Suzanne Falter, FREE SPIRITED: How My Daughter Healed Me From the Afterlife
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[1:03]Suzanne Falter is the author of Free Spirited, How My Daughter Heeled Me from the Afterlife.
[1:08]This episode has been hosted by Julie Chavez.
[1:11]It was the author of the upcoming Zippy Books title, Everyone But My Self.
[1:15]This is Suzanne Falter's second time on the podcast.
[1:17]Suzanne is the author of the memoir about her daughter Teal's death called Free Spirited.
[1:22]And she is also an intuitive coach who helps people find relief from crisis confusion and
[1:26]stress.
[1:27]Suzanne hosts the self-care for extremely busy women podcast, which by the way I was
[1:31]interviewed for, where she brings better self-care to thousands of busy people each week
[1:35]in 98 countries around the globe.
[1:37]Suzanne, welcome.
[1:38]I'm so glad to be talking to you for momstone.
[1:40]Have time to read books.
[1:41]Welcome.
[1:42]Thank you, Julia.
[1:43]Many thanks.
[1:44]Oh, I'm excited.
[1:45]This is I'm excited to talk about your book, which is Free Spirited, How My Daughter Heeled
[1:50]Me from the Afterlife.
[1:52]I was really moved by your book.
[1:55]And I was telling my family about coming to interview you.
[1:59]And I was saying, I can't wait to speak to her because this is such a fascinating
[2:04]experience and story.
[2:06]And it's not something that I have necessarily lived yet.
[2:10]Obviously, I mean, there are pieces I feel like of grieving that I can relate to in this,
[2:14]but it's just, it's beautifully written.
[2:16]And I really, really enjoyed just learning about your experience and getting to know
[2:21]Teal.
[2:22]Oh, well, thank you so much, my dear.
[2:25]Can we start there?
[2:26]I would love to hear.
[2:28]I mean, obviously, the book gives us much more detail, but what's your favorite way to
[2:33]talk about her?
[2:34]What do you like to tell people about Teal?
[2:37]All of a sudden, I'm getting teary and I never get teary when I talk about Teal.
[2:41]Well, let me explain to the listeners.
[2:44]Yeah, Teal was a big, hearted, very, very wonderful, joyful soul.
[2:52]And she had epilepsy and she had a massive seizure, maybe we don't really know cause unknown.
[3:00]She had a massive cardiac arrest and died two hours after I had dinner with her completely
[3:04]unexpected.
[3:06]And my favorite way to talk about Teal is really about, I'm sorry, Julia, I'm not usually
[3:16]so teary.
[3:17]Folks, this will be a vulnerable interview.
[3:19]Yeah, my favorite way to talk about Teal is just to recall.
[3:24]All the different ways she loved to live life so vigorously and really also how I learned
[3:32]so much about compassion and healing and taking good care of myself from her example
[3:39]after her death.
[3:41]Yeah, I loved so many parts of this book.
[3:44]I know that I said just after she was born, you describe a scene where you experienced
[3:52]what you called the beginnings of Teal's deep and abiding influence on you.
[3:57]And I love that I personally am honored to see your emotion, it's just such an honoring
[4:04]of her and who she was and is to you in her life and in the afterlife.
[4:12]I just think it's beautiful.
[4:14]I'd like to hear more about how she changed you.
[4:19]It sounded like it was a softening.
[4:21]You talked about push push survival mode, which by the way, I was like push push survival
[4:25]mode could basically be like put that on the back of my car.
[4:28]I mean, that's my life motto, right?
[4:32]And so she gave you a glimpse of ease and kindness when she was born.
[4:36]Do you want to tell a little bit about that story?
[4:38]Oh, well, you know, I had an extraordinary experience on the day of her birth.
[4:43]And immediately afterwards, she was in breach, which for those who have not had that experience,
[4:48]you have to have a scheduled caesarian section where they open you up and take out the
[4:53]baby because the baby's basically upside down.
[4:56]They gave me some morphine as part of the process of coming out of that surgery.
[5:03]And I began to have these fantastic visions of all kinds of auras that I could read around
[5:11]everybody around me.
[5:14]And I felt I suddenly knew exactly what the, you know, night nurse was going through.
[5:20]I had this unbelievable conversation with my, you know, other bedmate in the hospital
[5:27]room who I suddenly felt deep, deep compassion for.
[5:32]I just, I was a workaholic, driven striving.
[5:36]I will be successful if it kills me kind of person.
[5:39]And here comes my first child.
[5:41]And of course, that's a very softening experience in and of itself.
[5:45]But I was given the gift of feeling into all these people's personal experiences and
[5:51]immediately looking at them, seeing this glow around them and understanding more deeply
[5:56]innately about who they were.
[5:59]And it sounds pretty weird.
[6:01]I thought at the time I was losing it.
[6:05]I might have been in some like morphineie kind of way.
[6:09]But it was so profound that forever after that, I have associated teal with being deeply
[6:17]compassionate.
[6:18]And sure enough, her friends used to call her clon yin, who was the Asian goddess of compassion,
[6:24]Buddhist goddess.
[6:25]And dear teal just believed so deeply in the power of oneness as a singer.
[6:33]She was a singer in her lifetime.
[6:36]And I think one of my favorite things about her was her singing because I was on also
[6:39]a singer.
[6:40]And the two of us would sing together and have the most connected experiences singing together.
[6:48]But we also just love life on a very similar level.
[6:52]And it was just such an honor to be her mother, such an honor.
[6:58]Because she was a totally different kind of person.
[7:01]The other thing to know about teal is that she was a free spirit, which is why the book
[7:06]is called free spirited because slowly as in the prying of the lid off of the, you know,
[7:13]create or the casket, I emerged as a more free spirited person myself from the experience
[7:20]of grieving her loss.
[7:22]I couldn't help it because, you know, at the time I was doing a business I didn't particularly
[7:27]like.
[7:28]I was burning out my relationship.
[7:30]It just ended.
[7:31]I was wandering around the Bay Area trying to figure out where to live.
[7:33]And I'd only arrived here a few years earlier.
[7:36]I was just really lost.
[7:39]And then she died and the bottom dropped out and I suddenly had no home, no relationship.
[7:45]I had closed my business and now I had no daughter.
[7:48]So I was trying to get a grip and figure out what to do.
[7:52]And I just decided to surrender to the process.
[7:55]I rented a room in someone's home that was, you know, just a basic, simple little situation.
[8:02]And I made it a point to just live on as little money as I could and work as little as
[8:08]possible.
[8:09]And I really didn't work for about two years and I had some savings, which was fortunate.
[8:13]But I had a friend who put me up for free in her house.
[8:18]And you know, I just lived sort of like teal because teals deal was, I'm here to bring
[8:24]joy.
[8:25]I'm a singer.
[8:26]I will bust on the street.
[8:27]I will work as a waitress, put the cash in my pocket, go to an airport and just pick
[8:31]a destination and leave.
[8:33]And she went through the world with her little guitar singing on the streets all over
[8:37]the world and making friends.
[8:40]And she died my friends at age 22.
[8:43]So that tells you.
[8:44]Oh, yeah.
[8:45]Yeah.
[8:46]Yeah.
[8:47]Thank you for sharing those things about her.
[8:50]Love hearing about her and just her bravery and who she was to you, like I said, both
[8:58]before and after.
[8:59]I mean, reading about your experience, kind of the rootlessness that you experienced
[9:03]right after her death, I really, it's so challenging for me because I am such a tightly controlled.
[9:13]That's my tendency.
[9:14]And so to read about that and seeing how like you were describing so many things that
[9:20]you would, it sounds like placed your identity in and also kind of, you know, those were
[9:26]just ripped out at the roots.
[9:28]And suddenly there you are trying to figure it out.
[9:31]So such a brave time for you as well to, to try and take that time to transform and heal
[9:39]instead of digging back in in another way.
[9:41]Well, and it was tempting.
[9:43]I tried to restart my business many times and every single time, as if watching me from
[9:49]the beyond the universe just took that business right away.
[9:53]I launched a website.
[9:54]It was hacked into multiple times and finally my webmasters hard drive was being eaten by
[9:59]malware.
[10:00]and she was like, I'm done here. So I had to give up. I had to give up. I would have restarted
[10:06]if I could have. I knew it was wrong. I knew that that would not lead me to where I needed to be.
[10:12]Finally, when the hacking attacks started, I really did back off because it was obvious that
[10:17]nothing was going to happen. I had, you know, booked coaching clients and then they would all cancel
[10:22]because they'd be like, you're broken. You know, I don't know that I want to take advice from
[10:27]you currently. Exactly. Yeah. Well, and you know, the hardest thing about being a driven person
[10:34]is that you are deeply into Nile about what you need. And you're getting something out of it. So
[10:41]you're perpetuating the myth, the lie, the illusion. But you can't really say that, okay, I definitely
[10:51]need to just stop for two years. I thought I was quitting for a month. I thought I was just taking a
[10:56]a month off. Then it became two months and suddenly it was two years. I just couldn't go back
[11:01]to work. So I finally started to listen to myself. And you know, I have a book about self-care,
[11:07]the extremely busy woman's guide to self-care, which was the precursor to this book because the big
[11:12]thing I learned was compassion and oneness are connectedness to the afterlife, but also self-care.
[11:21]And Teal was really good at self-care. Because of her medical condition, she had to be.
[11:27]But, you know, she took meticulous care of herself and she would say exactly what she thought meant.
[11:33]She didn't let people walk all over her. And she was highly sensitive to her own needs.
[11:38]And may we all be so, you know? I know that you're winding down the podcast because I listened
[11:44]to a few episodes and you mentioned that in the beginning, but I was really what you just said that
[11:50]when you're a driven person, you're in denial about what you actually need. I mean,
[11:54]let me change my bumper sticker to that because that is.
[12:00]Hello, everyone. I'm driving away from what I need. Like that is exactly that is so accurate.
[12:06]But what a beautiful thing that you had a daughter put in your life
[12:11]who taught you exactly what you needed to know, which is that you must care for yourself.
[12:17]I just, that was that really resonated with me. And especially, we haven't spoken about this,
[12:26]but I wrote a memoir coming out next year, but it's about a crash that I had after I took
[12:31]too long, spent too long caring for everyone but myself. And then suddenly I was a disaster.
[12:36]And so that lesson, true self-care, not the performative kind that we see so much of, but this
[12:42]true question of how am I taking care of myself? Am I addicted to stress? Am I paying attention?
[12:48]Am I paying attention to me to what's happening around me? All these things. It's just,
[12:53]it's a message that we can't hear enough of. So I love that she was brought into your life,
[12:59]you know, not to teach you that in that way, but that that was part of who she was to you.
[13:04]Oh, I think, I think that was a big piece of why we brought together. I also really had to experience
[13:12]sort of teals ongoing wisdom and her energy around me. It really pulled me through my grief.
[13:20]This feeling that I was not alone, that whatever can be said about the afterlife and of course
[13:27]we don't really know, we'll never know. It felt real to me, boy. And it felt like this was
[13:34]happening for a reason. It felt like I was not as off base as I thought that I began to realize
[13:42]that everything was happening according to a greater plan and that I just needed to get with
[13:47]the program and surrender. And the more I fought it, the more difficult it would be.
[13:52]You know, I got this sort of little channeled blip that came down which said,
[13:57]spirit helps, but you create, meaning you set the intention, you get in touch with what you
[14:04]need and want. You create that from your gut and you will get assistance. You won't necessarily
[14:10]get assistance with the things you don't want. And I did not want that business even though I was
[14:17]trying to restart it out of a fear-based decision call. I'm going to run out of money.
[14:22]Oh, I'm sure enough, you know, they always do not so great. And I had a surprise job offer
[14:30]come into my lap writing fiction, which I did for eight years. Let's see two years into her death
[14:37]in 2014. And you know, it was somebody who'd known me all my life and who just came out of nowhere
[14:43]and wealthy person offered to sponsor me kind of, you know, invest in fiction. We started a
[14:49]little publishing company and I wrote a bunch of novels. And I had published fiction in the past,
[14:55]but I hadn't not for 15 years. I hadn't written a novel. So it was pretty great.
[15:00]That's amazing. I'm really in reading your book and continuing to see that concept of
[15:05]surrendering. There is so much to that of, you know, what am I aligning with in terms of my life?
[15:11]What is it that I'm trying to get to and asking those deeper questions of, you're exactly right?
[15:16]What do I really want that's below the things I think I need and the things I think I want,
[15:24]right? How do I kind of get down there? One thing I wanted to ask you, you talked a lot about
[15:30]your dreams or it feels like Teal really showed up a lot for you in your dreams and you gain a
[15:35]lot of insight from your dreams. Do you still, is that something that still happens for you? How do
[15:40]you hold on to your dreams? How do you interpret them? I was really interested to hear more about
[15:45]thank you for asking about that because the dreams were probably one of the biggest
[15:48]tools I used in managing the loss of Teal. These dreams would happen often as I was just waking up
[15:57]and they would either be a full on dream or it would be my eyes opened. I looked around and I
[16:01]suddenly had a deep awareness or in a few cases I even saw a vision and those do not happen now
[16:08]and I don't need them to happen now and interestingly I'm writing a memoir of my father.
[16:13]It's actually a biography because he's not writing it. I am. I'm writing a biography of my
[16:19]father John falter who was a Saturday evening postcover artist and illustrator and had an incredible
[16:25]career and I was, you know, this job came unbidden from a museum and I'm writing this thing
[16:32]and I'm having these dreams about him and it's a very similar kind of experience. He died in 1982
[16:37]and you know I feel he's showing me things that I need to have greater understanding about.
[16:44]Now what I do with these dreams and with the dreams about from Teal and in the dreams of Teal I
[16:50]you know I would dream that we were at a cocktail party in one of them we were at a cocktail party
[16:55]and she was maybe 35 she was sort of future Teal and she came up to me and we were
[17:02]hugging and chatting and just having a wonderful time together and it was like a visit from Teal,
[17:06]another time I dreamt we were watching TV together much the way we used to but then in other dreams
[17:13]in one of them she showed up and she was very Botoxed and she was wearing these like groovy
[17:17]dreads and these big aviator sunglasses and completely the opposite of who she really was because
[17:23]she was an extremely down to earth simple person who walked around in jeans and t-shirts and torn
[17:28]kids and loved it yeah right good choice so she she looked at me and she said unmute your phone
[17:40]and then she disappeared and at the time I had given up my smartphone and I just had a little flip
[17:45]phone and I had on mute all the time I really didn't want to be bothered by people unless it was
[17:48]an emergency and I saw that she was showing me that I had developed a false persona this you know
[17:57]workaholic and I at the time I was working with a style consultant and I had all these headshots
[18:01]and I was just so in my ego and so in my narcissism and she was showing me I could unmute my phone
[18:08]I could let go of my fear of the people and I could stop being my false self I could be my true
[18:14]self and let people in and that dream took me a while to understand so what I did was I wrote it
[18:21]down and when you write down everything that happens in a dream if you sit with it for a moment
[18:26]you do get a deeper understanding so you just keep writing and sometimes your pen just test
[18:31]a move across the page just let it flow and I always have a little section called the dream
[18:37]and then the interpretation and the interpretation made itself clear and I never would have
[18:42]understood that if I had just thought about the dream because those links are a bit unclear
[18:48]correct yes with my dad's book I am dreaming vague or dreams so far I haven't gotten
[18:57]super clear instruction but I'm the biggest mystery in this book is his first wife who he was
[19:03]married to for 25 years who he built his career with and she was a CIA agent she was a fascinating
[19:09]character and I don't know a lot about her and he's dropping little seeds about who she was
[19:16]and how their dynamic was together and it just shows up you know and I really think these dreams
[19:23]present themselves when the message needs to be delivered that was my big takeaway because I almost
[19:29]never dream about Tilly anymore and despite my tears at the beginning of this episode I feel my grief
[19:36]has been greatly healed yeah well and that's a good reminder right that I think there is there is
[19:44]healing and the tears can hopefully still be part of that right I love to let my feelings
[19:52]out through my eyeballs happens all the time yeah did you know I had a great chat with a photo
[19:58]my Kroger for once
[20:00]who takes microscopic photographs of tears.
[20:03]And the crystal and structure
[20:04]for different types of tears is completely different.
[20:07]So your body produces tears in grief
[20:11]that are different from, say, tears of frustration
[20:14]or tears of joy or tears of anger.
[20:16]And that tells me how healing, crying is.
[20:20]I am gonna be thinking about that all day.
[20:24]That is so incredible.
[20:27]Yeah. Wow.
[20:29]I'm gonna be thinking about that.
[20:30]I can't wait to hear about that or learn more about that.
[20:32]That's fascinating.
[20:34]Yeah, I'm a big fan of crying.
[20:35]Because for me, I keep everything so tight
[20:38]that that sometimes is the only way to unlock a little bit,
[20:42]right?
[20:43]If I haven't cried in a while, yeah.
[20:45]I mean, we can save my issues for another podcast.
[20:48]Obviously, there's no need to get into that today.
[20:51]Thank you for sharing that about the dreams.
[20:54]I really find that so fascinating
[20:58]and also very hopeful because I have known people
[21:04]in my life that are gone and I miss them and to know.
[21:10]I just, I think that's very hopeful
[21:11]to think about the afterlife.
[21:13]Do people ask you questions about the afterlife?
[21:16]Now that you've had these experiences,
[21:18]you've written the book, what do they tend to ask you?
[21:20]Or what do you wish they would ask?
[21:23]Because I feel like people have strange ways
[21:26]that they frame it up.
[21:27]So what do you like?
[21:29]I don't have any particular agenda
[21:32]for how I want people to interact with me,
[21:34]hopefully on anything.
[21:36]Sure.
[21:36]But on the afterlife, I would say people really are curious
[21:41]and then people always have their own experiences
[21:44]with the afterlife.
[21:46]It's amazing how much conversation there actually
[21:50]is about this,
[21:52]etherically conversations that are happening in dreams,
[21:56]in visions, in insights, whispering.
[21:59]One of my old housemates used to smell pot every once in a while,
[22:04]even though she had none in her house.
[22:06]And sure enough, her late husband had been a big weed smoker.
[22:11]So she smelled like, oh, he's here.
[22:14]You know, there's a very distinctive smell
[22:17]and why would you suddenly smell that?
[22:19]You know, wow, it's just cool.
[22:22]I mean, it's just cool to me.
[22:24]And unexplainable, as I said earlier,
[22:27]and mystery keeps us going, you know?
[22:29]Yeah, I think that that's a really good reminder.
[22:34]I love to think about mystery.
[22:36]And I think my favorite people are people
[22:38]who have an appreciation for mystery
[22:41]because there's so much we don't know
[22:43]and we'll never know.
[22:44]So do you think complete?
[22:48]So it's funny, I wrote down this question
[22:50]and we kind of touched on it a minute ago,
[22:52]but do you think that healing ever hits a point of completion?
[22:57]Or is it just a constant evolution?
[23:00]Well, I think, you know, we have collective grief
[23:02]from any things.
[23:03]I'm grieving to all my mother, my father, you know,
[23:07]friends I've lost.
[23:08]It's like, yeah, there's lots of deaths in our lives.
[23:12]And, you know, the big path is the grief is our teacher.
[23:17]So we learn a bunch of things from a grief experience.
[23:20]If we allow the grief in, it will wash us.
[23:22]It will cleanse us.
[23:23]It will provide us with insights.
[23:25]It'll perhaps give us inspiration.
[23:27]And I'm thinking of the women who started mad,
[23:29]the mothers against drunk driving,
[23:31]who lost children to drunk drivers
[23:33]and started this awesome and powerful organization
[23:36]that reformed driving laws around intoxication.
[23:41]That's the kind of thing that grief can give way to.
[23:45]We have a little saying in the world of people
[23:47]have lost children, which has you either become better
[23:50]or you become bitter.
[23:52]And, you know, like I didn't know that in the beginning,
[23:55]I was just kind of very, very aware.
[23:58]The minute Teal wound, I mean, just to be clear
[24:01]about her story, she collapsed in a bathroom.
[24:03]She, her heart was started half an hour after her collapse.
[24:08]She was taken to a hospital.
[24:09]She never regained consciousness.
[24:11]And she began to decline again from there
[24:14]until finally six days later,
[24:15]we had to take her off life support.
[24:17]During that six days, and in fact,
[24:20]the minute I saw her stretched out in the ER,
[24:22]I knew she would die.
[24:24]And I knew I would be changed.
[24:25]And I knew the whole thing was meant to be.
[24:29]I didn't accept it, but I knew it.
[24:32]And I had this weird experience
[24:34]where I was standing there looking at her
[24:36]about half an hour after I came into that room.
[24:38]And the nurse said to me,
[24:40]this must be so hard, not knowing what was gonna happen.
[24:43]Because she wasn't dead, but she wasn't fully alive.
[24:46]She was in a vegetative state, essentially.
[24:49]And some people, as we know,
[24:51]historically have lingered in those places for years.
[24:55]She said, it must be hard not knowing what's gonna happen.
[24:59]And I said, for reasons I really didn't even understand
[25:02]at the time, life has changed.
[25:05]Life has changed.
[25:07]And then I'm like, wow, do I really think that?
[25:10]I was like, yeah, I do think that life has changed.
[25:12]doesn't mean I was glib, I was in shock.
[25:15]Actually, it's what the truth was.
[25:18]You didn't throw that out.
[25:20]But I understood that, you know, expect the unexpected,
[25:24]that much I understood.
[25:26]And I had already lost a lot in the previous two months.
[25:31]So, you know, when we allow life to change us
[25:36]and we go with it and we surrender to it
[25:39]and we open ourselves up to what's possible
[25:41]even if we don't know what it will look like
[25:43]or how it will feel or even logistical things
[25:46]like how will I make a living?
[25:49]The answer will present itself.
[25:51]And the path is drawn out.
[25:53]And it is all ahead of us if we allow it
[25:57]to provide us with what we need.
[25:59]Gosh, you are just dropping serious wisdom here.
[26:03]I am gonna listen back to this and write it down.
[26:05]No, it's true though, there is life is changed.
[26:10]and it is so, I think as a parent too,
[26:15]it's, it makes it so challenging too.
[26:18]It's just a continual letting go of in all ways
[26:24]over and over again.
[26:25]And for those of us who aren't great
[26:27]at surrendering, allowing the club that I'm gonna start,
[26:32]you know, uptight people.
[26:33]I don't know, I'll call it something great.
[26:34]But like for those of us who have that,
[26:38]it really is this let go or be dragged kind of thing.
[26:41]Like this is what is happening.
[26:43]And how do I just enter it and let it go, let go or be dragged?
[26:50]There you go, my friend.
[26:52]Yes, yes, it's a nutshell.
[26:53]Cause you know, hey, dragging is not fun.
[26:56]I have other friends who've lost children
[26:58]who have chosen to be dragged.
[27:00]And 18 years later, they're still bitter
[27:02]and still pissed and their lives are still run
[27:04]by the fact that they lost a child.
[27:07]I think there's more to life than this.
[27:09]Yeah.
[27:09]I think it's a crisis.
[27:11]I think it's a huge loss.
[27:12]And my deepest sympathy goes out to everybody else
[27:15]in the club who's listening to this.
[27:17]Yeah.
[27:18]And what I know is life is freaking short.
[27:22]And then you die.
[27:24]I mean, take out the freaking
[27:26]and that's what T.S. Eliot said.
[27:28]Yes.
[27:28]Yes.
[27:29]And boy, he was right because life is short.
[27:32]Look how short Tails life was 22 years.
[27:35]She didn't know she was gonna die.
[27:36]Although the interesting thing is when I began to read
[27:39]her journals and I do write about this a lot in the book.
[27:42]Yeah.
[27:42]She had seeds of understanding of what was coming.
[27:46]And she wrote in her book.
[27:48]I mean, let me just preface this by saying
[27:50]she had a lot of channeled insights
[27:53]that she would put into a little ratty notebook.
[27:57]I have it right here.
[27:58]A little spiral notebook.
[28:00]And right inside the cover, she wrote,
[28:04]you will be in your power when you are overtaken by light
[28:07]and you can see everything as an opening to freedom.
[28:12]That was almost exactly a year before her death.
[28:15]And her insights about life, about herself,
[28:20]about her situation, about all of us were profound.
[28:25]And those insights really helped guide me.
[28:29]And that was one of the reasons I wanted to write the book
[28:31]because I wanted to share them with people.
[28:33]There were many, many ideas about
[28:36]how to be in this world that takeaway,
[28:40]the limitations, the takeaway, the restrictions,
[28:43]the takeaway, the fear that we are always grounded in.
[28:48]We're grounded in so much fear as we move through life
[28:51]and resistance to what is and denial.
[28:54]I was the queen of denial, believe me.
[28:56]Oh, gosh.
[28:58]I think I could talk to you all day, Suzanne.
[29:00]I'm like, I just, I'm really, I love hearing all of this.
[29:07]I want to just finish by talking about
[29:12]kind of your life that has grown up since.
[29:15]And you say in the book, you found new love in your life.
[29:20]But the part that you wrote that I loved,
[29:21]which was love doesn't happen when you find the right person.
[29:24]It happens when you find the right you.
[29:27]And is that something that you continue to see and grow into?
[29:33]What has that fit in your relationship now?
[29:35]Well, I'm 64 and my wife is 71.
[29:39]We met almost, let's see, we met just about two years after Teal's death.
[29:45]And by then I felt that I had moved through enough of my grief
[29:48]that I had space for someone else.
[29:50]It was super clear to me that it wasn't going to happen prior to that.
[29:53]And when I was ready, I just sort of made a decision and very quickly, she felt...
[30:00]in the place. And she was described to me in detail by a psychic. And at the time, I, I
[30:06]um, this psychic actually contacted me and said I was, I was told to gift you a reading. And
[30:11]I was like, well, okay, let's go. And she said, you will, you know, you will find the
[30:16]love of your life. And, you know, I won't go into the whole story because it's pretty detailed,
[30:21]but it was extremely accurate. And sure enough, two months later, I met my wife. And, um,
[30:28]you know, the thing about our relationship is we are people who have met later in life when,
[30:35]you know, kind of the lessons have really been largely learned, although there is always
[30:40]another path of learning. And we're on that path of learning, but our ability to be in
[30:45]a committed, serene, loving, deep relationship is far greater than it used to be. Because
[30:51]life is the sequence of learning, learning, learning, learning, learning, learning, we're learning
[30:55]all the time. This relationship is much easier than my 25 year marriage was to my former
[31:02]husband. And not because, you know, gay straight, whatever. Yeah, that's not the point.
[31:08]The point is that who I was with him and who he was with me were completely different
[31:14]than who I am with her now. And he helped me learn how to be in that relationship as I helped
[31:21]him. And, you know, we're always surrounding ourselves with the perfect teachers. I got into a
[31:27]terrible relationship prior to meeting my wife that was really marked by a lot of dysfunction. And
[31:32]that taught me even more about how to be in this relationship in this marriage. And, um, I have to
[31:41]say it gets better all the time, despite the physical ailments. Yes. Yes. You know, the creep creep
[31:49]decrepit to, you know, we are really aware of how fortunate we are. And that sure helps.
[31:56]Well, I love that you used the word serene because I think that's such a beautiful goal to have.
[32:02]But you're exactly right. We are hopefully growing into who are meant to become, but that takes time
[32:08]and pressure in the right circumstances. So you're right that those relationships later in life
[32:14]really can have a different shape and form to them because we better understand what we don't need
[32:21]there. I even see it in writing the memoir about my dad's life. I even see it in his first marriage
[32:27]and then his marriage to my mother, how he and his first wife evolved and then eventually split
[32:33]apart and how that all went down and how he and my mother got together. It's like, I can see the
[32:39]the path. I can see the progression of personal evolution. You know, even though it was the 50s
[32:46]and the 60s and people weren't wild. Not so evolved. It was more the martini culture, you know.
[32:51]Yes. But you're exactly right. And I think that's the advantage of looking back on the fullness
[32:55]of someone's life is that you can see their path. And so if we can translate that wisdom into our
[33:02]life and know that I'm on the right track, whatever the, you know, if I'm paying attention, then I
[33:08]can have an act of faith that the, the conditions are right for preparing me for whatever is next.
[33:14]But what it is. Oh, it is. Thank you for this time. This was a joy. This conversation was
[33:20]everything I thought it would be. I was reading your book and I thought she is going to have some
[33:25]interesting and valuable things to say. And indeed, you have some so excited that people will get
[33:31]to meet you this way and they'll get to meet Teal, both in your book and in you. And I just,
[33:38]I'm thrilled about the whole thing. So thanks so much for the time today. Many thanks, Julia.
[33:44]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to
[33:48]follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Also sign
[33:53]up for my newsletter at zebi Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors
[33:58]on zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan Beck, Texture Sound for the sound
[34:02]editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and