Tag Archives: suicide

Is There Life After Death? A Mother’s Story

When Karen Johnson's 27 year old son died of a, heroin overdose, she started believing in, life after death, when her son showed up in his human form waving at her at the airport. In her book “Living Grieving” Karen shares how communicating with her son in the, afterlife,  helped her live with her, grief, and start her work as a, shaman, helping survivors and spirits deal with,  life after death.

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Bio

Karen V Johnson’s fast paced professional career as a Federal Judge came to an abrupt halt when she lost her 27-year-old son, Ben to a, heroin overdose. Rather than grieve in a way that made people around her comfortable, she did the unexpected. She quit her lifetime appointment career, sold her house with all her belongings, and went on a 2 ½ year journey around the world finding a spiritual and healing practice along the way.

Karen didn’t think she could ever find her way out of despair, but she found a process that works and shares her journey of transformation with others so they can heal too. Her work is structured around, shamanic, practices, mindfulness, and the journey of the Four winds Medicine Wheel.  Karen blends her personal story with meaningful experiences, offering exercises related to each of the four practices of becoming unstuck, becoming lighter, awakening, and creating a new life.

Ben's Life After Death

Myrna: Can you share with the listeners your, grief, journey and the death of your son from a, heroin overdose. It's a powerful story.

Karen: Ben, my son was 27 years old and he was struggling as many young men are trying to find himself trying to decide if he's going to try to start a business go back to school, many things. And so, I was going on a vacation to South Korea for a week and I thought to myself, when I get back, we're going to have the big conversation. I don't care how uncomfortable it is.  And so I went to South Korea, and one day in the afternoon, I just wasn't feeling well. and into the evening and then all of a sudden, I get this call, and they hang up.

I just had this feeling of dread. And so, I called the number and the detective answers and I say, you just called me I am Karen Johnson. He said, yes. where are you? And I said, I'm in South Korea. And he said, I have some bad news for you. I'm sorry, your son is dead from a, heroin overdose.  Ben had gone to a party with them some other young guys, and they got drunk and they decided, hey, we're going to try, heroin, in all their 27-year-old wisdom.  My son was 6′ 8, 260 pounds and they gave him too much.

And he died almost instantly. He and I were very close and it just rocked my world. They say that the death of a child and an unexpected death are two worst ones to survive. So, when you have an unexpected death of a child, you're in a bad place. But that's the bad part of it. The other side of it is you know, it's always the blessing and the curse. The Yin and the Yang. So, the other side of it was so the next morning, I couldn't even get out of South Korea.

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Life after death: Seeing Ben in his human form

Believing in, life after death, started for me at the airport trying to return to the States. It was nighttime when I got the call, so sitting in the airport in South Korea, the next morning I see my son Ben in front of me, just like he is in life. And he's smiling, his big old grin and then he fades away. So, I desperately frantically call my ex-husband, his father and say, you gotta check. I think he's alive. I think he's in that refrigerator and he's trying to get out. I think he's alive. You gotta go check. And so, they go check and call me back and very kindly say, no, I'm sorry he's gone. And so that for me was a doorway.

Death. is always a doorway, it was the doorway into believing in, life after death. And it's something that I did not believe in before. I didn't have much of a spiritual practice. I would have said something like alive is alive, dead is dead. And so, my son Benjamin, woke me up to life on the other side, or, life after death, and he continues to do so to this day.

Myrna: That is one of the reasons I wanted to speak to you. I am wearing a sweater right now, but I'm getting chills. You said that was the first time that Ben appeared to you in his human form. The other times you said he was flapping around so I assume he appeared as a bird. I follow Sadhguru and he talks a lot about, life after death. And he said, whenever you die suddenly, from like, suicide, or a bullet or maybe like a, heroin overdose, or something, then your, spirit, can't seem to find peace. So, do you think that is why Ben stuck around after his, death?

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Grief is a painful experience

Karen: Yeah, after Ben passed, I was in a state. My, grief, was so profound, I was so distraught that my bedroom was upstairs, I couldn't get up the steps. So, I would be on the steps and I would be crying and screaming for Ben until I threw up. I was throwing up blood. I was truly a mess and I could feel him around me. I knew that he was around me just frantic. I couldn't hear what he was saying although I could sense him. I couldn't hear him so I did what my logical mind would never have done before I googled, mediums. To be exact, mediums, in Fairfax County, Virginia and this whole page popped up.

And so, one person's picture looked a little bit larger than the others. And I thought, well, I'll take that one. It turns out this is a way, spirit, has been guiding me now to buy a house and to do many things. Something looks different. And that's how, spirit, communicates because we don't always hear the words. We can't always translate what, spirits, are saying. And so, I went to a, medium, about three weeks after he passed and I said, look he came in right behind me. He's standing over there in the corner.

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Seeking out  a Medium to communicate with spirit

Can you tell me what he's saying? I can't hear him. And so, we had a wonderful session. And she told me things that really resonated because it sounded like him. Something like Mom, it was a boneheaded move, and things like that. That just sounded like him. And so, after it was all finished, he said, you know, you might have some abilities yourself because most of my clients have no idea that their loved one is right there in the room with them and there is, life after death.   So that was sort of the intro for me to begin studying, life after death, and, spirituality.

Myrna: Yeah, I think you said that you were Clair-sentience. I like what the, medium, said, spirits, are around us all the time, but a lot of us can't feel them. I heard that one of the reasons that we can't communicate with, spirits, is because when you die, your energy is at a higher frequency, and, spirits, has to lower their frequency in order for us to sense them or communicate with them and most of them don’t know how to do that. Is that true?

Karen: That's my experience. It's sort of like when you go to a Buddhist temple or you go into the Catholic Church or any church, they're singing, there's smoke, there's prayer. It's all a way of changing the vibration and the energy.

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Life after death: spirits need to transition

I think Ben’s energy couldn't dissipate until he was able to reassure me, because my being frantic, that he was okay.  I think you stay stuck and in trauma, it prevents, spirits, from fully moving on and doing what they need to do on the other side. Yeah, because they are watching us, they're seeing how you are dealing with, grief, and people say well if they go to heaven or nirvana or wherever you think that place is, how can they come back. But it's not prison. So, they're allowed to come back and forth easily and sometimes they're a little stuck in between worlds, and they need help.

Myrna: Does Ben still come back and forth?

Karen: Oh, yeah. So, you know, I became a, shaman. I do, shamanic healing, part of, shamanic healing, is helping people to die and helping, spirits, to crossover in the other world. I help, spirits, transition to, life after death.  And so, I helped Ben to cross over and he comes back and forth. I'll call him if I have a young person who's committed, suicide, or sudden death or something.  Sometimes, suicides, get a little stuck because there's so much bad talk about, suicide, that they're going to hell and all this kind of stuff. And so, they're afraid to cross over and the, after life.

They don't know what to be, so I can call Ben and he'll say, hey, man, come with me. I'll show you the ropes. I'll show you it's beautiful on the other side, you have nothing to fear and then they're able to cross over to the, after life, peacefully. So, we would kind of work together.

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Transform Your Mind Podcast Player FM

We had a lot of grief during the pandemic

Myrna: People have lost a lot of people over the, pandemic, and I've had some interviews on the show with wife’s losing spouses.  I've actually never had one with a mother losing a son. But the, grief, is profound. So, what kind of solace can we have? Should we be scared when we feel our loved one’s presence? What kind of advice you can give on that?

Karen: Yeah, so I think sometimes people say, I'd love to see my loved one but it I find it scary at the same time. I really don't want them appearing. So, if you have that kind of dynamic going on, I think they don't want to appear.  A lot of times we're scared of our loved ones after they die. I don't think before I saw Ben, that I would have said I wanted him to show up, but he just kind of showed up.  So, I think a lot of that goes on and it just depends how they show themselves to you.

Myrna: You went to the, medium, three weeks after Ben died. Did you find that your, grief, started to settle down after you could communicate with him? I know you're still grieving seven years after his death, but did the intensity subside?

Karen: The intensity of my, grief, somewhat subsided.

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Transform Your Mind Podcast Pandora

Shamanism Helps survivors deal with grief

Myrna: You said that, shamanism, allowed you to move through your, grief, on your healing journey. So, tell us what, shamanism, is.

Karen: About nine months after Ben passed, I had been in the spiritual world and learning things and growing and I had gone to an evolutionary astrologer who said, hey, I had another woman who had a reading like yours that became a, shaman. I went to Mr. Google and searched for, shaman, and Mr. Google said, try the Four Winds. I contacted their office and three weeks later I'm on a plane to Joshua Tree California.

I got there and I just loved it. That was the beginning of the, south direction, of the, medicine wheel.  The, south direction, of the, medicine wheel, is where you learn to shed your past, the way that a serpent sheds its skin. So, we're looking at all our old wounds and things that are bothering us in trouble. These are ways of thinking and being all those things and we're learning how to work with that how to let it go. A process called elimination. So that's the first feeling medicine that we learned in the south direction.

Myrna: Okay, so they teach you how to shed your skin and how does, shamanism, do that? Do you do it by meditation? Do you do it by coaching?

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Google Podcast Transform Your Mind

Shamanism works with luminous energy to help with grief

Karen: The, shaman, work is working with the, luminous energy field, and we have a, luminous energy field, because when someone's alive it’s vibrant, and when someone's gone, it's just not there. We have this field of energy around us. And so, what we do as, shamans, is learn to work with this, luminous energy field. And by the way, shamanism, is not a religious practice. We have, shamans, that are priests and rabbis, all sorts of people trained in using, energy medicine, to help people and so we do it by process called elimination.

Then we have what we call, medicine stones, and we use our, medicine stones, to help people heal the heart, we blow into our own wounds. And we work with them in different ways to energize these, medicine stones, and then other people can blow their wounds into the stones and then we use a process where we allow them to breathe in, breathe out. You know, the breath is a metaphor for, shamanic, work.  So, we're breathing in newness and freshness and breathing out staleness and old ways.

So, we're allowing them to breathe and release with a, medicine stone, on one of their, chakras. And then at the end of this process, we open to coaching. If you look at the pictures of the Christ and saints and the Buddha, all have this halo around them. So, we reach up into our Halo and open it up. And then we bring this divine light down into the person’s, chakra.

So, they've released heaviness, and we're replacing it with divine light. And it's profoundly healing so that's how, shamans, work with energy.

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Deezer Transform Your Mind Podcast

Shamanic directions for healing grief

Myrna: Can you take us through the other three, shamanic, directions?

Karen: So, the,  south direction, and then we moved to the, west direction.  The West has to do with death and dying and, fear of death. Most of us are really afraid of, death, and dying, ours and people that we love. And so, we work with that and sometimes people have energies and entities that we learn to extract and take out in the west.

And then in the, north direction, we move to, hummingbird medicine. The West medicine is, Jaguar medicine, Jaguar who fearlessly calls whatever is dead and dying in the jungle and so we want to be like the Jaguar impeccable and calling whatever's dead and dying within us. Then we move to, hummingbird medicine, and hummingbird teach us stillness in motion. It's little wings are flapping and it's still.

Myrna: And it's always singing right?

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Shamanic practice and directions

Karen: Looking for food and looking for The Sweetest Nectar. Hummingbirds feast on nectar. They don't go to the dung heap. They don't go there. They go to the nectar of life. Right? So that's that metaphor for drinking only from the sweetest nectar of life. So, hummingbird medicine, and then we end up with, Eagle medicine Eagle.

Eagles fly high. So you know Eagles have been the standard for the United States somebody that that flies high. It's the only bird that flies over all the storms of life always looking for clearing and it has to do with destiny. So these direction in, Eagle medicine, has to do with finding your highest destiny, flying high being able to fly high over obstacles.

Myrna: That's beautiful. I love it. What are some, mindfulness, tips that can help us with, grief and loss?

Karen: When I talked about my book is the journey of the bereaved and the journey of, grief,  is through transition, resurrection and rebirth and that's the same process our loved ones go through. So their transition is from their physical form to the spiritual one. They resurrect on the other side. After a while they're either reborn or maybe recycled into a new life or reborn into their after life.

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Download on Spotify

Grief is a journey of transformation

And so the, grief, this is our special journey because we go through transformation from having this person to not having this person. And then after a while, if if we can move some of this energy we can have this opportunity to resurrect to look around and say, Okay, so now what next? And then finally to get to the rebirth part where we actually use the energy of, grief, to create a new life out of the ashes of the old one which seems like a really unbelievable thing.

But when you think about other big events in life, like parenthood, and marriage, we know they have transformative energy. We know that life is never the same, life is gonna end with, grief. In our culture we want to avoid, death, because we associate it with sadness and despair. And so people that are grieving are often told, it's time to move on. It's time to get over it. Let's not talk about that.

So oftentimes, people become even more stuck in their, grief, because they become isolated and alone and they know that will make people uncomfortable. What I'd like people to know is that, grief, is a journey. It's not a one time thing and it has no time frame and your journey is going to be different than anybody else's.

Never say to a grieving person, it's time to move on. It's time to just just let them be. Let them be, and allow them to go on this journey. So that they can use these practices.

Alchemizing the energy of grief

The, south direction, helps people shed their, grief. Each each direction has four practices associated what mindfulness things that people have heard in other contexts. So we talk about non judgement. So one of the practice non judgement who are you judging and who's judging you? And when I ask people to approach these practices in a very ceremonial way, because we want to get out of our every day, reptilian brains.

Indigenous, alchemy, means native or inherent desire for, transformation. And I think we as humans are really hardwired for, transformation, and change. And when we keep ourselves stuck in, grief, that energy stays stuck in our body and it can make us sick. Years later, we can come up with big illnesses because we have so much unresolved, grief.

So what I like to suggest for people is to really work with these practices, each one they're 16. And so if you really deeply do the work and take it to spirit there can be profound change that will enable you then to go to a party, have fun, maybe go on a date or whatever you choose, but we have to do a little spiritual work first.

Myrna: Tell us about your book “Living Grieving using energy medicine, alchemize grief and loss.”  Why did you write it? I know you wanted to share the story of your son.

Karen: So I wrote the book after I went on my spiritual journey and beginning shamanism. I ended up selling my home and all my possessions and I went on two and a half year trip around the world, trying to understand, grief and loss. It just seems so incomprehensible to me. It's like this big elephant and how do you deal with this?

Book Living Grieving
Book: Living Grieving

Living Grieving

And and so I really thought at the beginning, I would just be writing a blog. You can find the book “Living Grieving” on Amazon. I do, shamanic, work I help people with, death, and dying people that are in the process of dying or people that have passed on. I also help widows and other people who are the survivors, I call us the survivors. And the book is really written for the survivors.

Additional Resources 

Master Lama Rasaji: Harmonizing Mind Body Spirit

How to Have It All

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Bio

Christy Whitman. is a Transformational Leader, Celebrity Coach and the New York Times Bestselling Author of “The Art of, Having It All” she has appeared on The Today Show and the Morning Show and her work has been featured in, People's Magazine, Seventeen, Women's Day, Hollywood Life, and Teen Vogue, among others Christy is also the CEO and founder of the, Quantum Success Learning Academy and Quantum Success Coaching Academy, a 12-month Law of Attraction program.

Christy has helped thousands of people worldwide to achieve their goals through her empowerment seminars, speeches and coaching sessions and products. Christy's life changing message reaches over 200,000 people per month and her work has been promoted by and featured with esteemed authors and luminaries such as Marianne Williamson, Dr. Wayne Dyer, Marci Shimoff, Brian Tracy, Neale Donald Walsch, Abraham-Hicks, and Louise Hay. She currently lives in Arizona with her husband, Frederic, and their two boys, Alexander and Maxim. You can meet her on the web at www.QuantumSuccessBook.com,

I read your bio and I'm thinking wow this woman is where I want to be. So we're going to start out by just asking you a kind of a background question you've accomplished quite a lot. Can you tell us your journey to this point in your career in life.

Searching for purpose

Well, I basically did everything that my parents told me, you know, Go get a degree, get a good job, put money in the Bank, have a nice fit body, find a guy! I had all that, and still I was just really really empty. I wasn't really happy. I was missing an essential part of myself. So I started going on a search for meaning.

I had this you know like when you're really thirsty for water that's how I felt spiritually. I felt like I just didn't know that there's wasn’t any real purpose or meaning in what I was doing. It seemed like the more money I made, it didn’t make me any happier. I went on this quest and really learned about meditation and learned about how our thoughts create our reality and learned about energy and how we are either attracting things to us or repelling things from us.

All these different philosophies started changing me, and I started changing my thoughts one by one and started shifting my energy and things literally just started shifting before my eyes. When I was searching at one point I was thirty pounds overweight, $60,000 in debt, I had just broken up with the latest bad guy, and I moved to California and I didn’t know anybody.

I Had quit my job also so I I had nothing going on in my life, when I found this information and it was amazing because within just a very few short weeks I got a great job, I was transferred to a different part of California, I found a really wonderful man, and I was in an eight-year relationship with, my body naturally went back to normal size.

Using the Law of attraction to have it all

Things were just flowing and easy, and what I was learning about was the universal laws that I now teach. I’ve shared my experiences of how I’ve created a great career, maintained my weight, and attracted an ideal partner. I've been coaching on, Law of Attraction, and, Universal Laws. Besides the, Law of Attraction, I just share my experiences and I share what I do, and what I learned and what I know not to do, and I just created an amazing business.

I'm serving people, and seeing people transform, and I feel passionate about it. Each and every day, back when I when I was in that space, I was making money, I was a pharmaceutical rep, but I didn't feel like I was on purpose. I didn't feel like what I was doing really had much meaning and so I started to really connect with the feeling of what would it feel like that if I did something and I was on purpose?

I didn't know what purpose looked like, but I started just allowing myself to feel that the essence of the purpose, of what it would just feel like. Even if I didn't know the how or the form or anything and then what happened with amazing. I had a book downloaded through me and that became my first book “Perfect Pictures.” I got it published and my family and friends all bought the book and it wasn't like they were the ones to read self-help books.

I started speaking at Spiritual Book Stores and Churches and while I was doing that, doing workshops on my book, I would take people through meditations and they started asking me to coach them. I had no idea back then, and we were talking you know 16 years ago, 17 years ago. I had no idea what Life Coaching was and most people didn't. I decided to just have people call me on the phone and started really appreciating their transformation. I'm grateful that my stuff it's universal and it helps every single person, no matter what circumstance or situation there going through. We can change all of it by knowing and applying these laws.

Tips for having it all

That's an awesome story I Absolutely love it. Dr Wayne Dyer says that that's how he's written all this books. He wakes up at 3.15 am in the morning and it's just downloaded. I just completed a series with the author of the Millennial’s Playbook to Adulting, Millennials do just that.

Whether it's their parents or a guidance counselor or somebody they find a job, they find the guy, and then they get married or something but it doesn't light them up it doesn't light them up because they’re going about it based on the jobs that's available or income or something along those lines.  It's a great thing to teach because whenever you are on purpose and whenever something lights you up and whenever you follow the, Laws of the Universe, which most people don't know what they are, you find happiness.

Most people don't understand the, Laws of Attraction, and how thoughts work. That's the only way that you can design your life. I'm glad that we're going to be diving into that subject in our next episode; but today we want to talk about your book “The Art of, Having it All,” I'm jumping ahead of myself. Before we get in to that. I want to bring attention to the word you used to introduce your coaching program “Quantum Success.

I love the word that you use to introduce your coaching program. I follow Deepak Chopra. He was my first mentor and when I wrote my first book which was called “Becoming Conscious, my Awakening” I talked about the Quantum and synchro destiny; but you're calling it, Quantum Success; so my follow-up question is “what do you feel is the blueprint to your coaching program and what is your definition of quantum success and, having it all, ?”

Using Quantum energy to have it all

I want to say I'm not a superwoman, I'm just an ordinary woman that has learned about universal laws and, having it all. Every single person listening have the power to create your life the way you want it. Quantum success, for me it was really about, I lived the first part of my life not, having it all, so far pushing, striving, setting goals, it was really when I found the knowledge, and the information on energy and that I understood, the energy that you hold while you're moving towards something is even more important than the inert action of the goal.

We're both physical and non-physical beings. If you're not doing that from a place of alignment then any momentum that you take is a waste of energy, it's a waste of time. You know a lot of times people are moving they're doing stuff and they're taking tons of action and it's eventually going to give them the success that they want; but they're going to hit a wall because if their thought process is different or their emotions on how they feel about themselves or even the way they think about themselves, the way they reflect on themselves, the way they judge and solve problems.

All of that stuff holds us back from really being able to allow the alignment and the flow of the, Quantum field, or what some call God, what some call Goddess. That consciousness that create whatever you want. When you start to bring in deliberately, having it all, the kind of energy that you want to experience, whether its success, or love, or abundance, or prosperity, or security.

Success is having it all

As long as you're doing it consistently, because everything is vibration. So when you do the action and take the action towards what you want to manifest and align your thoughts your emotions your perspective with succeeding, in that space of success. You imagine what would success look like? What does, having it all, look like? What would successful feel like?

If you had the career that you really wanted, that was firing on all cylinders what would that look like for you? I wrote in my last book “The Art of, Having It All,” It’s really about what does having it all look like to you. Is, Having it All, someone else’s definition? It's what lights you up that moves you forward. It's a life force that’s pulsating through you, that wants to become something more. It's up to us as, that non-physical part of that energy.

Cooperate with it instead of trying to cut it off and that's what most people do. Complaining and judging other people or they play like a victim. All those things are literally slicing up and siphoning off your life force energy, and it won't move you towards the desires that you want. We need to ask ourselves. How do I want to feel?

Then start to as much as you can, as often as you can, get in that feeling place. I mean the good thing is about the, Quantum field,  is that this is a holographic universe and so any emotion that has ever been felt can be easily felt by you. Circumstances and situations don't have to happen. We have the capacity as human beings to visualize and to feel our way into things, and to change a thought and you know these are all things that we can do because the thoughts that we have are not real, so we have to direct our thoughts towards what we want and why we want it, to, having it all, and how we want to feel.

Your vortex holds your un-manifested desires

That is awesome, we are so in sync on the things. My next question we're going to be talking a little bit about Abraham Hicks; she talks about the, vortex, when I do my meditation that's what I say. Everything in my vortex will be eventually be available to me, if not immediately but eventually. It’s all about vibration. I was listening to podcast last week and the guest was saying we have Three superpowers, and one of the superpowers was imagination. He reminded me that anything we can imagine, we can create. Whether you're imagining what you want or what you're imagining what you don't want it's real and it's going to manifest.

A lot of people think our, vortex, is outside of ourselves; but the, vortex, is within us. The, vortex, is inside us, so it's not something we have to wait for. It's like we just have to get into alignment with it because it's already there. It's the Creator that pulses pulsates through us. I'm going to get into a discussion of energy for a second. Most people think I'm going to manifest something or, Law of Attraction; but thoughts always create some kind of emotional reaction.

It's really the emotions, so we're viewing something we see something like a tree we look at the tree and we just kind of have the stimulus, we perceive it without eyes and we enjoy it. So energy is flowing in and it's flowing out, it's just kind of like a stimulus we see the ocean it comes in and it comes out. Well when someone says something rude to us or says something hurtful, or maybe you get in car accident, or you lose a loved one, or your bill comes and you can't pay it or whatever it is.

Those moments in life cause us to constrict our energy and we create blocks around it. Those blocks also create a vortex of energy because energy has to continue to move, it goes out, or it goes up, because that is constantly moving, it's never ending. So if energy come through and instead of feeling an emotion, like how that person hurt us or that person was rude or that person made us angry, we constrict the energy.

That creates a block and then that creates a vortex, that vortex is active, it's alive. That's the, vortex, that creates a thought and then the thoughts create a belief. It then creates some kind of physical manifestation of it and then we go, see it's true. You say No matter what I do, I can't seem to get ahead. Men are always cheating on me. We have to be careful and aware of where we're getting energetically charged and start to release those blocks, so that we can get back in that free flow again of feeling the love and the alignment.

The Art of having it all

I do the work, I want to be, having it all, I don't only coach; but I do a lot of mind work because I'm aware at that everything starts in the mind, which is why I call this podcast “The Transform your Mind” because everything starts there. But I loved about the, quantum field, as it relates to success. I actually never thought about it that way until you mentioned it; but you said if you want to move towards something because that's the, quantum field, that's energy that's moving and you have to be an alignment to that goal.

If you I want to red Mercedes but then immediately you say well I can never afford it, that's what you’re talking about, as far as you're not moving in alignment. I Actually absolutely love putting it all together. If you want success you've got to hold what you want in front of you so that you can be strategically moving towards it and also be aware of the energy that you're talking about. If you've got stuck energy, you've got blocked energy or you you're feeling bad then you're actually blocking your flow.

So, the next question I Want to ask you is about the luminaries and thought leaders that you mentioned in your bio. I love them all I didn't know much about Marianne Wilkinson, but I love Dr Wayne Dyer, I'm listening to two of his audio books right now. One is on Balance which is almost the same thing we're talking about today.

I have a Neale Donald Walsch book in my library “Conversations with God” It was one of the best books I have read. I studied that book. And Abraham Hicks, love her. There's was a point in time that I meditated with her every morning. I Picked those three because those are the ones that I know. So what are some of the lessons that you've learned from these luminaries as it you know as it relates to our topic today? Having it all, and, Quantum Success?

I heard of Wayne Dyer probably about 20 years ago. My therapist at the time she was a spiritual psychotherapists, she brought in the spiritual approach, she would hand me CDs, actually back then it was cassette tapes of Wayne Dyer and Marianne Williamson, and so they were my first two early teachers.

There are only 2 emotions love and fear

I really liked the perspective that Marianne talks about because she would talk about the Course In Miracles and how there's really only two emotions, either love or fear; so that really helped me start to connect with the energy and paying attention between, high vibration, or, low vibration, and then of course Wayne Dyer was huge for me in the whole getting in the perspective of my thoughts.

During that time that's when I was learning that your thoughts create your reality and so I was learning that not all thoughts are real and that we have places where as normal human beings we typically automatically think in these ways and for me it was like wow okay, so I'm normal right and yet I have to change these if I want to continue to change my life.

His work has always just been really touched my soul and in the time that I've been able to meet him and you know it just he really is one of those people that really was because he's passed on, but he really walks his talk. He truly was a lightworker and I could feel that it around him and it was there was an authenticity that and of what he taught and how he lived so that's what I learned about and appreciate him.

He was a very humble man and he never felt better than other people and he really had taught me a lot about ego and in keeping the ego in check and in that sort of thing. The Power of Intention, I mean that's an incredible book. I've been following Abraham Hicks Probably around the equal amount of time around 20 years and I was given a cassette from a little group that I was in in Redding California and I listened to them and you know listening test or channel Abraham and it was like whoa this is really strange and weird and yet I felt good listening to it, not only the words this used but the vibration that I felt.

As a pharmaceutical rep I had a big area in California, I would drive around with a cassette recorder on my passenger seat with all these different cassettes. I was really a tuning into a different perspective, I always write whether you know you buy someone's book and you read the book while you're just going to bed at night or you're driving around the car and you listen to a podcast that bless you or you know some kind of media where you're getting a different perspective than what most people think and how most people think because that's going to help you change your perspective. If you're inundated with the news and you know things like that and around a lot of people that are negative it's very hard to get out of that space unless you do something deliberately.

Saying yes to having it all

We're going to get in it to our topic today which is, “Having it All”, or “The, Art of, Having It All” so let me give you a little bit about you know the more a little tidbit that I picked up from you know reading the synopsis of the book. Christy in your book you ask “ ?” You ask the question like a lawyer asks the question a rhetorical question that we know the answer and your answer was a resounding “YES”

Absolutely exactly right. In the, Art of Having it all, you shared precise steps you took to create radical turn arounds in the midst of potentially devastating real-life situations. Freeing yourself of nearly $90,000 of unwanted debt, 30 extra pounds, navigating the turbulent waters of divorce, and this last two are really hard for most people, the grief of your sister's suicide, and the life-threatening illness of your newborn son.

As I read that I get goose bumps on it because you know that's a lot of stuff to have to deal with and I know we've touched on the energy and most of this beforehand as we talked in your bio, and some of the questions to answered already; but can you tag on to anything that you haven't talked about. What advice you'd give out listeners who are going through, as we call it the wilderness of the storm, in their lives right now.

Absolutely all of those things that you mentioned all of them, I got through and grew from them and had them turn out even better than I could have even imagined, because of the fact that I knew about the Universal Laws and that I knew about lack and energy and Lack in abundance and, I knew about emotions and all that. I knew that I needed to focus on my perspective on, having it all, my sons, my marriage, so just even in the case of my son Maxim, when he was 2 months of age he was rushed to the hospital and he had to have open-heart surgery as a tiny little baby.

Crazy, the miracles that were around that are just like the story is incredible. Typically babies that have a transposition of the arteries are usually found in the mother's womb, they see it in the ultrasound and then they do a heart surgery on them, probably one to two days of life, two days of the latest. If they don't catch it, it's usually within you know the first week and if it's not caught within the first week babies usually die in the crib if it's not detected. Wow!

Yeah, he was two months of age and the only thing that kept him alive is he had a little hole between both of his arteries and the valve that closes when a baby typically has their first few breaths, his didn't close so he was barely breathing which we didn't realize; but he if they did ever did this type of surgery on the baby this old so it was just the fact that he was just there and he was wanting to be there.

It's like, I knew that he was going to be fine and so I went I Told my husband I'm like okay listen we can't have anybody else's negative energy we can't have fear we can't have any of this around the situation. The only visual I'm going to hold taking Maxim home with his brother Alex, And the three of you wrestling and growing up and taking vacations and taking them to Disneyland and taking him camping and you know just like all these visions absolutely.

All these different watching and play baseball and so that was the only vision. Our family was freaking out and scared, of course we had to process our own emotions because it was an emotional roller coaster; whenever we were around him we didn't let in any fear energy. We would clear ourselves before we would walk in the hospital to see him and very selective of who we let around him and stuff and we did that because it's like we just wanted to keep in the positive space we wanted to keep in that energy flow of all good things and any possibility of negativity or fear or any lower-level emotions we wanted to keep it out of the creation; because it was it was imperative.

I'm happy to say that he's now seven-year-old boy, he's been cleared for years. He's got a perfect heart. I mean the surgery that they did was two months is like growing with him it's amazing yeah just the coolest kid and you know and just very grateful I mean just amazing and you know so it's that alone you know we would sit there and deliberately write down like okay what are the positive aspects about the situation nothing will go my God your child almost died is in the hospital ICU.

How could you even look for a positive in that situation? Well for me, we had to because we had to keep our vibration high, so I would write out, how I'm grateful how I was at the best Children's Hospital in all of North America, I was grateful that we were close to home and that we had family to take care of our son Alex during the day so we could be with Maxim. Grateful that all the nurses loved him and just all the positive aspects nothing but.

It's a universal law if you're in lack and limitation you cannot create abundance from that place and so you have to get into it's the law of sufficiency and abundance, you have to get into the place of being at peace, feeling that it's sufficient, it's good enough. You don't have to be over the moon excited about it, but at least coming from that place of appreciation and gratitude looking for what's right and good and stuff what's wrong and bad and when you do that your life will continue to change contrast will show up it shows up for every single person but it's how what you do with the contrast when it happens whether it's really extreme or it's minor you know some people get really reactive and how big emotional reactions over very small things and then when things come they're just like oh my God you know so we have to know how to manage our energy.

I'm Going to redress something, I experienced suicide in my family myself. My daughter was engaged to be married, she was planning her wedding and her fiancé, shot himself and committed suicide and like you I'm a very positive person, I wouldn't say that I know how to work energy like you are because you're an expert on that, but in my life I've had a lot of challenges and you know you say that you can look at your book of wars and in my book of wars told me that almost every challenge that I faced, had a positive outcome just like you can you can see now but your son when that incident happened; but for the life of me I couldn't find the positive in that, suicide.

Now I think I'd go back in and I and I think that the positive maybe, like my pastor talked yesterday that sometimes God breaks you so that he can fit you in for your purpose. I think that my daughter came out of that situation a stronger person but at the time I couldn't find the positive, so how did you find the positive energy in your sister’s suicide? There's a lot of suicides going on right now so maybe someone is listening that can benefit from some advice on how to deal with someone close to you committing, suicide?

Dealing with suicide

This is a great question. For me I remember just feeling that I have to make a decision for myself because she chose what she chose and we can't control what other people choose, it was her life it was her decision even Abraham Hicks says that every death is really a suicide. Anyways when someone takes their own life we make it mean so much and it is shocking and it is traumatic, it's not like someone gets a disease and they get degenerative because of that and then they pass, this is something that's horrible, taking that away either but when someone abruptly ends their life in such a dramatic way it is very traumatic on everybody around them.

I would look at my sister it's like okay she chose what she chose what do I get to choose from my life? Then I started asking myself those questions. What do I want for my life? Why do I want these things? How am I going to want to feel? Really start to feel that way; but during the process I will tell you I allowed myself to feel my feelings, when I felt angry at the situation at her and anything I've processed my anger. I didn't go and beat anybody up.

I mean there's a proprietary process, anger right it's not raging it's not hurting another person but I would feel my anger. I would yell into a pillow, there's things you can do that are constructive for you that and as long as you're feeling the energy of those emotions and you're not bottling move it and I what you're saying yes yeah If I needed to cry, I would cry. I gave myself permission to cry whenever I Felt like. I needed to cry, I would excuse myself and I will go cry.

Conclusion

Christy I Want to thank you so much for being an awesome guest. Our conversation today on, having it all, was very inspirational and like I said I learned a lot from you. Looking forward to our next talk, we are going to dive a little deeper into “How to use the 7 essential Laws of Attraction to create a thriving joyful and prosperous relationship with your work and money.” I Want to thank everyone for tuning in today to on the radio at www.wdjyfm.com in Metro Atlanta. This podcast is distributed to iTunes, TuneIn radio, Stitcher, Google play and now also on iHeart radio. I would love everyone who’s listening to subscribe so that the podcast can rank higher on iTunes and more people like you can listen to awesome messages like the one we have today. so Christy Until next time Namaste

The Emotional Trials and Triumphs of Cancer

The fear of, cancer, can be just as powerful as actual, cancer, right? And not all, cancers, in fact  most, cancers, are not a death sentence. So, what I wanted to do was to explain in my book is that we don't really know what people are going through.

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Today I interview  David Richman who is a motivational speaker, personal consultant, and author of CYCLE OF LIVES and WINNING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PACK.

Cycle of Lives shares 15 REAL STORIES OF TRIALS AND TRIUMPH WITH VICTORY AND DEFEAT: Many books only share one perspective; however, David’s book provides cancer stories told from 15 different perspectives, allowing readers to examine a wide range of experiences, events, emotions, backgrounds, and viewpoints. This array of human experiences will help readers to grow in empathy and better understand how issues like suicide, abandonment, loss, survivor guilt, abuse, fertility, and more, affect the way people deal with the traumas that shape their lives, cancer, or otherwise.

How has your life been impacted personally by cancer?

David: What brought me to this project was, my sister was diagnosed with, terminal brain cancer,  in 2004. So, she was right around 40, married with two young kids, great profession, life going great for her. Then all of a sudden, she was diagnosed with, terminal brain cancer, and all that was going to be taken away. To me that was profound on a lot of different levels.  Because not only was she gonna face the reality that she was going to die soon. Some people get a terminal diagnosis, but survive, but my sister had no hope.

She had kind of come to terms with the fact that there was a lot of different aspects of it that she had to deal with. And I think that's kind of true with anybody that might have that type of an issue, where you're forced to face your own mortality. And with, cancer, especially, you're kind of given sometimes time to get your house in order, right? A lot of a lot of people die on the spot, they don’t get tine to put their house in order.

Myrna: So, let me ask you, I know I'm jumping ahead of myself, but it seems like a good point to ask the question. Do you think that from the people that you've spoken to you, do they appreciate getting this time?  If somebody asks, how much time I got, and I said five months? Do they appreciate that time and knowing they have 5 months to live? Or they prefer not to know?

Do people appreciate knowing of their mortality

David: That’s a great question. I think it's probably super personal. That’s the whole reason that I wrote the book, if you are going through, trauma, or know somebody who is going through, trauma, whether it's terminal or not, but it's related to, cancer, you know, some other major trauma,  if you do have the opportunity to form deeper connections with these people, do so.

The problem is, is that we often self-isolate, and or we abandon people not willingly, but we just, we don't want to say we don't know what to do. We don't want to make people feel guilty. We don't want to say the wrong thing or bring people down or whatever. And so, a lot of times, people do not use this time constructively.

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Myrna: How did you deal with your sister’s diagnosis? And how did you help her?

David: Great question. So, what we did was, throughout our adult lives, we were close, sometimes not close, because life just gets in the way, right. Like we she had her family and kids and friends and work and you know, just like gets in the way. After the, cancer diagnosis, though, I think we probably talked way more regularly and purposefully.

I had a friend recently who lost one of his best friends, and he said that they couldn't count the number of, cancer nodes,  on his lungs, because there was too many, so he died really quickly after his, cancer diagnosis. And my friend said, that was probably the best way, why put him through all that pain?

Sometimes the reality is there, I felt like with my sister, even though she fought for three or four years, I mean, there wasn't an option for her to survive, because she had a massive tumor and it spread. What happened was that anytime that I reached out, she was available. We didn't always talk about heavy stuff. But knowing that there was a finish line, fast approaching, I think that we, with intentionality really tried to try to bond as deeply as we could.

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Transform Your Mind Podnews

A terminal diagnosis of cancer

Myrna: Now, a lot of people who are given that diagnosis would say I'm gonna make peace because they tell you to put your house in order and make sure you tell everyone you love them. And maybe you should do the things that you have always wanted to do. You think that people do that, like their, bucket lists? Do they do that?

David: I think that's a rarity. Because you know, we live in denial. And one of the people I spoke to was a doctor, an oncologist at NYU. She told me that no one accepts that they are going to die from, cancer. They always have hope, so very few people put their house in order or do things on their, bucket list. One of the things she told me that really made a lot of sense was, the human brain is not wired to be able to really contemplate in an understanding way our own mortality, it just doesn't just doesn't happen.

I think that kind of explains why we don't ever want to put our house in order and we don't ever want to do those, bucket list, kinds of things. Because we just don't think we're going to die. So the vast majority of people that I spoke to, they did have a fair amount of denial, either from them or the people that they loved. They put off taking care of things. They were abandoned by people that loved them, they self-isolated and didn't close loops that they probably should have closed.

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Transform Your Mind Podcast Pandora
Transform Your Mind Podcast Pandora

Cancer patients live in hope

Myrna: So true, that is why suicide is so against the norm, because most of us are wired to preserve our life, and we will go to great lengths to stay alive, even when the quality of our lives is taken away, we want to live. So that is a very distinct, very good information to put out to someone who is reading this, that is either going through, trauma, or they know someone who has been given a terminal diagnosis of, cancer. Make sure that you tell your loved ones that you love them and put your house in order.

David: My book is not all about death and dying from, cancer, because, cancer,  does not always mean death. Even the fear of, cancer, can be unbelievably traumatic for some people, right? Imagine if you received a diagnosis, it was early diagnosis, like a stage one, cancer, or something, and very treatable. But now you got to live the rest of your life thinking in the back of your head, oh, my gosh,

  • Am I allowed to go out in the sun?
  • Should I eat a certain food?
  • Do I need to exercise more?
  • Is this, cancer, going to come back and take me?
  • Do I not have kids because I don't want to lose them in case my, cancer, is fatal.
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Google Podcast Transform Your Mind
Google Podcast Transform Your Mind

Living in fear of cancer

I mean, the, fear of cancer, can be just as powerful as actual, cancer, right? And not all, cancers, in fact  most, cancers, are not a death sentence. So what I wanted to do was to explain in my book is  what are people going through that we might not know? Or what, traumas, have affected them so that they're not able to navigate this kind of traumatic diagnosis of, cancer.  Because we don't really know what people are going through.

Myrna: Yea death and taxes are the only thing that are guaranteed. And yet, we don't want to we don't want either of them.

One of the things you said, though, is that, went and you interviewed, these 15 cancer survivors even though each one of their stories were different, you found something that was consistent that linked all these stories.  What is the link?

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What every cancer patient fears

David: Sure, so there were two things that was consistent. And just to add one more thing to what you just said is it also is not just people that had gone through, cancer, that I spoke to, but also caregivers, doctors. I spoke to people that never had, cancer, themselves, but their lives were centered around, cancer, as a caregiver, or maybe they were with a loved one who went through, cancer.

So, I wanted all those different perspectives, because I think that it's not the same. If your spouse is diagnosed with, cancer, there still is an unbelievably deep and traumatic set of emotions that go through you, as well, right? You're not even the one with, cancer, but imagine what you must go through watching your spouse go through, cancer.

But the two things that I found that were quite consistent with every person I spoke to whether they made the book, or they didn't this is one:

  • No matter how crazy people lives are, nobody thinks their life is that interesting. They're just living their life
  • Two they feared asking for help. The theme that we've been talking about, which is almost everybody not everybody, had a big identification with the thought of, I don't know if I'm equipped to form really deep connections with the people around me about what I'm going through.
  • They are dealing with the tasks like how do I get to my appointment? How do I get my kids watched while I'm in the chemo chair? How do I navigate time off work? How do I eat healthier?  They don’t want to be a burden, so they have a hard time asking for help. And that was very, very consistent with almost every single person I spoke to.

Myrna: Do you think it's because people don't really like to ask for help?

David: That's definitely a. Yeah,

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Podbean

Patricia’s story: I don’t get colds, I get cancer

There was one story about this woman her name is Patricia and she made the statement I don’t get colds, I get, cancer.  From that statement, I delve into her, mindset, and I am assuming that she's had a hard life because she made the comment that I don't get colds, I get cancer, which tells me that, cancer, kept coming back. But, one of the reasons that I want to I want to I want to touch on it, is because I also know when we make statements like this one, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, what can you share about Patricia’s story?

David: Wow, that's a great insight. So, her story is really fascinating. And one of the things that was hilarious was like the second conversation I had with her she tells me, “My life's not that interesting.” So,  let me try to explain her story. Her story is pretty fascinating, because I thought it was about the fact that she had, beat cancer, five different times over a 35-year period. But that's not what her story is about. Near the end of her talking to me, I asked Patricia, I go, Hey, What's your secret? Like how did you, beat cancer, 5 times?

And she said to me, well, ever since I moved on from x, and I'll give you point x in a second. She said, every time that I moved on from point x, all I did was I just said to myself,

Every single day, you have to put your feet on the ground, get up out of bed, and go about your day.

Transform Your Mind PTWWNTV
Transform Your Mind PTWWNTV

Now sometimes David, I was able to make my bed and walk away. Other times, I make my bed and lay right back into it. But I wanted to get up and put my feet on the ground and make my bed and go about my day. Oh, wow. Now not knowing her story. If you told me life was get your feet on the ground and make your bed and go about your day, I'd roll my eyes go on, whatever, you know, good for you.

But her story is this so when she's a teenager she was in a relationship and that the relationship was exceptionally abusive. To the point where she has is forced to cut ties with every person that she knows, including her family friends, not allowed to go out anywhere on her own. He beats her up if he just thinks that she's having a bad thought. I mean, it's horrible. Okay, so after four years she learns how to escape by getting another identity and she escapes that abusive relationship.

Shortly after she escapes, she gets diagnosed with, cancer, for the first time. Over a 35-year period she gets diagnosed with, cancer, five different times and five different types of, cancer, very serious. Her story is while beating the first, cancer, she met some someone and he becomes the only person that she had ever met that she could trust and that she could love and felt would love her no matter what.

This man helped her recover from that abusive situation she had escaped from. And he was beside her for her whole life, during which time she was fighting all these different, cancers,  and living her life. This love sustained her through battling her cancers, caring for her dad who died of, cancer.

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Everyone has their time in the barrel

She looked at herself one day in the mirror, and she said, hey, don't walk around, like all burden. Don't walk around all emotional.

Everybody has their time in the barrel. All you do is just keep getting up, keep putting your foot on the ground, make your bed and go about your day.

And I'm just like, holy cow. She’s had been through all of that and the only solution to her was, everybody's got a tough life. Everybody has it bad, you could be burdened by it. Or you could not just get your feet on the ground, make your bed and go about your day. I'm like, That's brilliant. Right. And so, so that's, that's Patricia's story. So, I mean, there's more way more to her story you have to read the book.

Myrna: Well, you surprised me with that answer. But I get it. When I looked at that statement. I don't get colds, I get cancer. I thought that was a, defeated mindset. You know, saying I'm always sick. And then you become always sick, like self-fulfilling prophecy. But instead, she's looking at, cancer, almost like a cold, something that you get through. You get, and you just go on with your life!

Transform your Mind Stitcher
Transform your Mind Stitcher

Never sick a day in my life except cancer

David: And you know, one of the first things she said to me, she goes, I never been sick a day in my life. I never had a cold; I never had the flu. I have never been sick except for, cancer, and all the other stuff that came with it, I literally have never been sick a day in my life. And she goes, if somebody wrote a story about me, it would be titled, I don't get colds, I get cancer!

Myrna: What do you want the reader to walk away with after reading your, cancer stories?

David:  Well, first of all, what I want them to know is that each one of the book participants, doctor, patient, loved one, whatever survivor, they chose a, cancer focused charity, or other charity that they wanted the proceeds of the book to go to, so 100% of the proceeds of the book, no matter where it's sold, or how it sold, it gets divided up between the organizations that they chose. So that's number one. What I want the reader to know is they'll be doing some good financially, there's not a lot of money in books, but 100% of it will go to support their organizations.

But I think what more you know, like that saying, we talked about it earlier, like you never know what people are going through. That’s what I want readers to walk away with. We really have no idea what people are going through.  For example, Patricia finished a master's in art. She's an amazing artist and when you were sitting next to her in art class and admiring her work, and she's admiring yours, you would have no idea what she had gone through.

Book Cycle of Lives: Cancer stories
Book Cycle of Lives: Cancer stories

Conclusion

Myrna: How can readers get their hands on your book? How can they connect with you on social media?

David: Yes, the book is available wherever books are sold. So, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, your local bookstore. Up until a week ago, I couldn't have said this. But now the audible is out. So, it's, it's available as a book, as an e book or as an audio book. In fact, we had 15 different actors each read one of the different stories, so it's very entertaining, and very inspirational and it's not very heavy. There's a lot of inspiration that can come from these stories.

They can connect with me on Facebook or Instagram @cycleoflives or @David Richman or go to my website www.David-Richman.com  And they can learn about the institutions that we're supporting, and all the other things that are going on around this whole cycle of life's project.

Additional Resources

Nothing is Impossible: How to Turn Life's Challenges Into Opportunity