[00:00:00] Jay: I woke up one day, a different person. Everything that I had believed from my 49 years of life made no sense any more, and everything that I didn't believe made perfect sense. 

[00:00:13] Jill: Welcome back to Seeing Death Clearly. I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula, and end-of-life coach. The conversations I have with my guests may challenge you to think outside the box of what you believe to be true about death, dying, grief, and learning to live life to the fullest. This week is part two of my conversation with Jay Deutsch and about the healing journey he went on after the death of his wife by suicide. We will pick back up at the story of Jay being in the cemetery and the moment he forgave Larissa. And what life was like after that moment.

[00:00:44] At the end of the episode, I'm gonna tell you a little bit about how you can support the podcast, so please stick around. Thank you for joining me and Jay for this conversation. 

[00:00:53] Jay: My first spiritual experience was one day I was driving home from picking up weed and I passed the road that the cemetery is on, which I hadn't been to in years because I hated her too much.

[00:01:10] I resented her for leaving me alone with the kids. So I felt no reason to go to the cemetery and visit her. I kind of blacked out, and when I came to the car was parked in the cemetery across from her, her, her grave, and I remember sitting in the car and I was hysterical. I was crying, I was yelling. I was hitting the steering wheel.

[00:01:33] I was angry. And I got so infuriated that I got out of the car and I just started screaming at her, cursing at her, telling her how angry I was that I fucking hated her. How could you fucking do this to me? How could you do this to your kids? And as I was screaming, a breeze blew over me. It was a perfectly sunny, calm day.

[00:02:00] There was, there was no wind. A strong gust blew over me and I felt her say, I'm sorry. And at that moment everything changed. 

[00:02:10] Jill: That's so beautiful. It's making me cry. I mean, that's really beautiful. 

[00:02:14] Jay: It's almost like I felt her hugging me and saying I'm sorry, and all of the anger and hate just that, all that negative energy just left my body and I remembered the love.

[00:02:27] Mm-hmm. The 26 years. That's amazing. That's what I call my shift and moving forward from there, I was still going to the bar every night, but I had a different outlook on life. I threw away all my black t-shirts and bought colored yellow, green, blue, red, orange, and they started making fun of me at the bar for wearing colors.

[00:02:54] And this bartender, this young girl who was a miserable person. She actually said to me one night, I'm so sick of your positivity. Why don't you just get the fuck outta here? So I left the next Friday night. I, I went in and I kicked the jukebox and unplugged it, and everyone turned around and I gave everybody the finger salute and said, fuck all of you.

[00:03:16] None of you are my real friends. I'm out. And I haven't been back to that bar in three and a half years. I was still drinking. So I went to another bar nearby and I had my next spiritual experience. There was a girl sitting across from the bar across from me with her boyfriend, and we made eye contact, and I felt like I was having a heart attack.

[00:03:43] My chest was tight, my heart was pounding, I was short of breath, and I had no idea what was going on. I was there with two other guys, so I said, I'm gonna go outside and have a smoke. And I got up and walked away, walked outside, and literally 30 seconds later she appeared and she stood next to me and she said, do you feel that?

[00:04:09] I was like, yeah, it's insane. And we started talking. It turns out a month prior her father had committed suicide and it was a murder suicide situation. We almost felt an electrical charge between us. We could feel each other's emotions and it felt like, it felt like we were holding hands, but we weren't.

[00:04:33] The night went on a little bit. She went back to her boyfriend. I went back in with my friends and when her and her boyfriend were leaving, she came over and gave me a kiss goodbye, which was odd. She later told me that she told her boyfriend that we both had a similar experience and she just felt a connection with me.

[00:04:53] We started texting every day. She left her boyfriend and moved in with me and the kids two weeks later, and the term twin flame came up. It was something that she had experienced in the past where someone told her that she was their twin flame, but wasn't. I had never heard the term before. I had no spiritual or religious background, so to me it was just like, yeah, okay, whatever.

[00:05:20] I remember we would sit on the couch at night and stare into each other's eyes for hours and it would be like three o'clock in the morning and it would be like, shit, where'd the time go? My kids started calling her Mommy Colleen, as a joke, and her son that she had with a previous marriage had come to spend a night with us.

[00:05:41] And he slept in my daughter's bunk bed and the next morning he said, mommy, I want to be a part of this family. Oh. And uh, he was seven at the time. It was, it was incredible. It was magical. And then we got engaged and we thought about baby names and it was, it was crazy. And then one day I came home from work and she was standing at the door holding the ring and she said, this is overwhelming.

[00:06:11] I can't do this. And she went back to her boyfriend. Wow. So all of the grief that I had bottled up inside me just erupted like Mentos in a soda bottle, and I went into a deep, dark hole again. So this was about the time that Covid hit. And again, three days later, I lost my job. My boss came in and said, you know, we're closing down shop.

[00:06:43] We can't afford to keep you, yada yada. And instead of reacting, I said, thank you. I stood up, I shook his hand, and I walked out and I went outside and I looked up at this guy and I don't know why. And I said, God, why is this happening to me? And I actually saw a face in the clouds and I was to say, blown away would be an understatement.

[00:07:15] And I said, is she my twin flame? What is this? Why do I feel this way? And I got in the car and I got on the highway. And just as I merged into traffic, a black Chevy Suburban cut me off and the license plate was T W one N.

[00:07:40] Jill: I love stuff like that and it also freaks me out cuz I'm like, how does that happen?

[00:07:44] Jay: Freaked me the fuck out. Mm-hmm. That was my confirmation and I had to pull over and gather myself. I drove home. And I started doing research, looking on the internet. What are twin flames? What does this mean? And I found out there's a lot of misinformation by confused soulmates, and there's a lot of very accurate information.

[00:08:09] In the three months that I met her that we were together, I started my positivity shift. I started looking at life through the lens of positivity a little bit. I started a new Facebook page and I started doing friend requests for everybody that I could find in the spiritual world. Mm-hmm. Everyone in the Twin Flame world, tarot readers, psychics, I mean everyone who would maybe I shed some light on what I was experiencing.

[00:08:36] Someone suggested the book, the Power of Now, by Eckhart Tole. I downloaded the audio book and I listened to it to and from work every day. And then The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. Mm-hmm. And from what I learned, I was going through what they call Dark Night of the Soul, which is your spiritual awakening, the process.

[00:09:02] And some spiritual and psychic friends that I had on Facebook had told me that I was going through what they call a rapid awakening, something that could usually take months or years. Took me two weeks and I woke up one day a different person. Everything that I had believed from my 49 years of life made no sense anymore, and everything that I didn't believe made perfect sense.

[00:09:31] Now I consider myself spiritual. I started my training and coaching online and got certified in coaching in N L P Neurolinguistics programming. Currently getting certified in E M D R, I'm Reiki level two certified. I have dedicated my life to helping others to see grief through a different lens.

[00:09:59] I've helped hundreds, if not thousands of people to gain a different perspective because perception in life is everything, and we only believe what we already know until we choose to learn something new. Before the last three and a half years or so, I have been building my Facebook profile. I've started several groups.

[00:10:23] Uh, I have one called Learning to Love Yourself with almost 4,000 members. I have another group called Positive Memes and Inspirations, which is just a daily dose of positivity. That group has approximately 4,000 members, and I've been posting and commenting in other grief groups, about 25 of them total.

[00:10:48] I see a common thread in all of these support groups. And that's, life sucks. I can't do this. It's gonna last forever and I wanna die. And I thought to myself, how can people heal? Reading and listening to those type of posts every day, and all of the comments are what I call toxic validation. Someone goes on and says, I hate my life.

[00:11:19] I hate being a solo parent. I'm never gonna be happy again. I'm never gonna be loved again. I just want to die. And then I see 300 comments that say, me Too. I decided that I wanted to start my own grief support group, but based in positivity and healing. And within a few months, I have over a thousand members.

[00:11:40] And the comments are all based in love and light and positivity and motivation. People that truly don't want to accept the propaganda that grief lasts forever. 

[00:11:53] Jill: Definitely share in the show notes, links to your Facebook, all the groups, cuz I'm sure people listening would really benefit from that positivity.

[00:12:02] I find that as well where I'm part of caregiver groups and grief groups and I understand this desire to want to like vent how you're feeling, but you're right. Then you get all these people that almost feed into that pain. I don't know if it benefits anybody when there's that loop that then you get stuck in.

[00:12:23] Jay: Absolutely. I wrote a post recently about venting what it actually does on a neurological level. Since my certification in coaching, I've taken a very, very deep interest in neuroscience, the biology of thoughts, emotions, and feelings, psychology, grief, and depression. Of course. I have learned through my studies in neuroscience.

[00:12:47] Basically every thought we have is an electrical impulse in the mind, and every electrical impulse has a frequency or a vibration. And what people don't understand, a lot of people say, well, when I vent, it makes me feel better. And my response is, well, I used to punch people in the face and that made me feel better.

[00:13:07] But that doesn't mean it's a healthy coping mechanism. What venting actually does is it puts our focus on that, which we do not want, and our energy flows where our focus goes. When we vent, we're actually asking the universe for more of what we don't want, and we get it in the thousands of comments that say, yeah, me too.

[00:13:32] And that is a form of toxic validation. Where other people agreeing to our negative thoughts validates them and says, yeah, yeah, it's right. The way you feel is good. You're allowed to feel the way you feel. I validate your feelings. It's okay to not be okay. It's okay to feel that way and to be angry. When we bitch and complain and rant and vent, it becomes a coping mechanism that's easier for us to go to the same as drinking or drugs.

[00:14:05] The brain becomes addicted to focusing on the things that we don't want. There's the term toxic positivity that's floating around now, and I really don't think that people understand what that is. Toxic positivity is when you say don't feel what you feel, look for the positive in everything. It's not okay to be sad, and I never say that it's not okay to be sad because as children were programmed to think that being sad or crying is a bad thing.

[00:14:35] We have all of our emotions and all of our feelings, and they're all there for a reason, but they're triggered by thoughts. They're just chemical responses in the brain and in the body to thoughts that we have. Sometimes our thoughts are self sabotaging and not correct. People will focus on, I'm so grief, strick, and I want to die because I'm never gonna be happy again.

[00:14:59] That is called a limiting belief. It's not true. It's just what you're thinking through the lens of grief right now, you're looking through the future through misery and pain, but you can't tell what you're gonna think or feel in the future. And when we say I am or I can't, we're creating our reality. 

[00:15:19] Jill: Yes to all of that.

[00:15:21] My question that I'm thinking of is when I work with people around grief, I do encourage them to get it out. But often I'll say by maybe journaling, so you're writing it all out because there's definitely that connection between your hand moving on the paper using movement to move the energy out because the energy will get trapped in our bodies, and that causes physical illness and mental illness and all these other things.

[00:15:48] Now I'm thinking of that fine line of difference between venting versus getting something out because it's healthy for our bodies to release it. 

[00:16:00] Jay: One of the ways that I tell my clients to process and deal with their thoughts, feelings, and emotions is by letting them out and talking about them is a healthy way, but talking about them in a way that allows you to get through it.

[00:16:17] In a positive way. I used to have an 80 pound heavy bag hanging in my room where I'm sitting right now, and I would come in my room, close the door, blast the music, and I would beat the shit out of the heavy bag. And then afterwards I would feel relief. I took my children to the children's bereavement group sponsored by our local hospice.

[00:16:38] And my son went for three and a half years. I was against therapy personally because during my parents' divorce, my dad took me to a child psychologist who tried to label me as having conditions. Because they fit the criteria in his textbooks, and he needed something to check off on the insurance form so that he could bill my father.

[00:16:59] Thankfully, my father was a little bit smarter than this guy and said, my son is dealing with a terrible situation and just need someone to talk to, to let it out. There's nothing wrong with him. And what I tell people is, there's nothing wrong with grief. It's the normal human response to losing a loved one.

[00:17:19] It's not ADHD, it's not depression, it's not P T S D. It's not any of those labels that big pharma invented to sell drugs, like you said about energy. All of our thoughts are either negative or positive. When we focus on negative thoughts, that negative energy and the stress chemicals, it creates flood the body and create the feelings we have if we don't learn to let the energy out in a healthy way.

[00:17:46] It gets stored in ourselves. A lot of people will say, oh, I go to the gym, or I immerse myself in work, or I do other things to keep my mind off the things that I'm thinking and feeling. And that is called avoidance. And that stores the negative energy in your body and it destroys the immune system. It destroys the brain, it destroys the body, and it can manifest as illness.

[00:18:16] Depression, prolonged grief disorder, cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure, and pretty much any other ailment that, you know, the, the body suffers. And I tell my clients, you know, journal, write it down. Write down how you're feeling. And what I have learned through neuroscience is, you know, the brain is just an organ that floats in the dark in our skull.

[00:18:41] It has no connection to the outside world, other than through our five senses. So everything that the brain creates is based on our sensory perception. And I used the example of my daughter learning her multiplication tables. Uh, when she was learning her timestables, she would sit in her room with the flashcards and she'd practice for a half hour and I would go quiz her.

[00:19:05] And I remembered this clearly, I would ask her, you know, what's six times six? And she would sit there looking up at the ceiling, counting on her fingers, and she'd say, 30. And I'd tell her, now I want you to study again for 10 minutes, but I want you to say each card out loud. And she didn't understand why.

[00:19:25] And I told her that the act of speaking creates more sensory perception. It's the, the movement of your mouth. And the hearing of the sound triggers the brain to create a new neural pathway. It creates a new memory, a new thought. So she did this for 10 minutes and I went back in and she was rattling them off from memory with no problem.

[00:19:49] And I explained to my clients that the act of doing and engaging your body and your senses creates new beliefs and new patterns and new realities in your mind. Just by thinking these things alone, you're just creating energy, and the energy has nowhere to go. Yell, scream, break something, go out and scream at the sky.

[00:20:14] Write it down, whatever you need to do to actually get that energy out. Going on Facebook and typing a negative rant does nothing to get rid of the energy. 

[00:20:24] Jill: So you pointed out that, then other people go on and they say, me too. Me too. And you get the likes and you get the hearts. So then it feeds that desire that we have in us for love and for acceptance.

[00:20:36] Exactly. For validation. Which then feeds that loop of like, oh, well, how do I get the validation? It's by this negative type of ranting, which then subconsciously probably makes us want to hold onto that because if I don't rant, then I don't get the love, so I need to rant in order to get the love. It's not a good cycle to be stuck in.

[00:20:58] Exactly. Exactly. At least not if you really wanna heal. If you just wanna get the the likes. Okay, fine. Just like that bar that you used to go to. This is partially why I have a hard time socializing with a lot of other humans because this is the type of conversation I wanna have. Like the conversation that we're having here is real and it's vulnerable and it's just, it's a connection where so often I feel like people just complain about their kids and their spouses and their jobs and the neighbor and the politics and, and.

[00:21:27] I don't want to be part of that. Yes, I don't. Because it will eventually get to the point where then I used to have to drink a lot in order to be around people. I would just have to drink a lot so that I could participate in it so I wouldn't feel weird and awkward and out of place. And it just led to such a really negative cycle for me.

[00:21:47] Same. Yes. And I had to remove myself from a lot of that

[00:21:51] Jay:Yep. They say as we raise our own vibration, people fall away like leaves. Hmm, I like that. Yep. So I walked away from everybody that I no longer resonated with, and my circle became very small, but the ones who stayed are the ones that resonate and the people who I have these types of conversations with.

[00:22:13] Mm-hmm. 

[00:22:14] Jill: Yeah. And that is the benefit that I found. Once I took more control of my social media and started unfriending or deleting or whatever you call it, people that either made me feel bad about myself or would just say triggering things to try to get responses from people, I got rid of all of that, and then I started connecting with people that I felt a connection with.

[00:22:37] I'm creating my circle. Even though a lot of it is virtual, it's online. They're not necessarily people that are face-to-face with me. But I'm still finding that it's allowing me, especially now that I started this podcast, to get into these conversations that I really want to have with people

[00:22:55] Jay:. So they say energy knows no time and no space.

[00:22:59] Hmm. So we don't have to be in proximity to feel each other's energy. Correct. 

[00:23:05] Jill: Yeah. I mean, with reiki, you do Reiki. I do Reiki. At first when they were like, you could do long distance reiki. I was like, how does that work? I don't understand. And now I'm like, oh, it, it seems to work just as well long distance as it does in person.

[00:23:19] Jay: So I've actually learned how to charge posts on Facebook with Reiki, and I've posted a few images where people have sent me private messages and said, just from looking at that image, I had an amazing day. My headache went away or my whatever.

[00:23:33] Jill: I love that you came from such an atheist background. You know, my husband's still very atheist.

[00:23:41] He's softened a little to some of the stuff, you know, like I'm a tarot reader. I do reiki. You know, even a few times in the past I've been like, there's ghosts talking to me. I don't know how, but they're there. Yep. And you know, sometimes his response, and this comes absolutely with no judgment from me, but his response will be like, well, I believe you believe that that's real.

[00:24:01]. And I'm like, okay, well if you don't experience it though, I could see how. You would think that maybe it's not real. 

[00:24:12] Jay: You know,  it's funny when the first time I explained what I believed to a, to a close friend, I said, if I came to you and said last night I was sitting outside by the fire pit and the spaceship landed and took me for a ride, you would say, you're fucking crazy.

[00:24:26] But if the next night you were sitting in front of your fire pit and the spaceship came down and took you for a ride, you would call me up and be like, dude. You'll never believe what happened last night. Yeah, I mean, we have to, like I said, we only believe the things that we have experienced in the past.

[00:24:45] 90% of our thoughts are recycled and 80% of those are negative and they outweigh the 20% that we have that allow us to create new beliefs. I've had several situations and experiences where now I totally believe that Larissa is sitting right here next to me. I've had experiences where I should have died and didn't because of some magical intervention.

[00:25:10] I read Tarot also, and I do reiki, and I believe that we're surrounded by our spirit guides and that everything happens for a reason and that we agree to this life before we're incarnated. I believe, not in God on a religious level where he's some old man with a beard up in the clouds looking down on us.

[00:25:31] I believe that the Big Bang theory was accurate and that we are all a part of creation and that everything and everyone is God and life is whatever you make it. 

[00:25:45] Jill: Yes to all of that. It's beautiful. I'm really just so grateful that you came on and shared all of your story with us and your transformation and that dark night of the soul.

[00:25:56] That is, that is a real thing. People that don't go through the experience, they don't understand what it feels like to go through it and to come out on the other end and be like, I'm so glad that it happened. I'm also so glad that it's done and I'm not still in it. Yes. I'll share all of your links in the show notes so people can find you.

[00:26:20] This was awesome, Jay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of Seeing Death Clearly. If you enjoyed the episode, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and share it with a friend. The podcast has a new subscription feature where you can financially support the show.

[00:26:35] I love creating the episodes for you and with financial support. It will help to keep the podcast advertisement free, and I would be able to pay for more hours to provide more content in the future. 99% of my work as a death doula is unpaid. I host the podcast, I create educational content for social media.

[00:26:53] I run a Facebook group with over 900 participants. I volunteer at a local hospital. I help to host local educational events in the community, and I give my death doula services for free to people that need them and cannot afford them. It is my honor to do this work, but I do work three part-time jobs to cover the cost of running the business, the podcast, and contributing the household bills.

[00:27:13] Any amount larger, small will help. I appreciate all of you listening to the show and supporting me. Any way that you can, even if not financially, receiving messages from listeners about how much they get out of the. Each podcast episode is wonderful. There's a link in the show notes to do a paid monthly subscription.

[00:27:31] There's also a link to my Venmo If you would like to do a one-time contribution. You can also email me for more information at Jill@endoflifeclarity.com. My guest next week is Zil Eiler, Zil is originally from Brazil. She now lives in California with her family, and she is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

[00:27:53]  Zil shares with us some of what she believes about death and the afterlife based on her lived experiences and her faith. I'll see you next week for a new episode of Seeing Death Clearly.