Life Changes & Safety with Edie Weinstein

This interview is with Edie Weinstein, a social worker, therapist, journalist, and interfaith minister who knows firsthand how life can change in an instant. At 55, she survived a heart attack and received a stent in her artery—a moment that became a profound wake-up call. Instead of letting fear define her future, Edie leaned into mindset, trauma awareness, and deep self-compassion as part of her healing. 

She’s also the founder of Hug Mobsters Armed with Love, spreading the emotional and cardiac benefits of safe, intentional touch, and the creator of a strength-based therapeutic approach that helps people reclaim what’s right with them—using tools like vision boards and intentional focus. 

Edie has even taken her message to the world stage with a TEDx talk on the healing power of touch, and checked off some pretty incredible bucket-list dreams along the way—including interviewing the Dalai Lama. 

This is a conversation about healing, resilience, and choosing connection over fear—especially in the second half of life. “So let’s Call IT In With Dar”! 

The LoveTuner
The Lovetuner is a simple flute is considered to be the vibration of love and compassion.

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Transcript

This interview is with Edie Weinstein, a social worker, therapist, journalist, and interfaith minister who knows firsthand how life can change in an instant. At 55, she survived a heart attack and received a stent in her artery—a moment that became a profound wake-up call. Instead of letting fear define her future, Edie leaned into mindset, trauma awareness, and deep self-compassion as part of her healing. She’s also the founder of Hug Mobsters Armed with Love, spreading the emotional and cardiac benefits of safe, intentional touch, and the creator of a strength-based therapeutic approach that helps people reclaim what’s right with them—using tools like vision boards and intentional focus. Edie has even taken her message to the world stage with a TEDx talk on the healing power of touch, and checked off some pretty incredible bucket-list dreams along the way—including interviewing the Dalai Lama. This is a conversation about healing, resilience, and choosing connection over fear—especially in the second half of life. “So let’s Call IT In with Dar”!  

Welcome in, Edie. Before we get into our topic of “life changes and safety”, will you please tell our audience a little bit about yourself and how you got to the point you are today. 

Speaker Edie           

Thank you, Darla, it's a pleasure being on your show. My name is Edie Weinstein, and I am a renaissance woman, like probably a lot of the women that are and men that are listening into the show, I am a hype professional, hyphenate. So I'm a social worker, hyphen, therapist, hyphen, journalist, hyphen, interfaith minister, public speaker, PR and marketing person. I'm also the founder of an organization called hug mobsters armed with love, which we'll talk a bit about later on. And the other cool thing that I got to do, I have, I have a bucket list, like probably most people that you know, and one of them was to offer a TED talk. And that's something I did in October of 2022 again, I'll speak more about that. But I look at life as what I call an optimistic O, P, T, I, hyphen, Mystic, someone who sees the world through the    possibilities. 

Speaker Dar      

I love that… sees the world through eyes of possibility, 

Speaker Edie       

because some people will say they're pessimistic or they're optimistic, and they'll see the glass either half full or half empty. I see it all full, because even if a glass is only half full of liquid, the other half is air, so it's always full of something. And we get to decide what we put in that glass. 

Speaker Dar       

Yes, and by the plethora of things you're interested in, just by your title and your background, that's so exciting. So I know that you'll come to today's topic from a very interesting perspective for our audience. So let's dive into that topic of life changes and safety. 

Speaker Edie  

Well, a major life change happened 11 and a half years ago, I was 55 years old, and I was driving home from the gym. I was there maybe five or six times a week. I had a normal workout for about like an hour and a half, and I started having what I absolutely knew were heart attack symptoms. And women's heart attack symptoms are very different from men's. I had the torrential sweats, jaw pain and tightness like somebody grabbed a hold of my jaw and I couldn't move it, palpitations, lightheadedness, dizziness. It's not the crushing left chest pain that men often get. And rather than pulling over my car and calling 911, I drove home 10 minutes, and rather than calling 911, once I got home, I picked up the phone and I called my office. At the time, I was working as a therapist at an outpatient drug and alcohol rehab, so here I was working with folks in addiction, and I had my own addiction at the time work, and it wasn't just a solid work ethic, it was workaholism. I couldn't not work, so I called and I said, "I'm not feeling very well today. Can you cancel my clients? Hung up the phone again. I didn't call 911, I got back in the car and drove myself to the hospital again about 1015, minutes away. Folks don't ever, ever, ever drive in the midst of a heart attack. I must have had guardian angels looking over me, because I didn't crash my car. I didn't get hurt. Nobody else got hurt. So I stumbled into the ER and I gasped out the words, I think I'm having a heart attack. They whisked me up to the cardiac cath lab, and within an hour, I had a stent inserted into a fully occluded left interior descending artery, which is often called the widow maker heart attack. And the surgeon came into the room, and he brought me a picture, an x-ray of what it looked like prior to the heart attack, or during the heart attack, the LED looked like a broken tree branch. And then he showed me what it looked like with the stent inserted and it popped back up. And he said, Don't let this happen again. And I said, Well, how did it happen in the first place? He said, Well, tell me about your family history, genetics, and predisposition. I said, Well, my mom had died of a heart attack in 2010 and this was four years after almost four years after hers. And. My sister had had two No, yeah, she died of a heart attack. I'm sorry. She died of congestive heart failure. My sister had two heart attacks prior to mine. My cholesterol was through the roof. My blood pressure was through the roof. I was working 12 to 14 hour days, workaholic, sleeping five or six hours a night. And this went on for about two years. I was also swinging five hour energy drinks a couple times a month, and I'd actually had one the day before the heart attack. And he said, Okay, we need to change your diet. You're going to be on medication, going to do cardiac rehab, and he never said anything about changing my mindset. They usually don't. Now, there may be programs that do, but the hospital, as wonderful as it was, and it's my go to hospital for anything, they didn't have a social worker come in and talk to me about what you know, what I had just experienced. It wasn't until I was in cardiac rehab, and I met a woman there who was in her 80s at the time, and she had had open heart surgery, didn't have a heart attack, but open heart surgery. And she said, You do realize you've experienced a trauma. And I said, What are you talking about? Trauma? I'm fine. I didn't die. My heart didn't stop. She: No, no, no. When you have a heart attack, your body registers it as a trauma. You need to get support for this. And I started realizing how the medical system works, and I'm not dissing it at all, because I am part of it. I've been a medical social worker, and we need to understand that when our bodies experience trauma, so do our minds. So I started talking about it. I started educating women about our heart attack proclivities and what you know, what we can do to help prevent it, and how we can pick up our lives after that. So cardiac rehab a few times a week. And even in cardiac rehab, my workaholic tendencies kicked in. The therapist had to say, slow down. You're pushing too hard that you know, and stop talking while you're on the treadmill. And I said, You don't understand I talked for a living. I have to be able to walk and talk at the same time. And I saw a bumper sticker while I was in cardiac rehab on somebody else's car, you know, in the hospital parking lot that said it's not sweat, it's liquid, awesome. And the therapist there used to encourage us by saying, Oh, you're doing awesome.  

Speaker Edie…, 

so even when I was in cardiac rehab, my workaholic tendencies kicked in. The therapist used to tell me I was pushing too hard. I needed to slow down, because I had a they put a heart monitor on you and you know, my heart rate was up too high, not that they were afraid I was going to have a heart attack and die there, but they just said, you need to slow it down and stop talking while you're working out. And I said, You don't understand. I talk for a living. I have to be able to walk and talk at the same time. And I remember, while I was in cardiac rehab, I saw a bumper sticker on somebody's car in the parking lot of the hospital. It said, it's not sweat, it's liquid awesome. And the therapist used to encourage us by saying, Oh, you're doing awesome. That's awesome. And I said, I'm not, you know, I told myself, you know, I couldn't slow down until I was pouring out liquid awesome. And eventually I did have to slow down because they said, you don't want to get sick again, you need to listen to your body. So that's part of what the big change too, was listening to my body as part of my cardiac rehab. I walked through my little nearby town of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and it's in Bucks County, about an hour outside of Philadelphia, and I thought, Huh, why don't I combine hugs with walking? And where that idea came from was earlier that same year, Valentine's Day weekend of 2014 I gathered a group of friends at 30th Street Station, which is a big train station in Philly, for a free hugs flash mob and between. The 12 of us, we estimated that we hugged about 200 people. And one of our friends, who's a musician, walked around playing the the Super Tramp song, give a little bit, you know, give a little bit, give a little bit of your love to me, over and over and over again. I don't know how many times we played that, and most people said yes to the hugs if you said no, and the ones that said no, we said, Okay, well, hug somebody. You know, enjoy your day, because hugs have to be by consent. Now, the most powerful experience I had that day was that there was an Iraq war vet who approached us and said he was the only survivor of his platoon, and he had survivor's guilt. He said I thought about ending my life until just now when I met you people. You give me hope. Can I join you? And of course, we all start crying, and we gave him his own free hug sign, and he walked around hugging people now, all these years later, 12 coming up on 12 years later, I have no idea what happened to that man, but I pray that interaction with us gave him a new life. And I thought, huh, hugs save lives. So that's when I started that summer doing free hug strolls through Doylestown, and I estimate that in that time between then and now, I've hugged 1000s of people. Sometimes I do the free hug events by myself. Sometimes friends join me. And I've hugged in the United States, in Canada, and then in 2018 I took a trip of a lifetime to Ireland, and I hugged my way through Ireland, and it was just an extraordinary experience, because hugs are heart friendly, emotional, heart friendly and cardiac, heart friendly. So I encourage people every day to hug somebody 

Speaker Dar    

Beautiful. That is so awesome, and covering that was a huge life change for you. And I love how you mentioned the flash mob and that hugs are for consent. Could we get just a little bit more specific and maybe talk about specific client transformations that you've helped with? And of course, we'll keep their names confidential 

Speaker Edie 

Absolutely, just a little bit of background. I am a seasoned therapist. I've been in the therapeutic field in one way or another for 45 years, and I've worked in inpatient psych, inpatient Medical 

Home Care, your nursing home care. What else? Community, mental health, drug and alcohol. As I mentioned, I've taught social workers continuing education classes, excuse me. And currently I'm working in an outpatient group practice. And over the years, I've worked with clients who are, you know, struggling with mental health diagnoses. Some are trauma survivors. Some are dealing with addictions, some relationship issues, some loss in grief, some aging, whole slew of life issues. And my work with them is with the intention of helping them create the kind of lives that they want. I start by saying I want to focus on your strengths, not just what you feel is wrong in your life, but what you feel is right. Because when we focus on our strengths, it empowers us to do more, to heal, to feel motivated. And you know, we start out with that understanding. I also tell them that I'm an out of the box therapist. Now you can't see this because we're on just voice, but I have purple hair, and it gives me street cred with my teen clients, because I work with people from five on up, and people who are out of the box thinkers themselves are more comfortable when they see my hair like, Okay, this this person is going to help me move past my limitations, and I also suggest to them that it's this is just not what happens in the session that matters, but what they do outside of the session, and then I'm an accountability partner for them. If they say they're going to do some, I'm going to hold them to it, and I'm going to say, Okay, tell me how you know how you did with this thing that you agreed to do in the session. Well, I didn't get around to it. Okay? What got in the way? Because that's a jumping off point. If some, if. If someone does what they say they're going to do, great if they don't do what they say they're going to do, then we explore what's underneath it. How come what happened, and what can we do together to make it easier for you to do this thing that you are hesitant to do. So one thing that comes to mind, one client I had several years ago when I was working in outpatient drug and alcohol. Was a gentleman who had lost his job because he got a DUI, and the job he had was driving, and he came into my office and he said, Okay, I need a new job. How do we do this? And he said, Well, I'm gonna give you some suggestions. The first thing is, I'd like you to make a list of the qualities of the ideal job, not just what you're going to be doing, but what your the work environment is like, what your boss is like, what your co workers are like, how much money you're making and what else, how far from home. You know. What do you love about this job, and I want you to tell me about it like write it in the list, as if you have it now, not just, oh, I'm going to find a job that meets these criteria. The second thing I had him do was create a vision board. And you know, you know what a vision board is, 

Speaker Dar     

yes, but maybe you want to give a quick outline for our audience, 

Speaker Edie   

Absolutely so a vision board is a collection of images and words that represent, that symbolize what you want in your life. Could be a job, could be education, home, relationships, what you know, health, all the things that you want. L can be specific to one issue, or it could be a whole bunch of them. And you can go to $1 store and get poster board and glue stick and scissors and a bunch of old magazines that you might have, or somebody that you know might have, and you just look at the images and whatever leaps out at you can't, you know, can be, Oh, I like that. I'm not sure why I like it, but it touches my heart. I'm going to tear that page out. And then you cut the, you know, the images or words, and then you put them on the poster board like it's a collage. And then you put the collage where the vision board is, where you can see it and give it all kinds of good energy. Now some people, in fact, a client today that I'm going to see created his online, so we're going to go over that today. So he did that, and then I said, I want you to write a story about your new job, or a letter like you're saying, Oh, guess what? I just got this wonderful new job, and here's what it's like. So he said, Okay, I'll do that. Two weeks later, he comes in with his vision board framed. It was a little one. He didn't have a huge vision board. He said, Guess what? I got a new job, and it's not it. He said, it's even better than the job I had before making more money. My boss knows my situation, and he is willing to pick me up and take me home every day until I can drive again, till I get my license back. And this is not a driving job. So that was a huge success story, partly because he didn't just do those things. He applied for jobs too. No, it's not. It's sort of like you say, oh, I want to win the lottery. I want a vision board about winning the lottery, but you don't buy a ticket. You got to buy a ticket. And I'm this way back in 20. Let's see, it was the same. I left that job the same year I had the heart attack, like right after I had the heart attack. And so it's all these years later, I'm hoping that this gentleman has been able to fulfill his agreement with himself about staying sober and about having a, you know, creating a brand new life, so that you know he is one of, one of, the hugest success stories. And I don't, I don't glorify myself by saying that, but we are a team. When I work with clients, we're a team. 

Speaker Dar   

What are some examples, though, of how you worked on mindset that was, you know, that was all manifestation and mindset techniques. So that's a beautiful story to share with us, and I'd like to follow that up with you, leading us through an activity. 

Speaker Edie     

Oh, absolutely. And this is something that I do every day in the shower, and it doesn't matter what time of day, or how long the shower is, it's about letting go and calling in. So I'd like folks who are listening to envision yourself standing in the shower, okay, I will look okay. And the first part of the shower where the water is running, you could say, I let go of and you could say it out loud, or say it. In your mind, I let go of anger, depression, frustration, codependence, my case, workaholism, addiction, any belief in ill health or scarcity. You know, these are mine. It can be you can use mine or choose your own. I let go of feeling of helplessness, hopelessness, despair, worry, what else? Oh, in my case, also, because I'm 67 cognitive decline, cognitive dissonance, conflict, all the things that I carry throughout my day, taking on other people as a therapist taking on other people's issues, codependence, and imagine them washing down the drain, okay, the second part of the shower I call In love, peace, healing, bliss, blessings, abundance and prosperity. More than enough money. And this is what I say, more than enough money for everything I need, want and desire, money to pay my bills, on time, money to donate, to save, to share, to have fun with what else? Love. I said, Love, and then I asked, no. I don't tell anybody what to believe spiritually, but I have a spiritual practice, and I say every day, okay, God give me my marching orders. Tell me what to say, who to say it to to help make the world a kinder and more loving place. So the exercise takes as long as your shower does. And again, use your own words, if mine don't resonate for you. Anything you want, first part of the shower, again, anything you want to let go of and wash it flush down the drain. Second part, anything you want to call in. And you can while you're soaking yourself up, you're calling in everything that you want in your life, and by the time you get out, you're going to feel clean, physically, emotionally, spiritually, every which way. And it's fun. I had a good time with it. 

Speaker Dar  

I love that. Thanks for sharing. I do want to mention that I do the first part of your shower. I do the letting go, letting everything go down the drain, and then I kind of do a little close to the drain ceremony kind of thing, but to add the calling in and the marching orders, what a great idea. 

Speaker Edie 

Thank you, because you know that when we want to make changes, nature abhors a vacuum. If we leave space, all kinds of stuff can come in. So when you rather fill up that space with good stuff, things that you want in your life, and it's reinforcing, you know, the the more I tell my clients this all the time, the more you practice a skill, the more it's going to come naturally, you know? And a lot of my clients over the years have said, Yeah, I'm really good at starting, but I can't maintain the momentum, which is why New Year's resolutions don't work, because we have a hard time with that. So I say, Okay, let's not worry about New Year's resolutions. I call them New Year's re solutions, s, O, U, L, and what is it that your soul desires? What is it that you really not just want, but know that you were born to do, and how good does it feel when you fulfill that desire? Why wouldn't you want that every day, and the more we do something, the more joy we get out of it, if it, if it resonates with what we want. I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you. The other one is just gonna say, re solution. You love that.  So the other thing I encourage people to do, and it's fun, is to create a bucket list of things that you want to do before you kick the bucket. One of two a few of my bucket list items that I got to fulfill. The one was, was a trip to Ireland that I mentioned in 2018 the year I turned 60. The other was an interview with the Dalai Lama. In 2008 he came to Philadelphia, and I got to meet him, hug him, and interview him. And I had spent 20 years manifesting that interview. I used a vision board. I wrote questions as if I was going to interview him the next day. I did have an ace in the hole. Um, a friend named Greg Schultz, who is an American born Buddhist, and he was tapped to be the event producer when His Holiness came to Philly in 2008 so he was able to arrange the interview. So I owe him a debt of gratitude that I will never be able to pay. And. Except the agreement was that I talk about it whenever it's appropriate, and, you know, write articles about the interview. So there was that one, the trip to Ireland, and then in 2022 I offered a TEDx talk called overcoming the taboo of touch. And I'll send you the link for people to be able to watch it, and it was based in part on the hug mobsters story that I told you, but also about a paper that I did in grad school called counseling practitioners views on using touch as a therapeutic modality Now typically, you know, therapists are taught, oh, don't touch your clients. And there are many reasons for I mean, people have experienced trauma, so touch feels frightening to them, the importance of boundaries. They're not accustomed to touch, but touch when done by cons offered by consent can be therapeutic. And my clients know, you know, the clients that I see now ask for hugs. I don't hug them without their consent. Some of them, when we stand up at the end of the session, will come over and ask for a hug. So the TEDx talk was in Ohio because I decided I only wanted to go somewhere within driving distance. This was still during the pandemic. Didn't want to, you know, wasn't ready to fly. And it was just an extraordinary experience that, you know, I can still remember as if it was happening. Now, the other thing about it was that after I manifested it, I had to memorize the 17 minute talk, because there are no cue cards. There is no teleprompter. It's not improv. It's got to be memorized by presenting it as if it was improv. So I kept worrying, what if I can't remember it? What if I freeze on stage in front of the whole world? Oh, my God, you know? And I thought, Nope, we're going to do this. One of the coaches said to me during one of our practices. She said, Look, people, stupider than you have done this, you'll be fine, don't worry. And that made me laugh, and it was encouraging. So I would practice my talk every day, several times a day, in the car with friends and family. I bought a little round red rug, which is what some of the stages have. They have a red circle to stand in. So I bought a red Buffy rug, which is still in my dining room, and I could see it from where I'm sitting, and I would stand in the middle of the rug and give the talk. And as it turned out, our stage didn't have a red circle, but it's still a good teaching tool. But the coolest part, you know, I would do it in the shower too. I would practice in the shower, but I would practice in my sleep. I would literally fall asleep saying, you know, my running the the talk through my mind, and I would wake up in the middle of the night and I would dream about the talk, and I'd wake up in the middle of the night and go back where I left off, and by the time I got on stage. No big deal, but we were miked with a clip on mic that went down the back of my jacket, and I said to the coach that had ushered me on stage, make sure the microphones were on. She forgot to turn the microphone on so three or four minutes into my talk, she looked over at me and motions, come here, come here, come here. I said, What? And she said, Your microphone is not on. You have to start all over again, you know, so I was able to do it, and you know, it was graceful under pressure, so that's what got me through that bucket list item. 

Speaker Dar     

Oh, thanks for sharing that. That's such a fun story. And I think there's a real lesson for everyone in your technique of preparing. And even if we don't have a TED talk, even if we just have a big event coming up. What a great prep technique, for sure. Thank you. Thank you. I'd love it if you would talk about how people can take the next step with you. 

Speaker Edie 

Okay, well, the only way that I can see therapy clients is that they are in Pennsylvania, I'm only licensed to practice in Pennsylvania, but I can do coaching. So if they're interested in a coaching session that, again, is not psychotherapy, it's goal setting. It's working with me as an accountability partner. I'm offering a 20 minute free consultation to talk about what. Goals might be, and if you decide you want to work with me, then we'll take it from there. My website is optimistical, like I mentioned before, being an optimistic www, dot O, P, T, I, hyphen, mystical, m, y, s, t, I, C, A, l.com, there is a form there to fill out that request form, like I want to take you up on this offer, and I will get it gets emailed to me when people do that, and I'm more than happy to work with folks in that regard. Awesome. 

Speaker Dar  

That is such a generous offer. Thank you. Thank you so much, and we'll put that information in the show notes. Now, before we wrap up, is there anything else that you're really being called to share with our audience before we leave? 

Speaker Edie   

Yeah, absolutely. As I mentioned in our talk prior to the interview, the world is a scary place right now, and people don't know how to function in the midst of that, regardless of which side of the aisle you're on, politically, it's scary. So I encourage my clients, number one, to breathe, because we need to be able to function. And when we hold our breath, we're not thinking clearly so everybody takes a deep breath and just lets out a sound that describes how you're feeling in the moment. Just let it out. The second thing I encourage people to do is to compartmentalize control what you can in your life. If you have children to take care of. Take care of those kiddos. If you have a job, do your job to the best of your ability. Eat healthfully, exercise, get out into nature, spend time with kindred spirits. Remind yourself that humans are incredibly resilient and historically, we have gotten through so many things that it's hard to imagine, and one way or another, we're going to get through this too. Be inspired. I got to see a really cool musical that debuted on Broadway a few years ago called stuffs, Su, F, F, S, and it's about the women's suffragist movement. I didn't forget I was when I was an undergrad. I minored in women's studies, and of course, I learned about it, but I hadn't remembered that white, white women, not black women. Unfortunately, white women got the right to vote in 1924 years before my mother was born, and then black women got the right to vote in 1965 so this musical inspired me that despite all odds, we can do amazing things. So I encourage people to do what they can to make the world a better place, regardless of what that looks like, and to trust just again, despite all appearances that you can know. You can invoke protection. You can surround yourself in love, in a bubble, and whatever you want to call it, and it's not cosmic, foo, foo stuff. It's genuine. This past week, friends and I did a zoom call and we did a a visualization, where we asked all the peacemakers we could think of, past, present and, you know, living or dead to join us in making the world a safer, better, more loving place, 

Speaker Dar  

beautiful, beautiful. Well, thank you again for coming in, Edie. I'm so happy that we had this enlightening interview and this time together, thank you. Thank you. 

Speaker Edie  

My pleasure. My pleasure. Thanks.