Contact us:

Cami Thelander: www.bearfootyogi.com

The Confident Grief Coach School: www.healingfamilygrief.com

In this episode, in honor of World Cancer Day on February 4, 2024, we are talking about our own experiences of having a loved one diagnosed and die from cancer. We chat about the journey starting with anticipatory grief and leading into a new phase of grief when our person takes his/her last breath.  If you like what you have heard and it resonates for you - please hit the "like"  and "subscribe" button so you can stay connected with us for future episodes!  To chat with Cami about her Embodied Grief Support Coaching - please head on over to her website: www.bearfootyogi.com to view her services and send her an email at: [email protected] or give her a call at 651.322.0300!  If you are interested in learning more about becoming a certified grief coach - sign up for a time to chat with Pat about becoming a confident grief coach: https://bit.ly/GriefCoachChat  Download Pat's free ebook, "The Confident Grief Coach: A Guide For Helping Clients Process Loss" here: theconfidentgriefcoach.com

Contact us:

Cami Thelander: www.bearfootyogi.com

The Confident Grief Coach School: www.healingfamilygrief.com

Welcome to the NEW Confident Grief Coach Show hosted by Pat Sheveland, Founder of the International Academy for Grief and the Confident Grief Coach School and Cami Thelander, Founder of Grief Embodiment Coaching. 

Contact us:

Cami Thelander: www.bearfootyogi.com

The Confident Grief Coach School: www.healingfamilygrief.com

In this episode, our guest is Cami Thelander who is a passionate grief coach whose mission is to provide “embodied grief support” for those who are grieving. Cami experience deep loss at a young age.

Her story is profound yet not uncommon – her grief accumulated over the years until she had the deep realization that she was holding her grief within her body. Her journey brought her to where she is today – an advanced certified grief coach who incorporates feeling into the grief physically in addition to emotionally.

Cami Thelander is a Bachelor of Science, Advanced Certified Grief Coach, Certified Yoga Instructor, Death Doula, and Craniosacral Therapy Practitioner dedicated to holding space for grief and loss. She has created a unique approach to grief that she calls Embodied Grief Support, which combines Grief Coaching, Craniosacral Therapy, and mindfulness practices for a body-centered, whole-person approach to healing from loss.

Grief activates the body stress response and can cause a variety of physical symptoms including fatigue, brain fog, body aches and pains, and compromises the immune system. Embodied Grief Support addresses the physical and emotional impacts of stress, provides a safe space to process grief, and offers techniques to self- regulate the nervous system to cope with waves of grief.

Cami also offers virtual Grief Coaching sessions and online yoga classes for accessible grief support.  You can learn more about Cami and her offerings at www.bearfootyogi.com, or you can reach her by email: [email protected] or phone: (651) 322-0300.

#griefsupport #griefcoach

Shownotes:

Hi.There. I am really excited to have my next guest. She actually is a colleague. I'm working with me and the rest of us at the International Academy for Grief, Tammy Thelander. Iwant to welcome Cammy. I just want to let everybody know a little bit about you before we dive right in and have a great conversation about all things grief.

Yay. I always love to talk. About grief. Thanks, Friend.

Don't we? We're those people. Yeah. Cammi has her Bachelor's of Science. She is a certified grief coach. She's actually an advanced certified grief coach, a certified yoga instructor. She is a death doula and a cranial sacral therapy practitioner. So she's really well-rounded when it comes to all things, body, emotions, connecting, all of that. And she is dedicated to holding the space for grief and loss. She has created a unique approach to grief that she calls, I love this, Embodied Grief Support, which combines grief coaching, her cranial sacral therapy, and mindfulness practices for a body-centered, whole-person approach to healing from loss. Grief activates the body's stress response and can cause a variety of physical symptoms, including fatigue, brain fog. I mean, all of us have experienced some grief. We've had this. Body aches and pains and compromises the immune system. Tammy's embodied grief support addresses the physical and the emotional aspects of stress, provides a safe space to process grief, and offers techniques to help self-regulate the nervous system in order to cope with waves of grief. She offers virtual grief coaching sessions and online yoga classes for accessible grief support in addition to people that are local to her. She lives in Minnesota with some of her other cranial sacral therapy, and someday I'm going to have you be doing that for me. I'll have Cammi's information in our show notes, but right now we're just going to dive in and have a great conversation. Okay, so welcome again.

Thank you. Yeah, it was just like taking all that in from the introduction was honestly really cool. I don't often hear other people introducing me like that, and just to really let it sink in like, This is what I do. I can make out the world. I had a little proud moment for myself there. Actually doing the grief work feels really proud.

Well, and it just sit in that accomplishment. When we have gone through it... And, Cammi, are you going to talk a little bit about the certification programs. But one of the things, how we start in the certification programs is we start doing a little breathe exercise because the coaching model is the breathe coaching model for grief. But then we go around the room and say, who will you today? Who are you? Not what you did, but who are you? And it's so cool when you can just sit in that and just go, wow, I'm doing good. I've got some great stuff going on inside of me and who I be. Well, thank you for being here. I guess my first question to you is you've done so much and the Death doula and the cranial sacral and all of that type of thing. What's your why? Why did you start really diving into all of this?

Well, I think all of these things found me. As I just kept going with my life in my own grief, I was seeking my own healing and stumbled upon all of these different modalities that I didn't even know were helping me in my grief. I started with essential oils, and that was really connecting with plants and allowing the healing medicine of plants to help calm me down from when I would have a big grief wave and not know how to handle it. It was like all of a sudden I just started finding all of these things that were supportive for me. So it just expanded into these modalities and cranial psychotherapy being the biggest one that was the most transformational for at my point in my life when I found cranial psychotherapy and I literally stumbled into it. And then from there, I just kept finding things that felt more and more aligned. I was in school for cranial psychotherapy, and a student there had told me that she was going to be starting a death doula training. That was the first time that I heard about that. I was like, Are you serious? That's a job? You can get paid to be with people while they die? Yes, please. I want to be that person. It just kept unfolding. That's how I found you and the Grief Coach School as well was just these happenstances that just me being open and receptive to what was next for me led me to all of these different things that would support me in my journey and then, of course, be supportive for other people as well once I got the hang of it.

Wow, that's amazing. And it is. I think that people will say to me, Well, that's got to be really hard. And why do you do what you do? And it's like, I didn't choose to be working in grief. Grief chose me from the time that I was a little girl. So if you're willing to just share, when did you really step into that world of grief? How old are you? And what were the circumstances of that?

Yeah, my grief started from a young age. I feel like I grew up on grief in some levels. My parents had a rocky relationship that I witnessed at home with them growing up, and they divorced when I was nine. There was just some conflict and separation that was happening in the household. And around that time as well, we lost our home before closure. Right away, there were some non-death losses and grief that I was experiencing just within the household. Not long after my parents divorced, my dad was diagnosed with ALS. Then I was 10 years old and spent the next year watching my dad slowly die. The disease actually progressed pretty quickly. Als can draw out for many years, but his was just about a year long. I was with him, seeing him on weekends, going to his house on weekends before he was too sick to be in hospice. I watched the disease slowly take him. That was really hard being 11. I was with him bedside when he passed as well. I remember that day being so chaotic. It was just like there was no communication as far as how this transition should go.

It was super rushed. I remember being very confused, being 11 years old, like what's happening? All of a sudden, I'm here now and walked into the room. It was literally as soon as we got there, he was hanging on for us. It was like, as soon as we got there, he was gone. That just felt crazy, chaotic, and hard to process being 11. Later, I realized that there was a lot of the confusion of it was because the adults were trying to protect me being a kid and were not sharing a lot of information with me about what was happening in that created conflict with processing my grief during that time. And then while all of that was happening, my mom met her boyfriend at the time, and eventually they got married. I had this new family that I was being opened up to while my dad was sick and dying. So that was interesting to have a whole new family and a new father figure to support me through all of this. I really did open up to him. His name was Greg, and my mom married him knowing that he had prostate cancer.

A good portion of my time with him was spent just knowing with this fear in the back of my head that this person could very much be another temporary father figure in my life. Although I opened up to him and embraced him as my new dad or this role of a dad in my life, I only had about seven years with him. He ended up passing from prostate cancer. I was 15 years old. He was at home. His death, compared to my dad's death—I was there at bedside with him too—was totally different. He had the good death that you could say of surrounded by family. They had the communication ahead of time as far as how he wanted it to go, what prayers to be read, what songs to be played, all of that good stuff. I saw a contrast with the dying process with both of my dads. That's partially what made me so interested in being a death doula, is being there for that process. I was 15 years old and had just gone through all that and really just wanted to be a kid. I didn't want to be thinking about this a stuff, but my role had been upgraded now to the oldest daughter.

I was taking care of my sister who was younger and cleaning the house, grocery shopping, doing stuff like that because my mom had just lost her husband. She was destroyed. We were all destroyed. I just picked up that responsibility. I just did what I needed to do and focused on school and went to college eventually. Next thing I know, I'm in college and I'm struggling with all kinds of issues like depression and anxiety and panic attacks. I developed an eating disorder. I had a lot of other physical symptoms that were happening in my body. I realized that all of these symptoms were because I was running away from my grief. I had no idea how to process that. It was like, right after Greg died, I just jumped into this sense of responsibility and doing, doing, doing, action, go, go, go. Just need to get through school, just need to get to college. Then when I finally got to college, I was like, Whoa, removed from the house and in a new city. I had moved away and went to college. I just started really realizing what just happened. I just felt like my life just sped through since I was nine, really all the way up to being 18 or 19 going to college.

That's really when I started to realize that I needed to figure out how to deal with grief. But I had no idea where to start. I saw my school counselor. There was a counselor there that you could go to for free. I started seeing her and eventually got on some medications to help with the anxiety and the depression. And things were not getting better. If anything, things were getting worse because I was still living all of these tendencies and habits that I had developed in order to keep me away from actually going deep into what I needed to face, which was, of course, the pain of my grief and all the losses that I had just experienced. So it took me a few more years after that until I really, I would say, hit my rock bottom with just physically and mentally feeling so ill and just getting worse and worse. I remember deciding that I needed to do something about my stress and went to a yoga class. I was in this yoga class and I was laying in Shivassana at the end of class, and I was balling my eyes out. I was like, Holy crap.

All of a sudden, my body just took that little piece of rest and just started dumping out all these things that I had been shoving in there for so long.

That's tsunami of grief, right? Yes.

Wow. Yeah, it just flooded over me and started to move. I realized, Wow, I got to do more of this because that was intense. I feel better. I feel better after crying and moving and breathing and connecting with myself and feeling all the things that I had been running away from. So that's really I remember that moment was like, okay, I'm going to start exploring more of this. And that just snowballed into supplements and herbs to help with anxiety and depression, essential oils, and that eventually just snowballed into energy medicine and food as medicine and body work and yoga. So that was all happening while I was in college studying biology and playing outside.

Wow. And it was just like, Well, that was an epiphany moment. It's like all of a sudden you realize your body just finally said to you, Enough is enough. We need to really deal with this. And oftentimes it takes that a moment of, Now what do I do? And you actually had the wisdom to say, okay, I need to explore. I need to explore what are all these different things so that you can touch your body and that's the whole embodiment, right? We try to show that the emotions, and if you go back to ancient Chinese philosophy and the Five elements, which goes back thousands and thousands and thousands of years, they learned that how emotions really impact our physical bodies. The worrying, the stress, taking over, like misresponsibility as a kid.

Yeah.

I need to be responsible. I got to clean the house. I got to help raise my little sister. I've got to take care of mom and protect mom. All of those things go right into the gut issues and all of that. The grief into the lungs and all of that type of thing. So all of these things just really start showing up. And so eating disorder is not uncommon.

Yeah.

Now depression, that's where the grief depression all settles in our lung energy. And so once we can start releasing that and unblocking those energy areas through healthy ways of dealing with it, movement, breathing, meditation, all of that. It's just like things shift so dramatically.

Yeah, absolutely. Luckily, I had had a background learning about holistic healthcare because when Greg was sick with prostate cancer, we explored a lot of those healing modalities for him. I had been introduced to a lot of those things from a young age, so it was natural for me to want to explore those things because I knew from that, from the symptoms in my body that there was something else internally that needed to be put into balance again. But I had assumed that it was like, Oh, well, maybe it's my food, maybe it's an allergy, maybe it's all of these things that were outside of myself. I was still focusing externally, trying to find a solution because I was still not ready to go inward until finally I was ready. And I was like, Okay, here we go. Let's dive deep. Let's go in. And then all of those things were especially supportive, but they weren't effective unless I started that inward journey. And that's the piece that's the hard part that none of us really know where to start with because it's just...Yeah.It's a world of fear that we're stepping into with facing our grief and all the pain that we're holding on to.

Well, and if you look at your story, I mean, you think about the layering and layering and layering upon layers of various grief. So it's the death of, well, it's watching someone... The anticipatory grief of a chronic illness, but wasn't so chronic because your dad's was very fast. Then the loss of the safety of a home, that's a big grief when all of a sudden that's gone. Then you get into another relationship where you really are connecting. Then another physical loss, again, anticipatory grief on top of that. Your mom's got layered grief, grieving for you girls, you're grieving for your mom, seeing how devastating this was for her. You're grieving for your sister. We almost forget about our own grief because we're so busy taking care of everybody else and wanting to fix it and make it that way. So all of that, and then going away and then just getting away from the safety of family. There's an intentional abandonment there, but there's so much abandonment that you've experienced, too, that wasn't like you're being thrown away, but it was like, all of a sudden, these people are not in your lives or this situation is not in your life anymore.

And abandonment, to me, is a huge piece of a grief journey, and we have to do some really deep work to get our arms around that and then get to a point where we can reframe it into a way that palatable that we can live with.

Right. And slowing down enough to recognize that those things are coming up too. Like even just talking about abandonment, I noticed a lot of those challenges coming up in relationship with men later in my life. It's like if I wasn't aware of that deep belief from my inner child about this feeling of being abandoned, I was not aware of that for many years, and it caused so many issues for me. Even now it's coming up again with grief in this holiday season with my partner now. It's like, I'm calling it out and I'm holding it, and I'm cradling it and I'm giving space for these feelings. And by growing that awareness is allowing me to reframe that belief and to keep healing that inner child wound that does still feel abandoned on the inside.

Because the grief never goes away. Right. Part of in the course that we do in the Confident Grief Coach is we lean into Mary Francis O'Connor's work, The Grieving Brain. And I love how she talks about this is grief will always be here within us. The grief doesn't go away because it's a loss. But the way that we're grieving the action, the is what really changes over time. And the more resilient we get, or sometimes it actually escalates a little bit more because the more layering or something's going to trip us up, like the abandonment, like you said. And so then that's where how are we dealing with those pieces? So yeah, amazing. So part of what we wanted to talk about today is the Confident Grief Coach school and creating some awareness. Tammy is actually full disclosure, is working with me and a couple of others who I lean into as the leadership of the International Academy for Grief and to help really support me in ways that we don't have all the skills of everything. And so she really is our engagement leader. She's the queen of engagement. She is so honest and embracing. You've started a Facebook group for grievers, and that is. Called what?

The Embodied Grief Support Group.

Yeah. And so you grew that in a very short period of time. I think I just saw there was... You have quite a few members now in a very short period of time.

Yeah, I think I started it just this summer, so three or four months ago, and I think we just reached 850-ish members. So there is a need.

There is a need, right. Yeah. And so Cammi is getting out there and sharing some of her wisdom and that type of thing and creating a space for people who are grieving. And she's also working with our team to help create a space because we want to encourage and invite people who are helping the grievers to have a safe space to come together to collaborate to support one another. Because holding the space of grief for other people, we do it, and it's not like we carry it around because we've learned tools of not carrying around other people's grief, but it still is you need to be healthy and keeping ourselves together. And also we may have clients that we might be questioning or struggling like something's just not working here. And so this would be an opportunity for people to connect it and just be in community. That's really what it is. That's Cammi's initiatives. Her own grief coaching practice where she has done beautifully, and then also helping me to stand up through the International Academy for Grief that we actually have a community for the people who are the grief supporters and the providers of services.

Yeah, I was just going to compliment that because I think it's so awesome that we're here creating the space for, for one, encouraging more grief support providers to go out into the world by, of course, your training grief coaches to go out and support the grievers because we need more of that. But then also to have this mastermind and to have these resources and this community and this nourishment for the people that are supporting others in their grief is just like so special to me because, of course, we know being our own entrepreneurs and business owners and all those things, it's tough. It's really tough doing this in the world and the fact that it's grief-related and oftentimes there's heavy emotions and traumas that come up. We need to lean on other people. This just feels like such the perfect environment to have that safe space to make sure that the work that we're doing is in our honest, authentic alignment of supporting people in the best of our ability. And in order to do that, we really do need a mastermind in the community for us holding that space. I'm just excited that this is growing.

Me too. I'm so excited. 2024 is just like... We've just started working on some of this. We're in the infancy stages of it, but we know that in 2024, it's just going to get stronger and stronger. So you went through the Confident Grief Coach. I don't even know when you graduated from that. It's been a while. And then took some time, and then you decided, I want to raise my hand to go into the advanced grief coaching program that we have, which we just stood up last year to really help people so that they want to be certified through the International Coaching Federation. So you were in our first class. And I remember watching... There was five of you in that first class and having known all of you very well from being in the Confident Grief Coach because we spent a lot of time in community there, in our practicums every week, getting to know each other, a lot of coaching between the students, that type of thing. But there was such an amazing energy, up-leveling. And so what made you decide that, you know what? I want to up-level even more. I want to take that on.

I think for me, after going through the grief program, I was very certain that this is my calling and this is what I needed to do. And of course, all of my other pieces of my background, everything was just coming together. So I knew that this was like, I needed to be the best that I could possibly be as far as a grief coach. I remember starting the Confident Grief Coach program, and it was the first or second session or something, and you had asked me to coach you. I was like, Are you serious? I don't know how to do any of this. I was just so nervous and freaking out a little bit. I remember graduating from that feeling a little bit more confident of like, Okay, well, I feel like I can do this now. But I still was not like... I knew that I had a lot of growth ahead of me still as far as being the best that I could possibly be, because I really want to make sure... Of course, it's such a sensitive topic supporting people in grief. I wanted to make sure that I'm doing it to the best of my ability.

That was really like when you had offered that the advanced course like, Yes, sign me up. I want to continue to be the best coach possible. I had already gained a lot of confidence in that first program. But this waslike really just an opportunity to nail in all the skills that we had learned and to practice more and more and to gain more feedback and to really understand the coaching model and what it means to be a good coach. So that was so helpful for me, just with my confidence in going out there and supporting clients in the world. Like, no, I actually know what I'm doing. There's a structure to it. I have this practice and these skills and this support, and I feel good about showing up for people in this way. I think I did need that extra course and that extra certification to gain that confidence and that up-leveling, like you said, of like, Here I am, world. I was ready to hold space for the grievers in a different way than already the confidence that the first program had provided me with.

Yeah, truly the coaching skills, which is what we really focus on, is true coaching skills as defined by the International Coaching Federation and the core competencies there. Because for me, I've been involved in that and been a certified through ICF for a long time, many years. I just knew that there's some credibility and the whole, what do I want to say, strength behind the program and ensuring that we're really helping our clients. They're creative, resourceful, and whole, and we're helping them to really tap into all that they are that they may not see at the time. The results are pretty amazing. I know from my own practice and having been doing this for well over a decade specifically for grief, talk to me a little bit about what you've seen in your own clients and some of the transformation that you've seen by them going through your program.

That's my favorite part. It's like by the time we reached that last session with a client and were able to reflect on their progress and to retake the numbers of the emotional barometer and the life engagement scale, I'm very straight up with them about like, How do you feel now with your ability to navigate your grief going off into the world? Because I don't want to leave someone hanging if they still feel like they are needing support. And so far, with the handful of clients that I've worked with, we get to that end session and they're like, No, I feel great. I feel like I have the tools and the skills that I need to be able to take care of myself moving forward. I know what to do when these things come up. I know who I can turn to. They just have that solid framework of being able to support themselves. When before, they may have been partaking in self-destructive behaviors and creating a lot of imbalance in relationships and a lot of other challenges that were coming through in their life. So to just get to that end session with the client and to just reflect and celebrate the program, and then to hear about their confidence with being able to go off and to handle their own grief in their life.

Just like, That's my goal. I don't want you to lean on me forever. Now you go up and learn how to do this in your life because you'll have to do it for the rest of your life. That's really like, I love that last session because it's just a reflection of all the progress that they have really created for themselves. That's different for everybody, so that always lights me up.

I always said I wish that I had a time-lapse camera where you could start seeing them when they first come and they're scared, they're nervous. It's like, Oh, my gosh, what did I sign up for in this grief coaching program? And the tears are falling and just feeling so vulnerable. And then you watch them over the course of an eight-week, ten-week period, however long you do it, and you just see them continually just growing and confident and laughing and allowing their grief to really co-exist with all the joy and the hope of I can continue on this life and I can have a really good life. Right? Yeah. That's just amazing. So when people come into the program, the way it is right now is I feel very strongly that people have to interview with me before enrolling and being accepted into the program. And that's usually a two-way street. I want to make sure that people can feel aligned with the energy I have and the energy my teachers have, that type of thing. But also to make sure that they're ready for this because I don't want someone to come into the program and not be ready.

But the other thing about the confidence grief coach, our initial program is I always say it's a two for one because I expect the students to go through the breathe coaching model for grief and be coached on that throughout our time together during the certification program because we all have a grief. If we haven't, then we've been living in a bubble, I'm sure, some type of grief that's there. This is a way to explore that and help really learn and integrate the tools that we're sharing with our clients when we go out into the world. And so they get that plus they get the breathe coaching model for grief. I've taken that. And for you, it's like I'm bringing in some other embodiment support. I'm using this program, but I'm also bringing in my special sauce, which we want everybody to authentically be as grief coaches out there. You don't all want to be Pat. I have my own way of doing things, but to create that special sauce thing that's really going to help authentically with your own clients. What are some of the benefits just in the overall program that you walked away with? I have two questions. What are some of the benefits? You talked a little bit about that, but just having gone through a program where you became certified, where you really invested into it, time, money, energy. Then what's been the return on investment just by going through that program? Because for all programs, it costs money to go in because we have to keep the doors open and the lights on and continually add in more into our programs. There is an investment in it. But what has been the return for you personally?

I think for that first piece, just touching on just going through the program and the benefits of receiving the program and experiencing the breathe model as someone who experiences grief and going through my own process while also learning how to share this with others. I would say that alone covered the return on investment energetically and emotionally and just from a heart-centered space of just processing my grief and learning tools for showing up for myself in my grief process. So just alone going through the program was a big shift for me in my grief process, even having that... At that time, it was like 13 years after my dad died. I had plenty of time, but there's always more to feel back and explore. I love this model because no matter where you're at, you're able to benefit from all the tools with the breathe model. That alone was a big enough return on investment as far as being a part of the program and experiencing it and learning it. I would say the biggest thing that comes up is this feeling of hope, this light, this path forward that sometimes gets so foggy when we're in grief.

I think this program is laid out perfectly to start where you're at and then to open up to this idea of hope and vision and this life that you really want to create that's still very much holding your grief and your loss and remembering your person. Just to incorporate that into my life and to have more honoring practices for my dads and my grief was really super beneficial for me. As far as the return on investments, of course, being able to guide other people through this and to be able to receive money in return for that as well, I mean, that paid off, I think, within two clients. It didn't take long, honestly. Now I've just signed my seventh client and I have another interest for a number eight in January. So it really doesn't take long. And I haven't even... I mean, it's only been just over a year since I graduated the Confident Grief Coach school. So within a year, I've already tripled my investment or a three times return on investment. So that feels really good. It feels like the energetic return of it is so much greater than the monetary piece of it.

And of course, we need that piece as far as being able to support this work consistently in the world and receive that, the return as well. But it's really like I would say, the benefits really are, of course, for anyone who does support people in grief and can see that progress of the clients and can see the hope and the light and that vision of this new life that just creates a total shift in someone's whole life. That alone is worth the whole program.

Yeah. And of course, I feel the same way, but I helped develop the program, so it's always nice to hear that from someone else. And oftentimes, and I think all of us have had to do our own work on asking for money from people who grieve. This is one of these places where it's not like you have a program that people are used to buying, that type of thing. We all go through this deep reflection into how do I do this without feeling like I'm taking advantage of someone who is in grief? You and I had a recent conversation about the charging factor. We have to have a financial... These are our businesses, so we have to have a financial remuneration from that, right? We need to be able to do that to keep our lights on and our doors open. But yet there's a lot of, and I'm getting bombarded with them lately, of offers like, let's build your high ticket item and your six-figure, your five-figure item, and we can get you there in no time. And it's like that's not what we're about in the grief space. There's no way that we're going to go and ask someone to pay exorbitant amounts of money to be able to support themselves.

And I think honestly, how most people I don't tell people how to charge because you bring your own special sauce and other things into it. But in reality, if we take a look at, I don't think that we want to really exchange dollars for hours, which is a typical model. We're really here to help people, help them transform their lives. And so it really is about the outcome of it. But if you did do exchange dollars for hours, it's really not extraordinary. You would be paying your therapist that, you would be paying your chiropractor that, you'd be paying your acupuncturists. It's not like it's like, Well, this is way too much money. And for people that are listening to this, if you're considering grief coaching, there is that piece of it is to take a look at what is it that you're really looking for? What's the worth to you to feel like you could continue moving down a path where you can have happiness and hope and even joy and a sense of purpose that you may not have right now in your grief, because that's what you'll get when you're connecting with the Cami's of the world who have been trained to do this, and to get all of that in a 10-week program and all the tools and resources and that type of thing.

Like Cammi said, she doesn't want people to be coming every week for the rest of their lives because we're all about empowerment. And that's why the confidence and grief coach, that's an energy. Confidence is an energy. And we want to flow that confidence to our clients.

I love that. And it's so hard to measure that worth. I've been struggling with, what do I charge for this program? I've had some business coaches that are like, Well, look at this transformation that you're providing people. You should be charging way more because look at all this change that you're helping someone with. And it's like, yes, however, that's not going to do any good if nobody can afford it. So being able to just really make this accessible for people is important to me, and I think that can go into how you structure your program as well. So yeah, there's a lot to consider with that stuff. But the transformation is just the abundance and the energetic wealth that you're receiving from going through something like that is, I think, you can't put a price tag on it.

Right. And it's how much you put in. I'm going to be totally honest here too, as I've had people like... It's just like, it's just like, oh, I'm not going to make any money at coaching or having this a model. And it's like, but yes, you will. But the bottom line is you have to put yourself out there. So you and I and our team, we're going to be creating more services so that we can really help people that are graduates of the program to stand up their businesses. I give a lot of that information. Everything that I use in my business, I give to you all to use so that you can get set up so you don't have to invest all kinds of money into websites and this thing and that thing that you can really just start helping people with that. But as we go into 2024, we're going to have more great tools and resources and classes and different things like that, so we can really help the people who are supporting the griefed because that's what we're all about. The vision for the International Academy for Grief is one that came to me in my mind about a month or two after my mom died, and it was to provide accessible and transformative healing for grieving families throughout the world.

But we have to start in our own backyard. We have to start there and to make it accessible. That may be financially, it may be partnering with people. It's just there's a wide variety of how we can do that. We just wanted to share that with all of you today, too. Cami, I'm going to give you information. How do they connect with you?

Well, I do have a website that has a lot of information on the other things that I do, like my embodies approach to grief and the cranial psychotherapy and how I incorporate yoga and that stuff. So my business is called barefootyoggy, bearliketheanimal. So barefootyoggy. Com is my website, and that will have all kinds of information on how to contact me and reach me from there. And then also my Facebook group, the Embodied Grief Support group is obviously a free resource, and you get a lot of me sharing all these tools and resources and connecting and engaging from there too. I encourage people to check that out as well.

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, my dear. I'll be seeing you soon, of course, but just hang on. And thank you, everybody, who is listening to this. We are honored that you've taken a listen, and we really are here and excited to expand how we can support others to support people in their grief. Bye.

Thanks, Pat. Bye.

Contact us:

Cami Thelander: www.bearfootyogi.com

The Confident Grief Coach School: www.healingfamilygrief.com

Shownotes:

Thank you for joining us back here for our series on adoption, Where Grief and Gratitude Co-exist. This series of interviews has been created to share the many faces of adoption to bring not only awareness, but I'm hoping some sense of community and support for those of you who are chosen as an adoptee, for those of you who have opened your hearts to love a child who needed a home, and for those of you who are interested in getting more involved by supporting those who have the lived experience that my guests have lived. I hope you enjoy the episode, and if you do, please hit the like and subscribe button so you can help us continue to do what we have been doing over here in the Healing Family Grief community.

Healing Family Grief. As a reminder, we will be holding a live panel discussion event on Sunday, November fifth at eight o'clock, US Eastern time, where you could join us to ask questions, hear more from our panel, and also learn how you can get support if you are struggling with grief due to adoption, or if you would like to learn how to become a coach to support those struggling with adoption grief. I'll have the link in the show notes. In our final recorded interview, we are talking with Leah Sheveland. Leah's story is pretty extraordinary given the circumstances of her birth.

And the fact that she was abandoned as a little tiny 1.2-pound infant in a Dropbox in Calcutta, India. Lea's story is different than the others in this series because she truly has no way of finding out about her biological family. We discussed how not having that ability probably shaped how she has never had that extraordinary, deep yearning to learn where she came from or the culture of her birth country.

Doing this interview actually spurned a new desire within her. Now she's been talking to me about We should create a coaching program through our Healing Family Grief platform that is a tailored for adoption. So give it a listen. I hope you enjoy the show. And if you're interested in getting onto our panel discussion, please check the notes below and there will be a link to sign up. Talk to you soon.

Hello, everybody. I am so excited because I have someone special. This is the last of our series of four interviews that I'm doing regarding Adoption, Where Grief and Gratitude Co-Exist. Today, I am interviewing my bonus daughter. I have lots of bonus daughters. Leah is one that I spend a lot of time with, live with her and the kids. My son is gone a lot, so I spend a lot of time actually in their home, in the mother-in-law suite and hanging out. Leah has a great story of adoption, different than everybody else that we've talked about. But again, my family is just immersed in adoption with lots of different stories. And so Leah is going to share a little bit about her story, and I'm just going to ask her some questions along. Hi, Leah.

Hey. Good to see you again, and welcome to everybody.

Yeah. So if you would, could you just gives us, as much as you feel comfortable, a little bit about your adoption story?

Sure. We're going to date ourselves here. I am 41 years old. So my story is 40 years old, but it actually started in the late '70s. My mother was engaged to somebody from Europe, and they had planned on starting a family living in the US. He was here going to school and they worked together. Then all of a sudden, his only sibling committed suicide and he decided he needed to go back to Germany to be with his parents. She was at the time already 30 and found herself single and decided there wasn't going to be a lot of time to find somebody else and start a family, and a family was something she really wanted. She explored lots of different options, and at the time, single women, and especially that had crossed the line to their 30s were not really what the US considered adoption worthy parents. They really wanted moms and dads. They really wanted younger folks, just things that she didn't qualify for. So she had had some friends who were in a similar boat and decided that they would look at international adoption. She started some of the research to find an agency and all those things through Children's Home, which still today exists in the US for replacing American children.

But they had some connections with some international adoption agencies, one of them being International Mission of Hope, who was founded in Vietnam in the 1970s and expanded to India in, I think, '77 is what I heard, but started by an American who she was to a doctor. She was very well to do here in this country. They decided to move their family over to Vietnam to start this because there was a lot of Vietnamese children in the '70s that were looking for homes and then expanded to India. Right around the time, Mother Teresa started her adoption agency, any others out of there because again, there was so many children waiting and orphaned. She started the process of putting in a referral doing just like you do in the US. You have to get a physical, you have to submit your financial records, all these things to show that you could really feasibly take a child. If those of you that are old enough might remember this, those of you that aren't, there was a baby selling scandal that came up against Indian adoption in the late '70s, which shut adoption down for a couple of years.

There was a lot of controversy around was there baby selling, were people making money and profit off poor people's misfortune, things like that. She thought, Well, I don't know if this is the thing, but there's not really anything else. We'll just wait it out. By the time that was over, she was 35 years old, 1981. It started up again and there was adoptions both from Korea and India through IMH. She would put her name back on the list. How this list worked was basically the next baby that came in, if it was your number, it was yours. It was a referral system. You put your name on the list. Think of it like taking a ticket from a driver's license counter. When your number is called, you come up and that's your kid. You don't get to choose, you don't get to put in special requests for children as they come and as the next person is waiting. She went back on the list. In 1982, she got a call that I was born and that I was hers. She was thrilled, absolutely thrilled. She had finally gotten her family on board. My grandma was one of those that maybe didn't like a lot of change in her life, had this idea of what her family was going to look like, found herself as an older mother.

She had my aunt at 40, so she was used to being older, but still thought it would look something like a picture perfect life. At the same time that I was born, my aunt married a man from Turkey who had dreadlocks and dark skin and all this. Between the two, my grandma was like, What in the world is going on with this family? But it all worked out wonderfully, and she got my name. All two moved here from Turkey in '82 as well, so we joke that we both came at the same time, but he aged much worse than me. That said, it was beginning of a different look in our family. They are all blonde hair, blue eyes, Scandinavian and German background. All of a sudden, all two and I come and we change what the look of this family and then from there on, grandkids and everything would look like. That was it's an exciting thing. But back to my story in India, and especially in the '80s again, there was a caste system, and it was very much considered if you did something that you shouldn't have, you got kicked out of your caste, which would change your economic future, your social future, all those things.

At the time, many women who found themselves pregnant out of wedlock would either seek abortions or put their babies up for adoption. Calcutta is still today one of the poorest cities in the world, but again, at that time was extremely poor, dirty, people were dying in streets. I have heard stories that are just disgusting. In fact, all those stories have made me never want to go back to visit. But that said, they had these things called adoption drop boxes, and think of it like a library card or book return where you just open the door, conveyor belt comes, you put your book on and it goes back into the library. This was you put your baby on it and it goes into this home that was started by this Cherie who started International Mission of Hope. It was a hospital. They called it a nursing home, but a hospital that took in orphan to children or abandoned children were cared for by US doctors. There were also some Europeans there, I think. Then when they were strong enough, they were sent home via Northwest Airlines at the time to their family. I was born, they think, actually probably a late-stage abortion gone wrong because I was born very early, so I weighed a little over a pound.

Probably would not have made it if my mom had not accepted that referral, but anyway, was dropped. We guess, I don't think you'd live that much longer, so probably the birthday is right, but we guess at a time or anything else because my birth certificate does say abandoned child. The way adoptions work, unfortunately, until it's a legal adoption in the US, your health insurance does not cover said to be child. My mom had to pay out of pocket for all of the care that I was going to need to be able to get strong enough, which by their standards was six pounds to be able to take the flight from India to the US. Most babies did that within a couple of weeks and came home around a month. I was much closer to the five-month mark, but she didn't even think twice. It was like, Absolutely, that's my kid, I'll pay for it. It was wonderful that she did that. Then three years later, she repeated the process and I got a sister, not biological, but from the same orphanage, and her family was then made of the two of us. She never did marry.

She dated much later in life, but never did marry. That was her family. Because her marriage fell through and then because she decided to really look at how she could grow her family outside the typical means that we ended up a family. It's a very great story. She always used to say, You may not have grown under my heart, but you grew in my heart. Because she would get updates every day above one day, my heart stopped. So she got an update. Do you still want to resuscitate and do this and that and whatever? I got pneumonia. Do you still want to treat that? It's very expensive. It requires one-on-one care. She was getting updates regularly. There was times where she could have thrown the towel and then said, I'll take the next available, but she did not. It was a whole different a lot of people pray to get pregnant or have kids. She prayed that this would and it would work and it would be a healthy child, and then same with my sister, three years later.

It's funny. Leah and I met after her mom had passed when she started going out with my son. And when I heard her story, I said, Oh, my gosh. I just know that Mother Teresa held you somewhere she got to that orphanage and she held you because you should not have made it to where you are and be the brightest and such an accomplished woman and health-wise and darn decent health. And you said that your mother used to say the same thing.

She did. She always swore that Mother Teresa… And it was interesting because Mother Teresa had her own agency going in Calcutta at the same time, but they would wander, as I hear it, wander the streets looking for babies that didn't get lucky enough to be put on the conveyor belt and maybe they put them on themselves. But they were looking for these abandoned children in the streets of Calcutta to make sure that part of Mother Teresa's whole journey was to save lives and to really help India. And so she would walk the streets and my mom swears that she's the one who found me in some dark alley and put it on the conveyor belt and probably not hers because it was too far away and this small infant was not going to live.

Yeah.

See hers. But she does swear that that's the only reason I was around

And I feel the same way I always have from the moment that I met you. You came into this family then three years later, your sister came into this family, very different. You and your sister are very different people, that type of thing. I had some challenges there in terms of education and being able to, what do I say, learning challenges and that type of thing. You didn't, your sister did. So your mom had to spend a lot of time with your sister from that perspective. And you got very close with your nanny and pops, your grandparents, the one who was like, Oh, my gosh, what's happening to our family? So great to you. What would you say when you look over your life have been the challenges of being adopted and being brought over? Are there any that you say and what might those be?

So it's interesting because I've heard the story again about nanny, we'll lovingly call her nanny. And a quick funny story there is the maternal grandmother in India is called nanny. And my grandma never wanted to be Grandma Johnson because grandma Johnson already existed and was not the nicest woman in the world. So she, being her first grandchild, hoped and prayed that I would not come up with grandma Johnson, and on my own, I came up with nanny. So she was in love right away, but obviously that probably sealed the deal. And if you ask anybody, she used to call it her bookends, but my cousin Anthony, who was the last and I was the first of five of them, were by far her favorites, and she didn't even try to hide it. She would just very openly had favorites. And it's funny because she was so against in the beginning this idea and whatever that I would end up being her favorite. And maybe it's first, maybe it's that we spent a lot of time together. I'm not quite sure. But some people would see that as a challenge. It was never a challenge for me because we bonded as if I was her blood-related grandchild.

But other people were not always so accepting. People with little kids are fairly blunt in what they say because it's black and white. Well, you don't look like so and so. Well, correct, I don't. I do have a picture here. This is my mom. You can see the blonde hair, blue eyes, and then you can see the dark skin that I have. It was very obvious growing up. It wasn't one of those where you look like your family. You could pretend a little bit longer or keep the secret a little bit longer. It was well-known. But would ask and I would just say, Well, that is my mom. Well, that's not your real mom. Well, to me it was. I didn't even really know what that meant, so I would just say, Well, yes, it is. My mom would never discount that I was adopted, but never say there was someone else out there either. We were real family. I had a little bit of that, but I also was lucky enough that everybody that I came in contact with early in life was very accepting. The person who did my daycare one of the days my grandma couldn't have a daughter my age and we're still very good friends today and raising our kids as friends.

My cousins have always been extremely close to me and never saw a difference. Like I said, two of them are half-Turkish, so they look not American either as little kids. There's been people who have asked, but we never lie about the issue. I was adopted. And so it hasn't really faced… It hasn't made any challenges for me that haven't been easy to face. I think that's where the difference between me and my sister is that she was maybe not as strong of a personality, not to be mean, but not as intelligent. So she took some of those comments as personal insults, and at a very young age already started to question, Why do I not look like you? Why do I not fit in? So and so says this. You could see that it really started to eat at her and eventually turned into many teenage problems and eventually running away and drugs and all those kinds of things. But it was because she couldn't really wrap her head around the fact that she was given up for adoption and what happened to my real parents, why she didn't have a dad growing up. That was tougher for her than for me.

I was like, Oh, whatever. Then really just fitting in. I think she always felt like she really didn't fit in. I never felt that because I was so close to my grandma, so close to my mom. I had a close-knit group of friends. High school was easy because I went to a big school where there was a lot of people to meet up with and join sports teams with. I have never pictured myself as different, so that's probably why those challenges were not as huge to me as they are to other people.

And it could go all the way back, like when I interviewed my cousin, Barb, even in the epigenetics or the relinquishment, the abandonment, that type of thing. Her situation could have been so much more different than you, and being how tiny and non-viable you were, but then you were cared for and you were cared deeply for because they had to in order to have you survive, where it could have been a whole different situation for your sister, which we know can impact. And there's a lot of trauma-informed, therapeutic approaches now that I know that they're using for adoptions and that type of thing.

Which I think is wonderful because those didn't exist 20 years ago or 30 years ago when she was that age and probably could have benefited from some of that. My mom did try to find psychologists and things like that, but international adoption really got popular about 10 years after me when we started doing international adoptions with China. And even Russia was a big thing in the '90s, so it really got more popular. But back in the '80s, there just was not a lot of that yet. Especially being in Minnesota, fairly white communities, it was obvious if you didn't look like a lot of the people around you and there just wasn't a lot of, to your point, resources for help. Some people did struggle. I just never really thought of myself as different.

So.

They kid on I'm the blondest Indian when I got my job at 20 years ago now because there were a lot of Indian developers there who were culturally Indian and they ate the food and they spoke the language and they would all go to dinner every day and they would never ask me. I was like, Why? They never asked me. They would ask some of my friends who were not Indian but were friends with them. I finally said, Derek, why do they never ask me to go to dinner? He was like, Well, they're afraid of you because they call you the blonde Indian. They don't know how to accept somebody who looks like you but is not like them. I'm like, Oh, okay.

Interesting. Interesting.

Yeah. I've just always identified, to be honest, as white.

Yeah. It's not a dis on your cultural aspects, but it's just that this is all that you know, is that you grew up in this Scandinavian heritage- Catholic family. -family. I think we can probably surmise from what we just talked about. The gifts are your life. You were loved deeply given all the opportunities that had you not been given that you most likely would not have survived. When you're talking 40 years ago, a 1.2-pound baby in the streets of Calcutta, and yes, they had medical care and that type of thing, but even in Western medicine here, a lot of those children would not survive at that age or have really significant health challenges and all of that where you really don't.

No, it's been amazing. I have friends who have had premature babies in this country and they have problems with their eyes. It's one of the biggest things with the eyes or the lungs. I guess as a younger child, I got pneumonia fairly often, but I think that's pretty much… I don't get all that often anymore. I still don't wear glasses at 41. A lot of the things that they say premies have challenges with have never impacted me. I do credit that to probably the one-on-one care that was given and obviously great good care because it is a third world country today yet. Definitely, 40 years ago was not advanced at all.

I'm thinking about this, and you and I have talked… Leah and I talk a lot. We spend evenings just solving- Wrapping things up. -solving all the world problems and watching Netflix. But defining you as who you are today, what would you say because of your birth story, your adoption story, how has that defined you as a woman, 40-year-old woman today?

The funny part is I actually don't think it defined me. I do not think of it as a defining moment. However you come into this world, hopefully it is to a loving family. Not always, though. You are who you are, I think. Some of that is your personality, God chose to give you. Some of it is nature versus nurture first. Nurture plays into it, but I have never been defined by it. It is a fact, right? I was adopted. I did not look like my family. It really has not defined me. I think the struggle has been not knowing some of the background, so there is no health information. We did not come with health information because obviously you were abandoned, so you didn't have that anyway. Some of the things that if you have historical information you can plan for, you can, from a medical perspective, have tests run or check as potential issues down the road we don't have. I think that's been a little bit more of a challenge just because you don't really know what you might be predisposed to have. You don't know necessarily what to plan for. But I don't think that there have been any huge challenges in my life.

I was able to be educated to your point and find jobs fairly easily. In fact, maybe the color of my skin has helped in some of that. Obviously, it just to me has not been a defining moment. It has been more of a part of my story, and I'm proud of it. I'm proud of the fact that I was adopted. I don't think of my mother as anything less than my mother. I've never thought of her as like adopted mom or a second mom or anything like that. It's the mom that I had. Unfortunately, she didn't live as long as I would have liked, but it was exactly the story that it was meant to be. I did not say that I have a lot of challenges from it or it hasn't defined me in a bad way at all.

What I see just knowing you is probably the biggest thing was when you're going to have your first baby, and it was like, Am I going to be able to connect with this child? Because I've never had that. I don't have that psychological, emotional, maternal. I don't have any of that. And am I going to be able to love this child because I don't have... I had it from my mom and the family, but that was one of your questions. And so tell us what having... You're now going on your third child coming soon, but what has that done for you and changed even in the way that I don't even know if it's a thinking or in your heart. What has changed you?

Absolutely. That's a great question. It is true what Pat was saying. I was always under the assumption that maternal instinct was something that you just were born with, and maybe because I wasn't attached right away to my mother, so the whole idea of breastfeeding and anything like that was not part of my life, maybe I missed that because I didn't even want children. For the longest time, it was not on my radar. A career was on my radar, making money was on my radar. Anything around success was on my radar, but having children was nothing I really ever wanted. I felt like maybe I didn't have that maternal instinct. Maybe it wasn't something that I was called to do really. Even after we got married, I was 36 when we got married, and it wasn't necessarily a thing that I even thought would be possible because of my age. I am much smaller in stature, so I have been told it may have been harder to carry a baby, all these things. I thought, Well, if it happens, great. If not, that is not a big deal to me. I'm not going to cry over not having a child.

Then we did have one miscarriage and thought, Well, it's just not supposed to be. I didn't even try and ended up pregnant with Grace. I will tell you that I didn't think I could ever love something as much as I loved Grace. I mean, that child, and I think partially, and I tried to explain this once to my husband, who can be a little bit less nurturing than I sometimes would like, I said, I think it's partly because it's the only person in the world I am related to that I know. I did the whole ancestry, DNA thing. It came back with no results. I've never been genetically the same or related to anybody. Then here's this baby, and she was perfect. She was the most adorable, still is an adorable child. And it changed me inside. Something that I can't even tell you because I didn't think I wanted children. I didn't think I'd be a grader. I didn't really necessarily want two or three or however many God will let us have. But once I saw Grace, it was like, not only is she related to me, but I made this. This little thing is mine, and it's not just that she had no health problems.

There was nothing. My pregnancy was easy with her. I had a C-section because of my size, but it was very easy and I recovered quickly. She's just been like my little sidekick forever, my little buddy. To this day, I still sleep with her because of that. But she literally is probably the closest thing I have to perfect. She's perfect, and she's just perfect, and she's just to me. There was no way I couldn't love her. All those worries that I had, all those thoughts of, Oh, will I be able to do it? Well, do I have the DNA to be able to do this? Absolutely. It just comes to you. I think most moms will tell you that you don't understand that love until you have your own child. But it is absolutely true that it changes you completely. Then once I had Grace, it was like, Well, if we get pregnant again and I was approaching 40, it'll happen and it'll be great. It was. Laney was equally as wonderful, a little bit more of a complex pregnancy, but just you couldn't have asked for better. Then surprisingly, at 41, here I am pregnant again, and this is the easiest of all of them so far, so I'm sure it's going to be an adorable little boy.

But now I don't worry at all because it's just like you will find a way to do what you do. I think that's a mother. I don't think that has anything to do with how you got your baby because my mom obviously didn't carry but felt the call and was a great mother. Everybody, his kids, like I said, I hear they are changed forever by those children. You see it more in moms than dads because dads don't have that old carrying for nine months and all of that. I think it is really just an instinct that once you see that baby, you're bound to it. But it has been just a miraculous thing for me because of the whole I'm actually related to two people on this earth now, soon to be three. Funny thing there is for a long time, Grace did not like me. She actually looked a lot more like Trevor. She is still very fair-skinned. They all are light brown hair. In fact, it's almost turning golden blonde. People would not necessarily peg me as her mother. Even one time I was picking her up as an infant from daycare, and you fingerprint in so you don't have to stop and talk to anyone.

You get in, you get their car seats. I have the car seat. I go into the infant room to pick her up. All of a sudden, this door is locked and this person staring at me. I'm like, Huh? Pretty soon the director of the facility walks in, goes over to the person, What's wrong? Somebody's trying to steal Grace. She looks, she goes, No, that's Grace's mother. I must not have done pick-up enough times to be on this person's radar. But it offended me. Actually, I have to say it was offensive because I grew up not looking like my mom, and no one ever questioned it. I suppose, partly the times we didn't have locking doors and all that, but no one ever questioned that I was 10 Shades Daugther and my hair was black and everything else. Then here it is my own child, and you're questioning whether I should be walking out the door with her. But it has really just almost brought my family completely other. I wish my family was here. Like I said, my mom's gone, my grandparents are gone. So all of the people that I wish could have met Grace are not here, but I know they're seeing her from above, and they would just be thrilled because it finally brought full circle.

I came into their life for a reason. Grace came into mine, and now it's this perfect circle of love.

Yeah, and that's really what it's all about. It really is about the act of love, the emotion of love, the energy of love. As you said, your mother, absolutely, her heart was blown wide open with you and your sister, and that there was never a question that she was not your mother. I think you really are one of the fortunate ones. I don't know, maybe you're questioning of you did the ancestor DNA, nothing came back. But it's like you're pretty pragmatic about that. Maybe that is because you just know there's no way for me to ever know, so I need to accept the fact that this is my family. This is my family. I can't be searching where a lot of people really are looking to search. They do. A lot of the people that I have interviewed on this discussion have that.

I think the one thing you brought up, and it probably has defined me and maybe not the best day in the world either, but I look at life very black and white. There is not a lot of emotion in anything. I don't get real happy about a lot of things. I don't get real sad about a lot of things. It's just in the middle. There's not a lot of gray. It should either be this way or this way. That goes for how you clean your house versus how you raise your kid. To me, there's just not a lot of gray in anything or emotion in anything. Some people have often said you never seem that thrilled and you never seem that sad, or you don't cry about these events and you don't… I can't explain that to you because I do feel things. It's not that I'm one of those people that has a mental condition where they don't feel things, but it never really goes that deep. It's like, okay, so now you're faced with this. What are you going to do? For me, it's like figure out the best way to move on, what's the most reasonable, pragmatic, logical way to move on, and you don't dwell on things.

Some people would call that callous or emotionally scarred or whatever, but it just was… I think even when my mom died, it was horribly tragic. She was only 60 years old. I was 26. It should never have happened. It was diabetes that went completely wrong. I think over the nine months that she was in the hospital, I definitely had time to process what we knew was coming, unfortunately, and the fact that it was her choice to go on hospice and call it. She was very fine with dying and understood heaven was a real place. It was not scary for her, so it wasn't scary for me. But it really was never one of those things I really didn't cry for her. My grandma and I just became even closer than we already were because she lost a daughter. I lost a mother. We were both buddies. It just was one of those things many people get stuck. Of course, there are times I think there are said moments where you wish she was here the night before our wedding, of course, having these things that you wish she were part of. But then logically, I say she is part of them.

I don't believe they're that far gone. She is seeing it just in a little bit different view. I feel like that emotional part for me has and maybe it does come from adoption. Maybe it's just my personality is cold, but whatever it is, I just don't really feel a lot and-.

Well, knowing you, I would never call you as cold because you do seek out in your very relationship-oriented, and that is really important to you. But you are like, I'm pragmatic. This is just the way it is. Let's not get overly emotional over this. We don't know. It could have come from abandonment. It could have been your survivalist instinct. You could be just a case study for all of that, but you just don't know. But you're one that it's like, this is the way it is. I would say the most emotion that I have ever seen in you is with your children. That is where true joy, it's not contained. It's absolute true joy when you are with your children because that just speaks right to your heart, which is so beautiful. Before we close on this, because you just shared so much, and I think we're going to have this live panel discussion in early November just so that people can ask questions and that type of thing. What I really gained from talking with you is the abandonment is not always there forefront. Everybody has a different experience from interviewing everybody. Everybody has a different experience.

Some are more pragmatic than others. Others are always seeking, which is okay. We're learning how to do things better. There are lots of assistants out there. As your sister-in-law, my daughter-in-law, Kate, works in social services and adopted our little Rosie. We know that there's lots of really cool things out there to help support the family and the adoptive one. But it's not always necessary. You grew up, and even though some may call them challenges, you don't call them challenges. It's just like it is what it is. We're going to move forward in life, and I'm going to live my life in the best way that I know it to be and embrace it because you know that relationships, they can be tentative. I believe you came into your mom's life for that period of time just so that she could have that absolute joy and love of being able to give love and receive it. So if you had one thing that you would like to tell the audience, just a piece of wisdom for those who are adopted or are the adoptive family, what might that one nugget be?

I think that adoption is beautiful. I think it is a calling for the person that's doing the adopting and then the one that got adopted. I don't think anyone should ever feel bad about it. I don't think anyone should ever question if it's for them, if they felt called to do it, they should. But I think for the adoptee to try and not label yourself as different is going to be the biggest thing because you will find that you'll fit in just how you were supposed to. Sometimes people who are biologically related have challenges that make them not fit into certain things or even feel like they're part of their family at times. If you just let it unfold and don't dwell on that, I think life will be not that it won't have challenges, but that it will be just fine because it is, at the end of the day, I believe God writing a story the way he was to be. He puts people, he sends babies down. I believe all of that is planned long before we come here, and we really have no say in any of that. If you would just not worry about what others are going to think or how it's going to impact you and not dwell on that, but look to the future, I think you'll be much better off because the future is whatever you want it to be.

Your story and how you got here is just the beginning, but the old analogy of you write each chapter you do, and it's totally up to you on how you're going to write that chapter.

Wonderful. If you're struggling with writing the chapter, there are people out there that can.

Support you. Again, like you said, lots of help out there. A last funny story, but sometimes the things we don't… At my wedding, there was no parents there, so my uncle, thealtu, who came over from Turkey in 1982 as well, walked me down the aisle. People afterwards who didn't know me real well or weren't from my side of the family said, Oh, he looks a lot like you. You have the same nose. Well, Aaltu and I are not genetically related either, but he was meant to be there because all through life we had darker skin, we do look similar. All the way through marriage, he was the one that we've always been very close and like confidants. If you look for those people, it doesn't necessarily mean you're related to him, but if you look for people who are going to support that journey, you will find them and they will be there to walk with you.

Absolutely. You and I were just talking. I was talking about the breathe coaching model for grief that I train people to be certified grief coaches. But it's like now it's time to take a look at how do we tailor that for adopted families or people who have been adopted who might be struggling and just want to really walk that path to have a happy and fulfilled life? And maybe they're feeling a little stuck because we know that there's lots of tools. And again, there's trauma-informed therapeutic approaches through psychologists that are super important because not everybody was taken right, was brought into a family right at birth. Some kids are going through the foster system and the foster to adopt. And so there's all those transitions and abandonments and all of that type of thing. So there are so many people out there and finding your tribe. Like you said, finding out all two is one of your tribe.

And accepting the things that made you. I mean, one of the things people kid about all the time is my love for bleach and cleaning, but I really think that was something from being born in an institutional facility or basically born. Probably, especially with those small babies that had to be kept clean and bleached and whatever, so that embracing the things that people call quirks, but that really is who you are. That's not anything to be ashamed of. You love the smell of bleach, then use it in your house or whatever the case may be. I really hate the idea of ever going back to India. People find that weird, but I don't associate with India as anything other than if it was the malls or something beautiful and it'd be trying to go to, but otherwise a part of my history. So embrace what you want to embrace, let the other stuff go, and then really accept the rest of it because it is who you are and it's part of your story. Like you said, whether it's fostering, whether it's placement of an international adoption, whatever it is, it's not maybe the ideal or not the thing people think of when they think of family, but it's the way families are created, so embrace it.

I love it. Well, thank you so much, Leah, and for everybody else. Again, with this, we'll have a link to sign up and come and visit us. We're just going to come together as a little family so people can ask questions, feel whatever the case may be, so that we can have a live panel discussion. Because we know that there's lots of beliefs, lots of twists and turns, and lots of ideas on how to really move forward and allowing that grief that a lot of people feel through the adoption process to really coincide with the great gratitude and the gifts that come from it. So thank you. Thank you.

I love what you're doing, and I love that your family is made up of so many amazing stories that come together to be a family now.

Me too. Okay, we'll talk to you later.

Bye-bye. Bye.

Contact us:

Cami Thelander: www.bearfootyogi.com

The Confident Grief Coach School: www.healingfamilygrief.com

In this interview with Tim Mackey, we get yet another perspective on adoption. Tim was relinquished at birth spending 6 months in an orphanage setting before being adopted by his parents. It wasn’t until an ancestry DNA test led him to his birth family in his early 50’s.

Tim shares his thoughts on how to one should prepare themselves mentally if they choose to reach out and connect with their birth family.

Shownote:

Welcome again to this episode for Healing Family Grief on Adoption, where we believe that grief and gratitude can coexist. In this interview with Tim Mackie, we get yet another perspective on adoption. Tim was relinquished at birth, spending his first six months in an orphanage setting before being adopted by his parents. It wasn't until an ancestry DNA test led him to his birth family in his early 50s. Tim shares his thoughts on how one should really prepare themselves mentally if they choose to reach out and connect with their birth family so that however that goes, whether they're fully embraced or there is resistance to meeting, that the adoptee can walk away feeling secure and as whole as possible and not have unexpected trauma occur when things don't go the way that they really think that they should go. It's a wonderful interview. Please take a listen. If you do enjoy this show, please hit the like and subscribe button.

That way we know if this is interesting information for you, you can leave us some questions. We'll be really thrilled to answer those questions and be on the lookout in early November for a live group chat about all that we've talked about in this series. Enjoy and I hope you have a wonderful day.

Hello, everybody. Once again, I am so excited to be here and to be able to share some stories from my family members with this whole piece that we're doing on adoption and where grief and gratitude really can coexist together. We know that there's a lot of both within this. Tim Mackey happens to be my brother-in-law, who we've got to meet each other. I don't even know how many years ago it was. It hasn't been super long, but we're just so happy that Tim found this part of the family and that we have this new member. Tim has an adoption story, and so we're just going to move forward with that. He's going to share a little bit about himself, and we'll ask some questions. Welcome, my friend, my brother.

Hello. Thanks for the invite. Glad to be here. Thank you.

What I'd like to do is just start out a little bit about your story. A little bit about maybe what you've heard, what you haven't heard, but your story of being adoptee in a family.

Yeah. I was born in Santa Clara, California, in 1968, and I was adopted when I was about six months old to Mark and Betty, Mackie, and they moved to Seattle, to Chicago, back to Seattle, where I started high school and finished college and got married, and now I settled in. My sister, I actually have a sister one year younger than I am and a brother two years, and all three of us are adopted. My mom and dad wanted to have adopted kids, but she bought a DNA test about four years ago, and just on a whim, I decided to take it. Lo and behold, I found out that I had a half brother that had just taken it. I reached out to them, to Ken, Matt's husband, and then everything just happened pretty quick after that. I went from being the oldest of three to the youngest of five in just less than a week, I would say. When I found out this... I'd always searched as a kid, not really putting too much effort into it, but just curious more than anything else. The reason is my adoption papers said that I was Cherokee and Blackfoot, and so I wanted to learn a little bit about tribal enrollment, if that was a possibility or anything along those lines.

And so it was not really too hard at all. At about the age of 40, I just said, I'm happy. Both my parents love me and I'm happy where I'm at. And then my sister, I took the test and then met Ken. And so it was interesting in that the whole time I didn't walk into it with any assumptions or expectations. And I think that's really the key for anybody that is looking for or that has found their adopted parents or whatever is you come into it with the ability just to walk away without it affecting you or having any remorse or anger or upset. That's how I approached coming into it. When I met with Ken and my brother and mom at their house in Arizona, of course, that trip down Friday, I was shaking like a leaf and then Saturday morning, really nervous. The hour and a half drive to the house was really… I probably turned around about 10 times just because I was nervous. Then saying to myself, Hey, if this doesn't work out, you're in a good spot with your life and where you're at, it's okay. That made it easier to make that trip.

Then walking out and meeting the family. Ken, we had talked a couple of times on the phone, and he just came over and gave me a great big hug and Billy as well. We talked for a little bit and went in and met my mom. That was just like looking in a mirror. I still remember everything about that with Joyce. She said, I've been wondering how long or how you've been doing forever. I think she was really happy to find out that her son was in a good place. We've visited for a couple of hours that day and I got a chance to spend some good time with Ken and Billy. Everyone was welcomed to the family. In that regard, it was really easy then to do the next things and do trips to meet people and know the extended family. At the same time, like my sister, she met her family and it was a complete opposite story. She's had the opposite, so it's been a lot harder for her than me. But I think coming into it, not expecting anything, and the willingness to walk away is really, really important. If you put too much into it, who knows how it's going to go?

So you have to be able to walk away. I told everybody that at the start. So you don't know me, I don't know you. If this causes any upset or hard feelings, then I'm done and I'll just back out. And everyone was, No, we want to meet you. And in that regards, it worked out really well. But if one person had said, No, this is too upsetting. I would have just said, okay, that's fine. Here's my address if you ever want to get in touch, you won't hear from me again. That was just my approach to it.

I know that Ken, and as Tim mentioned, is my husband. It was like, wow, it was a whirlwind. There was a lot of excitement, but again, a lot of questions and the story behind it all. But the beautiful thing is, well, Kim, I will always say, you got the great end of the deal because the family was very poor and education was not something that was really sought after and had a pretty rough environment from what my husband has shared with me and probably with you.

The other thing that was interesting is I didn't talk directly with my brother. When I found out I had a brother, I reached out to you.

Yes.

We had dialog a little bit before we even approached Ken just to make sure that it wasn't going to be too upsetting because here we are at 52 years old. I'm 52, and I think Ken is nine years older than I am or so. But all of a sudden, there's a new person in the family, and they had never known that I was up for adoption or that their mom was pregnant because they were too little at that point. Then how it came about, I didn't want any bad feelings from that either. I don't think there was. I think the family was surprised that my mom had given birth that they didn't know. She never told them. That's why it was really important for me just to talk with Pat first, with you first before reaching your husband and to make sure that that would even be okay. I thought that was important too.

Yeah. It's just been a joy. You two get along just the whole family. Just to let everybody know, Tim's birth mom, my mother-in-law, died in the fall last year, so it's just been a year. But I feel knowing what I... Working with grief and working with so many people, I knew once I found out that you had been on her mind every single day of her life. Because any parent, that's what's going to happen, especially moms. It's like thinking about that child and what a gift that mom, Sheveland, got to meet you. Yeah, I think so. That you have this relationship because what a weight off of her heart, always wondering what happened with you and did you do the right thing? Because relinquishment is not something that anybody takes lightly, whatsoever that bond.

I think that they probably really struggled with it. But I'm happy with the way that things had worked out. I don't think it... I don't know. I think there should be some hoops and hurdles in finding your birth parents if that's of interest to you. But I think maybe had known maybe when I was 30 or 25 or so might be a little bit different than at the end of life because I only got to know her for a year and a half or so before she passed away or two years. But it may be nice to maybe have a little bit better long term relationship with her.

Yeah. As you talked about you were adopted into this family, your siblings were also this is like parents that really wanted to have a family and bringing in children that could use love and great home and all of that. What would you say are the gifts that you see having been one of the chosen ones?

Well, I think that my mom and dad, my adopted parents have given me, I think, a lot more opportunity in regards to education and studying and going to school and being a full citizen and I think, than if I had stayed and they were struggling. In that regard, I think Joyce made... She knew that it was the right call, not certainly easy to do, but she knew that that was right. My parents had both prayed for they wanted to adopt a native child and so it worked out great for them to have the opportunity. I feel really blessed that my parents raised me the way that they did. I told Ken and Billy when I met them, the state of Arizona is probably really happy that we didn't grow up together. I could see us getting into some big trouble as kids, that's for sure. But the family bond in the Sheveland side seems pretty strong too. So having that sense of family is good. Just the opportunity that adoption gives you, I think, is one that I'm most grateful for.

What would you say the challenges? You talked like when you were younger and you were interested in maybe getting to know a little bit more about your heritage and the cultural aspects. But what would you say are some of the challenges from being the chosen one, if there are any?

Well, I think the biggest issue was I don't look at all like my mom and dad. And my sister, she does a little bit, and then my younger brother was half black and half white. So we didn't look at all like my two white parents. And so that was always something... You get those funny looks from people and stuff like that. But as you get a little bit older, it's like, Oh, whatever, who cares? And then it was always, Well, what are you? It's the question I was asked all the time. And I would just have to look at the adoption papers that said you're Indian and Norwegian. So that's that piece.

A Norwindian.

Norwindian. I have the blue eyes of Norwegian and the hairline of Norwegian. I wish it was the other way around. So it was interesting. I don't really look like either side. I'm in the middle on both sides. I think that was probably the weirdest thing growing up is answering the question, well, what are you?

What's your heritage? Yeah, from that perspective, yeah.

But it's funny because I think Ken, Billy, and I look a lot alike in some regards. We all have mom's features, I think.

You are an image of your mother, your birthmother.

Probably the five kids, I would say, I look the most like her, that's for sure.

Absolutely. When you first sent me a picture and all of a sudden, I have a picture of her when she was young, probably in her 20s or 30s, and I'm like, Oh, my gosh, they're identical. That's got to be a weird feeling too. All of a sudden, like you said, you met her and it was like looking in a mirror.

Yeah. I don't think I'd say weird. It was just like, Wow! You feel a sense, maybe a hole. You're always wondering, What does my mom look like? What is she? That was really nice to see. Even if I had never met her, I was just glad to see a picture. I think that would have been a great ending point for me too. But having met her, and that was really nice as well.

It feels like almost like it's almost like a psychological sense of belongingness when you can finally see your birth, family, and some of those similarities. I interviewed my cousin, and when she got married, she found her birth family and had eight siblings. But how she looked so much like her one sister, I remember that at the wedding, and it was just like, Wow. Because I never thought of her as adopted. I never thought of her as that. But for her, that was really important too. We did talk about in the interview with her, just the fact that there's a lot of studies coming out now in regards to the interracial and multiracial and going into families where it's a white family, Caucasian and not a person of color in this family. There's some studies out there like what does that do? The other thing that she had mentioned, which I had never thought about, was how sometimes kids will tease other kids like, Oh, you're adopted. You look like this, and you were adopted. She said it was almost like, is that a bad thing as a kid? There's a lot of different things that I don't know if any of that really occurred for you.

You have the ability to find sight. I think the goal in adoption is not that they're with somebody of the same color, but it's with someone who's going to instill certain values. I think that having a mom and dad in the house is the best way to raise kids, in my opinion. Then having my mom stayed at home all the way through high school, and so that was great as well. Then just the family values that were instilled in me, I think that's the goal. If we're having a kid being adopted more than whatever race they're with, because in the end, we should see past that.

Yeah

Focus on family, focus on education, focus on hard work, those are values, I think, any kid, no matter what background they come from, if that's where they're adopted into, is going to be successful. But I think we've done a real disservice, especially in the native community, because we've made it a priority to get kids adopted by native. I don't think sometimes that the families are that intact or in the best situation to adopt. I would rather have a kid be adopted in a place that's going to instill values and help raise a good citizen. That's the key.

I appreciate that. I really do.

The other thing I think in regards to... That was exciting is once you answer that question, Who am I? And you can talk to your mom about it. One of my earlier things I mentioned was being enrolled and so being able to talk to her about tribal stuff. She was not enrolled, but the paperwork she had on all so that we could get enrolled. I took that on to get that process going and fill out all the paperwork. I was really happy that Ken and my sister, Mary and Billy, all went down to North Carolina and enrolled. That was a really happy day for me. Then knowing that both of my kids are enrolled now too. Whatever happens from now on, my family can always say, I know where we come from. I know our family. That was really important to me.

You really brought that together because that's something... Ken and I have been married 30 years. Been together over 30 years. That was always something that he wanted that sense of belongingness there. But it was just like it was just a very difficult thing for them, and you brought it all together and made it happen as a family, which just made you super happy. But my husband is just so happy and so proud because it's his heritage. It really is that piece of his history, his mom's history, that we all important stuff. It's just finding that.

I think it was important for my brother, because he lives on the reservation, to be able to say, Hey, I have my tribal card too, instead of being the outsider a. Little bit.

Yeah, where you had to live just outside the parameter of the reservation versus on the tribal lands. Right.

Yeah.

Very important.

And being two-toned like I am, I get even in the Indian community, people are like, and I can now say, There you go. I'm really happy that I did it. I'm really happy that I did it. I'm glad for my kids and I hope that they stay up on their tribal stuff and that they enroll their kids and that's something that's passed down from the work that we did. So it's good.

Yeah, that was a beautiful thing. I know that Ken definitely is so happy to now have been enrolled in his 60s. Powerful, powerful stuff because there is that sense of belongingness there too. Yeah.

There's probably nothing that I'll ever seek out from the tribe. I mean, Jeez, I'm 55. I've done just fine for myself. There's nothing that I can gain, I think, maybe from it, but it's just that sense of belonging or that's my history. That to me is helpful. But if it helps my kids out or their kids, then that's even because they're young and getting started, that's good. But for me, it's just that belonging sense.

More than anything. Yeah, I agree. Is there anything that you would say you wish could have been different in your story? Or do you feel like this really, it all played out the way that it was supposed to play out?

I think I lightly touched on it, but I get why it's a little bit difficult because there's probably a lot that aren't interested. It shouldn't be easy for someone just to say, surprise, 40 years later, when that person has their whole life together. I'm going back and forth on that. I just got really lucky because you guys, I think, had just taken the test a couple of weeks before. That was really lucky. Maybe the DNA is the approach that is easiest for everybody. You have to volunteer to do it. If you don't, then you're not on there. That might be one thing.

I thought maybe like with ancestor or whatever they should also have an arm of some therapist available because there could be some real, like you said, with your sister or something like that, to just have someone that can help when things don't go exactly right, or it's such a shocker, or there's some family dynamics. We had ours. When the story starts unfolding, it was like, Whoa, but everybody here was just like, This is cool. We're just so happy that you're a part of it, and Emily and your family is a part of that.

I wanted to step up. That's an interesting piece because not only is it tough, I think, on the birth mom, but in my situation where there's a different dad, that it can create a lot of hardships. That was the reason I didn't reach out immediately to Joyce or Ken, because I'm sure there's some backstory there that it was better to go through you for a while until things got settled down and people were willing to reach out.

One of the things that you said that just hit me very powerfully is the goal is not about color. It's not about nationality. It's not anything. It's about instilling values. I know because I know you and Emily, and just that is something that really seems to be one of the greatest gifts your parents gave you, is really the values and being able to pay that forward with your children. You do a lot of work with schools, and coaching, and different things like that, just paying that forward. What a gift, that you may not probably wouldn't have necessarily had staying with the birth family, because we know that there was some rough stuff going on there and it wasn't bad, good or indifferent. It's just that it was a different life.

Yeah. Well, I'm not judging at all the situations that while I was adopted, that's just way it was. I'm certainly glad for Joyce. I know it probably wasn't easy, and I'm also very happy that I was adopted too.

Yeah. That's a both-and. It's a both-and. That's part of why I wanted to do this little bit of a series, is to just be available for people to hear it so that they don't, Oh, I'm not alone, or My thoughts about this, I'm not alone in that thought. But everybody has different viewpoints on this too, right? Yeah. That's the power of who we are, is to be able to look at things with different lenses. But I appreciate that you talked about going in without preconceived notions of how it's going to turn out, because that's just a healthy balance with abandonment, relinquishment, whatever. There probably is that little bit of abandonment still simmering in there. All of a sudden, if you're being like, we really don't even want to talk about it in the family, now we just really don't want to meet with you, that I think could just layer on some real angst in the person who's adopted.

If your core is good, then it won't affect you. But if you have other issues or you're having these troubles going into it, then it's probably going to affect you a lot more. But if you've got your base established on who you are and what you're doing and who your family is, then the other stuff. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. You have to be able to back away. But if you have any chinks in the armor on who you are, then I think that would probably develop those things.

Yeah, and you are. You're very solid in who you are. You have a real knowing and a real core in your values and who you are. It wasn't about necessarily the birth stuff or who you are, the solid soul within yourself is very solid, and that was nurtured. It was nurtured with your parents that raised you, and that's where I think that's the gift of adoption. I talked to my daughter-in-law, Caitlin, and did her interview earlier today, and she works in social services. I said, How many... We know that we want to try to keep... In society, you want to try to keep kids with their birth families, if at all possible. But I said, What's the ratio that you see? She said it's 50-50, because 50% of them really do need to get into a home that's safe, that's nurturing. With all the people that they work with, it's a 50% chance whether staying with the birth family is really the healthiest and in the best interest of the child. That's what we need to remember, that it is about the child. A lot of times, emotions and egos and different things like that may get into the way, politics, all of that stuff.

I think for me, it's always been about the child. Always the child first. Always first.

It's funny. I think we've made adoption too difficult. It's thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars and legal fees and blah, blah, blah to adopt the kid. I have upstairs in my safe a letter or the court order. It's one page, double-spaced, about 10 or 15 sentences that says, Now for the sum of $350, my mom and dad adopt me and then signed by the judge and signed by me. That was it. There wasn't this big, long, drawn-out process. It was 350 bucks to take this kid. I think that if we have kids languishing in multiple foster situations over and over in different room, each night or different places, we've got to make adoption so much. There's so many people that want to adopt kids that just find the whole process overwhelming, and it should be a lot easier to adopt kids because the alternative is horrible.

Yeah. Every week, every day, every week, every month that goes by, it really is doing a number on that child's stability, their emotional stability, their health, all of those different things. Good intention, but if you don't have that core stability, so that's very very difficult, and we know that. What I like to ask is, what's one thing that you would just like to leave the people that are watching this with? You've given some really good thoughts to this, but what's one piece of tim wisdom that you would just like to-.

Well, I think finding your birth family or birth mom is a worthwhile endeavor, and I would encourage people that are interested to do it. However, you've got to be able to cut bait and keep fishing. So if there's any chance that you're going to upset somebody or upset the other family or cause drama or trigger somebody, it's best just to close the book and be happy with where you're at and what you've created in your life. It seems to me that the people really push, really push, and then thats those are the ones that get into situations. You have to be able to go slow. If it doesn't work or you're getting some pushback, then you fold the book and you walk away.

That's beautiful. A hard one for a lot of people. We've unfathom, but it is.It's wisdom.

Who said life is fair? That's just what it is. That's what it is. Don't create drama for other people. Just go in there. And if it works like it did with my family, it works out great. If it doesn't with like my sister, then it's something you have to be able to walk away from.

Yeah, and have a support and if you have a support of, I call it a tribe, but you have that support. I think anchoring into support before you probably even take those steps is really, really important and talk to some of these things.

That's a key piece. Your adopted parents are certainly your biggest pillars. And so... I talked to my dad. My mom had passed away but I talked to my dad quite a bit about the whole process and asked him if he was okay with this and told him the whole story all along. There was no surprises. I told him that I loved him and that this doesn't replace what you've done. It's just searching and looking for these things. He was okay with all that stuff. I would really recommend that you keep your adopted family involved in the whole process as well. Because I think truly, they would want you to feel that sense of the circle is closed. I don't think there's too many that would say, No, you're just mine. I think if a person is willing to adopt you, they want the best for you. I think that that would be something that most adopted parents would say, Yeah, just what can we do to help? My job was to fill them in on everything and making sure that they knew what was going on, that they weren't being replaced or any of that stuff.

Well, the word that's coming to me is honor. Honor- Yeah, honor your parents. -everyone who is part of this equation, this journey, and doing it with honor, honoring yourself first and foremost, but then honoring the people that are so important to you, and letting them know that this is love, and that love is not going to go away. It's a critical piece here, but it's honoring and remember to do it with honor. As a coach and a grief coach, because grief does show up in some of these places here, is find your tribe. If you don't have it in your family unit, find a couple of people that you can really talk through with this before you take the steps, and just really be able to so you can think clearly about what might this look like, and what are your expectations? Because having unfulfilled expectations can be a huge downer, and shake up the psyche a little bit. But just to... That's what I would encourage people, is reach out and find someone they can really talk to. But definitely if you can have the conversation with your family, the family that is your family.

As Caitlin said, there's not a label for love, so family is not a label. It's about the community of where we're raised, and who we're with. There's the extended, there's birth, there's all of that. But just really talk to the people that are involved and do it with honor for yourself and for them.

Yeah, honor your mother and father.

Absolutely.

One of the 10 commandments.

Core principles. Well, thank you so much, Tim. I really appreciate you. We love you. You know that.

Okay.

Contact us:

Cami Thelander: www.bearfootyogi.com

The Confident Grief Coach School: www.healingfamilygrief.com

PART TWO: Adoption: Where Grief and Gratitude Co-Exist. An Interview with Caitlin Sheveland

Welcome back to our next interview in our series of Adoption: Where Grief and Gratitude can Co-Exist.  In this interview with Caitlin Sheveland, we hear the story of what propelled her and her family into the world of foster care and adoption, ultimately bringing Caitlin into a soul purpose, a life purpose of serving children and their families in a formal social services role. She is a spit-fire and she makes things happen and it really totally changed her life and transformed her life and all those she served. She is the epitome of advocacy for ensuring a child's welfare always comes first through a safe and nurturing home environment whether that be with their birth family, a foster family, or a forever home as a chosen child for a family and she knows all about this intimately in her own lived experience and also her work in the social services. Please enjoy the show and if it appeals to you hit the like or the subscribe button, that's helpful for us to know what really is impacting for our listeners out there, and feel free to leave a comment. We are interested in hearing your comments and questions regarding this series. Thank you so much and I hope you really enjoy this interview with Caitlin Sheveland.

PLEASE JOIN US ON SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5 AT 8:00 PM US ET FOR OUR LIVE PANEL DISCUSSION WITH THE INTERVIEWEES ON ZOOM. A GREAT PLACE TO DISCUSS ALL THINGS ADOPTION! LINK TO SIGN UP: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUodOyrrTIiGdZsTVPWCouBCdsDPQO5w4t3  I hope you enjoy the episode and if you do, please hit the like and subscribe button so you can help us continue to do what we do over here in the Healing Family Grief community.

Shownotes:

Hi there, everybody. I am so excited because here is another one of our great interviews in regards to adoption. We have the International Adoption Day that's coming up in November. And as I said in my little preview to everybody, I am interviewing family members because we've had a lot of family members who have been involved in adoption. And today I am talking with Caitlin. Caitlin is my daughter-in-law who I just adore and love so deeply. She and I really have that hard space for children. We're going to talk a little bit about the story of what really got Caitlin and her family really involved. Our son, Tom, really involved in not only foster care but the adoption who is our granddaughter now. And so that's where we're going to start. So welcome, Caitlin.

Thank you.

So glad to have you.

This is so exciting.

So exciting. So why don't you maybe just start out sharing what happened several years ago that really brought you into foster care and bringing Rosie into our family?

Yeah. So I started before we even knew about Rosie. I had a really terrible birth with our last daughter, Oliver, and knew that I wanted more kids, but that I didn't want to birth them myself. So I had been processing like, what does that look like? I had never really known anyone that or anything, so it wasn't really in my scope of mind. I just knew that I wanted more kids. And so that started my heart's pathway of what's other alternatives to having children. And then one day, several months later, we were washing the dishes. I remember it vividly. And we had heard from Pat that there was a family member that had had a baby in a different state. And that night, we had gotten a call from Oregon, D. C. F. And they had said my husband, Tom's cousin, had had a baby, and they were looking for family members that wanted to be involved and what their involvement would look like. And I remember me and Tom automatically wasn't even a question. Well, if she needs a place to stay, she's family, so she can come here. And that was where they were at in the point of the case, anyways, was looking for someone to adopt this baby.

And so I know that it was a lot of conversations in the family of what does that look like, because taking someone else's child as your own and then doing that so that she can remain in the family and so that grandpa can still be grandpa, and she can still grow up with all her relatives and just looks a little different. And so we began a long process of really fighting for her and her best interest and keeping her in the family. I want to say it took us five months of me calling every day bothering all the workers to just advocate for her best, which eventually in June, we got the call that she was ready to be picked up and that it was going to take about a week for them to figure out which worker was going to fly her to us. So then we responded, Well, can we just go out there and get her? And they said, yes. And so I spent 24 hours, flew all the way to Oregon, grabbed her in a parking lot, flew all the way back. And we have a video of the moment that she came from the airport and met Tom and the girls.

And I really cherish that because it was meant to be. And the girls just loved her already, and she was so sweet and a sweet addition to our family. And so that started a journey for me because it was so fulfilling to be able to be that role to a child that needed a safe place to stay. And then also just the advocating for her. I learned so much in those five months of the system and how much children people advocating for their best, otherwise they get lost. And so it really sparked this passion in my heart to help other children. And so I started by changing my career. I used to be a hairdresser, and my passion shifted. And I started working with families that were working with DCYF and trying to reunify children to their parents and doing a lot of in-home therapy with them. And then I just kept going down the line. And I eventually wanted to make the rules because I saw how many families were just not being treated fairly and how many children there really were. And so I now work for the state, and I am in child services investigating childhood, abuse, and neglect.

So it's just saying that one yes, as nervous and as scared as we were of what that was going to look like, changed our whole lives and my whole career. And I now love what I do. I get to go into families and find out what are some safety concerns, what are some things that we need to work on, and how can we provide support to keep the kids home. And then obviously, if it's not safe, advocating for what is best for these children. And we still do foster care. We are on our sixth long term foster care child. So that has been really rewarding. Our first foster daughter, we were able to help reunify with her father, which was really nice. We got to invite him over for dinner, helped him interview for his first job. And then once they unified, it was able to buy some things for her room and set her room up. And we're still in contact with her dad today. So it's been a life changing event going from not really knowing anything about foster care or adoption or how that even looks. How can you love someone else's child as your own?

All those fears to now our daughter is going to be turning six. She's thriving. She's in kindergarten. It's like she was meant to be part of our family. And I like to say because we talk openly with our kids about adoption and that Rosie is adopted. But we like to say that the other kids grew in my belly, but Rosie grew in my heart because before we even knew about her, I was already in that sense of knowing that there is a child out there for me that I wasn't going to birth.

Well, and I can attest to the fact, having watched Kate, you were just a Bulldog. It was just like, this girl is our daughter. We're going to make sure that we get her. And you were just passionate and on the phone and pushing, pushing, pushing and advocating for her, knowing that jumping around because she had a few different foster homes and she was literally taken at birth. So the relinquishment, she was brand new baby and you knew that she needed to have that stability.

I remember even fighting with them when they were she's ready to go, paperwork's filed, but it's going to take us a couple of weeks. And I just remember my mom being absolutely not if she's ready to be ours, we'll buy the ticket and go fly out there. I don't care. But yeah, I think the whole process took, they say it's supposed to take about two years for the process of going inter-state. And I was not having that. I was not having my daughter somewhere else. When I knew in my heart was mine. And so like I said, we called every day to remind them, hey, what's the status today? Keep them pushing. And I think they really did it in five months because they were annoyed with me. But I needed to do.

That's all right. Annoying is good. Doing is good, but it's making a difference to the lives of little ones and all of that. So one of the things that I like to just think about here, what are the gifts? What are the gifts for you as the mother and Tom as the father and as a family for choosing being able to choose Rosie? I mean, she chose, I believe that God works in these beautiful ways, but really, she is the chosen one. And what are some of the gifts for your family that you have seen over these past two years?

I think the most important gift is just teaching my children that you can love people without roles. So I didn't birth Rosie, but we love her the same as our birth children, and our children love her the same as their blood siblings, and that there's not necessarily a label to love, and that there's this beautiful story of adopting people in, whether that's through the pure adoption process or even just allowing people in your life that need you, doing foster care. We have kiddos come, stay for a while, and then leave. And it's this beautiful process of teaching our kids about really just loving other people. And Rosie has been such a gift to us because she really just changed her whole life from your just American selfish way of having the kids, having the job, being successful. I wanted to own my own salon. And just everything changed once we started walking through this process because it was like, I don't really want those things anymore. I just want to advocate for what's best for children. And just really just changed our whole perspective on life.

Well, and you found your soul's purpose.

Right.

Truly. And Tom, Caitlin's husband, our son, is a law enforcement officer and always an advocate for the children in so many ways and in so many different roles that he's had within the departments that he has worked in. And so together, the synergy and the beauty and the relationship that you have in the home that you have created is just such a beautiful gift to Rosie too. But there's been some challenges. So what are some of the challenges to the adoption?

I think one of the major ones that stands out as far as the beginning process is just the fear of going to feel like she's mine. And is she going to love me like I'm her mother? Or is she going to hold it against me? Or just all those fears of anything, really. And I think that for us, we just had to push the fear aside and just state this was meant to be, and it'll work out how it works out. And really, all those fears that started creeping in the beginning, not even a chance that any of those are truthful. And so I think another one of the challenges is, especially, inner-family adoption. I think in the beginning, there's some challenges of roles or just not hurt feelings, but I think there's just like, it's unfortunate that the world is broken and that sometimes adoption needs to happen. And I think you grieve that process. I remember grieving for her biological mom of like, it's not lost on me that she's now mine and not yours. And in the challenges that mom has to face because of that, I think for me, that's the heaviest grief of just knowing that it's not lost on me that she's now grieving on something that we're excited about, that we love.

I think if I would say, I would say that is probably the biggest grief in adoption is just understanding that while adoption is just pure love and pure greatness, it's also grief for someone. And for many people, for Rosie, I'm sure someday she's going to ask about her birth mother, and there'll be some grief for her, even, too, why it couldn't work out the way that it should have. I think that's probably the biggest challenge. Yeah.

And I'm always very open when I'm talking to people and doing these interviews. We did. We went through some family drama. And you grieve that too, because the intentionality behind reaching out and wanting to adopt was pure love and wanting to really make a difference in this child's life. And we believe that all children have a right to flourish and thrive. And sometimes that just isn't a possibility. But extended family members may not see that and egos get in the way and different things like that. And we really had to work through a lot of that as a family union and individually with the various players in the family. But today it feels like everybody is like rock-solid on board and feels really good. And they love seeing the family together and seeing Rosie flourish. And I've just heard so many great things from the extended family. And Ken and I could not be more thrilled to have this beautiful granddaughter in our life knowing that there was nothing that we could probably do but having you guys step up just made a world of difference.

And I think it's been also restorative to some parts of the family. Rosie's biological grandmother sent her the beautiful cultural Indian necklaces and jewelry for her to have when she's older. And having video chats with her half brother and her grandfather. I think it also is a story of just some family redemption almost.

Healing the ancestral wounding. I think there's that. It's not anybody's fault that that goes on, but to be able to change the pattern and all of that epigenetics, so to speak, so that it can move forward. If you could take a look at your story, is there anything that you wished could have been different?

I wish I could have had it right away. I wish I could have... I'm close with her longest foster home that she had. And every once in a while, I will find a video of Rosie as a newborn and send it to me. And I think my heart grieves that I didn't get those first seven months because she is now my child. And so you talk about stories about rocking your kids to sleep and, oh, you were the fussy. So I had to do this. And I don't have any of those stories for her until she was seven months old. So I don't know what she was like as a newborn. And then your mama heart is like, was she ever scared? So I think that, yeah, for me, that is the biggest grievance and hardship, I think, is that I won't ever have those months back. Right.

Now, working in what you work, I want to really dive into that a little bit and where you are working. We all, I think, believe that reunification, being with the family, being with the biological parents when it's healthy and safe is by far because we know through epigenetics and the bonding in utero between child and mother, especially, is such an important aspect. And when relinquishment happens and children are in orphanages and things like that or foster care and don't have that bonding, we know it can cause difficulties. But there are times, right? Well, I guess I want to say in your experience now over these years, what percentage would you say you really are successful in the reunification? If you could look at all of your caseload and your departments.

Honestly, I would say 50-50. You have the parents that really want to put the work in and can and are able to overcome their challenges. Our job, DCYF gets a bad rap, but I am very passionate about my job. And I like to see it as I get in there, identify some of the hardships, the challenges that the parents have to being the best parent they can be. And then it's how can I help? What can we put in place? How can we make the children reunify? Because really, I just want a whole healthy family for you. And so there's half of the parents that are, yes, I want well, all of them are like, yes, I want my kid back, obviously, as a parent of a child. But there's some I would say half of them that are like, okay, let's do this. Ii will partner with you. I'll do what you say. Let's do this. I want to get my kid back. And then there's half that just buck you the whole way and are not able to really come to terms with what their challenges are and are not able to self reflect enough to know what needs to change in order to be the best parent they can be.

And it really just comes down to the parent and what if they're able to self reflect and able to take the help from you. And it's very it's sad when they can't reunify. Adoption is happy and we're excited for the foster parents that adopt and the kiddos that get to stay. Usually they've been in this home for a while and it's stability for them because we do the twelve month thing because children deserve stability. So people often ask, well, why can't it be a five year process? Because these kids, they need stability. And they really do understand that they're not stable until the 12 month mark. And so, yeah, I would say 50-50. And sometimes you get surprised. Our last foster daughter, up until month 10, looked like she was going to need to be adopted out, which we were so grieving for her because she had spent so much time with her mom. She was a teenager. And then mom really just had a moment of self-reflection and did what she needed to do and reunified with all of her kids. They now live with her and they're doing great. And so it really is just whether the parent can self-reflect and taking the services that we provide.

And once you see a click in their head, it's so fun to watch. We rejoice more over the underdog that just reunified with her kids because we know that that was really, really hard for her and she was able to do the work.

And how long do them stay when the reunification occurs?

So we say 12 months. But if a parent is doing what they need to do, they can reunify sooner, we're involved legally for 12 months. But then again, we're also involved after they reunify for a couple of months just to ensure there's all the supports in place that we're not going to be here again like that you guys are set up. So we do stay and supervise the family, really, from a distance just to make sure everything's going well and there's nothing else that we could help with the family.

Oh, that's so beautiful. So beautiful. Well, I took away one quote that I'll be using a lot is there's not a label for love. There's not a label for love. And we know that in our family. You know that through your work. It doesn't matter the genetics of it. Yes, you want to try to keep them in their culture. And I've had some conversations with my cousin like, what are some of the things if you can't keep them in their cultural aspects? There's just so many issues that can arise from that, which you're able to give to Rosie because we were able to keep her in the birth family. But a lot of times that doesn't occur. And we know, I know that having a blended family, dad and I have a blended family. All my children are all my children. There is no definition of love. It's just there. And everybody gets treated equally, whether you're... I don't even like to call in-laws, right? Mama Pat treats everybody the same because all of you are the same in my heart. So I guess if you could leave us with two things. One is if you had one thing to tell the audience, if they are the people perhaps looking at foster care or if they're the teenager or the adult person who was adopted into a family, what's one thing that you would like to share with them?

And also if we know someone might be struggling in their parenting role, how should we handle that to be supportive?

Yeah. So first I would say to people who are considering doing foster care, do it. It's so rewarding. I'm not going to lie, there are days that are tough because you're dealing with kids who are not with mom and dad. We have a two year old right now and we talk to his mom every night over video chat. And sometimes he's upset afterwards, which is understandable. And so, yeah, sometimes my night is consoleing a two year old, which is a lot, but it's worth it because when you watch these kids reunify or when you watch them find their forever, you're not going to say, Oh, that wasn't worth it. It always is worth the work. And so, again, to the kids who are older that are processing being adopted, that's something that we're very quickly probably going to come up on with, Rosie. Process your feelings. It's okay to process your feelings, but know that you are chosen by whomever adopted you. There was an actual choice made that I want you as part of my family. I think that that is also very empowering. You can grieve the part that you're not with your bio parents, but just holding on to the empowering thought that someone chose you specifically to be part of their family and to be loved.

I think that that is beautiful. Again, I think that what this whole process has really taught us is that love is love, and this world needs more of it. And as you go through life, God might put people in your path that need to be under your roof and need to be just loved on and have your role be a parent figure for them however long that has to be. And you just need to be willing to open your heart to people outside of your labeled daughter or son and just be able to just love people that need to be loved. And that's what we have done as a family. And so we've done foster care. We've adopted. We currently have a college girl living in our house because she needed a family to stay with. So I think we've just adopted now this identity that we just love people that need to be loved that get put in our path. And so as far as watching family struggle, I think a lot of times there are times that definitely an agency needs to step in and ensure kids are safe. But I think before it even gets to that point is just being someone who watches other… It's someone who cares for others to a point of like, hey, I am realizing that this person I might be close with in my community or my kids community seems to be struggling, how can I help so that it doesn't get to the point where DCYF is now needing to be involved?

What can I do if this person seems to be struggling? How can I help this family? Because oftentimes there is a path, and then it gets to the DCYF point. And so if we can nip it in the bud here, if we can have more people in life that are just have their eyes open to how they can help others, I think a lot of our families wouldn't get to the point where they need to work with DCYF. I think that just as a community, if you just adopt your community as your family and just keeping your eyes open, if God puts a family in your in your path and you're seeing what they're struggling, that's probably your invitation to help out. I think that that more so is something to be had because I think for me and in the investigative part, a lot of the families that come in, I'm not fighting neglect on them. They're just struggling. And so my job is helping put people in place to help them out. But if that could be done organically that they didn't even need to get to me yet, I think that we'd see a lot less families that need to be involved with the government.

I love that. And my B.R.E.A.T.H.E coaching model for grief that I created for people who are grieving and grief has so many different aspects. It's not just the death of a loved one, the physical death, but all of this that we've talked about is one of the points that I have, one of the steps is engaging your tribe. And of course, I use tribe because we come from an indigenous culture that we're married into. But I think that's so important because rather than judging or seeing what's going on in someone's family and making a judgment about that, how can you really step in and offer that support? Because like you said, it's not neglect. It just may be that overwhelm. Could you be a part of that person's tribe, a part of that family's tribe to step in and help out a little bit and make that difference so that that family can stay solid, safe and flourish? Because that's what it's all about. And so are there any resources just top of mind where people could go if I wanted to learn a little bit more about how to help someone that I might see is struggling?

Yeah. So every community has in every state really is a little bit different. But if you want to know what your town has for resources, you can go to the welfare office and just ask like, hey, what are the resources? Because they'll know housing resources. If a family becomes homeless and you want to help them find housing, they'll know those resources. They'll know food pantry resources. They'll know just almost like I would suggest researching that for your town where you live ahead of time so that once you come across the family like, hey, they seem to be struggling financially. Well, here, let me walk you through what the welfare office could do for you because I'm already knowledgeable about what is appropriate. Because sometimes, especially moments like that, they're in crisis. They're not thinking correctly of what they could do. So that's a perfect example of stepping in and saying, hey, I'm thinking correctly. Let me help you process through this and process work and what not. So every state, every town is different. So I would just say formalize yourself with what resources are around you.

Takes a village. Well, thank you so much. I love you to be on forever. I always want to say I'm so proud of you and Tom, but I'm proud to be your parent and to be a part of your life.

We're soul sisters.

Yes, we are. Okay, so there I go. I get a little emotional with that. So thank you, everybody, for listening and keep an eye out because we will be doing our panel discussion in the future. And great stuff, Caitlin. So just hang on and I'll talk to you in just a minute.

Contact us:

Cami Thelander: www.bearfootyogi.com

The Confident Grief Coach School: www.healingfamilygrief.com

Summary:

In this interview with Barbara DeMers, we will discuss not only her lived experience of being an adoptive child after being removed at birth from her mother and placed into an orphanage for 6 months before her adoptive parents brought her home, but we also touch on what some of the research is showing about the effects of adoption on the adoptee.

Barbara’s passion is to provide support and healing for physical and emotional challenges through energy healing.

She is an extensive learner - always developing herself through knowledge so that she may support others on their path to healing.  She is also a Certified Grief Coach through our Confident Grief Coach School where we help people become more confident in stepping out into the world as a professional support for those who grieve.

Shownotes:

Hello.It is.Pat here. I am Pat Sheveland, if you do not know me, I am the Confident Grief Coach. I'm the founder of Healing Family Grief and the Confident Grief Coach School. I wanted to give you a little heads-up on a project that I'm working on with some of my family members. Here's a little bit about the background. When I was a little girl, not even school age yet, I had first-hand experience of the joy and excitement that arises from an adoption. When I was really, really little, I was at my grandparents' house on a Sunday afternoon when my aunt and uncle came in and my aunt was carrying a baby. This baby was a girl. I was so excited. This had such a profound impact on me because I was no longer going to be the only girl in this extended family where all I had are boy cousins and my brothers. I had no sisters. This was super exciting. But to be honest, I never really thought about the fact that she was adopted until I was at her wedding when I met some of her birth family. I have to be honest, I just couldn't wrap my head around the fact that she had other siblings and other parents because all I knew is that she was my cousin and my aunt and uncle's child.

Never even thought that.She was. Adopted the whole time that I knew her. Over the last several years, she and I have had a lot of conversations about her adoption story. Interestingly enough. We and my immediate family, with my husband and I have experienced a lot of adoptions and have grown our family, I guess, to be a family of many adoptees. My daughter-in-law, who's married to one of our sons, was abandoned as a premature newborn in India many, many years ago. She was adopted by a single woman in the United States after spending months in an orphanage in Calcutta. She needed to stay there because she was unviable to even get on a plane to come to her adopted mother and come to the US until they could really have 24/7 care to really get her to that place. We believe that she was held by Mother Teresa, and that's what got her here and helped her to be just like this magnificent woman that she is today. Also, my granddaughter, who was our great niece at the time, was taken at birth by Social Services because it was just felt that it would be better for her and safer for her to be placed into a foster to adopt situation, and we'll share a lot about that story.

But it spurned a passion within my other daughter-in-law to want to take this child, bring her in to foster and to formally adopt her. Our great niece is now our granddaughter. We're so happy and so thrilled that she can be raised in a loving home and be a part of our family. Then a few years ago, I gained a new brother-in-law through ancestry DNA testing. Who knew? But I'll tell you, we are so thrilled to have him as part of our family and that we were able to connect and really get to know each other and be family together. Because my passion is in the grief healing space, I kept getting this inner nudge to talk more about adoption.

What are some of the grief that shows up? What's some of that grief that shows up for the people who are being adopted and also for the adopted parents? Or for the parents who had to relinquish their child, feel that that was a necessary thing to do?

What goes on with genetics and epigenetics and all of these different things that can really play an impact? I really wanted to delve into this a little bit further, and I've asked these family members that I just spoke of to share their stories with me so that I can share them with you. Over the month of October, I will be sharing each of these interviews on the Healing Family Grief YouTube channel and on the Confident Grief Coach podcast show. I would love it if you could hop on over to either of these forums. Hit the subscribe button down so that you get notification when these are up and running. Give us a thumbs up if you like what you see and hear when you do listen to these episodes. Everyone has a little bit different story, has different beliefs about adoption, and that's the beauty of it. We're going to culminate this series on adoption with a live panel discussion with my guests, my family, on Sunday, November fifth, at seven o'clock pm Central Time. We're going to hold that over Zoom, where you can sign up and ask us questions and get more insight. My hope is that if you are adopted, this can bring some measure of, I'm not alone in this and my feelings.

If you are a parent who relinquished your child, you can hopefully gain some comfort through this series and this conversation. If you are adopted parents and you just want to hear what other people's stories are, our stories are powerful and can help not only heal ourselves, but also provide an avenue for healing for other people.

So please keep an eye out for this series, Adoption: Where Grief and Gratitude Can Co-Exist. I look forward to seeing you over the next several weeks. Oh, yeah, links to the Healy Family Grief YouTube channel will be in the comments below. I look forward to seeing all of you and hope that you can make it. Peace out.

Hello, everyone. I am just so excited because I have someone that's super near and dear to my heart that I've known since I was probably three, I guess. My dearly beloved cousin, Barbara, who is the first, kicking off the first of our conversations about adoption and what it means to the adoptee.

The Person who was chosen to be brought into a new family, but also has experienced the abandonment of not being able to be with their birth family. So this is we're kicking it off. We're going to do a whole series about this, and then we're going to have a culmination of it.

With the whole panel of all the people that I'm doing individual calls with. So I'm excited to do this, and I'm honored, my dear Barb, that you are kicking this off because you and I have had lots of conversations about this over the years for sure. So do you want to just tell everybody just a little bit more about who are and who you are today, and then we'll dive into your birth and adoption story, but just tell us a little bit more about you.

Hey, my name is Barbara Demers. I am married. I have two adult children and a grandchild, my first grandchild on the way. I have been a hairstylist for more years than I even like to say, for 43 years. I've owned a salon for 12 years. I've also been interested in energy medicine. I've studied and I've been doing energy medicine since 1998, and I've studied several modalities, and now I'm doing some teaching and collaborating with a group called Awakening Healing Access. I also doing Akashic record readings. And yeah, that's me in a nutshell as they say in a nutshell.

So yes, hairstylist, extraordinary. This energy work, I just wanted to chat a little bit about that because I'm sure a lot of that came from everything that you experienced, whether you do it or not to come into energy, healing and that type of work. And you were one of the pioneers in the area where we live. Not many people were doing that. So what was like your firststep into energy work? What that drew you to it?

What drew me to it? Well, it was after my mother passed away. I had a client, a hair client that I was seeing who she was a family therapist, and she also started doing energy work. So she started telling me about she was doing this energy work stuff where she studied Reiki. And I was like, at the time, I had never heard of anything like that. And my first thought was like, she's weird. And that doesn't even like whatever, weirdo. I didn't know what it was. I didn't understand it. I just cast it aside. But she kept mentioning it to me that it might be something that would be helpful for me through my grief. And then I started on that synchronicity thing where all of a sudden, every place I went, she was there. I went to get gas. She's pumping gas across from me. I go to the grocery store, I turn the corner and there she is. Literally, it was in one week, I think I saw her every day. Finally, I thought, fine, okay, hey, no uncle. I give up. I'll go see her. I made an appointment to see her.

Before I saw her then I had another one of our friends, another mutual friend of ours whose mother had passed away shortly after my mother had passed away. And they found, her and her sister found a medium. And at the time, I had no idea what a medium was, but she called me up. She was, We found a medium. Do you want to go with us? Because she can talk to our dead mothers. And so I'm like, Yeah. I'm like, Yeah, sign me up. Sure, let's do that. So the three of us made an appointment to go see this medium, which was literally a couple of days after I had made the appointment to go see this gal who did the Reiki. So I went and saw the gal who did the Reiki, and then we talked for a while, and I got on the table and she's doing this energy work on me. And at one point, she grabbed my hand and she held my hand. She said, just as I suspected, because you're a natural born healer. I can remember opening my eyes and going, What? What's that? I don't even know what you're talking about.

Anyway, I left and then the appointment was relaxing and it was my first experience with energy work, and I still thought it was weird. I really didn't know what was happening. Well, then a couple of days later, I went with my two friends and we went to see this medium. And of course, I went first because we were all afraid because we didn't know what it was. So we sat down and she said to me, she goes, You know your life is about to drastically change, don't you? She said, You're a natural born healer. And I was.

Like, Oh, and.

I'm like, What the heck? How come this is two people in one week that have said this to me? And I don't even know what that means. What is that? So anyway, I've continued to see both of them for quite some time. Actually, I still see the gal, the medium gal, and the other gal is a good friend of mine now. And shortly thereafter, as I started to learn more about energy work, it was like, I know this. This makes sense. I get this. It totally was something that I can relate to when I started. I actually didn't do Reiki right away. I studied and became certified healing touch practitioner. And then I did some Reiki and I studied pronic healing. And I've just done a lot have a lot of training and education and energy medicine.

It was like it unlocked. I mean, it was all there. It's just like unlock the key. The key was you are an energy worker. It was almost like that was the key that you needed that your psyche needed to hear to like, okay, and then it just unlocked. And that's so beautiful.

Right.

So we'll probably get back to this and round back. But I just think it's fascinating because you were on the forefront... I had run to this long before other people jumped on the bandwagon. A lot of people didn't jump on the bandwagon and thought it was the devil's work and that type of thing. But we all know, most of us and people who listen to me, I would think, understand that we know that we're all made of energy and we know that we can transform energy. We can't make it. We can't get rid of it. We can't create it, we can't destroy it, but we can transform it. And that's what energy work is all about. That's where healing occurs at the most basic level when you can get to those root causes. Speaking of root causes, share as much as you're comfortable with Barb, because I know this can be a sensitive topic for.

Anybody who's sharing their story, but as much as you would like about your story your birth and adoption story.

Well, I was adopted. I am an adoptee. I was adopted when I was six months old. I was in an orphanage from some time after birth until my adoption. I was adopted into a very loving, wonderful, generous, loving family. I really had a very idyllic childhood. I had parents who adored me. I had a brother who was quite a bit older than I am. By the time I was about five, he was 18, he went on to college, and then he was drafted in the Air Force. And he really did move back to my hometown until I was probably about 16 or 17, maybe even 17 or 18. So I grew up like an only child. Right before I got married, shortly before I got married, I think I got married when I was 23, 23 and a half, about a year and a half before that, some of the adoption laws changed. And I had seen the article in the newspaper, and I had written... You had to write a letter to the agency that you were adopted through that you would like to open up your records, your adoption records, your adoption file.

And I wrote the letter, and I was so scared. It was really scary because I didn't tell my parents. And what was interesting then, a couple of weeks later, I went home and I was having dinner, and my parents had also seen the article and my dad had cut the article out of the paper and showed it to me and asked me if I would... He says, here, the laws have changed. We saw this. We thought you might be interested. And I was like, Oh, my God.

Thank God.

Thank God, because I had already sent the letter out. So I was contacted by a social worker. I was adopted through Catholic Charities. And sometimes they say it takes a while for them to find. So it was probably about, I think it was about a year and a half that it took. And what was interesting that I got a phone call one day and the social worker said to me, she said, Well, this is really interesting. And she goes, I should have known. I followed lots of leads, but the names sounded so familiar that I had a girl in my graduating class with that same last name. And so I contacted her and it was your sister. And I was just like, What? I'm looking for my birth parents. I have a sister? Well, lo and behold, I have eight siblings. And so it was right before I got married. I got married in January, and this was the end of November, beginning of December is when I got the call. And it just happened to be my birth mother did not live in the state at the time, but she felt a very strong call to come back to Minnesota.

And she came back to Minnesota literally just a couple of days before the social worker called my sister.

Wow.

So I met her, and that was probably the beginning of December. We met at Perkins, and we started at breakfast, and we stayed till way after lunch. I think we were there for probably about five hours or so. During that time, one of my sisters did come and had lunch with us. She worked close by. And then it was shortly maybe about two or three weeks after that that I met the whole family. I think it was maybe shortly after Christmas or around New Year's that I met everybody else.

So you went from almost effectively being an only child to having a whole bunch of siblings and siblings. Wow.

Yes. So my birth father was deceased. My birth mother is now also passed. But my birth father actually passed away about two weeks before I was born. He was an alcoholic and a diabetic, which is not a good combination. And that is not why I was put up for adoption or the last three of these siblings that I have, or there's three of us, actually, that became wards of the state when we were born because my birth parents did not have custody. All my other siblings were in and out of foster care. So we just became wards of the state when we were born and put up for adoption. And of course, adoption back then looked a lot different than it does now. My adoptive family waited, I think, over seven years for me. They had to, of course, my family went through Catholic charities, and so my birth family and my adoptive family were both Catholic. And they used to match eye color, hair color, and also nationalities. So I have a lot of the same Irish and German, Danish, and French. And my parents were Irish and German.

Luxembourger.

Excuse me.

I'm kidding. That was what my dad, my father and her dad were siblings, and my dad used to always go, You're Luxembourger. And it's like, well, we're really right next door to each other.

Yeah, right.

Tomato, tomato.

That's right.

Anyway, so I looked a lot like... I have blue eyes and same hair color and skin tone as my adopted family did. So people would often say that, that I looked like, Oh, this must be your mom. And I would always notice that smile on her face because I'm sure that was something that really warmed her heart. But I will have to tell you that when I sat across from my birth mother and my sister, that was mind-boggling to actually really see somebody that looked like you. I remember when my sister walked in the door, I almost like... I don't know. It was just really strange.

Is she the one that...

Yeah, you two look really similar to each.

Other because...

And we've shared the story many times. But at your wedding, I remember looking up and I'm like, Because Barb came into our family at six months of age. And I remember going to our grandparents and my aunt and uncle had this little baby. And I was so excited because I was the only girl out of all the boys of the cousins and my family. And there was a little girl and I was so excited that there was another girl in the family. So I never thought about... Its like I was never thought about adoption or how you came into the family or any of that stuff. I mean, I was what, three, I suppose. I think there's three years difference or whatever, however old. And so I didn't think anything of it. And it just wasn't a thing that we thought about. And then I was at your wedding and then this woman, your sister, and I looked and I'm like, Oh, my God! She's like the spitting image of Barb. And it was like weird for me. It was almost uncanny because it's like, I just don't... Wow, that's amazing. But it just was like, nightmare was in our mind's eye. Yeah, that's so beautiful. I bet it was just like extremely weird.

Yes. So my siblings did come to my wedding. My birth mother did not. She did not feel that it was her place. She said this is the time for your mother, for your parents to embrace. And she actually left town a couple of days before the wedding. So she didn't come, but my siblings did were there. So yes, I think that was interesting for everybody.

Yeah. And so special. I mean, when you think about... I mean, I shared with you that... And I'll be interviewing my brother-in-law, but my mother-in-law had a child that is my husband's half brother. And I always thought about after I found out about that, how my mother-in-law thought about... I'm sure she thought about Tim 24/7. I'm sure that that every day she thought about Tim because, again, he was given up at birth and was in an orphanage for six months. And I didn't get acquainted with his birth family until he was in his 50s. But I just also for the adopted child, but also for that mother, because we know that you're a mom, I'm a mom, that I think that tethering never gets from them. It's like this energetic umbilical cord that never gets cut off. It's always there. And so I just, wow, what a powerful thing for your mom to do to step back when I'm sure all she wanted to do was spend time.

Right.

Yeah.

It was my birth parent, my birth mother and my adopted mother did meet. Rather point to that it always brings me to tears. They met at my father's casket, my adopted father's desk casket. It was at his wake that she came to the wake and she met my mom at the side of the casket. And it was beautiful. They embraced and they thanked each other. And it was quite a poignant moment that I'll never forget. They interacted a couple of other times after that. But my birthmother did not live in the state. Yeah, she didn't live in the state, so she wasn't around a lot. My my mom died 10, my adopted mom died 10 years later. By the time my birthmother moved back to Minnesota and her later years, my mom was already gone.

Wow. So you have had extraordinary life filled with grief. Filled with trauma, filled with abandonment, filled with extraordinary love, compassion, the both ends of all of it. I'm going to start out with first, because I always like to start out with positives and life. What are the greatest gifts. That you feel were bestowed upon you being the adopted one, the chosen one?

Well, that's a very interesting question. I was brought up by, like I said, by very loving. I had a very idyllic childhood, very loving parents who were just, I don't want to say it couldn't do any wrong, but it was a very positive experience. I wasn't spoiled with material things, but I was definitely spoiled with love and attention and affection. It's interesting to talk with, or at one point, I know some of my biological siblings used to tell me that I was the lucky one because they were in and out of foster care, which I'm sure was not easy to be taken in a foster home and they were separated in a couple of different foster homes and then brought back together. So they used to look at and tell me that I was the lucky one. I do some work and Akashic records, and I've been bringing this to my record keepers and asking them about that. And really, I had the realization that I would not be who I am today if I did not live the life I lived, right? And so coming to the understanding or the appreciation of self-love and loving where I'm at and loving the life that I have today, where would I be or who would I be if I would have a different life?

So I think I have a wonderful life and I love the life that I'm living. So I wouldn't be here right now in this space if I had not had that experience. Did it come with some trauma? Yes. Adoption cannot come without trauma. I would even say that I know that I shared some of this information with you before that adoption really isn't the trauma piece. It's the relinquishment from the birth mother where the trauma comes in. So to me, it's like almost two separate things. Because for a while I really struggled with, well, is adoption bad? Is this not a good thing? But no, it is a gift. It definitely is a gift. It's definitely necessary, especially in fostering situations where if we're looking at the safety and the wellbeing of children. But yet there is a trauma because there's so much physiology and so much cellular things that happen between a baby in utero and your mother, and you just can't expect that bond to be broken.

That's why I said that umbilical cord, it's an energetic umbilical cord that is never severed. We know with epigenetics now and all the science that's out there just how our DNA is turned off or on in the womb and the things that happen with our mother and their stress levels and their happiness and even with the external, with our fathers. I mean, we know that even that can affect the child in the womb. But certainly, yeah, that word relinquishment is really so powerful. I mean, that's a powerful way of expressing it. So a lot of good because you won't be who you are today. You won't be the extraordinary mom that you are, the wonderful wife that you are, the friend that you are to so many, the sibling that you are. I know the aunt too many, the cousin too many. That's who you are. You've touched so many souls behind the chair that sat in the chair where you were doing your energy work without even probably thinking about it for many years. It was just a natural gift of helping others in whatever trauma they might have been going through life challenges. So if you could, and I know you've done a lot of work with this, what are some of the biggest challenges over the years from this relinquishment? The everything that transpired at the time of your birth?

That's a very interesting question and a very challenging one to answer because I didn't think about the psychology of adoption until probably about seven or eight years ago. Everybody has some trauma. We all have life experiences and life incidences that make us who we are or take us down where we build patterns or behaviors. But I think for the trauma of adoption, that relinquishment is that you... Well, it's pre-verbal, so it happens before. It's like it's pre personality, before you even have personality. You don't even realize what happened. For many traumas, I think, let's say if you were... I think this is the example that one of the gentlemen I've been listening to uses in his research. He talks about if you got in a severe car accident on the highway, you've been driving down that highway for years and you got in a severe car accident, and after a while you just think you can't get in the car and drive for a while, then maybe you can start driving after a while and you can start driving just around town, close to home. But you're not going to go down that highway again.

It's going to take a little time, maybe a little more driving, maybe go down another highway. But pretty soon you have a memory that you drove down that highway for years and you were okay. So the adoption trauma happens before you even have a personality. It's like all of a sudden you were attached to this beam, you grew in this beam. You have this hormonal physiology, a cellular physiology, all these things that all of a sudden that's gone. And so I think there's a lot of issues with trust. There's a lot of issues with addiction. There's a lot of issues with making sure that you present as being whole and grounded and steady, because if you present as being really wounded, then you might get pushed or relinquished again. For many adoptes, there's more than one relinquishment. It's not only the relinquishment from birth, but then for myself, I was in an orphanage. And so what happened in the orphanage? Was I cared for? Did where my needs met? Was just my needs met? Maybe I was fed and I was changed, but was I nurtured? Was I held? Those are the things that you had that there's relinquishment number two being moved out of the orphanage and into a new home.

So here I am again being relinquished from something that became familiar for six months, which ended the life of the baby is like a lifetime, right?

Yeah.

And you think that they can't be remembered, but these are very ingrained things. So yes, we can't really recall them and say, oh, yes, I remember.

Well, it's a survival instinct. So the lack of trust, the ability to have addictions. And when you talk about addictions, we're not just talking addictions to chemicals and that type of thing. It can be a lot of different things. It could be food, it could be shopping, it could be addiction to love of another person. I mean, there's just so many different... We probably all have some pattern of addiction within us, but this is like, it's there in survival. It's survival because dang it, I wasn't taken care of. I was given up. And then even in the work page, one thing that I thought about too, is you might have had a caregiver in the orphanage that just bonded so much to you. I mean, it could be the other way, too, right?

Right.

Exactly. And then all of a sudden, boom, you're ripped out of that person, out of their arms too. So then.

Why can't Itry to think why wouldn't I be ripped out of somebody else's arms? And I think some of that addiction comes from that need to self-soothe. And yes, there's a lot of walls that could put up because why should I even get close to you? You're going to leave anyway. And so that's where that presentation of having to be that really sturdy, whole person so that the person isn't going to leave. And even my husband said that to me a couple of weeks ago when we were talking because he was listening along with me as I was listening to some YouTube video about adoption. And he goes, You think you have all this trauma. He goes, But you're the most whole person that I've ever met. He goes, That's why I married you. And I'm like, That is what I present to you so that you could marry me. It doesn't mean that I believe that or feel that on the inside.

Wow. I didn't think about that presentation of presenting as whole. But now when I'm thinking about... You and I have talked about this. I feel like I'm meant to share some of this because there is so much just within our own family, within my family, my children, my husband, my cousin, my children have adopted my great niece who was taken away, relinquished at birth not by choice of mom, but by necessity. So there's so much that I have been surrounded in. My daughter-in-law, who will be interviewing here also in India, when she did her DNA, it was like part of the Chinese, Asian, and then the Indian-Asian. So that's what messed me up. But she too, six months or five months or whatever that she was over there as a premature baby. Then all of a sudden, you're put in somewhere else. And I see that. I see that being that presentation of I'm whole I'm strong. But I've also gotten to know my family pretty well too, that I can see the glimpses, but they don't come out for very long, right? Because that's a behavior. I think it's just a survival instinct, right? That any being on this Earth would be doing the same. It's even more so when we're human beings and that attachment is just so huge from that.

So you've been doing a lot of research in this area. You work in the Akashic records, that type of thing, a lot of energy work. We were talking before we got on the phone and you said that there is no healing from this. It isn't like we heal and it's gone. I shared, yeah, that's what I talk about with grief is I say it's healing family grief, but it's a part of healing. It's not healing it in totality because grief is part of who we are. This trauma and grief and trauma are so intertwined is who we are. And so it's always there within us. And then we build the layers of resiliency around that and how we're nurtured and cared for or maybe not, depends on how that all shows up with that layering upon that grief and the resiliency from that perspective. But it doesn't go away. But the action of grieving, I had interviewed Mary Francis O'Connor, who wrote The Grieving Brain, and she really defined the difference between grief and grieving. And that's what I see here too, is it's like you said, the trauma is there. You can't erase it.

You can't change the wiring and all of that type of thing, but your response to it or you talked about acceptance?

Right. You just have to know that the blessing and the trauma have to live right next to each other. I've really likened it lately to... It's like a lean. For a while, I really leaned on the trauma, and I was studying and researching about what is it and just having the understanding. There are some things I've read and listened to that I literally gasped out loud. When I learned that it was like a pre-personality trauma, and I was just like, Oh, my God, that makes so much sense. I get it now. And then there's the times when I lean really far into the blessing and it doesn't seem like a trauma at all because I've done so much healing work and really working on that aspect of self-love and self-acceptance and self-compassion. It's trying to find that balance between that leaning where the trauma and the blessing really live right next door to each other.

They're connected and they stand together.

They 're just beautifully together, knowing that sometimes you're going to lean and things will show up. That'll go. And then other times the lean is, gosh, it really hasn't been in my mind's eye because there's so much good stuff going on. Right. The flow. Beautiful. It's like that infinity symbol, right? And it meets in the middle.

Right. And it's just trying to find a balance where you just have to stay in that middle ground. And as I increase my capacity for self-love and for that self-compassion, I can increase that some of those walls drop and allows me to let other people love me, which that is I would say my biggest hurdle has been, is that I like to exude and I like to love and caretake a lot of people. But I like to keep everybody a little bit at arms like, you can love me from right over there and not any closer. And as I'm increasing my capacity for self-love, some of those walls are really dissolving, and I'm allowing that more love to come in. And then that can get to be really scary for me. I've been married for 38 years, and even with my husband, our relationship has really grown and changed over the past, I'll even say the past year. Sometimes he almost gets gitty about it. And then that's when I'm just like, You're laughing at me, and I shut my thumb. I can see the confusion in his face, where he's just like, I'm not laughing at you I'm ecstatic that.

I- I'm joyful.

I'm joyful. And he can feel more than, I don't want to say, an even exchange because it's not what it's about, but- A deeper connection. -a deeper connection. And he gets joyous. And then I just like... That just makes me want to... But I'm learning to read. I'm like, okay, it's okay. It's okay. It's okay, Barbara.

So having children. What shifted for you having this family and these children who actually were born of your own?

I always wondered if it's as weird for everybody as it was for me. I just thought it was like I couldn't believe it was mine. I don't know. It's really hard to explain, but I just couldn't believe that they were mine. Not that you have ownership over children, but... I feel that I was bonded very well, which is I know that some mothers don't have... Some people have a hard time bonding, but I'd spend a lot of time. I slept like literally, I think both of my children were collicky and literally slept on my chest for months.

I'm so excited for you and this grandchild who you get to meet, because I told you before we got on this recording that it's inexplicable. You can't explain this type of love that you have when you have grandchildren. And I think when I'm thinking out it now as you're talking, it is such unconditional love that they give us. And we're able to flow to them because we. Really don't have responsibilities around it. It's just a pure form of... And when we're feeling lacking in love, maybe that is. Maybe there's a woman I know that I have volunteered at grief camp for 10 years with, and their son died when he was 14 and of course, absolute devastation and trauma. And then two years ago, they had a grandchild and her friend also was a bereaved parent. And they call their grandchildren little heart healers. Little heart healers have taken the broken hearts and brought them back together. I imagine that will be the same for you also with yours.

So do you work with people and help them in what you do? Is that something that you have a desire to share more?

I've been trying to figure out what that would look like, to be honest with you. And I think just the awareness about adoption or relinquishment, because I seem to have, I'm like you, literally, I think I know more adopted people or people who have adopted children than it's just they just seem to come out of the woodwork. They're all over in my circle. And I think just building awareness that these kids do have trauma, I think many of them do really struggle. I do know a few people who have adopted children from other countries, and that's been huge. They don't have the genetic mirroring, even the smells as for an infant, the smells, the sounds, and because the sense of smell is something that is one of the first, really one of the strongest senses for an infant. And so coming to a different country that sounds different, that smells different is really huge for these kids. And I think the genetic mirroring part, a lot of times they don't look like anybody else. I talked about what a big deal that was for me. And I was raised in a family where I had the same hair color and eye color and nationalities.

And so, like I said, it's so hard because it is a gift for the trauma and the blessing. And I think I'm curious as to how much information or education that adoptive parents get.

I'll have to inquire with my daughter-in-law because we haven't really talked about that. She has been working in the social services system, mainly because she was going into foster care, so she could bring our great niece to come live and ultimately be adopted. But she had a support system that probably had access to information where many don't. And so I think with a lot of what's going on.

Everywhere and the awareness that we have and so many things that this absolutely is a huge need that there probably is a pretty significant deficit because it's not something... And in schools, you probably don't talk about it a lot. As a kid, you probably didn't go around and have conversations about that you were adopted or whatever. Kids like you.

And I would like to speak to that. Yeah. That's a very interesting thing. There's something that often I find, and I'm sure you've experienced it, especially in little bit larger families who there's maybe several siblings, you also always have that sibling that's the odd duck. And what does the family say? It's my brother. We always tell him he was adopted because he's such a weirdo or he doesn't fit in. So basically, what are... And you think about that. I have heard that so many times from people. So what are you saying? They're basically saying adopted people don't fit in and don't belong. That's my brother. He's weird. He's the black sheep. He's the weird one. We tell him he was adopted because he doesn't fit in and he doesn't belong.

And you know that I've told you this story, but my brothers, because I was the youngest, the only girl came at the tail end. Your brother and my oldest brother were the same age, so there's a lot of age difference there. And they used to tell me I was adopted because I was blonde and all my brothers, my cousins, my parents were fairly dark haired and I was blonde and I was the only girl. I would dig around in my mother's papers and try to find my adoption papers because I truly believed I was adopted. I didn't believe it. I didn't believe it probably until I was later grade school or so somewhere that she had written an article that I had read then finally, and it was about my birth and when she was in the hospital, she had been an editorial for the local newspaper. And that's the only time that I finally realized that I wasn't adopted truly. And yeah, you're telling them you don't fit in, you don't belong. Yeah. Well, this has been super amazing conversation. So I'll share your information and the show notes so that people can find you out there on social media. And is there one last thing that you would like to end with? Anything that you would like on your heart to share?

Actually, when you asked me to do this, I was thinking about a while back when you and I were doing some coaching, and I did the Gallup Strengths. The Gallup Strengths.

Are they the VIA strengths?

Yes. My number one strength was connection. And when I started looking into adaption because I just like to believe that... And I thought, isn't that interesting? That that's part of my wanting to be connected to everything and to everyone because I just love to see, because I just think everything is connected like this is so interesting. You're connected to me, and I'm connected to this, and that's connected with that. I just thought that that was interesting little perspective there. And anything else? The last thing I'd like to share that if anybody, yeah, I'm open to talking or visiting, chatting with anybody about adoption, about their feelings about adoption.

What's the best way for them to What is the best form for them to reach you?

Probably you could go through my website and it sends me an email, so they would drop any information there. I can reach out and connect to them.

You want to just give your website right now? Like I said, I'll put it in the show notes.

It's my name. So it's www. BarbaraDemers.Com.

I will have that in the show notes. So thank you, my dear cousin, sister, soul sister. This was amazing. So everybody else, keep an eye out. We'll be having more of these and we'll have Barbara back on when we do the panel discussion later on. Thank you.

Looking forward to that.

Contact us:

Cami Thelander: www.bearfootyogi.com

The Confident Grief Coach School: www.healingfamilygrief.com

Founder of MPCS Inc. with The FACTOR OF, Maria Nebres is an international bestselling published author of Love and the Highly Engaged Team, a certified trainer of Jack Canfield’s Success Principles, and an authentic success coach, blending her expertise in human relations, human resources management and personal success development for motivated individuals to realize their true leadership for abundance in soulful business and life.

Maria has been assisting people and businesses (both profit and not-for-profit) transform their lives and their organizations for over 25 years. She has successfully led and facilitated many transformational programs for employee relations and engagement, performance/success management, business and personal transitions, leveraging her passion for helping people and organizations achieve authentic and lasting success through heart-centered leadership that taps into each individual’s true passions, purpose, core genius, and talents, no matter the vocation or field of work they are in.

It is in this way that she believes the essence of the working world will heal for lasting abundance in harmony with the larger world’s healing. She promotes the vision of ease and abundance through inspiring others by doing what inspires for better results that serve.Maria has served her clients across many industries including healthcare, financial services, pharmaceuticals, management consulting, technology, food and beverage, research and development, and the public sector.

To learn more about Maria and her services, check out her website at www.factorof.com or contact her at [email protected].

Shownotes:

Hello. Thank you so much. I'm here. I'm here with Maria and it's Nebres. Want to make sure that I say that right and welcome. And thank you so much for allowing me to interview you and share your gifts and your magic to the world.

Thank you for this time. I appreciate it.

No problem. So I just want to read your bio so people can get an idea of who you are and what you're all about. So Maria is the founder of MPCS, Inc. With the Factor of. She is an international best selling published author of Love and the Highly Engaged Team, which I love because as a previous corporate executive, I was all about team building, and it was all about I know that teams are the best way to really get anything done. So I love this. I make anxious to hear all about it.

Oh, that's fantastic.

That's great. She's a certified trainer of Jack Canfield Success Principles, and most of us know who Jack Canfield is. And she's an authentic success coach, blending her expertise in human relations, human resources, course management, and personal success development for motivated individuals to realize their true leadership for abundance. We love abundance and soulful business and life. Maria has been insisting on people and businesses, both profit and not for profit, transform their lives and their organizations for over 25 years. She looks way too young to be having done this for over 25 years. It's working well for her. She's in her zone. She has successfully led and facilitated many transformational programs for employee relations and engagement, performance, success management, business, and personal transitions. She's just got this passion and she leverages that for helping people and organizations achieve authentic and lasting success through heart centered leadership, tapping into everybody's true passion, purpose, core genius, and talent. No matter what the vocation, what work that they're in, this works across all venues.

It Is in this way that she believes the essence of the working world will heal for lasting abundance, which we all know that we need, especially now, and in harmony with the larger world's healing. So it's about the healing. And that works in the corporate and the personal. So she promotes a vision of ease and abundance through inspiring others by doing what inspires them for better results that serve. She has worked across all paths. We're talking health care, financial services, pharmaceuticals, management consulting, technology, food and beverage, research and development, and the public sector. So she has a wide variety of information here. So I'm really excited to learn more about that. And Maria, I'm going to put it when I post these videos, but her website is www. Factorof. Com. And so I'll make sure that I post that her contact information for you. So Maria, wow. You have a very accomplished life that I can see from just your bio. So tell me, how did you get started in this?

It's interesting because I got started from having moved to Canada as a young girl. At the age of six, my parents decided to relocate us from the Philippines, which is my native land, to Canada, the land of opportunity. And at an early age, I grew up learning that you focus on what it was to serve the world, to serve society. I certainly grew up learning and understanding the ethics of work. And there was a certain order in which you would achieve and attain certain certain thing. So I saw it from my dad who had five jobs at the time. I saw it in my mom and the role that she played in the household. And I certainly saw it in terms of the upbringing and the discipline that we were being taught. And then at a certain age, I grew to learn more and more within a new culture, which was the North American way that I had more opportunities. I had more opportunities than just being in the house. I witnessed my mom. She loved what she did, but I wanted more because I was one of four children, the only girl. And yet the thought was that my lot in life was going to be, and there's nothing wrong with it, but was going to be to take care of home.

The culture of North America was totally different from the culture that was being instilled in me in my childhood, which was, it's okay for you to stay at home and take care of family. I wanted something a little bit more. So I ended up going through my education and then finding that I had this natural extra love for being with people. I'm not much of an extrovert, but I certainly love people. And so I fell into sociology, which I ended up really loving, landed in human resources, and then the story began of my life. I love to help individuals really around. The reason why I like sociology is it is the study of the psychology of what motivates people to do what they do in relation with other people. That fascinated me. Human Resources at the time presented for me that right training ground. I naturally fell into it, manifested it, I suppose you would say. I haven't looked back since, except that it grew my interest more and more for how could I serve more in a larger capacity? And that landed me into the work that I did with Jack Canfield. I experienced in the corporate world this thing that I believe a lot of people go through, which is burnout and not quite knowing how to perform and still be highly engaged.

So when I talk about leadership issues around engagement, which fascinates me, it isn't leadership from a role function standpoint so much as it is leadership from a universal standpoint. And who actually owns it is every single individual. So I have that passion to want to share that message. And with whatever truth that I have from the experiences that I gained, I dealt with my burnout from having transformed myself from personal development. And I swear by personal transformation work, when you do your inner work, everything external to you starts to make a lot more sense and a lot easier. Because really, the challenges that we face is really around the relationships between individuals. So that's part of why I felt that I was in a position to be able to pivot myself after having earned my stripes of really understanding process and structure, the structures we create. And then how do we play within that structure? And how do we allow for the malleability that really life is all about? So would it really matter if we were talking about the workplace? Not necessarily. It's really about you, the common denominator and the environment you choose to enter.

So that brought me to this big aha moment after having done my transformation work and deciding that I was going to go through. My first big breakthrough was opening up my own practice at a very young age and deciding, no matter what anybody told me, no, you still need more years. Well, that was 17 years ago. I took that leap of faith and I trusted myself. 17 years later, I went through major milestones of wanting to achieve one breakthrough after another. And I called the shots on it. And I'm so proud of it that I really want to share with individuals who have the same spark and spirit to really understand what it is and what it takes that's inherent in all of us. So I had to obviously prove that point. And that's what inspired me deeply to write my first book. Wow.

Just just amazing. And you just shine. I'm just watching you. And you're just, you know, this light and this passion is just shining out on the screen and everything. And you resonate for me because as I said, I spent 25 years. I'm a registered nurse by background, but I spent 25 years in the corporate environment. The last many years, probably half of my career in executive roles.

Right.

So when you talk about the leadership and all of that, it was. I was getting to that point that, Gosh, this just isn't doing it for me. And so I had to go deep. I had to go deep and really decide what's my next journey in life. And that actually led me to becoming a life coach. But I would really like to hear, I'm assuming that you have some steps or something. How do you know when you're working with individuals and organizations, what are the key components of starting to do that inner work?

Yeah. So my book is really centered around because everyone seems to want a system and everyone seems to want a process. And certainly it does help in terms of knowing that it could be as simple as really the reason why we have process and frameworks is so that we can do something repetitively. And there is value to the repetition because it creates a sense of discipline. It's a sense of habit. So in a lot of the work that I've done, both in personal transformation and within the corporate structures and platforms, I blended it together to indicate that at base, you have to have some fundamental mental habits. And they have designed my eight-step process. I say that with the caveat that it isn't so sequential and so linear as what people think, because the nature of inner work is that it is messy and has to necessarily be messy. More like a matrix versus something that is so start, finish, start, finish. And if you're going to take a look at it from that process standpoint, it's going to be start, finish, back, moving iteratively. So this eight step process I have, which is really what designed my whole program or my book, the framework, and my organization.

I actually called my organization the Factor Of, because Factor of is really the acronym for some of the fundamental core bucket steps that an individual would have to have to apply in order for them to really have a good, great framework and foundation. And the entrance to that, I believe, in some of the learnings that I had from corporate organizational structure is it really requires your holistic approach, the whole entire you. And the whole entire you, many people tend to think it just as here. And then all of a sudden it turns translates into your body, into your physical hands. But somewhere in between there is going to be the cohesion with your heart. And the heart is representative beyond the physicality. It's so representative of something so much larger, which is really the foundation for what your purpose, your core purpose really, truly stands for. I call that everyone has a spirit of service. When you connect with your spirit of service, which is something that is beyond and much, much larger, almost it's on the divine side. When you get that clarity and you connect it and you reconcile it with your physicality, which is the material form, then you can do magic.

You can do magic.

Yeah. Oh, man, I hear you, sister. I hear you. The spirit of service. And I just want to share that for people who are tuning in and seeing my videos, there's a reason why I'm doing these videos. I am connected with Maria because we belong to a coaching group, which is a business coaching platform, but it is all for servant-hearted authors where we are writing books, but our books are really our platform to go out into the world and make a difference, a positive difference. And so we come from all different perspectives. But the core is, as you said, it goes right into the heart. You said that right into the heart. It's all about being heart-centered. And as a leader in big corporations, sometimes that may get lost a little bit because we're in our heads so much. We got to figure out the budget, follow the budget, figure out the strategy and the tactics and all of that. And going back into the heart is so deeply important to in that passion. And so the spirit of service. So tell me a little bit about how do you help organizations? Do you work with the individuals within the organizations?

Do you do bigger things within the organization? Organizations as groups? Tell me a little bit about your experience with that.

If I were to categorize the suite of services that I offer because that's basically what it is. I have served corporate leaders in the functions of leadership. So anywhere from a line manager to a mid manager to executive and also at the employee level, because human resources and the function of human resources touches all. In that nuance and dance, what I find is that leaders in organizations have a great opportunity and are the biggest influencers when it comes to setting the culture that you want to have so that there is unification when it comes to what this thing is that they call engagement. Statistics will show that many organizations that have employees in them, and that's really what an organization is, it's a group of people, so it doesn't even have to be corporate. If you've got a business, if you have a movement, if you have an organization, the purest definition of it is a group of people coming together for a common cause. Now, what does that take? It takes leadership, absolutely, and it takes engagement. So how do you engage beyond the inspiration of, Hey, I've got a great idea. It's how do you keep it gelled?

And so the work that I do is anywhere from there's the transactional. If an individual is looking for transactional solutions, my transactional solutions obviously would be in my core technical experience around anything thing involving the resources of humans for humans. So I challenge leaders in the work that I do with them with the language that they end up transposing in terms of how do they lead people. It starts first off with this term called human resources management. There is this misnomer that human resources management means that you're managing the people. And in this new paradigm that I'm trying to really move, it's let's move away from defining things that really limit high engagement. High engagement, the single biggest source for high engagement is love. And when you love and you are able to translate that down into an organizational across multiple people for a common cause. It isn't about managing them. It's about what you're managing are the resources that support humans. So a lot of the work that I do with leaders is really understanding that their intentionality or their intentional approach to the culture that they really are committed with. And part of that commitment has to start, in fact, all of the commitment must start to start from within.

So it must start from the leader. So I do a lot of work with the leader to make sure that their vibration and their ripple effect is that whole term in corporate, can you walk the top walk and can you talk and can you talk the walk? And that is directed at the leader. And then what are you modeling out so that you're also encouraging folks to do that? Certainly in this day and age and in these really uncertain times, which will become the norm, and the norm is really going to be business unusual. It's not going to go back to the business usual. Why? Because we've been gifted with so many lessons in just a mere three, four months now.

Yeah, things have changed dramatically. The face of organizations has changed dramatically. And I just love that love. I hang on to my little crystal here. But that love is the center of this because we don't think about that in organizations. But you're right. It doesn't have to be an organization. It's getting together and all being there for a common cause. And that's where we make a difference in the world. And everybody brings... I know for me, I always said I could walk away from my job and know that everything would just run so smoothly because the people that I worked with, yes, in the structure, they reported up to me, but they didn't. We were a team. And so everybody brought their strengths. And so it was just so fluid. And so I was able to exit gracefully. Everything still is just flowing just beautifully. And that's what it's all about. So I wanted to go to there was something that you had written in it. We had communicated a little bit back and forth, but talk to me a little bit about compassion fatigue. You had used that term and I thought, Oh, I just really love that term.

And I'd like to hear your perspective on that. And how do we bring that to people, not only into their homes and into their own hearts, but into the workplace? And what does that mean?

Right. So certainly I find that in many organizations, when you're faced with having to help other people in their own grieving or trauma, and that happens in the workplace as well, certainly I've had and I've experienced many leaders going through their burnout. Even in the health care sector, let's say, I'm reminded of some of the physicians and the nurses who have experienced that compassion fatigue because of the work, the work that they do. But certainly a leader goes through that as well when they're leading individuals who are facing mental health issues. Mental health issues, by the way, isn't necessarily just resorted, like reserved for people who are clinically diagnosed something. It's when something is something destructive at the personal level is affecting an individual and you still need them to perform. So how do you deal with the compassion fatigue is having that dance and that conflict where a leader doesn't know what to do. They're experiencing it and they're feeling the vibration of the individual's grief or trauma, the effects of those base emotions. So we do a lot of work in terms of understanding what is compassion, first off. But in the end, compassion requires to give it, it requires having a full supply for yourself.

I helped to navigate my clients to really remembering and putting in place their tools around self care. Because self care should really be translated into soul care. Because when you're doing self care, the essence of the spirit of service, the spirit of work, does not come from your hands. It's from your essence. And compassion happens to be one of them. So when an organization commits to putting at the business table the value of love, you get certain attributes and the demonstration of certain attributes that will deplete from your essence. And compassion just happens to be one of them. I'm not sure in the United States. I believe you guys have, and I'm using an example. In Canada, they instituted laws for protecting and providing support programs for violence in the workplace, which included domestic violence. And I think the reason for it was because an individual would enter a workplace and they had issues, suffering issues like domestic violence and the mental health issues that come across that and the obligation of an organization. So that is already pretty highly emotionally charged then you get an employee who's experiencing it and a leader who's needing to manage that whole process.

Compassion fatigue can occur. Self-care in general is really where would address certain fatigue at the emotional level that an individual would face. I used compassion as one example. Certainly, it wouldn't have to be something as specific and as traumatic as that. It could also be that the organization is going through so much high change, and how do they deal with the emotional charges and the varying degrees of emotional attachments that maybe themselves are going through and their employees. But that's with everyone as well. When someone wants to start off a business and they're an entrepreneur and they're looking for, I don't really know what I'm going to do or what I'm supposed to do, it's a highly emotional charge. And then you think this individual is probably going through their own fatigue because they're not managing their emotions. And it's okay to manage your emotions. Now, emotional management doesn't mean you repress. So we go through that in terms of explaining that emotional intelligence factor comes into play as well. So we do talk about strategies around managing your emotions as part of that compassion fatigue mitigation.

That's so beautiful. And as you're talking, I'm just thinking a couple of different things. With this whole idea of in the workplace, I remember at one point, one of my managers who reported to me was having some significant issues with her son. And it was very distracting for her, very challenging for her because of what he was going through. And so that's where we just needed to sit and to be the compassionate leader to understand what she was going through and knowing that her team and what she needed to provide there in the organization was still important to her. So I was telling my daughter-in-law that I remember her son needed to be transported to a treatment facility. And it was another one of these layers of her grief and her stuff that was going on in her life that was pretty constant. And I finally just said, I'm going to go get him and I'm going to transport him because you just just want you to sit here and just be able to just breathe. And I know just how tough this is for you because when you're in the middle of it and the codependency and all of that, so please, let me step in and help you with that.

You can stay here and just breathe. And she was so appreciative. And it didn't take much. I just got in my car and picked him up and took him. But it made such a difference for both of us because I felt like I was really serving in such a bigger way for her and him. And that she could just because she had this grief that was going on and this trauma and just couldn't even see throughout all of that. So it's so important in the workplace that.

It is.

Take a look at that. And I also appreciate that you're talking about entrepreneurs and solopreneurs, of which I'm one in my coaching business. This is why we have coaches. This is why we do what we do because Mary Ann Williamson, I'm in a group with her, and she'll say something like, You can't preach yourself. We as coaches even need coaches because we need to understand that there is some compassion fatigue even going on with us because we may not be uncertain. We're not the expert in everything. And so that's one thing that I really want to get across here for everybody who's listening. Now, this is important for people like Maria to bring into your organizations, even if you're a one person organization or if you're a large corporate organization, bringing in someone who really has an understanding of this bigger picture. And as executives and leaders in organizations, serving with your heart needs to come first. I mean, this is what's going on in the world right now. Absolutely. All this stuff that's happening.

We can say.

Oh, this is horrible. This is horrible. And I'm like, oh, I think this is just pretty amazing because the paradigms are totally going to be blown apart. What felt like an implosion of the world is actually opening up and creating this heart spaced life that we all can lead in. And it's just a beautiful thing.

Absolutely. And on I find that though we are renewing and changing, there is something that's really certain that we will always face. And that will be in a perfect world, we could have conversations like this where we pick out something and we solve it or we get the clarity around it. But in the real world, in the reality of life, everything happens. And for every single human being, there is a true leadership in them. And there must be. They must be able to tap into it. For all these things, how do you replenish your resilience? Your resilience is how you can bounce back whenever challenges come your way, because challenges are so inevitable if you're really truly living. The plus side of knowing about life in terms of committing that you want to thrive and you don't want to just survive. We must survive. Our bodies are in our brains and our whole being protects us all the time. But I believe that what's happened is that we have conditioned ourselves to believe that every single thing is a crisis. It's wearing out like this rubber band where you keep stretching it, stretching it, stretching it, and it's not going to have its resilience.

A rubber band's resilience is that it goes back to its original form. But when we are not replenishing it, one of the things that can help to replenish it is to understand and to understand the kinds of supports, and that's through awareness. So awareness is a very big part of the coaching that we light workers and spiritual workers and any health and wellness practitioner would highly recommend. It starts with a level of awareness. What are you aware of and how are you going to be able to orchestrate your own levels of support because of the known. And the known is to thrive and to live in life in a thriving way. You have to understand that the demos will happen. The level of discernment is going to always happen where you're going to have to be pressured with choices to make because you can't move forward without making choices. And so therein lies the whole dichotomy of being blessed with the fact that we have the capability of creating, we have the capability and will of being able to choose whatever comes our way. So why not maximize on it? And there is a way to it.

And each of us in the work that we do, which is what I love about this community for a new paradigm of shifting for all of us, humanity, understanding what our source is for really healing the world. We all got that capability. Would require that understanding. And sometimes you would need absolutely you can't do it alone. And that's the whole thing I love about the collective. I must have spent in the last 2-3 years, I invested big time on my continued, ongoing transformation supports. And that's not something that anybody can determine for you, but they can offer it to you. And this is why I love these types of platforms. And I truly appreciate that you welcomed me for this chat. Yeah.

And I just want to say there's one thing that I just want to put out there in know? We talk about spirituality or going deep and into the spirit and the essence of who we are. And organizationally and in the in our jobs and whether it's corporate or whatever, this is all part of it. We all are these divine human beings. So if you're in a corporate environment and it's like, oh, you can't be talking about that, or you're voodoo, you're crazy because you've got this stuff, that isn't what belongs here. I call BS on that because the only way that we're really going to survive and heal humanity, which is every one of our responsibility ability is to tap into that wisdom that's within each of us, that heart centered space and allowing all of the people that we're in contact with to allow their hearts to shine and to share their beautiful wisdom. Because this is how we learn is through each other. Absolutely. It doesn't matter if it's the person working in the mail room. It doesn't matter if it's the CEO at the helm and everybody within that continuum. This is all about humanity and it is about heart.

So for the people that are watching, say, on my LinkedIn channel and you're going, Pat, what are you doing? It's like stepping up to do here. This is the that so of us that we're here to change the world, baby. We're here to change it in a great way, right?

That's right. I take this from my experience within the corporate world to run a business, I'm not suggesting that there is no value for structure because you definitely do need structure. You definitely need to have clarified roles of accountability and commitment. And when I say accountability, you need to understand the difference between responsibility and accountability as it pertains not just to rules, but individuals. And there are so many simple ways. It's just a matter of whether or not all of us are willing to let go of what it is that we need to let go of. And that is the part of the journey and adventure that is so enriching for an individual when they do work with coaches in the spaces that we are in, which is really transformational. If you're afraid, and I'm saying this to the audience, if you're afraid of the word and it just doesn't feel good with you because it's voodoo, as you would call it, words like soulful or spiritual, then call it what you want to call it. The individuals that will help you through it, there is an understanding that when you go and choose for the right coach, that they understand your space, first off.

Because we live in a time right now where it's both feet on two different paradigms. If you want to thrive, you have to understand that you're always both feet on two different platforms. There is the platform of what you know today, and there is the platform of what you want to have tomorrow. When you are doing Matt dance, there are basic things that you are saying heaven yes, or hell yes to committing. Make sure that you do the homework that you do. The homework that you do, and that I'm speaking of is that inner homework. The inner homework that if it resonates for you, if the person's dynamic resonates for you, then chances are, explore it because there is something to be said there because it is essence that is aligned in you both.

Well, thank you so much. We do need to get going here. But I just thank you so much, Maria, for sharing your essence.

Thank.

You. I wish I would have had you there many years ago when I was doing my thing in corporate America and that type of thing. But your essence is beautiful. I appreciate what you're bringing to the world. And I hope that everybody else has an opportunity to look at this. And I will have all Maria's information so that you can contact her. You can go to her website, you can check her out. And just thank you so much.

I appreciate this time. I really appreciate it. And you know what? Divine timing had it so that it was perfect that we were meeting today on this. Absolutely. I'm grateful. Take care. All right. Bye bye.

Take care. Peace out.

Contact us:

Cami Thelander: www.bearfootyogi.com

The Confident Grief Coach School: www.healingfamilygrief.com

Karen Lorre studied psychobiology (how the mind affects the body) in college. She has had a lifelong interest in psychobiology, epigenetics, neuroscience, health, and spirituality. She has studied the Science of Mind since 1985, has been meditating consistently since 1991, and has studied the Law of Attraction since 2009.

While still in college, Karen found she had a natural gift for receiving direct communication and downloads from the Infinite Loving Divine and intuitive clarity.  Karen is an actress and has done over a thousand hours of TV, films, and commercials. As an actress, Karen observed how when she played different characters, her body would respond in different ways. Karen had some intense emotional and physical challenges that caused her to seek answers.

This led her to discovering ways to transform her fatigue and pain into vibrant energy and chronic pleasure. It led her to become so steadily in love that nothing can stop her. Karen now teaches others how to transform their own emotional and physical fatigue and pain into vibrant energy and chronic pleasure. Karen now lives in chronic pleasure and pure love and has all the energy she needs to do what she wants.

She has no stress; nothing is challenging for her now.  Karen’s work has been endorsed by Dr. Deepak Chopra, Dr. Bruce Lipton, Dr. John Jaquish, Gay Hendricks and many more.

If you are interested in having Karen send you her books, you can reach Karen at: [email protected].

If you are interested in learning more about grief coaching with Pat Sheveland, go to www.healingfamilygrief.com.

Shownotes:

Hi, everybody. I am so, so super, super, super excited because I get to visit with Karen Lorre today. This is really special. I've known her for, I feel like, a really, really long time, but we've never really connected face to face. I guess this is face-to-face. It would be so cool if it was person-person-to-personto- person physically, but we're not doing that right now. But as many of you know, I'm doing these little fun interviews with people that I've connected through my business coaching program. I know we all are authors and we all have our programs. I don't want to call programs, what we want to bring to the world. It's how we want to bring our open our hearts and just share with the world. And so this is a group of authors, and many of them said, Yeah, I'll raise my hand. I'd love to have you interview me. And then I'm just sharing it across my platforms and hopefully that it just connects for all of you. So, Karen, let me tell you first. Thank you. I am so appreciative of having you here.

Thank you. It feels wonderful to be with you, Pat, and so happy to connect with your wonderful people. Thank you

So let me tell you a little bit about Karen. Okay. So Karen studied psychology.

No. Psychobiology

Oh, it's psychobiology. I'm sorry. My eyes got that wrong. Thank you. Thank you. How the Mind Affects the Body. She did that in college, and she's had a lifelong interest in psychobiology, epigenetics, which I love, neuroscience, health, and spirituality. It's that whole package.

And she studied the science of mind since 1985. Now you would look at her and think, no, she was way too young in 1985 to even be thinking about stuff like this. But this is the beauty of all the work that she does is she just keeps getting younger and younger and younger. And she can teach us all about that. She's been meditating consistently since 1991, and she studied the law of attraction since 2009. So she truly has immersed herself and her whole being is about all of this. While she was still in college, she had a natural gift for receiving direct communication and downloads from the infinite, loving, divine, and intuitive clarity. Karen is an actress and has done over a 1,000 hours of TV films and commercials. One Life to Live? Correct?

You can speak, Karen.

I didn't know that that was the question. Yes, I did One Life to Live for four years, but lots of other shows.

Lots of other things, too. But just for people that are soap opera fans, you may recognize her.

Yeah.

Go ahead sorry

I was just going to say one of the Tinas because there was quite a few.

Tina morphed a bit.

Tina morphed. She had life transformational experiences.

As we all do. Yeah. So as an actress, Karen observed how she enjoyed playing different characters, and she found that her body would respond in different ways. And so she had some pretty intense emotional and physical challenges that caused her to seek answers. And once she starts telling her story and she talks about her books, you absolutely have to read her books because there's so much amazing information. Just hearing her story is not even amazing. It's just so incredible and so deep and just so much there. This led her to discovering ways to transform. She had a lot of challenges with fatigue and pain, and she learned to transform that into what she says, vibrant energy and chronic pleasure. That's what Karen is all about. Before you get to know her, you just start wanting to get into this energy with her. So she now lives in chronic pleasure and pure love, which I know for a fact, and has all the energy she needs to do what she wants. She has no stress. Nothing is challenging for her now. And her work has been endorsed by some of the people that are pretty notable, Dr. Deepak Khopra, Dr. Bruce Lipton, Dr. John Jockish, is that how you say it?

Daquish.

Daquish, Gay Hendrix, and many, many more. She's had a very story life, even outside of her acting career, that she can maybe talk a little bit about. But again, Karen, it's just a joy to have you here and to help you share with whoever's listening throughout all the platforms that were on a little bit about yourself. I guess I would like you to just start, because you are the intuitive. What is it you would really like to share today with us? Let's go down that path a little bit.

Well, I know a lot of people suffer when someone dies or if someone gets hurt or when something happens. I know we have this whole situation going on in America and probably other places in the world where people, like black people who have been persecuted and had had incredible injustice, where they're suffering and where there's some police brutality. Not every policeman is that way, but some policeman are doing that. I know that grief comes from so many different ways. One of the things that I've recognized is that when I had an experience where I lost my father, passed away, my best friend ex boyfriend killed himself, and I got subpoenaed to be in a trial against a church I went to when I was just a teenager, just as for part of a youth group because the minister had been a pedophile and all of the counselors that he hired had been a pedophile. And so all of this conspired. And I was in such a state of grief about my dad and then about Donny who was the man who killed himself that I couldn't function. And I remember people would call me and I'd say, I can't.

Whatever it was, I couldn't make plans. I couldn't commit to anything because I just didn't know how I feel. I had no energy. My body got so weakened. And because of the way I've studied where I've studied Psychobiology, which is how the mind affects the body, epigenetics, and meditation, and a little bit of neuroscience and all these different things. What I started to realize, and because of my experience with acting, where I literally saw the world shift when I was a different character and my body shift when I was a different character. I saw this happen so consistently as an actress because sometimes you're playing one character one week, another character another week, another character another week, then you have a break for a couple of weeks, and then you play another character and every character is different. I would notice how just being a specific type of character, let's say I was playing a character in grief, the world responded to me one way. When I'm playing a character who's happy, the world responded another way. When I play a character who's bitchy, the world responded in another way. I really got that it had nothing to do with the world.

It had to do with what I was emanating in the world. When I was feeling all that grief, I didn't know what I know now, but what ended up happening at a certain point, and I stayed in that grief for probably a decade, and I wanted to kill myself. It was just so debilitating to feel that intense sadness. Then at a certain point, I had the experience of being very intuitive since I remember it since I was in college. It probably happened before, but I didn't pay any attention to it. And I started to perceive the presence of Donny, the ex boyfriend, best friend who had killed himself. And I perceived him and what he explained to me, and I was still sick at the time, I got really sick because the grief that I had experienced, it cannibalized my body. It took away my energy. I got diagnosed with narcolepsy. My adrenals were so depleted that the doctor said he'd never seen worse adrenals in 30 years. My thyroid was off and my hair was thinning and I had to wear glasses to read. I had so many things going on. There was much more than that.

I had chronic pain. All of it was going on. I had now at this point, I'd been married when my dad and when Johnny in the court case, all of that happened right at the beginning of when I got married. We were married for 10 years, but at this point, we were getting divorced. I'm living in a small apartment and I can barely get out of bed, but I'm trying to feel better. When I would be in that place where I would either just be waking up or just be falling asleep, I heard different energies communicating with me, or I felt them. I don't know if it was actually sometimes it's audible and sometimes it's just a knowing and sometimes it's kinesthetic and sometimes it's a vision. One of the things that happened was I kept hearing, Donny, when we had been dating, and this was when I was in my 20s, he had written a song for me that one of the gogoes sang. It was called I Feel the Magic. He had told me he had written it for me. He would sing it to me all the time in real life. While I'm lying in this bed, right between sleep and wake, before I started actually thinking my normal, habitual thoughts of grief, I would hear this song and I didn't understand why I was hearing it until maybe eight or 10 months later when I realized it was a way of Donny to communicate with me.

Johnny was in non-physical and what he was communicating to me was that even though he had killed himself and I had all these ideas that, oh, somebody who kills himself, they're going to be suffering in the afterlife. They're going to be in a lot of pain in the afterlife. I just had imagined him like that. What he said was that that was completely wrong. He actually said that every... And this is very controversial, so forgive me, and it might not sound like a very compassionate thing to say, but he was dead when he was saying it, so I'd hope that I interpreted it correctly. So I'll just say it and then whatever. He said that every death is a suicide. I said, What do you... He said, And everybody, when they die, they go into immediate love and joy and freedom. Let everybody let go of all the physical pain, the mental pain, resentment, fear, grief, sadness, anger, all of that stuff. I remember thinking, Wow, that's amazing. I couldn't believe how his energy was so high and loving and happy. I could feel him literally feel him being proud of me. He would communicate this understanding to me.

When I said to him, but every death is a suicide, what do you mean? What I got was that everybody's making... They might not be conscious of the choice. We have a lot of desires that are unconscious that we're not even aware that we're desiring them. He said that even what's happening is a lot of times people will have some desire. I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to live like this. Oh, this is making me sick. This is sucks. It's sickening what I'm doing, or it's sickening what that person is doing. Then their body listens to that and starts to become that. Johnny said that every single person that has ever passed away has always gone into pure positive joy and that they never have died accidentally. I couldn't believe that since I had so many people in my life that had passed away. I just kept asking him about it. He said, People, they aren't conscious a lot of times of what they're wishing. For example, one of my best friend, she just passed away almost a year ago. She was my age. We looked a lot like people thought we were sisters, but she had an Austrian accent.

She was from Austria. She had a husband that she loved with all her heart, but she knew he was unfaithful. He kept giving her venereal diseases. She had two children that were grown up and that she loved. He worked far away from the... He worked in other countries. He was a director. And so he would be gone for sometimes months at a time. And she would go into anxiety because she knew he was having affairs. And she never... She would ask him to stop it. She asked him to go get help and do all that stuff. And he went, but he didn't get the help he needed. And what she did was she pretended she was fine. But what she would tell me is he makes me so sick. So what happened? She got sick, got extremely sick and she got pancreatic cancer, which is... The pancreas is what takes care of your insulin, which is what you do, what you need when you're eating things that have sweetness and things that don't. Your pancreas monitors the sweetness in your life. And so she was being to the world, fake sweet. And her body was hearing her say, Makes me sick.

I can't stand what he's doing. It's so sickening what he's doing. And she just got weaker and weaker and weaker. And I could see this happening. She would also go awol for months at a time. So I wouldn't always have the ability to communicate with her. But one time when she was going awol before she actually got sick, this is maybe 15 years ago, and she only got sick in the last, like, diet a year ago, and she got sick maybe a year and a half before that. But she... Sorry if I'm talking so long.

No, this is beautiful. Thank you. I'm just mesmerized.

By it. Okay, thank you. So this was maybe 15 years ago, and I was home alone, and I was in that nappy, half nappy, half awake state. And I got this message that I realized was from her dad. I'd never met her dad. He was dead before I ever met her. But I knew it was her dad. And he kept saying to me, tell her I'm proud of her. Tell her she did the right thing. And I was like, what? Tell her I'm proud of her. Tell her she did the right thing. And so I got out of bed and I tried to dial her phone number, but it went. I didn't know it, but she was in Austria. And so it just went to that weird dial that happens when you're dialing in another country and they're not answering and you can't leave a message. So I decide to email her, and this was 15 years ago, so maybe phones are better now. And this was before WhatsApp, or at least before I knew about WhatsApp. Anyway, so I email her and I said, Hey, hey, love. I'll just keep her anonymous since I was talking about her husband and everything.

Hey, love, I think I got a message from your father. And he kept saying, To tell you that he's proud of you, you did the right thing. He's proud of you, you did the right thing. So I don't hear from her. And then the next day, I get a phone call and she's like, Karen. And I'm like, What's going on? And she said, I'm in Austria. And then she tells me the story about how when her father had died, he had given her just two brothers. And there's a brother and his sister had given just her this particular house that had been in the family. And she had always felt guilty about that. So she was in Austria, and she had before, maybe a couple of years before, she had given her brother and her sister to be part of the ownership. And now she found out they'd been doing something that wasn't right, that was going to get her in trouble, something that was potentially illegal or something like that. I don't know the specifics of what it was, but she said that she had just signed the papers to remove them from ownership of the house and she was taking back full ownership and that she was in her hotel room crying on the bed, lying on the bed on her belly and saying, Daddy, please give me a sign.

I'm doing the right thing. I feel so terrible. Give me a sign. I'm doing the right thing. Oh, my God. I feel so terrible. When her father was telling me to tell her, I'm proud of you. You did the right thing. I'm proud of you. You did the right thing. He was answering her prayer. What she said to me was she told me that whole story. Then she said, I got the email and I knew I had done the right thing. And she was so thankful. And she brought me all these flowers when she got back in the States. And we had this really great connection. And what was interesting is that when I was at her funeral last year, I met her family and I had not met them before. I met her brother and her sister and their partners. I told them that story and they all went white. I said, What's going on? And they said, We always thought she was being selfish. We didn't know that she was being advised by her father. I saw them see how their resentment of her had been unnecessary. And that thing where I've picked up the energy of someone who's non physical has happened so many times.

Another time, just one of my clients, I coach people, I help people release unconscious blocks so they can have amazing, priceless results. But one of my clients, her husband had died very suddenly, and she hadn't talked to me too much about it because we'd been dealing with just her specific things. So she hadn't talked to me about him too much. I didn't know much about him, but I was not working with her at the time, but I could feel him and I knew it was him. I don't know how I knew it was him. It's just a knowing. I knew it was him and he was singing the song. I don't know this song actually, but it's Come on Baby, Let the Good Times Roll. I don't know how it goes. Sorry, there's something in my eye. But he was singing this song and he just said, Come on, baby, let the Good Times Roll. And he kept singing just that one line over and over and over again. I was like, I got that he wanted me to tell her that. I texted her and I said, Hey, I got a message from I think it's from your husband.

What did it say? I said, It says, Come on, baby, let the Good Times Roll. And then she doesn't text back for 10 minutes. And then the phone rings and I pick it up and I'm like, Hello? And she's here and it's, Hey. And I said, Yeah, what's up? And she said, My husband and I sing that one line of that song to each other multiple times a day as we would pass each other, if one was sitting down and reading and the other one was walking by, we just touch him to the light on the shoulder, Come on, baby. Let the good times roll. As we're making dinner, Come on, baby. Let the good times roll. As one of us wakes up, Come on, baby. Let the good times roll. It happened so consistently that, of course, if that's his way of communicating with her, that he's alive and well and come on, baby, let the good times roll, that she doesn't have to be because she was struggling with the grief. What I've seen is that if the reason I've been able to contact or be in contact, be receptive, I don't really contact them.

They seem to contact me. But the reason that I've been able to do that is because you have to be in the same frequency as someone who is non physical, like they're like a satellite and you're like the radio station. And if you're on radio, Hey, grief, you cannot hear the station of radio, Hey, love. It's a different frequency. And so you have to turn the dial on your energy in a way to get into a place where you're more in a place of appreciation or love or fun or happiness. That energy is the energy of the people who have passed, even babies, even puppies, even kittens, even horses, anybody, children, grandparents, parents, everybody goes into this place. There's no middle place. There's no... What do people call it where they're dead but they're not dead? Limbo. There's no limbo, none of that. It's just immediate. There's a principle in physics. It's one of the laws of thermodynamics. And the law is energy cannot be created nor destroyed. It can only be transformed or transmuted. I might be saying it slightly wrong, but that's the essence of the...

Exactly right.

Oh, thank you. But yes, that's the essence of that thermodynamic law. And so the energy of me, the energy of you, the energy of the energy of all of us, we have a frequency that is our personality energy, and then we have the frequency of our spirit energy. Those two energies aren't always the same. They might be at two different frequencies, but when someone dies, it's just the energy of their spirit. You still know it's them, but it's the energy of their spirit. Another experience that happened, which is so funny, I was driving and I heard my husband and I were just getting divorced and our dog had passed away a year before because animals take on our negative emotion. And so if you are dealing with grief and you have animals, another reason, besides just wanting to talk to the people that you've lost, another reason to get happy is because it'll make your animals healthier. Because animals are just, they want to support us. They're so amazing. But so our dog had died and I was driving home late and I had a car, like a sports activity vehicle. I had a large back part and I heard a dog running in the back, but I don't have a dog in the car.

I pulled over and I go look in the back of the car and I don't see anything empty. I get back in the car and I haven't started it yet. I'm still parked and I feel the energy of my dog. His name was Ruben and I feel him all over licking my face. Licking my face, licking my face. I'm like, Ruby, oh, my God. I feel so good to see you or feel you. I love you so much. How are you? And then he kept saying to me that I have to call my ex husband because he's going to get a dog and the dog is going to be him. And I'm like, I'm not going to tell him that. I was like, no, he already thinks I'm a wack job. I'm not going to do that. So I kept saying no, no, no. And I go to bed that night and he's still licking me all over. You got to call him. You got to call him. You got to call him. So I wake up in the morning and I'm supposed to go play on the beach with some friends and I hear Ruben, You got to call him.

You got to call him. You got to call him. I'm like, Oh. And so I just like, All right, fine. I pick up the phone and I call my ex husband on a cell phone. He answers the phone and I said, Hi, is this an okay time to interrupt? And he said, Yeah. He goes, I'm just in the car with his daughter. I'm just in the car with her. I said, Oh, that's great. I said, I think I got a message from Ruben. And he's like, What did he say? I said, He said you're going to get a dog and it's going to be him. There's long silence. And then he goes, We're driving to Santa Barbara to pick up a dog. I got off the phone as quick as I could. And so Ruben was right. I needed to call him to let him know that Ruben was coming back, that it was going to be Ruben. And the thing that I've seen over and over again, I had another experience the other day a couple of weeks ago. It was probably before the Coronavirus thing. So it's maybe a couple of months ago. And I was out with somebody that I hadn't known before.

I just had met him and we were talking and he said that his wife had passed away a year ago. And I said, Oh, wow. He said, How are you doing with that? And he said, I miss her every day. And I said, Do you ever feel her presence? And he said, No, not at all. And then I just looked at him and I said, Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, life is but a dream. And he looks at me, his eyes go wide and he says her name was Merrily. And I have a picture of her on my bedside and the frame says Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, life is but a dream. I look at that picture every day and I miss her. He was white. I said, Well, maybe we connected with her. He's like, and he starts crying. It was so beautiful. Then yeah, so that stuff, whether it's dogs or people, I've had it so many times that it's just become these so many stories of that stuff. What I'm trying to say through all of this is that there is no is no death. What we call death is really energy being transformed from physical into a non-physical energy.

That energy of who we are has a signature that is somehow knowable, but it's not the personality of the person in the sense of it doesn't have any of the same resentments, none of the same limiting beliefs, none of the fears, none of the concerns, none of the anger, none of the physical symptoms. It is in a place of total fullness and freedom and wellness. I know this for myself, and I'll just stop talking after this little bit, but when I was in my teens, I was asked to do a modeling job on a sailboat while I had sailed to Hawaii. I know the ocean. I lived on the ocean. I like the ocean. I'm not afraid of the ocean. I feel great in that thing. But they wanted me to do something called spinnaker flying, which I'd never done before. I have weighed most of my life about 108 pounds. It's a gusty day. There's about 40 knots winds, which is a strong wind, in case you don't know knots. I don't know how to do the math of it, so 40 knots, you can look it up. Anyway, it's a big wind. As they're preparing the shot, I'm getting makeup on and I have a bathing suit on.

They're this guy goes up and he weighs probably 280, 290, maybe 300 pounds. He goes up and he's bouncing on this thing. It's basically a spinnaker flying is where you... The spinnaker is really, if you watch a sailboat, it's the sail that's the most balloony. It's like such a balloony, beautiful sail. It's taking the one point is attached to the top of the mast, and then the two points are attached to swing. It creates a triangle. You're in the triangle. He's in this triangle and he's holding on. He's bouncing around. Then he gets off and comes back to the boat and he goes, Oh, man, you're going to love it. It's great. It's a little rough. You got to hold on, but you're going to love it. I said, Okay, great. I get onto the swing and then they let go and maybe I didn't have enough of a hold or maybe I didn't have enough weight. But for whatever reason, the sail, instead of being this way and lofting me up, it went like this. And then it whipped me down onto the ocean from above the mast. And it was a 55 foot mast.

So it was probably like a 60 foot whip onto my back onto the ocean. I couldn't breathe. I got all the wind knocked out of me, swallowed water, and I started to go under. And there was a guy who jumped into the water, but he was afraid because the waves were pretty big to come towards me. So he's trying to throw a lifesaver to me. But we're probably about 30 feet away and the shore is maybe 250 feet away and the boat is again 30 feet away and I don't have any energy, I don't have any air. And so I'm going down and I get down into the water and at a certain point, something shifted and I didn't care. And I was like, Oh, my God. This is so good. And I just was feeling something within me just let go. And then I heard a voice and I felt this voice this beautiful feeling of everything being okay, all is well, so love. And then I hear this or feel this question, do you want to live or are you ready to go? I knew I wanted to live. I was 18. I still had so much I wanted to live.

The minute I had that thought, No, I want to live, this energy came through my body and I shot up. I don't know how much, but it was maybe 12 or 15 feet under the water at the point. I just had been sinking low. I somehow shot up through the water. The guy sees me. He hadn't seen me, I guess, for a few minutes. I froze the lifesaver again and it's still 20 feet away. I don't know how I got to it. I got to it like that. I don't know if I... It felt like I flew over the water, but I don't know exactly what happened. All I know is that I was down there, I made a decision I wanted to live and I got to that lifesaver in a way that I still have no idea how it happened. He pulls the lifesaver in, then he puts me over his thing, climbs up the ladder to the boat, gets me on the boat. They have to pump my stomach first because I swallowed all this water, and then they give me mouth to mouth and I can finally breathe. So I probably was eight or nine minutes without oxygen.

And so that's probably the closest near-death experience I had. But after experiencing Johnny and Rubin and my friend's dad and all these other people, those people who are now non-physical have taught me how to be in an ever-present near-death experience.

I so love this, Karen. Yes, yesterday I interviewed another one that is in our group, Dr. Petra Frese, and she talked about her near-death experiences. And you're telling the same stuff. I mean, it's the same thing that, yes, we have a choice, but once we move to that, it's all light, it's all love, it's all just absolute beautiful that.

Yes. We want to be there. But we have so much to do here. And so to be sharing this, especially for those of you who know me, I work in the grief space. I work with people who are grieving the death of their children and their loved ones. And that's my sole purpose of coming here. And so this will interest you, Karen, is this is in 2012. I had a brother who died before I was born, six years before I was born. No one ever talked about him. It was just not something that was dealt with in the home at the time. But I found out about him and I had this connection with this brother and would go to the cemetery and hang out with him. My family didn't know I did this. I'm sure they would have probably put me away somewhere. They knew that. But in 2012, it would have been his 60th birthday. My mom started allowing me to open up with her and to understand what was going on with her. And she shared about him. But I was on a plane. I was a corporate executive at the time. I was flying in a plane, going to our corporate offices.

And I had this experience where it felt like I had an electrical shock that just went through my body. And this voice, not really a voice, but it sounded like a voice that I was born through you. And I knew immediately it was my brother. And I thought, oh, that's cool. I probably already knew that all these years, but it wasn't like... But there was a deep emotion that came over me. That was so beautiful because it was like, I'm here for a purpose. He left early, but in life, he was just a baby, four months old. But it was just such a beautiful awakening. And that's what I want all of the people who are grieving the death of their loved one, that there is no death. And that's, yes, we need to grieve. Grieving is a part of our healing process. That's part of some of the things that we need to do. But staying in it for any length of time to where we're not finding that joy, we're not having that purpose, we're not having fun and doing all of that. It's almost like a disservice because our loved ones are here.

And so once you can tap in and feel them or to work with a Karen Lorre, who can most likely they're going to connect through her because she's got that vibration. She's got that high vibration where that your loved one can connect is so beautiful. And that's where I see the healing occurs when people are grieving is once they finally get that connection, like that gentleman that you're having dinner with. And it's like the veil opens. So what a beautiful, beautiful... You're just speaking my language. It's just this is... If we could let everybody know that this is what it is. And while we're here, it really is to be about joy and to embrace our bodies and to embrace our lives. Tell people what you do. Now you work with people. Can you just give us a little bit... Talk about the magic that you do working with people.

I help people release unconscious blocks so that they can really have an incredible life. I basically teach people how to live in a way like I do where it's full of love. I can give a couple of different examples of how that works for people in my life. So one client, he had been married for 12 years, and now they were separated. When he was a little boy, he'd been sexually violated and also given drugs when he was four or five years old. He had this scarring, and his marriage he was married to a woman, and his marriage was just fraught with tension and awkwardness and anger and struggle and just a lot of pain because he was harboring things that he didn't even almost consciously remember because he'd been drugged and he was so young. He didn't really understand it, but he knew it had happened just because there was a police report and his parents knew. There was something, but he never been able. He was a psychologist and he'd been to psychiatrists and psychologists and they haven't helped. I help a lot of people that haven't been helped by regular doctors or by psychologists anyway.

I work with him and within a few weeks of working with him, we clear that old trauma from when he's a little kid and he's free. Then he's starting to be happier and he's going to the world and he's connecting with people and having a good time. His wife sees him and they start to reconnect, cut to, Oh, he also had never been able to express himself and he had wanted to be a writer and he'd wanted to be a singer. He'd always felt like he was afraid to be seen. I think when you have that traumatic thing, sometimes it is hard to be seen. We worked on that. Now he's back with his wife. He is recording and putting out videos of recording music, singing, and playing music, and he's writing. H e's got his writing his inflow, and he's got a writing partner, and it's this really wonderful thing. When he got back with his wife, for a minute, his wife was... I wouldn't say minute, but when he first got back with her, she was still operating in the old paradigm. So she was still bringing in that struggle. So on the next session we had after he'd gotten back with her, he tells me about this.

So I give him a couple of things to do. And within that week between that session and the next session, he does the things and his wife transforms. So I never coached his wife. I just coached him and he just became what I did what I suggested and she totally transformed. So now their relationship is joyful and full of appreciation and sexy and fun and playful and a totally different relationship than they've ever had. It's the relationship they both had wanted but never knew how to get to. That's one example. Another guy, he had been captain of a police in a very large Metropolitan area. He'd also been in the Vietnam War. He was older and he had seen his best friend killed right in front of him. So he had a tremendous brief and tremendous PTSD. He'd been involved with the Manson murders. He just had a lot of stuff going on through his whole... He was involved as the police, not in... But he'd been the investigator on the Manson murders and all this stuff, one of them. Anyway, when I meet him, the first session, he's got all this grief, he's got PTSD.

By the end of the first session, the grief was gone. Within a few weeks, two or three more sessions, the PTSD was gone. By the time I'd done... I have a little program that I do a few weeks, depending on what somebody needs, depends on everybody's different. But with him, I think it was nine weeks. By the time we were at the seven week thing, he's like, Karen, I don't know what you're doing to me. I wake up, I'm so happy. I just want to hug everybody. I'm like a fucking Faerie. I don't know what it is. I just feel so good. My friends don't even recognize me anymore. They're making fun of me, but I don't care. I just feel so good. It's great. What was also cool is he had a son who was living with him, who had been living with him for years and who had been in depression since he was a teenager. His son was in his 50s. They'd been there for a while in this depression. He told me about his son on the fifth or sixth session. He'd never even mentioned him. I didn't even know he was there.

When he told me about it, I said, Okay, so tell me how you're handling him. I listened and I said, Okay, would you be willing to try such and such? I tell him what to do and he tries it. The next week he comes to me and he says, You're not going to believe this. I said, What? He said, I'm doing the things you told me to do. I'm just doing the things. I stopped doing the things you told me not to do, and I'm doing only the things you told me to do with regards to my son. I'm with my son. We're at the dinner table. My son goes, Hey, Dad. He goes, I'm feeling a lot better. And my client goes, What do you mean you're feeling better? You're taking different meds? What's going on? And he's like, No, it's not the meds. He goes, I just like, Dad, I'm just seeing you change. I've seen you change. And then the way you're treating me, I just want you to know I have a job interview tomorrow. His dad was like, This is the first job since... I don't know if he ever had a job.

And his dad was like, You got a job interview? And he's like, Yeah, I'm going to go on the job interview and I feel excited about it. His dad, my client, was like, He could not contain himself. He was hugging him and picking him up. It was so cute. He was so excited because... Sorry. He was so excited because this was such a change, and it was no effort for him to do it. Another client, he's been married and he loves his wife, but they hadn't been having sex for a while, and his wife was getting very negative and critical. And so I called him what to do? And he sends me a message three days later. Karen, he goes, I was doing exactly what you said to do. And he goes, this is the scenario. He says, I was with my wife doing what you said to do. She says to me, I don't know what you're doing, but whatever it is, it's working. Take my pants off. He said that their relationship has completely changed. He was in a job he didn't like. Now he's in the same job and he loves it and he can't stop loving it and he thinks he doesn't want to leave it anymore.

He just loves it so much. Even though he had hated it for decades or years anyway. I don't know if it's that old, but for a long time since he's had it, he hated it and now he loves it. Their whole marriage has transformed and then he has been getting more abundant. He got a mentor who's the wealthiest guy in his community that came to him and offered to mentor him. This stuff happens over and over and over again. Another one of my clients is in retirement and is disabled, and so they don't have a certain amount of money that was coming to them every month. Then they started having all these great creative ideas, and now they have a huge company that has fought into their ideas. Now, not only are they getting more money, but they're living their life on purpose and feeling like they're contributing in a way that they didn't know how to contribute before. Another person was on the way to getting a dialysis. I don't mean in the car, but like his doctor said, you're going to need a dialysis in the next week or two. Started working with me, and now the last time he went to the doctors this week, the doctor said, No, you don't need it.

The body is so responsive when you start to shift your emotions into a higher zone. Your ability when you are in that higher zone, to connect to those you love. One of the other things that happened was with my dad, he had died in 90, I think in 91, maybe 2000 or something like that. He died somewhere around there. I don't even remember because I was in a fog when he died because that was also when Johnny died. But anyway, so my dad died and I did not perceive him until I started to get into this more place of alignment. Johnny had already been in my life. Johnny was teaching me. I was getting more and more connection with my spirit. I was feeling better. And one night I was writing out things that felt really good for me. I was writing about, I don't remember what it was, but it was something that felt good. I was probably writing for two hours. So when you write and it's something that you're so it's so beautiful to you that you're sobbing while you write it. That's where I was. I'm sobbing and I'm writing. Then I realized it's late, so I'm going to go to bed.

I get up and I go into the bedroom. The minute I go into the bedroom, I feel my dad and I know it's him. The whole room is thick with love and it's his love. And I can feel he's proud of me. And it was so undeniable. It was so helpful. And I could feel there were all these other energies there as well that I didn't know who they were, but they were there as well. But I got my dad and he was saying, I'm so proud of you. Love you so much. I've always loved you. And then he started telling me how proud of all these things that he knew that I was doing that I've been doing since after he died. And then he has stayed with me. So one of the things, my mom, she now doesn't have my dad, and she's in her 80s now, and they were married 43 years. They would have been still married probably, but now he died 20 years ago, more or less. So he suggested to me that I write, that I get everybody that loves my mom, all my relatives, all her friends, people that worked with her, neighbors that knew her, anybody that loves her, to write a letter of what they appreciated about her to her, but send it to me.

I got maybe 40 different people sending this because the word eulogy, it actually means the study of good, the study of good. I had seen somebody use the word eulogy after somebody died. And I had thought, why wait till somebody dies to give them a eulogy? Why wait to study their good after they're dead? Let's do it now. And then my dad gave me that idea. And so then I get all these people's emails, and then I went to a company, I think it's called Blurb, and they made a hard back book, and everybody sent their pictures. I put a picture of my mom on the book, and then I put pictures of everybody that she knows and loves with their letters, everybody's letter in their picture, and then the next letter in the next picture. And so when I was doing it, my heart was so filled up because I'm reading about my mom, things that I didn't even know because some of these people knew her before I was born. Some of these people I had experiences with her that I never had. They knew her at her age. They were peers with her as opposed to being the daughter.

Or they worked with her, which I never saw her at work. So it was so beautiful for me. My vibration and my energy, my love for my mom increased so much. And I realized my dad was doing this as much for me as it was for my mom because now I could love her even more fully. But then I gave the book to my mom. I gave it to my brother. I gave the book to any of the 40 people or so that wanted it. And I have one, too. And so now if she wants to, she can just pick up the book and read somebody talking about something great that she did, or how she changed their life, or what they love about her, and see their picture. It's such a great little thing to do for somebody. I think the company I used was called Blurb. Com. My dad has come in in these ways, and I feel like Johnny comes in all the time. Johnny and my dad are probably who I feel the most, but I feel anybody that dies comes to me. I just want to share this one story, and then I'll go back and let you talk and start talking.

I was home one morning. I was actually in the middle of it. It was like two in the morning, and I woke up and I had so much energy and I thought, I've got to dance. But I didn't want to get out of bed so I had my phone there. I got my phone. Actually, I sleep with my phone in the other room, but I brought my phone in the room and I just started playing dance music on my phone. I'm dancing in the bed, just lying down but dancing, and I'm dancing, dancing, and I can feel all these energies of all these people dancing around me. I don't know who they are, but they're having fun. And what they're saying was, Oh, my God. It's so great to be here. It's so great to be non physical. We all loved each other. We all are here together. It's the perfect way because nobody suffered. It was just bam. And I didn't know what they were talking about. And so I had no idea. And then I go back to sleep eventually. And then I wake up and I'm on Facebook and I see a post that somebody made about somebody who came in and shot a gay nightclub in Florida.

And all of a sudden I started, I went, Oh, my God. And they all were right there. And they were like, Yeah, that was us. It was the perfect way to die. And I'm like, What? And I'm listening to them and they're saying it was the perfect way to die. We're doing what we love. We're with the people we love. We were having so much fun. And then boom, we're out of there and we were all ready to go. And we all wanted to go together. And I didn't tell anybody because I thought this is so politically wrong. But because I don't want anybody to go shoot anybody. That's not what I'm talking about. I want peace in the world. But they weren't suffering. And so this keeps happening when you hear things in the news. I don't really watch the news, but if I hear something like that, I often have felt the person and then I'll hear the news and I go, Oh, that's what it is. And I marvel at how they all want to talk to me. How easy it is to talk to somebody when I live on top of a mountain and people say, Aren't you scared to be here when you're all alone?

And I was like, I'm never alone. People are like, Is COVID hard for you? I'm never alone because I have so much entertainment from non-physicals because they are sexy, they are funny, they're loving, they're playful. They're my teachers, them and dogs.

I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. Well, they come to you because your vibration is so high. It's easy to connect. It's so easy to connect. What you're bringing to the physical is how do we raise our vibration so that we can have that beautiful connection. The message that our loved ones, when they transform, transmute, when they go to that next level, non-physical level, they're happy, they're filled with joy, they're in nirvana, they're in the best place possible. That should help us in our hearts. That's such a beautiful gift that you're giving people who are grieving to know that their loved ones are happy and vibrant and always around them. Always.

There's no time that you're not connected to everyone, even people you don't remember or don't even consciously know. There's no time that you're not connected. I want to say one thing is that if you are grieving, you don't have to rush to feel better. It's okay. Where you are is perfect. But there is the possibility of whether it's gradual or whether it's sudden, there's the possibility of feeling better and better. When you get into that spot where you're... Even if you aren't in it consistently, I'm in a really consistent state of love. But even if you're not in it consistently, when you start to feel good, you start noticing things. Oh, there's that bird. That was my dad's favorite bird. And it's right here coming and looking at me and going away and coming and looking at me and going away. When you start to see little things of evidence, one of my friends always told me I was just like his mom. I never had met his mom. And we had been friends. We would see each other every couple of months. We didn't have a whatever. It was just very casual every once in a while.

I had used the screen that pops out from the top. And on the top it formed a heart. I had thought, oh, my God. The universe is romantic me. I hadn't seen my friend for months, a long time. But I kept feeling like, E-mail that to him. E-mail that to him. I was like, Why? I don't want to talk to him. I haven't talked to him. He should talk to me. I don't want to do it. E-mail him. E-mail him with that. So I email him and say, hey, how are you? I just saw this picture and I felt compelled to send it to you. It says the universe... I said, I think the universe is romantic. He pits back. He goes, Karen, do you remember how I told you how much you remind me of my mother? I said, yeah. And he goes, My mom passed away and I'm back east helping my family with all of her stuff. Then I felt her so clearly and I realized she had been telling me to send it to him. I realized it was her and she told me this whole thing about him.

I wrote it in his... Where I have his contact information, I wrote all the stuff he was telling me down. And I didn't want to tell him then because he was in a state of grief and he was trying to handle stuff. But he said after... We just went back and forth and I just told him some basic stuff, not to overwhelm and emergency. I was very gentle. But he said after that, his mom's favorite bug was ladybugs. And they started seeing ladybugs everywhere. They were just like attacking the car thing. And so he was like, Yeah, I think we are seeing her, but we wouldn't have known that it was possible if we hadn't. And so then his whole family asked him to bring some of his mom's stuff to me. So when he came back to town, he brought these things of hers that he gave to me, different clothing and different stuff like that. And it was so beautiful and so sweet. And that law of thermodynamics, I had not looked up that law. And this guy was a Harvard grad, deep, brilliant, really brilliant guy. So we went to dinner after this, several months after that email exchange.

And he says, So, Karen, he goes, You're saying that... He said, He goes, It seems like you have some connection with my mom, but how can that be? How can you when she's dead? How can you? And he goes, I need a scientific answer. I was like, All right. So I just said to her, What should I tell him in my head? And then that's when she said, Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only be transmuted or transmuted. And he put it, it was like eating, stops chewing, puts his fork down, and he goes, It's the only answer that could have surprised. Or something like it was in that vein. And I was like, Well, she knew it. I said, I didn't know that. I knew it. I'm sure I learned it, but I didn't have that line memorized. She gave it to me because she knows you, because she loves you.

Wow. I knew that would resonate for him. That was the only answer. Well, Karen, thank you so much. I could sit here and listen to you for days. I would love to have a pajama party with you and just listen to you all night long. That would be so fun.

A pajama party would be so fun.

Would that be fun. Yeah. We'll all have to. Once us authors can all congregate somewhere, we can have a pajama party. So tell everyone the two names of your books, because you have two books, and how people could contact you if they want to.

Okay, this is my second book. It's called Effortless Enchantment, and it's a memoir of magic and magnetism and miracles. It has some of the same stories that I might have told. I told New Ones, too, and it might have New Ones. It definitely has New Ones. That's the second book and it's a memoir. It's a fun book, but the memoir really is about the intersection between my life and spirit. There's a lot of stuff in there about how to get into connection. This book was my first book. It's called Chronic Pleasure and it's about using the law of attraction to transform fatigue and pain into vibrant energy and chronic pleasure. That's basically how I healed my body. I had to fire every doctor that I was working with and fire the psychologists and the psychiatrists because they were meaning well. I knew they cared, but they were keeping me sick, and I ended up working my own intuitive magic, partly guided by Johnny and partly guided by my spirit, that gave me this incredible healing where I no longer have narcole. I live in chronic pleasure. My adrenals are completely healed. My thyroid is balanced.

My hair has grown thicker. My eyesight has improved. My skin has improved. My flexibility has improved. It's crazy all the ways that your body improves when you really get into a state of steady appreciation and love. So if you want either of those books, I'd feel happy to email you either one of them. But what I would ask for you to do is send me an email to Karen, K-a-r-e-n Lorre, L-o-r-r-e@me, like you and me, me and me. Com. [email protected]. And if you put in the subject line, your books, and then just put your name in the body of the email, you don't even have to write much, but just say whatever your name is, just so I know. Because some people's emails are like, fy632@gmail. Com or whatever. I was like, I'd like to know something. So yeah, that would be great. And then I feel happy to send you my book. And I just want you to know that the people you love and your spirit never leave you. They're always loving you. They're always improving you. They're always proud of you.

Oh that is so beautiful. So beautiful. And I can attest to your books. I love the audiobook books because I love listening to your voice talking to me. That's wonderful. So, Karen, thank you so much. Like I said, this was just a fun thing for us to get together. I've known Karen for quite a while now, many, many months and have read her books and her work, and it's just so extraordinary. She's got extraordinary stories, but it all comes from... It is all the transformation that has occurred in her life and for her to tap into her spiritual beingness and to be able to use this for anybody who would be interested in working with her. Absolutely. Get with Karen. I think I'm probably going to end up getting with Karen just because you're just amazing. You're beautiful. Just being in your presence just vibrates everything up. I thank you for that. I've just been sitting here just in such a beautiful space and beautiful energy. It comes through the waves, comes through. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Pat. Thank you. I feel so appreciative of you. You're such a good listener. I love the story about your brother, and it feels so perfect that you birthed him through you to benefit the world. I just feel so happy for people that you work with to work with you. You're such a gift and your heart is so pure and you have so much love and you're so fun. Thank you so much for asking me. I feel really blessed to know you and to be part of this.

Thank you, Karen.

Contact us:

Cami Thelander: www.bearfootyogi.com

The Confident Grief Coach School: www.healingfamilygrief.com