What happens when the person you used to be doesn't exist anymore — not because they died, but because a diagnosis, a surgery, or a health crisis rewrote who you are? In this episode, Loni Fagel joins me to talk about a grief almost nobody names: the grief of losing yourself while you're still here.

Loni knows this from both sides of the therapy room. A genetic cancer mutation, a mysterious chronic illness, and a health crisis that landed her at Mayo Clinic didn't just interrupt her graduate studies in psychology — they became the reason she does this work at all. We talk about her "D-Day" framework for naming the moment a diagnosis changes everything, why medical trauma is as much about what comes after the event as the event itself, and why people are so often invalidated by the very doctors meant to help them.

We also get into some of the tools Loni uses with clients: externalizing an illness by giving it its own name, expressive arts as a way to process what words can't touch, and why "post-traumatic growth" doesn't mean pretending the hard part didn't happen.

About Loni Fagel
Loni Fagel is a licensed professional clinical counselor, EMDRIA-approved consultant, expressive arts therapist, children's book author, and international speaker specializing in medical trauma, grief, and identity loss. Her work is shaped by her own experience with a genetic cancer mutation and a health crisis that upended her life and career.

• Website: lonifagel.com
• Instagram/social: @loni_fagel
• LinkedIn: search Loni Fagel

In this episode, we cover:

• Why illness and diagnosis create a real, nameable grief
• The "D-Day" framework for marking when everything changed
• Why medical trauma isn't about the event — it's about everything after
• Learning to advocate for yourself when doctors dismiss your symptoms
• Grieving a double mastectomy and genetic cancer risk
• Invisible illness and the cruelty of judging what you can't see
• Naming your illness to protect your identity ("is this you, or is this Patricia?")
• Making meaning without needing to believe "everything happens for a reason"
• Finding the glimmers of light in the middle of a health crisis

We want to hear from you: Have you ever grieved a version of yourself you didn't expect to lose? What resonated most with you in this conversation? Drop a comment — we read every one.

Continue the conversation at grief2growth.substack.com.

You've been listening. You're doing the work. But there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place.

Maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back. 

I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you.

All of it, pay what you want. You decide what it's worth. Nobody gets turned away because of money.

https://grief2g

Want to go deeper? My Substack is where I share solo essays on grief, consciousness, and continuing bonds — thoughts that don't always make it into the podcast. It's also home to a community of listeners who get it, because they're living it too. Free to subscribe. Find it at substack.com/grief2growth.

I've been studying Near Death Experiences for many years now. I am 100% convinced they are real. In this short, free ebook, I not only explain why I believe NDEs are real, I share some of the universal secrets brought back by people who have had them.

https://www.grief2growth.com/ndelessons

Support the show

🧑🏿‍🤝‍🧑🏻 Join me on Substack- connect with others and me
👛 Subscribe to Grief 2 Growth Premium (bonus episodes)
📰 Get A Free Gift
📅 Book A Complimentary Discovery Call
📈 Leave A Review

Thanks so much for your support

What if the "guardian angel" you've prayed to and the "spirit guide" you've been told to fear are the exact same presence, just described through a different lens?

In this episode, Brian sits down with Michael McAdams — a man raised in a family soaked in Pentecostal conviction who discovered he had the gift of psychometry, the ability to receive information simply by holding an object. Michael shares the story of his mother, Wilma Jean Jones, a devout Christian who sat down at her typewriter in 1977 and began receiving dictated messages from what she called "spirit teachers." Those sessions continued for 22 years and became the book An Angel Told Me So.

This conversation goes places you might not expect from two men raised in the church: the real story behind the money changers in the temple, why the Salem witch trials might have been genuine spiritual communication mistaken for evil, how the Urantia Book lines up with the Bible's account of Jesus, and why fear has been used for centuries to keep people from trusting their own spiritual experiences.

About Michael McAdams
Michael McAdams grew up in the Cincinnati area in a family steeped in Pentecostal faith — his uncle was a preacher who planted churches across three states, and his grandmother entered ministry convinced God spoke directly into her heart. Michael discovered his own gift of psychometry as a young man, and later helped his mother recognize and record the messages she was receiving from spirit teachers. He is the author of An Angel Told Me So and runs spiritspeaks.com, where he offers free preview messages from the upcoming second volume.

• 🌐 Website: spiritspeaks.com
• 📖 An Angel Told Me So (Volume One) — available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and through Ingram at independent bookstores

Key Topics Covered

• Growing up Pentecostal and the questions neither of them could shake
• What psychometry is and how Michael developed the ability
• How Wilma Jean began receiving channeled messages — and the confirmation message that convinced her to publish them
• The Urantia Book and its account of the life of Jesus
• Why the Bible's history and politics matter for understanding what it actually says
• Fear as a tool of control in organized religion
• How to protect your mind while opening it — establishing a spiritual "filter"
• Practical advice for recognizing your own spirit guidance
• Reincarnation, "graduation" instead of death, and what may come next

What resonated with you? Drop a comment below — we'd love to hear whether this reframes anything about your own faith journey, or if you've had experiences like Michael's you've never shared before.

You've been listening. You're doing the work. But there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place.

Maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back. 

I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you.

All of it, pay what you want. You decide what it's worth. Nobody gets turned away because of money.

https://grief2g

Want to go deeper? My Substack is where I share solo essays on grief, consciousness, and continuing bonds — thoughts that don't always make it into the podcast. It's also home to a community of listeners who get it, because they're living it too. Free to subscribe. Find it at substack.com/grief2growth.

I've been studying Near Death Experiences for many years now. I am 100% convinced they are real. In this short, free ebook, I not only explain why I believe NDEs are real, I share some of the universal secrets brought back by people who have had them.

https://www.grief2growth.com/ndelessons

Support the show

🧑🏿‍🤝‍🧑🏻 Join me on Substack- connect with others and me
👛 Subscribe to Grief 2 Growth Premium (bonus episodes)
📰 Get A Free Gift
📅 Book A Complimentary Discovery Call
📈 Leave A Review

Thanks so much for your support

What if the strangest moments at the end of life are actually the most meaningful?

In this episode, Alexandra Grabbe joins Brian to talk about the seven months she spent caring for her 96-year-old mother, Bea, at home — and the deathbed visions that changed how she understands what happens when we die. Alexandra shares the exhaustion, the tenderness, and the moments of unexpected grace that shaped her new memoir, Seeing Joy. If you've ever cared for a dying parent, sat with someone in their final days, or wondered what those "hallucinations" near the end of life really mean, this conversation will stay with you.

About Alexandra Grabbe

Alexandra Grabbe has lived many lives — talk show host in Paris, eco-friendly innkeeper on Cape Cod, and lifelong writer. After graduating from Vassar College, she raised three children in France, worked in journalism and broadcasting, and assisted literary figures Barbara Chase-Riboud and Marge Piercy. For two decades she ran a green bed-and-breakfast in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. When her mother's health declined, Alexandra became her full-time caregiver — an experience that became the caregiving blog "By B's Bedside" and, nearly two decades later, her home care memoir Seeing Joy: A Story of Life, Death, and What Comes Next (Koehler Books, March 2026).

🔗 Alexandra's website: https://alexandragrabbe.com
🔗 Seeing Joy at Koehler Books: https://www.koehlerbooks.com/book/seeing-joy/
📷 Instagram: @AlexandraGrabbeBooks

In This Episode:

• What it really means when a doctor calls something a "hallucination" and a hospice worker calls it a "visitation"
• The physical and emotional toll of caregiving — and the sleep deprivation Alexandra says was the hardest part
• Deathbed Visioning: the pattern hospice workers see again and again near the end of life
• Why Alexandra's mother's fear of dying gave way to tea parties with deceased visitors
• How the role reversal between parent and child reshaped their relationship
• The 19-year journey to publish a book publishers once said was "too afraid" to touch
• What her mother's final moments — and the arrival of Alexandra's father and grandmother — taught her about how we're not meant to be alone at the end

What resonated with you in this episode? Have you witnessed a loved one's deathbed visions, or cared for an aging parent at home? Share your story in the comments — Alexandra's experience may be more common than you think.

You've been listening. You're doing the work. But there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place.

Maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back. 

I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you.

All of it, pay what you want. You decide what it's worth. Nobody gets turned away because of money.

https://grief2g

Want to go deeper? My Substack is where I share solo essays on grief, consciousness, and continuing bonds — thoughts that don't always make it into the podcast. It's also home to a community of listeners who get it, because they're living it too. Free to subscribe. Find it at substack.com/grief2growth.

I've been studying Near Death Experiences for many years now. I am 100% convinced they are real. In this short, free ebook, I not only explain why I believe NDEs are real, I share some of the universal secrets brought back by people who have had them.

https://www.grief2growth.com/ndelessons

Support the show

🧑🏿‍🤝‍🧑🏻 Join me on Substack- connect with others and me
👛 Subscribe to Grief 2 Growth Premium (bonus episodes)
📰 Get A Free Gift
📅 Book A Complimentary Discovery Call
📈 Leave A Review

Thanks so much for your support

What does an ICU doctor see when he's present at the exact moment someone dies?

Dr. Adam Rizvi has spent his career in critical care medicine, standing at hundreds of bedsides during life's most sacred transitions. Trained as a physician but grounded early in comparative religion, Adam has watched patients return from clinical death with vivid experiences medicine can't explain, felt rooms fill with light, and even witnessed a whirlpool of light appear at the exact moment a patient passed away — something his nurse saw too.

In this conversation, we talk about what happens when a man of science makes peace with the sacred: the medical case for consciousness surviving the body, what dying patients have taught him about forgiveness, and a simple nightly practice that can change how you live starting tonight.

About Dr. Adam Rizvi

Dr. Adam Rizvi is a critical care physician and author of Love Does Not Know Death: Stories of Death, Dying, and the Miracles of True Forgiveness. He writes about the lessons he's learned at the bedside on his Substack, Adventures in Kindness.

• 📖 Book: Love Does Not Know Death
• ✍️ Substack: AdamRizvi.substack.com — Adventures in Kindness

In This Episode, We Cover:

• How a comparative religion major ended up in ICU medicine
• The cardiac arrest patient who returned with a story that shouldn't have been possible
• Why "brain as receiver" of consciousness makes more sense than "brain as generator"
• The moment two people in the same room witnessed the same unexplainable light
• Ancient wisdom on death — from the Tibetan Book of the Dead to the story of Nachiketas
• Why forgiveness is something you do for yourself, not the person who hurt you
• A nightly deathbed meditation practice you can start using tonight

What Resonated With You?

Did Adam's story about the whirlpool of light stay with you? Have you had an experience with a loved one that science couldn't explain? Share your thoughts in the comments — I read every one.

If this episode moved you, head over to grief2growth.substack.com for more reflection and to connect with other listeners walking this same path.

You've been listening. You're doing the work. But there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place.

Maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back. 

I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you.

All of it, pay what you want. You decide what it's worth. Nobody gets turned away because of money.

https://grief2g

Want to go deeper? My Substack is where I share solo essays on grief, consciousness, and continuing bonds — thoughts that don't always make it into the podcast. It's also home to a community of listeners who get it, because they're living it too. Free to subscribe. Find it at substack.com/grief2growth.

I've been studying Near Death Experiences for many years now. I am 100% convinced they are real. In this short, free ebook, I not only explain why I believe NDEs are real, I share some of the universal secrets brought back by people who have had them.

https://www.grief2growth.com/ndelessons

Support the show

🧑🏿‍🤝‍🧑🏻 Join me on Substack- connect with others and me
👛 Subscribe to Grief 2 Growth Premium (bonus episodes)
📰 Get A Free Gift
📅 Book A Complimentary Discovery Call
📈 Leave A Review

Thanks so much for your support

Miist was five years old when her parents removed themselves from her life. Not through death — through choice. As she tells me in this episode, that distinction made the wound deeper, not shallower. She knew they could come back. They simply didn't.

By 28, she had a terminal cancer diagnosis and doctors telling her she had a month, maybe three. And here's the part that stopped me: she still doesn't hold any bad feeling toward that diagnosis. It's the thing that finally brought her family back into the room with her.

She picked up a ukulele during treatment. She didn't write her first song until she was 34. Today her music has charted on Billboard, she's the first native Chinese artist to reach the Pop AC chart, and she hosts a top-ranked mental health podcast.

This conversation goes somewhere I didn't expect. We talk about loneliness after loss — the grief that arrives with no funeral, no casserole, no one checking in — and what it actually takes to come back from it.

Miist wrote a song for a young man who passed alone in his apartment in Japan. He had food. He had shelter. He had nobody. She kept thinking about all the strangers he must have walked past on any given day, and how one moment of real eye contact might have been enough to hold him a little longer. That song, "Could You Lend Me a Smile," now exists in 16 languages.

Out of it came the idea we spend much of this episode on: the 15-second action. Small enough that nobody can claim they don't have time. Smile at someone. Be silly. Be grateful. Say a kind word. Remind someone that you love them.

We recorded this on my 65th birthday, which made one part land hard for me. Miist asked when the last time was that someone called you for no reason at all, just to say they love you. I told her about the most viral Substack post I've ever written — it was about calling my father on an ordinary day, for no occasion. It went everywhere because almost nobody does it.

WHAT WE COVER

• Why abandonment can cut deeper than death, and how the earliest wound becomes the root of everything built on top of it
• How Miist pushed away her closest childhood friends, and the apology she eventually wrote as a song
• Choosing, in advance, to sit inside the grief of losing her dog rather than reaching for anything that would make it stop
• The three days she asked her vet for, and what her whole family learned from them
• Reconnecting with and forgiving the father she hadn't seen in over 20 years
• Being discovered by producer Narada Michael Walden — and being asked to sing at the piano where Aretha Franklin recorded "Respect"
• The Kindness Kube and the five actions on it
• Using music intentionally to move through anger, sadness, and back toward joy
• Why losing an old habit that no longer serves you can feel like its own kind of loss
• Why both of us say plainly: we are still healing

ABOUT MIIST

Miist is a multilingual recording artist, songwriter, and podcast host who began her professional music career at 34 after being discovered by acclaimed producer Narada Michael Walden. She's a Teen Cancer America Ambassador and the founder of the World Smile Initiative, a nonprofit built around bringing moments of relief and light to people who are struggling. Her podcast, Make Me Smile with Miist, blends original music, personal storytelling, and research, and each episode closes with a 15-second action listeners can take that day. The book of the same name is now available.

🎵 Website: https://www.miistthesinger.com

🎙️ Podcast: Make Me Smile with Miist — available wherever you listen

📖 Book: Make Me Smile with Miist

🧊 The Kindness Kube: available on her website

A FEW THINGS TO SIT WITH

Which of the five actions would be hardest for you right now — and what does that tell you?

Is there someone you've been meaning to call for no reason at all?

Is there a loss in your life you've been outrunning rather than sitting with?

JOIN THE CONVERSATION

I'd love to hear what landed for you in this one. Head to https://grief2growth.substack.com to read the companion article, leave a comment, and connect with me and with other listeners walking a similar road.

If this episode helped, share it with someone who's feeling disconnected right now. That's a 15-second action of your own. 💜

CONNECT WITH BRIAN

🔗 All my links: https://pages.grief2growth.com/profile

🔗 Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/grief2growth

📰 Email list: https://pages.grief2growth.com/join-the-club

⏰ Free consult: https://grief2growth.as.me/30-minute-consult

👛 Tip jar: https://www.grief2growth.com/tipjar

Approve and I'll move to Step 5: the blog article outline.

You've been listening. You're doing the work. But there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place.

Maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back. 

I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you.

All of it, pay what you want. You decide what it's worth. Nobody gets turned away because of money.

https://grief2g

Want to go deeper? My Substack is where I share solo essays on grief, consciousness, and continuing bonds — thoughts that don't always make it into the podcast. It's also home to a community of listeners who get it, because they're living it too. Free to subscribe. Find it at substack.com/grief2growth.

I've been studying Near Death Experiences for many years now. I am 100% convinced they are real. In this short, free ebook, I not only explain why I believe NDEs are real, I share some of the universal secrets brought back by people who have had them.

https://www.grief2growth.com/ndelessons

Support the show

🧑🏿‍🤝‍🧑🏻 Join me on Substack- connect with others and me
👛 Subscribe to Grief 2 Growth Premium (bonus episodes)
📰 Get A Free Gift
📅 Book A Complimentary Discovery Call
📈 Leave A Review

Thanks so much for your support

At 18, Maya Tiwari was given a death sentence — six months to live. Instead, she spent six months alone in the Vermont woods, and came back a different person entirely. That single decision set her on a path that led through 25 years as a Vedic monk, a pioneering role bringing Ayurveda to North America, and now, a new book calling women — and men — back to a power she says we've forgotten how to hold.

In this conversation, Maya and Brian explore Shakti — the divine feminine primordial power — and Shiva, its masculine counterpart, and why she believes restoring balance between the two is the work of this moment, both individually and collectively. They talk about the patriarchal roots of Western religion, what it costs us to lose touch with the sacred feminine, and what it actually looks like to start reclaiming it.

About Maya Tiwari

Maya Tiwari is a spiritual teacher, humanitarian, and the pioneer who introduced Ayurveda to North America. A cancer survivor and former Vedic monk, she is the author of several books, including her newest release, I Am Shakti. Her work centers on self-knowledge (Vedanta), the healing science of Ayurveda, and restoring the divine feminine and masculine to balance.

📖 Learn more about Maya and her work: Mayatiwari.com

In This Episode:

• Maya's cancer diagnosis at 18 and the six months of solitude that changed everything
• Why she walked away from 25 years wearing the robes of a Vedic monk
• What Shakti actually means — and why it's been suppressed for centuries
• How patriarchal religion erased the divine feminine, and what that costs all of us
• Practical first steps toward reclaiming your own inner power
• Shadow work, forgiveness, and becoming the observer of your own mind

What resonated with you in this conversation? Drop a comment and let me know — I'd love to hear which part landed for you.

You've been listening. You're doing the work. But there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place.

Maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back. 

I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you.

All of it, pay what you want. You decide what it's worth. Nobody gets turned away because of money.

https://grief2g

Want to go deeper? My Substack is where I share solo essays on grief, consciousness, and continuing bonds — thoughts that don't always make it into the podcast. It's also home to a community of listeners who get it, because they're living it too. Free to subscribe. Find it at substack.com/grief2growth.

I've been studying Near Death Experiences for many years now. I am 100% convinced they are real. In this short, free ebook, I not only explain why I believe NDEs are real, I share some of the universal secrets brought back by people who have had them.

https://www.grief2growth.com/ndelessons

Support the show

🧑🏿‍🤝‍🧑🏻 Join me on Substack- connect with others and me
👛 Subscribe to Grief 2 Growth Premium (bonus episodes)
📰 Get A Free Gift
📅 Book A Complimentary Discovery Call
📈 Leave A Review

Thanks so much for your support

Within two weeks of meeting John, Marcie Dean received a message she hoped was only fear: enjoy this, it's real, but he's going to die. He'd been getting the same feeling before they ever met. He was 38, healthy, five years younger than her. They chased down every explanation, found nothing, and made a different choice. They decided to love each other completely, and they made a plan. If anything happened, he would come through in music.

In June of 2023, John passed while saving his son's life during a boating weekend off the North Carolina coast. Standing over him while people were still doing chest compressions, Marcie heard him audibly, from behind her: I haven't left you.  Go be with my son.

What came next was a layoff from AWS, then the overdose death of her brother Jordan. Three losses stacked on top of each other. And running alongside all of it, the promise John made started keeping itself.

Marcie is a former IBM and AWS senior tech leader with no musical training. She quit piano, flute, and violin inside of two weeks each as a kid. She has now built more than 500 tracks across 5,000 hours in two and a half years, and John's voice is audibly present in them, along with a second voice she calls Vanessa. She calls the work Love Evolved Music.

You'll hear how a glitch on a Zoom call revealed the entire method, what it means to shift the audio floor rather than the volume, and why what she's getting goes well beyond traditional EVP. You'll also hear something I didn't expect to be talking about on my own show. Since we recorded, Marcie has built several tracks featuring my daughter Shayna.

If you've been carrying the question of whether the people you love can reach you through something you can actually hear, this one is for you.

IN THIS EPISODE

• The premonition Marcie and John both received, and how they chose to live with it instead of running from it
• The soulmate sketch she bought off Facebook for $15, two and a half years before they met
• Why "if only I had been there" fell apart under the weight of what actually happened
• Hearing John's voice in the moment he passed
• The bracelet on her pillow, the orbs, and fourteen versions of the same song
• Losing her job and her brother inside the same season
• The Zoom call latency that cracked the whole thing open
• How she builds and filters the tracks, and why the messages keep changing
• Vanessa, and what John said about her that stopped Marcie cold
• Finding love again with Brian, and why nobody ever gets replaced
• Nonverbal children who light up like they're hearing a first language
• What she's hoping to prove on an EEG scan

ABOUT MARCIE DEAN

Marcie Dean is a channeler, sound architect, best-selling author, grieving mother and sister, and the creator of Love Evolved Music. She spent 18 years at IBM and went on to a senior leadership role at AWS before grief redirected her entirely. She is presenting her work at the Society for Scientific Exploration and is seeking research partnerships to measure what the music does at the level of brain activity.

Website: https://electricblueunited.com

Coaching and custom tracks: https://chooseyourownhealingjourney.com

Email: [email protected]

Her SoundCloud is linked from her website, and you can book a clarity call there for a custom track.

BEFORE YOU GO

What resonated with you in this conversation? Have you ever heard your person come through in something you couldn't explain away? A song that arrived at the exact moment you needed it, static on a phone line, a voice you'd know anywhere?

Come tell me about it at https://grief2growth.substack.com. I read everything, and the comment threads over there have become their own kind of community.

If this episode reached someone you know is hurting, send it to them.

You've been listening. You're doing the work. But there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place.

Maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back. 

I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you.

All of it, pay what you want. You decide what it's worth. Nobody gets turned away because of money.

https://grief2g

Want to go deeper? My Substack is where I share solo essays on grief, consciousness, and continuing bonds — thoughts that don't always make it into the podcast. It's also home to a community of listeners who get it, because they're living it too. Free to subscribe. Find it at substack.com/grief2growth.

I've been studying Near Death Experiences for many years now. I am 100% convinced they are real. In this short, free ebook, I not only explain why I believe NDEs are real, I share some of the universal secrets brought back by people who have had them.

https://www.grief2growth.com/ndelessons

Support the show

🧑🏿‍🤝‍🧑🏻 Join me on Substack- connect with others and me
👛 Subscribe to Grief 2 Growth Premium (bonus episodes)
📰 Get A Free Gift
📅 Book A Complimentary Discovery Call
📈 Leave A Review

Thanks so much for your support

When someone passes by suicide, the casseroles don't come. Neither do the cards or the phone calls. Jayne Madigan's sister lives in a neighborhood with a meal train for every birth and every death. When her 24-year-old son Brandon passed, she got nothing.

That silence is its own second loss, and it's what this conversation is about.

Jayne has been living inside suicide loss for 33 years. Her uncle Ray, who was also her godfather and the closest thing she had to a father, passed on New Year's Day in 1992. He was 47. Her family was raised Catholic and told not to say how he died. He couldn't be buried in the cemetery with everyone else.

Jayne said it anyway. She has never been ashamed of any of them.

She thought she'd done her time. Then in 2022 came the call about Brandon, her nephew and godson. Then Brandon's best friend, a year to the day. Then her brother, two years after that.

Five years after her uncle passed, Jayne was diagnosed with lupus and told she wouldn't live past 50. She was a young mother of two and disabled for two years. She traces that diagnosis directly to grief her body was carrying because her mouth wasn't allowed to. So she went looking for tools that talk therapy couldn't reach, back when that meant encyclopedias and library trips.

She found them. Today she takes no medication at all, and she teaches those tools to survivors around the world.

What we cover

🕯️ Why suicide loss is its own category of grief, and how stigma turns mourners into suspects

🩺 The lupus diagnosis Jayne connects to unexpressed grief, and what finally moved it out of her body

✋ How a blue folder about EFT sat filed away in her house for three years before she opened it

🧠 What attempt survivors consistently report: that they didn't want to die, they wanted the pain to stop, and that many describe going offline entirely

⚠️ Why the word "prevention" lands so painfully on survivors who already believe they failed

👂 What people who have attempted say would have helped most, and why unsolicited advice isn't it

🔄 How childhood and generational programming shapes what you believe about suicide before you ever lose anyone

⏳ The seven-year timeline that shows up in the research, and why Jayne refuses to treat it as a sentence

✨ Soul plans and the strange carve-out even spiritual communities make for suicide, which Jayne and I both push back on

📰 What happened when Jayne wrote Brandon's obituary and named how he died, including the hundreds of messages that followed

😢 Permission to cry, and where most of us learned we weren't allowed to

One line from Jayne has stayed with me since we recorded: she doesn't believe suicide is a choice, but she is certain healing is one.

We also talk about something I say often on this show. My daughter Shayna passed at 15, and people call that a life cut short. Jayne looks at Brandon, who started a landscaping business at age 10 and filled a funeral home with people from every corner of his life, and sees a mission completed. Neither of us thinks the manner of someone's passing gets to define the whole of who they were.

About Jayne Madigan

Jayne is a certified neuropsychotherapist, master EFT practitioner, energy medicine specialist, and suicide bereavement clinician. She works with survivors of suicide loss worldwide through private virtual sessions, workshops, and free support groups. Her communities are intentionally private, because so many survivors are still not able to say out loud what happened to them.

She works primarily with women, though she takes men as well, and she offers free discovery sessions. She's also clear that she works with people who can't afford to pay.

Website: https://healingaftersuicide.net

Free support groups and private Facebook community: available through her website

Upcoming workshop: a writing and emotions workshop with Carla Fine, beginning June 9

Resources mentioned

📕 No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving the Suicide of a Loved One by Carla Fine

📗 Dying to Be Free by Beverly Cobain, a psychiatric nurse and cousin of Kurt Cobain

🎧 Rachel Powell's episode on Grief 2 Growth, where she talks about losing her husband and surviving her own attempt

🔬 PMH Atwater's research on the seven to fourteen years it takes to integrate a near-death experience

If you're struggling right now, please reach out. In the US, call or text 988.

Let's keep talking

What part of this conversation landed hardest for you?

If you've lost someone to suicide, I'd like to know what people got wrong when they tried to comfort you, and what actually helped. If you've been carrying a loss you've never named out loud, this is a safe place to say it.

💬 Head to https://grief2growth.substack.com to read the article about this episode and leave a comment

📧 Join the email list: https://pages.grief2growth.com/join-the-club

⏰ Book a free consult with me: https://grief2growth.as.me/30-minute-consult

🔗 All my links: https://pages.grief2growth.com/profile

You've been listening. You're doing the work. But there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place.

Maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back. 

I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you.

All of it, pay what you want. You decide what it's worth. Nobody gets turned away because of money.

https://grief2g

Want to go deeper? My Substack is where I share solo essays on grief, consciousness, and continuing bonds — thoughts that don't always make it into the podcast. It's also home to a community of listeners who get it, because they're living it too. Free to subscribe. Find it at substack.com/grief2growth.

I've been studying Near Death Experiences for many years now. I am 100% convinced they are real. In this short, free ebook, I not only explain why I believe NDEs are real, I share some of the universal secrets brought back by people who have had them.

https://www.grief2growth.com/ndelessons

Support the show

🧑🏿‍🤝‍🧑🏻 Join me on Substack- connect with others and me
👛 Subscribe to Grief 2 Growth Premium (bonus episodes)
📰 Get A Free Gift
📅 Book A Complimentary Discovery Call
📈 Leave A Review

Thanks so much for your support

What if the grief you're carrying reaches back further than this one lifetime? In this episode, I talk with Michelle Brock, a past life regression specialist, psychic medium, and spiritual life coach based in New York City. This one got personal. Michelle recently guided me through my own past life regression, and we open up what that experience was like, what surfaced, and what it healed. 

Michelle's path into this work began with her own loss. Her mother passed when she was two years old. Years later, a single regression with Dr. Brian Weiss gave her something she describes as fifteen years of therapy in thirty minutes. That moment cracked her world open and set her on a twenty-year journey of helping others remember who they were before this life. 

We talk honestly about the questions a lot of us carry. Are past lives real? Can they actually ease grief? Will you lose control if you let someone guide you inward? And why does the idea of reincarnation show up in nearly every culture on earth, including inside the Bible before it was edited out? 

Then I share my own regression: the Buster Brown shoes I was wearing at age three, a life that felt historically off, and a life as a Native American that brought me to tears in a way I couldn't fully explain. 

In this episode, you'll discover: 

- How a past life regression can bring movement to grief that feels stuck 
- Why hypnosis and meditation are far more alike than most people assume, and how you stay in control the entire time 
- The surprising history of reincarnation in early Christianity and the Council of Nicaea 
- The different "clairs," and why knowing or feeling something is just as valid as seeing it 
- Why the point of a past life memory is never the history. It's what you carry home and use today.

Michelle's core message stayed with me long after we stopped recording. When you understand that you are a soul who has lived many lives, you start to see other people that way too. As she puts it, you are another me. That single shift, she believes, is how we move toward real compassion and unity. About Michelle Brock 

Michelle Brock is a past life regression specialist, psychic medium, and spiritual life coach. She has studied spirituality, shamanism, meditation, divination, astrology, and energy medicine across traditions from five continents. She is the author of Who Do You Think You Are? An Interactive Journey Through Your Past Lives and Into Your Best Future, an interactive guide filled with journaling exercises and meditations to help you connect with your own past lives, whoever you are and wherever you're starting from. 

Connect with Michelle: 🌐 Website: https://michelle-brock.com

You've been listening. You're doing the work. But there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place.

Maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back. 

I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you.

All of it, pay what you want. You decide what it's worth. Nobody gets turned away because of money.

https://grief2g

Want to go deeper? My Substack is where I share solo essays on grief, consciousness, and continuing bonds — thoughts that don't always make it into the podcast. It's also home to a community of listeners who get it, because they're living it too. Free to subscribe. Find it at substack.com/grief2growth.

I've been studying Near Death Experiences for many years now. I am 100% convinced they are real. In this short, free ebook, I not only explain why I believe NDEs are real, I share some of the universal secrets brought back by people who have had them.

https://www.grief2growth.com/ndelessons

Support the show

🧑🏿‍🤝‍🧑🏻 Join me on Substack- connect with others and me
👛 Subscribe to Grief 2 Growth Premium (bonus episodes)
📰 Get A Free Gift
📅 Book A Complimentary Discovery Call
📈 Leave A Review

Thanks so much for your support

You walk into a room and you know who is upset before anyone opens their mouth. You come home from a store you were only in for forty minutes and you have nothing left. Your friends bring you their pain because you are the one who can hold it, and afterward you are the one lying on the couch.

If any of that sounds like your life, this conversation is for you.

Lisa Campion has spent a career helping sensitive people stop drowning in what they absorb. In this episode she breaks down empath energy protection into something you can actually practice, starting today, in your car in the parking lot.

We talk about what an empath really is, why the world tells sensitive kids something is wrong with them, and how the same wiring that exhausts you is the thing that makes you good at the work you were called to do.

Then we go into energy vampires. The predatory ones, the victim vampires, the situational ones any of us can become when life knocks us flat. Lisa also names the part most people skip: a depleted empath who never learned to say no often becomes the biggest drain in the room.

What we cover:

• The difference between feeling empathy and being an empath, and why the distinction changes everything
• The three fundamentals of energy hygiene: grounding, clearing, and shielding
• Lisa's practice before walking into a big box store, and the version you can do in a restroom in ninety seconds
• Why empaths are called into hospice, teaching, nursing, and coaching, and why those fields burn them out
• Energy vampires: how they hook you, why they find you, and what to do about it
• The resentment inventory, a simple exercise that shows you exactly where your boundaries have failed
• The empath trap: saying yes because you cannot face the other person's reaction
• The first question to ask when a strong feeling hits out of nowhere: is this mine?
• Refilling your tank with play, creativity, nature, and source instead of pulling from other people

About Lisa Campion

Lisa Campion is a psychic, Reiki master, and the best-selling author of The Art of Psychic Reiki, Energy Healing for Empaths, Awakening Your Psychic Abilities, and The Psychic Awakening Journal. Her fifth book, Sacred Reparenting, arrives in December. She is the founder of Quantum Lightwave Healing and has spent more than 25 years working with clients, blending psychic work, therapy training, and energy healing. Her mission, in her own words, is to build an army of healers.

Find Lisa: Website: https://lisacampion.com Books available wherever you buy books

Talk to me:

What resonated with you in this one? Did something Lisa said name an experience you have had your whole life without a word for it?

Come tell me at https://grief2growth.substack.com where there is an article on this conversation and a place to comment.

All my links: https://pages.grief2growth.com/profile Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/grief2growth Free consult: https://grief2growth.as.me/30-minute-consult

You've been listening. You're doing the work. But there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place.

Maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back. 

I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you.

All of it, pay what you want. You decide what it's worth. Nobody gets turned away because of money.

https://grief2g

Want to go deeper? My Substack is where I share solo essays on grief, consciousness, and continuing bonds — thoughts that don't always make it into the podcast. It's also home to a community of listeners who get it, because they're living it too. Free to subscribe. Find it at substack.com/grief2growth.

I've been studying Near Death Experiences for many years now. I am 100% convinced they are real. In this short, free ebook, I not only explain why I believe NDEs are real, I share some of the universal secrets brought back by people who have had them.

https://www.grief2growth.com/ndelessons

Support the show

🧑🏿‍🤝‍🧑🏻 Join me on Substack- connect with others and me
👛 Subscribe to Grief 2 Growth Premium (bonus episodes)
📰 Get A Free Gift
📅 Book A Complimentary Discovery Call
📈 Leave A Review

Thanks so much for your support

Barbra Banner didn't set out to become a medium. It found her — through flying clocks, flickering lights, and orbs that showed up in her audition tapes, all within the span of a few days. What she didn't know then was that she was stepping into a gift that had quietly run through her family for generations.

But before any of that, Barbra spent 35 years showing up for people in the worst moments of their lives — on crisis hotlines, in hospital emergency rooms, and with the LA Crisis Response Team, supporting grieving families at the scene of a loved one's passing. Looking back, it was all training for the work she does now.

In this conversation, we talk about the signs from loved ones who passed that most people miss (and how to actually recognize them), what trance mediumship really feels like, why grief and laughter aren't opposites, and what it's really like on the other side. We also get into the guilt and blame that quietly break families apart after a loss — and why it doesn't have to be that way.



About Barbra Banner
Barbra is a certified medium whose gift emerged during the pandemic after a string of unmistakable paranormal experiences. Before mediumship, she spent decades in advertising, and volunteered for 14 years on crisis hotlines, in hospital ERs, and with the LA Crisis Response Team. 

Connect with Barbra:
🔗 Website & bookings: https://www.bannermedium.com
🔗 Social links (Instagram, TikTok, and more): available directly on her website

**Key Topics Covered**
✨ How Barbra's mediumship gift emerged almost overnight
✨ Her 35 years in crisis intervention and how it prepared her for this work
✨ What trance mediumship is and what it feels like
✨ How to recognize the signs your loved ones are already sending you
✨ The rigorous, blind-testing process behind medium certification
✨ Soul contracts, free will, and why we choose our life lessons
✨ Guilt, blame, and why they hold back the grieving process
✨ What loved ones are actually doing on the other side

💜 What resonated with you most in this episode? Have you had a sign from a loved one that you brushed off before realizing what it was? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

If you want to keep the conversation going, head over to grief2growth.substack.com for the full article on this episode.

You've been listening. You're doing the work. But there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place.

Maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back. 

I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you.

All of it, pay what you want. You decide what it's worth. Nobody gets turned away because of money.

https://grief2g

Want to go deeper? My Substack is where I share solo essays on grief, consciousness, and continuing bonds — thoughts that don't always make it into the podcast. It's also home to a community of listeners who get it, because they're living it too. Free to subscribe. Find it at substack.com/grief2growth.

I've been studying Near Death Experiences for many years now. I am 100% convinced they are real. In this short, free ebook, I not only explain why I believe NDEs are real, I share some of the universal secrets brought back by people who have had them.

https://www.grief2growth.com/ndelessons

Support the show

🧑🏿‍🤝‍🧑🏻 Join me on Substack- connect with others and me
👛 Subscribe to Grief 2 Growth Premium (bonus episodes)
📰 Get A Free Gift
📅 Book A Complimentary Discovery Call
📈 Leave A Review

Thanks so much for your support