After we have lost a loved one one of the most sought-after signs is a “dream visit”. We hear about them all the time. But, what do we know about them from a scientific viewpoint?

Dr. Joshua Black is a grief researcher, speaker, author, consultant, online course instructor, and host of the Grief Dreams Podcast. He has focused all of his MA and Ph.D. research (in psychology) on investigating dreams in bereavement (also known as grief dreams) and continuing bonds from many types of loss (including prenatal loss and pet loss).

Most of his academic research and publications have specifically been on dreams of the deceased. Dr. Black is considered one of the world’s leading academic experts in grief dreams. Due to the lack of academic research in this field, Dr. Black has focused his efforts on raising awareness on grief dreams through doing talks, interviews, and developing an online Grief Dreams course.

Additionally, he developed a grief dreams website (www.griefdreams.ca) and runs several social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @griefdreams).

ℹ️  https://www.griefdreams.ca

Transcript

Brian Smith 0:00
Close your eyes and imagine what are the things in life that causes the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, or challenges, challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we’ve been buried, but what if, like a seed we’ve been planted and having been planted, to grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes, open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is grief to growth. And I am your host, Brian Smith. Hey everybody, this is Brian back with another episode of grief to growth. And today I’ve got with me Dr. Joshua black, and I’m really excited to interview Dr. Black says he’s his field of expertise a very unique field. He’s a grief researcher, a speaker and author, a consultant, online courses structure and he’s the host of the grief dreams podcast. He’s focused all of his Master’s and PhD research in psychology, on investigating dreams and bereavement, also known as grief dreams, and continuing bonds for many types of loss including prenatal loss and pet loss. Most of his academic research and publications has specifically been on the dreams of the deceased. Dr. Black is considered one of the world’s leading academic experts in grief dreams. Due to lack of academic research in this field, Dr. Black has focused his efforts are raising awareness on grief dreams, through doing talks, interviews and developing an online grief dreams course. Additionally, developed the grief dreams website and read several social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, at at grief dreams. So with that, I want to introduce Dr. Joshua black. Thank you for having me today. Yeah, it’s really I’m really excited to have you here today. We had to move this a couple times because of some some things that our calendars but really afford to talk to you about this, this field that people I think know a little bit about, but not a lot about. So how did you get involved in researching grave dreams?

Unknown Speaker 2:09
Like, it’s it’s a very interesting story, that, you know, it came really after my dad died, I wanted to be an elementary school teacher, that was my focus for my entire life. I like since I was a kid, I remember my dad telling me how that that was the best job to have because it has a good pension, and it’s pretty well paying paid in Canada anyways, it’s where I’m from. So I spent my whole life really going towards that. And then the fourth year, it took five years to finish my undergrad, the fourth year, my dad died, and it changed absolutely everything. And so the first time I really experienced a death, a significant loss in my life. And it was completely devastating for me. Like I remember getting that phone call, he was supposed to pick me up, it was around my birthday. And we’re supposed to go to a hockey game together and just never showed up. And so I just thought he slept in, he had some health issues, where it minimize what he could do. And so I just figured, oh, maybe he was just you know, had migraine or something he just couldn’t, couldn’t come. So I didn’t think anything of it. Two days later, I got a phone call from my aunt, who basically said that, you know, they found my father dead in his apartment, and, and he was just claps on the floor. And for me, like the amount of emotion that came out, was so scary, because one of the reasons because I was I still am a guy. But at that time, I really, I didn’t feel comfortable crying. So I tend to not cry. I don’t know when the last time I cried probably when I was a kid. And so those emotions are coming out, I haven’t felt those in for a very long time. And they just kept coming, the tears kept coming and like the, the negative thoughts and the of the future of like not being able to do stuff with them and not having any more memories. That really scared me and a lot of ways. And I had to sit with that. And I sat with that for about three days, I decided to do a eulogy, which was interesting in itself. I recommend everyone to do that. But yeah, I kept crying on stage for a good like five minutes before I could speak. But the emotions like I couldn’t believe how much emotion was coming out. You know, with that, and one of the reasons I should say too, because me my dad had a rocky relationship throughout her entire life. And one of the reasons was he had a he drank a lot to cope with his emotions. And so he had a lot of trauma he never actually worked through. And so I was scared him for the majority of my life. And we just never, you know, clicked kind of thing until after my mom and him got divorced. And it was about that year and a half there. That’s when we started rebuilding our relationship. And he acted a lot differently to me, I think, and I think there’s a story in that for me because I think that’s where the pain was coming from. Because if it was if I only thought if he died, maybe You know, two years earlier, I wouldn’t have felt like that would have been like, okay, you know, okay, so had a lot of resentment, a lot of pain for him, but because of the friendship that we’re really building, and he’s becoming the father always wanted kind of thing as a kid. And then for him to just die like that. It was it was such a shock. And it brought up all those, all those emotions. I remember wanting to after I get got the news, I want to do something special for him. And I was actually really considering dropping out of school and going to Israel, which was a trip he wanted to take me on the following year. And I was really grateful looking back now I had a partner who calmed me down and was pretty supportive to say, you know, let’s wait until you finish you’ll have one year left the school, let’s you know, finish that. And then you can decide on if you should do that or not. And so I’m so happy for that. Because it it’s amazing, the irrational decisions we can make, you know, when we’re in a state of grief, so I’m just so happy I had I had, you know, some support around me at that time. So anyways, I did the eulogy. I went back to school the next day, and all my sadness was gone. But the crazy thing was all my happiness and joy was gone, too. And so I was living in this weird gray state where like, there was no color left in the world. And I was in that state for about three months. And I couldn’t tell you, I tried everything. And nothing really gave me joy they used to. And so I just thought, well, this is life. Now. This is what grief is this is life. And it wasn’t till I had a dream, my father that everything changed. And so this is where my love for that topic really started. And so the dream was, I was just in my room was very, wasn’t like a bizarre dream at all, like I was in my so in the dream, I was in my room, and everything in my room was the same way. It wasn’t waking life, which is, you know, very unique in itself. At that time, a lot of clutter everywhere. So that is amazing details.

Unknown Speaker 6:56
Yeah, sure. And then a lot of other dreams that I have heard, you tend to be like, you know, weird stuff going on. So you’d wake up, you’re like, oh, that was a dream. But this was it. It was very realistic in that way. I saw my dad at the end of my room. And he looked so healthy, like I never like it wasn’t even a memory because I never even seen him like this before his energy was very light. As I said he a lot of trauma and issues going on, and waking life. So we always had this heaviness to him, where he just never dealt with his stuff. And but here he felt so light, like his energy was just so beautiful. And he just looked so healthy. And I walked up to him and I said, I’m gonna miss you acknowledging loss. And I said that I loved them. And then we hugged, and I woke up. And when I woke up, it was the most crazy experience because everything changed, the color was back into the world. Like, I don’t know, I didn’t know, I remember sitting at the edge of my bed and saying What was that? I wasn’t turning the dream. But I felt something changed in me because of the dream. And I still sit in the mystery of that moment. And I hear it a lot from other people where the dream itself changes people. It’s not really the interpretation, I can help in many different ways. But the dream itself had the power to change, like, where I was in my grief. And so I was able to have this joy back and I was able to regulate my emotions, I could have tears, you know, when I thought about him and stuff. So it was really a beautiful, whatever, that was a very beautiful point in my life, because I don’t know where it’d be, I’d probably still be in the gray. And I’d probably be doing something differently because of that dream. I then finished, you know, school, within probably, I think six months after that. And I applied to be in Teacher’s College, which was my goal the whole time. And the moment I got an interview to get in. I just felt something wasn’t right. And so I turned it down, which was for me looking back one of the craziest decisions I’ve made because I had nothing going I had no plan B there’s no plan B, I was going off a feeling and especially after grief. I don’t know why that was because I feel like I’ve been misleading in many ways. But you know, looking back, maybe because my dad was dead and to have that pressure to do it, that unconscious kind of pressure. But at the same time, I think there’s just another path that was just being led for let out for me. I just didn’t know what that was. And that following year was just as scary as to grief because I couldn’t find work and when I did find work wasn’t fulfilling. I’m like, is this life you know, is this life after you know, doing your your undergrad? I’m like, this isn’t what they told me. Every all the jobs I wanted you to masters for I’m like, I don’t want to do a masters. Right? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 9:37
I don’t want to do any more school. And so I saw I worked you know these odd jobs and I want to find some meaning. So I went and volunteered at a hospice to help with the bereaved, and I did one on one support and group support and group support. And they had these questions about these dreams. So some people were sharing these positive dreams. Other people were asking questions why they didn’t have dreams other people want to know What these negative dreams meant. And you know, I didn’t really know, I didn’t know much about dream research at that time. And so I looked at the research, I still had an account for my school. So I looked at the publications that were available, and there wasn’t anything when it came to these types of dreams that I could provide them to give them any kind of understanding. And I was really shocked by that, because, you know, I thought, you know, most SUVs researched a lot, you know, a lot of people are just almost like cleaning up the trail, like the the laneways, Pat, like paved, and they’re just like, every research study is just moving a little, like an inch forward. Exactly. But there’s like nothing, it wasn’t a dirt road, I can really go off of it. So I couldn’t give him an answer. And then I had this moment where I was like, could I like, as I knew the impact it had for me, and their questions really interested me? and thought, like, could I research this topic? Like, is that a possibility for me? And then in my mind, I’m like, well, you have to know stats, you have to know research methodology, I’m like, I don’t want to know. And I didn’t want to be a researcher and for a lot, so I was really scared to pursue that, that goals. But finally, I settled down the nerves and said, you know, what, you know, why not give it a go, what’s the worst can happen, you know, I don’t get in or I go, when I fail, at least I tried, I can say I tried, you know, like, and so that’s really, so I had to, like, have courage to even, like, pursue this. And I did. And what amazing was I actually got through, and like, without some challenges, I gotta say, I want to quit many times, and the support of, you know, my friends, and the people who follow the topic and my platform were really helpful and encouraged me to how much this was needed. And so when I was at the, like, the lowest points of my, I guess, you know, masters or PhD, I had that to go off and say, you know, we got to keep persevering this, you know, like, we got to keep doing this. And so it spent a lot of time extra time, I felt like, I was like, two years behind everyone else tell you truth. Because everyone wanted to be a researcher, like, when I asked my colleagues that are in their masters, they like, Oh, I knew, like when I started University, so like, they already had this plan, and they really valued, you know, stats, and we said methodology. To me, I want to be a elementary school teacher, which I took those courses, but I didn’t, you know, like, I just got enough to get the good grades, like I didn’t retain any other information. So I had to learn all that over again. And then when I got my PhD is less like, was like, super smart. And I had a really sort of, you know, up my game on that too. And you know, but I made it through, you know, at the end of the day, I made it through. And by the end of that fourth year, I was at par with everyone else, if not, you know, in the sense of what I was doing a little bit, my career trajectory was a little different, because a lot of people want to be to do a postdoc, and to do all this other stuff and want to get into other areas. I’m like, this is the only topic on a research I get, I don’t want to be bothered with anything else other than this. And so I really directed a lot of my focus on doing talks and set up the website and the podcast, rather than, you know, do more research studies outside of my field, which a lot of my colleagues are doing at that time. So I just had a different kind of, I think, plan on why I was researching the topic, and then what I was going to do with it as I move forward. So that’s where it all sort of happened. And when I was in my Master’s and PhD those years, that’s when I really realized how vast The topic is like before. I’m just going off a couple of questions. Once I got in, and I started seeing the different biases, the different ways people see these dreams, started collecting the dreams and doing the research. I’m like, wow, this field is phenomenal. And it really, you know, changed the way I viewed these dreams in many ways, but also the way I approached them with people. And I think that’s one of the most important things of why I’m doing these talks is to validate the importance of this within the grief journey, but also how to use the sermon and provide a safe space for people to actually share these experiences.

Brian Smith 13:47
Yeah, that’s, that’s awesome. And I think it’s it is such important work that that again, I don’t know, there’s been much research done on it. I haven’t heard of any. And I know that, you know, when we have these dreams, and some of us do. And frankly, some of us say they don’t. Everybody wants to you know, I I’ve worked a lot with parents who have lost children. And we’re like, Why can I get more dreams? I want to I want to dream visit you know, it’s such a it’s a but people like so I want to just back up for us. And maybe you can find it what is actually a dream because we don’t we know we go to sleep we have this thing that we feel but what is a dream.

Unknown Speaker 14:21
A dream is really any thought feeling or seeing that you sort of remember when you wake up and so that’s sort of the definition of a dream. A lot of people think when it comes to dreams, it only happens in REM state but it’s not actually true. We actually dream throughout our sleep so and non REM and REM there are differences in the quality of those dreams. So usually non REM dreams are more bland. And in the REM dreams you get more of the emotion that’s going on but at the you know, near the end of night it’s not as as true. And the other interesting thing is in REM you tend to remember more dreams. So a lot of people would say if you remember a dream, it’s probably from Rome because if you wake someone up 80% of them Time, they’re going to be dreaming in non REM, it’s around 50% of the time. And so there’s just a little difference there. We don’t know where these Greek dreams fit in personally, like, you have to catch it in the lab to sort of understand where these powerful dreams come in. It’s probably around but you know, like, at the end of day, we just don’t know. And I think that’s the mystery of this topic, because they do act differently than other dreams. A typical dreams anyways, so there is this mystery of what actually is going on in the brain when these happen. And so yeah, that’s, that’s basically a nutshell the dreams, and I should tell you some dream research. So when it comes to dreams, 10% of the population doesn’t remember dreaming, even though for our knowledge, everyone is dreaming. It’s just the remembering is the issue. And so on average, one to two dreams a week, the public would say they would remember. And you can, you know, change that based on which kind of we can talk about that more, but you can increase your frequency of dreams as you move forward, just by valuing the topic. So you know, keeping a dream journal, listen to this, and you know, talking about your dreams with others, if you’re really trying to tell your mind that these are important. Now, our culture is really bad at valuing dreams. So why would you remember them? Right? And so there’s different ways to remember dreams a little bit better? We can go over that, you know, if you want to, but yeah, right. Yeah. Okay. Well, I

Brian Smith 16:17
do want to interject here, because my wife was one of those people for a long time would say, I don’t think I dream, because I don’t remember my dreams. And then after my daughter passed, and my daughter or the daughter was talking about dreams, and I was talking about dreams, and we do all these reading about dreams. Now my wife is remembering her dreams a lot more often. Because it’s what you’re saying that valuing the dream makes a difference.

Unknown Speaker 16:38
Yeah, it’s so amazing to and like, the more you you value it, the more you read through your dreams down, the more you can have and like, the more you just remember anyways. And so like I remember, like just trying this out, like research has shown that just by doing that, it increases your recall rate. And so for me, I usually have, you know, maybe three dreams a week, and I remember started doing this. And within a month, I was having three dreams a night that I could remember. And so I finally said, you know, this is enough like this is because it kept waking me up and write down. And so finally, I’m like, I’m only writing down like the ones that I feel are more meaningful. And so then my the rate of recall actually decreased, so you can increase and decrease based on that too, right? So interesting. Wow. Yeah. Which is really interesting. And so what I want to sort of say, when it comes to dreams, most people, on average, most people will have negative dreams. And that’s just because a lot of times we carry our stresses or worries to bed, or, or watching the news, or we’re watching a horror film or something that is going to be creeping into our dreams. And after trauma, what’s interesting is that these dreams become even more consistently negative. And so you would think after grief would be very similar in the sense that people are going to be having a lot of nightmares or negative dreams, if you just look at the pandemic right now. And there has been research to show that there’s been an increase in nightmares, increase of negative images from people, and you can just sort of see how that reflects the stress of individual and given a pandemic is a very stressful time, for many reasons. Financial is that you have the grief stuff, someone dies, you have work you have catching the virus in your own death and mortality, your loved ones, your mortality, there’s so much stress, people are dealing with even having to homeschool your kids like I can’t imagine what that would be like. But you know, like, you’re going to bed with all that. And so dreams reflect our waking life. And people just need to understand that connection. Because there’s a lot of clues and a lot of things that you can learn from your dreams. If you know how to sort of understand your dream language, I think that’s the most important thing is that everyone has their own unique language when it comes to the dreams as much as we want a quick fix. And we want to just google you know, what does an elephant mean? And then take that to mean what your dream means. It’s not the best way of doing it, you’re just going to sell yourself short. And you’d probably be led in a wrong direction. So like everyone’s like symbol of an elephant be different. But there’s also a story that goes along with the elephants. It’s very rare. You just have an elephant you wake up, you’re usually riding the elephant, you’re going around and meeting people or whatnot. Right? So there’s a story that goes along that helps people understand what the dream itself is trying to convey to the dreamer. Sometimes it’s very passive, and it’s just, you know, working through the emotions of the day. But a lot of times, it’s you know, there’s a lot of problem solving in there and basically allowing you to see what you’re working on still. Because the mind is so great at tricking you to think you’re further than you are in life. And you know, yes, sometimes I’ll give it I’ll give an example. That’s just in the pandemic. You know, when they like that it was that crazy. Everyone was buying toilet paper. Yeah. So around that time, I was like, Oh, I got this. I’m okay. I’m not too stressed. You know, like, I have a smile on my face. I was going through life. And then I had this really crazy nightmare where I was in my house I grew up in and there was a chandelier being taken down. And when I was taken down, I took some of the glass And I started eating it and then I having sort of having like a panic attacks, I realized that glass was stuck in my throat and I couldn’t get it out. I woke up with just a deep sweat. Like, like for me like the last time I had it was probably like maybe seven or eight years ago like I nightmares that I pretty cognitive my emotions and waking life. And so I tend to work on them in waking life. So it doesn’t have to affect me so much in my dream world. But anyway, so that was a such a big trigger for me that there was something I didn’t I wasn’t catching I wasn’t seeing Hmm. So I really had to look at that because I’m like, I thought it was fine. Like what’s going on? And then I realized, like, okay, let’s, if this was someone else’s dream.

Unknown Speaker 20:37
I can look at this. I’m like, okay, what’s the chandelier? Well, a chandelier provides light to a large space. I go, what’s similar to that that’s going on in my life right now. And so I started thinking, I’m like, Oh, the news does that the news provides stories to a country, right? And so for a large space, I’m like, so I’m breaking off and must be reading a lot of it and jesting it. But what am i ingesting is actually caused me great pain and suffering. I don’t know about it. I was like, this makes sense. Because what it was doing at that time, as much as I felt calm, I was reading a lot of news throughout the day. And that was actually very detrimental to my mental health. And I didn’t even know it. And so I really had to take a step back and say, Okay, why are we looking at the news? Oh, to feel safe, how many times you need to look at it to feel safe. And I’m like, okay, maybe you know, once or twice if it’s gonna happen, Betcha it’s gonna be like the headliner, you don’t need to go on to like, you know, 10 different articles to understand. Toilet paper is running out like this, right? And so I made a list when like, how can I actually problem solve this? So like, Okay, what do I need to feel safe? And so you get some extra food and that sort of stuff? And like, Is there anything else that you need? And it’s like, no, so then, okay, so then the, the need to, to look at the new so often wasn’t as important for me. And so it was just maybe once or twice in the morning, I would look at an article. And that was it, I wouldn’t look at night. So that was the big thing. Like, dude, I really stopped that. And I never had an experience like that, since I haven’t had a nightmare since that day. So it’s just really understanding that, you know, there’s a lot of knowledge that we can gain about ourselves, I always like to say dreams can be our best friend, who is, you know, can tell you the truth when you don’t want to hear it. I think that’s sort of, you know, what a best friend supposed to be anyways, is to really give you the heads up and when you’re off the off off your rocker and, and thinking that you’re going north, but you’re really going south.

Brian Smith 22:29
So is the dream, our subconscious trying to communicate to our conscious mind? Is that what it is?

Unknown Speaker 22:34
Do you think? Yeah, right. But I know other people who have different theories of you know, based on their religion, and based on their belief in the afterlife and stuff, they may see it as differently. But yeah, for me, it’s just like, it’s a guidance. If it comes from inside or outside of me, it doesn’t really matter. Like, I’m not too concerned, I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna use it.

Brian Smith 22:51
Yeah, well, that’s a good point. That’s an excellent point, you know, because the thing is, you know, as we talk about dream visits, you know, people will say, Well, I just have my normal dreams. And then I have my nightmares. And then I have my grief dreams, or my dream visits. And they’ll say, it’s a totally different quality of experience. It’s kind of like the way you described the dream with your father. And, and you wake up and you feel there, it’s reminds me when people have Indies, when I say it just changed my entire perspective on everything.

Unknown Speaker 23:22
And many of those dreams can be like that. And it’s also you know, it’s important to say, we talked about these positive drains a lot. And I think a lot of topic, a lot of the conversation does go there. But there’s a lot of negative frames that also happen that also have very similar qualities to some of the positive dreams are very vivid, they’re very real, they’re one on one, they may not give you a positive feeling, but they stay with you for their entire life, too. So sometimes a lot of people who are spiritual take those as a haunting, and there’s cultures that believe that that is a negative visitation. So as much as a lot of you know, press goes to these positive dreams, there is a lot of negative dreams. And just in my study, I just sort of state so when I looked at sort of how frequent these these are, and just the general public, I found that’s one of the amazing things I found was like how common they are. So after spells a loss within the first year to is 86% of people had a dream of the deceased after pet loss, it was 78%. And after prenatal loss, it was 58%. And then there was a study done with children 55% had a dream after their parent died. And so it’s it when you start looking at those numbers, you realize how common these actually are, then when you sort of look at are they positive or negative experiences. Because if you remember when we talked about just how common negative dreams are, in general, then after trauma, you would think a lot of dreams after grief would be negative to so especially deceased in it. But as you’re saying, this is where it gets interesting because it goes against typical dream research that most these dreams are positive. So when you ask someone, you know, the content, if you ever had a positive dream and you sort of give a lay on with that. means around over 90% of people say they have at least one positive dream of the Seas when it goes to negative around 30%. And of those 30%. What’s interesting is that those individuals will also have a positive dream at some point. And so what it says to me it probably is going on is that people are having more negative dreams in the beginning. And as they work through their trauma and their grief, they’ll have more of these positive dreams moving forward. We don’t know that for sure. We need to do more longitudinal research for that. But that is what I’ve heard on my podcast a lot. And what I’ve just heard with talking to other people, but yeah, there’s something there and I think within so within those beautiful dreams, so they’re acting differently than normal. And as you said, like a lot of them have this very beautiful space that is being provided with just love and peace. Like it is absolutely amazing. Like the deceased will say, amazed, like really why stuff. They really help the dream out in many different ways to feel loved to deal with some of the problems that we’re facing. But just the presence of love is one of the things I find is the most remarkable because a lot of times we seek that in life and never achieve it because we have so many worries and so much fear that is just under the surface. But in this dream, it’s like, none of that matters. It’s like all you have is this space of love, and what that can do to someone. And so when we when I look at my dream, yeah, I realized the importance of being able to say goodbye to my father, because his death was sudden I realize that the saying I love you as important aspect of that dream, because I never said that to him. And probably since I was six. So it’s something that I needed to say that never got a chance to say, Well, he never said to me too, so let’s not put the blame on me. Eric, yeah. And then the third thing was this peace, that peace in the dream was different than any other dream I had. Even the dreams that are positive, I have don’t have that level of peace in them. So there’s something else going on? That’s probably very beneficial to us as we move forward through grief.

Brian Smith 27:03
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I was we’re doing this or talking about this. I was thinking about recollection of dreams. We talked about how you can actually recall more dreams. But do we have any idea why we recall some dreams and don’t recall other dreams? or Why? Some people seem to recall a lot more than than other people do.

Unknown Speaker 27:21
Yeah, when it comes to dream recall, there are theories out there. Because we can’t see each dream, it’s very hard to understand why remember certain dreams over others, especially when it comes to this the deceased. A lot of people will say, you know, you remember dreaming because the vividness of it. So the more vivid a dream, the more emotional dream is, would be different factors. If it’s in RAM, you may have a better if you’re waking up in RAM, you may have a better chance of catching that because RAM is very similar to our waking state. And so it could be you know that but yeah, so there’s little, there’s still a lot of mystery on it. But when it comes to these streams, it’s very interesting because they tend to come up at very important times in people’s lives. And so I’m not sure if they’re just not remembering the dreams or they’re just not occurring, right? That’s a question that we won’t know until we be able to see dreams in general. It could be people are dreaming of deceased more than they’re actually remembering it and that’s interesting. So then then it’s like why remembering certain dreams at certain points in our life over others.

Announcer 28:18
We’ll get back to grief to growth in just a few seconds. Did you know that Brian is an author and a life coach. If you’re grieving or know someone who is grieving his book, grief to growth is a best selling easy to read book that might help you or someone you know, people work with Brian as a life coach to break through barriers and live their best lives. You can find out more about Brian and what he offers at WWW dot grief to growth.com www dot g ri e f the number two gr o w th calm or text growth gr o w th 31996 if you’d like to support this podcast visit www.patreon.com slash grief to growth www.patreon.com slash g ri e f the number two gr o w th to make a financial contribution and now back to grief to growth and yeah,

Brian Smith 29:21
you know it’s interesting because I in the community I run a lot of people believe that we actually leave our bodies every night and we basically astral travel and we meet with our guides and our loved ones and stuff like that and we don’t recall that so we’re we’re kind of back and forth between you know two worlds and so when we you know have these these grief dreams we call them dream visits that we believe that we’re actually with you know our loved one again but with the great dreams or have you noticed any like common Natalie’s with the dreams versus regular dreams and give you some examples for me. It seems like they’re usually once I have the really short. They’re usually not they’re not very long. And when I would see my daughter, I would always know she’s not supposed to be here. So I get very excited because I you realize, you know, this, this is supposedly happening. And then it would be somewhat lucid because I would know I was dreaming. And then I wouldn’t want to wake up. But I would always I would get excited, I’d wake myself up. Some of the things that I went through is, Is that normal? Do other people have that?

Unknown Speaker 30:22
I’ve heard that. Yeah, they definitely do seem shorter than other dreams, even just the word count that I’ve collected, like I’ve collected over 1000 dreams. And just when you compare that with other dream research, it tends to be a little shorter. But that also could be you know, what people are writing, because when I captured the data, I didn’t go after a dream sample, which most people would in their research, I would have to recreate sample. So a lot of people you would assume are not dreaming Theseus, so they’re not, you know, wanting to talk about their dream. So maybe that’s reason why it’s a little shorter. So it didn’t didn’t add enough detail to the dream, they sort of just cut to the chase of maybe what was most important to them. So yeah, we don’t do more research on that. But yeah, a lot of people will say that, you know, they’ll know the Sisa data, they’ll know that they’re dreaming. It’s not as common as I think. Like, like, for me, like I knew my dad was dead, but I wasn’t lucid in the dream. Like, I didn’t realize it was a dream. In that moment. A lot of people are like that, where they could acknowledge the person’s that but they won’t say this is a dream and become that lucid. What was the other one? You’re saying?

Brian Smith 31:24
Well, I would say, it’s short, it’s lucid. And then I was for me, I would like always get excited about seeing her and wake up. And I didn’t want to so I’m like, yeah, so I started actually trying to, when I was in it, say, okay, just don’t get it. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 31:41
And that’s just love right there. It’s just excitement. And, you know, at the end of the day, you know, the dream may have ended, even if you didn’t get excited, but at the end day, it’s just something to smile at. But that’s how much love you have, you know, for your daughter, maybe last year, and for you to sort of take it as a visit. It just makes it that much more special to you believing that it was her right. And so, you know, there’s just something to smile and say, Oh, right, okay. Like, like, how can you change that without like, trying to decrease the outlay. I think that is one of the most important parts of the dreams, just feeling that and that’s just love coming to the surface, you know?

Brian Smith 32:13
Well, like you said, there is that and you can’t really even describe the feeling of love, but just one of the things, you know, when you have it. And I found that when people have that, though, and I know a lot of people have had these types of dreams and like, you know, I could just feel the love, you could feel that they’re okay. It’s just that reassurance that they’re okay, that we’re going to be okay. But it’s interesting, because we, a lot of times people will take those positive gyms we visit but then the negative dreams will say, Well, that was just a dream. But is there something to be learned from the negative dreams also? Of course, yeah. Well,

Unknown Speaker 32:45
first is using discernment, right? Some people who, as I said, will take those dreams as a visit also, depending on where they’re where they are. Right. And so it’s it’s really understanding, like when we call things a dream visit, it’s just really understanding that that actually complicates a lot of things, for people in many different forms. And just for before I go on the negative frames, people, just in my own research, when you look at, you know, who are having these dreams, like that was one of the common concerns that why I started the research was you know why some people are having these dreams and other people aren’t. And so the spiritual people would always put themselves down if they haven’t had a dream. And then they’ll be jealous of others. They’d say, oh, maybe he didn’t cross over properly. Maybe he’s mad at me, because I had to like maybe sell the house or something. Yeah, or couldn’t give them that type of funeral that he wanted. Or maybe, you know, the afterlife is they forgot, they forgot about me kind of thing. And so I want to give a scientific explanations, sort of understand that a little bit more. And so what I found and in replicating the research, is that dream recall was the most important factor. So what it’s saying is that people who remember more dreams in general, remember more of these types of dreams. I think that’s interesting. For a lot of people, when you start asking them, if they didn’t have a dream, you know, what the recall rate is, usually it’s pretty bad and pretty poor. And so I usually connect the dots for them. And for them, you can see this weight goes off. And because all those reasons, negative reasons where they put on it, it are now sort of this valid, and now because the research people can hold on to that and say, Oh, I just didn’t remember maybe the dream that I did have. But within that study, so in both studies, I looked at spirituality, because a lot of people thought, so I wasn’t gonna put it in, but people sort of made me put it in thought that people who are spiritual will have more of these dreams. I guess it’s a good theory. Anyways, it’s not true. So people who are spiritual or not, are both having similar dream experiences. difference is, is in the content. So maybe in a spiritual person, we’ll talk about the afterlife, or they’ll talk about, you know, I don’t know what heaven looks like or what death is like something like that. We’re in people who are not spiritual, they won’t but they still have that loving quality. They’ll even say they’re okay, like they still have those kind of comments that still say that they love them, but they just won’t have that other stuff in it. So, you know, but for those people what I want to sort of mention, you know, when we label these as Maybe a dream because it’s a somehow we can put off others. Because if you’re not spiritual, your guard and your wall goes up the moment you hear it’s a visit, and you don’t want to share those experiences anymore. And so I really tried to get people to understand that, you know, there, it’s the quality of the dream, I think the most important to ask and then ask how they feel about it. Because some people based on their culture, religion, that is not that would be frowned upon, in many ways to call it a dream visit, right. But it’s a great moment together, and whatever you call that living in the mystery of that moment, and that in itself can allow people to share these a little bit more freely, because most people hide them if they don’t get asked. And I think that’s why people thought it was rare. But you know, for a spiritual person, they’ll let you know right away if they think it’s a visit, because you know, like, they’ll say, just the wording they use. I think that’s beautiful. And I always I never discourage that, because I’ve seen in even in my research, how these dreams help people believe more in afterlife and help people regain their faith, which is really rocky after someone dies. I understand sort of, like, How could this happen. And so you sort of see how it’s beneficial for people. And when it comes to these negative for dreams, these dreams has been shown just in my research when they’re distressing, that they relate to trauma symptoms, and they also relate to unresolved feelings of guilt or blame. And so a good example of this is just understand, like dreams represent our waking life. So a good example was a widow her said like her husband died. And she had this dream, a repeated dream of her husband coming to the door, and telling her that he’s still alive. And then, you know, basically wants to get back together with her. But she says, Oh, no, I’m dating someone new. I can’t. And she’s like, how can you still be alive? Like, how could you make me think that you’re dead? Like, how can you be such a mean and heartless person to do something like that to me? Then he said, You know, like, the moat He’s like, then he’s like, well, if we’re not gonna be together, well, then give me all the money that you inherited, then I’ll leave you alone. And she, she said, No. And then he began to chase her. And so he had this repeated dream over and over again, she thought it was a negative visitation. And then when you start asking about these points in the dream, that are, you’d say, are are important. The one is getting back together, and her being in a relationship. And so that’s one of the issues, right, like how difficult it is for someone who has a partner die. And then to start a new relationship, like you’re, you’re trying to love two people at the same time. And it’s very difficult in our culture, because it’s always been frowned upon. And so for them, like you have to sort of figure that out. And then you have the difficulty of the other partner. Are they even? Do they even want to know about your partner that died? Or they even you know, is? Or are you hiding your, your love to make them feel better? Kind of, right, exactly. It’s a very difficult position to be in. And then on top of that, you have this money. So when you ask her about the money, she said, the most hardest thing after the death was actually accepting the money, because he worked so hard for it. And she felt it was so unjust, that he worked so hard, and she’s the one that gets suspended or keyman. So she’s sort of working through that still. And she’s spending some of that money on the new relationship. So if you see that there’s this complex thing going on, and the mind is trying to say, you know, you got to work through this because whatever you’re doing isn’t working. And because a dream is repeated, like that is a flag that you know, there is something that you’re not getting in waking life that the mind is really good at, if you’re not going to get it they’ll tell you again, either in the same way or in a different story. If you track your dreams over you know, over weeks you can really see if you’re making progress or not based on

Brian Smith 38:38
strength I’ve been having the same dream for years.

Unknown Speaker 38:43
Right? Well, there’s something important there right and he’s drinking trigger, especially your feelings can trigger certain dreams and there’s probably clues in there to help you understand that because you’re not like I don’t feel at the random at all. They’re really telling a story to us to really help us be more healthy and waking life.

Brian Smith 38:59
Yeah, I want to reiterate a couple things you said that you said some really profound things there that I really want to make sure the listeners heard one is when people say I’m not having these dream visits, there’s something wrong with me my loved ones mad at me or this I don’t we don’t have the connection whatever. I think it’s really important. Like you said to ask how many dreams are you recalling in general and that the fact that there’s a correlation there so hopefully that will take a lot of pressure off of some people and there are ways that we can improve our dream recall as you said, by valuing it by journaling I think setting an attention I’ve heard people say I want to have a dream you know just just maybe trigger that subconscious thing I want but I also want to ask you about you had this visit or this dream with your father I using the visit where we had this dream with your father and it changed your life. What was your belief in the afterlife before that? Did it change that or what were your thoughts about that?

Unknown Speaker 39:54
Yeah, I don’t know. It’s very interesting cuz I when I look back at that I am spiritual and but when I look back, I wasn’t asking for it. At that time, I think I’m still developing my my faith in many ways, as I still am, I guess I’m trying to understand this crazy world. And then, and understand myself as I learn more about myself my idea of God or whatever changes significantly. And so at that time, you know, I, when I even look at that dream, I don’t even I don’t think I’ve ever even classified as a visitation. It was just a dream that changed me and I still look look back. I’m like, I would even say it’s visitation. I don’t know, because it was just something that I didn’t put a wasn’t a interpretation. I don’t think I’ve ever really put an interpretation on that dream, per se. It’s just me just how crazy it was. It changed me. And that love is the thing that I keep the most and like, I don’t I get them that I don’t know. Right. Like, like, you know, if it really matters to me, but that I but I wouldn’t I do know for certain is that dream changed me. And so what can I learn from that dream as I move forward? And this is really, I think what’s possible when it comes to love. And so my goal has not been trying to prove the afterlife is real, you know, really it is or it isn’t, I’m going to die. It’s gonna happen. Not like, it’s not like, my belief isn’t going to determine anything. And so, but what can I do? Now? Like, okay, I can learn what’s possible for a human. And I think that there are different levels of love. And if I can dream, a scene like that, or an emotion like that, why can’t I live that in waking life. And so that’s always been my goal moving forward, is trying to get to that place in waking life. And not just need a dream to get me there. Like, I’m really working hard to really try to understand, you know, myself, who I am, what stresses me out, what am I attached to? And what’s holding me back from love. And a lot of people, you know, I’d say, like, we do get attached to these experiences, because they make us feel good. But then when we go to waking life, we’re like, I just want another one. Rather than saying, you know what, yeah, what can I do to increase the chances I can actually have that while I’m awake? Yeah, I think that’s where I’m at. It’s just, it’s less about, you know, what is after, and more about what can I do now. And a lot of these dreams that people share, they have so much wisdom that I gained from them. So that’s why I love asking about these dreams, because there’s so much you can take from it. When it comes to what love is and the words that they say there. It’s just very remarkable. From where I’m sitting to be able to utilize these dreams as a way to rethink what life is and how to process how I see myself as I move forward.

Brian Smith 42:25
Yeah, well, I want to ask you about I don’t know if you’ve heard of this phenomenon or not, but I’ve heard of people that were someone will be deceased. And someone else will have a dream the widow come to visit them, and tell them they’re okay. before anybody even knows this person has been deceased. So have you heard about this happening?

Unknown Speaker 42:43
This is where it gets really wild when it comes to these. These dreams because even on my website, there’s history, I put these people who can have these dreams, as you said, before they even know the person is dead. And I think there is something very beautiful about that and tell our people sit in mystery. There’s a lot about life, we don’t know and think that we do know, even when they think that we know what the afterlife is. It’s just I think insane in itself. Because we just don’t know. But we do know that like for to believe that there is one okay, but to understand what it’s like, I don’t know if we can even conceive of what that is. But right, right with our minds, right. And so there’s a lot of times we have to sit in the mystery of life. And to understand that we may be wrong in different ways, but there’s certain things you can be certain of anyway, so these dreams really make you sit in that mystery. Because they’re having dreams very similar to what someone would have after they know the death person somehow that moment knows of the loss. And that could be like some people would say, oh, that they visited them in the dream. And so they let them know that they basically died. And we’re going to be okay, so that’s one possibility. The other is, let’s say if you’re not spiritual, there must be a connection that people have that goes beyond time or space that people will just know. And I hear that with, like, you know, parents with their children, they just know something’s wrong. They always have this like radar, and they call on something is. And so there could be the strings of just attachment, and then love that allows us to know, when you know someone has died too. So either way, whatever the possibility, it changes the way we understand human beings, just by the occurrence of that. then other times when it comes to, I think some other dreams you’re saying about people having dreams for others. I think that is a really fascinating topic, I collected a lot and people came on my podcast and talked about it. It’s more rare. But someone could have a dream that’s actually meant for someone else in the sense that the character in the dreams of the deceased will tell them to share a message with their father or their mother or whatever. And sometimes that person doesn’t even really even know or really is that close to that individual. And so it takes a lot of courage for someone to have a dream and then share it because it could end up really someone calling you crazy or they just don’t believe you and stuff like that. But for the most part, a lot of people have said the powerful impact it has on others. A lot of times they never had that dream themselves. So it’s very interesting when you start looking at that, and that’s more research that needs to be done on that topic, because it does change the way we we see ourselves and like what’s possible with us. And there’s just so much more we just don’t understand. We’re trying to, like, I guess, go on Mars and land on Mars. And we don’t really even understand, like what we are capable of. Right? Like, it’s just it’s very interesting how we keep pushing the boundaries externally. But internally, it’s still really similar to where it was prior.

Brian Smith 45:27
Yeah, well, there’s just some of the reasons that I believe there’s something more to it than just our subconscious is, you know that that phenomenon I’ve heard of happening, not often, but it happens when people will, will dream about someone else being deceased before they even know. And if you just mentioned another one will, it’s like, it’s almost like they can’t get through to the one that they’re trying to get through to. So they’ll go to the cousin or the art or the neighbor down the street even and say, Nope, the neighbor come up and say, you know, I had a dream, but your your daughter last night, I barely knew her. But she came to me and came to tell me to tell you that she’s okay.

Unknown Speaker 46:00
Yeah, it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful when people said have the courage to be able to actually share that. I do want to mention, when we said we talked about some of these positive trends, there is a there is a category that should be of concern to anyone who works with the bereaved. And that’s a theme called Come join me. And here so kids can have this, it seems. And then also adults, but it’s where the deceased is either dragging the dreamer, basically, to the afterlife, or the dream or the deceased to try and convince the individual to basically kill themselves to join them in the afterlife. And it’s a very positive scene in the sense of what the person how the person is interacting with the individual. But these are really rare, but they seem to sort of point to mental health issues and suicide ideation. And so, you know, in my studies, I sort of saw how people who had those types of dream has really high forms of trauma symptoms. And then there’s been other people that it’s highly related to complicated grief, and you see it even across cultures, with indigenous people in Georgia. And so their thing is, if someone ever has that type of dream means you’re going to die soon. That’s the myth. And so I think any if you’re in a hunter gatherer, gatherer society, if you’re dealing with trauma, you’re not going to be, your memory is going to be off your cognition is going to be off and reaction time, so I can see you slipping, or it could be that they, you know, they do kill themselves also, and I, and I, you know, when people when we, when we say, ask about these dreams and understand where it is, because if you take if you tell someone, you know, these are dream visits, right? All of a sudden, that person will say, oh, then I’m supposed to kill myself, to go to the afterlife, because this is a positive dream. That’s what I really have to ask, you know, what’s the dream before we label it? Just to know, will that complicate the individual brief in any way? And what are their beliefs? And so, you know, with that, I cannot, I can definitely see people probably have taken their life because of some of these dreams, because they believed it was what they were supposed to do. And in grief, you know, like, our cognition is not the greatest like we are impulse control and reaction time in the sense of what we do. I was about to go to Israel and like dropped out of school, right. So if I had one of those dreams, how easy it is, for someone to just take that next step, because they believe the dream was telling you the truth. And so just being aware that there’s said, like, there’s so many types of dreams, that I’ve seen that I think I am in a privileged position to understand the landscape, which, you know, that’s what I’m really trying to talk about this stuff, because a lot of people only hear certain aspects, and a lot of them are these positive dreams. And that’s beautiful, and it’s great. But there’s also this other landscape that hasn’t been talked about. And that’s sort of the importance of understanding and using discernment, when we sort of talk about these dreams and how people’s beliefs and how they interpret their dreams affect the grief journey.

Brian Smith 48:41
Yeah, that’s some really excellent, another excellent point you made there about that. You know, because it’s interesting as you were telling your your path, how you were doing one thing in your undergrad and then decided to go into psychology and going to dream research my, my daughter, when when my other Shana passed, when my daughter Kayla was in the medical, she was on a path to become a physician’s assistant. And after Shayna passed, she realized this is not really what I want to do. So she she changed. She made she majored in psychology and undergrad, and then they are masters of mental health counseling. So you know, it’s interesting that like, when we’re in grief, we have to be careful about making big decisions, because we don’t, our cognition is not great, but also, it can actually put us on the path that I think that we’re meant to be on. Or us that i think that i think that you know, and you took this dream that you had from your father and you said, Okay, this this changed your life and change your life work. And people might have heard of this. And I was looking at your website before I get on so I’ll give you you know, but I’d heard it before about Paul McCartney. After his mother passed, and everybody knows the song, let it be. And there’s a line in the song. You know, Mother Mary comes me everybody assumes This is the Virgin Mother. But Paul McCartney had a dream of his mother after she Pass, come in ham. And the lyrics are when I find myself in times of trouble Mother Mary comes to me speaking words of wisdom, let it be. And in my hour of darkness, she’s standing right in front of me speaking words of wisdom, let it be whisper words of wisdom and that that song is just so profound. And as he’s relating this dream to James Carville, like 50 years later at James Carville, what’s the guy’s name, going to court and court games, relating it to him 50 years later, you know, you can see him tearing up, I mean, you can see that, that that dream still impacts him to this day. So there’s, I think there’s something very profound about about these these dreams.

Unknown Speaker 50:40
Well, I hear from a lot of people they’ll utilize, they still remember these dreams, you know, 4050 years later, and they still remember how to feel like that feeling of love can still be, you know, they can still look back at that and carry that with them in many ways. And it provides them that comfort as you move forward. And for a lot of times, it’s that thing that actually, when people look back, it can be that thing that really helped them work through their grief in many ways. I’ve had, you know, people that were about to kill themselves have a dream of deceased, you know, talk him out of it. People who are, you know, addicted, had a dream, and it changed them until like, you can see, like, the significant moments and of people’s grief journey. Change because of these dreams. That’s why like, it’s really interesting how a lot of people don’t share them. That was any research on them. Because like, oh, people just resilient? Well, it could be they’re also having these dreams that are helping them become resilient and work through some of the stuff outside of let’s say, you know, traditional means, I think, you know, that is a very beautiful quality of these dreams. And it’s like, why shouldn’t we we should know as much as we can. Because it seems that there is some type of inner knowing or knowledge that is guiding us to how to work through grief. And if we can understand the concept of what’s going on, we could work and help people a lot better in waking life. Because they’re said, there’s so much wisdom, even Mr. Paul McCartney Let it be like, I remember hearing that I was so shocked because I was in love with that song. And now I’m like, wow, like, that makes it even more beautiful. Yeah. And the way he said like, and, and there’s so many. So even on my website, Greek dreams, I’d say there’s so many other points in movies and TV shows that capture these dreams when I started looking. And I said, like starting like every kid, every time I look at a movie or, or comes up, I’m going to write down and like the amount of shows and places where I’ve seen these dreams, you can tell it’s affecting a lot of people that they’re putting it in their movies, and they’re putting in their TV shows in ways that are capturing the importance and the beauty of the topic. For the most part, there are a couple that will put in negative dreams. And I think that’s beautiful, too, because it just showcases and raises awareness. But the beauty of these dreams help change people. I remember one of my just side note, one of my favorite movies growing up was Braveheart. And one of the reasons was my dad’s favorite movie was Braveheart, too. So we always watch it together. And then, you know, I never realized until I was in my master’s program, I put the movie on again. And there’s three grief dreams in there of him dreaming of his deceased wife. And I think that’s probably the record. I haven’t seen more than three right now. But like I go, how interesting that is one of my favorite movies that I was hired to actually had these experiences. And I didn’t even realize it wasn’t conscious of it until after I started, you know, looking for these around. And I think you know, there’s something to say about that. And I think there’s something special about that, just in my own journey where I look back, and like my dad’s tied these dreams. It’s not just I had my own, but it was in one of our favorite movies that we add to

Brian Smith 53:37
that as well. That is really cool. So tell me about what you offer to people I know you’ve got it, you’ve got a course you do one on one work. So

Unknown Speaker 53:45
tell me about what you offer. So to raise awareness, I like I was doing, you know, before the pandemic, I was doing a lot of talks and workshops, and so I kind of stopped and so I decided to do an online course and so it’s nine and a half hours that someone could take and it really helps you understand, you know, some stuff on sleep dreams, but you know, the majority of time grief dreams and all the landscape like we we talked about an hour, so it’s probably another nine hours of like conversation on the topic that we just didn’t go into it because it’s so vast in the sense of what’s there. So if someone wants to learn more and wants to talk about these more, I think that’s a great starting point, you get a certificate at the end of it. And then you’ll feel it’s people who you know, have these negative dreams or just want to talk more about these dreams I offer the one on one group dream consulting, and just you know, it’s just it’s sad there’s not a lot of people that know the information so I’m just trying to help people the best I can understand how a lot of there are a lot of clients that have negative dreams and so it’s really you know, how it applies to waking life and what it’s trying to teach us to move forward with that and then you said like I got the grief dreams podcast so people who want to know more about the just want to hear more of these stories, like that’s the place to go because a lot of the people that come on majority of them have really positive life changing experiences. I I think that’s phenomenal. Even The last guest we had on was in Gara. And she talked about, you know, meeting her thing was her grandfather and she asked what the afterlife and then he told her what the actual life was like, I think that’s kind of cool in the sense of these answers and questions people have about life they they can get from the deceased to so

Brian Smith 55:15
yeah. I love what you’re saying it. And it’s interesting because I’ve studied near death experiences to a fair amount and their grief dreams remind me of that without the trauma, you can have some of these experiences. And I also love the way you put it, you know, you don’t have to believe it’s the afterlife, you might believe its inner wisdom, or the subconscious, whatever, whatever works for you. But there is there is you cannot deny the wisdom of it, you cannot deny the message of it, the beauty of it, and the way that it can transform, you know, people’s lives. So I think the work that you’re doing is just so, so very important. And I love just a short amount of time we’ve been able to spend together today, I’ve learned a lot, you know, in terms of their types of dreams, I didn’t know I didn’t know about the Come with me, you know, dream, you know how maybe we can interpret these negative dreams, I thought you get a great, great example that woman, you know, with, with her husband and the other person in the life, and that’s got to be a really, for no complex situation, you said, trying to, you know, honor your wonders on the other side, but live your life while you’re still here. So seeing that come through in the dream of being able to understand what what the dream is trying to tell you. So it’s all just amazing.

Unknown Speaker 56:29
It absolutely is. And that’s why I love talking about it. And one thing we didn’t mention is how these dreams change over time. So you work through your grief and like so it’s not really your dreams aren’t about grief anymore. And these dreams are the seeds will pop up in time to other needs that you have and times of suffering. So let’s say if you get divorced, or something you may have, or something tragic happens, you may have one of these dreams, and it’s been 10 years since individual died, but they’re offering you support and comfort. I’ve seen a lot in the pandemic now, which is very interesting of how the deceased are coming to offer support in many different ways. Either just being together to reduce the isolation, or to provide them questions are asking how they’re doing in the pandemic, and then an end of life, which is interesting, you’ll start seeing these frames again. And they’re basically helping people transition from life to death. So they’re providing a lot of comfort for the individual in those final final days. And I think it’s, I think that’s one of the other really unique things of this research, or just this topic is that, you know, it’s not just one dream at one moment of life, it’s like, once it happens, it keeps happening and certain moments of your life that are very important. And so like, why did why is that and how come we don’t have those dreams prior? Like that? I don’t know, like, but it is there’s a lot of mystery, a lot of research still needs to be done. So hopefully people know it’s a safe space. Now, I think explore research wise, I think you know, that’s maybe one of the reasons why people didn’t do research prior because it was really tied with the afterlife a lot. But I think it did a really good job to say no, like, everyone’s having these. Let’s just talk about the subject and the non judgmental way. And people can take it as they want. You know, like, I’m not as long as it’s comforting. You know, like, I don’t really care what you take it as it’s when it’s distressing. It, let’s work on that. Because that’s going to cause you to limit what you can do and where you can go with your healing.

Brian Smith 58:13
Yeah, well, you mentioned something that I taken a note and I hadn’t brought it up. But I guess we have a couple more minutes. So I do want to get into it because my father in law at near the end of his life had dementia. And he would he would talk about all these things crazy, like dreamlike things. So my theory was he had lost the separation between dream life and real life. I’m like, I don’t know what was going on with him. But it seemed. But when he would talk about people in his fantasies, they were always deceased, like, consistently, they’re always people who were deceased. And I thought that was a really interesting observation I did not make at the time. But later on, as I look back when I’m like, seeing them back, he was like tapping into the other side as he got as he got closer to the end.

Unknown Speaker 58:58
Yeah. And that, you know, there’s research has been done a lot of research coming out of hospice Buffalo, with Dr. Kerr, and Dr. Pay grant, that are really looking at these end of life dreams and visions. And it’s very hard to separate the two at end of life because their sleep is so sporadic. But, you know, same thing. So they’re having these dream experiences. And sometimes it could be the dream experiences tied into waking life. So it becomes a vision. But yeah, they’re there. And they tend their research found that there’s tend to be an increase in these as they approach the end. And so that in itself is just it’s very fascinating to me, on you know, how these continue to support us and why can’t we have them every day? Like why do they show up this quote unquote, random? I don’t know. And I think you know, that’s, that’s one of those mysteries that you’d have to sort of sit with and be patient and I think if anything like we teach our kids to be patient, I guess these dreams teach us to be patient as adults.

Brian Smith 59:52
Yeah, well, you know, it’s even the whole the word afterlife, you know, because what it to me what it says is consciousness is something that is Bigger than we understand just it’s not just in our brains, there’s something that’s, that’s everything, it’s undeniable, we’re somehow connected to something larger than ourselves or to each other, in some ways that we don’t understand from a materialist point of view. And I love the way you’re going about it academically, it’s not a matter of faith, it’s not a matter of I have to believe this. But also not to shy away from the fact that these things are actually happening. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:27
I’m glad you like that, right. Some people may frown upon some of the stuff I’m doing. And I’ve just because of their belief system, and what they sort of see the extremes to be. And so yeah, it’s just, you know, the love and support that, you know, you give for allowing to be on your platform, and then everyone else, I just sort of thank you all for continuing to raise awareness on the subject, because it’s just so important to my heart, but I know, it’s impacting a lot of people just around the world. And I think for me to do research that’s affecting the world is such a place, I’m in such a place of gratitude, because most people, their research never gets read. And for this, to have an opportunity to actually change the way we support people. You know, in just a matter of doing a master’s in PhD, I think that’s just a remarkable part of where I’m sitting at that, like, you know, like, the legacy of just my father’s is actually moving through the world. Yeah. And for me like that, that means a lot.

Brian Smith 1:01:17
That’s very, very cool. Well, I want to tell people where they can reach you. It’s Dr. Joshua black, and he’s at grief dreams.ca. So you can find more questions and answers on his website, the course is available there. You’re available for one on one consulting. So I’m just I’m so thrilled to put this episode out. I think it’s a really important episode that’ll help a lot of people.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:41
Hey, I’m happy but then thank you again for having me on. I really appreciate you valuing the topic.

Brian Smith 1:01:47
Alright, well have a great rest of your day.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:49
Thanks, you too sweet dreams, I hopefully get another one of those dreams tonight.

Brian Smith 1:01:54
So that does it for another episode of grief to growth. I sure hope you enjoyed it. If you like this content, make sure you subscribe. So click on the subscribe button here, and then click on the bell to receive notifications and click on all that way you’ll be notified whenever I release new content. Thanks for watching and have a great day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Do we get to choose when we die? If we don’t choose, who does? Is it God? Is it me? Is it random? Which answer resonates with you? Which answer has evidence to support it?

This is a question from a listener. If you’d like to have a question answered, let me know. So far, I haven’t gotten any easy questions. But, I’ll take a swing at anything you want to ask.

If you have a question you’d like me to answer, drop me a line and I’ll include it in a future episode.

If you’d like to talk to me privately, I’m available for one-on-one consultation.  Uou can book a session here:

https://grief2growth.as.me/30-minute-complimentary

Transcript

Brian Smith 0:00
Close your eyes and imagine

what are the things in life that causes the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, or challenges, challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we’ve been buried. But what if, like a seed we’ve been planted, and having been planted, to grow to become a mighty tree? Now, open your eyes, open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is brief to growth. And I am your host, Brian Smith. Hey there, what does it answer a question that I got from one of my listeners slash viewers. So I appreciate you guys interacting with the last video, I deal with the questions and I’ll keep these going as long as you’re interested in it. And this is a you guys don’t ask easy questions. This is a question though that’s very common that comes up and I’m gonna, I’m gonna frame the question that number, I think, maybe expand it a little bit. So the question is, when we cross over when we when our bodies stop functioning, when we die, to put it simply, do we have a choice of coming back? We have heard reports of people who have had near death experiences that have been given choices, or been given a choice to come back and they’ve chosen to come back. We’ve also though, frankly been told the people who have been given a choice to come back or have not given a choice. And we’re just sent back. So the question that this was prompted by the fact that this person’s loved one their their son, passed in a similar way to my daughter. He was a young man. Sudden, unexplained death. My daughter was young, she was 15, sudden, unexplained death. And so when we hear someone who’s had a near death experience, and been given the choice to come back, we think, well, this person was so young and vibrant, and love life so much. Why weren’t they given a choice to come back, because I know they would have chosen to come back. So the thing is, frankly, we don’t know that they would have chosen to come back we have heard people, even people who were mothers had young children that were here that were given a choice or not given a choice, but were told you know that they had to come back and they decided they wanted to stay because it was so great there and they knew everything was here was going to be okay. So we don’t really know what we would choose or what our loved one would choose if they had been given the choice. And frankly, we can’t know if everyone gets a choice. Because it’s a said, we know that some people don’t get a choice, and they’re sitting back without having a choice. We don’t know if people cross over and don’t have a choice and are required to stay. And so one reason when that might be required to stay is that their body can’t sustain life. So if your body can’t sustain life, then of course, you wouldn’t be able to come back. So I want to take this question of whether this person may given a choice and I want to expand it a little bit to do we choose when we die?

Because this I think is the broader question. Do we do we choose when we die? And if and so let’s go through this. So I always like to start off with as what do we know? So we’re gonna start off with what do we know for sure, we know for sure that 100% of the people that are born will die. There’s there are no exceptions. If you’re born, you die, you’re going to die. That is the plan. The questions are where are when and how does the things that are variables, but birth comes with 100% chance of death, the number one cause of death is birth. So we know that and you know, so we sometimes get upset about the timing of things, we get upset about the way things happen. But we know that death is inevitable. So the thing is, do we choose when we die? And so let’s look at what the let’s look at what the options are as with the evidence for each of those. So one option would be that it’s random universe is just a random place. Things happen. And we come in and we die whenever, whenever we die. And we can look at the evidence for that. And someone can make a case. Yeah, it seems to be pretty random. Another option that we might look at is that God determines it. So God determines when we’re when we die. And I know people that believe this. And for some people, this causes them great anger, because God has chosen to take a loved one earlier than we thought they should have. For some people. This brings them great comfort, that God in His infinite wisdom decides when it’s a right time for us to go. And people accept that and it’s okay with them. That one doesn’t really work for me. But if it works for you, then fine. I was visiting with someone just a couple days ago, that had a loved one that passed suddenly very young. And they were comforted by the fact that they believe in God’s divine timing. And the guy determined that so it could be random. It could be God. It could be that we Choose, either alone are in cooperation with a team of on the other side. So this is an interesting thing, because we can clearly see as the human part of us zoom inside of us that we don’t choose, we see people die in accidents, we see people fighting to live, and we see them dying anyway. So we know the evidence doesn’t show that the human part of chooses when we die, but there is the possibility that we choose as our higher self as our soul, if you want to call it that as our oversoul. And as a possibility that we choose when were in spirit, when we’re going to die, and we plan that out. So these are the options that it’s it’s random, that is chosen by God that we choose, it could be pre determined, it could be freewill. So these are the options. So what what is the evidence for each of these scenarios. And so the evidence random, as I’ve already stated, is pretty much there, you can make the case that is random, it certainly looks random from outside perspective, the evidence that God chooses, you know, there’s no way to really know that. That is a that is a belief. And you could say that maybe based on scripture, somebody might say that God knows the, the number of hairs on our head and the days of our lives. So that could you could call that evidence or something that might lead us in that direction. When it comes to whether we choose or not, I believe there’s a great deal of evidence for this. And this is what I believe we’ve had people that have had between life regressions, where they’ll go back to when they’re and lead life between life. And they’ll remember planning their life out and how things were supposed to go. We’ve had you know, mediums tell us or people coming through mediums telling us that it was determined when they were ago that there was nothing that can be done about it. We’ve had people who’ve had near death experiences that have said everything is just as it should be. And that we we are, it’s determined when we’re going to go. I remember Dr. Mary Neal, when she had her near death experience when she was in spirit, she was told that her son would die at a very early age, I believe was around 18. And it was about 10 years from when she had this experience. And know in spite of whatever she did, or whatever she believed, or whatever it did come to pass that her son did did pass at that time, I happen to know someone who was an intuitive and medium who says that she knows when people are going to transition, including herself and her loved ones. And so in that case, at least what she’s reported to me, there’s really no choice. But there’s some people that have said that we have multiple exit points, that there are multiple points in our life where we might have, we might choose to go. But we can’t apparently go past that last exit point. So that’s, that’s pretty determined.

So the thing is, whichever these things we choose to believe, we can find some amount of evidence for it. I think the preponderance of the evidence points to the fact that somehow that we choose either when we’re in spirit before we come here, or as our higher self, how long we’re going to be here. And I think we choose it that way. And it may not it may not fit in with what our human point of view is, you may you might say, well, who would choose to pass it at 15, for example, who would choose the pass as as an infant, and in some cases, even our people have had children that pass in their 30s or 40s, and that their life was too short. And who would choose that so as our human self, we probably wouldn’t choose that. But as our higher self and seeing the bigger picture, we might choose that for the benefit of our soul for this incarnation, and or for the benefit of our loved ones. Another thing I want to say while I’m talking about this is I think it’s very important is especially with young people, we view their their transition as a tragedy, that their life was cut short that they weren’t able to enjoy their life, and that they should be here and enjoying all the great things about life. Well, there’s a couple of things that’s that’s actually kind of wrong with that point of view. And I want to play with Azhar, first of all, their lives were not cut short. They, we when we transition continue to live, in fact, we live more abundantly a better life. So when we think about our loved ones, and we think about what they’re quote missing, keep in mind that they’re not really missing anything that they have, they have moved on they have graduated, I would call it to to a higher level. The other thing is that kind of comes from the point of view that this one life is all there is where it’s a one and done point of view. So if you’re going to come to this earth, you would think you want to stay here as long as possible to get the most out of it as possible, because you only have one shot. Now, again, you might you might believe that. I believe there’s enough evidence to show that we come to this earth over and over and over again. And that it’s not just one shot. So in any one life, that life life happens to be short or tragic or full of pain or whatever. Our souls don’t view that as a loss because it’s just one experience out of many. So those are my views on whether we choose when we die, who chooses when we die. And we can examine those. And you can examine those and determine, first of all, which one makes the most sense to you, which one has the most evidence for for it. The other thing is, try each one on because we can’t, frankly, really know this for a fact, while we’re here. So try it out what makes you feel comfortable, what brings you peace, what brings you joy, and if any of them, don’t bring you peace, and jump, don’t bring you joy, then you don’t have to choose to believe that there are other options you can choose that do have evidence, I’m not just saying choose which one feels best to you, or makes you feel the best. I don’t think it’s all about wishful thinking. For me, I feel more empowered by knowing that there’s a plan that I participated in the plan, not that just God impose this on me. And God put me here and said, This is what you’re going to do. But it’s a cooperative thing. It’s where we are co creators in our lives. And even though things happen in my life, that human Brian, my ego, might not like, I choose to trust the things that happen for me or for my own best good. And for the best good of everybody and everything in the universe, in spite of how it might look right now. And that’s what brings me peace. And that is what I found, frankly, a lot of evidence for. So those are my thoughts again, I like to hear what your thoughts are. What am I saying that might be right, but when you might say that might be wrong. And any other questions you have, just let me know. So have a great day and I’ll see you soon. So that does it for another episode of grief to growth. I sure hope you enjoyed it. If you like this content, make sure you subscribe, so click on the subscribe button here, and then click on the bell to receive notifications and click on all that way you’ll be notified whenever I release new content. Thanks for watching, and have a great day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Brian Smith 0:00
Close your eyes and imagine

what are the things in life that causes the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, or challenges, challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we’ve been buried. But what if, like a seed we’ve been planted, and having been planted, to grow to become a mighty tree? Now, open your eyes, open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is brief to growth. And I am your host, Brian Smith. Hey there, what does it answer a question that I got from one of my listeners slash viewers. So I appreciate you guys interacting with the last video, I deal with the questions and I’ll keep these going as long as you’re interested in it. And this is a you guys don’t ask easy questions. This is a question though that’s very common that comes up and I’m gonna, I’m gonna frame the question that number, I think, maybe expand it a little bit. So the question is, when we cross over when we when our bodies stop functioning, when we die, to put it simply, do we have a choice of coming back? We have heard reports of people who have had near death experiences that have been given choices, or been given a choice to come back and they’ve chosen to come back. We’ve also though, frankly been told the people who have been given a choice to come back or have not given a choice. And we’re just sent back. So the question that this was prompted by the fact that this person’s loved one their their son, passed in a similar way to my daughter. He was a young man. Sudden, unexplained death. My daughter was young, she was 15, sudden, unexplained death. And so when we hear someone who’s had a near death experience, and been given the choice to come back, we think, well, this person was so young and vibrant, and love life so much. Why weren’t they given a choice to come back, because I know they would have chosen to come back. So the thing is, frankly, we don’t know that they would have chosen to come back we have heard people, even people who were mothers had young children that were here that were given a choice or not given a choice, but were told you know that they had to come back and they decided they wanted to stay because it was so great there and they knew everything was here was going to be okay. So we don’t really know what we would choose or what our loved one would choose if they had been given the choice. And frankly, we can’t know if everyone gets a choice. Because it’s a said, we know that some people don’t get a choice, and they’re sitting back without having a choice. We don’t know if people cross over and don’t have a choice and are required to stay. And so one reason when that might be required to stay is that their body can’t sustain life. So if your body can’t sustain life, then of course, you wouldn’t be able to come back. So I want to take this question of whether this person may given a choice and I want to expand it a little bit to do we choose when we die?

Because this I think is the broader question. Do we do we choose when we die? And if and so let’s go through this. So I always like to start off with as what do we know? So we’re gonna start off with what do we know for sure, we know for sure that 100% of the people that are born will die. There’s there are no exceptions. If you’re born, you die, you’re going to die. That is the plan. The questions are where are when and how does the things that are variables, but birth comes with 100% chance of death, the number one cause of death is birth. So we know that and you know, so we sometimes get upset about the timing of things, we get upset about the way things happen. But we know that death is inevitable. So the thing is, do we choose when we die? And so let’s look at what the let’s look at what the options are as with the evidence for each of those. So one option would be that it’s random universe is just a random place. Things happen. And we come in and we die whenever, whenever we die. And we can look at the evidence for that. And someone can make a case. Yeah, it seems to be pretty random. Another option that we might look at is that God determines it. So God determines when we’re when we die. And I know people that believe this. And for some people, this causes them great anger, because God has chosen to take a loved one earlier than we thought they should have. For some people. This brings them great comfort, that God in His infinite wisdom decides when it’s a right time for us to go. And people accept that and it’s okay with them. That one doesn’t really work for me. But if it works for you, then fine. I was visiting with someone just a couple days ago, that had a loved one that passed suddenly very young. And they were comforted by the fact that they believe in God’s divine timing. And the guy determined that so it could be random. It could be God. It could be that we Choose, either alone are in cooperation with a team of on the other side. So this is an interesting thing, because we can clearly see as the human part of us zoom inside of us that we don’t choose, we see people die in accidents, we see people fighting to live, and we see them dying anyway. So we know the evidence doesn’t show that the human part of chooses when we die, but there is the possibility that we choose as our higher self as our soul, if you want to call it that as our oversoul. And as a possibility that we choose when were in spirit, when we’re going to die, and we plan that out. So these are the options that it’s it’s random, that is chosen by God that we choose, it could be pre determined, it could be freewill. So these are the options. So what what is the evidence for each of these scenarios. And so the evidence random, as I’ve already stated, is pretty much there, you can make the case that is random, it certainly looks random from outside perspective, the evidence that God chooses, you know, there’s no way to really know that. That is a that is a belief. And you could say that maybe based on scripture, somebody might say that God knows the, the number of hairs on our head and the days of our lives. So that could you could call that evidence or something that might lead us in that direction. When it comes to whether we choose or not, I believe there’s a great deal of evidence for this. And this is what I believe we’ve had people that have had between life regressions, where they’ll go back to when they’re and lead life between life. And they’ll remember planning their life out and how things were supposed to go. We’ve had you know, mediums tell us or people coming through mediums telling us that it was determined when they were ago that there was nothing that can be done about it. We’ve had people who’ve had near death experiences that have said everything is just as it should be. And that we we are, it’s determined when we’re going to go. I remember Dr. Mary Neal, when she had her near death experience when she was in spirit, she was told that her son would die at a very early age, I believe was around 18. And it was about 10 years from when she had this experience. And know in spite of whatever she did, or whatever she believed, or whatever it did come to pass that her son did did pass at that time, I happen to know someone who was an intuitive and medium who says that she knows when people are going to transition, including herself and her loved ones. And so in that case, at least what she’s reported to me, there’s really no choice. But there’s some people that have said that we have multiple exit points, that there are multiple points in our life where we might have, we might choose to go. But we can’t apparently go past that last exit point. So that’s, that’s pretty determined.

So the thing is, whichever these things we choose to believe, we can find some amount of evidence for it. I think the preponderance of the evidence points to the fact that somehow that we choose either when we’re in spirit before we come here, or as our higher self, how long we’re going to be here. And I think we choose it that way. And it may not it may not fit in with what our human point of view is, you may you might say, well, who would choose to pass it at 15, for example, who would choose the pass as as an infant, and in some cases, even our people have had children that pass in their 30s or 40s, and that their life was too short. And who would choose that so as our human self, we probably wouldn’t choose that. But as our higher self and seeing the bigger picture, we might choose that for the benefit of our soul for this incarnation, and or for the benefit of our loved ones. Another thing I want to say while I’m talking about this is I think it’s very important is especially with young people, we view their their transition as a tragedy, that their life was cut short that they weren’t able to enjoy their life, and that they should be here and enjoying all the great things about life. Well, there’s a couple of things that’s that’s actually kind of wrong with that point of view. And I want to play with Azhar, first of all, their lives were not cut short. They, we when we transition continue to live, in fact, we live more abundantly a better life. So when we think about our loved ones, and we think about what they’re quote missing, keep in mind that they’re not really missing anything that they have, they have moved on they have graduated, I would call it to to a higher level. The other thing is that kind of comes from the point of view that this one life is all there is where it’s a one and done point of view. So if you’re going to come to this earth, you would think you want to stay here as long as possible to get the most out of it as possible, because you only have one shot. Now, again, you might you might believe that. I believe there’s enough evidence to show that we come to this earth over and over and over again. And that it’s not just one shot. So in any one life, that life life happens to be short or tragic or full of pain or whatever. Our souls don’t view that as a loss because it’s just one experience out of many. So those are my views on whether we choose when we die, who chooses when we die. And we can examine those. And you can examine those and determine, first of all, which one makes the most sense to you, which one has the most evidence for for it. The other thing is, try each one on because we can’t, frankly, really know this for a fact, while we’re here. So try it out what makes you feel comfortable, what brings you peace, what brings you joy, and if any of them, don’t bring you peace, and jump, don’t bring you joy, then you don’t have to choose to believe that there are other options you can choose that do have evidence, I’m not just saying choose which one feels best to you, or makes you feel the best. I don’t think it’s all about wishful thinking. For me, I feel more empowered by knowing that there’s a plan that I participated in the plan, not that just God impose this on me. And God put me here and said, This is what you’re going to do. But it’s a cooperative thing. It’s where we are co creators in our lives. And even though things happen in my life, that human Brian, my ego, might not like, I choose to trust the things that happen for me or for my own best good. And for the best good of everybody and everything in the universe, in spite of how it might look right now. And that’s what brings me peace. And that is what I found, frankly, a lot of evidence for. So those are my thoughts again, I like to hear what your thoughts are. What am I saying that might be right, but when you might say that might be wrong. And any other questions you have, just let me know. So have a great day and I’ll see you soon. So that does it for another episode of grief to growth. I sure hope you enjoyed it. If you like this content, make sure you subscribe, so click on the subscribe button here, and then click on the bell to receive notifications and click on all that way you’ll be notified whenever I release new content. Thanks for watching, and have a great day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

April Hannah, founder of Hannah’s Healing Wellness Studio and co-founder of a media production company in upstate New York, has been providing clinical mental health counseling for over two decades, in combination with a variety of healing modalities and consciousness studies to her clients around the world.

After co-founding her media production company, Path 11 Productions, in 2008, she went on to produce three documentaries on life after death and consciousness studies. She is the host of the Path 11 Podcast and recently launched her first streaming television network, Path 11 TV. April has interviewed over 350 of the top best-selling authors, scientists, and researchers of consciousness on her podcast, has delivered more than 10,000 reiki and energy healing sessions to her clients and has spent countless hours documenting, investigating, and filming topics related to grief, bereavement, and afterlife studies.

After April’s mother passed away tragically in 2019, she immersed herself further into the study of the afterlife. She has now made it her life’s mission to use her film production company and one-on-one consultations to help others become better prepared not only for their own death but for the death of their loved ones.

You can find more about April at:

www.path11tv.com
www.path11productions.com
www.hannahshealing.com

Transcript:

Brian Smith 0:00
Close your eyes and imagine what are the things in life that causes the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, or challenges, challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we’ve been buried, but what if, like a seed we’ve been planted and having been planted, to grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is grief to growth. And I am your host, Brian Smith. Hey everybody, this is Brian Smith and back with another episode of grief to growth. And today I’ve got with me, April, Hannah, and I’m going to read April’s bio, and then we’ll get started having a conversation. April is the founder of Hannah’s healing wellness studio. And she’s co founder of a media production company in upstate New York writing. She’s been providing services to clients for over two decades and mental health counseling, in combination with a variety of healing modalities and consciousness studies to her clients around the world. After she co founded her Media Production Company path 11 Productions in 2008. She went on to produce three documentaries on life and life after death and consciousness studies. She’s the host of the path 11 podcast and recently launched her first streaming television network path 11 TV, April’s interviewed over 350 of the top selling best authors, scientists and researchers of consciousness on her podcast. She delivered more than 10,000 Reiki and energy healing sessions to her clients and spent many hours documenting, investigating and filming topics related to grief bereavement after my studies. So after April’s mother passed away, tragically in 2019. April emerges self further in the study of the afterlife. And she has now made it her life’s mission to use her film production company. And one on one consultations up others become better prepared not only for their own deaths, but for the death of their loved ones. So with that, I want to welcome April, Hannah.

April Hannah 2:07
And Brian, thanks so much for having me on. I never expected I would be in the other seat. You know, I’m so used to being a podcast host myself that I was like, wow, this is kind of weird, you know, to actually be interviewed. So thanks for having me on today. Yeah,

Brian Smith 2:21
it’s good. It’s good to have you here. And I’ve I’ve been in both suits. I’m not sure what city is easier. So that’s true. Yeah. So tell me how did you get started? And why your backgrounds in mental health counseling. And that’s interesting. My, my daughter just graduated, actually a couple weeks ago with her with her master’s in mental health counseling. So very nice. She’s just going into the field. So what what led you to to choose that as a as a profession as a career?

April Hannah 2:45
Yeah, well, I mean, I think I always knew very early on what my life’s calling was, like, I’ve never had any doubts about that. I knew that I wanted to be a teacher in some sort of way. But I was always that person that my friends would come to I was the great listener, I somehow, you know, had some good advice. all adults around me would say, You’re such an old soul. You know, I think things were coming out of my mouth when I was a young kid that like young kids, like shouldn’t have, you know, that information. So, you know, I grew up in a really, I would say, very open family, the women in my family were very intuitive and very psychic. And so I kind of was always a little bit in this intuition, you know, lifestyle and realm. So, you know, that blended with some trials and tribulations in childhood. You know, my mom struggled a lot with alcohol, alcoholism and addiction, I usually say that my family were my best teachers. And really just having a little bit of a traumatic childhood. When I was a teenager, I just wanted to like, research and, you know, figure out how I could be a better person and understand my own anxiety. And my family threw me into therapy very young, due to my mom’s addiction issues. So I think I was seeing a therapist as early as like, first grade. So therapy’s always been a part of my life. And I think just being really influenced by having really great therapists that helped me throughout my life, saved my life, you know, and I really was a child that ended up I guess, taking the better road, you know, I never turned towards addiction drugs or alcohol. I was kind of, I guess, more of that overachiever. You know, want to make everybody proud. And, you know, just kind of felt like I really couldn’t help my mom in many ways. So, you know, you go on to help others who who kind of want that help. So I just felt very natural. I had no questions about what I was going to study in college. It was like psychology drawn to it. I was always fascinated with people watching and you know the behavior of people. So it was a very easy choice for me. And then in my 20s while I was going through grad school, I encountered my first energy healer and I was rape crisis counselor at the time, and we had coworker who was a male. And we were just sitting around the lunch table one day, we were talking about dreams. And at the time in my 20s, I would have really vivid dreams, I would be in people’s houses. And then I was like, walking into a house that I had dreamt of, right. So like, I started making these diagrams and like, oh, what’s going on, you know, just having like a really strange experiences. So we’re sitting around the table, and he’s talking about, oh, yeah, my wife has really vivid dreams. And she’s always dreaming of houses. And actually, this morning, she woke up and she said, Oh, I was in this yellow house. And I walked up the stairs. And I took a left. And as he’s recounting this, I was in that house the same night dreaming of that. So I was like, Who is your wife? What does she do, and I need to meet her. And she was actually a registered nurse working in Kingston Hospital in New York. And, and she did card readings and energy healing. So I went to go see her just to check her out. And I was like, yeah, I’ll get a card reading. And it was she was the first woman that ever put her hands on me and delivered energy work. And in that one session, I healed more things than I had ever healed in clinical therapy. Hmm, wow. So that was a really life changing moment for me. And I was like, okay, whatever this is, I would love to figure out how to do this. So I can blend it with the therapy that I’m doing. And then so in my 20s, that led me into all studies of any type of energy healing that I could get my hands on. And of course, the first thing that most people get trained in is Reiki. So, you know, I’ve been doing Reiki now for over 20 years, and I went through all the different levels and continue to study different different modalities, you know, to this day, and then I’ve been able to incorporate it into the work that I do with people. And I find that when you treat people more on the mind, body, spirit, soul level, and not just their mind level, healing happens at like accelerated speeds. So that’s what kind of got me into, you know, blending more of the esoteric work with with the therapy.

Brian Smith 7:08
Yeah. So what other modalities Do you blend with your with, with the therapy?

April Hannah 7:12
Yeah, so I went, I went ahead and got trained in clinical hypnotherapy at the Southwest Institute of healing arts in Mesa, Arizona. So I did that for a while. And that has been amazing, because it just made me a better meditation teacher, you know, I learned different induction techniques to be able to bring people down into a more relaxed state. Gosh, I’ve studied with Sadhguru and took a 32 hour and inner engineering course on, you know, medic meditation and just a way to be you know, more on that being level. I’ve also been trained in esoteric healing with the lady by the name of Bernadette bloom, touch and Bri therapy, I’m sure you’ve heard of Emotional Freedom Technique, and the tapping techniques that people can use and eye movement therapy EMDR. So I mean, I have a toolbox, you know, filled with a bunch of different different skills, and you know, love to blend. Seven years ago, I got into essential oils, because I found that that really enhance the Reiki sessions that I was doing and the energy sessions people respond really well to send. So the essential oils I’ve really gotten into, so kind of pretty much pretty much anything you can think of I have tried to get trained in. Wow.

Brian Smith 8:28
So how do you determine when you’re working with a client, which are the modalities to use?

April Hannah 8:33
Yeah, well, I think it really depends, the three that I usually specialize in his anxiety, post traumatic stress and grief. So it really everyone is so different. And I think the really helpful thing about learning all these different tools is not no one person is the same. So you know, and PTSD, so the trauma and the PTSD is pretty huge. And anytime somebody is coming in with trauma or PTSD, I usually go straight for, you know, the techniques that help to change the neural pathways in the brain. So the thought field therapy, the tapping techniques, the eye movement therapy, because without getting like, you know, too sciency and brain and stuff here, but you know, what I’ve learned about trauma is that it gets trapped in the amygdala part of the brain. And our amygdala is kind of like the fire alarm, you know, that goes off. And, you know, many times when people are experiencing trauma or PTSD, the body doesn’t know how to calm itself. So anytime I’m working with somebody, in that case, I usually like to introduce more of those techniques in right away and also the hypnotherapy should really have to get them out of that state of fight or flight. So that’s really helpful. people that come in with anxiety respond really well to the Reiki sessions, the guided meditations and the hypnotherapy and and then you have a lot of people who are like really mentally stable and they’re really just on the spiritual path and you know, life is good work is good relationships. Good, and they’re really coming for more of a deeper spiritual awareness of themselves. And then, you know, we met through the afterlife awareness conference, and, you know, with path 11 TV that I’m doing and path 11 Productions, that has like giving me my own library to give my clients you know, just, uh, you know, meeting you and all the speakers at the afterlife awareness conference, I have a whole grief library, you know, with the podcast and everything like that. So I take a lot from what I’ve learned from you guys. You know, about grief, I, you know, I’m constantly recommending books or websites or people or if it’s outside my scope, I’m like, okay, here’s a connection. Let’s go there. So really depends on what the person is presenting at the time of their their session.

Brian Smith 10:47
Wow, that’s awesome. So what got you into actually producing like, documentary? Do you produce a couple or three documentaries? Right, so what got you into doing that?

April Hannah 10:57
Yeah, so that’s kind of a funny story. So back in 2008, I was going through this transition where I used to work in a psychiatric hospital on a children’s unit. So I did inpatient therapy. And as I was getting more into the holistic work, I was kind of feeling a little bit of a rub against of what my belief systems were because, you know, I was working with children that were having pretty intense like grief reactions. Like, I’ll never forget this one child that came in, he was four or five years old that his grandfather had died. And he was seeing his grandfather, and he was having conversations with him. And they put that child on Risperdal, which is an anti psychotic, wow. Yeah. And I am like, there’s just something really not okay with this system, like this child, you know, and I was learning about how, like, the children are still in both worlds, right, and the veil, the veil has not has not been, you know, put down and, and he was having conversations with the grandfather and seeing him and it was natural grief, but also, you know, children being psychic, intuitive and sensitive and able to have access to that other world much easier. And then I saw the child get put on anti-psychotics. And that was kind of the day that I said, Okay, I’m putting in my two weeks notice.

Because it’s just doesn’t feel right anymore. And so I decided to go into my own private practice. So the day I launched my website, I get this email from this video ographers Michael Hubbard egg, saying, Oh, I see that you’re a Reiki Master. And I wanted to do a documentary about Reiki. Are you interested? And I was like, Oh, my gosh, you know, the universe is responding. I guess this is really true. If you follow your path, it will support you, right? Yeah, yeah. So. So I was like, really excited, like, Oh, my God, I can’t believe that I just put the website out. Now I’m gonna be in a documentary like, this is awesome. So I met with Mike. And we sat down, and we had coffee. And we started talking. And I was like, I really don’t want to be filmed. But because I felt like still really green in the field of healing. You know, I was maybe only about seven years in, you know, practicing Reiki and learning all this stuff. And I said to Mike, I said, I have really amazing teachers who, like have been doing this work for 2025 years. I said, I’m really good organizing things. I’m a really good writer, and why don’t I reach out to them, and let’s interview them. So we kind of combinded our ideas together. And Mike was on a spiritual journey to he had in one year, I would say almost like 12 to 15 people die in his life. They were friends, family, coworkers, pets, you know, neighbors animals. And it really made him begin to question what he was taught growing up in his religion. So he was kind of doing this in depth study, and, you know, was like researching about Reiki and out of body experiences and came across the Monroe Institute. And he just happened to find me, because we were we lived 11 miles away from each other. So he contacted me. And I said, Yes. So as we got to talking, we realize that with all of the teachers that I had, and a couple of the people that he wanted to reach out to, we were going to be able to film a bunch of people and have enough footage to create a documentary. And we had so much footage, that it became a trilogy series. So um, so the trilogy series is called the path, the path series. And we wanted it to kind of mimic a little bit of what’s what Mike’s journey was in questioning the afterlife. So our first film is called the path afterlife, which is a collection of stories of people. One lady got struck by lightning and died and came back she had a near death experience. Other people are researchers of consciousness and out of body experts like William bule, Minh, Thomas Campbell, and people from the Monroe Institute. So we collected a bunch of stories. And after we made that documentary, we both believed Okay, there’s something that happens after death. We believe in an afterlife now and The next film is called the path beyond the physical. And that was all about Okay, now that we know that there’s an afterlife, and we’re consciousness, how do we play with consciousness? And that got us into the study of astral projection? How do you go out of body? How do you visit different dimensions? And, and so with that we were able to interview a man by the name of skip Atwater, who was a part of the classified mission called Stargate where our, you know, military was training psychic spies, and it’s become declassified. And so we got to learn all about that history and put that in there because the Monroe Institute was also being investigated by the government, because they were doing these barnette by neural beats, and people were going out of body and all these people were like, you know, gathering around on weekend retreats, and you know, doing some funky stuff. Yeah. So. So we go from believing, okay, there’s an afterlife. Okay, what’s this? What does this mean that we’re consciousness, and we’re not our physical bodies. And then the third one, we really followed a nuclear physicist. He’s retired, now, he worked for NASA, his name is Tom Campbell, and he has his own toe. So in physics, that means theory of everything. And he really believes that we live in a virtual reality, and that we’re kind of, you know, playing these roles in these avatars. And that love is really, at the basis of consciousness and why we’re here, you know, we’re here to evolve. And the way to evolve is to become more like love. So the third documentary was called the path, the path of evolution. And that really follows his scientific theory on consciousness. So we created those three films, we kind of toward the Northeast, and went out to Los Angeles and had a couple of shows out there. And, and then we took a break, cuz it took like, six years to do as long. Wow. And then as we were taking that break, Mike was like, well, we don’t want to lose our audience. And this was when podcasts were just starting to come out. And he’s like, April, you need to host a podcast for us. And I was like, What are you talking about? I don’t know how to host a podcast, not a podcast host. He’s like, you’ll be fine. You talk to people all the time. I’m like, Alright, I’ll do it. And I think we started that in 2015. And we’re, like, still going. So that’s how the podcast kind of,

Brian Smith 17:17
so is that what became path? 11, then

April Hannah 17:19
no path. 11 really started with the documentaries. So so we call herself path. 11. And then we just added path 11 podcast.

Brian Smith 17:27
And that’s what I meant. So we just project you started. That was what started path 11. And what’s what’s the origin of path? 11? Right. This is essentially it’s an interesting name.

April Hannah 17:37
Yeah. So we both felt that we were on the spiritual path, right? We were two people that ended up, you know, coming together on the spiritual path. And the significance of the number 11 was pretty strong. When we were going into the studio to edit the film, we were we were experiencing the 1111 phenomenon a lot. We had no idea what that was. But every time we look at the clock, it’s 1111 111. Then we met with one of my teachers, and she talked to us about numerology. And she figured out what our life path numbers were. And I was a life path nine and Mike was a life path 11. And then, you know, then we started noticing, like, when we were driving to do interviews with people on Google Maps, it would estimate our time of arrival was 111. I had my phone’s like in the car after an interview for the documentaries. And I go to pick it up afterwards. And there were 13 ones on my cell phone at the time, and we’re like, what is going on here? And, and then I later found out that I was born at 1:11pm. And Mike and I lived 11 miles away from each other. So you know, the the 11 just became significant. So we said, okay, we’re on a path. Why don’t we just call it path? 11? Because 11 keep showing up. And that’s how we got our name.

Brian Smith 18:53
Yeah, that that is awesome. So I’m interested in you know, as we’re talking today, this was keeps coming up. For me this week is like this idea of I’ve heard people say there’s no evidence of the afterlife. And I was in aklavik vector. salmons group, I’m sure you know, Victor is Victor salmons group and someone said, you know, should we try to talk to skeptics? And how do we convince them? We’re talking about the amount of evidence that there is or isn’t. And now I hear about these documentaries you produced, and there’s so much, you know, evidence and, and you even touched on the fact that government knows consciousness is real. The government has studied this, you know, but it’s still perceived a little bit as woowoo. It’s kind of out there and people say what’s not really scientific.

April Hannah 19:37
Right? Yeah. Well, you know, and I wonder too, like, as you’re talking, I wonder if we get tripped up on the vocabulary that we use, because we’re calling it afterlife. But really, it’s all consciousness. But we need a label and we need language to try to explain what does it look like when it’s not in the physical body?

Brian Smith 19:58
Yeah, yeah.

April Hannah 19:59
You know, So and like you said, there’s tons of proof. I mean, like, what other proof do they need at this point? I mean, we are, we are still having everyone that I’ve come across has had some sort of paranormal, right? interaction or communication with, with something that has either lived here on this earth or has inhabited a physical body and is no longer. So I think sometimes maybe, you know, we get confused with the word dead death after life. But really, I think that consciousness is just, it’s a, it’s a continuation, it’s those people who are transitioned, you know, are still are still a piece of consciousness with that information stored in that consciousness that is just not in the physical body. So maybe it’s just we have to find different words and stop calling it the afterlife.

Brian Smith 20:51
Yeah, well, it’s funny because Suzanne giesemann I remember she coined the term the ever life, because it’s like, there is just one continuous life there, there isn’t an afterlife, and you’re right terms like dead, which implies that we end as opposed to, you know, transition is another phrase that you use, and even a term paranormal paranormal is just something we don’t understand yet. And, you know, analogy I’ll give the people like, if you took someone from 500 years ago and told them about radio or television or cell phones, they would say that’s magic, or that’s, that’s paranormal. There’s no you can ever be able to communicate with someone across the world, like you and I are right now wirelessly. Without any kind of physical contact. That’s impossible. So impossible, just you know, a phrase we use for stuff that we don’t understand yet. So yeah, it’s I’ve really love what you’re doing, by putting out these documentaries. And the people that you interview that provides this, I guess, permission for people to believe what we’ve already know. I mean, we’ve, humankind has known this for millennia. But it’s been the last couple 100 years that we’ve kind of like forgotten who we are.

April Hannah 21:54
Exactly, yeah. And I think you know, the videos that we produce and the stuff that we’re putting out there on path 11. tv, again, kind of gives people more of that repetition of stories, right? And yeah, like, if you hear enough of these stories in these accounts, how can you begin to really deny that there’s some some experience that’s happening?

Brian Smith 22:13
Yeah. And I love what you said there. Also, I think there’s value in the repetition. You know, it’s funny, because I’ve been studying near death experiences for, wow, 1520 years now. And I still can’t get enough of them. I’m still I still listen near death experience podcasts, I look them up on YouTube. Because while they’re all the same, they’re also all unique. And we also need to, I guess, kind of keep reinforcing this, this path that we you and I believe that we’re on anyway.

April Hannah 22:40
Yeah, and the thing that I find really comforting to have the same way. It’s like, give me another story. Let me let me hear again. And I’ve interviewed a lot of people on the part of the path 11 podcast who have had near death experiences. And the thing that I find comforting, comforting is, you know, everyone’s recollection just of how peaceful and how loving that energy is, and, you know, of what they experience when, when they’re there. And like you said, a lot of them have some of the same basic messages that people come back to say, which, again, in itself is really interesting. But then, you know, the uniqueness of the story of what each person learns and how their life changes, you know, like, just next week, I’m going to interviews another man that has had a near death experience is going to be a document, new documentary that we’re working on for pet film and TV. And he came back and became this wonderful artist had no artistic skill, never did art in his life. And now, like the near death experience has brought him different skills that he never had. And he’s creating this beautiful art and kind of bringing this, you know, back to the people as his gift. So, yeah, I find I find near death experiences really comforting to it’s like, whether you have a belief system or not, like listen with an open ear, and you know, see what you think.

Brian Smith 24:01
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting, because a lot of people I think, think that people like you and I are just, we’re just suckers, like will fall for anything, or it’s wishful thinking and what they don’t realize, at least most of the people I’ve met that really entered this field, most of us are still really skeptical. And I think that’s why we keep studying it so much, because we’re like, Okay, I’m still really skeptical about this. And I look for those, but they called radical near death experiences. Did you experience something that you could not have experienced? Otherwise? Not just I had this nice, you know, i saw angels and I came back to my body, but can you tell me what the doctor was saying? While you were unconscious? Or the guy that you just mentioned? That’s probably the David ditchfield. No, no. Oh, really? Rodney Bentley. Okay, that sounds a lot like David ditchfield because he had a near death experience. He came back and he was able to create not only art but music and the guy couldn’t even read or write music before. So our need and more Johnny who, you know, came back it was miraculous to hear from healed from cancer. So those are the ones that Really fascinate me because it’s like, Okay, this is not this is not the brain being deprived of oxygen. This is not wishful thinking. This is not you know, you you had a dream this is, this is real evidence.

April Hannah 25:12
Yeah. And I love those stories to where, you know, the medical community says, Well, what? You don’t know. I guess it’s a miracle. You know, like the miracle stories are there’s no explanation. We can’t explain it.

Brian Smith 25:23
Yeah, they’ll never use your miracle. They’ll call it like a spontaneous healing. Right? Exactly. Yeah, we call the miracle there’s a spontaneous healing. That could happen. Yeah, yeah. So, um, what I know, you’ve been doing the path 11 podcast for a while, but path 11 TV, I believe was fairly new. So tell me about path. 11. tv?

April Hannah 25:43
Yeah. So we launched it in November, in the middle of a pandemic, and a crazy election year. So, you know, we kind of the pandemic put a lot of things on hold, we were supposed to launch it at a different time. And, you know, so it was a little, I think it got overshadowed by everything that was going on. So really appreciate you having me on. So I can start spreading the word a little bit more now that people are, you know, calming down a little bit with everything. But yeah, so since 2008, Mike and I really have been, you know, filming, we have a bunch of different projects that we really weren’t doing anything with, we were just kind of sitting on this footage, we knew that we would create something, but we weren’t quite sure. And then one year was about three years ago, I believe we’re in 2018. I had this experience. And again, just following the wisdom of spirit saying you’re going to do something with the afterlife conference. And then all of a sudden, I was like, Okay, well, let me reach out to this woman that organizes it. And these would be really great people for the podcast. So my intention was to podcast and to come down to the conference in podcast live, so we could get more content. And Terry said, Well, this is interesting, because the production team that we’ve used every year, doesn’t want to do it this year. Do you guys want to do it? And Mike? and I were like, Oh, my gosh, okay. Sure. So when when the conference was being held in person, we would be the production team that would go down to the hotels, and we would live stream it for people that couldn’t be there in person, and they could watch it. So we’ve been doing that now for three years. And with all that, and the arrangement that we have with Terry, you know, it’s like we help her out, she helps us out. And she had given us the rights to what we film because, you know, we don’t charge anything to do any of this stuff. So it was kind of like this nice, even trade. And so we said, well, we have all this content, let’s put it on a television network. And so I kind of look at path 11 TV as a library and a resource for people. And we like to film and investigate what we’re still curious about. So. So we have a lot, we have the three conferences 2018 19 2020, of the afterlife conference. So you’re up there on path 11 TV. We also filmed a segment called shortcuts on the path. So shortcuts on the path was an idea that I had to make many short documentaries about different types of healing techniques, because like I said, when I was in my 20s, I wanted to learn all about these different modalities. So I figured, well, why don’t we actually go out to these practitioners, and let’s, you know, make a mini documentary. So if people aren’t really sure, if they want to try a salt cave, or a float tank or acupuncture hypnotherapy, they can watch this and then they get an idea. And then maybe they might be a little less scared to try, you know, a holistic medicine. So we have that. That’s a full season that we have on path love and TV, we have over 100 hours right now of video content on there. And then the other thing that I really love to do is to kind of catch people who are like, grassroots healers, you know, they’re like, on the ground, they’re not famous. They’re not necessarily out there writing books, or holding huge conferences, but they’re making these really small changes in community. And that’s what I think is most important, right? We start with ourselves. And then we if we’re a person that is following our spirit, our soul and our passion, we are going to be that ripple effect. So I really look for people in my community who are doing that. And I created two seasons of something called conversations on the path. So I sit down with people like you, you know, and people that are just really making a difference, but they’re really connected to who they are and their purpose and they’re living in they’re not they’re not afraid. They’re just like, I know, this is what I’m supposed to do. We also have some UFO Footage on there. Travis Walton, one of the most famous UFO abduction stories, we went down in a film the UFO conference, and Terry Daniel has her podcast called as Dr. Death has, so we have her on the path 11 TV as well. So there’s a bunch of content there. But I think in this next year, we’re really going to focus come back around More to just the afterlife and near death experiences. So I think we’re going to become a little more niche. We have a lot of different things up there right now for, you know, different variety of tastes. But I think, because our love comes with exploring the afterlife that we’re just going to really begin to focus it in, tell more stories create more documentaries about that.

Brian Smith 30:22
Oh, I have to ask you because you mentioned UFOs and I, how do UFOs relate to afterlife? And I know those two seem to come together a lot. So how does those two tie together?

Announcer 30:33
We’ll get back to grief to growth in just a few seconds. Did you know that Brian is an author and a life coach. If you’re grieving or know someone who is grieving his book, grief to growth is a best selling easy to read book that might help you or someone you know, people work with Brian as a life coach to break through barriers and live their best lives. You can find out more about Brian and what he offers at WWW dot grief to growth.com www dot g ri e f the number two gr o w th comm or text growth gr o w t h 231996. If you’d like to support this podcast visit www.patreon.com slash grief to growth www.patreon.com slash g ri e f the number two gr o w th to make a financial contribution. And now back to grief to growth?

April Hannah 31:34
Well, I mean, in my experience, it’s interesting because I was talking to this gentleman truth seeker is his name. He has a podcast too. And we had him on we were on his podcast. And he brought up a really interesting point. He’s like, you no longer hear about UFO abductions anymore, do ya? It’s almost like, you know, people were getting taken up into the spaceships and like you don’t really hear those stories that much anymore. Right. So I think I had it has it relate to the afterlife. Again, I think it’s not necessarily a part of the afterlife, but it’s a part of the consciousness. And for us to think that we are just the only, you know, living centium beings in this galaxy is like absurd to just believe that Earth is the only, you know, planet that has living life on it. So I think I’m not sure why it may connect with the afterlife. But I think it carries that mystery of what else is out there. Who else is out there. And I think it also expands our ability to expand our consciousness out even further beyond the physical body. And I think those UFO stories help us to do that.

Brian Smith 32:44
Yeah, I just think as we’re having this discussion, one thing that just occurred to me, there’s also there’s so much evidence, I’m not really into UFOs. But there’s so much evidence, you know, and even the government has released evidence. And again, coming back to a conversation I was having earlier this week with what evidence would it take for people to accept the afterlife is like being quote proven. Now the government has even said we’ve we’ve seen UFOs? I mean, they’ve they’ve actually released this and announced it, and people just kind of went, yeah, and they just kept moving on. And there’s still people that are denying it, even though the government’s actually say, Yeah, we do have evidence for this. And it’s it’s sick, it’s kind of similar with the afterlife, we’ve gotten this to this point where it’s like, well prove it to me. And I’ve even had this conversation with people. There’s no evidence, and I’ll say, Okay, well here, here’s a bunch of evidence, I’ll just throw it at him. Well, you can’t. That’s nd E’s aren’t real, medium ships, not real, you know, paranormal investigations, none of that stuff is real. Therefore, there’s no evidence. So they just basically looked at this mountain of evidence, and just dismissed it all out of hand and just keep on leaving whatever it is they believe.

April Hannah 33:45
Yeah. Well, you know, and I’m not like a huge conspiracy theory person. And I’m not big into politics, and all of that. But I’ve had I have heard, some people say, and I think there might be some truth to it is that maybe some of this really isn’t validated in the mainstream, because if we truly understood the power of what we have, and what we can do with our consciousness in our minds, that could be really scary for maybe some of the, you know, the big brother businesses, you know, the way that Earth kind of runs in the rule set with the money in the companies and this, that and the other thing, and, you know, if you really kind of think about the rules that we have on earth, and the structure, it’s like, you know, we’re kind of told, okay, well, you go to school, and after school, then you should go to college, and after college, you want to maybe meet your lifelong partner. And after that, well, then you need to get engaged or you need to date you need to court so go out to the restaurants, buy a bunch of stuff. Buy the fancy ring. Now let’s plan a really big wedding. And after you plan the wedding, let’s buy a house. And after the house, maybe you should have a couple of kids and then you need to expand your house and your car and all that. So it’s like if you kind of see how I feel like we’re kind of told how to live or there’s like this unspoken, rule set to live. And then you have people that are like, you know, and I think in the younger generation, they’re like, yeah, forget about marriage, and I just want to travel and I want to live life. And they’re kind of messing up the economy a little bit, you know, not really kind of buying into what society is kind of telling us, at least in my generation, what I thought we were supposed to do. So I do think that there’s a lot of power in studying the afterlife and studying UFOs and studying the galaxies, and really training your mind. And not allowing it to be filled with fear and a lot of clutter and a lot of, you know, like the monkey mind. And when you get a really clear mind and understand how to use your consciousness, you become very powerful, you know, and in a good way, and granted, are there people that could maybe, you know, use that not for good? Sure, you know, I’m sure, I’m sure that can happen. But I think the word world would be a lot different. And we wouldn’t be so fearful, we maybe wouldn’t be so dependent on money, and you know, all of this stuff. So yeah, that’s, that’s my take on it. Well, our

Brian Smith 36:03
system is set up on competition, and it’s set and it is set up on on divide and conquer, frankly, and if we all if we all realize that we’re all the same, we’re all one consciousness. And what I do to you affects me, it would totally change things. And, you know, it’s interesting, because when the government was looking into, I don’t know all the names of all the different programs, starrcade, Stargate and MK Ultra, but they were like, the remote viewing stuff they were doing. And they realize there are people that could sit in a room and describe something that’s going on halfway around the world and draw it, they’re like, Well, what does this do to our top secret stuff? How do you protect? How do you practice putting into vaults not doing any good? Cuz this guy’s describing what’s inside the vault?

April Hannah 36:42
Right? Yeah, exactly. And, and I think that there’s power in that, right. So, you know, it just makes me wonder, like, maybe it’s never really validated because of that. And, you know, there is a little bit of a mind control of the masses. And I think people who, you know, you hear the term wake up, people who are waking up or not on their spiritual path, tend to see how we can be indoctrinated with fear. And like most people that are waking up, usually the first thing that they do is stop watching the news. You know, it’s like, I just can’t handle that anymore. And then like, you don’t become as programmed into what’s going on, you know, in society, I think.

Brian Smith 37:20
Yeah, I know, there were a couple things that really kind of, and they you talked earlier, and I thought this is interesting, because a lot of times, people that experienced trauma, they set out to not only heal their own trauma, but kill other people’s trauma. And I as I’ve watched your life path, I see that, you know, you’re like I’ve experienced this trauma, how do I want to understand this? So trauma is a really interesting thing for people because none of us likes it. But it does transform us, you know, it can make us you know, better. So I, I know, your your mother passed in 2019. How did that impact your path?

April Hannah 37:53
Yeah, it shook me, you know, I thought I was really prepared and well versed in death, and bereavement, you know, and then you have something like that happen. And, you know, when my mom had passed, it was all I could say, as I was so grateful for finding path 11 Productions and being on the spiritual journey since 2008. Because it was like, in that moment, it was like, Oh, Okay, I get it, everything that I’ve been doing everything that has come, you know, into my life, kind of prepared me as much as I could be prepared for that moment, you know, and it was, you know, it was pretty traumatic, because she was crossing the street late at night, she was under the influence, and she ended up getting hit by a car. And, yeah, and, you know, my mom and I, it was a very, you know, just challenging relationship from the beginning. And, because there was always an element of addiction, you know, and, you know, her going in and out of rehabs. And she was 65, and had maybe 10 years of sobriety under her belt, and then fell off the wagon again, you know. So, I would say that a large part of my life was trying to heal this trauma and trying to heal this relationship and trying to understand how to be in a relationship with an addicted parent, how to create boundaries, how to keep myself sane, so I could function, you know, in my own life. And so that was really tough, because, you know, with the trauma, not only of her death in the way that she died, there was also trauma in the relationship because we were strained from each other for a while, you know, and, you know, we would still call and talk but she was just a really bad place. So, so when that happened, I had done a lot of my own trauma work. I mean, clearly, you know, it’s like, even up until this day kind of launched me back in because when you’re a child of an alcoholic and or a parent that has addiction, there was something that happened after her death, which allowed me to go into The trauma that I had in a different way, because I was no longer the child that was waiting to get the phone call that my mom was gonna die. Now there was, there was relief in the depth of that her suffering and pain is over. But there was also something of the fight or flight of, okay, am I gonna get a call from the police where she living now? What is she doing? Does she need money, you know, kind of all of that stuff. And then when the death came, there was this piece, but then it was really time for me to do the work. And so I would say like, so grateful for filming the afterlife conference, I knew that my mom was going to pass intuitively, I did not think it was going to be in this way. And when we were at the afterlife conference in Utah, Linda Fitch, who was a shaman did a fire ceremony. And here and I’m filming, right, I’m filming, I’m doing my job. And all of a sudden, the ceremony brings up so much grief within me, and I just intuitively knew that my mom was going to die that year. And I had dreams of it, I had dreams of the officer coming to my apartment, and actually notifying me which was exactly what had happened, like a lot of intuitive stuff. And, and so here I am trying to film, the afterlife conference, the ceremony is going, and then all of a sudden, I had to put down the camera and I had to, like join in into the ceremony. And I was putting in all the fear and the sadness about my mom and just was like grieving her death before it had even happened. And, you know, I know that Mike caught me on film, like just bawling my eyes out, you know. So it was just, you know, having gone through a lot of these ceremonies and learning different mnemonic techniques, understanding kind of what the bereavement process was, like, helped me to move through the process with a little more grace, you know, after she had passed, and, you know, where I’m at now, is really understanding that there is something to be done with this story now, right? Because there are a lot of people in the world who are affected by people that they love very much who have struggled with addiction. And it’s really hard not only to be an addict, but to be a family member that loves them. And then also, you know, just understanding tragic death in it in a different way. You know, like, was like, okay, there’s, there’s a lot to unravel here. So given the fact that I have the platform with path 11 TV, I have this podcast, I’m in the process of my own journey of doing some journaling, doing some writing, I’m going to be reaching out to the driver that killed my mom, to see if he is willing to have a conversation. Because being a mental health therapist, I can only imagine, like, I have so much just like empathy and concern for him because his world also changed that night. And we’re two strangers that will always forever be bonded by the date of October 19, you know, and I really want the opportunity to be able to talk to him and let him know that like, our family carries no resentment that my mom was suffering that, you know, when we think about the soul contracts, like this is another thing that I had mentioned on another podcast, in doing all this documentation with path 11 TV, I learned about the concept of soul contracts. So understanding that also took the sting a little bit out of my mom’s death, right? It’s like, Okay, well, clearly, this was kind of pre planned setup, you know, I know that I chose her to be my mom, and she chose me to be her daughter. And, you know, and this gentleman that was there the night, you know, in perfect timing for this to happen, he was also a part of the plan. So and, you know, I did a little research to to see how many pedestrian deaths there are in the world each year. And there was, there’s quite quite a few, you know, 1000s so I’m like, Okay, so now I’ve kind of shared that group similar to you, right? Like you’re in that in that group of grief community that has lost children. And like, you can understand that community you know, I feel like I kind of got thrown into a community of tragic loss and death and specifically people that you know, get hit by cars. And there’s a whole process to like the police investigation and what happens with that the trauma of things not being able to be released to the family until this this this this and that is done you know, identification of the body whether you’re able to do that or not do that. I mean, there’s there’s just like a lot, you know, that goes with that. So, I have really felt wasn’t expecting like my life to kind of be a little more focused on my mom, you know, and all of this, but it’s just like, how do I not with the platform that I have begin to unravel my healing journey and use it for good to hopefully inspire someone who is also A child of an alcoholic or an addicted parent. So that’s kind of my spend my mission now, which is why I’m here on your podcast.

Brian Smith 45:07
Yeah, that that is, it’s great that you’re, you’re taking that and, and transmuting it into something that can help other people. You know, I can tell you, I work with helping parents heal. So the one thing we have in common is VA had children transition before us. But everybody feels like their thing is different. They’re like, Well, my child transition by suicide, so you can understand me, Mike, because my child transitioned by it, my daughter had a heart issue. So we formed all these little subgroups. And I’m kind of, I’m not trying to criticize that. But for me, it’s like, the thing is, we all lost our children. So that’s what we all have in common. But everybody needs to kind of hear their own story in someone else. So in your case, your particular story will help someone who’s gone through through that. And I know that when someone is suffering from drug or alcohol addiction, as you said, it impacts you during the time that they’re here. But it also makes the grief more complicated. And what ways does it do that? And what ways does it change the grief process?

April Hannah 46:10
Well, I mean, I think what I’ve had to work through where a lot of the shoulds should I have? Why didn’t I I think it complicates it, because you know, my mom had called me, it was maybe a week and a half. Before this incident happened. I think her soul knew, you know, it’s one of those things. And she left a voicemail message and she was not in the right mind, I could tell that she was either on drugs or drinking. And it was this plea for I need to know that my daughter’s okay. And that my dogs, okay, because I have a dog bogey. And I was in the middle of moving my office like this whole time was just so crazy and weird, because I had also got a very strong intuitive feeling that I needed to come out of my office lease, and like spirit was like, you need to move now. And I have been learning that when you get something that strong, like don’t question it anymore. And I was like, Okay, why am I doing this? I felt like I was like this zombie. And, you know, I’m calling I’m like, why am I calling my realtor and asked me to get out of my lease. And I just kept hearing, downsize, downsize, downsize. So I did, and I ended up moving into a smaller office that was like half the rent, and still confused, like, why did I do this, I loved my office space, like this is making no sense. And then my mom died a week later. So you know, it was kind of I feel like my guides in the universe really setting me up to be able to take the time off that I needed. But when I was in the middle of moving out, I got this voicemail from her. And it was kind of one of these things like, okay, is this a good time to call back? Because clearly, you know, it’s like 10 o’clock in the morning, and she’s not sober right now. You know, what am I going to run into? When I call her again, I ended up calling her and she never picked up. And that was the last that I had heard from her, you know? So you kind of I think where I’ve struggled is, you know, in learning about codependent behaviors, learning about enabling behaviors with people who have addiction, I always carried I would say, more of a tough love line with my mom. And I would always say to her, when you choose sobriety, I will support you 100%, you know, offered for her when she was sober, do you want to come live with me, I’ll help you get on the ground, then you got to get out and do stuff like that. But, you know, it did get to the point where if she was calling for money, she knew that she couldn’t call me and ask for money anymore? Because the answer was no, like I kind of learned it’s, it’s not that you need gas. And it’s not that you have to pay a bill, it’s that you’re either going to get drugs, or you’re going to drink it away. So I feel like that’s what’s made it complicated for me because clinically, as a mental health therapist, you know, when you are trying to teach people not to enable the addict behavior, and that the addict really has to get to the point where they want to heal themselves, and it has to come from within, or else they won’t, they won’t continue to stay sober. And you’re trying to hold these healthy boundaries for yourself for your own mental health status. You know, after she died, it’s like, well, could I have been a better daughter, maybe I should have, you know, called her to check in more, or maybe I really should have just taken her out of the situation that she was in. But then looking back at that, if that had happened, my life would have been complete chaos, you know, and that wouldn’t have been helpful for her or for me. So I feel like the complication for me has been more than trying to wrestle with these boundaries that I set that were out of love. And at that time felt like it was what needed to be done for us. But then, you know, you second guessed that a little bit.

Brian Smith 49:42
I really appreciate you sharing that because I’ve seen it from the other perspective. You’re the daughter and the mother, but I’ve seen it with parents and children having to draw those boundaries and I I’ve never had to do that and I thank God I never did because I can’t imagine how tortures that would be for a parent to you know, Put a child out, for example, a grown child, you know, 1819 years old, that’s, that’s out of control. And, and this is a real situation that I’ve dealt with. And then that child, you know, transitions dies, passes, you know, and then you’re like I was trying to set a healthy boundary. But because I said, this is what this is our human mind. And because I set that boundary, now, he’s dead. So now it’s my fault, right, and we’ll just start beating ourselves up and going down the cycle. So it’s really helpful to hear a mental health professional tell us that when we all struggle with that, but we can only do the best we could do, this is what I was telling my clients, you did the best you could do at the time you knew how to what to do, or what the time you had to do it.

April Hannah 50:40
Yeah. And when I go back to those times where I was kind of setting that boundary, that really was right. And that is really what felt right in that moment. And something that I knew that I had to do, you know, if I was given a crystal ball, and was like, Okay, this is how your mother is going to die on the date that she’s going to die, maybe you should intervene a month before, then I probably would have you know, but again, I really trust in the fact that everything really is orchestrated in some way with the agreements that we set up with our soul with our soul group before we come in, and that this is a part of my evolution. And I feel like the really tough times, it’s, it’s really a choice of what we want to do with it. And I feel like I’ve had enough, you know, resiliency, throughout my life, I’ve been inspired by so many other people, like yourself included, where you see them go through really tough times, but they make a choice to use it for positive, you know, and instead of, and that doesn’t mean that I’m not grieving that I don’t struggle with it. You know, it doesn’t mean that just because I’m trying to make a difference, and work it in a way that can bring healing doesn’t mean that it still doesn’t hurt. But, but yeah, but I think that’s the important thing that it is important to know that when you’re setting those boundaries, it’s because you’re really doing them out of love, and love for yourself and love for the other person, especially with addicts, because your hope is that they’ll hit that rock bottom, and then they will go and get help. But I have also, I do believe that, well, this was just a moment that I had, it was one, one Christmas, when my mom had actually fallen into heroin use, it was really, really bad. And I had this pivotal moment in the month of December for Christmas that she probably wasn’t going to show up because we couldn’t find her. And so I bought her in case she showed up a mother daughter charm. And it was for me to give to her, but also to bury her in it. And I know that sounds really morbid, but it was kind of like, Okay, I’m going to buy this necklace. And if we find her, if she winds up dead, I’m gonna put this on her, and I’ll always have this charm. But if she’s alive, then maybe she’ll wear it, but we’ll still have it. But I kind of like had this strange, I don’t know, like come to Jesus moment of where I was, like, you know, her addiction is so bad that you are probably going to have to come to terms with, if you set these boundaries, there is a chance that she’ll die. And that you have to become comfortable with the fact that she that death is a very serious option. When it comes to people with addiction. You know, there’s usually three options, they get sober, they go to jail, or they die, you know, is usually what I’ve seen. So I had this moment, where I got really comfortable with the fact that okay, you know, her addiction could lead to her own death. And that relieved me of something, you know, and like, from that day on, it was kind of like, but this waiting period of is it gonna happen is she going to get sober, I’m just gonna be you know, so. So I think that sometimes with parents, you know, because I’ve, I’ve had parents in my practice that have had children with addiction, you know that I also let them know that too, to know that it really is a realistic thing that could happen that, you know, if you set these boundaries, your child could go and overdose, they’ll find a way to get the money to get the drug or to get the alcohol, you know, and until they’re really ready to move into a state of sobriety. It is a really realistic option. But can you try to come to more peace with that?

Brian Smith 54:06
Well, and the thing is, you can’t say them either either way, because if you enable them, you’re endangering their lives as well. We have to really like go this is where the things like the soul planning and understanding higher perspective, we need to forgive ourselves a lot of times I find that more than more often than anything, we’re so hard on ourselves that we act like we’re on these omniscient beings, right? If I had only known if I if I had been there, but you you can’t know you, again, we we make the decisions we make out of law that we have to make a decision, and then let it go, whether that’s a parent or a child or anybody else in our lives. We can’t control other people’s behaviors.

April Hannah 54:45
Exactly. And I tried to stop my thought process like when I get into those what ifs or I should have, I kind of go back to the reality of but she’s dead, right like she has passed. So nothing that I can do from this moment on can change Anything that has happened up until now. And then when I kind of redirect my thoughts to that, then I work on the grief, you know, but they come in, I mean, those thoughts come in. And I think that that’s natural. But I think the healing process is again, learning how to redirect and train those thoughts. And to remind yourself that, okay, when I get into that state of grief, or feeling sorry for myself, or you know, feeling like I wasn’t, you know, the best daughter, that it’s like, none of these thoughts right now change the outcome, this is the outcome, let’s deal with the outcome, you know, and kind of move forward from there. So, I really tried to do a lot of training within my own mind, to redirect myself back to the reality because I think a lot of people who lose people that they love, you know, I’ve had clients say, well, it’s not fair. And I, you know, I miss my mom, or I want my mom to be here. And I wish she was here to see me, you know, get married or do this. And it’s like, got it. Yeah, but she’s not right. So then how do we, how do we deal with the reality of it, because some people can also really get stuck in that area of I just want it to be different. It’s like, well, I can’t be different. And there’s nothing that I can say to make it different. Or you, you know, to make a difference. So how do we work within the grief of the reality of of what’s today? And what’s in front of us?

Brian Smith 56:11
Yeah, actually, I what I do even beyond that, because the reality is, you know, they’re, they’re dead, which is not a word that I use the reality. But I always I’ve tried to help people reframe reality, not to change it, but reframe it. We all come here for a certain period of time, and it’s all really short period of time. Frankly, it’s nothing in the scope of eternity. We all come in, we all go out 100% of people that are born die, your loved one transition before you but they’re still with you. You will see them again. So even this reality, it’s still not as bad as you’re saying it is they’re not they’re not gone forever. And what breaks my heart is when I hear people say, I’m never gonna see her again. I’m like, we’ve got to stop that language. You will see her again, she’s still with you. She’s, she’s better off now than you are. So let’s reframe that reality. You know, again, not changing it. But that to me take that that guilt away from like, you know, I remember, I’ll never forget this. I was at a conference a couple years ago with Suzanne giesemann was speaking, all these 500 parents in the room, and we’re all like, you know, we’re she’s channeling Sanai, this this entity, she channeled she channels, and someone asked, Why do we have to go through this? Why do we have to deal with this tragedy? You know, why is? And tonight as answer back was, it’s a tragedy from your human perspective, from the perspective of your limited small understanding of your your body, and your loved one left? Yes, it’s a tragedy. From our perspective, it’s not a tragedy. This was the plan. They’re back home. They’re safe. They’re sound. I look at my daughter’s like she woke up from a dream. We’re all living this dream. You mentioned virtual reality earlier. That’s a very helpful analogy. It’s very real, but it’s but it’s not. And I had a nightmare two nights ago. Terrified, I’m running, I’m being chased and everything. And finally, in my nightmare, just, I just lay down, I gave up. And I woke up in my bed. And I was fine. And I’m like, that’s kind of how it is here. We go through all these struggles and these, these trials and tribulations. But when we transition, we wake up back where we were. And so that’s, that’s why I try to help people to look at it. So it takes the sting out of a little bit, I

April Hannah 58:22
hope. Absolutely. I think the reframe is really important. Well said,

Brian Smith 58:28
Yeah, well, April, I really appreciate you being here. Date, you’re fascinating person to talk to you. You did a great job as a guest. Let people know where they can reach. I know you have several different websites, and I’ll put those in the show notes. But I also like to put them in the audio. So where can people reach you?

April Hannah 58:43
Yeah, so I do do want my own one on one consultations, right? So I have my own business called Hanna’s healing, I do energy work, the pandemic has allowed me to reach people all over the world, they do stuff virtually. So that’s Hannah’s healing calm. For your listeners, we wanted to give them a 30% off coupon code for path 11. tv. So that’s going to be podcast 30. And they can find all the videos that we’re talking about on path 11 tv.com. They can also go to their smartphone and type in Papelbon TV. And we have apps on every device, Apple TV, Roku, Amazon, Android, you name it, go to your app store, you can download it, you can also just sign up for a seven day free trial. But if you like what you see in the seven days, put in the podcast 30. And you’ll get 30% off either the monthly plan, that’s 999 a month, and then the annual plan is $99. So that podcast 30 code will get you 30% off of either. And yeah, and people can browse that. The other thing we do with papiloma TV is I invite people on once a month as an extra bonus for subscribers. So we just had a woman on that did Chinese face readings. We have psychic mediums that come on and do gallery readings. We’ve had some coaches come on to do soul coaching. So I try it What I’m trying to do with cath lab and TV is build a community to get to know my subscribers, where it’s not like Netflix, like you subscribe, you watch, and then you’re not talking to anyone. So I meet with all of our subscribers once a month for an event, and, and then the podcast path 11 podcast calm. And you can find all of these links at path 11 Productions. com, but pretty much if you type in path 11 death or afterlife in Google, you will find us. And I really think that you know, you’ve Susan geese minge we have her presentation on there from the afterlife awareness conference. There’s a bunch of stuff that people can browse before signing up for subscription. But I think your audience would benefit a lot from the content that we have on there because it’s more heavily focused on the afterlife, and, you know, consciousness and death studies. So yeah, yeah.

Brian Smith 1:00:51
Yeah, it sounds like an awesome resource. And I know people in my audience are always looking for more. And there’s, there’s so much out there. Sometimes it’s just nice to have a portal, like one place to go where I can, I can find this. And I can just start, you know, Benjen on this stuff. And I know people literally stay up all night watching their death experience stories. So I’m sure they’ll find a lot to like their path. 11

April Hannah 1:01:11
Yeah. So Brian, thank you so much. It was just great to make this connection overall. And for you to support the work that we’re doing and giving me an opportunity to actually come on and share my story. It’s a part of my, my healing journey. So thank you.

Brian Smith 1:01:26
Yeah. Well, thanks again for being here. And I’ll see you at the afterlife conference. Okay, we’ll do all right. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you. Bye. So that does it for another episode of grief to growth. I sure hope you enjoyed it. If you like this content, make sure you subscribe. So click on the subscribe button here, and then click on the bell to receive notifications and click on all that way you’ll be notified whenever I release new content. Thanks for watching, and have a great day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Transcript:

Brian Smith 0:00
Close your eyes and imagine what if the things in life that causes the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, or challenges, challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we’ve been buried, but what if, like a seed we’ve been planted and having been planted, to grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is grief to growth. And I am your host, Brian Smith. Everybody This is Brian Smith back with another episode of grief to growth and today I’ve got with me a federal shining light parent and her name is Dolores Cruz. Dolores group grew up in Los Angeles where she attended USC as a theater arts major. A few years after she received her Bachelor of Arts she met her husband Joey and while taking classes or she met Joey while taking classes at a theater in Hollywood. She put her acting aspirations aside when they married in 1985. And she immediately started her family. While she was working full time as elementary school teacher and part time as a dance teacher local dance duty studio she and Jade Joey raised their four children, Nicholas, Jessica, Vanessa, and Eric, Delores never hesitate to mention that Aaron came as a total surprise. And we’ll probably talk about that as we get into the interview. I guess the odds of you brought even more joy to their family than they already had, as they continue to live a very busy life full life as a family of six. Then on May 12, of 2017 tragedy struck when Eric was killed in a car accident on his way home late one night. We’ll talk about that. And what I don’t want to spoil the whole thing by bringing the entire bias. So what we’ll talk about that as we get into it, but Dolores is the author of the book, look around a mother’s journey from grief and despair, to healing and hope. And her book tells not only the story of her spiritual journey, but also tells about Eric, who he was and how he touched all those around them. And now she understands what was that he was meant to come to this world for a short time, so that his family could continue to learn and grow and pass on his legacy of love. And Doris continues to honor Eric by sharing healing hope with her with other parents whose children have transitioned as an affiliate leader and caring listener with helping parents heal. So I want to welcome you to grief to growth, divorce.

Dolores 2:26
Thanks so much, Brian. I’m really happy to be here. I appreciate it.

Brian Smith 2:30
Yeah, it’s great to meet you face to face. I know we’re fellow helping parents heal parents, and which I mentioned in the introduction, that your son Eric transition, so I do want to talk about that. And you’re in your life leading up to that. So I read your book, it’s a fantastic book, it takes us on on their life journey. So we won’t be able to cover all that today. So I want to say people that are interested, you know, go ahead and get the book. But tell me about your story and how Eric came into your life.

Dolores 2:58
Sure, you know, so the usual life that we all hope to have, right? You know, I went to college, I met my husband had our family, our four kids more than we expected. And I don’t know if that’s what you want to mention, but we really thought we were going to have three. And I like I said against the odds, read despite precautions, Eric showed up and which surprised us. And we just were a little scared because we didn’t have a huge amount of money and the life was you know, we work really hard. But we just thought well, okay, you know, I guess he’s meant to be here. Yeah, obviously, he really was just Joy’s you know, raising our kids, all of them and very busy and all of that. And so I was still working as a elementary school teacher, I’m now retired. And my husband’s working. And he was out of town actually, when this occurred. So Eric had, he was well, what I love to always bring up about Eric is he was a drummer. MUSIC I’m come from a musical family. My mother was a violinist, my older brother, who also by the way, passed away at age 26, because he had a congenital heart condition. He was a musician and composer. So I grew up just hearing that. And then of course, he also had his rock band. And I was just surrounded by the classical music and the rock music and just it was beautiful. And then my other brother mark is a drummer as well. So I mean, it was just surrounded. And so Eric had that desire to become a drummer. He was about 10 or 11, when he probably about 10. When he mentioned it, we were like, save your money if you want that drum kit, and he did. And my brother who’s a drummer, who’s his godfather, took him to get his drum kit and it was really, you know, exciting. And there it was, and honestly, every day since he was by the time he was 11 when he got it every day he would practice and it never ever bothered me. I just knew I don’t No, I guess I just somehow knew inside that that was his soul coming forth. That’s what he was bringing to us. So, never had an issue with noise or anything like that. And he loved it, you know, went to high school to four years of music orchestra drumline. He was such the drummer and then went to college where he met his bandmates Finally, and they formed their band called jubilo Drive. And they began to play and they wrote their own music, and it was just joyous it was, you know, such a light in our lives, to be able to go and watch him perform. And as I know, also, most of us say about our children. There was just that kindness and compassion. And people just were drawn to him. As I know that, you know, I’m sure you can say about Shana as well. And many of us I’ve heard other parents say the same thing. And there just seemed to be that something there. Anyway, he had finally gotten after graduating college and all that a couple years later, he had finally gotten this job that was just going to make him real money, he would have a real salary. And it was, it was something it was in recruiting, which is honestly something I’m not totally clear about. But it was just, it was a good spot was good spot to start. He had literally been on his ninth day of work, and said he would come home while he was going to stay out with to hang out with his new, you know, friends at work. And so I thought, well, that’s great, that’s typical of him, and said, Okay, great. And he was still living at home along with his sister, Vanessa, and I have my other two children were already living out of the house. And they were extremely close, extremely close, having gone to all the same schools. They had many of the same friends spent a lot of time together. Anyway, so he, you know, it was I go to bed early, because I have to get up, I would have to get up at like 5am. So I tried to get to bed by 930, whatever. 10 o’clock. And he wasn’t home yet, which I thought was unusual, because he was totally responsible. He really was a very responsible, and he was already had been gone a bit earlier than usual getting up early to go to work. And he wasn’t home. And so you know, we were doing the usual texting. I was and his sister. And as I found out later, his other siblings eventually, were texting, you know, where are you? And he initially said, Oh, I’ll just you know, we’re just having a good time. I’ll be home. Don’t worry about me. And

I went to bed. Yeah, got up the next morning about 515. And right away, looked in his room and he wasn’t there. And so went into my daughter’s room because my husband was like I said, traveling. He was in Toronto, on business. And I went to my daughter, and I said, Do you know have you heard from Eric and as soon as I said that there was this horribly loud knock at the door. And I just knew what that was. And she got out of bed. We ran downstairs and you know, it was the sheriff and coroner standing here saying that, you know, does Eric Cruz live here? Yes. Well, he was killed in a car, or they said specifically he has passed away from now he was in a car accident. And as you know, you get the news. And it’s just, you know, your everything falls apart. And you’re on the ground and yeah. Anyway, we the worst thing ever was having to call my husband well, and my other kids as well, but to who he immediately got on a plane to come back. And we never know, we don’t know exactly what happened like that hour or so before because the texting ended about an hour before his accident, which was at 12:30am. So

Unknown Speaker 9:02
we

Dolores 9:04
you know, again, why was he out too late? Not sure. Was he not feeling well? Did he drink too much? I don’t you know, maybe maybe he was I don’t know, and we just don’t know for sure. So the but you know, he It was a horrific accident. Luckily, it was just him it wasn’t it didn’t involve anyone else. And so we had to figure out what to do. You know, moment by moment. You don’t know what to do. Yeah. You know, you don’t know what you’re supposed to how do you do this? We were not able to see him because his accident was so bad and he the car had burst into flames. It was just horrific. So it was just felt like more pain. The thing is, I felt like I was in a deep dark hole. And you know what that is? Yeah, it No, I didn’t see any light. I felt totally pulled under and I didn’t know how I could ever ever feel joy again. I didn’t worry about it. I just I didn’t say it was impossible. I just had no idea how that could happen. Yeah, to get there so little by little, you know, just someone sent me a book called on grief and grieving by David Kessler and Elisabeth Kubler Ross, which got me to know who he was. And I was able to connect with him. And we started just reading all these books, I don’t know, you may have done the same thing. I just read book after book and people would give me books and they were the right books, which is interesting. And then the one Mary Neal’s seven minutes, seven lessons from heaven. And that just oh my gosh, near death experiences. Oh, that’s amazing. So then I’d read up on those. And, you know, I was raised Catholic. I went to Catholic schools, even our kids went to Catholic schools, and with all my siblings, I was the only one to send my kids to Catholic schools, that was just my choice and their choice, and that was all good. And I was good with it. It was okay with me, I could find all the goodness that was in there. But when this happened, that did not convert anymore. I had no doubt, you know, about I believed in God, and in an afterlife, but I just didn’t know. Yeah, I wanted to know where Eric was,

Brian Smith 11:32
right?

Dolores 11:33
These books helped me to get an understanding of where he was, and they covered me. So you know, the near death experiences, and then went on to just, I don’t know, I have a list in my book. But the mediums that people send me I mean, with things George Anderson, or I read, there are just other books, you know, I should have the list right here. To mention in case anybody else wants to know, but john edwards, somebody gave me crossing over it. So anyway, I just opened up this, this more this bigger picture. And I like to say that so this was my beliefs right here before and it was fine. You know, you had to find there was bad in the good, but you know, I could pull out the good. But once that I started learning, it just exploded. This was my belief system. Now I in it was so much better. So much more so much deeper. And it just helped me so much. And I do want to mention that their way I got an another interesting way that I became connected with helping parents heal was out of the blue, the following about seven months later, after Eric’s accident. I get it. A friend requests a request from someone I didn’t know that and then I get a message saying, Hi, you know, your cousin Susie, who’s really my second cousin Susie? Well, I’m her cousin on the other side. And she told me about, you know, Eric, and my son passed away recently, and I just want you to know about helping parents heal. And I said, Oh, great. And that’s how I got connected by this. You know, how strange is I don’t know to cut Tell me. So it was all meant to be that way. But yeah. Again, just so much, I get so much through helping parents heal. I can’t even begin to explain it. And I went to the first conference in 2018. I know you were there. And it was just amazing. So I found after a few months that, you know, I could I think I can do this as much as of course, we all just want to be with our child. As much as we say, you know, if I die right now, that’s fine. You know, I’m not gonna do anything about it. But hey, if something happens to me, oh, well, you know, at least that’s where I want to be. But I found that, you know, there’s a reason why I’m here. And I have a purpose. I, you know, I can’t describe it in detail, but I know that there is and sometimes I’m feeling you know, the guidance, lead. And that’s all that that’s what really matters. Yeah. And I’m connected to Eric still. Yeah. Sweat really matters. Yeah.

Brian Smith 14:37
So how long would you say that it took you to to find that there was still some purpose in being here. So I you kind of talked about like it was right after it happens. You want to be with your with your child and I think it’s a very, very common thing. So what what was it that what was it that led you to feel like you did have have a purpose to be here?

Dolores 15:03
Wow. Yeah, I’m trying to think specifically, I know that it started, I started to realize, realize that we’re probably within that the end of the first year, I’m just thinking that I started to feel like there, I do need to be here. I think probably not until around the time I got involved with helping parents heal, and all the that I learned, especially, you know, from Suzanne giesemann, and just so many others about, it’s the bigger picture, when I was finally able to look at my life, and people around me and just see that there was so much more, and that maybe there was a plan. And maybe if he was meant to, to live only that meant, you know, that long and that many years here. Yeah. And he had a purpose. And maybe his purpose was, you know, complete. You know, so I started saying maybe because that’s how it came in. It was like, Well, okay, maybe that is like I was I was open to to what ever would resonate. And if and else like I think this makes sense. And I think this is right, then then that became the truth for me. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I think it was, again, I have to give credit mainly to helping parents heal for opening that helping me to open up that belief system. That then I thought, Okay, then I in, in honoring Eric, I, maybe I’m here, maybe the one reason he’s gone is for me to propel me propelled forward to do more of what I’m here to do. It just started to come to me that way. Yeah, yeah. And so I can honor Eric, and honor. who I am and why I’m here as well. To stay. And, and, hopefully, love, as Eric did be as compassionate as Eric was, be as kind and, and all of that. And so that’s what I want to that’s what I want to do.

Brian Smith 17:20
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting, when I when I was reading your book, he talked about Eric, and how you seem to attract people. And that’s, and I’m just gonna ask you this question. Do you think that’s part of like him being the baby of the family? Because you know, that there’s, there’s that, you know, he was he was the baby. But there’s also something that no matter what the birth order, it seems like our kids transition early, when I talk to other parents, there’s something about them the way they impact people while they’re here. And then even when they’re God.

Dolores 17:50
I do agree. It does. I mean, I know, I admit, I’m focusing on Eric as instead of my other children, because he’s not here. I mean, it had been one of them. But then again, maybe there would have been that special Spark, that I do see an Eric. And yeah, I think it became more evident to me what you’re saying, right after, of course, and, you know, as people surrounded us, which was so beautiful, filled, the house surrounded us. And we had them writing in in little these little notebooks that we’ve saved. And what things that they had to say about him that I didn’t even know, and that I didn’t realize and how they said, I remember the time when they that there was this act of kindness, and or they would say, you know, I only met him once or twice, but he immediately made me feel like I mattered. And he took interest in who I was. And I know that’s, you know, not all early 20. Kind of, you know, or teenagers aren’t going to necessarily do that. Right? He did do that. So I heard so much of that, that it does make me feel like there. There was this other act of kindness that I saw that I wrote about that was just a few months before he transitioned. right on the corner. It’s a little bit busy street when you go down to the corner, and there was an accident, and no one was hurt. But there was these two cars were stopped in the street. So my daughter and I walked down there and it had just started getting dark. And we’re you know, people are gathering and we’re looking and and there was like this truck with these for older people more, a little bit more elderly people. And then there was a car over there with these younger people. Well, after a few minutes, I see Eric come out of the house. He’s holding a bottle of water. And he he’s very pensive and quiet. And he goes over and he’s just standing like this, you know, look watching where the younger people aren’t. And I know he was just thinking. He was just feeling that compassion and thinking, I wonder. I wonder how they feel and I feel bad for them. And I you know, and I could just tell I was blocked. him and then after whatever few minutes, he walks over to where the older people are. And there was an older man sitting on the curb, kind of leaning against the light post, you know, they were shaken up, they were not hurt, but they were definitely shaken up. And he goes over and he stands there in front of the manager and watching it, like I could see it again, like a movie. And he just leans over and handsome about the bottle of water, which I assume was a new bottle of water. And the man takes it and he drinks from it. And they just say whatever. And I just went, Oh, my gosh, beautiful act of kindness. And it really touched me. And it’s just stuck in my head. So that’s again, I think that’s a awesome example of just who he was.

Brian Smith 20:43
Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 20:44
Just kind of odd that.

Brian Smith 20:46
Yeah, I want to talk to you about, you mentioned earlier that your beliefs were Catholic, that you were you were raised Catholic, you send your kids to Catholic school. So did when you started discovering this other stuff. Did that come to that conflict with your existing beliefs? Did you feel guilt coming out of that? Did you feel like your beliefs weren’t enough? What what caused you to open up to this other these other things?

Dolores 21:10
That’s a great question. Because as a matter of fact, yes, it it. It took me a while to stop feeling guilty about not just leaving, because really, to be honest, I was already separated from the church, I was not attending regular services anymore. That had stopped already after a couple of years. But I still felt connected. And I still identified, you know, to some degree, I might still do that. But of course, let’s face it, you start talking about mediums and all of that. And then I’m like, Oh, you know, I know, according to what I hear, you know, from the church, or what everybody says, you know, this is not a good thing. Right? I just needed to move forward with finding out more. And, and I prayed about it. I did I mean, I still prayed. And when I say prayed, it became then learning to you know, to meditate, and then to listen, and to ask the questions and see what comes in and help me to know the truth. And I, what I found not only just in this instance, let’s say with mediums, but as I’m learning about other cultures, and you know, Buddhism and shamanism, and just, everything was so beautiful. I thought, of course, there’s not one way, of course, there’s so many ways to to be took no God, I like to I like the word God, you know, I know, it’s, you know, the divine source and all of that as well, the creator. Of course, there are so many ways. So just because I step away from here, doesn’t mean I don’t like it, it just means that I like the bigger picture that I have found. And I think it’s also beautiful, and in my connections with Mother Nature now, which I can’t even describe. I mean, it’s I think, God, you know, for all of, for my awareness, I guess, is what I want to say about the beauty in nature and the sun in the moon. I mean, just all of that, you know, I feel very kind of Native American as well, that indigenous beliefs, all of it is just fantastic. So, as time went on, no, I, I came to understand that much of what I was taught is a false belief about restrictions and judgments and everything you can do wrong, and that it’s really not that that really, if you look in another light, it’s, it’s there’s so much good in all of this.

Brian Smith 23:51
Yeah. And that that is a hard thing. I guess for a lot of us because the church and I don’t, I don’t want to bash religion or Christianity or Catholicism or anything, but there is this built in fear and limitation. And I liked the way you put it. When you set my beliefs were like this. Now my beliefs are like this. And I’ve had people ask me, about, you know, losing your faith or losing your religion or whatever. And in fact, it’s funny, I was talking with someone the other day, a business person, and they work with Christian stuff. And they said, Are you are you a boy, I see you’re a believer, because I looked at my blog. And I said, on my website, I said, depends on a defined believer. What I tell people is I have more faith or belief now than I ever had when I was just confined to that little box that they put me in, right, because as you said, we get outside and we see Wow, this the same thing is taught and Buddhism and in Hinduism and and native beliefs and, and all the all these other faiths that have come to the same conclusions, minus the fear part that we were taught.

Dolores 24:56
That’s a wonderful way to put it. I totally agree with that. But you Yes, it’s interesting, I was just speaking with someone who’s who has a relative who’s elderly now and going to most likely be passing away soon. And, and she was describing that despite being such a Catholic, and such a good Catholic and doing all the right things, that he’s got such a fear of dying. And I, to me, I can only think that that’s again, the fear because of the fear that was instilled, as opposed to the love. Yeah. As opposed to focusing on the love. There is a focus on the fear. So yeah, I agree with you on that, for sure.

Brian Smith 25:38
Yeah, I think it’s really important. And I’m glad that we’re that you discuss that we’re talking about this, because I’ve seen a lot of people we go along with, I call it Sunday school religion. It’s like we’re taught this this this version of God and stuff in Sunday school, and it’s, it’s good enough, it’s good enough, until something really blows up your life. And then suddenly, I’ve seen people totally lose their, their their faith and belief in anything that become totally materialists become total atheist. And then for some of us, though, it seems to open us up. So that leads back to what are your thoughts about when I’d like to know how you react when you first heard he says about soul planning? Or that maybe this was planned for Erica lever? Or how did that strike you?

Dolores 26:22
Yeah. In the beginning, that within those first couple of days, when everyone is over, and they’re all coming up to you, someone’s a few people probably said that I know, what a couple of people. Well, it was his time to go. And I was like, No, it wasn’t, it wasn’t, He should be here. He had so much more to do. And all of that just made me angry. But over time, and with all the reading I did, little by little, I began to see that, yes, you bring up soul planning. I always say that I just, if it resonates in my heart, then I do believe it to be true. And it starts it does feel right. That we Some people say it’s God’s plan, I like to say we did it together. That it’s our plan. And depends how you want to see that then again, some people say, Well, you know, we are God. So we’re, you know, so anyway, however you want to get it, you know, that’s our words cannot fully express the true meaning.

Unknown Speaker 27:27
Right? But

Dolores 27:29
yeah, I, I absolutely. Now believe and I’ve heard so many speakers on helping parents heal or mediums or just explain that. Some souls choose to be here for a shorter amount of time, that they’re that they’ll choose their exit point. And, you know, maybe they’ll skip that exit point. And I feel like he had another exit point that I can’t clearly recall. He probably, yeah, he had this crazy ski thing go on when he was studying abroad, and they were in the endora. And he did one of those things where, because he didn’t know he was new, but he was doing a huge Hill after a couple days thinking he could do it. All right, and he’s down and trying to curve and did one of those things where he’s flipped over and spun all the way down the side of the hill where all these trees were. And he didn’t hit anything. And he was fine. Yeah. I just thought, well, there would have been a perfect exit if if he had chosen.

Brian Smith 28:27
Yeah,

Dolores 28:28
thankfully, you know, I’m glad we had some more years with him. So yeah, I think that’s, that is what I believe I, I, I now believe that it was the time and there was a reason for that.

Brian Smith 28:44
Yeah. You know, it’s interesting when you said that the people come and well, many people say all kinds of things in the early days, and people say things, but when people say things like, you know, it was his time, or even worse, it’s God’s plan. You know, like, like, God snatch them away. And, and I’m with you that the whole idea of, of a separate outside entity saying, Okay, that’s it, you’re, you know, you’re only going to get 24 years, or 15 years. In the case of my daughter, I don’t believe that. I believe it’s a, as you said, it could be you could consider it a joint plan with God and our guides or whatever. But I believe that we’re involved in that plan as well.

Dolores 29:26
Yeah, totally agree. And that’s another false belief that people are brought up with in not only religion, but probably just in society in general, is that we don’t have that inner power. I’m not talking about the power of the egotistical power or the earthly powers. I mean, that we have inner spiritual power and strength that we are in charge of our lives in a much deeper way than anyone really talks about.

Brian Smith 29:57
Yeah, that’s a that’s a really interesting concept. Isn’t it? You know, we’re part of the same organization. So we hear a lot of the same people speak. And it’s an understanding that I’ve come to as well. And it’s a again, it’s a little bit complicated because we would say, Well, no, if I were in charge, then Eric would live to be an old man and I would be rich. And you know, and this is not the way things have worked, you know, worked out. But that’s, that’s our, as you said, that’s kind of the ego part of it. That’s the smaller part of us, our higher self, wants to have these adventures. We want to have these experiences. And, and you know, and we can start to see and as you, as you said, you know, when Eric transitioned, it caused you to reevaluate your faith and your belief and just totally expanded, you

Announcer 30:42
will get back to grief to growth in just a few seconds. Did you know that Brian is an author and a life coach, if you’re grieving or know someone who is grieving his book, grief to growth is a best selling easy to read book that might help you or someone you know, people work with Brian as a life coach, to break through barriers and live their best lives. You can find out more about Brian and what he offers at WWW dot grief to growth.com www dot g ri, e f, the number two, gr o w th calm or text growth gr o w t h 231996. If you’d like to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com. Slash grief to growth www.patren.com slash g ri e f the number two gr o w th to make a financial contribution. And now back to grief to growth.

Dolores 31:43
Right? Yeah, absolutely. Definitely expanded. I’m definitely happy to be where I am is in this growth. You know, there’s always that part that says, I just wish he was right here. Of course, we miss them. We just and but I I don’t feel any I never I mean, I can’t say I never I did in the beginning feel very. The automatic response was what the heck is going on? God, You know what? Why did you? Why did you do this? What’s going on? What’s the point I was a good person, right? Because we connected with gotta be good. And then you’re going to get this and that’s really not yet I have learned it. It’s not about you know, a god standing there saying Well, okay, I think you did well enough. I’m gonna make sure you get these blessings. And it’s interesting when people when something good happens to someone and they go, Oh, God is good. And I’m like, Yeah, but what if that didn’t happen? Would he still be good? Yeah.

Brian Smith 32:48
Yeah.

Dolores 32:49
So I don’t look at it that way. I mean, yeah, I look around me at the this amazing earth. And I’m reminding myself that I am here to enjoy it. And that it is fat. You know, it is so beautiful. But yeah, I just, I don’t think that I, you know, I was angry at first, but now I it’s not God who does things to us. It’s just this plan that again, is still a bit of a mystery to us. And that’s okay. That’s okay. But I do feel it.

Brian Smith 33:27
Yeah. Yeah, that that belief that if we do good things, and good things will happen to us works up and right up until something bad happens. And then it just totally falls apart. And I’ve never met anybody in my life and nothing bad has ever happened to you know, and people that say, you know, even the power of positive thinking and the law of attraction, all that stuff. Again, that works to a certain point, because that’s not the point. I don’t think that’s the purpose of being an Earth is deliver a carefree pain free life. We come I think for for these experiences, which can, you know, and you’re a great example of can actually help us to grow that can help make us, you know, into something that we wouldn’t be otherwise. I want to ask you about, you know, again, about faith. I think this is another important point that, at least for me, I, we were taught in Sunday school, we’re starting church, that we’re all eternal beings, we’re all going to be in heaven again, Sunday. But when people die, they’re basically their God. They’re there. They’re in heaven. You know, some some religious teach, they’re asleep. I just heard this the other day. They’re like, with a dead sleep and then they don’t they don’t return raising or until Jesus comes back or something. But there’s just this thing that I believe that they’re still with us. And I know you’ve got that feeling about Eric as well.

Dolores 34:47
Yes, absolutely. I didn’t realize just how close our loved ones are. And you know, you’re it’s interesting stories every so often someone will talk about Oh, You know, and then this happened and I felt like they were right there. But again until it happens to you, you luck. It’s just an interesting story. But Wow, it even before reading any books, the very first thing that happened that just really I haven’t It was fun. It was wonderful. But it surprised me is that I had, of course, during those first few days been telling Eric, where are you? I need you here. I want a hug from you. And I was saying that often I was talking to him from the beginning. I don’t know why I just did. I just, I just knew he must be there. I just something I automatically did anyway, about a week or 10 days later, I had gone to Whole Foods. And there was a couple people, young people out in front along with these tables. Because it was for what’s called the dare program. And it had they had they were an organization that taught young people in school about drug resistance. And it was drug and drug and alcohol resistance education, I believe. Hopefully I didn’t get that wrong. And anyway, so they were there. And I noticed them as I went in, I thought oh, yeah, they used to come to our school. I wonder where they’ve been. Anyway, as I came out, I thought, well, I’m gonna make a donation. So I go up. And of course, the young man I speak to is like Eric’s height. Eric’s build, probably his same age, more or less his complexion and everything. So I’m talking to him, and Oh, where are you guys? Ben? He goes, Oh, well, you know, they cut funding. And so now we have to come try to get funding elsewhere. Oh, well, sure. I’m gonna write him a check. And he writes a receipt. And just as he’s handing me the receipt, he says, How about a hug? And I, you know, it took me by surprise. And I just said, Yeah, I’ll always take a hug. And I gave him a quick hug. And it was just like, it just I didn’t know what to think, to thank you very much. And then walked away. And I just went, Oh, my gosh, was that you, Eric?

Brian Smith 37:02
Yeah,

Dolores 37:03
I do. I, I believe it. It was. I mean, I think then I was the beginning. without even having, like I said, read any books or spoken to anyone about any of this? I thought, well, he is around. He is with us. So that was the first of many. Yeah, Heinz.

Brian Smith 37:21
Yeah. Tell me about some of the other sides you’ve gotten.

Dolores 37:25
Yeah, so some of the most interest? obvious, maybe the biggest, I’ll just say, and then I can talk about the subtle ones as well. But yeah, but three months later, I was. We our family was attending the party of a very good friend’s little girl who was she was gonna be five years old. And it was kind of a family thing. So we all went. And as we’re walking in, I, I felt the sadness of Eric not being with us. I know he would have been. But then I immediately said, you know, he’s here. So I just, you know, went in with that. And we’re standing around, we were outside around a table standing holding plates and talking. And all of a sudden, right here in my peripheral vision, he was standing there, and he was totally clear in my peripheral. He was in color. I know, he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt. He had his facial hair. And he was looking towards the center. Like he was just standing around with us. Hmm. And I just slowly turned my head to look and of course, he dissolved away. But I knew that he was just saying, I’m here. Yeah, way of letting me know. And it was, and I told my family about it. And they loved it.

Brian Smith 38:41
Yeah, yeah.

Dolores 38:43
So yeah. And then another time as far as seeing him, and these were the only times well, kind of was just two years later, which was couple years ago. And I was we my husband and I were with some friends in Europe, we were at Prague Castle. And in at the, when they say, castle, it’s this large area with many buildings. And so there’s this extremely old church, I don’t know it’s from the 13 or 1400s or something. And so we were climbing up those, the spiral staircase that’s all cement and you’ve got walls, you can touch to each side here. And there’s like 280 steps or something silver walking up to go to the top and, you know, we’re older. So we’re huffing and puffing and laughing. And I’m at the front. And so I look back in there’s the spiral, to look at my friend and I saw Eric stare there for just a moment just kind of even not solid, but just kind of ethereal. I don’t know how else to describe it. But I saw what he was wearing. And it was between my husband and my friend. My name is Linda and I just again, it was like Oh, it was just for a few seconds. Yeah. And I told them all I said, well, Eric’s with us because I saw him. Wow. Yeah, it was. And that was really that more obvious. So I did have him, tell him speak to me once, where I was about six months later, and I was in bed at night. And I would always go to bed a little bit ahead of my husband, because I had to get up so early. And he was just more of a night owl, and I would just get tired. But he and I would always, you know, when I go to bed, you need just kind of lay there with me, we talk for five or 10 minutes. And then he kissed me goodnight. And then he closed the door and go out. And whenever you go out, I just cry. Because I don’t know, that was just my time. And I cry. And I talked to Eric and I had taught myself to do a self guided meditation, which Dr. Mark Pitts stick was one of the people that had I’ve had that opportunity. And I’ve heard a couple of others. Anyway, I taught myself that at night, I would just guide myself and go to this beautiful place to be with Eric. And that night, I was extra tired. And I said, Eric, I’m instead of doing the full five minute intro to get there. I just did Eric, let’s just let’s just meet. So I did the, the imagining of being there and seeing him coming. And all of a sudden right here, I heard it just kind of on the inside of my ear. I heard I’m right here, mom. And it was it was again, it’s it’s a little surprising. It’s also beautiful, and it was peaceful. And I just who was just covered with peace, and I just went to sleep. Yeah. And again, just such beautiful gifts that, you know, we don’t get them all the time. And that’s okay. Because once is enough, just to let you know, really, you know, if you believe it, then it’s with you always, because they’re always with us. Yeah.

Brian Smith 41:57
Well, I really appreciate you sharing that because I think a lot of us have had similar experiences, and people will chalk it up to Well, I’m just hallucinating is wishful thinking, because people don’t typically don’t talk about it a lot. And as I’ve as I’ve been on this journey, and I’ve talked to people who are actually opening up, you know, I’m finding out this is not as uncommon as we think and and our loved ones show up to us in many ways. So I do want to say though, that those things are unusual. actually seeing someone or hearing someone is very unusual, they typically come to us in more mundane ways. Yeah.

Dolores 42:35
So a couple of those cool ways, which are always give me a lot of joy, as well. One thing for example, my husband travels for work. And he does a an annual trip to New York in June. So this was not the first June but I think the next one. And I always join him at the at the end of his work time so that we can spend a few days go see a Broadway show, man, we have some friends there and we visit. So I met him in the lobby and I joined him, we go up to the room. And just as we get to the door, I just went Oh my God, look at the room number and it was 2311. And his birthday is the 23rd of November. I mean, I saw it right away. And then my husband who I hadn’t noticed all this time he looks at it goes oh my god. And it was just beautiful. And I said well, you know, see, he’s been right here with you. And so it’s that kind of thing. And also there was in his room, and these are still there now there was a package of glow sticks. And the four glow sticks. So this was actually just a year ago. And I love that as the time goes by I can still get these are some signs it’s no, but it so my son was supposed to get married last May 7, obviously that didn’t happen because of the shutdown. So it was me. I was so I on a Friday, May 8, I went in his room and I saw one of the sticks glowing. So of course I’m like Whoa, I wonder why it’s glowing. And I asked my family members no one had really been around because of shutdown but of the head my two daughters and my husband had been there. So I asked him Did anyone go in Did anyone touch it do anything? They said no? Yeah, I’m thinking right away. Okay. Is this Eric and I look at the package and it says that that like 60 hours or something for glowing? I thought oh, that’s really cool. I told my husband he said you know, I noticed that yesterday. Well the day before had been may 7 the day that my son should have gotten married. So that was special. So it started on May 7, may 8, ninth Sunday was Mother’s Day, and by then it should have the glow should have probably been on its way out and it was still glowing. brightly. Yeah. Two days later was May 12, the anniversary of Eric’s transition, and it was still glowing. Wow. And I just, and it continued for even yet a couple more days. So it went on for at least a week. Before, you know, it finally died down. We don’t know how it started. Except it happened to touch three very important significant days. So I again, think that was just a lovely sign. Yeah,

Brian Smith 45:27
yeah. And signs like that are really wild. And it’s, you know, it’s also encouraging to hear that your mind is open to those things, because I’ve talked to people and so I haven’t gotten any signs. And then as we start to talk, then they’ll say, Well, except for this or this, and that I’m like, those,

Dolores 45:42
those are the signs that you said you haven’t gotten, right. It’s everything, it’s it’s just the little things like for I know recently, I want to say that, let me just double check that that what, for example, I had these two birds, these two crows, that when I went out, when I go out my front door, my car, it’s just a few steps down. And then that’s the driveway. So my car is like right there. So I can be there. And but then above, there’s some cable lines, right? And it’s not far up. So one day I had gone out when I was still working, and to go to work in the morning, and I look up and these these two crows right there. And by then I was already talking to nature. So I just go Hello. And so I get in the car. And as I get in the car, they fly together to the tree right next door, bushy tree. So I get in the car and I’m backing out to go down and just as I get to about the sidewalk, crows together, come back to where they were they fly together at the front at the other end of the driveway, they come all the way together and go right over my car. Whom and when they went I just felt that energy. And I just want that had to be Eric and then I was like man who’s with you. I just goes my brother with you. Because you know my brothers over there too. And it was such a an amazing feeling. And you know, anyone could have said all these two birds flew by I guess but it to me it was so obvious because it was kind of unusual, that kind of behavior. It’s never happened before. Yeah, yeah. So things like like that. Yeah. And, and license plates. And I’ll tell you about the probably the coolest license plate. I get a lot of like, oh look that says mom there. Oh, look, there’s one over there that says mom Oh, look, you know, so you get those. But cool. coolest one was the one that said EC lives are his initials. lv for love. And then MLM EC mom? And it’s like, wow. Yeah.

Brian Smith 47:55
Yeah.

Dolores 47:56
So. And literally, I’ve got two journals loaded with all I read them all down. And still, I mean, just yesterday, I was writing them down, and they’re all around.

Brian Smith 48:11
Yeah. Yeah. So you’re coming up on four year anniversary of Eric’s passing, right. So um, what do you what do you what would you say to someone who’s early in this journey? Who says, okay, there’s no way I’m ever going to heal, you know, she, she might be able to do this, but I can’t do it?

Dolores 48:30
Well, I would say that, if you have an intention to heal, that you will, that if you it’s all of it, you have the power and you, you may not feel like you have a choice, because we don’t feel it was our choice for this to happen. But I do believe we have a choice as to what we’re going to do now. And as much as I didn’t see how it was possible to get to a place of joy. I believe that the reason I did is because I set out on a journey to figure it all out to find me Not that I’ve got it all figured out. But to understand have a better understanding. And to find that joy again and to find Eric, that was just my, what I intended to do. I did not choose to just sit and shut myself off and, and mourn for the rest of my life. I you know, in that way I was not. That was not what I intended to do. So I just think it’s your power of intention. Yeah. And looking like you said, looking for the signs, not discounting just just believing what, you know, you can believe it or not. So why not believe it? Yeah. If it brings you joy and happiness, yeah.

Brian Smith 49:54
Yeah, I think what I found is a lot of times it’s something I’ve found in comics. I’ve talked to so many people. Is this just being open? And do your own research? Do you know to really understand and know what’s going on? Because the I guess the first thing is that you said setting that intention. But sometimes we can’t even get there. Because we’re just like, I just, I just want to be stuck for a while. So it’s the first thing is believing it’s possible, you know, and and talking to someone like yourself, who’s coming up on four years out and seeing that is inspiration for other people.

Dolores 50:32
Yeah, I mean, yes, you’re right, it doesn’t seem possible at all. And you do have to grieve? Yeah, it is. You know, I know, some people go what, but I’ve heard it put that it is a gift. It is part of the human experience. It is something that we can’t avoid. And we have to allow to move through us. And we have to, you know, as we’ve heard the just flow on that river. And sometimes it’s like this, and then other times, it might be peaceful, and just add to allow it and not fight it. And at some point, cloud if you start to feel good, rather than say, Oh, I’m not supposed to feel this way.

Unknown Speaker 51:19
Yeah,

Dolores 51:20
let it let any let that happen. Because that’s the other part of the gift as well, is that? Yeah, I remember. I think it was only about six weeks, not even maybe a month or six weeks after your transitions. And of course, I was still like this. having lunch with my sister and another mutual friend. It was more of my sister’s friend, but I knew her. And we were sitting eating, and she said, so what are you gonna do this summer? And I said, grave? Yeah. And my sister was like, my sister is totally in tune with me. And she’s like, Oh, yeah. And she totally respected that, because I wasn’t gonna ignore it. Right. I was lucky that as a teacher, I had the summer to have that kind of time. I know, not everybody has. But I had to go through it and allow myself and then at the same time be totally open to whatever was next.

Brian Smith 52:17
Yeah, yeah, I think that’s really important to wait, you know, because while we’re doing all this spiritual, you know, stuff, we also have to not knowledge, the fact that we’re human, and that we miss that physical aspect of and so when people ask me, you know, is it possible to heal? And it was a question I was gonna ask you, and obviously, you You’re doing great, or at least, appears to be doing great. I was hesitate when I say that to people. But there is still, you know, my, my other daughter graduated with her master’s just past Friday. And so when those big events come, I still miss Shayna, you know, I still miss her a lot. And a picture will come up, you know, with her Facebook member just came back a couple days ago. And I so I don’t want to give people the impression that it’s like, oh, yeah, at some point, you just get over it and everything’s fine. No.

Dolores 53:07
The way I see it is the grief is, is here. In the beginning, the grief is here. Yeah. And as we move forward with our child or loved one, and we start to continue to build our life, then our life starts to build around. And then the grief kind of goes just kind of over here, you know, and it’s just so it’s not always in your way, but it might you know, then you become more aware of it on some days, and not on others. So I think and I think that’s totally okay. Yes, I absolutely still have my tearful days. I still, of course, miss my son, and I always will. We do have a wedding. My other son is getting married in a month. And it’s so exciting. And we wish Eric could be with us physically. We know he’ll be here, but they’re spiritually we know that. Right? We’re gonna have the picture on the chair. You know, of course, we’ll talk about So yeah, that’s, that is painful. Or if I, you know, I’ve attended other weddings, and I just cry when I see the mother coming down with with the groom thinking, well, I can’t do that with Eric. Right. So yeah, that really is painful to think about. So that comes up. And I can still have joy. I can still feel that have joy from a connection. I do have with Eric. Right. And so it’s just it. Yeah, it’s it’s such a I don’t have to say it, but they weave together.

Brian Smith 54:43
Yeah. I love the way you put that as we move forward with our loved one because one of the phrases that used to just trigger me was when people say moving on. Yeah, just to move on. I’m like, I will never move on. Right. And that that to me, just I get an image Like Shane has here in the past, you know, 2015 when she passed away, and I’m moving on through time, and like, that’s not gonna happen, she’s coming with me, which is why people watching on YouTube, she’s always over my shoulder, because I still have that relationship with her. And that’s very important to me. It was funny, as you were talking, I was thinking, you start off saying how music is so important in your life. And music helps me a lot. I was listening to a song this morning called, it’s just a ride by an artist named Gemma. And I love this song. Because every time I listened to it, it’s like, it’s the bigger picture you talked about when we sit when you say, this is a gift people go, you’re crazy. How could it possibly be a gift, you’re never gonna see your son again, it’s not a gift. But if you look at it, life is just a ride. This is just a temporary experience that we’re having. And Eric is okay. And Eric is still with you. And we’ll see him again. And then we can start to see, you know, the beauty even even in the pain.

Dolores 55:59
Yeah, and I know how strange that sounds. But there is I have found that to be true, or there is beauty in all of it, including the pain. Yeah. And that’s, I guess why? It can be a gift as well. Because Yeah, because if we’re here to feel all of it to have the full experience, then that is part of why we’re here. We can feel it in other ways besides our child transitioning, but I think it’s just sort of like, like I said before, it’s kind of a mystery how it works, but you just kind of know it. This there’s something that is to this is as it is to be, and it’s all good.

Brian Smith 56:45
Yeah. So it sounds I was gonna ask you how your family or how you’re honoring Eric’s legacy. Today, we’ve touched on several these things. I like what you said about your son, I can’t remember your what’s your older son’s name?

Unknown Speaker 56:57
Nick,

Brian Smith 56:57
Nick. Okay. So yeah, you said Nick’s getting married, you’re gonna have a picture of Eric at the at the wedding. I think that’s I think that’s really cool. When people do that. I think that’s a great thing to do. And what other ways is your family keep Eric around?

Dolores 57:12
Well, we, he created his own music has been created music. And of course, we still listen to that. And they haven’t the band hasn’t been able to play live. They did, of course, have to move on. And you know, get a new drummer and all that. But boy, when they did play and when they do again in the future, and we show up and we’re there because he’s up because of course Eric’s there. Why wouldn’t Eric be with the band as they’re playing? So that’s a way to honor. But the other thing is that, aside from the fact that I did write a book in his honor, yeah. As that also, I was looking for a music school, because I wanted to do that scholarship thing. And it was funny how I tried one music school and it just didn’t work. No, they just weren’t getting back to me. And then I tried this other music school, same thing. And I just thought that’s weird. I’m offering, you know, to, you know, the scholarship. And so I ended up at this old music school. That’s like 100 years old. They’ve been around in LA in Los Angeles. And as it turns out, that’s when when my mother was 15, she moved from Milwaukee to LA, and she was a violinist. And that’s what she took violin, and it never occurred to me. Wow. And I thought, and maybe my mom has done to make sure that I go, you know, I feel my mom had a hand in that. And yes, so I’ve been I was able to explain what I wanted to do. And so yes, there’s a drum student that I paid for a year of lessons to start, and then it can continue after that, but we started first year. And he’s, I don’t know, I think he’s 12 or 13. And it’s just beautiful. And he’s a beginner. And, you know, I know Eric would love or does love that, you know that he and we are helping this student? Yeah. Have lessons. That’s awesome. Yeah. So that’s just feels so good.

Brian Smith 59:09
Yeah, it also is, you know, it’s another reminder of how things seem to work out the way they’re supposed to. Sometimes we get frustrated because things aren’t working out the way that you know, we feel like they should and then something even better, works out. So you know, I tell people I’m my banker. I’m, I’m an engineer, so I’m a very analytical, analytical person. But the more I’ve gotten into this and more relights This world is like magical. There’s all kinds of magical things that happen. events that happen to us people that come into our lives, like you said, you know, the synchronicities someone gives you a book someone, a cousin of a cousin calls you up and tells you about, you know, helping parents heal, which is changed so many people’s lives, including my life. And someone randomly on Facebook said you need to reach out to this guy Mark Ireland because he’s his son had passed away Margaret and a couple of books and that led me to help him parents see Oh, I’ve been Know what to buy up and parents So ever since then, yeah,

Dolores 1:00:03
yeah, the connections that well we are all connected is amazing. And that is why all those things happen because because we are all connected and, and it is a miracle. Yeah. Who was it was it? Was it? I know if I forget who I’m going to call it the wrong person, but you can look at life as if nothing is a miracle or is it everything as a miracle?

Unknown Speaker 1:00:26
Was Einstein said?

Dolores 1:00:29
I want to say it was it. Yeah. And when you really look at it, everything is so miraculous. And, and we are all connected.

Brian Smith 1:00:39
Yeah, absolutely. What’s yours? It’s been really great getting to know you and and talk about Eric and talk about your book. So tell people where they can reach out to you to find out more.

Dolores 1:00:49
Great. So I have a website which is Delores look around one word. at.com. And then I have a blog. Delors look. around.blogspot.com. Okay. Yeah. So and I, and most of that has to do with either spirituality or, you know, the other side of the veil or my son or so there’s just some stuff going on there. It’s kind of new. So I but I’ve got that’s what it’s about. And yeah, and then the book is on Amazon called look around.

Brian Smith 1:01:28
Yeah. Well, it’s a look around and mother’s journey from grief and despair to healing and hope. And, yeah, I did get a chance to read it before we did the interview. It’s a great book, I think it’s thick, it can be really helpful to people to kind of, especially if you’re early in grief to kind of know, you know, kind of what to expect. I think that’s can be a very helpful thing and to offer, you know, hope. It’s really, it’s great that you’re doing this for people. So any any last words you want to say before we before we wrap up for today?

Dolores 1:01:59
Oh, well, no, I think I really got across the main messages of of that we can heal and that we are connected and there is a bigger picture. And I just am so grateful to you. Thank you so much, Brian, for having me on your wonderful podcast.

Brian Smith 1:02:16
Well, thanks for being here. Have a great rest of your day.

Dolores 1:02:19
Thanks. Okay, you too.

Brian Smith 1:02:22
That’s it for another episode of grief to growth. I sure hope you got something out of it. Please stay in contact with me by reaching out at www dot grief to growth calm. That’s grief the number two growth com or you can text the word growth to 31996 at simply text growth, gr o w t h 231996. So if you’re watching this on YouTube, please make sure you’re subscribed. So hit the subscribe button. And then hit the little bell here and it’ll notify you when I have new content. Always please share the information if you enjoy it. That helps me to get more views and to get the message out to more people. Thanks a lot and have a wonderful day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai