Enlighten & Elevate with Kelly
Thank you for being here dear soul! My name is Kelly and I am a Reiki Master, mother, wife, and lover of all things spiritual. Come with me on my quest to find tools and knowledge for continued spiritual growth. It can be tough to navigate the world as a human and parent. Dive in with me for enlightenment and ways to empower your life! We will explore many topics such as spirituality, holistic healing modalities, and metaphysics.
Enlighten & Elevate with Kelly
Tara Wild's Journey Viewing Loss Through the Lens of Love
Hello beautiful souls! Personal loss during the holiday season can feel particularly poignant, a sentiment I know all too well from the loss of my mother. This episode, we are joined by Tara Wild, who shares her own heart-wrenching story of resilience following the mysterious disappearance of her husband during the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, we navigate the emotional labyrinth of grief, touching on how it can be transformed over time from a weight into a source of strength and hope. Tara's insights on choosing love over fear are not just theoretical but deeply personal, as she discusses the journey that led her to found the Luminous Heart Healing Collective.
This episode goes beyond personal stories, exploring the broader themes of community and healing through unconventional means like meditation and EFT tapping. We highlight the crucial importance of supporting those who are grieving by being present, creating new traditions, and finding moments of joy amid sorrow. Tara's book, "Snapshots of My Broken Heart," serves as a poignant reminder of the potential for growth that lies within pain, offering wisdom on how to embrace acceptance and forgiveness even when answers remain out of reach.
For those navigating the treacherous waters of grief, particularly with children, we delve into the importance of open conversations that are both honest and age-appropriate. By modeling emotional processing and providing tools like tapping, we can help children manage their grief effectively. Tara's work, both in her book and the Luminous Heart Healing Collective, inspires hope and connection, reinforcing the idea that by facing the extraordinary challenges of loss, we can uncover pathways to healing and a more meaningful existence.
0:00 Navigating Grief During the Holidays
4:13 Heart-Wrenching Disappearance and Search
11:13 Finding Healing Through Universal Loss
24:15 Embracing Acceptance, Forgiveness, and Possibility
32:24 Navigating Spiritual Awakening and Parenting
44:17 Choosing Love Over Fear in Grief
50:40 Open Conversations on Grief With Children
55:15 Connecting Through Loss and Healing
Tara's book:
Snapshots of My Broken Heart: How We Find Peace and Connection When We Choose To View Loss Through the Lens of Love.
https://a.co/d/3OMpMXB
Where to find Tara:
Website: www.tarawild.ca
Facebook Group: The Luminous Heart Healing Collective
Instagram: www.instagram.com/theluminoushearthealing
To get in touch with me:
enlightenandelevatewithkelly@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100067889031070&mibextid=LQQJ4d
@kellymatthews840 on Instagram
Hello, beautiful souls, welcome back to Unlined and Elevate. I am so happy to be back here with you guys. It's been a little over a month since I've put out a podcast, kind of been going through a lot of things personally and just working through some different stuff and had some hard time kind of moving through and getting things out there. So we really appreciate your patience and understanding. Would love any prayers and healing energy you want to send me. I think that'd be great. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:We are now in the holiday season and it's a wonderfully happy time of year for many, but not all people, you know. My guest today is going to talk about grief, and grief is really felt this time of year when families get together. It's just not the same when you know your loved one is no longer there. My guest talks about her journey, her positive outlook on grief, the book she wrote about it, how she courageously chose love over fear and continues to do so. I think one of the best ways I've ever heard grief explained is that it's a weight. It's a weight that we carry with us, but it gets easier and gets stronger and we don't feel that weight as heavy as we move through because we get stronger as we're on that journey. And I just thought for me at least, that really resonated. I don't know if that resonates for everybody, but for me it personally resonated with me a lot.
Speaker 1:You know, we all experience and process grief differently. I have so much compassion for people who have been there, who are currently in this place. Grief is hard, it's hard to process, it's hard to talk about. You know, it's hard to move through it. Often people around us too, like they feel uncomfortable too because they don't know how to talk about it. They don't know what to say. They don't want to say the wrong thing, you know. You know we just have to honor each and every person for their journey and just be there to support them. And you know what, if you don't know what to say, you can just try to bring laughter and joy to people. Or you know, however, you want to personally reach someone, just let them know that you're thinking about them and you're there for them as they move through whatever kind of personal hardship. It could be something other than grief too, because a lot of people's family situations right at this time are just not as blissful and loving as maybe they would like.
Speaker 1:You know, I lost my mom when I was 25, and I really miss her every day and she was one of those people that I mean. I really feel like she made Christmas magic. But she made so many things magic. She always knew the right thing to say or the right thing to do. Or, you know, I miss her hugs, I miss her voice, made so many things magic. She always knew the right thing to say or the right thing to do. Or, you know, I miss her hugs, I miss her voice.
Speaker 1:But one of my favorite spiritual teachers, her name is Chantal and she said that the dead never miss a party, that they're always with us. She said that the dead never miss a party, that they're always with us, and I believe that I know that I feel my mom with me. But to speak their names when we gather, tell their stories and talk to them because they hear us Not to be afraid to create new traditions and, you know, carry them with us as we move forward on our journeys and they're on a different journey, right Like so we're all moving through this and I just want to send out love and compassion to all at this time who are moving through grief, who are really missing their loved ones or who are maybe in grief over a family that they wish they had or they don't have, or whatever the circumstance is. You know, I'm sending love to all of you out there.
Speaker 1:If you like the podcast, if you like this episode, please like and leave a podcast review on Apple Podcasts, spotify. It would be really helpful and I would be so grateful to you for it. I'm grateful for you as listeners and wishing you all the very best as we move through this holiday season. Thank you so much for being here and I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did. Welcome back everybody to another episode of In Line and Elevate. I want to give a warm welcome today to Tara Wild. She is a best-selling author, coach, speaker, widowed solo mom and the creator of the Luminous Heart Healing Collective. Welcome, tara.
Speaker 2:Hi, thanks for having me, kelly. It's nice to be here.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness, Tara, you have an incredible story. I'm just going to just turn it over to you and let you tell everybody you know all about you and how you came to be here today, and start your heart healing collective.
Speaker 2:Okay, thanks for asking. I've been doing so many visits with different podcasts lately and just finding so many people's stories so interesting and it really does lay the foundation for everything that we're going to talk about it today and everything that you and I seem to have in common from our communication so far. Essentially, the reason I started interacting with podcasts in that sort of arena is because I recently wrote a book called snapshots of my broken heart, which has been a lifelong goal to write a book, but in 2020, I got my content. So what was happening in our life at that time is I was living in Vancouver, british Columbia, in Canada, with my two little kids and my beloved husband, who was a filmmaker, and we were essentially living a beautiful life like everybody was in the pandemic hit and we weren't really having any kind of fear around that ourselves.
Speaker 2:We were just on lockdown. And when the world opened up, my husband was one of the first producers to get greenlit to start producing a film again in our community. So he started working on a film in August 2020. And then when they started shooting in September, of course, inevitably somebody got COVID and they had to shut it down and just go on hiatus for a little bit of time, and he was a project coordinator. So what we had to do at that time at least in the part of the world that we were living in was we were called to quarantine on separate levels of our house. So my husband had COVID, my kids and I did not. So we were on the main floor of the house and he was upstairs just trying to put this crazy game of Tetris together and try to figure out how to get his show back up and running, and and so he was spinning his wheels up there and we were all just back in the of the sort of lockdown that we'd all been in already for so long. Anyways, that said, it wasn't like it was on the stressful side and it was frustrating to him, but what was really happening was he's getting cabin fever up there. He hadn't been out and about in the world for a whole week and I finally just said you just got to get out there and do something like just go catch your breath, get some fresh air. It was reluctant because he felt really bad because the kids had finally got back to school and they were pulled back out and I was getting back to my things. I was actually doing my EFT tapping practitioner certification at that time and I know you're a fan of that modality, so I was doing that at the time and he felt bad because I had to shut everything down. But nevertheless he needed to get out and so I encouraged him to head out.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, september 24th, I sent him out with a coffee and no real destination. He thought he would probably pop into the office and make sure everything was cool there. He was going to go, put some gas in the car, maybe take a drive, take a walk, and so he headed out and he never came back. Never came back and it was initially really confusing and difficult because he and I had been texting all morning. We were having this beautiful conversation the night before he left and we were talking about what's worth doing. Is this job like necessary for you? He worked for himself so he could have called it off, and we were just actually started to really dream and scheme, like a lot of people did during that time where we had time to have deep conversations with our spouses and stuff and start moving forward in our relationships and our lives, and we were talking about what was next for us. We were getting excited about it. So we're texting away and what we did not text about Kelly was where he was going away, and what we did not text about Kelly was where he was going.
Speaker 2:And so throughout the course of the day I was doing various things with the kids. I had a women's circle on zoom that I participated in and him and I were checking in with each other. And then after a period of time, there was no response to the texts that we were having. And this isn't actually unusual at all because as a seasoned film wife, I knew my husband could easily be in meetings for really long periods of time. Right, like they were really trying hard to get this show back up and running. There's millions of dollars at stake, like lots of people's livelihoods and everything. They're trying to figure it all out, and so I wasn't particularly worried.
Speaker 2:And then, all of a sudden, the intellectual part of me that was not worried was completely taken over by a feeling that I can only describe as being at the cellular level, where I knew that something was really wrong. And I made the obvious phone calls to his assistant who told me he hadn't heard from him since about 10 o'clock that morning and it was about 1015 when I had and I called around the hotels where some of his colleagues who were also quarantining were working from and no one had seen him and so it became a missing person situation. No one had seen him and so it became a missing person situation and it was the most surreal thing ever. My husband was a guy who never wanted to be away from his kids or for me. He lived for us and wanted to be with us at all times. I really had to almost push him out the door that morning, but he needed that space. But unfortunately I didn't know where he was and it just became this perfect storm where somehow his like luxury vehicle didn't have GPS built into it. His phone, in whatever sort of had transpired, where he was had been damaged, and we didn't get phone records for I think, four days or five days to indicate where the last ping from the towers had been, and so it was very difficult for them to start a proper search, because the last place he had been seen was at our house and where he actually ended up being was about a 45 minute drive up into the beautiful sort of wild wilderness that we have in British Columbia. A lot of your listeners will be familiar with the big ski resort Whistler which we have here. It's quite world famous. And so what he had done is he had actually taken a drive up this beautiful sea to sky highway that runs along the Pacific Ocean an obvious choice for him if he was going to decompress and he parked his car and it took nine days for his car to be found by a mountain biker, nine days for his car to be found by a mountain biker, and that's when the real search began. So you can imagine, for those first nine days, everything that was unfolding.
Speaker 2:During that time I was home with my kids. I called in my sister and my cousin to come in and distract them, while I took calls in the closet from police, entertaining every possible horrific scenario you could imagine, right from you know. Do you think that he could have been depressed? Do you think that he could have a whole other family and like living in Belize or somewhere? Every unthinkable kind of situation and the answers were no. But when you're in that situation, it was unthinkable kind of situation and the answers were no. But when you're in that situation, it was unthinkable that he would ever not even come home. So unfortunately, I had to entertain all of those things.
Speaker 2:And the weather. Here in British Columbia we live in a temperate rainforest, so it's torrential downpour at that time of year. And where his car was found downpour at that time of year and where his car was found was on these back roads outside of the town of Squamish and there's mountain roads, not completely untraversed, because a lot of mountain bikers and hikers will go up there, but the weather was terrible leading up to it. People wouldn't have been out, roads were washed out, but this was his kind of old stomping grounds where he used to make car commercials, so we knew all the back roads. So anyways, all this to say what I think happened was he took a relaxing drive went up that way, probably likely had to go to the bathroom, wasn't going to go into a restaurant or a gas station because he was infected, and we were really just following the rules.
Speaker 2:At that time.
Speaker 2:Nobody really understood, we didn't know. So we're just following protocols and what took nine days for the search to begin? And they begin very methodically, working their way? The dense forest of this area. It is a place where people would go hiking. It is a place where you could easily have an accident um, easily. There's a ferocious river that runs through it and as they began the search we were hopeful that they would find at least some sort of evidence of what went on.
Speaker 2:His car was not tampered with, it was just locked. His mask on the desk or on, or sorry, his mask on the passenger side, and he really he didn't have a code or anything Like. He wasn't out with stuff to go hiking or anything. But I can imagine that he probably took a little walk to try to clear his head that day and he never found anything in the search. They have to be methodical to a certain point and then they can't use resources moving forward. We had a lot of helicopter surveillance and our whole film community and a lot of friends and family joined in the search as well. So there was a lot of outpouring of love and support, but ultimately it was fruitless. And so there, at that mark of probably close to two weeks after he'd been gone, I really had to make a decision about how I was going to move forward in this life, and that's where the real story begins the importance of the stuff that's in the book that I wrote and in the blogs that I've been sharing for the last three years.
Speaker 1:I can't even begin to imagine what you've been through your children and your family, and I just can't even begin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a lot.
Speaker 1:It is a lot and the world was going through a lot just with the pandemic and all of those things and then you throw this on top of it.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I can't even begin in with young children. That makes it exponentially more challenging.
Speaker 2:It does. And then what you're saying about the pandemic having happened at that time was actually a real catalyst for a whole new trajectory for me, in the way that I perceived my experience of loss and I. So we're moving through life and I had to land into a real state of acceptance and I had to share with my kids that we were going to move forward and we may never have answers, earthly answers. I certainly had many spiritual interactions during that time. I was not a seasoned meditator. I didn't recognize at that time that we all innately have the ability to connect with the oneness and to channel downloads to to connect with the oneness and to channel um downloads. But I did have a real vision really early on um, where I I did have a vision of him in the woods. Of course I didn't know what that time, that's where he was, but I had a very clear vision of him in the forest and he's moving towards a tree and then he gets there and he just drops out of the picture. If you were watching a closeup of a movie and it was in like I was fumbling through a meditation, but I was desperate for answers and that was what got given to me and I have to say that, as devastating as the picture of that is in my head on that day, I think it was the third day that he was gone in my head on that day I think it was the third day that he was gone I was overwhelmed with a feeling of peace and understanding and I feel like it was the truth, because the truth, no matter how bad the news is, always feels good, right, because I think it gives us a place to move forward from. So I actually clung to that and as I was moving forward and I had to share the news with the kids and everything, I was surrounded by a lot of amazing people. There was a lot of people in my life who were acquaintances, who really came out of the woodwork in particular with tools to help. So people who practiced Reiki and sent Reiki my way to help heal me. People I had a beautiful stranger reach out 10 or 12 times a day by phone to do EFT tapping with me to just continually clear the energy out of my body so that it wouldn't stick as trauma, and many other people.
Speaker 2:But I really started searching for some sort of guidance around how to handle loss and grief. I had only been through it with a couple of sick relatives before. Never was somebody as young as my husband. It was never such a tragic type situation, and so I didn't know where to start and I narrative was just so hopeless. It was so like oh, grief is going to be with you forever. You're going to carry this weight forever. It's going to be so heavy, it's going to be so awful, like life is over. You're never going to get over this. And the truth is I understand fully that grief is with us forever, 100%. I get that and I've embraced that now.
Speaker 2:But at the time the narrative was just not okay with me. I was like you know what, like I get that, but I'm not willing to suffer for the rest of my life and I'm gonna have to choose a new narrative. And I couldn't really find a book that was talking about it from the perspective that I was looking at it from, and so I started reading books about people who had suffered adverse situations, as so many of us have right, and I started looking at how people used creativity to try to help themselves. And I've been a long time lover of writing really amateur, but like, really loving it for forever for everything from like letters to do lists. I just love writing and and I had always shared stories of adversity in the past, and so I decided that I was going to start writing and I didn't know what was going to transpire from that. But as I was thinking about ideas, I was moving back into my life, I was starting to get out for walks and things like that. I started to really recognize.
Speaker 2:Wait a second. Sure, nobody has the same story as me, but the whole world just experienced something where one day things were one way and the next day things were different, through the pandemic. And that is loss. One day we're in a solid, healthy what we view to be a healthy marriage and the next day something transpires and all of a sudden we're not right. I know a lot of your listeners know that story all too well. That is loss, right?
Speaker 2:We give birth to a child who, like in my case, I gave birth to a child who was born with a mild to moderate brain injury. That was not what I was expecting. This is loss, right? I had friends who were going through health diagnoses at the time.
Speaker 2:This is loss, and I thought, in a world where none of us can talk about death and like loss, and we feel super awkward interacting with people if they're going through a hard divorce or a bad relationship or diagnosis and yet we're all completely equipped to talk about it because it's the one thing we've all experienced.
Speaker 2:Right, we've all experienced it, and that was the format of the blog post that I started to post, just like several months after Darcy was gone and I began to really connect with people and hear stories and I really started to realize that loss is a universal experience and we're connected through it and we're innately capable of helping each other through it, and that everybody's story they don't.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have to be a story that sounds like a horror movie, like mine, right, it can be whatever it is the emotional experiences that we have through all the different types of loss are really, really similar and I wanted to feel connected. It's the fastest way to peace for me, and so I didn't want to feel different in my story. I wanted to find the sameness, and that's what I'm finding. I started after I created my blog. I started connecting with a lot of people who would send me feedback, and so I created the Luminous Heart Healing Collective, which is just a small online community where we talk about loss of all kinds and we share and we connect and we find peaceful little sort of nuggets and insights from each other and after a period of time, it all developed into my book, which I am now sharing with world was published in April and really loving the experience of talking to people about it in the podcast arena and through the different groups that I've been connecting with.
Speaker 1:Wow, what an amazing, beautiful story that you've just shared. But the insight is incredible Because everybody has experienced loss of some kind in the way that you just described it, whether it be an illness, an actual death and I love, too, that you touched on like everybody is afraid to talk about it, right, they don't know, they're so uncomfortable about it, and I love that you are making it like an everyday conversation, that we're here for each other. We can talk about these things, because it does need to be talked about. I almost think, like death needs to be talked about so that people actually live. Let's stop being afraid.
Speaker 2:Literally the one thing that we know is going to happen. Everything else is uncertain, yeah. So it is really funny to me, that funny humorous, that yeah, we don't seem to know how to show up for each other. And, like I had a lot of beautiful people who came into my life and, of course, people who were already part, like in my friends and family, who really did feel like they were able to hold space for me. But the people who weren't able to, just for fear of not really knowing how to navigate it, my feelings of sadness for them because I know they want it to show up for me, but in our culture we just don't talk about this. So it makes it really hard for people to know that they're capable and with this whole heavy narrative that I found at the beginning of grief is with us forever, I really wanted to find a book that would tell me a way to find meaning in the experience of loss. I really wanted to find a book that had a more hopeful message and mine does.
Speaker 2:I chose a different narrative. I literally do understand and accept that grief will be with us forever and I actually love that because grief is simply the reflection of a massive experience of love, right? We wouldn't feel it if we didn't love the way that we did, and so to even think of not feeling grief for the loss of Darcy would be like living without that love. The difference is I'm not blindsided by grief anymore, because we reached out and held hands with grief, we accepted it, and I would say the kids and I talk about this a lot like we can hold hands with it and then we can learn to understand it and walk alongside it and not be blindsided by it, not have this analogy of the big bad wolf jumping out from behind the bush, which it does a lot. At the beginning, grief hits you hard in the craziest ways. I'm not like negating that one bit but over time we really can learn to recognize that it's simply the flip side of having experienced really big love, and I wouldn't give that up.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't. Oh yeah, no, not for one second. Would you ever change that?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Oh gosh, what a beautiful book and story. I'd love to dive more into the book, Flipping the narrative, changing it up. Do you want to dive more into that and how you wrote about approaching it in a different way?
Speaker 2:Yeah, initially when I started writing my blog posts, it was really just inspired conversations that I was having with myself as I went through different parts of the experience, right. So I was writing in real time and had this little collection and, at the same time, I was writing a separate thing that I felt might become that book that I was looking for, where I was understanding these beautiful concepts that have really served me and, from what I know and what I've listened to of your story, have also served you, in that that reframe of all of this is happening to me, to all of this is happening for me. So I wanted to write a book to explain how I could possibly figure that out with this within this kind of crazy story that I was living through, right, which was really incredibly difficult and beyond complicated. When there's no, when there's no body found, it makes things incredibly logistically difficult as well. So, on top of deep grief and stewarding two children through this, I had a lot of logistical kind of nightmares to deal with as well and I was just trying to figure it out and I was just trying to, like, put some pieces together for myself to sound like a type A personality, like I like to do lists and I like organizing my thoughts, so I was doing my blog and then journaling away on the story and our experience of what was happening, in a sort of flowing kind of state, and what I realized was there were some really key pieces that helped me and the kids get through the whole experience. And the first piece and I've broken the book down into four sort of chunks.
Speaker 2:I guess the first piece was acceptance, right, and so you can imagine, kelly, like I was sitting on a couch, frozen, waiting for somebody to find something right, like a set of keys, a boot, a body, anything right. And there's again whole narrative around closure, right. Oh no, you have no closure. How are you ever going to move forward with no closure? If you choose to not move forward until you get closure? I'd still be a hostage sitting on that couch. I needed to accept and choose to move forward and find some sort of closure from within. Thankfully, I had that vision I mentioned to you, so that was pretty helpful.
Speaker 2:But ultimately I had to accept that nothing outside of me was going to be able to solve this issue for me. There was a very good chance that there was going to be no closure and it's like terrifying at the time. But I dove into studying universal law and one of my teachers said something so fantastic to me. She said Okay, so you might not get earthly closure, you might not get physical, tangible evidence of what's happened, but you know what you do get. You get an extraordinary life. And none of us really get closure. We don't know. My friend doesn't know why breast cancer chose her. We don't know that night that I said something wrong that maybe made somebody's marriage go down the wrong path. We don't know when these things started or how it happens. We don't really get closure on them, and so I decided to not stay hostage to that. And so acceptance was the first real key piece, and so I talk about that in my book and then there's a curated collection of the blog posts that kind of go along with that concept.
Speaker 2:And the next piece that was really helpful for me was the concept of forgiveness, and forgiveness practices have been a massive part of my story, and so I really do share the sort of tools that I used and also just like the concept of forgiveness and how all the things and people and circumstances that we have to forgive in our lives so that we don't carry that burden with ourselves. It's not about saying that it's okay that this happened in my life. I of course don't wish that this happened and of course we don't find it easy to forgive people who hurt us or people who inflict abuse on us based on their own traumas. But we can forgive the situation so that we don't have to carry it ourselves. Right, and then that helps us to land into gratitude, right. Then we really understand what gratitude is about, because we're a little bit more free and a little lighter.
Speaker 2:And then the book moves into talking about choice and possibility. And I had a really powerful experience and again, this was probably only five or six days into the whole experience of my husband being gone. At this point a search has not begun. Everyone's just sitting, there's amateur searches going on, friends going over and looking at all these different places and trying to figure it out. And I was sitting there on my porch one morning and I knew my phone was about to blow up with all of the activity of the day and my girlfriend sent me a message from across the country and she said I find it impossible that Darcy can't get himself to safety. He's so healthy, fit, capable, motivated. It's impossible. And when I really thought that through, I was like, yes, the impossible is happening here and it's terrible. It's the worst impossible ever. But the flip side of that is, if the impossible is happening in the worst possible way, then the impossible is also possible in the best way, right.
Speaker 1:And you know.
Speaker 2:I don't know what the stats are, but we hear more amazing stories of miracles and wonderful things that seem impossible happening than these really hard ones. But the gift in that experience, or in that realization, was that now, as I move forward through my life, I know with absolute certainty that everything is possible Because the impossible happened. The gift in that is just an. It's an extraordinary thing to move through your life knowing that and I don't wish that. I learned that this way.
Speaker 2:But I, here I am, and what's the opportunity or what's the alternative to who, sitting and being sad forever, is looking at what I do have. And I have that beautiful gift of knowing that really we make, we have a choice in all situations. We can choose between fear and love in any situation, and I'm a firm believer that's always an option. We can always choose the loving lens and with that we can really move forward with infinite possibility on our hearts right, which is a really nice way to live, and I can tell you I wasn't living that way before. So, as much as I wish this didn't happen, I love the life I live now, with the gifts that have come from it, the wisdom that's come from the experience of loss and the connection.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness, and I love all of what you just touched on. I felt it so deeply because I also through a traumatic experience with my husband, but he had cheated on me so it wasn't. But that still is a loss and a grief, like I had to find a way to let it go, and I can't explain why that was, but I and I it was just a channeled message that I read where it was things happen for us, not to us, and I am a completely different person for having been through that experience and I did learn forgiveness and I. It was so freeing because I know a lot of people sometimes struggle with it. But when you release that weight it's an unbelievable feeling to just let it go and to be able to focus on the good. And you're right that the possibilities really are there. You have to see them and you have to choose love again over and over and moving forward in a loving way.
Speaker 1:And I understand the world in a way that I never did prior to being forced, like the world, the universe was put this out there as an opportunity for me to go dig deep and learn from it, because you do when you're, when we're in those dark spaces. We're like why? What are the whys? What is the meaning of this? Why am I here? What is the purpose of life if this is where I'm at? And then so, when you're forced to confront some of those things, you go deep, you go inward. And then so, when you're forced to confront some of those things, you go deep, you go inward. And then there is so much beauty in it because when you start to see that we're all connected, when you start to see the reasoning behind things and why we choose and it's a gift to come to earth, to earth school, to learn.
Speaker 1:But if we're here, we're lucky, we get to experience all of these things, all of what and again, I think it's all perception, right, good and bad, it's how we perceive it, but sometimes bad things lead to very good things. You can experience something traumatic and a beautiful come out on the other side of it. I'm not saying that being in any especially not your situation or what I experienced is pleasant, but I'm here to say that anybody, you can overcome things and you don't hurt forever. Now, with grief, I know I lost my mother 16 years ago and I know that is also very different than losing a spouse, but I miss her every day and I think about her every day, but I know she's with me and I feel her with me in so many ways and I believe in signs and I'm not I'm not sure.
Speaker 1:I know you're very spiritual. I see signs all the time. I see signs everywhere and I know some people think I'm goofy for it, but that's okay. I'm okay with that, Like whatever.
Speaker 2:I see magic all day long. That would make people believe in it. It's yeah.
Speaker 1:Magic all around me with nature, and like there are miracles every day. We are a miracle, the human body is a miracle, the things that we do you writing your book, you're, and working through this stuff with your children like all of that is magic and miracles at work and I just I really felt I'm so moved by everything because it's just really beautiful and I love that you are blogging about it, that you're bringing people together, because community and connection is really what we're here for and we are all in this together on the world, no matter where you are, the struggles that we see going on in the world. I think the world needs more love and less judgment. We need to be like when I see things happen now, what I think is that person doesn't need my judgment, that person needs my love, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's so nice. I love having these conversations with people who really are really embracing that idea and you mentioned earth school, right, like this. I always say like this whole experience has been equal parts excruciating and extraordinary, and that's absolutely what we're here for. I think what I have really learned through my study of universal law and this is like a whole other podcast episode but ultimately, when we're seeking something and I was seeking I was taking steps towards really understanding my life better, feeling more purposeful in my life. I had previously in my life been very codependent, very much like the constantly in service, in servitude, as opposed to being in service, and I was really looking to change that in my life and I was calling it in my head. Like I said, I was learning about no EFT tapping and I was really helping people with that. I was starting to get really passionate about energy work. I was diving into all these things and I'm telling you when we are putting something out there that we want to see happen in our lives, I wanted to become really awake. I was looking to connect and the universe delivers fast and furious and we don't always like the way that the opportunity lands with us through death, through deception, through disease, but if we're willing to see both the excruciating and the extraordinary, that's choosing love over fear.
Speaker 2:And the subtitle of my book it's fun, you get to name your book, you can call it whatever. Mine's called snapshots of my broken heart, because all of the curated blog posts are like little snapshots, right, like little, like selfies and blooper the blooper reels and the B roll. But your subtitle really has to say what the book is about. And my subtitle is how we find peace and connection when we choose to view loss through the lens of love. Right, it's a choice always, and I think that beautiful things can unfold and extraordinary things can happen.
Speaker 2:So I don't love what happened to me in my life.
Speaker 2:I don't love that my kids lost their dad.
Speaker 2:I don't love that I lost my beloved husband, but I do love who I am now and I do love the life that we have. And I do love what I've learned. And I do love who I am now and I do love the life that we have and I do love what I've learned and I do love how both myself and my kids are able to share it in a way that's meaningful for other people, because it has brought that purpose that I was looking for and, like your story, turned out a little bit different than a lot of people would think as well. From the sounds of it, a lot of people a lot of people wouldn think as well from the sounds of it, a lot of people wouldn't be able to sit with forgiveness and recognize that you're not letting someone off the hook for deceiving you. You're letting yourself off the hook from carrying around that anger, that judgment towards them when they are also a human. So I'm sure you thought that about your own situation. This person doesn't need my judgment. They need my love, right?
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And then if we all stuck to that as our credo. We'd be doing really well on this planet.
Speaker 1:We would. That's why I started my podcast, because I had gone through this awakening and I had learned so many things and I just thought to myself I want to share this with everybody who I can reach and, more importantly, I hope that they will share it with their children, because I talk to my children very differently than I was raised. I was raised Catholic not knocking that in any way but I'm not a religious person. I'm very spiritual but I talk to my kids about that, about we are spirit beings first and we talk about how we chose to be in each other's lives, to play roles, and how to understand some of the difficult people around us or situations that we're presented with and how that we can look at that differently. And I never understood the world in those terms until I was much late. I was much, I was well into my adulthood and I never understood the world in those terms until I was much late.
Speaker 1:I was much, I was well into my adulthood and I thought to myself after I learned all these things. I'm like geez, I would have loved to know this 20 years ago and obviously, because of how things work with the universe, I wasn't ready 20 years ago and I learned it in perfect timing. That's just how everything works. But it is my mission to help others and I really want to reach kids and I want them to learn about energy and about their body and about co creation with the universe. And again, like you're saying, choice our thoughts, everything and the energy we bring into everything. Because these interactions even just you and I talking now somebody may think, oh, that's an insignificant interaction, but it's not. The most significant things in life are often what people just will disregard as insignificant. And I tell my kids the energy we bring into everything matters.
Speaker 2:I love it. I also parent very differently than I would have a not from like this, from the spiritual standpoint too. I was never a religious person. I was always trying to understand what spirit meant to me. Anyone who reads my book will get a very clear, some really clear, interesting, amazing stories about how I did finally connect with spirit and truly understand what I believe is like the God of my understanding or my higher power.
Speaker 2:But the way that I talk to my kids about it now is far more candid. They really do understand the signs that we receive all the time. My daughter can absolutely discern her father's energy from other energies. She's very much an empath and came by it very honestly. But she it's just she's so comfortable with it.
Speaker 2:And I'm really excited because I see that with other families and I see people doing the work that you're doing, people doing the work that, like everyone, I'm interacting with through my Luminous Heart Healing Collective like there's a transformation happening. We're moving towards a new earth and this is a big part of it. It's the way that we're raising our kids is just very different and with a true understanding of energetics, and we have just so many tools to protect ourselves and to heal, remove trauma. And my kids, like I say, people call them resilient. I say they're beyond resilient. It's post-traumatic growth. They've learned through the tools that we use didn't store the trauma. They just they haven't stored the trauma the way that a lot of people from our generation and previous generations have.
Speaker 2:And if you believe in ancestral healing, that this is powerful work because we're healing future and past, and it's really cool and again, we could just go off on so many tangents here, but I think it's really about choice points and choosing love over fear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cycle breaking right. How powerful is that? It's so huge and I love that you talk about it healing multiple timelines because it does. And so time as I under, I didn't understand it until I awakened. But there is. Time is now right. It's past, present, future all at the same time is now right. It's past, present, future all at the same time. And I know that was like a huge thing for me to really wrap my head around.
Speaker 1:But when I'm a Reiki master and so when I started diving into that whole world you can send healing any dimension, any place, any time your past, self, future, self and when I started diving in and actually understanding that and what power we have as individuals, it just blew my mind and I just I honestly have not been able to stop diving into all the things that are out there and available to people.
Speaker 1:That's why I think we live in an incredibly exciting time because there is so much information out there, there are so many practitioners you can work with, you can align with and just little practices. Even the things you talked work with, you can align with and just little practices, even the things you talked about with gratitude. If somebody started with gratitude, just starting there, finding ways to connect in that way and just being grateful for what you have around you and focusing on the good, because the energy you bring into your life is what you focus on. So if you're going to focus on holding a grudge, resentment, anger, you're going to be bringing more situations into your life that are going to reflect those things. And I didn't understand that. I had no, I had no concept of this at all. And then when you start really diving in and understanding energy, how it works, like you're talking about the law of attraction and all how, the universal laws, all of those things and it's just mind blowing what you can do and what is available to you.
Speaker 2:Indeed, it really is, and I just love how there's so many beautiful conversations happening about it. It's starting to find its way into the verbiage that our children use when they're communicating with each other, at least in the circles I run in, and it feels really good and, like you say, like an exciting time to be alive, despite the fact that we've all actually gone through a lot of suffering and a lot of loss In these last few years. There's been a lot of divisiveness and we've really been called to step forward and recognize that we have choices, that we have tools, that we have the ability to not be the hostage to whatever 3D situation we've landed in.
Speaker 2:We really can transform right here, right now, and you and I both know it because it's happened to both of us and it's. To have that experience is one thing. To be out verbalizing it and sharing it and writing about it and talking about it and interviewing people about it is, I feel, like really important work and it's nice to be here being purposeful in the experience of adversity. I'm really grateful for the whole thing.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And I love that you bring up divisiveness, because that's been something huge in the last several years and I had this thought the other day that we again and I've had it for a long time it's becoming very clear to me what the divisiveness is about, because they don't want people connecting. They don't want that connection. And I think if people just had compassion and understood that a lot of people, when they have a lot, a really big emotional reaction to something, it's because they're in fear. All of these people, whatever side of whatever you're, if you're, it's fear, it's all fear based. And side of whatever you're, if you're, it's fear, it's all fear based.
Speaker 1:And if they, if you can understand that and understand how people react when they're in fear for that fight flight, you'll understand that they're not critically thinking, that they're not being able to access those things. And instead of hating them or making fun of them or ripping them down which is I've we've all seen that over the several years what we need to do is send loving energy to them. Is, and that that is so powerful. If we sat in that vibration just for two, three minutes and sent out love to everyone in the world for their highest good, just sat in that. If everybody did that every day, could you imagine what kind of impact that would have on the world?
Speaker 1:And you could feel it, I could see it. You could feel that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and.
Speaker 1:I do it every morning, I do it as I drive to work. I sit there and I call on my angels and I sit in that thought. I send it for everybody's highest good. And if we all did that, instead of the teardown and the judgment and all the things out there, things would be different. And maybe someone will hear this conversation and they'll think to themselves the next time they get upset or they get triggered by something, they'll think about it in a different way. And that is also something that I'm like. I just want people to think about life differently, why we're here to views the things that we experience, that they can help us. And it is all about choices and how you want to move through. And I will tell, and I'm sure you can attest to this the only way to move through something is to move through it. There is no, it's no other way.
Speaker 2:There's no app for it, there's no gummy for it, there's no nothing. You literally have to go through it. But if you choose to go through it with that loving lens, you can find so much wisdom and so many gifts in it. Right, I really have had that experience and it's changed the way that I interact with the world. It's changed what. It's changed what I consume. It's changed the conversations that I'm willing to step into and be part of.
Speaker 2:I really find it difficult to even engage in with social media. There's a lot of people talking about this and it can seem frivolous and not important to discuss a particular artist that you agree with, or a politician or whatever, and to discuss it, but energetically. If that's what we're putting out into the world, if it's less than good, if it's full of judgment, that's what we're drawing back into our lives. So I'm just very discerning. Again, it's full of judgment, that's what we're drawing back into our lives. So I'm just very discerning. Again, it's about choice.
Speaker 2:I'm very discerning about how I engage in the world now and, to be honest, I like what we're doing. I like that. I also wake up first thing in the morning and I put out the energy from my heart space of. I hope that everyone has loving interactions today. I hope that everybody has a sense of peace. I hope people have joy amongst their communities today. I hope that everything unfolds and gets detangled for the highest good of all and I hope that we can all put our heaviest burdens down and let that be solved elsewhere so that we can be here taking our time to be thoughtful and to have conversations, like you and I are having, and to be purposeful in our work.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Oh my gosh, Tara, you've just been an incredible guest. I have absolutely loved this conversation, probably more than words can say. The world needs more people like you. You've really turned pain into purpose right, More than anybody that I think I've ever had on my show before.
Speaker 1:That's a good way, what you're doing is incredible. Oh, you know what. Before, though, before we close, I did want to ask when it comes to children, do you have advice for other parents out there with grief, because grief, as we discussed, comes in many forms. Do you have advice for them as maybe starting to work with them or how to talk to them?
Speaker 2:So funny because, like I do often talk about how, when I was going through this crazy life experience in those early days, I didn't have the one thing I needed, which was my husband at home, but I did have like everything else flowed in, like I seem to have the best help possible for everything, and one of the things that I obviously had to do after a period of time was really explain to my kids what was happening, without actually really knowing and I actually had talk about having exactly what you need. I actually had access to one of the world's leading trauma therapists, dr Gabor Mate, who many of your listeners would have heard of. He's a pioneer of using different methods for helping people feel addiction. He really does understand trauma from a deep level and articulates it beautifully.
Speaker 2:And I had access to him through my brother, who's a filmmaker, and he was actually able to coach me on how to communicate with my kids the initial idea that their dad was gone to in a way that would minimize the trauma, so using the right verbiage and stuff and I will say that that was super great to have for that first conversation that we had and it really helped set me up to feel confident. And one of the things that I said to my kids right off the bat was Dad never in a million years would have thought that this was going to happen, but he picked me in case it did. And so the first thing I did was show them my confidence, and maybe I didn't feel entirely confident, but that's what I expressed to them and I have grown into that confidence and I think that makes kids feel really safe regardless of what's happening. So not just with grief, but just like any adverse situation right, like even when your family's in a situation where mom and dad might be separating or there's going to be like space or whatever, or maybe mom or dad has to go have like medicinal support if they're going into the hospital or anything like that. So I think showing confidence was really key and important and then being truthful, right Without overloading them with information. I've been very truthful with my kids, not just about the answers that I didn't have, but I've been very truthful with them about how I want to feel in the experience. So when I was trying to find help with grief and I was reading this narrative that I didn't want for them, I was telling them guys, we're not going to do this Like we're going to find a way that feels really good to us. And we had discussions. So I would say, have open conversations with your kids about grief and say, hey, like, use that big, bad wolf analogy. At a certain time it's not going to feel so scary Somebody's. It's not going to feel like it's jumping out and surprising us when we're like at school and someone's talking about doing a father's day. It's like little triggers. They're not going to be forever and if we start to understand grief, we can anticipate it. And that's what I've helped my kids do.
Speaker 2:When I've seen them have some fears coming up around things and I think it might be connected to grief, I don't not talk about it, I choose to talk about it. So, for example, my daughter was going on her first ski trip, which was her first trip away from me she's quite young and her first ski trip, which was her first trip away from me. She's quite young and a couple weeks beforehand she started talking about how she didn't feel like she was going to be good enough on the trip. She didn't feel like her. Two of her friends were going and all their parents were going and I wasn't going to be there. And I could see she was in.
Speaker 2:She hadn't been on a snowy mountain without her dad for many years, and so, instead of putting it off and leaving her in a place where she might have been triggered by the grief and it might have jumped out at her out of nowhere, we just started talking about it. I said Do you think this is connected to dad in any way? And then the tears would flow and we would tap and she would realize oh yeah, I haven't done this without my dad before, this hard. So then we talked about strategies.
Speaker 2:So I think, just being really open, being open to discussion, being confident and not afraid to talk about it and that's coming slowly, right, because we do live in a culture in North America where we don't talk about it, and there was times when I didn't want to talk about it with my kids. There was times when I didn't think I knew what to say, but it's also okay to say I don't know, but we're going to figure it out. Just, I think one of the key things to making sure that our kids process these things and process grief and anger and all of the feelings that come along with it, are giving them the opportunity to feel it and showing them yourself. I'm feeling it. I feel overwhelmed by it, and it's okay because watch me as I get through it.
Speaker 1:Model it. Yes, and you're giving them a tool to move the energy. Yeah, I, that is incredibly powerful Again, something I didn't learn until much later in life, but it is incredibly powerful to know how to move energy. It really is incredibly powerful. And to tap through that. I've done tapping with my girls before and it is. It's tapping is wonderful and I for many reasons, but I love so, so many things about it, but you can do it anywhere and it doesn't even nobody even really has to understand what you're doing.
Speaker 2:You can just. I teach my kids and I do often do workshops in the kids' classrooms and stuff and I teach them. We just tap on the nail bed and if you're in a job interview, you just do that under the bed. That's so smart. You're driving your car, you can just do that. You're moving the energy and where that really saves us is that the energy moving through our body. We're not storing, storing it. That's where trauma comes from. It doesn't come from the event. It comes from the event landing in our body and not moving out of it, which is why I live with deep grief but I'm not traumatized by this event.
Speaker 1:You're moving it through. Yeah, oh my gosh, wow, how incredible, what an incredible story. This has been an incredible conversation and I know it's going to be so impactful. When you were talking about all those things, like I felt it, like I felt goosebumps all over the place, really impactful, powerful information you just shared there. You've been an incredible guest. You've shared incredible information. Where can people find you? Where can they buy?
Speaker 2:your book. Oh yeah, so you can do. You have show notes that you'll be able to pop the link in for. Okay, so yeah, my book's available in all the Amazon markets, so you can find it in. It's called Snapshots of my Broken Heart. I'll show you a picture of it right now, just so you can see it. Snapshots of my Broken Heart.
Speaker 1:It's a beautiful cover.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I love it. It references the art of Kintsugi from Japan, which you might know, where they take broken things and rebuild them with gold Beautiful. So they can find that book on Amazon. We can put the links in your show notes. It's available in all the markets and not yet on audible, but I'm getting there. I think I'm going to be able to record it soon. I'm hoping you can also find me on facebook through the luminous heart healing collective. We're a private facebook group where we talk of loss of all kinds. It's really just a place to unpack ideas, share thoughts and little nuggets and whatever. And that's on Facebook, so you can just reach out that way. And then you can find my blog and also the link to the book at ca. So T-A-R-A-W-I-L-D, ca, you can find me there. You can find a beautiful photo gallery of my kids, the link to the book and anything else that we're doing moving forward.
Speaker 1:Tara, this has been incredible and I honor the beautiful light you are in this world. You are doing absolutely beautiful work.
Speaker 2:Thank you, namaste.
