I write to the emotions. She wrote she read them. Out as a poem as I danced, and we had a painter painting live behind me on a beautiful canvas and a sound healer. Creating a soundscape for everybody to be in that space with me those moments of my childhood, those moments of grief, and my adulthood. So that was a really powerful experience and we’re playing around with what more we can do with that. What else has happened with dear radiant one, my little baby, was nominated for best spiritual memoir by own times. Just recently, which I’m very excited about. Yeah. Very excited about.
Phoebe Leona: Thank you. And like I said, I’m just letting it do its thing. And I did talk a bit about my company, NoMad, which was birth from all of that grief of twenty thirteen when I went through everything. I always let NoMad guide me and I follow the breadcrumbs to where what it wanted to do next. And that’s how I feel with all of my creations, including Dear Radian one of, okay, I gave birth it. I put up my heart and soul into it. And now what does it want to become now that it’s out into this world? So I’m sure there’s going to be maybe another 4.0 version.
Victoria Volk: Guaranteed.
Phoebe Leona: That I have no idea. I have absolutely no idea what that will look like, but I’m that’s why I love what I do because I just lean into that mystery of what it wants to it’s a true co-creation. And I love having that space and that deep trust for the creation to just whisper to me or maybe shout at me if I’m not really listening. To say, okay, this is what needs to happen now. And yeah.
Victoria Volk: Okay. So because you brought up co creation and I hear a lot of intuitive vibes in what you’re talking about. Can you share with people how you tapped into that personally and any advice that you would give to others to who may not be getting the message. And then what is that not getting the message play out like in real life. Right?
Phoebe Leona: Oh, I’m getting massive chills in my body. So this is a very good question, and I think we could dig deep into this. So intuition, everybody’s born with us, this idea of intuition. We have these clear abilities. And clairvoyance is one that I think a lot of people know to be, you know, the mediums or the psychics and they have visions. And we don’t necessarily need to tap into it and identify as a medium or a psychic. But we have these clear abilities, which means that we are able to sense the unseen world and have communication with our souls, desire, our guides, our angels, whatever you wanna identify with. I’m not going to label them for you. You can choose if you align with that or not. But there is some sort of sense. So when you just spoke to me, I got chills in my body. So this is a clearability of clear sentence.
Phoebe Leona: So my physical body is giving me or an emotional body as well was giving me signs like, oh, yes, lean into this. When you do meditations and you and you visualize, right, when somebody guides you through a visualization and you can actually see what your future could look like or where that scenario that person is guiding you to or maybe you just do it on your own. That is you tapping into that clairvoyance. So you can dive in deeper and do some research if this is a new idea too. But when we have these abilities to tapping to the unseen world. This is the tapping on the shoulder. Listen, this might be something here you. This is your yes. This is your no. This is that gut instinct. Right? We have even in our vocabulary of I just knew it in my gut. Right? Or you know
Victoria Volk: Spidey sense.
Phoebe Leona: Spidey sense. Right? We have this nomenclature for it in our worlds. And this is really us tapping into our intuition. Now my personal story with intuition was and I might have spoken about this when we sat down the last time I was super intuitive. I had this ability to sense the energy in my space changing that made me afraid to really use my intuition because what I thought was I was creating the scenarios. So my father being, you know, dealing with his PTSD, he would go into flashbacks, and I would actually sense the energy change when he was triggered. So before he physically acted it out in our worlds, in our reality that we were sharing, I felt it. And so when I felt that energy and then I saw it play out in my physical world, I thought, oh my god, I’m crazy, and this is a curse. So I share that because some people might not have had that dramatic story, but they might have had a conditioning. Right? A lot of times as children, we’re being conditioned to not feel these intuitive spider senses, as you said.
Phoebe Leona: We might feel very emotional because we’re in a situation that is unsafe, but our parents said, oh, that you shouldn’t be acting out right now. You can’t act your fears out or your anxiety out right now, so we had to clamp down on these emotions that are part of our intuition as well as children. So there is that looking at it as possibly that it was a curse or maybe it was just programmed out of you.
Phoebe Leona: And so I think it’s really important to know that it’s not a bad thing if you don’t know how to tap into your intuition. This might just be part of your story. And so if you’re curious to be more intuitive and lean into it, there are ways of getting there. And a lot of the work that I do with the somatic work, if that’s a word that nobody knows out there, it’s really just being in the body, it’s being embodied. Being able to tap into your physical body, the sensations that I said, the emotions that are coming through, not just getting lost in your head because a lot of times in our head. It’s, you know, not really truly in our reality. That’s not really our intuition. The messages that come through intuition are usually down in our heart space. And these messages come through as a very like, whenever I feel them come through, it’s just one word or a short phrase, and it’s usually like a heartbeat or like a metronome, like, yes, yes, you got this, might feel like a mantra to me. It is that gut sense. Right? It is that just you feel it in your body. If it’s all up in your head and it’s, oh, like, the squirrel cut, like, the dog and the squirrel. Like, the dog is just, oh, scroll there. Scroll there. Right? If that’s what your mind is doing or you’re getting on cancer, we’ll have all of these different thoughts. That’s not usually your intuition. Right? That’s you just kind of up there letting,
Victoria Volk: Anxiety.
Phoebe Leona: Anxiety. Yeah. Anxiety.
Victoria Volk: Stress,
Phoebe Leona: Ego, Fear, all of it run the show. So I feel that when we can start to really drop down into just listening not needing to know the answer, and that’s what I think happens a lot is something feels uncomfortable. How do we fix it? Right? Let me look at all the things and let me write out the to do list and let me take a class or look at YouTube or Google it and find, go outside of myself. To find the answer. But when we really can just drop down, take a few breaths, understand again, maybe tap into your clear abilities if you know what they are or work on focusing on how to strengthen those. And listen to what’s coming through, whether it is that visualization or whether it is that feeling in your body or whether it is maybe a sound, maybe there is an audio message that you receive or a sound, like sometimes I have ringing in my ears. So there are a lot of ways to listen to your intuition.
Victoria Volk: Repetitive numbers, signs, those two.
Phoebe Leona: Yeah. Yeah. The Angel numbers I see Angel numbers all the time, like, the seven sevens are always in my world.
Victoria Volk: Actually, I had two podcast episodes, recent ones back to back that were the exact same time. Oh, both episodes. And I’m like, oh my gosh. Did I upload the wrong episode? Yeah.
Phoebe Leona: At the end on that today? Oh,
Victoria Volk: Oh,
Victoria Volk: So how did all of this play into the version of yourself that you’re stepping into now?
Phoene Leona: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: I’ve closed a business. I know I know what that process is like and it’s heart wrenching. Yeah. It’s painfully. It’s a painful awareness because you know how much blood sweat and tears you poured into something.
Phoebe Leona: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: And I’ll just say, from my own perspective, what I’ve come to know is that everything is just a stepping stone.
Phoebe Leona: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: And I didn’t fail in that business. You know, when I closed it, people I know people thought people even asked me, oh, we couldn’t make it or whatever because where I live and what I was charging or what have you and a lot of ego thoughts I had and myself too, but really it was I had to close that door for something else to come in.
Phoebe Leona: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: And I wrote my book, and then I started another business that wasn’t the right business. And I had a one chance off conversation with friend who I was working with, and she’s like, you know, for this one business, for my website. And she’s like, you wrote a book, didn’t you, about grief? I’m like, yeah, why aren’t you helping people in their grief? And I was like, Okay. Captain obvious. Good question. And so it was a question. You know, we can’t see the label from inside the jar, and so that one conversation has landed me talking to you again for a second time. It’s you know, so we have these moments in our lives that are truly transformative. Are what do they call those moments? What do they call it? A moment that changes everything.
Phoebe Leona: Like a pivotal.
Victoria Volk: Like a pivotal
Victoria Volk: Yeah. — pivotal point.
Phoebe Leona: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: So what happened? It’s changed. And how did that come to be?
Phoebe Leona: Yeah. Okay. I feel like I wanna go back again because I didn’t fully answer your other question. So I wanna finish that, which will feed into that. And I also wanna bring other people up to speed because they didn’t talk too much about that part of what shifted for me in terms of nomad. So in terms of the intuition, what you had asked me is, what would it look like if you don’t listen to it? And that leads us into this question really.
Victoria Volk: Right.
Phoebe Leona: It’s basically I like to think of it as this child Right? You’re the mom or the father of a child saying, hey, like, just tapping on your shoulder. Like, hey, I need a little attention here. That’s your intuition going, hey, this might not be the best thing to do or go for it or whatever. And if you’re not listening to it, it gets louder and louder and louder until it’s like full on temper tantrum. So in the external world, that looks like, oh, there’s a challenge. Now we don’t sometimes we go, okay, I’m ready to step into this challenge or I’m going to ignore the challenge. Right? We make our choices there. But if it’s I don’t wanna call it the wrong choice. But if it’s the choice that our intuition is guiding us because it knows. Right? It’s our higher self. It’s our soul. It can see your life from a bird’s eye view, and it kinda comes back down into this reality. And it’s like, oh, that’s a good move. Oh, that’s not a good move. Right? So it’s understanding, learning how to trust it. And so that little child that’s tugging on you is going, go this direction. Go that direction. Right? Because you can see that bird’s eye view. But if you don’t listen to it, yes, more challenges, more obstacles come up, and it turns into that temper tantrum.
Phoebe Leona: So where I am with NoMad, that’s the company that I started because of the year of grief. I wanted to have power back because in that year, January, my father died. March, my husband of fifteen years, said, I wanna end our marriage. That started the domino effect of losing my home, my dog, my physical health was at stake because of all the stress. And then the one thing that was still there that I had was my job that wasn’t filling my soul at all. And it was a choice that I had made because of these other two people that were no longer in my life And so that was the one thing that I said, I wanna have control over this. I want to live in alignment with my soul’s purpose, which was to really create a space for people to have a sense of belonging and purpose. And what are the two things that I did at the time while I hot yoga, that was the modality, and I wanted to travel more. So we started NoMad from this place of wanting to feel empowered in my life again and have these other aspects of myself be, you know, fueled again. So I started a retreat-based business. That’s what NoMad was.
Phoebe Leona: And as I said at the very beginning with Dear Radiant, why don’t I just kind of when I create something, I follow the breadcrumbs. So Nomad has been not just a retreat based business where I taught yoga was the modality, but it’s evolved into another modality that I created, a somatic practice called Movement one o nine, that was one of the bread crumbs. It turned into local community events where we had two hundred people at the summer solstice bring coming together in my Hudson Valley community here in New York, it turned into me leading yoga teacher trainings. It also turned into having to go online when we’ve all went into lockdown and figuring that part of the world out. So it evbed and flowed and morphed and shape-shifted in so many different ways. And I just leaned in and they said, okay, what do you wanna do now, baby? Now when I started it, the other aspect that I wanted in that part was I just had this vision that it was going to be with my partner. Like, didn’t have a partner. But I said, if you build it, he will come.
Phoebe Leona: And he did it. I mean, I had a couple of relationships that it could have potentially turned into that, but they all fell apart. Because I was still going through my own grief am I, you know, recovering from my trauma. So a lot of those relationships as beautiful as they were, they triggered a lot, and they got me to evolve further by leaving them and then doing the inner work.
Phoebe Leona: So here I am almost ten years, I guess it’s we’ll be celebrating nine years this year of NoMad, still no partner, letting it kind of morph into things, but I’ve also taken all these other branches, like Movement one o nine, like my book, Dear Radiant One, which can fit under the umbrella of NoMad, but I was noticing that my community was under the umbrella of just NoMad was getting smaller and smaller. And I just could’ve, like, you know, like, square peg triangle or whatever that scene is, a square peg, round hole, whatever. I was just like, oh, no. Just oh, this is all, NoMad. But now I think that there’s something within what I’ve created there and I don’t quite know what it is yet. I don’t know if it’s a book.
I don’t know if it’s Movement one o nine. It might be a combination of both. It might be something completely new. I said in the I think I said in the email that you read. I’m sort of mushy. I’m in the chrysalis. So I’m just letting it morph into what it wants to become right now. But I am also grieving. Right? Here we are talking about our grieving hearts. I’m grieving because it is my baby. I put my hot blood, sweat, love, heart, soul, tears into it. And I’m kind of like, was that a waste of time? And it isn’t. Yeah. Absolutely not. And I really resonate with what you were saying about other people saying, you didn’t make it or you failed. And I don’t feel that. I feel I feel frustrated because I want Nomad to I want I see no I always see my creations as little babies. I’m like, I want my baby to see this world and really be the vision that we had together. So I’m letting go of that idea of NoMad might not get to do the things that we had envisioned together. So yeah. I’m hearing I’m getting a little teary. I didn’t show up. But I do have a deep sense of trust that something else is being born, and I just I have absolutely no idea what it is. And I have a feeling just sitting here talking to you right now, Victoria, that magic is happening.
Victoria Volk: I got full body goosebumps like I if you could see my chicken zips right now.
Phoebe Leona: You’re chicken. I love it. Yeah. I mean, it might just be and I invite this for anybody out there listening. It might just be that you would you just spark something within me hearing your words. That an idea will come out whether it’s just I walk away from that and go, oh, actually, there’s some insight that I hadn’t seen yet. You’re a mirror for me. It might be that you and I are gonna get off of this and go, oh, wait, what about this and this and this and we collaborate or you connect me with somebody or there might be somebody listening here and go don’t let Nomad, go to bed. I love what you’re doing. Did they reach out to me or somebody else, you know, is inspired by our conversation and they go make a big life shift? Right? It doesn’t have to be related directly to me. It might be that somebody out there listening is going, oh, I’m going to listen to my intuition and yes, I need to leave that romantic relationship or that job or maybe it’s time for me to take the leap and make that new step into what I most desire. So who knows what universe is doing right now as you and I are speaking.
Victori Volk: We’re cocreating magic.
Phoebe Leona: Yeah. We’re cocreating magic right now, and the magic happens within the grief. Mhmm. It has to,
Victoria Volk: and I think because of it.
Phoebe Leona: Yeah. Yeah. I just got chills again.
Victoria Volk: Let’s just talk this out then.
Phoebe Leona: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: So what was the dream or is the dream that you had for so long? When you started NoMad?
Phoebe Leona: It was it was providing a space for people who were making transitions in their life. Because I had just gone through and was still going through it. Right? That year of grief, that year of great loss, that year of stepping into the unknown. And as I was doing it, a lot of people were applauding me saying, wow, you made a huge leap.
Phoebe Leona: And I didn’t see it as that. I saw it as, wow, I just got jot down. And I’m taking this one little thing where I might have some power and I was claiming it back. And I didn’t see myself as any sort of hero and that I was just trying to survive, but people were applauding me in that sense of wow, I wish I could do something like that. And I thought, you can, why not? You know, it came sick in nature to me, but I also know that that came from a lot of, you know, I know you had a similar childhood like having to deal with so much chaos. Chaos. Exactly that you don’t know that you didn’t know you don’t realize you had a choice. Right? It’s just like, yeah. This is just what my phase. You just keep going and roll with the punches. So when I started to see that something that came somewhat second nature to me doesn’t come for other people, I thought, well, what if I provide a space what if I take them out of their ordinary life, bring them to a retreats, yes, they get to see somewhere beautiful and you know, have beautiful food and make connections and see parts of the world that maybe they never had seen before, but also see parts of themselves that they had never seen before and tap into this new not a new version I shouldn’t say that, but this version of themselves that they hadn’t really tapped into in this reality or maybe this time and space. Right? Maybe they knew that was a part of them and they lost it along the way. But tap back into that and say you do have the power. If you’re in a toxic relationship, you have the power to leave it. If you are not living in alignment with your soul’s purse purpose. You can leave the job or you can make a big move, you know, physically across the world or whatever it is. It might also be really small and subtle but it changes your whole internal landscape. So that was the vision. And like I said, when you and I say this a lot of my teaching when you know your why, when you’re so aligned with your purpose. The Whats? Doesn’t matter. So, yeah, use the what of the retreats, but the “why” that creating space for people to have that greater sense of belonging so that they could make those transitions in their life was my why and has it has been my heartbeat these whole years since then. And so, yeah, the what is wants to be something new right now, and don’t know what that is.
Victoria Volk: You missed a question though.
Phoebe Leona: How how how how in terms of what how what
Victoria Volk: How do you envision it looking?
Phoebe Leona: Well, I think that’s where maybe that’s a good thing or maybe it’s a bad thing. I don’t have, like, specific visions of how I want it to look. I envision it as this is why I’m showing up in the world. And I trust that universal provide the how and the what. And maybe that is my downfall. And maybe you’re giving me some insight as to get clear focus, baby?
Victoria Volk: Because this is the thing. It’s like we’re always co-creating or always manifesting, but the universe doesn’t know what to manifest or co-create or bring to you. Yes. You’re not clear on the how.
Phoebe Leona: Yeah. Yeah. Story of my life, I think, Victoria.
Victoria Volk: Well, here’s the thing. So, like, I mean, I’m not intending to turn this into, like, some sort of, like, coaching session or anything.
Phoebe Leona: No. I love I get pre therapy today?
Victoria Volk: Here’s the things. When I think of you and when I think about everything that you’ve talked about and shared with me, in the audience, I feel like you’re a very grounding presence for people. Right? So, like, when people are around you and you have these retreats, feel like you are very grounding for them.
Phoebe Leona: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: But Phoebe grounded, how do you fly? Who encourages you and who is the person or what is it, what elements in your life are not, some people need accountability Some people just need a cheerleader. Some people need someone to challenge them. So I think so often too, like, especially helpers they have a hard time asking for help. Mhmm. And so am I am I nailing
Phoebe Leona: Oh, for sure.
Phoebe Leona: Oh, yeah. We got this. Yeah. And I mean, I know you want there was an aspect that you and I talked before, we press record that we’re gonna go to right now is this idea of love in my life. And That has been a huge game changer for me because, yes, going through so much chaos in my childhood alone, I did not know how to ask for help. And going through it again in twenty thirteen, it was the universe going, you need to ask for help Phoebe. And I did. I had to lean in to my family. I had to lean in to some people even strangers because I went to live in Costa Rica for a period of time and didn’t fluently speak Spanish, so I had to rely on strangers to help me. So it’s been a lesson the last nine years of ass asking for help, but still what you just saw, what you just reflected back of the ground in this, that was me going, I need to survive. I need to be really grounded here and not only because I’m a helper, like you said, and on hold space for other people, but I need to provide that for myself. And it was a little bit of survival mode. Right? Or a lot of survival mode. It was just holding on for dear life of okay. Gotta get my shit together.
Victoria Volk: Sols. Can I ask you? Yeah. They don’t mean to interject, but I just because so, like, it feels like because I know for me too, like, I had this grip or this hold. Right? On something, like, this is my identity. Right? Like, this is my identity. This is who I am. This is, you know, what who am I without this?
Phoebe Leona: Yes.
Victoria Volk: Do you feel like the only way to find out if that is where you want to continue to go as if just letting it go, like, backing away for a time.
Phoebe Leona: Yeah. I’m I think I’m in that, that’s why I’m in the chrysalis because it’s the that’s that mushy part. Right? When you’re in the crystal, well, from the little caterpillars in the chrysalis. Maybe we’re in the chrysalis too right now, who knows? But when we’re physically in that idea of the chrysalis, you become mushy. Right? You so you have to have that deep surrender, but at some point, right, when it’s making that shift to become the butterfly, there is the resistance. Mhmm. Like, it has to press out to create the wings. So there is this play between the deep surrender and that resistance of becoming the something new. And that’s really where I’m at right now of letting go of that identity. No man was my identity. For, you know, almost nine years now. And it is letting that go but there’s a there has to be a bit of resistance of like, okay. Well, how do you wanna see the next vision, right, and create that? And so that is, I’m not taking it as a cop out, but I am they I’m figuring out what the how is
Victoria Volk: The “How” that’s where we came back to is the “how”.
Phoebe Leona: Is the how because I’m kind of like, well, I was this for, you know, nine years. That’s all I knew to a certain extent because I was so had the death grip. Like, of Nomad and even though it’s letting it up and flow, but there was this has to survive because it was me proving to the world that I can do this I survived that horrible year and look what came from it, and I’m gonna use it. And you universe is telling me, like, you’re good. You’re so alive. You got this. You don’t have to just be in survival note mode now. You can actually thrive and spread your wings and fly. But I’m not quite there yet because I’m thinking, well, what is that gonna look like? And I guess maybe I’ll find out because the butterfly is not looking, maybe it is, and the, like, wings, like, oh, look at those colors. I’m not sure. Bright and then it just flies and it’s like, oh, okay. I’m crying. So I’m in that exploring process and there’s a little bit of playing with ideas, but also not being attached to them right now and seeing what what comes out of it. But I do wanna answer a little bit more, go a little deeper into this idea of the partner because I did have this vision of my partner is going to come in. But I had somewhat rules and regulation of what he was going to look like and be like because he was going to play a large role in my business, in my vision of them. And it’s really interesting because I’ve been completely single for six years now. Here I am doing my thing. I’m writing a book. I’m doing no mood or a pandemic. I’m still standing. And there were just all these challenges that came. Right? Everybody, I’m not saying I’m not doing a woe’s knee. Everybody has been gone through letting go of the old normal, right, going into that lockdown. There was a deep sense of grief during that period and letting go of your old identities, get letting go of old relationships, jobs, whatever. So I was in that at that time too and trying to figure out what NoMad wanted to be. And like I said, though, that was really when I was doing the square peg round hole and figuring out, well, let’s try to do online. You know, programs or membership or, you know, one on ones. And I was just, like, figuring out what it wasn’t. It just didn’t translate in the way of really being in person with people. And so, you know, the finances were not coming in, I was not receiving the abundance that made it not only thriving but not sustainable. I invested a lot in my book. You know, I did a hybrid publishing, which I am grateful for. I have really love the team of Grace Point, but it was a huge investment that I probably didn’t have, but I just going, it’s gonna pay off. It’s gonna pay off. And because I believe in myself and I even this morning, I was crying about that, my eyes are probably still a little puffy. And here I am about the the brink of letting go of my business and possibly declaring bankruptcy from putting my heart and soul in finances into it and steps in literally out of nowhere this man who just I met him and he’s my person. Like, there’s no doubt about it. And it’s it’s really quite beautiful how it happened because it somebody matched us up who I’ve known for twenty years and she’s known him his entire life since she was five years old. And just out of the blue said, hey, you two should meet. And it’s really quite beautiful.
Phoebe Leona: So I think that I did manifest the how of Nomad, but it also wants to become something completely new and different. And so maybe he’s stepping in because he does have a lot of similarities in terms of strengths that I don’t have that could really be a beautiful combination of what I envisioned originally. He even came to me with this vision that I didn’t put into his head. He said, I think we should do retreats together down the line. We need to do this. So it might turn into Nomad 2.0 after we reestablish our personal relationship and build that business or it might be that we need to co-create something completely new together. I’m not sure yet. And this is the first time I’m, like, publicly talking about this.
Victoria Volk: Well, I got my chicken zits again when you were talking about it. So it feels like truth to me.
Phoebe Leona: Yeah. Yeah. It’s kind of wild. So
Victoria Volk: Is that crazy? I mean, just sit just for a moment. Like, just I mean, we don’t do this enough. Like, just really reflect back. Like, life is crazy. Like, you just cannot anticipate the amazingness that can happen. Right? We don’t It’s like you will you think when you’re in the thick of the icky? The thick of the neck. And you’re in the thick of the neck. You can’t even fathom that there can be brighter days ahead. Yeah. You know, I had a client, one of my first clients, actually, after they became certified as a grief specialist, his life has just exploded. I worked with him for a time. He went through grief recovery with me and stuff. And, you know, at the time, like, his he was struggling in relationships and trying to get his business going and he’s a designer. He does — Mhmm.
Victoria Volk: Now he’s into purses. He designs purses. Ended up on the red carpet. He’s, like, on the own network, the Detroit oh, love in Detroit or something like that? Remember the show. It’s a reality show. Like, it’s just crazy. How his life has just exploded. And he said in a post, he said something to the effect of, imagine living each day. You think today is the best day. But imagine if even tomorrow is better. Like, you have no idea. Yeah. Like live like tomorrow is gonna be even better.
Phoebe Leona: I love that. I’m I think this episode is called full-bodied chills.
Victoria Volk: Oh, yeah. That’s good.
Phoebe Leona: Because I just kept getting chills as you’re speaking about this.
Victoria Volk: Okay. Well, there is a true crime podcast called Full Body Chills.
Phoebe Leona: Okay.
Phoebe Leona: You might have to call you know what? Yeah.
Phoebe Leona: Play around with that because you and I just keep balancing our what did you call chicken zips? Chicken zips.
Victoria Volk Yeah. Chicken zips of truth.
Phoebe Leona: Oh, sure.
Victoria Volk: People would be like, chicken zips of truth. Why? I gotta listen to that one. Yeah. Maybe that’s a go.
Phoebe Leona: There we go. That’ll stop them in their tracks.
Victoria Volk: So what I hear is that you are very curious and excited about not knowing what’s to come in a way. Yeah. And yet surrendering to the how and just letting it unfold. But yet, at the same time, this is where I think, you know, you are a very grown in presence and maybe this gentleman that it’s come into your life, like who’s kind of been under your nose. Right? Like, because he was with the he was he’s a friend of a friend. Mhmm. Had you met him before?
Phoebe Leona: No. Never lived with me. We have so she was a Pilates client of mine here twenty years ago, and I knew her socially too. She even came to my wedding. So I had been to a couple of her parties, and so we have looked back and said, were you at that party? Were you at the upper end? We don’t quite know yet because of this so long ago. But, yes, very much under under each other’s nose. But we weren’t ready yet. And that’s something that I wanna speak into too is
Victoria Volk: Yes. Please.
Phoebe Leona: When when you are ready, the universe makes it so clear and says, get this is it. This is you’re ready now. Right? Here you go. Like, your client. Your client had to go through all of that grief and he was trying, he was showing up and doing his work. Like, ugh. And then all of a sudden, it just clicked. And now his purses on red carpets. And I swear I truly believe in that. And I’ve I have seen that in my own personal life. I’ve seen that evidence in the external world and everybody else in other people’s lives that when it’s meant to be for you, you cannot mess it up. It is just there. And that’s how I felt for this relationship. It was just we were not ready for each other and we’ve had many conversations because he’s done a lot of work on himself if he’s done, you know, he’s a life coaches while he wrote a book too. And it’s even funny when we see that our books, our covers, our same coloring, like, same kind of branding, very similar format. He shares a lot of his own childhood trauma and, yeah, maybe a guest for you, by the way. But yeah.
Phoebe Leona: So it’s just so funny because we’re laughing at each other. Like, we’ve been walking side by side but just weren’t we weren’t ready for each other yet. We weren’t ready for the relationship that we both want wanted for so many years, but we weren’t emotionally ready for it yet. We had to recover through the trauma to a certain extent and our own grief so that we could be ready. Right? He if I had met him six years ago when I had my last relationship, he would have been triggering all my traumas right and left, and I would have said goodbye, just like I did to the other two, man. And so I had to do this in our work for it to show up. And I say that because it doesn’t have to be a romantic relationship. It’s whatever you desire right now. It will show up when you have to do the work, though. That kinda like, it’s that balance of the doing and the being. Right? Because I think that in our world, we get too much in one direction. It’s the very western world of just do do do and have the strategy and check the things off the list. And, yeah, if you hustle and hustle, I played that game for so long and so many things didn’t happen in that world for me because I wasn’t allowing there that to be that surrender into that being. But on the flip side of that, if we’re just, you know, love attraction, I believe in it. I truly believe in it. But if you just do that and kinda lean back and not do any of the work, the thing isn’t really going to be truly yours. I mean, you might see it but if you’re not actually showing up and doing the inner work, going through your grief, going through recovering from your trauma, whatever it is that’s your karma and your dharma. Right? Karma is the lessons we enter into this world and the dharma as you shifted into your purpose. If you’re not actually playing with those two, yeah, those things might come on your radar and you might not see really truly see them or they might just float on by because they’re not you’re not aligned with them yet. So it is that play of the doing and the being?
Victoria Volk: You said something, and I’m gonna say, I’m I had a client, she asked me, Everyone else says you have to do the work. I’d get so annoyed when I’d hear that. Do the work. You gotta do the work. Well, what’s the work? And after she went through a group recovery with me, she’s like, I get it now. This is the work. Like, this is the work. So in your mind, what is the work?
Phoebe Leona: That’s a good question. For me, it’s awareness. I really truly believe awareness is the transformation. Now awareness can look different for people. So awareness might be that you need to be aware of your three d reality? Like, what is actually physically happening in your relationship? Or what is happening in your bank account? Or what is happening in this toxic situation at your job? Right? But also, it’s awareness of what’s happening in your mind, what’s happening in your physical body. How can you listen again to the spidey sense. Right? When you’re in those external relationships with the world and your body’s going, uh-uh, right, you have to bring your awareness to that so that you tap into that intuition. That’s really what I see the work is just being able to listen So it’s kind of funny that to do the work is actually sitting back and listening. That’s step one is that listening and the awareness, but then there is the, okay, now I need to take action from that place. Right? So maybe I do need to get a job that’s going to help you pay the bills or maybe I do need to leave that relationship or maybe we need to go see a relationship therapist. Or whatever it is, it’s actually taking the action and doing the work physically doing the work. And then there is the surrender., of okay, letting go and saying this isn’t working or I deeply trust that it is working, but I don’t see that. Evidence yet. Right? So that’s level three, step three of the work. I’m sure there are others, but those are the three that I feel are necessary in everything as I just talking off the cuff.
Victoria Volk: I love it.
Phoebe Leona: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: I love it. I love this conversation. And I wanna give you an opportunity. To share anything else that you would like to share?
Phoebe Leona: Let me think. I feel we should yeah. Let’s talk a little bit more about grief because that is your podcast. Mhmm. And to know if somebody is out there right now who is grieving a relationship or grieving possibly the loss of their own business or whoever they are right now to allow yourself to simply be in that chrysalis. Allow yourself to get mushy. Allow yourself to I love what you at you pressed me to do is imagine the how or the what or the whatever it is that drives you. Right? It could be the how, it could be the why, it could be the what. But whatever it is that’s gonna just be your heartbeat for a little while. Right? If you’re in that grief space and you don’t know what is to come, find some sort of heartbeat for you that’s gonna get you up every morning and really build a relationship with physical support in your life Right? It might be one person, it might be a community, but then also what has really been a huge piece for me is trusting the divine, the universe, God, guides, angels. Whatever it is that you resonate with whatever word resonates with you and energy that resonates with you in that end unseen world because there is and energy. There are many energies around us that we don’t see and maybe not feel, but they are here and they are on our side and they are flying high above us, seeing a bird’s eye view. And I was in a session, if I don’t mind if you don’t mind me sharing really quickly I was in a, like, a call with some a group yesterday, and you probably have heard this. And I feel like, actually, now I’m saying that you might have even spoken about it, but the idea of the two footprints, two sets of footprints talking to God and saying God, why weren’t you there for me? There were times that I only saw one footprint and I was walking in a long loan, and God said that was because I was carrying you.
Victoria Volk: It’s a footprints in the sand. It’s actually
Phoebe Leona: Footprints in the sand. Yeah. And I just wanna remind everybody because that’s something that I needed to remember for myself is when we’re going through those moments of grief. There is someone carrying us even in those deepest darkest moments, in those mushy moments, in those messy moments. There is something here for us and to just deeply trust and find a way to build that relationship to trust again.
Victoria Volk: And someone is caring. Mhmm. And I think that’s what a lot of people forget. It’s like there are people that care you just have to allow yourself to be cared for.
Phoebe Leona: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Oh, that’s a hard one for us, helpers.
Victoria Volk: True. Yeah. It is. What a beautiful way to tie up this episode, I think. Where can people find you now if they’d like to reach out to you and connect with you?
Phoebe leona: That is an interesting question, Victoria. I’m not sure where I’m going. Social media, I’ll just say first of all, social media I’m on Instagram it’s my name @phoebeleona.love and Facebook. And then I do have my website, so I would say right now, they could go to phoebeleona.com that’s where you can generally see what I’m physically doing in the world. Then I have my thenomadcollective.org and Movement 109. Those are also websites, but they’re all linked together. Who knows if they’ll be there in a couple of months? Maybe they got, you know, floated away. Maybe they’re coming back in a bigger way. We don’t know yet. But if you find my name Phoebe Leona, you’ll find what’s happening now. And I think that’s a great way to, like, What is that girl doing? Let’s see.
Victoria Volk: We might have a Where are they now? Three. Yeah. Maybe in a year.
Phoebe Leona: Yeah. Yeah. And I just wanna acknowledge you too because, you know, what you just said of being cared for is you did respond to that it was, you know, somewhat desperate email of, like, I don’t know what’s happening guys. Let’s see. And you were one of, you know, a few that responded immediately and I saw that you cared, and I know that you care so deeply for the people that you help. And the listeners that you show up for. So I just I wanna take a moment to acknowledge that. So thank you.
Victoria Volk: Thank you. Sometimes I need that reminder too, and I’m looking at her clothes. Yeah. Yeah. Since this is my labor of love, For sure.
Phoebe Leona: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: But it’s been a great joy. And that’s why I continue doing it. You know, it doesn’t put food on my table, but it fills my heart. It’s my soul food.
Phoebe Leona: Mhmm. Exactly.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. Find your soul food people. Find your soul food.
Phoebe Leona: Yes.
Victoria Volk: Alright. Well, thank you so much for joining me again. On kind of short notice, like, this was like, hey, wanna come back? Yeah. Let’s do it. Alright. I love that.
Phoebe Leona: You know, we had to do it while it was still mushy because, yeah, it wouldn’t have been that exciting if I was. Everything’s fine now. You know, hindsight.
Victoria Volk: I mean, that’s the beautiful thing behind you. Right? But when you’re in the thick of the ick. Right? The thick of the ick. And it’s not it it doesn’t have to be it doesn’t have to be this negative bad energy. Right? That we like, this drudge of it certainly, it doesn’t feel good. Yeah. But with for all the reasons that you said, it’s like lean into the awareness. How is this making me feel? What do I wanna see for myself in the future? What do I want for my life? Yeah. You know, these deeper questions that we are so afraid to ask ourselves Yeah. You know, one of my favorite segments on Saturday Night Live was deep thoughts by Jack Handy.
Phoebe Leona: Oh, yeah.
Victoria Volk: I mean, I was, like, ten, eleven, twelve, you know. Oh, wow. Because I’m aging myself now. This is when Saturday nightlife was, like, really good. But Yeah. But yeah.
Will Ferrell, deep thoughts by Jack Handy.
Phoebe Leona: Was it I don’t think it was Will Ferrell. It was before Will Ferrell’s time. It was because I actually met him in a certain week already. No. It was before Will Farrell.
It was oh my god. I know who it is, but he’s not in my brain right now.
Victoria Volk: I thought it was the same guy that was played Bob Ross.
Phoebe Leona: It was Al Franklin.
Victoria Volk: Oh, yeah. Are you sure?
Phoebe Leona: Now that I said, and I’m afraid I am wrong, but hold on, Okay. We’re good we’re gonna fact-check.
Victoria Volk: I’m you know, I have a saying, like, with my friends. I’m like, I’m gonna get a t-shirt that says, Google that shit.
Phoebe Leona: Yeah. I think it was before Will Ferrell’s time. And I do feel I see his face. And Al Franklin was on Saturday Night Live? Yes.
Victoria Volk: Phil Hartman.
Phoebe Leona: Phil Hartman. What’s? Okay we both we both lost
Victoria Volk: Wait. No. Deep okay. Well, Jack Handy was an actual person. Learn something new today.
Phoebe Leona: That makes sense.
Phoebe Leona: Yeah. Yeah.
Phoebe Leona: So they made affirmations before is, like, a big thing in our world at which I thought those.
Victoria Volk: Okay. It looks like I have to do some writing.
Phoebe Leona: You’re gonna have to fact-check and do a follow-up for the listeners here.
Victoria Volk: I see a connection between Phil Hartman and that’s segment, but I can’t like, I would have to do some reading. Yeah. Anyway, I will find it. Anyway, I digress. Have a beautiful rest of your day, and listeners, thank you for tuning in. And I hope this episode was helpful. And if it was, I hope you share it or leave a review, five stars if you feel so inclined. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life, much love.
