A Reason to Carry On: Reflections on Life's Challenges and Opportunities with Author Vony Eichel

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Hi everybody, this is Brian D Smith back with another episode of Grief 2 Growth. Today I got with me Vonnie Eichel, and Vonnie was born and bred in New York where she attended CW post-college of LIU, Long Island University, but she's lived all of her adult life in London. Uh, Vani's explored many careers. She's worked as a Blue Badge tour guide. She studied for the stock exchange and finance industry, um, behavioral psychology, systems analysis, but she finally found her calling as an exercise therapist for the elderly, disabled, and those with special needs and psychiatric, uh, ex-offenders. Her passions are ballet and, and wild swimming. She lives on a beach in West Sussex, UK. And today we're here to talk about her book, which is called A Reason to Carry On. And it's a fascinating book about what she's learned through her life and through her time as an exercise therapist with the people we talked about earlier. So I want to welcome to Grief 2 Growth, Vani Eichel.

Thank you so much.

It's good to have you here today. You've had quite an interesting life. You've been through several different careers. And ended up, I guess, as an exercise therapist. So tell me about how things kind of progressed for you.

Well, unfortunately, I was one of those people who didn't know— I didn't find my calling for a long time. And it actually— the only thing I did know is I developed a passion for ballet. And then what happened was I broke my leg rather badly, not for doing ballet, And it was a compound spinal fracture, and I was laid up for a year. And it was terrible pain and just, you know, debilitating. You can't understand what it's like to be handicapped unless you're sitting in someone's shoes. And I did. I sat in wheelchairs, on crutches, and it was a very bad break. And I suffered tremendously because I was someone with ADHD and always have to be running, as you can see from my past careers, always doing something. And there I was, enforced to stay at home and stuck. And what turned into the most productive year of my life, because I found out what my true calling was. I loved ballet, I was interested in spirituality, and you— and I thought putting the two things together, it worked so well. And I thought that was it, that's what I was meant to do in life. And I didn't know it all the time.

Yeah, it's interesting how life sometimes seems to like put, put us on a track that we don't know that we need to be on.

Yeah, I mean, I would have never thought that I would, you know, would do what I was doing. You know, it would have been so much easier to jump so many years later and find out who I really was, the real me.

Yeah. So do you think, do you think our lives are, are sort of planned, or how do you— what's your feeling about that?

Very much so, because I did behavioral psychology, and one thing I learned there, that 50% of, of our personality is formed at the time of conception. So, but if you think even more than that, it's who your parents are, your, your social background, your education, it's all mapped out. From when you're born. So I don't know how much free will we really do have. I'm sure we do. But within what degree we have it, I don't know.

Yeah, that's, that's an interesting paradox, I guess, the different free will and planning. And it's something that I kind of wrestle with. I think there's, there's a certain amount of free will, but there's also, there's just too much going on in our lives that seems to be guide it from somewhere else.

Oh, yes, definitely. And, you know, people, they can't really— like, for myself, example, I didn't know who I was. It took me so long to find out who I was. And people sometimes go through life and they really don't know themselves, or they put a mask— they have their masks on and they've never taken them off.

But, you know, it's interesting because even though you say you didn't know who you were, you've integrated all these various aspects of your earlier life into who you are day. So none of it was lost.

No, I think nothing's ever lost. Whatever you learn in life, you carry and you use it for something else. So nothing you learn, no experience that you have, I believe, is ever lost or wasted.

Yeah, I could tell that as I was reading your book. And, you know, you were an exercise therapist, but your behavioral psychology, your understanding of the human condition comes through very clearly in the book. And you can tell you're using it in your work, even as you're working as an exercise therapist.

Well, I think everyone needs to have empathy. And, you know, you— I went into these homes and sometimes, you know, it was shocking. It was like hitting you in the face. It was so— the smell and the, the whole— the sadness of it. And yet it proved to be the most rewarding time of my life. The more needy the people, the more pleasure I got from being able to give to them. Because ultimately, the receiving is in the giving. Yeah.

You know, as you're going into these homes, as I'm reading the book, I'm thinking, these are things that most of us avoid. We, you know, we avoid being in places like that. They make us sad. They make us afraid. You know, you're dealing with some people with some very serious psychological issues, criminals, people like that, people that we would rather turn away from. So why do you think you found it so rewarding, you know, going into these places that we, most of us would like to avoid.

Okay, when you talk about psychiatric ex-offenders, I was in a room alone, nobody was supervising us, and there was a, a pedophile, a rapist, uh, you know, robbers and arsonists, you name it. And I was never ever afraid because they knew that I cared, and they showed their vulnerable side. The minute they stepped out of the room, you could hear them screaming at the staff or whatever. But I guess I came out over as genuine, and I believed I saw the genuine thing. Because these people, they all have their masks on. When you come from a deprived society, your brain is affected, as our brains are all plastic, and it molds to protect oneself. You don't— can't trust anyone, so you're in protection mode. So the biggest thing for these people are— oh, how someone looked at them or someone bumped into them— to have respect. Well, they didn't need that with me. All they needed to be was themselves. And it was very difficult to get them to do exercises because they wanted to talk. And I, you know, I said, I'm an exercise therapist. I'm not even a proper, you know, behavioral psychologist or anything. I'm just an ordinary exercise therapist. But they wanted to talk. And it's like perhaps you talk to your hairdresser, I don't know. Yeah, it was from that point of view, I feel— I felt— I can't tell you what it was. It just was so wonderful. And once when I left, I found this feeling of light all over me, and I thought, my God, is this the light? And I started crying and crying and crying, and it was just wonderful.. But to come back to your program is about grief. Now I developed a relationship with one of the students that I had because the staff, I always reported to them and I said one of them tried to kiss me and said, oh, that's dangerous. And they gave me notice. So I told one of them that because he would always stay after and I would help him because he was illiterate and, you know, just listening to him. And he said, oh, I'm going to start making tables and chairs again. You can't, you know, and all. He was very angry. And I said, okay, I'll see you privately. We'll go meet in the park. And so I developed a relationship with him, trying to help him. And it was very successful in the beginning. And then I had to go away on vacation, and then I came back, and then he was totally changed. So psychopaths, and he was a diagnosed violent psychopath. He was an arsonist and a, and a rapist. And I didn't know then afterwards, the person that I knew was a totally different person. I know psychopaths are supposed to be manipulative, etc. But I don't believe that he was being manipulative. I would think he was being real, or maybe I'm just naive, still naive. That's why I called him Henry Higgins and me Eliza Doolittle. Naive students. But I don't know, quite honestly, because once he got into that real psychopath persona, there was nothing I could do with him. Nothing at all. But then I discovered myself that my brother had died 25 years earlier. And why would I talk about my brother? I mean, one, I remember it was August 9th, that was the day my brother died. And I said to him, oh, that's my brother's death. Oh, this is a special day for us or something. And one or two other things. And in the long run, I realized that what I thought was this altruism was in fact transference. And I was trying putting my feelings onto this chap Henry to try to get my relationship with my brother or be with my brother, which I only found out afterwards. And it's so strange because what did psychopath, violent psychopath, having in with my brother? They were so different. My brother was a lawyer, an accountant. He was a volunteer policeman, volunteer fireman, you name it. There's no honor that he wouldn't do. And he even went to Harvard for a year. But what the only thing they had in common, they were both 34 years old. But I transferred my feelings because before I— since my brother's death, I cried for 4 months and then it just stopped. But if you mentioned my brother, if we ever talked about him, my, my eyes would always be full of tears. But since I— this relationship I had with Henry, it never happened again. So I guess I was carrying all that pain and the grief, and I didn't— I wasn't even aware of it.

Yeah.

And cut my feelings off. And I can't explain completely what happened, but Clearly, I worked something through because I could talk about him again without crying or without tears swelling in my eyes. So I think people who grieve, they can grieve, grief to grow, or they can cut their feelings off and they don't grow.

Yeah, I agree 100%. It is a choice. It's a choice that we have when we go through grief. And we do often because of our society says, get over it, move on. Are, you know, people ask, are you still grieving? And so we do sometimes cut, cut that off. But the grief will find a way to come back and be addressed. And that's what happened in your case.

Well, I have more than one situation. When I was— I woke up this morning, and I was thinking about our chat today. I was thinking of something else that I didn't really talk about another grief. In between, I could also say, to give a comparison to what I had, is I lost my husband. And he was killed in a car accident. So kissed him goodbye in the morning. And then all of a sudden, two policemen turn up on my doorstep. And I thought, oh good, we can talk about a robbery or something. Please come in, sit down. And they kept their feet on the— their eyes on the ground. They didn't look up. Then I was sitting there, and it was really strange. All of a sudden, the wheels started turning. And I thought, oh my God, this is like a movie. And I wanted it to stop. Oh, I can remember so distinctly what was going on in my head. I want to stop the movie. I didn't know who it was or what. I got up. And I screamed at them. I said, "Get out! Get out!" And I ran away and they ran after me. And I understand afterwards from a psychiatrist that that's an aggressive response that I had. And I'm not an aggressive person. And I couldn't cry. I was in a state of shock really. If I just said, I meant I had to make phone calls with the police then. I said, "Richard's dead. Richard's dead." And that was it. I couldn't cry. But then afterwards, I started getting depressed. Depression started hitting me. And when I went skiing with my family for Christmas, that was really saved me. And it's very strange. So I'm just talking about to show you about the difference of what we were just saying about people who cut off their feelings. Wherever I went, every shop I went to, I told everyone my husband died, my husband was killed. I went to the bubble lifts, I said my husband was killed. I didn't stop, I couldn't, you know, dump it off. And then I just started working afterwards when I came back to London. That's to deal with that grief, you know, I just numb myself with work. But those are two, the contrasts.

That's a really good point. Grief is different for every person. It's different in every situation, you know, with your brother and your husband. And there's no two grief processes that, that are alike. That, and I understand that feeling of, because my daughter, we found her in her bed, you know, 15 years old, and she died overnight. And you do, you just like, your mind just rejects it, right? You just, your mind's like, this cannot be true. And you just want to find that off switch, you know, the stop button on life.

Yeah, it's amazing what your brain does. It's just amazing. And then about 6 weeks after I really believed that, I said, okay, come back, Richard. Now stop it. It's nonsense. Now just come back. You know, so there's so many people who've suffered so much with grief, and they have all these crazy things happening to them. You know, you can't even believe that I could have really believed that.

Yes, yes. There again, it's just too much for our brains to handle, and our brain's trying to protect us. So we— it's that overwhelm, that overwhelm, and our mind trying to process, and it's just too much. So it just pushes it away. And then, as you were saying, it can come out years later, decades later, you meet someone like Henry, and you're like, you're not even understanding what's going on, but you're reliving the thing with, with your brother in a different way. Which can actually lead to healing.

Yes, it did in my case.

Yeah.

But also you have to remember that I was working with people at the end of their life, in the last furlong of their lives. And when you say about, oh, they're in it, it was the same for them. Some of them weren't accepting who they are or what they are, or they lost it because their life was too painful. Or many— I remember one, I gave one exercise session and one woman started screaming at me, 'Stop it, it's my husband's funeral! Stop it, you have no respect!' And she went to the head of the home and she put a complaint about me that I'm interrupting her husband's funeral. And she really believed it, and she seemed normal, normally Mm-hmm. You know, and so our minds play havoc with a lot of us. And I, you know, people who I met, they seemed sometimes very off, or they would be very aggressive, or they wouldn't want to mix with anyone. Or if, I don't know if you read all the book, but for instance, there was quite a few of them who would be insulting to people. And say, oh, you're disgusting, you're this, you're that. So I always tried to come around them. Eventually it worked out very often that people just put on these masks, the same as saying about grief, that you don't want to suffer grief. You don't want to get involved in life. You don't want to be hurt anymore, or you need to protect yourself. And that happens in these nursing homes all the time. You see it.

Yeah.

As they get older, particularly if they're alone.

Yeah, I just, I think the book is really interesting, because you do talk about these two almost opposite ends of humanity, but humanity that a lot of times we reject, we don't want to be around the old people, they get to be, it can be scary. As you said, sometimes they become, they become aggressive. And then the, the people that we call psychologically damaged, and what I, what I got out of, you know, reading the book is like, you connected there to their humanity, no matter how society looked at them. And I was scared for you reading the book. And some of the situations you're like, I can't believe that she's, you know, you know, doing this, but you were, you were seeing their humanity, and they respected that. And they react, they reacted to that.

Well, if you, if you go through with your heart, I think that's the whole thing. And I did, I mean, I wasn't earning a fortune. You know, I, and I went there, because I love what I do. I believe in exercise, and I think exercise is so important for everyone. You know, particularly, I was too late in the day to become a ballerina, and I'm sure I wouldn't have ever been a good one. But I, I just believe that, you know, ballet is a metaphor for a perfect life. Hmm. Because, or any, a very, any professional sport, anyone over the top of their profession, because what is it mentally, physically, uh, spiritually. You have— it's like psychological, it's physiological, you know, it's everything. You have to be totally focused, and everything has to— it all works together. When everything goes together, it's because you've got the technique. And it's like with physics, it's physics as well, because how do they spin the way they are? Because they have to be on a certain axis. You have to know the, you know, the center of your body or over the ball of your foot, etc., your head up, your shoulders. You have to know that. That's all technical. And so it's a metaphor for a perfect life. And a lot of people who are troubled have a disconnect with their bodies. And by doing exercise, it brings them back into their bodies. And then also with community, because they also have a disconnect to community. So working with other people. But I think it's so important for everyone because even— I just had a book launch and there was a psychiatrist there and he was retired now, and he said he never realized the body connection. And I think now people are understanding the mind-body connection much more. Yeah, Plato said it, Freud said it, they knew it.

And yeah, that, that's really— actually, there was— you had a couple of really great points in there. I think one is, I, and I completely agree with you, I think a lot of times we can become so much in our head. And forget about spiritually, because we— that's another thing that we've lost. But we're so in our heads, we forget about our bodies and that mind-body connection, and how important it is. But also, which, as you were talking about ballet being a metaphor for life, I thought, you know, living this life is hard. It's a, it's a skill for us to carry on the way that we do. And I don't think we give ourselves enough credit that it's hard to, to be an adult. You know, we call it adulting, is a term we use here, you know, in the US now anyway. It's like, I'm tired of adulting because it's hard, all the things we have to do. And some people just don't manage that very well. Stay with us.

We'll be right back.

You know, one of the hardest things about grief? Most of the people in your life just don't get it. They want you to be further along than you are. They get uncomfortable when you bring it up. So you stop bringing it up. And that's why I started writing. My Substack is where I go deeper. Thoughts I don't always get to on the podcast. Essays on consciousness, on continuing bonds, on what it actually means to carry loss and still build a life. The stuff that used to keep me up at night written out in a way that I hope meets you in the morning. But here's what I didn't expect when I started it: the community that showed up. People who are doing exactly what you're doing— listening, learning, trying to find their footing. Readers who comment, who share their own stories, who remind each other that none of us are as alone in this as we feel. And that's what the Substack has become— a place to go deeper with me and to find your people. It's free to subscribe. Find me at grief2growth.com/substack. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/substack. Or just go to Substack and search for Grief to Growth. I hope to see you there.

I think it's a question of having your values right. I think that's what it is. I think if you deal with your heart and you really, you know, they say this, I think I wrote in the book, there is love and fear. Those are the two basic emotions. Fear being a very big word, envy, avarice, greed, or whatever you like. Or if you work with love, you might not succeed all the time. You might be wrong because we're human, we all make mistakes. But if you're acting out of love, then you can't go wrong, right? Yes, you can make mistakes. Yes, you can. It might not be successful, but you know, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what anyone else says. It's what you feel about yourself. And if you know you've done your best, you might not have succeeded, but as long as you did your best and you tried your hardest and you did it with a good heart, that's all that matters. And I think if people do it from that point of view, The people who are successful, you know, in the nursing home that I wrote about in A Reason to Carry On, in the different nursing homes, you had people who really were in a dreadful state, totally paralyzed, debilitated, nothing in life. And yet they were grateful. They said, oh, they're grateful to be so well looked after, and they weren't so fantastically looked after. But They were grateful for everything. And then you have people who have this sense of entitlement, or this isn't good, or this isn't good, or that one's not good. So it's really your attitude to life. It's not the life you have, but it's how you live it.

Oh yeah, extremely. But I want to go back to something you said earlier, and there's always been this nature versus nurture debate, right? So who are we? And having had a couple of children and seeing how they come out, they have personalities. And anybody that's had more than one child knows that, you know, they come with personalities. But we also are formed, as you said, by all these influences around us. And almost universally, when you see people that are in the institutions, that the criminally insane or whatever, you can trace that back to something that happened to them earlier in life.

We're not always— sometimes people are born like that.

You know, so you go ahead.

So the message is people can change. That's the positive things.

Okay. Okay.

Some people can't change. It doesn't apply to everyone, right? Most people can change. If you have— even if you have a brain problem with your brain, if the brain is damaged, there are ways for you know, that we can get around it. The brain, there's a way to get around it. You know, people are written off by doctors and they can go on and on because we're human. We don't know all the answers.

Right.

But there is a way if people really strive. But if they have to have the right attitude, have to do it with the right heart. You know, if you're looking for happiness, you're not going to find it. If you're, you know, you have, you, it will always elude you. But if you're just looking to be the best person you can be and do the best you, you can be, and like, succeed.

So you, you mentioned, and you worked with a bunch of people. And you mentioned Henry, that you felt like you were getting to at some point, but then he kind of slipped back. Do you think that— so there are some people that just are not going to be able to change as long as they're in the body?

Well, he was so happy and he was helping other people. He was taking someone else from the hostel and showing him what I showed him. You know, it was a big divide between the East and West of London. He'd never been down some places I'd take him. I took him to the theater to see My Fair Lady, you know, and he really enjoyed it. And he said, we went into this Voy Hotel, into the lobby, and he said, "Oh, sauce, it's somewhat like me." I mean, sorry, I can't do a Cockney accent very well, but would, you know, be put my foot in a place like this. Appreciated. He was grateful. And you got the other person that, you know, something just went.

Yeah. But somehow it feels like you reach some level of humanity with him. It's like that. I think that spark is, is always in people. There might be something physically that's so damaged that they can't bring it through. Or maybe not consistently. But what I loved about reading your book is like you tried, and with some of these people, it might have been the first person that ever treated them with that type of respect.

Well, apparently I found out afterwards that there was someone before me and also said he suckered in. And so he knew what he wanted. For some reason, I don't know what it is, but he asked me to be in touch with his psychiatrist. And the psychiatrist said he's very dangerous. Don't go near him. I'm giving you my phone number if you need— I mean, I would never have thought it about the same person, you know. So, you know, how do I know? I, I don't know. But it's my hope and belief that he did have that window open. Even sometimes we say, oh, you know, the light's on but nobody's at home. Maybe someone was at home for that minute or so, or for that short time.

So, um, with the— so you— with the older people that you worked with, tell me what that experience was like with some of them and how you, how you brought them out. Because you mentioned some of them could be, uh, withdrawn, some of them were aggressive. So how did that work with, with that, with you?

Well, I think it was a very funny story in a way. I told the— when I went into this very poor nursing home and there was one woman and she kept taking off her clothes, and I was only there for an hour of a week, but I knew her from her anatomy from top to bottom, really. And this other woman, she would always say, oh, you're disgusting, you're horrible, and all that. And then I come in one day and they're sitting together holding hands, and this became a real love story. The woman who was so difficult, you know, she was starting to treat her like a pet, and she stopped disrobing. It happened occasionally, but not often. So they saw love, it might have been the first time in her life. And this person who had— was so hard-hearted, who knows what happened to her in her life that she was so aggressive to anyone. So you hear, you have— and that happened more than once. So who can say, you know, who can say what happens? And then the woman who was disrobing all the time, she died And the other woman, she was obviously obsessive-compulsive, and then she was putting her anguish into other things, like in emptying her handbag all the time, or, you know, and she had to be moving all the time. So who knows? But, you know, nothing can surprise you when you're mixing with people.

So what do you believe in terms of, like, spiritual growth from the challenges we go through in life? Do they Is there a reason for the challenges we go through?

Well, I believe in reincarnation because I don't believe that, you know, a lot of people don't believe in— well, when I say about God, I mean the light, anything. But to have faith, you all, everyone needs to have faith because I don't see what the alternative is. We've all had our hard times, and what I consider hard is ill— when you don't have your health. That's the only thing to me that really matters, because anything else you can overcome, but ill health you can't unless you get cured. So I think you can overcome most things in life, and the only thing is your health. And, um, so with spirituality, to me, I believe there is something greater, and I've seen it. I, you know, I think I also— I wrote about When I was in Costa Rica and I was taken away by a riptide and I started swimming, I couldn't, I was out of breath. And then I decided, okay, I'll float. And I prayed and floated and I kept being taken under. I was kept being taken under all the time. Oh my God. And then I saw a vision of my daughter running along the beach with people behind her and she was wearing black and they were going towards my body. And there I was in the water, and that's what I saw. And then I hit a sandbank, and I got out, and I was, you know, I was vomiting the whole time. And the next day, along the beach, I saw there are crosses erected for all the people who lost their lives on the beach. So when I talk about there was, you know, I wasn't hallucinating. There is another reality there. Also, when I saw the light, I told you the time I just started crying because I was on the right path. There are moments that come where you see light or you get to think, oh yes, and it's not, not always, or it's not always there, but there is something greater. And that's what I tried to teach Henry and the other people the people that really I spoke to most. And I wasn't qualified, but psychiatric ex-offenders. But I tried to give them the idea there's something greater than ourselves. You're not alone. Why don't you talk to your, your whoever it is, a little angel. Just think of it as an angel. And you're not alone in life. Who's there? Someone there for your, you know, for your good, who wants to be there for you. And, you know, whatever people believe in, That's so important to have faith. Just because you believe and you pray doesn't mean you get what you want, because we don't know what we're meant to do. We're here for a reason. We're here to learn and to better ourselves. But I always say that if you don't learn your lesson, you're going to come and, you know, it's going to happen to you again. So you might as well get it this time, because you'll only have to face it again. Listen, nobody has proof. Nobody knows, you know, with faith. Even people who are really religious leaders or whatever, they have their doubts at times because we don't know it. You're not supposed to know. Wouldn't it be boring if we knew what was going to happen to us? I've had my time in the past going to psychics and astrologers, etc. I don't anymore because I made a promise to someone who was working with me who was very religious. And she told me, no, you mustn't do that, please promise me, and all that. Yet she had visions. She said it was the Holy Spirit. It was okay for her to tell me what was happening, but no one else.

I've heard that many times, yes.

Yeah. And so I don't, and I just trust myself, and I, you know, believe in doing what's the best that I can be, you know.

So, yeah, that's really interesting that, you know, you talk about being able to know the future and stuff. And I think there is a, there's a certain amount of, we're not supposed to know too much. But that can go too far. And then we, we forget who we are. So we can look at people like the people that you worked with as throwaway people. You know, these are people who are so damaged, they serve no purpose in life, belief. Let's just put them away and forget about them because they don't have the same value as, say, other people do. So I think that that belief really changes the way we view other people. Even though they may be damaged at some level, I think there's a part of them that's still whole.

Oh, most definitely. Because everyone has a purpose in life. You know, even Henry, look what he did for me. And look what he's done, that I have my book to write because of him. And how it helped me with my brother, my problems with grieving. So every, no one, even people who was, I, if you remember in the book, there's also about people who have the brain capacity of a baby, adults. And I tried and I thought, oh, it was successful. Maybe I got something. And I thought I had a smile and it was wind. It wasn't the, you know, I couldn't get through to them. It was a waste of time. But the parents and the people who look after those people, if you look at them, a religious figure said that those people— you have to believe in reincarnation— if you believe, those people have nothing to learn here. We have to learn, but their souls are so elevated, they have no reason to be here anymore. And we're honored to be able to be with them. And if parents of handicapped children, she, you know, look at their children, how they're blessed, and that their child is giving you an opportunity to grow in a way that you would never have done otherwise. I'm not saying it's easy. We're not here for pizza and parties, etc. You know, we're here to grow and learn, and some people have harder lessons than others. But the rewards that you get are— you can't compare it.

I have to say, I have to tell you this. My mother-in-law is in a facility for dementia, and she's getting to the point where she doesn't remember, you know, who we are and stuff like that. And so my wife has gone through this before, because we went through it with her father also. But I have a friend who's a medium, and she just wrote a book. And she's talking about when, when these people that we think we're not getting through to, when they actually do cross over there, they know, they know what's going on. They, on a soul level, they know. So we feel like they're not hearing me, they're just drooling, they're whatever. Their soul is still, still aware.

And that's the point that, you know, souls are so elevated. You know, they don't need to talk to us, or they have to communicate with us.

Yeah. And they start, they actually start going over to the other side a lot more than we realize. When we think they're out of it, they're, they're visiting the other side, they're visiting where they're going to go. But there is still something for, for us to learn. From, from their existence. And the caregivers that care for those people, people like you, the— what you, what you get out of doing that. And I, and I have friends that have had severely handicapped children that have never spoken, that have lived for 11, 12, 14 years. And they say it's the best thing that ever happened to them.

Yeah. Yes, I know someone else like that. She adores this boy. You know, so everyone has a purpose. There's a reason for everyone to carry on.

Yeah. So, so speaking of a reason to carry on, that's what you titled your book. So I guess the lesson from this is that every life has value. Would you say that's, that's a good way to summarize it?

Absolutely. Every life, you know, every life has a value. Every life has a purpose. And every life has a meaning. And every, you know, even though So that's what made me look. When Henry, in the book, he's the one, this illiterate person with no education, got me to start thinking that he told me the story about laying on the road and in front of a pub.

Yeah.

And someone put out their hand to help him up. And he said, what's the point? You get up like a yo-yo, up and down like a yo-yo. I might as well just start, you know, keep fixing drugs. That's all. He, you know, he was a drug addict. It. And so that's what got me thinking and looking at all the other disadvantaged people I worked with. And that's, that's was how the book started.

Right, right. And it does come back to what you said, it's a matter of how we go about life and how we look at it. But unfortunately, there can become this learned helplessness, like, you know, I've tried so many times, and it just never works.

Absolutely. You know, in one of the homes, there was this very nice man, and he'd, he'd had a stroke, and he didn't want to do anything. We had people like that, and they let his wife come in and bring people to play bridge with him or whatever, and he wouldn't do anything. And there was another woman, she would— she'd had a stroke, but she was staying in bed the whole time. They brought her down, and I got her to exercise, and she really seemed happy doing And then the head of home told me that her family contacted them, that I mustn't go near her or touch her ever again. She wants to be left. And for me, it was that I took her out of her comfort zone because she absolutely could do— you don't have to do much, you know, just move your fingers, a thing to get a little bit of movement or just to move your body or sway or whatever. To get— but you see, it got her out of her comfort zone, right? She was afraid, and that's why I was encroaching on her space.

That's another great metaphor for life, because we can become comfortable with the limitations that we impose on ourselves. And when we find ourselves going beyond that, we will self-sabotage, right? We'll pull back.

Well, you don't want to grow. You know, I told you, I woke up early this morning and I was thinking about what I'm going to say with you, what we're going to talk about. And there's something I was thinking, shall I admit to something that I've kept, we've kept a secret or don't talk about? Someone in my family had committed suicide many years ago. And it's just a subject we don't discuss.

Right.

And And I thought, well, should I bring it up here? And it started because I covered it up. And, you know, and that pain that you get, it's always there because you don't want to think about it. When she died, she jumped out of a 6th floor window. Can you imagine? For her family to know such a thing. But she was diabetic and the sugar had gone to her brain. But still, we wouldn't talk about it. They shipped off her body. She died in Europe, and she was sent off to South America to be buried next to another family member. And it was just something not discussed. But I mentioned that I married very young, and my parents were encouraging me because I'd met my first husband, and they were encouraging me to marry. I wasn't, you know, I was in school. I was, you know, I was 18. I didn't, you know, I wasn't interested really. And they really pushed push this thing. I understand now because they were in grief. The grief— they want to get out of the grief and have something new. Um, yeah, forget about it. And I was the patsy. That was— they thought I was better for me, to save me from, you know, life's troubles, but married, you know, comfortably, and then you'll be fine and all that. You like Europe, you know. And that's what happened to me to avoid the grief or to break out of that grief. Right. I only came to those terms, you know, I understood that today when I was thinking about it, because it was such a cut that's never healed. I put a Band-Aid on it.

Yeah. Wow. That's big. Yeah, that's a big revelation. And And again, it goes to show that nothing is lost. You know, all these things that, that we think are terrible tragedies, they're all, they're all lessons that we can learn. And I really appreciate you bringing that up and being so vulnerable because suicide is one of the ways that we put shame on. We put shame on the person that took their own life, we put shame on the family a lot of times, we put shame on ourselves. We should have known, I should have known, I should have been able to stop it. And there's so much shame around it, which compounds the grief, and it doesn't allow you to grieve properly. And it's one of those things that we do tend to cover up and bury.

How many people are taught how to grieve? Look, I was carrying around so much grief with myself for years. And, you know, I've also miscarried in my life. And, you know, now that you opened me coming to you, I, you know, speaking to my my children, etc., and talking about grief and such. And they said, Mommy, you know, you had miscarriages and you always denied that you had any, that it was anything. But a lot of people who have miscarried, they have a grief that they deny. I don't, I don't see it as grief because I, you know, because I just try to over, you know, forget about it. But I guess somewhere and some level there must be grief, but who, who knows? How to grieve, who teaches you?

Yeah, and there is miscarriages, another one that sometimes with people will look at someone and say, well, you shouldn't grieve because you didn't, you didn't have the baby, you didn't know the baby, there's really nothing there to grieve, and will kind of dismiss it. So people will cover that up. But there is that, there's an anticipation, there's, there's that soul connection, I would expect, especially as a mother, which I've obviously never been. But you know, that, that child is physically connected to you. So there is something there to grieve for sure. And it impacts, you know, it impacts us. Anything, any loss that we have is grief, you know what, and we shouldn't dismiss any of it.

And they should really start teaching grief in schools, I think, because it's such an important part. It's not just dying, it's part of life. You know, where it's— because I remember someone saying that they had a child and the child very— died at a short life. And someone said, no, it wasn't a short life. It was that person's life.

Yes.

Who is it to say that was a short life? That was that person's life.

Yes. Yeah. Well, speaking of that, we met with some parents yesterday who we've all— one thing we have in common is we all had children that have died. And one child was the age of 2, you know, our daughter was 15, someone else was 17. And, you know, my wife and I are— we've been going through this long enough. Someone's been 8 years now. We're like, none is any better or worse than the other, right? We— I felt so bad for these people that lost their child at the age of— at the age of 2. That's for you, like you said, that is her life. That is, that is her life. It's not a short life or a long life. That's, that's her life. And that's, that's the experience that those, those parents will have to, to carry. But what I've come to learn over the years is that, again, like we've said a couple times here, nothing is ever lost, that these people with even very short lives have impact. Even people like Henry, who some might, might say is a terrible, terrible person and maybe someone might say never should have been born, you know. And he has, he has an impact. He has a role to play. We all have roles to play. And we, we tend to judge other people's roles. But everybody can be our teacher. And you, because you were open, and was able to be your teacher.

Absolutely. But you know, in the Jewish religion, I admire so much that they have the mourning. They know how to do it. Because many other people, religion, you know, they just go back off to work or they whatever, but they don't deal with the grief, with the grieving. And it's so much to have a week where you just don't do anything but you grieve and people come to you and honor you. Or then a month, you're not— if you're a wife, you have to— not allowed to do anything for a year. If you're a child, If you have a— if your parent died, you're not supposed to do anything for a year. I think it's very important because it gives people structure, allows them to grieve and makes them grieve. And, and I think it's very, very important.

It is, it absolutely is. And you're right. And again, conversation we were just having yesterday, you know, someone's like, a sibling had passed and they had like 3 days off, you know, and because we say, well, It's just a sibling. It's not a spouse. It's not a parent, you know. So you've got 3 days to get back, get back to it.

And siblings are part of you.

Absolutely.

My arm has never been the same. Right.

Right. So we— you're right. We don't, we don't give people the space. We don't give people the time. We don't, we don't We, again, we kind of prioritize what grief is. We have shame about certain types of losses. And frankly, that's one of the— that's one of my missions is to get over all that, to get over all the shame, to get over, you know, to tell people, you know, it's okay to grieve. It doesn't matter how long it takes. It's different for everybody. It's just, it's different. Every situation with your, with your brother was different than with your husband, and it's going to be different with the next person that that you lose. And same for me.

But people have to understand that on a physiological basis, it takes the body 3 years. Remember we talked about the body? Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Don't forget about your body because the body takes 2 and a half to 3. I was told by someone who dealt with old people or whatever, and he said it takes the body, a doctor, 2 and a half to 3 years for the body to get through the grieving. Even more.

I hadn't heard that, but it makes perfect sense to me. Because again, dealing mostly with parents who have lost children, I tell people, 2 years is early grief. When people tell you, you should be over it in 2 years. No, 2 years, 2 years, you're just starting to get over it. You know, it was— I'd say, yeah, from my experience, I'd say 3 years. Yeah.

You're gonna have to— it's physiological, your body is telling you. So if your body is telling you 3 years, you've got to look after yourself, and people don't listen. Yeah, wonder why there's so many problems in life, because people aren't listening. They're trying to patch it up, whatever. But if people understand it's a 3— at least, at least a 3-year process, and it doesn't mean when, when these people in these nursing homes that I met, and if it was even a bad marriage, they still miss that person. They have synchronicity. Their body clocks and everything was working together. From a bad marriage, you still have it.

Yeah. Let's talk about the body clock thing, because again, I think sometimes people don't really understand how synced up we are when we live with someone.

Yeah, your rhythms are together. You know, it's very sad when people who are owls marry larks because it's difficult because you have different time frames. But some, if you're on the same time frame and everything sort of synchronizes together, I'm sure you synchronize from other ways as well. But, you know, coming back to that, we, we spoke about ballet and the body and the importance of the body with the mind and the spirit.

Right?

So why should it be different? Why should it not be there for grieving and for loss and pain? It's very much there. And I think people have to be aware of it and listen and hear what, you know, is going on in their lives. Like, the best thing that happened to me again is when I broke my leg, because I was forced I was forced to stop running.

Yeah, that's, that's a really, really interesting, uh, perspective, you know. And, and so for you to take that and say, okay, now I'm forced to make a shift, I'm literally forced to slow down and to reprioritize, and then you found your passion.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I wouldn't have found it perhaps otherwise. Because I wasn't, I wasn't, I was brought up, oh, you have to do this, you have to do that, or you expect to do this. I, you know, I remember when I went to my first ballet class, it was a jazz ballet, and the teacher was talking about art and architecture and science and technology. And I thought, what is an ordinary dance teacher talking about these things? Because we have these fixed ideas about people. Right. They know they're just a dancer, but to be a dancer, you need to be all those things. And people in life, you need to be whole. You've got to be more than just what you're doing and what you are.

Right.

We've got the spirit, we've got the emotional, we've got the body, we've got the mind, we've got it all. And you've just got to work it all together.

Yeah, exactly. And then, as you said, to take the opportunities that come in life and then to integrate those and move forward and roll forward. Because I think it's really sad. And when people say, well, I haven't found my purpose in life yet, and I've wasted my whole life. And I'm like, no, nothing's ever wasted. Even though you may not be doing your passion yet, everything that you have done is integrated into who you are today. And it's making you ready for whenever that next thing comes along. But as you said, you believe in reincarnation. I believe we have one continuous life that's broken up by birth and death. We come in and we go out of the physical world, but we do have one continuous life. And we've got forever to get it right. So we can learn things while we're here. Hopefully we do learn things while we're here. So we don't have to come back and repeat the same thing. Because as I said, this place is hard. But nothing's ever lost. Everything, everything that we go through, we can learn something from.

But I think if you have the tools, And I think, I know you don't, I don't believe, I think you believe so much in organized religion anymore, but I think to really, you know, because a lot of people don't teach it properly or they don't know what it's about, but I think there you have, it doesn't have to be religion, it could be any belief.

Sure, sure.

But gives you a structure, right? To where you belong and where you follow the principles. Because they were all, you know, set down a long time ago.

Oh, yeah, I believe there's a great deal of wisdom that mankind has forgotten, that we've rejected. And that's a, that's a big part of our issue, whether, you know, spirit, we're gonna call it spirit, spirituality, call it religion. That's knowing who you are as a whole person, as we keep coming back to body, mind, and spirit. Whereas modern man says we're just, you know, we're just our brains, right? And everything else is inconsequential. And we have to address that, that whole person. So I completely agree with you, you have to have the tools to integrate this stuff and that perspective that, you know, everybody, no matter what, is of the same value, that we all have that same inherent spark of divinity within us. That sometimes gets covered over. Sometimes our brains are so damaged it really can't pull it through, maybe, but it's still there.

It's just being open to it and understanding it. Remember I wrote in the book that when my brother died, I discarded religion. I said, what is this? You let someone suffer like that? And it didn't have the answers for me because I went looking down the Eastern Trail and going back, and then I came back again to religion. Because it's all there. It wasn't taught properly, or I didn't learn it. And now with the internet and all that we have to learn, we can learn. There's no excuse anymore. Everyone, if they want to grow and they want to learn and they want to have a better life, it's all there for us.

Yeah, I agree with you. And religion is really interesting because I've gone back and forth. I was raised in a very fundamentalist faith, and I rejected that. I never really became an atheist or materialist, but I kind of went that direction a little bit. And, and then people rail against religion, right? Because they say, well, religion got it wrong. So religion's terrible. And it's not— there's a nugget of truth, I believe, in every major religion. They're mostly the same. They overlap way more than we'd like to admit sometimes. But they get a few things wrong because, because people are human, people are men. So we project these things on the God that God's judgmental, and this is going to happen, and that's going to happen. But there is a kernel of truth, I think, in all major religions. And so I agree with you, we can, we can take those things, like, for example, that we are spiritual beings, and that we, we need to have time to grief, grieve, and setting forth that those boundaries and say, you know, for a week, I'm going to just sit, you know, for a week. And a lot of times in our society, we don't allow people that we don't, we don't give more than a couple of days,, or just to be, just to be.

But I, you know, I think there's much more to religion than what you're saying, because it's like someone said, you have to look at the minutes of the last meeting, and I think explains it all. Because I do believe there's— it's there, and it's all— I think it's there, and it's correct. And all the great sages, and, you know, they just try to get better at it, better and better at it. And, you know, these great philosophers from 2,000 years ago, no truths change just because we have the internet now. They We had the wheel then, doesn't mean the truth changed, right?

Right.

Same truth. It's how they present it. The truth is right there, and the answers are there too. Not all the answers, because I don't believe we're supposed to know them all. But, you know, and as I say, people might not agree with me, but I can find— I find it that, you know, not to have religion or not to have a belief It's very difficult. I don't know how people survive things.

I agree with you. It's really interesting, because I've seen people that become materialistic atheists, and I always add the term materialistic to that, because these are people that just like, it's all physical. That's all that matters. And then they'll try to say, well, I can derive morality. I don't need religion to be moral. I don't need religion to be moral. I don't need religion to have hope. I don't need religion to have this or that. But as you said, it's all that you can't reject the tens of thousands of years that we've had these teachings. And that's brought us to the point we are now. And if you look at the teachings of Jesus and Muhammad and Buddha and Gandhi, you know, they're all, they're all the same truth. So there's, there's nothing new to discover when it comes to morality. So it doesn't make sense to just throw it all out and try to start over again.

Exactly, exactly. And no, it's a beautiful, big, beautiful world out there for us to put meaning. You know, it's like I say that in the book, at the end I said that, how do you explain to someone what art is? How do you explain music? How do you explain love? You can't. You have to put the meaning in those things. And it's same with the meaning of life. You have to put meaning in your. And how do you do that? You listen to that still inner voice. You just be. You don't try to force anything. Just be and be nothing, like me being forced to break my leg, to sit at home and not be able to move and just, you know, be in pain. And that's how it came to me. And by the way, I just want to say my leg should have healed in 3 months, 3 to 4 months. Wanted me to learn the lesson that it took a year for my leg to heal.

Yeah, yeah. So that, that, well, it was like, this is what it's, this is what it's going to take for, for you to, to find your path.

I wasn't getting it. I was looking around 3 months, 4 months, 6 months. I still didn't get it, right?

Right.

It took a whole year.

Yeah.

I didn't get it.

Yeah, well, as you said earlier, you know, we talked about, you know, reincarnation, come back and doing the same lessons. And some people believe that even while we're here in this one life, that if we don't get it, then the universal God, whatever you want to call it, will just keep nudging you, you know, until we do get it.

Yeah, we have a reason and a purpose. And, you know, we've got to do it. If not, again.

Yeah. Well, Bonnie, I really enjoyed our time together. Tell people again, remind people of the title of your book and where they can get it?

A Reason to Carry On, and it's on Amazon.

Bonnie, great talking today. Thanks for doing this.

Thank you so very much. I enjoyed it tremendously.

All right, enjoy your afternoon.

Thank you.

Bye.

Bye.

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