Part Two A True Story of Hope through Unimaginable Loss

Health & Well Being
Spirituality
Love & Relationships

Part Two: A True Story of Hope through Unimaginable Loss

Kim’s powerful memoir, Where Yellow Flowers Bloom, is a heartfelt testament of love and devotion in the midst of sudden loss and trauma, with an enlightened perspective on mortality.  Through her patience, perseverance, and willingness to receive help and to heal, she confirms love’s ability to transcend death and connect beyond life.

Her book takes you on a mother’s journey to find her missing son, as she follows her intuition, becomes open to spiritual guidance, and experiences unmistakable synchronicities.  Through tenacity against insurmountable odds, she affirms that her husband and son are still with her.

Kim’s story is one of hope and the redemptive power of love even through death.  Yellow flowers grow in an unexpected place – this helped Kim see the beauty where there should be none.  Love found a way.

Kim's website:
https://kimcantin.com/

Kim's Gift: For the first 10 people who subscribe, rate and share Kim's episode, and email me at moira@moirasutton.com ~ you will receive a e-book copy of Kim's book.   

Moira's Website: https://moirasutton.com/

Long Distance Healing: https://moirasutton.com/long-distance-reiki-healing-session/

Create the Life you Love FB Community:  https://www.facebook.com/CreatetheLifeyouLove1/

Transcript

Intro: Welcome to the Heart Soul Wisdom Podcast, a journey of self discovery and transformation. Moira Sutton and her amazing guests share real life stories, tools, and strategies to inspire and empower you to create and live your best life. Come along on the journey and finally blast through any fears, obstacles and challenges that have held you back in the past so you can live your life with the joy, passion, and happiness that you desire. Now, here's your host. Create the life you love. Empowerment life coach moira Sutton.

Moira: Welcome to season four, episode 82 a true story of hope through Unimaginable Loss, part two with our very special guest, author Kim Canton. Kim's powerful memoir, Where Yellow Flowers Bloom, is a heartfelt testament of love and devotion in the midst of sudden loss and trauma. With an enlightened perspective on mortality. Through her patience, perseverance, and willingness to receive help and to heal, she confirms love's ability to transcend death and connect beyond life. Her book takes you on a mother's journey to find her missing son. As she follows, her intuition, becomes open to spiritual guidance and experiences unmistakably synchronicities. Through tenacity against insurmountable ODS, she affirms that her husband and son are still with her. Kim's story is one of hope and the redemptive power of love. Even through death, yellow flowers grow in an expected place, unexpected. This helps Kim see the beauty where there should be none.  Love found a way.

So, without further adieu, it's my pleasure to welcome back Kim Canton. 

Welcome, Kim.

Kim: Thank you. It's nice to be here.

Moira: Yeah. And for people who didn't hear Kim's first, it was episode 80. And So, this is a follow up because I wanted to dive deeper with Kim around synchronicities, hope, love beyond the veil, a lot of those things, because I know you as our listening audience and community, are very interested in that. So I do want to start Kim with just that morning again on January 9, 2018, in the dark, when you woke up and that 30 foot wave of mud, boulders and debris crashed down in your home with your family inside. So just to get people that context again.

Kim: Yeah, so, you know, there was heavy rain. We were all in the house and we were woken by the heavy rain. And then before we knew it and before we could get out, a 30-foot wave of boulders the size of cars and down 100-year-old trees crashed down on our house and others, and it obliterated it. And sadly, my 49-year-old husband was washed away to his death. My 17-year-old son perished. Our dog, the house, everything was gone. That there was not even the rebar left in the pool. It was just wiped away. There was 62 homes totally destroyed that night, 150 other damaged. My daughter, who was 14 at the time, was buried alive under 20ft of mud for about 6 hours. She had a little pocket by her face to breathe and her rescue was shown around the world. And I was washed away two football fields and injured and found in an intersection wrapped in electrical wires and had to learn to walk again. So, it was really the night that's part of the title of the book, right. Unimaginable loss. It was the night of the unimaginable. No one could have you think different things are going to get you. Maybe heart attack, stroke or cancer, car accident. You never think mudslide. But that's what got my husband and.

Moira: Son, I think, like you're saying, you could be walking across the road, not a mudslide in your head, planes, trains, people who are afraid of that. But you talk about very much that you came into a place of living in the present moment. Is that something you really embrace now at every day of your life?

Kim: Absolutely. That's been a noticeable change for me, is that I'm very clear I'm not promised tomorrow. And what that's done for me is I'm much more in the moment and I'm much more probably authentic sharing how I feel about different things or people. I'm just more vulnerable and I'll just say my truth and I think that's a good thing. I'm just living probably more authentically just because I just know none of us get out of here alive. Right. And you want to make it the most probably for me, I want to make it the most authentic journey moving forward. And so that's kind of one of the things I've noticed.

Moira: I think that's really wonderful. And where we talked earlier about you had the courage to write this book, to go back into that so it could be passed down through your daughter Lauren and through generations that this has happened. And that story being and what you're saying about being authentic and mindful and every moment that story alone with you having the courage to share, that helps others possibly share their story and to heal and have hope.

Kim: And that's what I wanted. Right. And someone told me this really interesting acronym, hope as an acronym, HO P E is Helping Others. Or is it Hope helping others through personal through sharing your personal experience. And because by helping others with your sharing your personal experience, hope kind of it can help others. And that's what I think. And there may be a nugget that you can relate to. If I've heard stories of people who've gone through a tough time, there's nuggets that help me and where I am. And So, it is good, I think, to share the stories and how you get through it. Right. How do you get on the other side of this? How do you move forward with it?

Moira: And that part about moving forward because I do have some friends and where their parents lost their spouse and many, many years ago and in one particular case has never got over it. It's still reliving that every day. And that's sad because there's life. Like you said, life is a gift.

Kim: And it goes on. Life goes on, right. Life goes on and our loved ones want us to go on and thrive. The worst thing, I think if they looked down and saw me crying in a chair all day, they're going to be bummed out, right, that's true. So, live well.

Moira: I don't know if we got to this before, but I don't think we did. But that you and Lauren survived. Do you think if one of you hadn't, that maybe you wouldn't have that will to continue on and in this case continue that perseverance to find, to look for Jack?

Kim: I don't know, but very well could be that I had a purpose to take care of Lauren and she had a purpose with me. Right. And So, I think because we each had each other, we had to kind of, for lack of a better word, play bigger, right. We couldn't just wallow in ourselves so much. We had to be there for the other. And So, I think we probably saved each other's lives a little bit in that way because we had to focus on each other and our new twosome Ness versus a family of four. So, yeah, I think it happened the way it was meant to happen. I think about it as my husband has Jack and is taking care of him and I'm taking her and we're still a family, a virtual family, but we're still a family, right. And I'm moving forward. I'm not just wallowing in it. I'm looking forward to the new things that my life is going to bring in my life.

Moira: You share the willingness to receive help and to heal. Another good message for the people listening, for a lot of people don't want to be what we were saying earlier, like vulnerable or that or share their story thinking they'll be judged or weak or some title given to them. Was that a biggie for you to learn to receive help? And we're going to get into that.

Kim: Yeah, I was the helper of others. I was the doer. I always helped other people. And I think there's no coincidences in life, I don't think. And I think that this event in part was to help me evolve as a soul and to learn how to receive and not just give, because I was always the doer, the giver, but I just didn't know how to receive and take help because maybe I didn't trust it. I don't know. Maybe I didn't trust the help and boy, did I need a lot of help. I mean, I had nothing. I had no underwear, I had no driver's license, I had nothing. And So, I really needed help and I accepted the help, and I learned that the help, the compassion, it was through the compassion of people that it was really healing, and it was really giving me a richer sense of the human experience, which is the human experience. There's a lot to experience as a human. Right. Grief is one of them. I don't think many of us get away from ever not having grief. Right. That's a human experience. Joy is and also this notion of being vulnerable. And I read somewhere, which I really liked, is people would normally I think it was Brene Brown, maybe she was attained people used to attribute vulnerability with weakness. If you're vulnerable, you're weak. And when she was studying, I think, soldiers that had been in wars, and they said, being vulnerable is being the bravest you can be. Right. It's being the bravest you can be. By being vulnerable and authentic, you're being brave. And So, it's a newer thing I'm experiencing, and it's been great. And I think I'm developing richer relationships because of it.

Moira: Definitely. And to embrace, like you said, all emotions. A lot of times I'm speaking for myself, too. You get busy or you do something, or just to ignore that emotion.

Kim: Don't distract it. We can distract ourselves. We can be really smart at getting busy and distracting ourselves by running another ant or whatever, instead of just staying in it a little bit and processing it.

Moira: I know sometimes I'll say to my husband, More so now in my life, I'll be 65 in February, and not so much not in my fifty s and not even a couple of years ago but making this big move to Nova Scotia was a big jump. And just days that I just feel like crying. And it's not crying. I don't know what the crying is. I don't even know where it's coming from. But my husband said, well, just go cry, I said, and I do the same thing. I go like, oh, I can't really cry. Everybody in the family are here. Maybe we're in a smaller house. Maybe I'll get in the car and drive somewhere. But don't show those emotions. To my family, who was always the strong, like you said before, the Matrix.

Kim: I could do everything.

Moira: But now I tell them, I can't do that. I can't go there, I can't do that, I can't do that anymore. Because I've come to a point even my own nerves, they're not the same that they used to be. So, I very much am present every day that this is what I can do. Go do something that you love to do. That kind of thing. Now, when they found Dave, your husband, at Hammonds Beach, now, that is it. The Chumash sacred burial.

Kim: Yeah. So, in Santa Barbara, the indigenous people that lived here, there's a group called the Chumash. And my late son's best friend since third grade, Chumash. And so, his dad is one of the elders. And he took me down to the area where my husband was found at the shoreline. And he says, Kim, he goes, this is a beautiful place. And he had me turn around on the beach. Instead of facing the ocean, I was facing behind the ocean by my back. And he said, just right here, just up probably 50 yards, not too far away, was a meadow. And it's Chumash sacred burial ground, and no one's allowed to touch it. It's a protected space. And that made me feel really good that he was kind of found in a very sacred place. That the Chumash, of all the places they could have laid their ancestors to rest, they chose this sacred area. And Dave happened to end up right on the shoreline by there. And it's visually speaking, it's beautiful where he ended up. And Dave liked water and not surfing, but snorkeling. And so, you know what? I don't think he would have minded where he ended up.

Moira: I think also it could be possibly I'm just saying this, but I know you've entertained many ideas and thought it over, but in the sense that to give you to be more calm, like you just said, that he was found there at such a special place, that's where he laid his body to rest. Not his soul, but his body.

Kim: Yeah. And it gave me more peace, because, tragically, some of the other victims weren't as lucky. Right. Some were found by the train tracks, some were hauled away, whatever. So, I was given peace by that.

Moira: Thank you. Tell us, at Dave's funeral, you had some unbelievable gifts came to you. You have these piled in your book, and I really want people to hear your stories because they're real and you come from your heart and your soul and just what happened with some signs that happened. The bird story.

Kim: Yeah. So that was at Jack's memorial, and it was at the Santa Barbara Mission. That's okay. We have them two separate places. But the Santa Barbara Mission is a beautiful people. Visitors come visit this beautiful, beautiful mission structure. And it's an acting parish, and we needed it because we needed the size, because it was really a community tragedy. And so, a lot of people wanted to come. And so, we chose that. In my church, because of the mudslide, you couldn't get to it. It was smaller and the roads were blocked. But when we went in there for Jack's service, it was interesting. One of Jack's dear friends who was giving the eulogy, her name was Ellie. She goes up to the lectern, and all of a sudden, from the entry doors to the mission, swoop in two birds, and they swoop in and fly right up to the altar. So, they're going past 500 people, and then the other wing has over 500 people. So big space swooping in. And then the one bird darts up to the right side and sits in the thick-walled windowsill, looking down at the congregation, at all the people in the audience. The other bird starts flitting around and kind of like being comical flitting around up by the altar where Ellie's giving the Eulogy or trying to give the Eulogy. And the Catholic priest at the time stops, he goes, that must be Jack. And then what was fascinating is so many people in the receiving line after the service said that was Dave and Jack and people who had been members of this church for years and years and years. I think it was even the priest said, we've never had birds fly in like that. And so, I think they were there and they showed up that way to say, I'm here. And I think Dave was the protective father, just watching and giving Jack his glory. It was his day, and Jack was doing his little bird dance, flitting around.

Moira: It's interesting. It reminds me when my father passed Kim, we were outside and the coffin was not put in the earth yet, and out of nowhere, no animals were there. But this little black kitten showed up and was jumping in and out of the bar. And my dad loved cats and it made a smile. It shifted our state, like you said, thanks, dad, because I miss you. Now, you use the word whispers a lot in your book. Share with us what you mean by that.

Kim: Yeah, that was a word I came up with more of. There was things I couldn't explain that happened. That when I reflected on them, like, say something happened earlier before the tragedy. And then I reflected on them going, wow, I wonder if for somehow Dave and Jack in their soul, not at a conscious level, but maybe at the soul level, knew they were going to transition soon. And a couple of the examples were well, and a couple of things is Dave went just a few months prior to update all the insurance stuff to make sure the house and the policies were all updated appropriately. Interestingly enough, our neighbor who also died in the slide did the exact same thing. So, I don't know what was the nudge if they were just being good administrators of their insurance policies, but I find it curious that both of them within the same month happened to decide to go make sure everything was in order and then they both passed away a few months later. I thought that was curious. Jack, my son, if you asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he'd say a billionaire. He liked big ideas and big things, and he was always at Christmas time, he'd give me a list, his Christmas list, and it had hyperlinks of all the things he wanted. And of course, it was over the top. He wanted the $600 gaming chair. I'm like, you're not getting the $600 gaming chair. Right. But all this stuff. But what was interesting to me is the Christmas before, the month before, he hadn't given me a list and I asked him, I said, Jack, are you going to give me a list? What do you want for Christmas? He goes, Mom, I really don't need anything. And for him to say that Mr. I want to be a billionaire, right, he's got his list of all the things he wants that was so different, but maybe his soul know he didn't need anything else that he might he's not going to be around to enjoy it. Dave had a brother who died when his brother was 18 of a congenital disease that they can now fix, but they couldn't fix it then, and his name was Michael. And what happened a few months before the tragedy is my husband was speaking to the landscaper outside of the gardener, and Dave happened to trip on a couple of cement steps, and he landed on the asphalt driveway and on his ring finger and busted it. And that same ring finger that had his wedding ring also had been busted because Dave was, he used to be a softball player, a baseball player. He liked baseball. So, it was hard to get the ring originally over the knuckle. And then he went on a plane ride, and his finger totally swelled up being broken, and he had to go to the urgent care to get the ring cut off. And so, he said, Kim, I had to get the ring cut off a little bit later, when we feel like we've got spending the money to replace it, we can go replace it. So, we didn't do it right away. But then all of a sudden, close to the tragedy, Dave comes out in the morning, and he says, I had a dream about Michael. My brother. And Dave never talked about his dreams much at all. And so, I said, what is it about? He goes, Michael was telling me he was pointing to my ring finger and telling me to go get the ring fixed. Go get it replaced, go get it replaced. And I said, Dave right. It's right before Christmas. I need to spend more money. Like a hole in the head, right? But he's like, Michael says, I need to go get this replaced. I said, Then let's go today and get it replaced. And I am so grateful that happened that we listened to that kind of nudge that Dave had an overwhelming sensation, get the ring replaced now. And it was recovered on his body. So, he had his outdoor watch on, not a fancy watch, watch that you wear, like when you're camping. And he had his wedding ring, the replacement one that looked the same as the original. But I have that, and I wouldn't have had that if Dave didn't listen to his nudge. And so, I think that was kind of like a whisper. It was this thing that happened we had to do. And it made me wonder, did he know his time was short, or was there something else at play that got us to do something, and I'm so grateful it happened.

Moira: And you also start the book sharing and thank you again. Kim, you shared how you had this feeling to go get a family portrait of all of you with you and your dog and the family and of course, the location you did that with, that was also important.

Kim: Yeah, it was. We'd been living like everyone, right? Everyone's living a busy life, and you just kind of get too busy to get your pictures done. But I had an overwhelming sense it was a whisper. Get a family portrait done. Get a family portrait done. So, I'm like, okay, getting a family portrait done. And then I came home, and I'm like, really? My dog, I had a beautiful Irish setter, and he was starting to gray a bit. He was seven. And I said, I need to get some pictures of him. So, I went and got that done all within the same week. So, I had them all. And weeks later, literally weeks later, half my family was gone. But I had a recent family portrait. And what's even spookier, or maybe not spookier, maybe more coincidental, is when we were looking for my son. My son was one of the two people. There was 23 people that died that that night, two of which were deemed missing. A baby girl, Lydia, two years old, and my 17 year old son. And as we were looking and getting all these clues of where to look, and the university, the anthropology group where we ended up going, I had the photographer. I said, can you walk me to where we took our family picture? Because everything looked so different, right? All the topography had changed, the boulders, and everything was just a mess. And she took me almost to the very place that we were supposed to be searching for my late son, where our family portrait was. And that was a jaw dropper. That was a jaw dropper going, oh, my God, we're back here again.

Moira: What's really great about that is that when we have an intuitive nudge or a whisper I love that whisper, that we follow through on it. We don't ignore it. That's how you develop your intuitive abilities more. You follow through. Or if there's something like you said that you notice that like any synchronicities that I'm reading a book right now by a gentleman, and he talks about if things are happening a lot like somebody you haven't seen for a while, and you see them, you see them, you see them, that kind of thing. There's a reason go up and ask them, do you have a message for me? Is there something we haven't, you know, that kind of thing, and there could be a gift coming right through that person.

Kim: Exactly. I think there are certain people that show up in our lives for very specific reasons to help us with that step. But you're right. I think we all have intuition matters if we listen to it, right? But if you start noticing, like, why now? Right? I had a professor once always say, ask the question, like, if you get something from someone or something that kind of randomly happens, ask yourself, why now? And you don't have to answer it. You just got to be curious, why now? And just explore it and see if there's anything you're maybe just more aware of it and then later. I certainly reflected on it in my book. I mean, all the whispers, we just talked about a couple of them, but there was a number of things that I'm like, wow. And here's another one that just came up that I didn't even know about when I wrote the book, is my late son was an Eagle Scout. And so, they went hiking a lot in the backcountry of Santa Barbara. And Jack was in a middle school which went on three big trips a year, all the students and the teachers. And the winter trip in March was you get to choose what kind of trip you go on. So, Jack chose the mules and backpack trip in the backcountry where he knew how to hike. He'd hike there so he could feel like big man on campus. He was comfortable with it, but he wanted to go because the mules carried the food. He didn't have to, and he got steak at night. So he goes, I'm going for the food and the mules carrying the food. So anyway, there was a teacher there, Jim, who Jack felt really close with. There's certain teachers that you bond with more, and Jim and Jack really kind of bonded. And Jim sent me a letter he wrote about that experience just this year. So, after the book is published, he sent it to me, and it's called Mud. And what was interesting, remember, Jack died in a mudslide. But when they were on the hike, I think three years prior, they were on this trail, and they ran into a rattling rattlesnake. And Jack's like, I really fearful of rattlesnakes. And they got around it, and then they had to figure out how they were going to get back the next day. And the route back, the main option was through this really muddy marshy area that was thick with branches and stuff, and Jack was just really apprehensive about it. And Jack was a rock star. I mean, he'd done 50 miles hikes. He was more knowledgeable, experienced, and stronger than anyone else on that trip. He even won the arm-wrestling match with Jim, the teacher. Right? And Jim had never lost to any student, so Jack was pretty much a rock star in that. And Jack pulled him aside and says, I think we need to go the other way. And he said to Jim, he goes, because I hate mud. I never knew Jack hated mud. But it was a mudslide that killed him, and that's what he told his teacher. But three years prior, I hate mud or I'm afraid of whatever. And that just was wild to me to get his letter about it and hear that for sure.

Moira: Again, you had so many experiences. I want to share this one. I'm not going to go through them all. I'd love people to buy your book and I'm going to pass it on to my friends and neighbors in the library and for people to really hear about hope and love and all those things. But I really like the one about the dogs, the two dogs, I loved all of them. Kim so that's my problem. But you were with your friend Grant. You're both sitting on beach chairs. This is when you couldn't be searching dogs for the clues. And search dogs aren't like pets.

Kim: They're working dogs.

Moira: They're working dogs. But this one, what this one did, just share that with, again, our listening audience.

Kim: Yeah. So that one was Shirley was the handler of Keegan. And Keegan is a really smart working dog, but Shirley would say she's a *****, and it's not because she's a female dog. Don't touch her. She's not going to be nice to you. No petting, nothing. She's out there working. So, we really respected Keegan. I was grateful she came to help search. And we were all in beach chairs. Brant, Catherine, and I on a corner of a lot of a house that was being demolished because it had been so damaged in the mudslide. And the dogs were working because they couldn't get into some of the crevices of this house. And they thought there could be the two missing victims there, Jack and Lydia. And so, the dogs were able to working as this house was being demolished. All of a sudden, Keegan, the dog, breaks away from her job, which she never does, and comes beeline just straight running toward us in the three chairs, me in the middle, low on the ground. She comes straight toward us. She runs around behind me and licks my neck in the most gentle way possible. And then she went back to work.

Moira: Yeah. What is that? Right?

Kim: We all were stunned. We're like, what was that? And even the handler is like, what was that? That wasn't Keegan's natural mode of personality, kiss a grieving mom on the back of the neck. But she did, right? And we're like, well, maybe that's Jack just saying, I'm here, mom, and it's going to be okay.

Moira: Did you feel that in the moment? Did you know that? Yeah.

Kim: I think both my husband and my son do the best they can. And I think how it works is right. Our loved ones can pass on. We can't see them anymore, how our eyes, our human eyes work. But I think their soul and their spirit is all around us all the time and do.

Moira: You still have a lot of unmistakable synchronicities in your life, and you act on them.

Kim: I can't really think of one. Recently, there was so much that were relative, you know? And so many of them are discussed in the book. You know, I reconnected with a friend of mine after that I'd known 2030 years ago, and he lost his wife. And I just think that was I think we showed up for each other as friends in helping each of us in our grief journey. And so, it's like sometimes you meet people for a reason or a season. I like that. And I think it was for a reason. And I think the reason was somehow, some way, we reconnected to help one another. And maybe it was orchestrated by his wife and my son and my husband of just saying, let's let them help one another.

Moira: I'm just taking that in.

Kim: Yeah.

Moira: The title of your book. Tell us how you came up with that and also the significance of wildflowers.

Kim: Yeah, sure. So, I credit my daughter, my amazing daughter who was buried alive. Lauren helped me come up with the title for the book. And when she said it, I said, that's perfect. Because we were looking for my late son's remains for three and a half years, and we were looking over a 30 square mile radius. So, it was a huge needle in the haystack and the soil because it had all the stuff from people's garages, the paint thinners, the insecticides, whatever, the insulation in the walls. The soil that got spread out was really toxic. And it was known to have and, like, plumbing broke, right? So, it had feces in it. It had all these bacteria. It was arsenic. It was considered chemical soup. And I know when I got to the hospital, they gave me a lot of antibiotics because they were really worried about what I could have ingested. And they did that for all the survivors, so nothing should grow there. But the pile that we ended up finding some of my son's remains in it was covered with beautiful yellow wildflowers. And the student at the university cut some of them. They had been doing an archaeological dig to look for the remains. And she's like, Life found a way. Like, it's unbelievable that they were found. And I said, no, love found a way. And so where Yellow Flowers Bloom. Which is the title of my book. Where Yellow Flowers Bloom. It's kind of a metaphor, right? To see the beauty where there otherwise shouldn't be any. There shouldn't have been beauty on this hill of arsenic and yuck. And there was. And you can see it and then appreciate it for its beauty. And so, the title is really a metaphor for life, which is, I think, how I'm trying to people who've read the book have really told me is that I needed to read this. This was really inspiring to me. And so, the title works for that, right? Look for the beauty. Look for the beauty where otherwise you might not. Because there are silver linings. There are things to still have awe in life about.

Moira: And just that slight, shift life found a way to love. Found a way that's just so insightful and beautiful. Kim, I don't know if you have a minute to read something from your book. I love hearing authors read for listening. Hear from your voice.

Kim: Let's see if I can do. Okay, here's one. It's from chapter 28, and I'll start reading it as a gift to me. The volunteers arranged for a local artist to lovingly repair the pig. It was a wooden pig the artist used to use to repair the pig using the ancient Japanese form called kintsugi, the art of the golden lacquer. Repairing something broken like a porcelain's a's, also known as the art of the precious scars. Kazuki expresses a belief that the break and the repair are both important parts of an object. It is better to show the repaired break rather than trying to hide it. The break, once repaired, shows the valuable and authentic history of the item. Often once repaired with the gold lacquer, the item seems perhaps even more beautiful. This was the same art form that a colleague and friend had told me about months ago when we talked on the phone soon after the mudslide. During that phone call, Christian had used Kazuki metaphor. Metaphorically. She said that if I fell apart emotionally from the magnitude of my loss, I too, could reassemble as I healed. Perhaps I would be more beautiful, like a Kazuki piece at the soul level. Whereas before I would have considered this just a fluke. Now I was more attuned to noting the synchronicity of such events. The pig was more beautiful after it was repaired with gold paint. It is now on display in our new home. It reminds me of the human kindness and love I experience from strangers after the tragedy. And it works as a metaphor for our lives. From what I've read, this art form relates to aspects of the human experience. It can symbolize nonattachment, the acceptance of change and fate. It is also about repair. And through the repair there is perhaps a rebirth or evolution. Based on my experience, I could not think of anything more appropriate as a metaphor and a gift.

Moira: That's perfect, Kim. Just perfect. Ending the note on synchronicity and love and healing and all the things you just said. The break and the repair are both important.

Kim: Yeah. It's part of the journey, right? It's part of the human experience. Not fun at times. No, but you can get to a.

Moira: Better place and grow and evolve as people, as humanity.

Kim: Yeah.

Moira: Kim, I know that you're so generous. You're giving a copy of your book to the first ten people who subscribe, rate, and share your episode. And also, the other one. Thank you for that and all the links to find Kim where you can purchase her book. And the gift here for those people will be below in the show notes. Kim, thank you for sharing again from your heart. And thank you yes on a true story of hope through unimaginable loss with so much gratitude and love. Namaste.

Kim: Namaste.

Intro: Thank you for listening to the Heart Soul Wisdom podcast with Moira Sutton. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please join our community@moirasutton.com and continue the discussion on our Facebook page. Create the life you love. You will be part of a global movement connecting with other heart centered people who are consciously creating the life they love on their own terms. Together, we can raise our consciousness for the greater good of humanity and for our planet.