Trauma Talks : With Russ Tellup
Hi, I’m Russ Tellup, a Trauma-Informed Somatic Coach and Level 1 Brainspotting practitioner. In my podcast "Trauma Talks," I dive into the neuroscience of trauma, exploring somatic healing practices, Polyvagal Theory, and IFS (Internal Family Systems) parts work. I also occasionally address the complexities of narcissistic abuse, offering insights and tools for healing. Join me each week as we navigate the journey of recovery, resilience, and self-discovery together.
Trauma Talks : With Russ Tellup
What If Death Is A Rebirth Into Purpose
What if grief isn’t a staircase but a spiral that returns to teach us, soften us, and connect us to something larger than loss? That’s the journey Dave Roberts takes us on—former addictions counselor, longtime professor, and host of Teaching Journeys—after losing his 18-year-old daughter, Janine, to a rare cancer. We move from the clinical realities of unresolved grief and relapse to an honest, deeply human exploration of meaning, near-death experiences, and the possibility that love continues beyond the body.
Dave shares how his early reliance on stage models gave way to a more accurate view: grief loops and resurfaces, especially through anniversaries, music, and memory. He describes a transformative encounter that shifted him from strict materialism to an open, critical curiosity about consciousness, the afterlife, and continued bonds. We dig into near-death experience research, veridical perceptions, and the tension between healthy skepticism and genuine mystery. Along the way, Dave shows how intention, service, and community can ease suffering while honoring the truth of the pain.
We also talk generational trauma—abandonment, seizures, and the shape of inherited patterns—and what it means to forgive with context, not amnesia. Dave reframes his parents’ choices through ancestral insight, revealing how understanding reduces shame and frees the nervous system. For anyone facing raw loss, he offers grounded steps: show yourself grace, survive before you try to thrive, don’t judge a life by its last act after suicide, and build support with people who have capacity, not just proximity. If you’re looking for resources, Dave’s book with Patty Farino, When the Psychology Professor Met the Minister, and his Teaching Journeys podcast offer more tools, stories, and hope.
If this conversation helped you breathe a little easier or think a little wider, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs it, and leave a review so others can find their way here too. Your voice helps this community grow.
Hey, welcome everybody to Trauma Talks Live. My name is Russ Tellip. I am your host with Trauma Talks Live. I am a somatic trauma-informed coach with Brain Spot in Colorado Springs. And this is a weekly podcast where we talk about trauma, uh the effects it has on our nervous system, and how we can leverage that information to live the best possible lives that we can. And I have a treat for y'all. Today we're gonna have a chat with Dave Roberts. Dave is the uh host of the uh Teaching Journeys podcast. He's a teacher, uh therapist, the guy the guy is a renaissance man, and he is pretty genius when it comes to grief and and some of the stuff that you guys can do to deal with this. And you know, this is the second podcast in a row where we've dealt with grief as our main topic because it's important. So uh, Dave, welcome to the show, man.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks. Thanks, Russ. I've been looking forward to our conversation for a while now, and I'm I'm anxious to share what I've learned with your guests in the hope that uh with your with your audience, in the hope that it's gonna you know be of use and help somebody who's listening.
SPEAKER_01:That's awesome, man. Um, do you mind just giving everybody a little bit of rundown of your history and and kind of where you're you're coming from? It's a long story, I know, but we've got plenty of time.
SPEAKER_00:So it is. Well, I've told a story enough where I can kind of condense it in a in a way and give you give everybody the highlights because I'm sure we're gonna be building more on the story as we go on. But I'm gonna start from the beginning. Um, my first job that I had of any consequence that really shaped my career path was I gravitated to the field of addictions. I was a an addictions counselor and a clinical supervisor in a state-run uh facility in upstate New York. Uh, I worked with individuals with addiction and other traumas related to addiction, uh, such as abuse, you know, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, abandonment issues. Um I worked with individuals not only who had substance use challenges, but also had coexisting mental health challenges such as PTSD, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder. I did that for 27 years. Um, it was one of the more fulfilling times of my life. The individuals with substance use disorders I consider to be my greatest teachers. Um addiction is so stigmatized in this country that what we tend to, what we've tended to do is look at the individual and define them by their addiction, when the addiction is actually the behavior that has caused them to have difficulties in their lives. But behind the addiction, these are great creative individuals. They also, as I discovered later in my career, they had a lot of unresolved grief issues due to grief that that wasn't expressed due to the fact that the person they lost was another addict. Um, just grief that wasn't expressed because they self-medicated it. So that became an issue that we dealt with. And through my conversations with them, I learned that their unresolved grief was also a really key trigger to relapse to the return to their substance of choice. Um, concurrently, to me, teaching, or to excuse me, to me being an addictions counselor, I did get my master's in social work degree in May of 2002. Started teaching at Utica University, where I've been for over 22 years. I teach courses such as Care of the Human Spirit, Death, Dying, and Bereavement, Impact of Addiction on Children and Families. And my passion is to help individuals, young adults who are wanting to work with individuals who are experiencing trauma, giving them the tools so they can do really good trauma-informed practices. Um, but in between, a lot of times people have will have thought or asked, well, how did you go from addiction to immersing yourself into the field of thanentology? It certainly was not through professional choice that I decided to do this. I didn't wake up and say, you know, I want to deal with death, I want to deal with all issues related to death, life, and or you know, death, life, and life after death. Um, that found me due to my own personal tragedies. Uh, I am no stranger to loss before I get into the personal tragedy that redefined my life path. Um, my father left when I was five years old, left leaving my mother to raise me as an only child. He I found out that he had died when I was 11 years old. I found out when I was 14 that he died at 11 in a car crash. I never saw him again. And there were other losses. My mom, maternal grandmother, uh, my aunt to maternal aunt who raised me in a multi-generational household, um, pets. Um I'm my my dear friend and mentor who taught me everything about building teams, dealing with with individuals with substance use challenges, supervising and motivating staff. He died of cancer in 1998, but the loss that threw me headlong at the age of 47 into trying to figure out the type of person I wanted to be and the kind of world I wanted to live in was the death, or as I call it now, the transition of my 18-year-old daughter, Janine, um, on March 1st, 2003, of a rare and aggressive connective muscle tissue sarcoma. She was diagnosed a little bit over three weeks after giving birth to her first and only child, Brianna. And she was diagnosed a week after I received my MSW degree, after I was actually told that I had met the requirements. So um, in the space of a month, I went from the joys of grandfatherhood to the joys of completing my higher education journey to being thrown headlong into a uh terminal illness challenges with my in being a caregiver to a child with terminal illness and then dealing with the parents' worst nightmare, which is having to bury one of your children before you yourself go.
SPEAKER_01:She was pretty young, right? 18?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, she was 18, Russ, and um, you know, the pregnancy massed any differential diagnosis of her cancer. Um, she had injured her right foot in a freak accident and early in her pregnancy, didn't respond to traditional treatment for um for an injured foot. Uh, didn't respond to foot elevat to elevating the foot, it didn't respond to rest, medicine, nothing. And they've they've they wanted to, they finally decided they wanted to do an MRI in April of 2002, but she said, not until my child is born. They did the MRI, found an eight undefined eight-centimeter mass at the bottom of her foot. That they discovered it was a malignant stage four tumor. And the type of cancer that she had, which is actually called the veliar rhabnomyosarcoma, the five-year survival rate for that type of cancer was depending on the which research was 10 to 15 percent, which means that there was an 80 85 to 90 percent chance that she was going to die within five years.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's wow, that's incredible. Yeah, and and how and how long were you taking caring for her and while she was sick?
SPEAKER_00:Well, she she died 10 months after diagnosis, and you know, interesting, you know, before then, be you know, just after she got diagnosed, her, her significant other, her cat, my my my granddaughter, um and her daughter moved in with my two kids and me and my wife. So the joke on our street was how many two-legged and four-legged could you get into a single-level ranch? And we tested that theory with, I think it was nine. Um, but we all we all got along real well. We made it work, and her significant other stayed for four years after um my daughter transitioned, um, so that she could she she wouldn't have to be uprooted until she went to kindergarten. And we he made sure that he got married again, but he made sure that we saw her regularly, and she was a part of our lives growing up, and she's still a part of our lives today. And she has two kids of her own. She's 23 years old now.
SPEAKER_01:And it sounds like he still have a great relationship with her her significant other, the her daughter's father.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Um, you know, we don't see him as much because obviously, you know, we we have our own lives and our paths have kind of gone separately. In fact, I just saw him at it was a party for his his uh his his daughter, Brianna's daughter, and well, which make it his granddaughter and my great-granddaughter. And it was like, man, we picked up like you know, we had we we where we left off, and we hadn't talked in about two or three years, but it was just seamless. He was uh he had responsibility to defy his 19 years of age. He was 19 when um when Janine got diagnosed, and you know, he was he was a man who was already kept his integrity. Janine asked him to stay for till Brianna was ready for kindergarten. He did it, no questions asked, and then he went off on his own, but we're still maintaining connections with us.
SPEAKER_01:That's awesome. Yeah, and uh and a connection with his daughter.
SPEAKER_00:Yep.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's fantastic. Wow. Uh it's and and this all happened after you were working with people on addictions. So you already already seen the effects of grief that the grief could have on people, and then ended up living it firsthand.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and you know, the thing is, and I look back, and hindsight's always 2020, but in the what in the addictions field, then the standard grief model that we use was Kubler Rosa Stages of Grief. And I remember working with one client who was experiencing grief, and I was working with him as his case manager. So I pulled out the old Hazleton pamphlet on the stages of grief and started telling him this, you know, here here are the stages. There's denial, there's anger, and this is kind of where you should be right now. And as I look back on that, if I could if I knew then what I knew now, I would not have gone that way. Because with my own journey, as I learned with my daughter, grief isn't a linear process, it's very much circular. The pain of loss can surface at any time during our journey, no matter how long it's been, depending on what's going on in the moment. What's different for me now, 22 years plus in my journey, is that I no longer feel the intense suffering that goes along with grief that just wrecked my body, that wrecked my mind, and wrecked my soul. Um, I still have the occasional yearnings, but the intense suffering is no longer a part of that anymore. Um, and I I accredit that to a lot of support, and particularly to one individual I met through pure serendipity who facilitated a spiritually transformative experience that allowed me to find peace and be convinced in the survival of consciousness after we our physical bodies no longer function.
SPEAKER_01:Which is a great segue, Dave. It's almost like you've done this before.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, a few times. Not only in my own podcast, but obviously I've guessed on others. And you know, I I try to make your job easier as a podcaster by giving you those segues.
SPEAKER_01:I might just have you run start running my podcast. Uh so uh where was I going? What was the last thing you said?
SPEAKER_00:Spiritually transformative experience.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Yeah, I would love to hear because I I I I I listened to your podcast on Chris Mamoney's show, The Empowered Groof Journey. Um, and it it's a really fascinating story. So if you don't mind sharing that spiritual awakening would be the right word, I guess.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, spiritual awakening. I don't use the term enlightenment anymore, but it's usually awakening, you know, spiritual awareness. You know, a lot of people use enlightening, but you know, and I and I and I can work with that, but I prefer like the awakening or awareness. That to me, I think is kind of for me, encapsulates my journey.
SPEAKER_01:Well, the idea, I think the idea of continued consciousness is a powerful healing tool for people. So I'd love to hear your story, man.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Well, first of all, I have always been very my my core belief system has always been about science. Behavior did not exist, phenomena didn't exist if I could not experience it with my own senses, and it was right in front of me in the real world. Um, seven years into my journey, I was doing the traditional grief playbook for somebody who had lost a child. I was starting to re-engage in life gradually. I was starting to do some service work with uh individuals who were grieving. I started writing about my journey, particularly as a grandparent who was grieving. Um, and then I also started to coordinate and organize conferences. One of the conferences we organized was in upstate New York in Verona, New York, at the Turning Stone Resort Casino. It was called Beyond Words Um Embracing Creative Approaches to Change. Something like something like that. But it was about embracing creativity in grief and as a conduit for change. Um, I was responsible, I was one of the conference coordinators. During the registration process, I got a call from an interfaith minister in Long Island by the name of Patty Farino. And Patty, all registration was online. So Patty had found out about the conference through another friend of hers who ran a berefe parents chapter in Long Island, New York. So she put in her credit card information, double-checked her choices, hit submit to register, and her computer screen went blank. As we look at it now as some type of divine intervention for that to occur, because if her computer screen didn't go blank, she would have never called me to register. So she called, I registered her by phone, took all of her information. We talked for about 45 minutes. I asked her if she um she ever she had lost a child, but she said no. She but she did tell me that she was the volunteer minister coordinate volunteer coordinator for the angel of hope statue in Long Island. Um, the Angel of Hope is a statue that's erected in honor of children who have died. And there's a brick with the parents can purchase or members in the community can purchase that basically has her name, date of death, date of birth, and people go there to congregate and to pray and to to connect. And Patty was there to provide support. And there was a couple of young people that had died that young men that had died that she felt extremely connected to. So to make a long story short, we share our stories. She says, So I told her about Janine, she goes, Do you believe in signs? And I said, You know, Pat. I really don't go in for that. I'm kind of a science-based guy, and I really don't believe in signs or really too many spiritual, too much anything spiritual. Um, but I said, I think did think my daughter sent me a double rainbow on on Father's Day in 2009, and I have the picture of that. And it was my wife had called me and said, You know, you better come over. I think your daughter just sent you a double rainbow. The cool thing about that, Russ, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, there wasn't any rain. This double rainbow just appeared. It went from one side of the my earth to beyond. Um, so I told Pat, if we meet at the conference, I'll I'll give you a hug. We met at the conference, we hugs. She whispers in my ear, I think your daughter sent me a rainbow. Now, you know, Russ, I'm freaking fried after the conference. You know, I did all this work. I mean, I had nothing left in the tank. My fumes were on fumes. Um, so I said, Oh, that's great, that's wonderful. Um, come to find out after the fact, um, she had on September 3rd, just before the two weeks before the conference, she was driving with her husband, Marco in Long Island on Route 17 in New Jersey, and she saw this magnificent double rainbow go from one end of Route 17 to the other end. They were so mystified and enamored with this rainbow because there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Yeah, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, man. So she they took a picture of and did a video, and all of a sudden, she's sitting on the car, she hears a voice in her head saying, I need you to talk to my father. And Patty attended to the voice and said, Well, I'd love to, but I said, She goes, Who's your father? It was the guy you talked to about the conference. So, what ended up happening? Patty said, if I ever get to your Long Island, if I get to Long Island, she would be glad for me to stay with her and her husband. She'd show me her Long Island. Now, first of all, first of all, I'm gonna backtrack just a little bit. Day after the conference, I'm jumping back and forth. But man, this is all gonna make sense. I'm driving three of the presenters, okay, to Old Forge, New York, which is in the Adirondacks, great scenery, change of leaves during September, um, during the fall. So I took them up there because they were they weren't from this area and hadn't seen what fall in the Adirondack's look like. So they're having this intense discussion about spirituality, and all of a sudden I just looked up at the sky and just said, I want to be where they are, meaning that I wanted to have more of a spiritual understanding of death to get me through the next chapter of my grief. And my soul was yearning, was calling out for something that my mind and my body didn't know I needed yet. And I always have said intention is a powerful precursor to manifestation and manifesting your dreams and manifesting your wants. So she said, if you get to Long Island, let me know you can stay with me. Comes that turns come to find out there was a workshop that um one of our then colleagues was doing called Embracing the Power of Change, which ended up being a a port tent for what was to happen for me. And this was on November 11th, uh 2010, that he was doing the workshop. So we did the workshop. We she we she we went back to her house about 9:30. She said, get into something comfortable, get into your pajamas. I went back to her um her her living room, her sacred space. She had a fire going, and it was 70 degrees in November in New York, and she had a fire going, and she assumed a cross-legged position, much like my daughter would have assumed, had this young, young energy about her, looked at me and said, Why don't you listen to music anymore? And it wasn't her, and I'm getting a chill telling you this, it was my daughter. Um, coming through her, yeah. And I said, I don't listen to music because it reminds me of you. And she said, Well, that's why you gotta, that's why you have to listen to music. So for the memories, and then I just gotta tell myself, man. Yeah, yeah. Oh, and this was the way the whole weekend was. Yeah, it was a weekend where she would come through, remind me that you know, you've done a great job grieving me and you honoring me, but you're also a father, you're a teacher, you're uh, you know, you're a husband, you're a grandfather. All of those categories need to be present for your for your your family. Um, it's just not about grieving me. And the message was that I'm always going to be here, but you basically need to embrace all categories of your life so that eventually I could find my greater purpose in life as a result of the challenges that her death presented to me. And what I learned from that entire weekend, Russ, and in the conversations that Patty and I had, is that Janine has taught me that love truly exists from the other side. If we're open to it, if we're aware to it, and we're receptive to it, and can come to believe that we've we do live in a multidimensional universe.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, sure.
SPEAKER_00:So that is without it, you know, and we for 10 years I bugged Patty to write a book. I said, You we gotta write a book, you got we got to tell them what you did for me, and we got to share this with the world because it could be be very helpful to them. And she was always very private. She does not consider herself to be a medium, she considers herself to be somebody who walks a sacred path who is very much connected to the spiritual world, and she does what she does to help people, to help them find peace. And she never wanted what she did commercialized. But finally, during the pandemic, she goes, Yeah, it's time. So she was in South Carolina. I was in upstate New York. We used Google Docs, we wrote a book, and I'll display it if it's okay. It's called When the Psychology Professor Met the Minister. Um, how the woman on the how the corner of Hunter and Whittier permanently altered one academics worldview. So there it is.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, if you want to uh put a link down in the in the chat and it'll go right on the video.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:I can I just put a link to your podcast as well in the chat.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, yeah, I could I can do that. Or basically, if they just go on Amazon and search for for you know when the psychology professor met the minister, they'll find it. Because the the the Amazon link is god awful long. Um, unless you do their you do their internal link. But if they just go on Amazon, um you know, they can I can send you the link later, you know, the shorter one.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, if you don't mind, that way I can put it in the description.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'll throw it, throw it in the show notes. I'll just email it to you.
SPEAKER_01:So Dave Dave, this interaction with her basically turned changed your whole life, right? Perspective on loss, um and then and then kind of prompted your work going forward.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. And here's the other question that I know your audience is probably wondering did I believe what happened to me? And that's a legitimate question, considering that I was so science-based that I rejected spiritual practices, which is interesting because my mother was into tarot cards. She tried to get me into spiritual, you know, the spirituality side of it. I just rejected it. And I vehemently rejected it. Um, and I had come to find out later why that why that may have been the case. But later on in my journey, I got some understanding as to why I did that. But um I believed what happened for me because I asked for it. I stated my intention to the universe that day that I wanted something more. And the universe said, Well, we're gonna give you something more to ask for. We're not just gonna give you a spiritual background in terms of which in terms of which to help you work through grief. We're gonna give you a whole different perspective that's gonna help you find peace, that's gonna inform who you are personally, professionally, um, you know, the the work that you do with clients. And I was still in 2010 employed with the state. So what I asked for exceeded my grasp, exceeded what I wanted. And I'm glad now that the universe didn't listen to me and gave me more more than I than I asked for, but it was more, it was what I needed.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, more than you asked for, but still manageable.
SPEAKER_00:You got it.
SPEAKER_01:Yep, more than you asked for, but what you needed.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely, yeah. Absolutely. So, and you know, that's the story up until this point of my own spiritual transformation and what a lot to help me find peace. But you know, my story is ever changing every day. You know, every individual that comes into my life, every student that I interact with that has a different story always inspires me. Um, to and I, you know, I'm gonna continue to grow until the day that I'm called um to the beyond. And I I do believe there's an afterlife. I do believe that there's more to this existence than this life. Um, you know, research on near-death experiences, which has been documented since the 1800s, where individuals have physically died, their spirit has left their body, they've been met, they've been met on the other side by loved ones, spiritual guides. They've been taught, they've been given a glimpse of what the afterlife is like in teachings, and they come back into their body prepared to come to you know to complete their mission on earth. They're they're told you need to come, you need to go back because your mission on earth isn't over yet. Once you're done, you will join us. Um, and they come back with a renewed perspective, um, and a change in their worldview, which is similar to the world changed worldview I went through after the catastrophic loss of my daughter.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, they you cannot uh energy cannot be created or destroyed, so our energy has to go somewhere. I was reading an article about a near-death experience where they left their body, left the hospital, and there was a shoe on top of like the cover for the entryway where the cars would drive through on the roof. And no one knew it was up there. When he when they brought him back, he was said something about this shoe, and sure enough, it was out there on the roof. So he legitimately left his body and saw the top of the the hospital.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, there are people that have had near-to-death experiences um that have actually seen themselves being operated on, seeing themselves being resuscitated, and they're able to share those details. Um, you know, when they talk about meeting a divine presence, it could be, you know, if you're Catholic, it could be the Blessed Virgin Mary, it could be Jesus. Um, you know, if you're you're you're Buddhist, it could be you meet the Buddha himself or some type of divine being or being of light that is there to to introduce you and indoctrinate you to the other side. And um, near-death experiences have been documented since the late 1800s, and there's such a wide variety of research that's been done that have documented very similar features that there's no question in anybody's mind that near death experiences are they're a valid phenomenon, and they're there's an interesting correlation as far as like the experience to DMT as well, right?
SPEAKER_01:Like I've heard a lot of people's DMT experiences that follow along kind of the same themes as as a near-death experience, and then they call it the death chemical because they say that there's a reserve of DMT in the brain for when we do die so that it can help with that transition. So maybe who knows?
SPEAKER_00:It could just be you know that's true, and you know, the other thing, I mean, there's there's always you know, you gotta the this the skeptical part, we need to be skeptical. Take a look at a scientific explanation. A lot of funky things happen to the brain when you die. But but here's the thing we define death in this society as brain death. That's the universal definition. When the brain stops functioning, you know, the rest of you know where brain stops functioning, then we stop breathing probably shortly thereafter. One of the things that Bruce Grayson brought up, and he's the founder of the International Association of Near Death Studies. One of the things he brought out is that near death experiences need us to take a look at the relationship between the mind and the brain. If the brain is dead, and there's parts of our brain, I think you, you know, I think the prefrontal cortex are part of our brain that's responsible for vivid, you know, vivid imagery, visualization, hearing sounds, and individuals experience vivid visualizations, butterflies, flowers that are exponentially brighter than anything they've seen on earth. The question becomes if the brain is at is brain dead, then you know, they're then how is how is the are these images being being recalled? See, yeah, which basically we say that kind of matter determined consciousness, and and you know, matter is primary in determining consciousness, maybe consciousness in those cases primary in determining matter. And I mean these are questions that these these are quite things that I started, you know, I I started researching. I said, Yeah, and I started, you know, I started thinking about them. And it's it's helped expand my belief system, it's helped me develop critical thinking, it's helped me realize that science does may not have an explanation for everything. And if we can accept that some behaviors are real, but there may not be a scientific explanation for it, we can just kind of, as my friend John Turk, the author of The Raven's Gift, has said, we just we just are in awe of the magic of the universe. And why can't we just accept that? That there's magic in the universe that isn't explained by science. And I'm paraphrasing John.
SPEAKER_01:Well, they also say that science is undistinguishable from magic.
SPEAKER_00:Yep, that's true.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so it's just science we don't understand yet.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's it. And you know, um, so yeah, so I I've kind of learned to embrace some of the mysteries of the universe, um, and that has helped me.
SPEAKER_01:You you also in your um story that I've that I've heard on other shows, talk about some some generational trauma, right? Yes. Um, yeah, could you could you dive into that a little bit? Because that's really interesting as well.
SPEAKER_00:Well, as I mentioned, I think in the beginning of the of the of the uh program, uh my father left when I was five years old. Um the last memory I have of my father uh before he left was I was sitting at, I was five years old. Now I'm 70 years old now, mind you. I still remember this. This is like always going to be embedded, I think, in my DNA, this memory. Um I was five years old eating a bologna sandwich, which is my favorite food at the time. Um, and I think my wife still says I'm full of bologna, but I think for different reasons than other than my than my eating habits uh when I was when I was a child, but um and I remember him being pinned against the wall by my two uncles and said, if you ever do anything to hurt Sadie, Sadie is was my mother, is my mother. Um she said, if you said if you ever do anything to hurt Sadie again, we're gonna kill you. But five years old, that's the last memory I had. I never saw him again. Physically, what that did to me, it traumatized me and to what the effects that it had. I started having seizures when I was five years old, grandmal seizures. Um, so they did a they did an EEG, EKG of no EEG of my brain, excuse me. And E G or I, whatever. They did a they did brain wipes EEG, thank you. Yeah, um, they did um uh EEG of my brain and they discovered they said that there was a part of my brain, or was a there was a part in the the EEG reading that showed that there was susceptibility to stress if that part of the brain was was was stimulated, which was causing the seizure. So I've been on phenobarbital for you know uh 30 milligrams now. I've been been on that's the highest dose I've been on since I was a kid, and I haven't had any seizure since the 80s, but I won't stop taking it because the seizure threshold tends to, if you stop taking it, tends to lower real quickly, and then you become susceptible. So that was the first impact I had emotionally. Um, I felt abandoned. I got I was angry at my mother later for not remarrying to provide me a father, so it that caused a lot of issues for me. I was angry at my mother for overprotecting me and angry at my father for leaving. Um in what was it about it? It was Easter, it was like 2000, I want to say 14 or 15, might have been sooner than that. I got an email from a person in Baltimore where my father was born, pure serendipity again. I had written an article for about my father for Father's Day. She got back to me and she said, I think I might be your first cousin on your father's side, gave me information about gave me information about my father's parents that that um nobody ever knew. I never made that information public of who my paternal grandparents were. So I got in touch with her. Turns out we are first cousins. She sent me the whole family tree history. She was into chronological, you know, she was like the ancestry DNA queen of our family, you know, she wanted to she really was focused on finding out lineage and getting people together. And it turns out that my father came from a history where there was addiction, um, mental illness, and when the women and infidelity, and when the women in their lives wanted emotional attachment from the males, they just beat feet and left, they just moved on. The women, yep, they just moved on. Yeah, they just moved on. And my my father, my guess is that my mother wanted more than my father could give him, so he left to give us, so he left.
SPEAKER_01:Um, I'm sure the interaction with your with her brother didn't help.
SPEAKER_00:No, no, but there's also some other things that occurred. He had stepped outside of the marriage, and this is the other part of the story, and he had fathered a child from another relationship, and through the wonders of ancestral DNA in 2022, I found 2021. I found out I had a sister, or 2022, I found out I had a sister. 2021, I found out I had a sister, and um, you know, younger sister who lives now in New Mexico, and um, we've had a great relationship. So, but here's the other here's the other thing. I had a context now for my father's leaving. I knew that he couldn't stay in a traditional marriage because it was not in his DNA to do that. His his history couldn't change his history, his history was inextricably woven into his DNA. He left. I deter I determined that he left not because he didn't love us, but he left because he did. He did not want to see any further harm come to us. I deduced this with also with the help of Patty, who we were having a conversation about my father, and she goes, you know, I'm I'm sensing your father. He's he's got his he's got his head buried in his hands, and he's upset because he left you. He's upset because he left. And at that moment, this was after I met my cousin, I had a context for his leaving. And I told him, I said, Dad, I forgive you. I said, I understand. You don't have you don't have to you don't have to worry about it anymore. You don't have to beat yourself up. Yeah. Um, and I hope that gave him permission to grow in the afterlife. Um and I honestly, Russ, I love my father as much as the mother raised me because I and also he gave me a pretty cool sister. And I had always hoped that I had had a sibling that I could have talked to during Janine's illness. Yeah, I didn't discover her then, but I discovered her now. So that that prayer manifested, that that wish manifested, and I'm just glad I have her in my life now. I don't I'm learning what it's like to be an older brother. So um Yeah, that's fascinating.
SPEAKER_01:My my mother had a similar experience where she until my mother, my grandmother and my grandfather, who was her stepdad, passed away. Uh, she had never looked up her real father, and then she looked up her biological father afterwards and found out she's got some brothers and a whole family down in Florida. They've since relocated to Florida and she's down there with all her family and just absolutely loved it. It's it's amazing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah, and then my mother, um, Susan always said, or Susan does Patty always said, have more than one spiritual teacher, just don't rely on me. And after I met Patty, it had to be about a year or so after, uh I met a shamanistic holistic practitioner by the name of Susan Roback, and she has a lot of body energy work uh that releases a lot of stuck energy, releases a lot of trauma. And I had had a conversation with her about my mother, and I said, Boy, I was angry at her for overprotecting me. Um, and to the point where it just she's just like stifled me. And and then the next month I met with her, she goes, Let's put you on the table. And what Susan will do is if she'll do something called a soul journey, she will just go deep, in she'll take it, she'll she'll go deep, see what she finds that may of information maybe from other lifetimes, other dimensions, other worlds. And she we she she after she did the soul journey said to me, She goes, What I saw was uh was a little boy four years old in Egyptian or Roman times in a chariot with his father. The chariot overturned, killing the four-year-old boy. And so I gave some thought to this, and you know, a lot of times spiritual awareness is about making connections in the real world to create some awareness. Sure. So I I I put this together what the what Susan saw with the discussion we had about my mother's overprotectiveness, and also at that time I also began to to revisit and also believe in the fact that we've had past lives, and that was through the influence of Brian Weiss's Many Lives, Many Masters. That our souls have lived many incarnations in the physical form, and so I started to think I was wait a minute, what if I was the child that died in Egyptian times? What if my father was my father in this lifetime, and my mother in Egyptian times was a mother who couldn't say was my mother who couldn't save me from from dying? What if our souls what if our souls contract after we both you know you know we both you know uh died and went to the afterlife? What if our souls contracted to have the experiences mother and son, but my and my and my father contracted? My father was gonna leave, my mother was gonna overprotect me to the point where it would anger me because she didn't want to lose me again. So this was her soul resolving the karma from a past lifetime where she couldn't save me. So I so I I had a context for my father's leaving, his history, and I also had a sacred explanation for my mother's decision to overprotect me. Now, you now trust you or anybody in your audience couldn't consensually validate my experiences, sure, but for me, I know what those experiences did to transform my worldview, I know what it did to promote ancestral healing and peace. All the therapy I did in the past didn't help me come to peace with this as quickly as the work I did with Patty, and as as quickly as as two sessions with Susan about my mother. And you know, I have an ancestral altar that I call up over my desk, and I have pictures of my father, my mother, uh, with me as a child, and they're a part of my they're a part of my soul family, and my you know, and those who I I rely on uh for spiritual guidance and for inspiration. So um it's interesting.
SPEAKER_01:I have a family wall that I so my father and I had a very poor relationship, he was very abusive. Um, I didn't really have much of a relationship with my mother, unfortunately, because I lived with him and through was living through all that abuse. But now I have out there a picture of them on their wedding day. I think I have a picture of her in her dress and then her holding me as a baby. Because even though um I didn't have a great time with my dad, and even though that relationship wasn't very positive, I'm still here because of him. And and the other thing that I started to realize is for him to be the kind of person that he was, he had to endure some abuse too. People aren't born like that, they're not created, so yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I I mean we're born out of love. I mean, we're born with with love, and there's love in the afterlife, from what I've read, and from all accounts of individuals that have near death experiences. We're born with love, but it's the the contracts of the human experience and and the the issues and challenges we run into and the conflicts that that really you know they really kind of mass that. And but in the afterlife, again, from what I've read, there's there's no anger, there's no there's no uh revenge, it's all about love, light, and bliss, and um, you know, the the behaviors that we've engaged in in this life is eventually from a sacred perspective for the greater evolution of our souls, and we have the option to come back and do it again if we want to. You know, the soul has free will as much as a human if human flesh has free will. So um, you know, so and if I told you 22 years ago I'd be talking like this, or even 15 years ago I'd be talking like this, I would exercise my right as an addiction counselor to do a rapid drug screen on it.
SPEAKER_01:Um so my question now then is Dave with with how your view of life, death, and the afterlife has evolved through your experiences that you've had with these people you've worked with. What is your belief system now about what the afterlife is and how we can can reconcile with it?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I mean, for me, and the afterlife is is a place that's going to be characterized by pure love, pure bliss. I believe that we have other functions in the afterlife. From what I've read, I believe that we will do different things in the afterlife. Our you know, I've read about children who have transitioned early, um, you know, who have served as inspiration or as as communicators with mediums trying to help find find missing children. So I believe that our life is going to continue. We are going to continue, it's going to be in a different form, in a different dimension. Um, and and basically what I believed is that um, you know, death is basically now a rebirth into a new existence, is that we leave one part of our existence and continue in another. And we do have the option, our souls have the option to come back into the physical experience to experience what we need to experience for the evolution of our souls. And Brian Weiss has talked about our souls, we have soul families, they're soul groups that travel together over lifetimes and they contract for different relationships. Hell, Russ, you and I could be part of a soul group. We might have been connected in a previous lifetime. Um, and so for me, you know, I think once you realize that there are other dimensions in the universe, and I'm paraphrasing this from the afterlife of Billy Fingers. Once you realize that there are, you know, you've like you other that we live in a multidimensional universe, you won't look at life, death, or life after death the same way again. And in some ways, I challenge my students. I ask them when we talk about the spiritual aspects of death. The question that begs to be asked is that do we really die? Or do we just go on in a different form? Do we go on in a different form of energy? Is our death just a rebirth into a new existence? So I believe that our existence is ongoing. I also believe our version of the afterlife can be anything we want to create. Um, you know, if you look at Mitch Album's book, The Five People You're Most Likely to Meet in Heaven, um, the protagonist in the book meets five individuals who are very influential, and they each had a different version of the afterlife depending on what they did in this lifetime. So, and I think we can, and I also think that we don't come into the afterlife automatically spiritually evolved. I think if there is work that we need to do from this lifetime or previous lifetimes, we're it's kind of like you know, we're we're at at that particular level, and then we continue to grow as we master those levels. So I believe it's just a whole new level of existence. Um that we're we are all gonna be. And I don't believe in a dualistic philosophy, I don't believe that we're gonna be banished to the bowels of hell, hell if we've done some you know indiscretions in our lives. I think if we're willing to forgive ourselves, I think God has been a for is a forgiving human being. And I think as if if if we can if we can be open to that and and and forgiveness is just the kingdom of heaven, or however you look at it, the pure spiritual bliss is open to anybody.
SPEAKER_01:I believe that it sounds similar to uh like Gnosticism almost. Yeah, I'm not for I'm not familiar with that school of thought, so you're not it's a it's a form of Christianity that was popular in the first and second century, and the idea was that the earth was created by a non-benevolent force, right? Um, and that Jesus was here as a as a way to try to bring about a certain amount of knowledge that will then allow our soul to evolve to the next plane of existence. Yeah, and similar to like Indian, uh, like uh and uh what's the word uh reincarnation?
SPEAKER_00:Yep, yeah. And there's a lot of religions that believe in some form of reincarnation. Um you know, and I and I and I do believe that. I do believe that there have been there have been Ian Stevenson and Jim Tucker did some reincarnation studies in the early 2000s of uh there were 2,500 cases that were presented to them of children who had they you know whose parents believe they had reincarnation experience, they were coming in remembering memories from a past life, and they found 50% of those to be solved. In other words, 50% of those were valid reincarnation experiences. Um so yeah, I mean, from what I've researched from my own experiences with with Patty and from working with other spiritual teachers, man, I don't believe this is the I don't believe this is our our only existence in the physical realm. I believe that that we will continue to go on with the option of coming back into the physical realm for our soul to to learn to to evolve and continue to evolve, you know, for the greater good of our soul. So that's yeah, that's what I believe.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So um, what are you doing these days? So you've got a podcast. You you said you did you guys just recently wrote a book over the pandemic. Can you tell me a little bit more about the book? The podcast and kind of what's going on in Dave's world today.
SPEAKER_00:Well, um certainly I I I'm retired, I think, and probably with uh a bunch of parentheses around it because I'm busier retired than I ever was working. So um, but the book is uh When the Psychology Professor Met the Minister. Uh, it's a book that's broken up into three parts. The first is um about the spiritually transformative experience, and we go into detail with that. That helped me find peace after my daughter's uh uh transition. Uh, we talk about uh part two is called Something Greater Than Ourselves. We've about life in a multidimensional universe, about the power of storytelling, honoring the past as your teacher. And the third part of the book is for present and future generations, how to achieve wholeness, how to embrace critical thinking, to transcend challenges. Um, and so that that's it for the book. We've gotten really positive reviews on Amazon and on our author website. Um, we've been very happy with the response of the book. The book was published on or was we rolled it out on March 1st, 2021. March 1st was the date of my daughter's transition to a new existence. So we rolled it out then. Yep. The book is four years old. Um, it's a relatively young book, but you could I believe you could pick this book up 10, 20 years later, and now it's not you're gonna get something out of it. Um, you know, the teachings in there I think are are timeless, and there's something for everybody in the book. It's just not about grief, it's about achieving awareness, about achieving peace, it's about doing things that can help you become better versions of yourself. So hopefully, uh, this our book is at the hands of every anybody who needs it. So, as far as the podcast goes, that's another story. We need to do a whole nother episode on how that even got started. But I've been doing it at the behest of two very pain in the butt students that I had at Utica University who persisted for a year in telling me to do a podcast because I needed to bring the teachings from the death and dying classroom into the podcast world. So on March 31st, 2023, Patty and I did the first episode of the Teaching Journeys podcast. The mantra of the podcast is we're all students and teachers, so let's learn from each other. I've had individuals like like yourself for us who have had who have transcended their own traumas and have have done you know coaching. I've had coaches on who have had stays like you have had skills to share that have helped individuals transcend their own traumas. Every guess that I have is my teacher and on the students. So I just ask the questions, try to have everybody's journeys represented authentically, and yeah, with the hope of them sharing some tools that are going to help my audience, who in many cases are dealing with their own challenges. It's been a fun experience. I've discovered that the podcasters we have a great community of support, we support each other, we refer guests to each other, we bounce ideas off of each other, and that was something I hadn't anticipated was that that bonus of community.
SPEAKER_01:Um and collaboration is fantastic.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. And and I'm gonna be up, I'm gonna be close to 200 episodes. I'll be publishing, I'll be 200 episodes, I believe, by the end of the year or the beginning of next year. Um, and I never thought I'd I'd get that far, but the podcast seems to have a life of its own. I've been blessed with referrals from podcast agents, other podcasters, satisfied guests. So as long as uh the demand is there, I'm gonna keep doing it.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I can tell you, I was on your podcast last week, actually. Yep. Um and it was a great experience, man. I mean, you're a great interviewer, and I I enjoyed your your vibe, which is why I asked you to be online. Hey, before I before I let you go, I would love it if you could if you have any advice for anybody. In fact, I was just right before we got together, I was meeting with a young lady who is dealing with a suicide. Her her partner died by suicide in just in July. Um, but man, people dealing with grief, obviously, you know it's just so over overwhelming when it happens, and there's so many emotions happening, so much going on in your head. What is the first thing that people should really try to focus their energy toward to start that recovery process?
SPEAKER_00:Well, first of all, is show yourself grace, speak show grace to yourself. I've said this on other podcasts, and this is gonna probably sound very cliche, but grief certainly is a marathon, it's not a sprint. Um, there are gonna be good moments, there are gonna be sad moments, there's gonna be emotional ups and downs, but it's normal, it's part of the journey. Um, ride the wave, realize that you can learn from everything that happens with you, even if it's just the understanding that you can survive before you can thrive. And I think we have to survive before we can thrive. Um, we have to wallow in the muck of our grief before we can wallow through it. That's um, and in doing so, is I've learned later in my life, grief has been one of my greatest teachers. It's taught me a lot about resilience, about developing resilience. It's taught me a lot about you know tapping into the better parts of myself with compassion, with empathy. But the other thing, particularly with very tremendous. Losses. Suicide is traumatic. It's stigmatized. There's a lot of shame and guilt that's associated with those that are left behind. There are questions about should I have rich, should could I have done more? Could I have recognized the signs more? Could I have done something to prevent this? And you know, the thing is, is I hope individuals understand that nobody's death is anybody's fault. No, um, it isn't. I mean, I beat myself up for two and a half years thinking that I should have had prevented my daughter from getting cancer. I should have protected her, I should have protected her from getting a disease that was inevitably incurable. Um and I realized that given the hand of cards that were dealt to me, I did the best that I could. And what I knew that I did is I I loved my daughter immensely. Uh and that love is always gonna carry. And I know that anything I did for her was out of love, that I had no control out of anything that happened. In fact, I wanted her to get another clinical trial. I begged her to do that, and she said, No, I want to be here with my family, I want to be here with my daughter, I want to be here with my friends, and I want to be here with my parents. And so, what I learned is that she taught me that we live life on our own terms, and some and we die on our own terms, and that's what she wanted to do. She wanted to live life freely, she also wanted to die on her own terms, and she wanted to die freely, and I've learned that now. But show grace, please don't blame yourself for not seeing what could have happened, and for those that have experienced traumatic loss, especially due to suicide, don't judge the totality of a person's life by their last act. Don't do that, don't do that. Individuals who die by suicide are people that are overwhelmed, they don't feel that there's there's any hope for the solution to their problems, they feel that they're a burden, and they end up taking their lives, but don't judge a person by their last act. Um, take a look at the totality of that life.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, very well said. Um, I did have one more question that just popped up in my head while you were doing your closing statement.
SPEAKER_00:That's okay. So we're not closed yet.
SPEAKER_01:Your granddaughter, how is your granddaughter doing?
SPEAKER_00:She's great, she's 23 years old. Um, she has a couple of kids. Um, she's doing you know, the thing is, is that her father made sure that she always knew the history of her mother. We we made sure that she knew who her mother was. In fact, one of the more surreal moments I had with her is I had a DVD, and I were going old school, Russ. I had a DVD that that we made, or that her significant other, Jean's significant other Steven, made of her last Christmas. And we sat and we watched that video. My granddaughter and I, about two or three years ago, watched that video, and uh, because I wanted to see how much love her mother had for her. Sure. And her mother also filmed other moments where she was holding her, where she was playing with her and walking, and I didn't know that it existed because I just stopped after the after the the last Christmas that we had together. Yeah, um, but she wanted that she wanted that video documentary so that when Brianna was ready to see it, she could see that yeah, there was a lot of love for the 10 months that I had you, I loved you more than life itself. And and that was a surreal experience for me, an emotional experience for me. And it was just, but it was kind of pretty cool watching it with my daughter's daughter to say, This is your mom, this is who she is.
SPEAKER_01:Well, she's blessed to have you as a grandfather, my friend.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, thank you, thank you. Um, you know, um, thank you, and um, I'm blessed to have her in my life as well as as you and uh other individuals who have crossed my path, and certainly not by chance, it's all been pure serendipity by the grand design. I've come to believe that people that come into our lives don't come into our lives by coincidence, which leads me to one other statement. Sure, in early grief, we were we we lament about the people who we thought were gonna support us in grief, but didn't. But yet there's other people that come forward that we never thought were gonna come forward that do support us. Celebrate those people that are in your support group now. Don't spend a lot of time lamenting over those people who aren't there. Those people who aren't there may come back at some point, but make sure that you are you're you're you you uh benefit from the people who are willing to be there for you during the worst time of your life and realize that support systems are going to change depending on life circumstances, where you are in your grief and everything.
SPEAKER_01:So I guess some people don't have the capacity to be the support that you need. Um, and that is not a reflection on them or you, they just don't have the capacity to be what you need.
SPEAKER_00:No, they don't, and they don't know how to be of support, which is why a lot of books are being written on how do you how do you hold space for somebody who's grieving, how do you hold space for somebody who's at trauma? What do you do? What do you say? What don't you say? We're not born with that knowledge, and certainly in a society that fears mostly fears death, we don't talk about how to how to help grieving individuals. We don't know how to we don't talk about how do we set we set support for that. So how do we set space for that? So but it's it's it's improving, it's improving, but we still got a ways to go.
SPEAKER_01:Well, there's definitely an emphasis on trauma, and grief is a for definitely a form of trauma. You got it by every description. So, Dave, thanks so much for being here with us, man. I'm gonna I'm gonna jump over here on the main screen and and uh uh we talked about some heavy stuff today. A lot of it could be a little triggering. So I just want to take a minute for anybody who is feeling triggered, just take a second, get your feet flat on the floor, just take a minute to be present, take a couple deep breaths, and as you do that, we're gonna close out the show. Um, my name once again is Russ Tellip. I'm a somatic trauma-informed coach with Brain Squad in Colorado Springs and the host of Trauma Talks. Um, today we got the chance to talk to Dave. Dave is a wonderful guy, he's got an amazing story, and I hope that you go check out his podcast, the Teaching Journeys podcast. And there's a link to that right here in the chat in the uh in the comments for the video, and I'll put it in the show notes for the podcast as well. This is our second episode of Trauma Talks Live. We haven't really gotten a whole lot of info of people coming in and asking questions. I don't know if people are shy because they're definitely watching. Um, but if you're in here and you're on one of these live broadcasts and you have any questions, anything pops into your head, or you just want to say, hey, Dave, I really like your goatee, whatever you want to say, jump in there and ask because you interacting is what's going to make Trauma Talks Live successful. So um, once again, if you are not a subscriber, please subscribe and I will catch you on the side. Dave, thanks again, brother. I really appreciate your time.
SPEAKER_00:You're welcome, brother. It was a pleasure to share space with you tonight, being on your podcast. I had a great time and uh thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_01:You got it. All right, guys. Have a good one. We'll see you next week.
SPEAKER_00:Bye bye.