What You Don't Know About Grief | With Amanda Beth Johnson | EP 481

What if grief isn't something to get over — but something to grow through?

In this powerful episode, Brian sits down with intuitive healer, ThetaHealing practitioner, and bestselling author Amanda Beth Johnson, who was widowed at just 27 years old when her husband Jeff was killed suddenly in a car accident. Nearly 30 years later, Amanda has transformed that devastating loss into a life of service — helping others navigate the emotional, physical, and spiritual terrain of grief with wisdom that can only come from having lived it.

This conversation goes places most grief discussions never reach. Amanda opens up about the premonition dream she'd been having since age 12, the guilt of moving forward after loss, why healing isn't linear but layered, and how energy medicine and ThetaHealing can access what talk therapy sometimes can't touch. 

If you've been wondering why grief keeps showing up even years after your loss, or whether it's possible to carry your person forward without staying stuck — this episode is for you.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why the five stages of grief are widely misunderstood — and what to expect instead
• The "rock in a jar" model of grief that changed how Amanda thinks about healing
• What ThetaHealing is and why it works at a level that surprises people
• How to honor your person's memory in healthy versus unhealthy ways
• The role of intuition, energy work, and somatic healing in grief recovery
• Why moving forward is not betrayal — and how your person may actually be cheering you on
• What Amanda would tell her 27-year-old self about feeling the feelings

Connect with Amanda:

Website: https://amandabethhealing.com

All platforms: https://amandabethhealing.com/linktree

Books: Search "Amanda Beth Johnson" wherever you buy books

Visit the Grief 2 Growth store for FREE items as well as other tools to help you along your journey:

• Guided Meditations
• My book GEMS of Healing (signed copy)
• My Oracle deck to help you connect with your loved ones
• Mini-courses
• Mini-guides
  
  

Check it out at https://grief2growth.com/store

Grief doesn’t follow stages, timelines, or rules.
If you’ve ever wondered, “Am I doing this right?”—you’re not alone.

That’s why I created the Grief Check-In.
It’s not a test. There are no right or wrong answers.
 

In just a few minutes, you’ll gain clarity, reassurance, and language for what you’re experiencing.

👉 Visit grief2growth.com/checkin

This deck is a labor of love. It's a 44 card oracle deck that's about connecting you to your loved one in spirit. The deck comes with a companion digital guide that gives you an affirmation, a reflection, and an activity for the day.

Check it out at https://stan.store/grief2growth/p/oracle-deck

Transcript

0:51

Close your eyes and imagine. What if the things in life that cause us the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, are challenges. Challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried, but what if, like a seed, we've been planted? And having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is Grief to Growth and I am your host, Brian Smith. Hi there, I'm Brian Smith and welcome to Grief to Growth. Whether you're joining us for the first time or you've been with us for a while, this is a space where we don't just talk about surviving grief. We explore how it can transform us. Together we ask the big questions like who we are, why we're here, where do we come from, and where are we going? Every conversation is an invitation to grow even through life's most difficult moments. Today's guest is someone who understands grief not only as a deep personal experience, but as a sacred doorway to healing, to transformation, and to purpose. Amanda Johnson is an intuitive healer and a transformational coach who was widowed at just 27 years old. That loss marked the beginning of a decades-long journey when it's taught her grief isn't just something we endure, but it's something that can lead us back to ourselves. And now, nearly 30 years later, Amanda supports others in navigating the emotional and spiritual terrain of loss. Through her work in somatic healing and intuitive development, she helps people reconnect with their inner wisdom, honor their pain, and to reclaim their joy. Amanda believes that grief is one of the most deeply felt but least understood emotions, and she's here to help us give it a sense of space and reverence that it truly deserves. So, in today's conversation, we're going to explore how grief can act as a spiritual initiation, why healing isn't linear but layered, what it means to truly listen to the body in grief, and how, yes, it is possible to experience prosperity and purpose on the other side of loss. Amanda is the best-selling author of Blooming into Life, and she has a forthcoming book written between the lines. Actually, that may be out already as we're recording this. She's also a contributing author and a daily gift of kindness, a daily gift of peace, and a daily gift of friendship. You can learn more about Amanda and her offerings at amandabethhealing.com, where you'll find her work in somatic coaching, energy healing, and intuitive transformation. And remember, you don't have to navigate your own grief journey alone. Join me after the episode of my Substack at grief2growth.substack.com, where I'll share a companion article and a place for us to continue the conversation together. So with that, let's welcome Amanda Johnson to grief2growth. Hi, Brian. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah, it's really good to get to meet you. We just had a nice conversation where we got started here. We realized we need to start recording, so I'm sure it's going to be a great episode. Before we get into everything else about your work and your books, tell me about your husband. Oh, so I was 27 years old, and Jeff and I had been together for nine years. We were coming into an anniversary, and he was killed suddenly in a car accident. And like so many, I was supposed to have been in the car with him that day. But my own procrastination, we were members of a car club. I was the secretary of treasurer. We had a meeting coming up. I didn't have the minutes in the meeting ready. So I stayed behind to take care of doing these minutes. And then I get a phone call from his folks who they were half an hour away. They heard something on the scanner, and here I was in my pajamas, and I turned up the scanner to listen, and I just had that overwhelming sense of I needed to go there. I'd had years of experience as an EMT, and I'm not an ambulance chaser. I really am not, but I was just overwhelmed that I needed to be there. So here I am in my pajamas. I shoved my feet in my tennis shoes, and I went down the road, not three miles from our home. And there was a line of traffic stopped, and an officer came to tell me, and I told him why I was there, and he lets me out of the car, and the rest is history as I walked to the, and I don't know how much of this information you want or the story, but the things that transpired there, the woman who came out of the crowd, dressed, she had a white cardigan sweater dressed in a nurse's uniform that was comforting because that's what my mom had worn all of my childhood. My mom was a nurse, and that she was there on the side of the road with me, and this was nearly 30 years ago before cell phones, and so who was that first person that you call, and the support that I then had, and life continued to just really fall apart after that. Immediately there was so much anger, anger at God. It just really rocked my belief system. How could this happen? We had everything going on. We had our classic car. We were getting ready to restore. We had everything. We did everything together. I mean, he was my whole entire world, and that was gone, gone in the blink of an eye, and it was just really shattered, and I realized then, as I'm at the scene of the accident, and I look at this car, and I recognize that car. I mean, one, yes, it was the car that he had just purchased from me, but it was the car that I had seen in my dreams repeatedly for 15 years. That was his death, not mine, and then from there, rebuilding life and rebuilding all of those things and the grief, and at the time I was working part-time, so this meant that I wasn't going to be able to stay where I was. My job wasn't full-time, and I had just lost my whole world, so I ended up eventually moving back home to Iowa, to where my family was. You said it was a car that you literally dreamt about. Do you feel like that was a premonition? I do. When I was 12 years old, I started having this reoccurring dream, and it was a large white car, and I thought that I would originally wake up as if it were a nightmare, and I was scared and panicked, and I would have this dream over and over and over again, and I never got past seeing the car on the side of the road, and to me, I thought I'd been hit by a train. In actuality, it wasn't a train, it was another vehicle, but it still looked the same, and at 12, that was my impression, that was my reference as to what I could envision that would have caused this much damage. Wow. So, at 27, and it's really wild, it was just to my wife before we sat down to record this, I have been running into, there's a pattern, and the people have interviewed me lately, but a lot of people, a lot of women especially, but also men who have lost spouses, so I feel like there's something that's coming through for me and for my audience right now, that this sense of devastation that you must feel at that age to feel like everything's been ripped away. It did, it felt like Jeff had been there for me for all of the really big icky stuff that happened in my life. I had been involved in car accidents before we met, he was there when I had the diagnosis of fibromyalgia, he helped me through all the physical pain and the doctor's visits and all of the things that came with that, going through college and finding out, the reason that I never typed is because I'm dyslexic and dysgraphic, and so typing is very frustrating for me. He was my college typist, I married my college typist. He handled all the money. He could tell you at the drop of a hat where the money was, how much we had, and all of those things, he took care of all of those things. He was my business partner. We made custom teddy bears and he engineered different cutting stands and things. He helped me with the patterns and cutting it out and all the packing and hauling and doing the juried shows that we did everything. We went camping together. We had our three dogs and that was our life. We had the world by the tail. When he went, we were still relatively, I mean at 27, we hadn't been out of college very long. The financial hardship, he worked full-time, he managed everything and now here I am, a part-time job, and that whole society not knowing how to deal with grief, as a part-time employee, the company, which was kind of a human service type company, had no policy for grief or for bereavement for part-time employees. They were caring and wonderful people and so that was very flexible, but they realized they had no policy for it. Then the first time, anything that you do, that sounding board, the person who you discussed everything with that helped you make all the decisions, you're now talking to the dogs and that's it. You don't have that companionship, that person that you always relied on. Although we had friends, we had acquaintances, it still is not the same and it really rocks your trust. How do you rebuild? You don't pick up that life. Our life was no longer. I needed to learn how to pick up my life and how to continue my life without him. Yeah, and that's the thing. I literally have a friend whose partner passed away three days ago and she's going through this, you feel like it's the end, right? Oh, yeah. It's the end of something, right? It is the end of something, as you said, but how did you start to come out of that? When did the fog start to lift? He was killed in August. By October, I moved back home with my mom and I spent literally three months eating, sleeping, crying. And then my mom said one day, she goes, you know what? You're going to work with me. You're doing something, you're getting dressed, you're getting out of this house and you're doing something. People, and I think that that's kind of one of the harder things is because everyone has grief and no one will ever be able to fully understand exactly what I felt, just like I cannot fully understand what another person feels when they go through their grief. But the whole idea that because people don't know what to say and they say nothing, and so you feel ostracized. I feel like if I went out into public, I had it tattooed on my forehead, you know, widow, you know, and no one would talk to me, they would not approach me. I would rather people said 50 stupid things to ignore me once. So when you know someone who's going through that process, I encourage you to talk to them, just say, hey, I'm thinking of you. And don't ever ask them how they're doing because they're doing fine until you ask them and then they lose it. But just coming out of that fog was when I realized that, you know, obviously I had things to do. I needed to resolve things spiritually. And if that just meant that I just had to resolve that anger, how I felt so left behind and abandoned. So finding, you find new things to put in your life. Nothing will ever replace that. I think that I saw the graphic of grief as being like a rock inside of a jar. And this rock represents our grief, and that jar is us as a container. And as this picture continues to go on, the grief, the size of that rock, that stone, that hardness and heaviness stays the same, but that container grows around it. And that's the growth that we do in our ability to understand and to move and to better adapt to that grief. Our container gets bigger. We grow and we learn, and that allows us to handle our grief so much better because I don't think the grief, I mean, I'm nearly 30 years out. And so my grief is not, I mean, this fall will be 30 years. And what I found amazing is that there are some years that the anniversary death date just kind of passes. It doesn't feel real prominent. There's nothing. It's kind of like, oh, I'm feeling really moody and really icky. And oh, it's that anniversary. And then there's other years as they come by, you know, a month or two before I am really caught up in everything and I'm very aware of it. And I think that it's really, really important to embrace. When you're having a bad day or a difficult day, you need to give yourself grace. Let those feelings come up and really deal with them. You can't not deal with them. You know, on a day that you're having the sadness and the grief, you need to deal with it and give it the time and attention that it needs. Because if you stuff it, it's like stuffing it at a pressure cooker and it's going to come back and it's going to really just take over. And for me, I think one of the things that was the easiest is that Jeff was an amazing person. And everyone in my life who has come into my life since he has been gone, they know who he is. I mean, I don't run him through a ritual, but I don't hide that part of me. He is the one who gave me lessons and passed on information and things that came specifically from him. Tips and tricks I share with people, with the appropriate people I tell him, yeah, that's one of the things Jeff taught me. You know, we don't hide, we talk and we celebrate. We celebrate all the things that he was. And I know other people who were close to him have not been able to process that. And I think that when you can't embrace the good things, you just stuff it all the way. It makes it really, really hard to heal. So I think that's really important for people to know because I think one of the fears people have is they're going to lose their person. They're going to forget them. They're not going to be a part of their life anymore. And it sounds like that's not true in your case. Oh, no, absolutely not. And it's not because I have a shrine in my home to him. But there are different things that just make me smile. It's like, oh, I remember that. And there were certain things. I mean, it was kind of a ritual, if you will, that we sat down and we would have a bowl of mint chip ice cream. We shared that bowl of ice cream of an evening. I didn't need ice cream for a long time. He wrote in Blue Inc. And for a long time, Blue Inc. gave me a pause. It was like, oh, gosh, you know. And now as an author, when I sign my book, I sign in Blue Inc. So there's different things that come up. And as they come up, we embrace them. And we really, you know, and we enjoy, we live near the Adirondacks. And so going to the Adirondacks was our safe haven. That was where we could escape and disconnect. And we went voting. And I had not been voting since he was killed until two years ago. And when we went out on the boat, and because it was just the two of us. So I helped launch the boat. I helped load the boat. I did all those things to be on that boat. And when it launched into the water, the tears fell, the grief was there. It was there like it had just happened because this was the first time that I had been voting. And thankfully I was with great human beings who were like, Oh, this is heavy. What's going on? And I just said, I'm just having a minute. And then afterwards we shared the stories and we talked about, you know, all the great things. And so I continue to go voting and it's not tearful now. Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing that. I think that's so important for people to know there are, there's some things that may be too painful immediately to do like, like, like writing in Blue Inc. You know, and things like that, but it doesn't mean it's gone. It doesn't mean it's gone forever, that, that, that can come back. And the other thing you share, I think it's really important for people to understand is we can still have bad days or bad moments or bad, whatever. 10, 15, 20, 30 years later. It doesn't mean we've gone back to where we work. And some people think, well, that means I'm stuck. I haven't, I haven't progressed at all. No. And, and, and Elizabeth Kubler Ross in 1969 established those, those five stages of grief, those five stages don't stay in any order. They don't have a timeframe. They don't, they come and go. They wax and they wane. And, and you would think that when you get to the point of acceptance, woohoo, you should have a trophy. And you're not going to go back through them again. And, and no, you're going to go through them. But you acknowledge them. You acknowledge each stage in each phase and you give it. It's time. Yes. There is a concern when that depression gets to a clinical state and you do need to involve someone else on a professional level. I don't want to shortchange that at all to be aware and to be watching over other individuals that they don't stay in any of those stages too long because there, there is a lot and feelings. I think that we're not, we're not always educated to acknowledge our feelings. We're taught to just shove them down, you know, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, get, get back to work. You got three days now go. And that's not how it works. And sometimes, you know, like I said, with my job, you know, there were days that I needed to go, okay, I'm in the middle of doing something. I worked with client. I was in human services. And so what I would go work with clients and something would come up. It's like, Oh, I can't deal with this in this minute, but I need to give myself some time. Maybe it's in the weekend. Sitting in my car with the car off in my garage was always a quiet space. It was always a safe space where I could cry. I could, I could journal. I could do any of those other things that I needed to do. Sometimes screaming and yelling was important. I remember one of my first really angry times right after Jeff was killed, I had this, this ugly figurine. I mean, I think it would have been on the clearance rack at Goodwill had it not been gifted to me. I took it outside and I smashed it. And I felt so much relief after that. And so I think it's important to look at your anger. And what are you doing with the anger? Can you journal it? Can you scream? Can you go get a pool noodle and, and beat your bed? You know, what, what do you do with that anger? Do you have somewhere you can go that, that is a safe space for you to release this anger? Do you have a friend, you know, a pastor, a minister? Where do you need to go to share, to be heard? Because I think that's another part of the process is when you're ready to take these feelings and be heard with them. A lot of it does happen in private, but it doesn't have to. There's, you know, and Brian, you have an amazing group of individuals and listeners and your audience that helps and shares, you know, that was kind of my introduction with your group. I can't even remember how I found my way to your page. And I've referred so many people to it, to, to share and to support one another and to know that there is so much more on the other side of this grief. Yeah. Yeah. And I, and it is extremely important for our grief to, to be witnessed and to be normalized to think of the sense. And I want to talk to you more about the anger you, because you mentioned that. And I think you also mentioned faith. So your anger at whom was it directed? Was it God? Was it, was it your husband? Was it yourself? But the universe, what was, where was your anger? Where was that coming from? Oh, a lot of anger at God. I mean, we had the world by the tail. How, how could you possibly do this? How could you take him? He was, he was a boy scout. He was, you know, teaching youth hunters safety. He was a tax preparer. How, how could you take someone who had so much to give? How could you take them? How could you shorten their life? And how, how in the hell could you take them from me? They were my support. They were everything to me. So there was a lot of anger at God, a lot of anger. And then I guess the bold is to be angry at Jeff. Yeah. How could he leave me with these bills? With this accounting nightmare, because it was all his, you know, how could he leave me? You know, and I, when I, I went through other things in life that brought me to a, a big healing crisis. I gone through a divorce. And after that is when I really found the whole healing and bringing so much back to his death and resolving that, doing the forgiveness work there, you know, and, and forgiving myself for being so angry about it. And not having better resources. And I think that I came into that situation of his sudden death better than the average person because I was a hospice volunteer. One of my degrees is in gerontology. And part of that is the death and dying course. And Jeff being my college typist and always taking the other side of any argument. So he typed all of my reports and all of my theories and my ideas. He would take my handwriting and put it into a report. And then he would always have a discussion. What'd you think about? And so I was better positioned to know what his beliefs were for the after world, you know, was, was there to be a burial? Was it to be cremation? Was he an organ donor? Was, you know, all of those things that we don't talk about, those are things that happen behind closed. No, you need to have those conversations because even in grief, that you have time to prepare for. You need those answers when it happens. So, yeah. So you, how did you start to make this transition? Because now you, you're involved with helping people to heal. So how did that transform our transformation come about? That happened with me feeling that I was rock bottom. Just there was something else had to give the joy in my life was gone. I was getting up every day. I was going to work. I was coming home, you know, taking care of the kids, doing, doing the things, but I didn't have joy in my life. On the outside as a business owner, life looked good. You know, you had the education, the car, the house, the kids, the dogs, everything looked perfect. But on the inside, I was very, I was very empty. And there were some days I just didn't want to be here. I didn't want to keep doing it. And so that's when I stumbled into my healing path. I was actually working on growing my business and came across the alignable page, which is supposed to be like Facebook for business owners. And another alternative healer said, Hey, you know, let's, let's, let's meet. Let's talk about how we can support each other. And I'm thinking, Oh, she's alternative healing. I'm alternative healing. I was still doing my float pod primarily at that time. And next thing there's a, Hey, let's schedule appointments. We can exchange information. See how we can to support each other. And then it just really hit with me that what she was offering was something that I might be able to benefit from. And so she did an intuitive energy read with me. And it's like, Oh, that was too spot on. It was uncomfortably spot on that someone else could see and me what I felt and what I thought I had walled off from everyone else. And so I began the fade healing process with her. And it's like, this is so quick and efficient. And this is, this is really an awesome way to get to where a person is really hurting to help them to grow and to expand and get moving beyond what they've gone through. And so I took the courses and that's what I practice primarily. As, as a healer is the beta healing process process. Okay. And you said you were doing some sort of a healing before that. What was that you were doing before? Not really anything for I, I have a salt floatation pod. Okay. Salt floatation. Okay. Yeah. So I do. I do. Yeah. That's the alternative healing I was doing before is I have the salt pod and in the salt pod in, in, in those things, you know, there's been times in my life when Mike, when I bought my house, Jeff and I were actively looking for a house. He was a veteran and he had that, that VA bill that would allow whatever the certificate was that would have allowed us to buy a home with very little money down. And we were in that process when he was killed. And so when I bought my home years later, I remember having the key and then just sitting on the floor and crying and feeling that his presence was there. And that he was like, no, this is what you're supposed to do. You're, you know, the times when I felt the lowest, I felt that he would show up as support, you know, when you're questioning big decisions or anything, I always felt that he was, you know, that cheerleader there. Yeah. To, to say, no, this, this is what you're supposed to be doing. You know, I, I would feel guilty that, you know, here, I bought a house, something that we wanted to do. And he didn't get to do that. I want to talk about that because I actually said, I, this has just been coming up as a theme in my life. And I was to speak with someone a couple of days ago, whose husband passed away less than a year ago, eight months ago. And, and one of the things was like, am I betraying him? Did you ever feel like you were betraying Jeff? Oh, I did. Um, and, and, you know, being 27 when he was killed, um, his, his brother, um, who I'm still close with. His brother came and, you know, when, when the whole funeral thing happened, um, finding a plot and, and, and doing all of those things, his brother bought the plot next to his. And I was like, but that's supposed to be mine. You know, it's like, and he said, no, he said, you are too young. You need to go live your life. And, and Brian, who is, is, is 12 years younger than Jeff. I mean, that was just wisdom, wisdom beyond wisdom. And, um, then there's those things that you do it. The first time you, you date. It's like, oh, that, that does a, that does a heart flop. That does a brain flop that, um, that's not something you enter into lightly at all. Um, and, you know, buying the house, uh, the car that we were restoring, I, I still have, and I have been able to restore it. Um, I, I follow his dates. Uh, we lived in upstate New York and March 17th, the weather's pretty clear. And so the car would come out of storage March 17th. Uh, his birthday was October 11th. And that was fall and cold weather. And oftentimes we had snow by then. So the car would go into storage and it was into storage those dates. Um, weather patterns have changed and I don't have to put the car in storage nearly as early and, and, uh, but I was able to restore it. And that is, you know, that's still things that he didn't get to see. But when I make those decisions and I have those things, I do feel his presence that he is showing up and he is, yes, this is okay. This is what you need to do. You need to, to go forward with this. Um, so it's, it's an interesting thing. And that still is, you know, part of that Woo Woo spiritual world. Some people experience these things. Some people don't, um, you know, but he's, I feel he's come to me in those random times when that extra reassurance was good. And knowing that our lives did not continue, but my life needed to, and these are part of being a healthy functioning adult. These are the things that you do. Um, and I can't imagine that any of our loved ones would ever expect or condone that our lives stopped when theirs did. Yeah. Well, it's interesting because it sounds to me like, uh, Jeff's life with you has continued in a sense, right? Would you agree with that? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I also, but not to the point where, like I say, some people, I think, I think there is a healthy continuation of his memories. Um, to, to remember the fun things and to do, to do those things. I think that it's unhealthy when you feel you have to do everything because that's what they wanted. Yeah. I think that's unhealthy. I think, I think there's unhealthy connections, like having that shrine of this place of no one can, you know, I don't always think that is healthy long-term. Yeah. I think I, I, I agree with you and I, and that's, and that line's going to be different for everyone, right? The question is, you know, for some people like at, do I, do I date again or not? Now 27, that might be an easier decision to make than someone to say that 60 or 65 or 70 when, when they lose their spouse, that, that might be a different consideration, but you're absolutely right. It's like our lives as, as the people that are still loved here in the physical with our, with our needs and things, our lives do go forward. And we may restore the car. We may buy the house and we may date someone else. That's, that's a healthy progression. But also you can carry that person forward with you, you know, in a sense. One, one of the, the, the recent tips, you know, when you're defrosting the windows in your car, if you pull the visors down as if you're looking at bright sunshine, just pull those visors down, could traps the heat from your defroster and your windows to frost so much more quickly. It's been a huge tip and I've shared it with lots of people. That was his tip to me. Now, I don't know if he discovered if he read it somewhere, but you know, and, and giving him credit for that, giving him credit for that lesson. And, and as an Eagle Scout, that always being prepared, you know, and those things. And, you know, as you, as you move on in life, deciding on what are the things you're going to keep to carry forward? I, I had several boxes in my basement and they've been packed up since I moved and I opened them this summer to, you know, I, it's a lot of his Boy Scouts stuff, you know, I don't want to sell this. I don't really have a reason to have it in my life, but I would like to find that person who can appreciate it, who can understand what happened in the Boy Scout world, that the trading of the council strips and those things. And so, and as I opened that box, knowing this was my intention, it, it brought tears because I could just think of the amazing human being that he was and that all that he stood for, but those were tears of joy. Yeah. And that's one of the difficult decisions. You know, I think my daughter passed away, you know, 10 years ago and deciding what you're going to do with this stuff. Right. You can't keep everything, but you'd also just don't want to throw it away. No. And she had a huge Care Bear collection. So my wife went through and we've kept several of them. But now as, as her cousins are having children, um, my wife is like giving them, you know, one of the Care Bears. And we've set, we've kept some for my other daughter. So all, every one of those little things is another decision now. Mm hmm. It is, it is. And, and I, and I work with, with other spiritual healers, you know, with networking and stuff. And as I said, gosh, this was really hard. And, and my friend Lisa, she goes, yeah, he's laughing at you because it's silly for you to keep them. You know, what everyone perceives in the information and just when you, when you work with other healers and stuff, take the parts that work for you. Not every healer is, is absolutely right or whatever. But yeah, he would be laughing at me, you know. Yeah. You know, it's really interesting because, and I, I think it's different, I guess that's different for everybody from any way, because like, which was Shana in her room, I wouldn't call it a shrine, but we kept a lot of it the same. And that, but not, you know, not everything. Some people, when someone passes, they want to get rid of everything. You know, and that's, that's another extreme and people have asked me like, so what point do I start getting rid of stuff? And I'm like, whenever it feels right to you. Yeah. And there's a few things that, that you're always going to keep, but I think it's, it's so amazing that you've been able to repurpose her care bears. And again, finding someone that's going to love and appreciate and respect them. You know, I think that that's the important part rather than it, you know, and I've always said, when I go, don't have an option. Everybody just come into my house, take what you want. I don't want people picking through my life because that's how it feels to me when I go to an option. It's like, oh, so, but again, it's finding what works for you. And some people are, they just get rid of it, you know, just take it all out of here. I tend to be, I won't say a hoarder, but I'm a collector, a collector of a lot of unique things and what you have space for and the things that bring you joy. If they don't bring you joy, how is it? Marie, what's her name? It doesn't bring you joy. Yes. If it doesn't bring you joy, get it out of here. You know, and that's kind of, and as, and our lives change as we move, as we need to downsize or do things, it's about the comfort level. What brings you peace of mind? What makes your heart happy? Yeah. What makes you there? You mentioned, I know you talk about the, that healing happens in layers and we've already kind of touched on this. We talked about the fact that, you know, there is this back and forth as we go through it, but did you want to say anything else about that? Because I think that's a really important concept. When we talk about layer layering, when we do healing, we heal what comes up in the session and it doesn't mean we'll never talk about it again. The next time we talk about it, it's at a deeper level that you're willing to let go of. You know, like we just talked about in, in the physical possessions, we get rid of the things we're comfortable getting rid of at the time. And the next time, as we dig down the layer deeper, we can sort through and we can part with more things. And that's kind of how we part with our grief. I think as, as we're ready to look a little deeper, go a little deeper and to let go of those things, because we see that they don't service anymore. I think that's so well put because the way I've kind of said it before is like, it's like a spiral. We keep, we come back around and we feel like we're in the same place, but we're coming at it from a different light, different level from a different layer. And that's kind of, I think we're saying the same thing, maybe just in a different way. So when you return to that feeling, sometimes people will feel like I'm right back where I was, but you're not. You're not. You've had, you've had so much growth from the first time you felt that feeling to feeling it again. You're feeling it at a completely different point in time. So many things have happened. You've had so many thoughts that you've processed. You've had so many experiences, even if it's only a couple of days later, always give yourself credit that if you're revisiting it, it's probably time to sit with it, to let go of it. You know, when, when we look at, you know, why, why is this feeling coming up? What is it about it that I need to release? I need to let go of so that it doesn't have to keep coming up and looking a little deeper each time. And, and yeah, it's, it's going to feel hard. It's going to feel difficult. But boy, it feels good when you let go of it, you know, when you're able to, to have your peace with it and to, to process that out. It's just awesome. So Amanda, let's talk about the work that you do. How, how do you work with people? Most of the work that I do with people is virtually. So you don't have to travel to the Midwest, but if you're in the area, great to meet with you. So we do work that, so virtually meeting with individuals, looking at where are they in the process? What are their goals? Where do they want to go to continue to, to feel empowered and to have purpose in their, in their life path? You know, what, what is it they're working toward? What are they willing to do to get there? And then I work as a guide to helping you stay true to your goals and revisiting those because sometimes they need to change. Sometimes as we learn and grow in one area, we decide that that area is not important, that we need to keep working in this one. So helping folks to see where they are, where they want to go and what they need to do to get there. And so a lot of the work that I do through the Theta Healing is tons and tons of forgiveness, you know, forgiving ourself, forgiving God, forgiving those people who left us, doing that forgiveness work. And then digging down a little further and understanding what it is that created our belief about whatever it was that gave us the anger and those other emotions, and then setting those free as well. So just getting you to a place that you feel where your happiness comes back. If you're living your own life, you're not living this prescribed, you know, three days and go back to work life. Yeah. So is Theta Healing, is that like an energetic healing or? Yes. Okay. It's most similar to but not the same as Reiki. That's a term that's a little better or more widely understood. Yeah. So when people are setting goals, because I know a lot of times people in grief have trouble with setting goals. They're like, I'm lost. If you ask them, where do you want to be? They're like, I have no idea. So can you help people kind of go through that process as well? Absolutely. And I remember when I first started working, you know, one of the magic wand questions, you know, if time and space were nothing and money were no object, where would you be? What would you be doing? And it was like, oh, that's a choice. So helping people to understand where they are now and what they want their perfect day to look like, and then understanding the steps that need to take place there and how healing themselves brings them the circle of people that they need to be in, you know, and grief is one of those things that it really, it rocks your world as far as, you know, those people, like I said, the ones who don't know how to talk to you, who are afraid to say anything. And so some of those people fade away or everyone has their own story. And if you don't fit theirs, then maybe you don't fit their circle. And that's okay. Your friendships change, your connections change because you're changing. You're learning, you're growing and making room for those other circles that meet your needs. And so helping folks to understand that shift that comes in. Amanda, we talked about your life almost 30 years ago from the 27 when Jeff passed. Have you remarried, had children? How's your life changed since that point? Since that point, I married, was married for 16 years. I have a bonus daughter that started with that relationship. And then we had a child together. My daughter is now 22. And that relationship ended in divorce. And that was also a very, very devastating part of my life. And continuing forward. And that is when the whole healing thing came about and doing the healing work that I've done with myself, with other people, creating that into a business. And just continuing to go forward and finding that happiness and joy every day. So would you say that out of the grief that you had, I mean, multiple griefs like we've had, and divorce is a grief. Very similar to death. So would you say that who you are today has grown out of those experiences? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, people talk about their old self and wanting to bury their old self. It's like, oh no, no, no. Respect and cherish your old self. Your old self and the decisions you made and the places you've been, those are all the things that come together and make you who you are today. And hopefully they've made you a better person because you've had those experiences. You've lived those life stories and you've taken the good parts and moved forward with it. You know, it doesn't change that those bad parts happened. But when you move beyond them, they're no longer emotionally draining you and holding you back. So, but yeah. And, and grief happens. And so many times grief is about not just the death of a person, but it's the, you know, the death of a marriage and losing a job, anything that we lose, losing a pet, losing a dog, a job, you know, there's, there's all kinds of loss that happens and, and respecting each of those losses has a process. Yeah. So I know you've written two books, right? Can you tell me about the books that you've written? Okay. So Blooming into life is the first book that I wrote. It released March of 24. It's a, it's a memoir. And it talks about the struggles in these processes of going through in, in life and finding the theta healing process. My second book, which actually since I, we've changed the title on it. It will be stepping into life. I anticipate that releasing the end of February, beginning of March of, of 26. And this is more about the spiritual process. It starts with how I first learned about my gifts and not knowing that they were gifts. My first connection in life was more reading handwriting, the energetics that come off the page and how that developed into a whole spiritual practice and how that spiritual practice kind of fell by the wayside when I was in college and pursuing other things. And that that, that really waits on you until you're ready to come back and rediscover it. And then looking at once I did the formal training into how to utilize this spiritual connection, how I see where my intuition played in all those years that I was doing social work type activities. And it just follows with us. And I encourage everybody to have that connection, you know, trust in your intuition, your inner being and connecting with yourself, not relying on what other people have told you about yourself because sometimes they're telling you from their, their perspective. And so just teaching you how to live and be true to yourself and the life that you're meant to have. Well, let's talk more about your intuition because you mentioned right at the beginning, you said you had this dream when you were 12 about this. It seems like it was a premonition. What other intuitive abilities have you had or do you have? I do all the clairs, the clear sentience, the clear audit. So I have that ability to connect in with my higher power. Generally refer to that as source. You can put in God, spirit, universe, whatever, and to be able to purposely connect in. The theta healing taught me how to do that from a theta state brainwave. And theta is a lot like that time in the morning when you wake up, you're not asleep, you're not awake. It's also the brain state you go to to achieve in meditation. It allows me to quiet my mind and to receive that information, working with my higher power and guides, connecting with other people's guides and helping them to release those limiting beliefs because I believe that we come into the world as a soul, having human experience. And the people who raise us and are around us, they become our first sense of God, if you will, because what they say goes through your parents and they're raising you. And that's the influence you have and they have your best interest at heart. But somewhere along the way, we kind of lose connection with that soul information that we brought in with us. And we start living the life that gets, in my words, prescribed to us, what the expectations of everyone else is. I have to do this because of this and this and this, rather than dropping back into our soul bodies and pulling up that intuition and connecting with what is in our best interest. So I first did it with handwriting, being able to look at someone's handwriting and not reading the words per se, but knowing what the energy was behind their intention. And then just taking it further and further as I became more in tune with listening. So yeah, I hope that answers your question. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely it does. So if you could go, if you could not go back, but if you could talk to your 27 year old self, you know, a few months after, after Jeff had passed, what would you say to her? I would say feel the feels, get over the anger, own the anger, own that anger so that you can move and own those feelings and feel them instead of stuffing them. Because I think that had I felt them, had I processed them, I wouldn't have spent three months on the couch, you know? And then looking at my employment record, getting a job. I mean, basically I look like I had no job from October to March and I applied to all these jobs and I'd been supervisory, you know, positions and I was applying for line staff because I didn't think I could handle anything more than that. And I finally, I'd been turned down for amazing jobs. And finally, someone asked me, it was like, well, why do you think you haven't gotten a job? Why have you not had a job? And then I said, well, I was widowed. And they're like, oh, it's like, honey, I'm ready to work. You don't work doing this therapy and stuff. But I said, owning what it was, it was that you think because I've been a supervisor, I'm not going to stay line staff. I'm just going to work here a little bit and I'm going to leave. And I said, I'm not ready for that. And so that was one of the first times I think that I was truly honest with where I was at in life. And I think that that's what I would tell 27 year old me is be honest, process the things, own the things, say the things and stop worrying about what everybody else thinks because they're not the ones walking in your shoes. Yeah. I respectfully push back on that a little bit and that I think three months on the couch after losing your husband tragically at 27 years old, that seems acceptable to me. But I think that it could have been, because we're talking October. Yeah. Yeah. It's just. But it's whatever. But I think that I could have done it maybe with more grace. Yeah. Had I had I and had I reached out to other people? Yeah. Had I reached out? Had I taken that step of not just hiding? Yeah. Yeah. I completely agree. It's like whatever it takes to feel, to feel those feelings and the process, those feelings, you know, I, and I think about, and I love what you said earlier about when we were talking about forgiveness or getting over the anger. Also the anger at ourselves for not knowing what we didn't know at the time, you know, so it's, we, it's interesting to play these games about like, what would I tell myself? But you're 27 years old. You know, we, we don't have, we don't have those skills. We don't know anything. No spot. And I was just, I was talking to my friend who just lost her partner just a few days ago. And I'll never forget her words. She said, I don't know how to do this. And I'm like, of course you don't. Of course you don't. And I think that when, when we give ourselves grades, because we don't know how to do it. We don't know. And 27 year old me would not listen to 50 something year old me either. Yeah. Well, you know, it's, and I love the fact that, you know, you, you've taken this and you, and you've grown, it takes time though, you know, and that's the other thing. Cause we, we, we look at some, some might look and say, well, I'm not there yet. Of course you're not, you know, it takes time to go through all the things that we have to go through to develop into, into who you are now. And don't forget to celebrate the new use that grow. When you get through a day and you've had a day and you've, you've enjoyed something for the first time in months. Celebrate it. Celebrate all those little tiny wins because you know, it's, it's like building a new foundation. It's not just a foundation. It's brick by brick. Celebrate every brick that you get in that new foundation and becoming that new person that you are without that other person in your life, because it's, it's hard. No. I'm not going to tell anybody it's easy or there's a quick way through it. And there is no timeframe. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. There just isn't take, take the time that you need. Yeah. I'd like to say I could have done it in less than six months, but probably you're right. It wasn't going to happen. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's just, it's a natural thing, you know, and we want to, again, we want to do it fast and I work with people and, you know, I, and I see people that are in this early phase of grief and they're like, I want to be here. And I'm like, you're where you need to be. You're where you're supposed to be right now. You know, you're, you're a few days in or a few, you're a few months in or you're even in a year. And, you know, it takes a while to go through because it is, it is a process that we have to go through. And my process is not the same as your process. Right. And so when we start comparing ourselves a little so-and-so did I, that's so, and so that's not. Used to respect and honor your process in your timeline. That you need to do these things. Yeah. And so is there anything that I haven't asked you today that you, that you wanted to discuss or you'd like to add? I guess the only other thing is in, as the wellness coach part of me, definitely consider looking into some of the homeopathic remedies or some of the Bach essences. They really can help you as you process these things, as you go through them. The Bach flower remedies has a five flower rescue remedy. And that helps with a lot of the shock and the trauma. You can go through and look at these things. You can, you can research a lot of this information online, but there are things that do help you through that. That is, that's, that's a natural way of doing things rather than some of the other crazy stuff that we do. Okay. We'll say a little bit more about that. Cause I'm not familiar with that. So the Bach essences, they are a liquid and they come in bottles like this. And you can, so the five flower remedy is a combination of five flower essences. So Dr. Bach, who is British and so should really be pronounced batch instead of one flower. And he was a homie path and he went into the woods and he identified 32 different flowers and their energetic essences that he then distilled down. And this practice has continued on, I believe since the 1700s. So it's very well studied and these energies of these flower essences help with different emotional states. And so the combination of flowers that are in the five flower remedy work very well for. They call it a rescue remedy. So shock and trauma and just sudden things that happen in our lives that you can put the drops under your tongue. You can put them in your water bottle and usually we recommend some affirmations as well that go with it. And it just creates a whole sense of calm. And that's there. There's other uses for the, the buckflower essences, but that's the primary one there. So when you're dealing with that, that shock and awe when things are new and fresh, there are some things you can do that. And homeopathically, there's also some homeopathic remedies that you, they're little tiny pellets and you put them under your tongue and they help to help you to process things and to, to regulate and stabilize different things in your body, especially those emotions. Yeah. So I'm assuming there's just things that people can work with you with as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. And Amanda, let people know, well, first of all, remind people the names of your books and where people can reach you. Okay. So my books are blooming into life and it's available wherever you purchase your books. And the next book coming out soon is stepping into power. And again, those will be available everywhere. You can contact me through Amanda Beth healing.com. If you do backslash link tree, you'll see all my platforms if you want to, instead of going through the website, but it's there as well as on the website, you can also see my calendar as far as what's coming up for events or podcasts that'll be appearing on like as well. And if people want to look up your books, I assume it's Amanda Beth Johnson as the author. Yes. Okay. There's a lot of Amanda Johnson's out there. So we, we threw the Beth in there. I understand. That's why people like Brian D Smith, if you put the D in there, you'll find me. If you don't put the D in there, you will never find me. Our common names. Yeah. Yeah. I always say my parents had no imaginations. Like do you have a last name like Smith? You got to give, you got to do better with the first name. Yes. Well, Amanda, it's been a pleasure to meet you today. Thank you for sharing your, your story and what you do. And I know it's going to inspire a lot of people. I know that, you know, that, that early part of grief where you feel like there's, there's no hope, you know, it's, it's always helpful to find someone who's made it. I don't want to say to the other side, but who's made it further along. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's, that is my hope that I've come far enough down this path that I can, I can turn and shine the light and illuminate that path for the, for the next person going through it. And I thank you very much for the opportunity to share with your audience my experience and hopefully to, to shed that light of hope for them. Absolutely. Well, have a great rest of your day. All right. You too. Thank you. Bye.