Cathy Jane Jensen- Searching For Her Son On The Other Side

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Hi there, welcome to Grief to Growth Podcast. Your host is Brian D Smith, spiritual seeker, bestselling author, grief survivor, and life coach. Brian believes that the worst tragedies of life provide the greatest opportunity for growth. Brian D Smith says he was planted, not buried, and he is here to help you grow where you've been planted by the difficulties in life. In each episode, Brian and his guests will share what has helped them to survive and thrive. It is his sincere hope this episode helps you today.

Hey everybody, this is Brian D Smith back with another episode of Grief to Growth. And I have to say before we get started, if you are watching this, then you notice I'm wearing sunglasses today. I'm dealing with an eye infection. The lights are hurting my eyes, and it's kind of not great to look at. So that's why I'm wearing sunglasses. I'm not trying to be cool or anything. But I've got with me today Kathy Jensen. And as you're going to find out in a few moments, Kathy has a fascinating mind. She's really interesting to talk to. We did a pre-interview a little while ago. I've read her book Finding Aaron, which is a spiritual practice beyond belief. It's an incredible book. So we're going to get through as much as we can today. I know we have a lot to talk about. Let me just read a brief bio on Kathy, and then I'll bring her in. Kathy has a master's degree in theoretical linguistics. She taught at the University of Iowa, which is the Hawkeyes to us football fans. I'm a, I'm a big fellow Big Ten person, Ohio State. She taught in the linguistics department at English as a Second Language program. She was awarded a Fulbright Lecturer Award to teach at the University of the Andes in the linguistics department in Mérida, Venezuela. So she was in Venezuela for several years. And is that where you met your husband, Kathy?

No, I actually met him in Iowa City when he was doing his master's degree.

Okay, so you guys moved to Venezuela together. So she lived in Venezuela for quite a bit of time. She opened the Iowa Institute Language Academy in Venezuela. She taught English and Spanish. She moved from Venezuela to Spain and Kathy has a son, Aaron, who is in spirit now. We're gonna be talking about Aaron, because Aaron is the inspiration for the book. So I want to just get a little bit of background on you, Kathy, but welcome to Grief 2 Growth.

Thank you very, very much, Brian. I'm happy to be here.

Yeah, as I say, I think people are— I know people are going to find out very soon, you've got a very interesting mind. And we talked before, and I think we're kindred spirits in the fact that we both feel like we're here to, to teach and to really kind of help people out. So Tell us about your journey, how you got from Iowa to Venezuela to Spain, and also tell us about Aaron.

Okay, well, um, I had— we'll start with Aaron. I had Aaron in Des Moines, Iowa. I was very young, 17 years old. Um, his father, Joe Schaefer, who is in spirit also, um, you know, we didn't stay together very long. We were very young. And when Aaron was about 8, we went to this wedding. And Aaron struck up this friendship with Alejo Sánchez. And they decided to go bowling and this and that. So Alejo came into our lives when Aaron was about 8 or 9. And he is from Spain. But he had lived in Venezuela for a very long time. He was a Professor at the University of Los Andes. And he was in Iowa doing his master's degree. So Alejo and I then got together. That's actually what prompted me to go into linguistics was learning about teaching English as a second or foreign language. And so that I did that, I got my master's, Aaron and I moved to Venezuela. And then Alejo to— had made the promise that when he went to do his PhD, he would come back to Iowa, which in fact is what he did. So we came back to Iowa, Aaron went back to City High School with all of his friends and this and that. And then Alejo got his PhD, was back in Venezuela, and I got a Fulbright to teach at the school there at the university. So okay, everything's fine. We have still have, but now it's totally different. A beautiful farm in the Andes with peacocks and guinea hens and ducks and geese and cows. And we had our own cheese, we made our own cheese, and, you know, kind of idyllic. And I opened up the school, I left the university, opened up the school, the Iowa Institute. And Aaron met Candy Castillo. He worked cable. So he would work in the States for 6 months, and then he'd come to Venezuela for 6 months. So as an adult, we had the unusual and wonderful opportunity to spend lots and lots of time together. That was about 8 or 9 years where he's 6 months in Venezuela, 6 months in the States. He and Candy got married. Venezuela was then falling apart, and we knew we needed to make some changes. My mother-in-law was there in Venezuela, so it was difficult to decide what to do. Then Aaron moved to Spain, invited us to go. I went, had a beautiful, beautiful time with Aaron, had all of our plans made. He was going to come to Venezuela, do teacher training, then we were going to open a school in Spain. So I left from that beautiful trip. I was there for 2 months, during which time, Brian D Smith, during which time he told me twice he thought he was going to die before I did. And at the time, of course, I just basically told him to don't ever say that again. And that when you get to Venezuela— uh-huh.

What age was he at this time?

37.

Okay, okay.

Yeah, so we had all of our plans made. I left on June 3rd, came back to Venezuela. So we, we knew we were gonna, you know, try to sell the farm and Alejo was retired by then, and he was thinking to move his pension to Spain and blah, blah, blah. So Aaron had a little house that I had helped him buy. Some guy called— I went back June 3rd to Venezuela. Some guy out of the blue called me and said, you know, this little house over here, would you be interested in selling it? So I met that guy. Aaron was very interested in selling it. I met him. He decided he wanted to buy the house. He did the— made arrangements for the money transfer. And I said, you know, maybe we should sign a paper. And he told me, he said, you know, I really wouldn't think I needed to, except my best friend just died 5 days ago of a heart attack. So on June 28th, we signed this paper, he's buying the house. And on July 2nd, Aaron passed. Just out of the blue. So as you know, and parents listening and people who have loved or love someone so much, and they die so suddenly anyway, just, I couldn't believe it. I was in shock and all that kind of stuff. And I wanted to die for a long, long time. Then on July 8, just 6 days after Aaron had passed, So we were in a place called Puerto la Cruz. We had a lot of stuff, Alejo and I, you know, financially very successful. We were getting ready to go to Spain, which took me a long time to be able to even go on the airplane. But then on July 8th at 2:30 in the morning, I was— I wasn't really asleep, but then all of a sudden I was wide awake, Brian, and it was like this incredible feeling of joy. I mean, it was joy. It like ran through my body. And I was so shocked that I just like got this recorder. And it was like I heard these words, or I felt them. And it was that everything was okay. Aaron is okay. Everything was fine. And in the words I heard, you know, I'm a good mom for Aaron. That I had listened to his ideas, that I had paid attention to them, and that to be patient with myself, that patience is my virtue. Okay, then that was huge. I wrote— I made a promise. And I said, okay, Aaron, no matter what, I'm going to find you. No matter what, I'm going to find you. And I wrote it down. And I laminated it. And I carried it with me. And when I would be falling into that despair, I'd bring it back out because I couldn't understand where that feeling came from. I I couldn't figure out what had happened, but it had happened. It had happened. And so that— and then I started keeping track of everything, keeping track of everything. And that, that's what initiated this, this quest of finding Aaron. And, and that's where the book comes from, too. The book, you know, was 5 years in the making. It was a very difficult to write book in the sense that I had so many beliefs about death that I didn't know that I had. And that's what I hope that people who do read the book, I would like to say it is so important to become aware of what you believe about death, but don't even know that you believe it. That's the gist of it.

And that is a very, very important point that I wanted— I want to kind of bring out. So what were some of the beliefs you had about death that you didn't even know that you had?

Okay, well, I have, you know, there's two, there's two main myth makers, or model makers is a better word, in Western society. One is science, you know, for about 400 years or so, science, and the other one is the church. And even those like me, I didn't— I was raised Catholic, Irish Catholic, who's, you know, very open to saints and this and that, but I was not in any way shape or form, a serious Catholic, let's say. But yet I had this— so many people would tell me things like, like, for example, the book is self-published. And when I went in to talk to the people about publishing it, the guy, the previous owner of the publishing place, he said, you know, I'd like to make a copy of the back of the book. And I was just like, so pleased, thinking, oh my goodness, it's made an impression. And he came back in and he handed it to him and he goes, you know, it's forbidden to collaborate or even to communicate with the dead. It's forbidden, forbidden in the Bible. So on the, what we call, you know, the religious side, our culture has all of these ingrained ideas that unless you're highly motivated, you don't, you don't go through those beliefs, you just kind of have them. They determine your reactions to things. They— and then the other one, of course, is the last 400 years of science. So my main block is Newtonian classic physics model, or material realism is what I call it in the book. That idea is way deep down inside, even if we don't know that we think this, we— most of us do— that everything comes from matter. That matter is, I mean, and that's why, you know, they keep looking for the tiniest part of matter, thinking if they find it, they're going to find out how, how it became conscious. But so, so I had an incredible amount of experiences, like Aaron has never given up. And other people, my father-in-law that we had experiences before that I wrote down just because they were so unusual. You know, I wrote everything down, but then I kind of forgot about it until my dad died, and then Aaron. So I just remember struggling. It was so horrible. I would, I would have this message or a symbol of eternity, really, and, and I would be so sure and so enthusiastic and so certain, I'd never doubt But then I would start doubting. I would say, but how, you know, how could Aaron move matter? How could this— well, all of that doubt is tied into this belief that I didn't know that I had, that basically it narrows down to the brain produces consciousness. So if you have that idea that the brain produces consciousness, well, without a brain, there's no— there's absolutely no survival of consciousness. I mean, it's just not there. So, and I remember the day I was in Spain. I remember the day, and I must have read it, I don't know, probably 100 times in so many different books. But finally, that day it got in. And I just remember like, oh my God, this, this is the problem. 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 a 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. Yeah, Kathy, I love the way you put that. I think it's brilliant. Because we do, we have these two pillars of knowledge in our society. And it's the, it's the religion, you know, which binds us in certain ways, you know, but because it keeps us from believing certain things like our loved ones can still be with us, we can communicate. And then we got the materialism that we're all steeped in, which tells us that your religion is just wishful thinking. So we— even though we think we believe, we, we always have this underlying doubt, right? And right, yeah. And I think you and I are very similar because I asked the question too, how, how does Shaina do this? How does she make a song come on the radio? How does, how does this work? And that's that Western mindset.

Right, right. And you know what, I think, I think for religious people, that's the most— I mean, the easiest belief to get acquainted with and work your way out of it is the science one. Because you start reading about, you know, Max Planck, and all of these physicists who absolutely say that material realism is just a theory. It's just a theory. And we've absorbed it as a fact. Well, inside of that theory, anything that can't be reproduced in a lab repeatedly, you know, is, is not data for investigation. So they just can't, they just can't investigate it. But religion, most of our Western religions have absorbed that belief. I mean, it's deep down inside of the, the very religious, so they don't want to investigate. Because they're afraid that their belief is not really true. But in fact, it is true. So if people will be courageous enough, because it takes a certain kind of courage, and it takes a certain sort of motivation also, to really get familiar with the ideas and the truth behind your religion, which is what Thomas Aquinas did, which I found that a fascinating research area, that he, he tried very hard to take the beliefs and, and research them and find the truth in them in a way that we can understand, you know, rationally. So then, then the fear factor goes away also, if you start to understand all of these different things that are happening. Well, let me, let me say this. And you know, in Joseph Campbell's model, there's two sort— there's a spiritual hero. And there's two sorts of ways a person goes on this quest, a quest for spiritual knowledge. So he said, a spiritual hero is a person who's found or learned a way, a mode of experiencing the supernormal realm of human spiritual life. Okay, so a mode of experiencing the supernormal range of human spiritual life. There's two ways you do it. One, you're born with this deep desire to know, and there's, you know, nothing's going to stop you. And the other one is something is stolen, and you go to get it back. So for parents, particularly, it seems to me there is no group with more motivation than parents whose children have been stolen. Yeah.

So that's that. Wow, that's so well put. And I hadn't really thought of it that way before because, you know, you titled the book Finding Aaron. And so many parents I've seen have written books and it's always finding, finding, finding, because we feel like we've lost something. And we feel— and that's, that, that's the thing that, that kickstarts us. That's the thing that just kicks us right in the butt and says, I can't just— I can't do this anymore. And you know what I also love about what you just said? You know, you mentioned the word fear. And there's fear on both sides. I've seen fear from the materialists that they don't want to admit that religion might be true. I've seen a lot of fear from people who are religious that say, well, science is going to disprove my— disprove my beliefs, so therefore I can't become scientific.

Right. And in fact, it's the opposite. You know, in Einstein, there's a quote attributed to Einstein where he said, the only truly religious people in the, in a materialistic age, I mean, materialistic in the sense of a model that's based on material realism, where, if it's not repeatable, if it can't be observed by everybody, it's not data for investigation. He said, the only really religious people are the serious scientists. And, you know, you look at the Big Bang, that's you know, one of the main contributors is a priest. And you look at that. Chardin, that Teilhard de Chardin, a paleontologist, he's a Jesuit priest. And so many— and Kepler and Copernicus and all the early scientists when science had just started veering off from religion, right? Those guys were deeply, deeply religious. And I think interesting about the word religion is I read in something from Carl Jung, he says the real meaning of religion comes from really hairy, something like that. And it means to take careful and serious account of the numinous, to fully integrate it into your life.

Yeah, it's, it's really interesting that, and for people that don't, and you and I both have this scientific type, type of bent. And so people might be getting a little bit lost here. But the thing is, science and religion were all one body of knowledge up until, as you said, about 400 years ago, right? When, when science took a left turn and said that everything's got to be observable, repeatable, and if it— and if not, it doesn't exist, you know. And they couldn't study consciousness. So they— and they've got people now tied themselves so much up in knots that they say that consciousness is an illusion. Um, so you talked about material realism, and the other side of that coin is idealism. And so for— you might want to explain to people what that actually means.

Well, well, I'd like to, if I may, I'd like to, I'd like to go into this so-called split. So, so, you know, there was very, very, very religious people who were learning that, for example, the Earth was not the center of the universe. Yeah, so we have this very famous meeting of Galileo demonstrating his telescopes to the religious folks. And you know, he was under a lot of pressure. And everyone would be afraid to publish if what you publish could get you killed. So he was very careful. And, and he, one of his quotes is like, I, I'm assuming that this God who gave me the ability to think and investigate wants me to use those abilities. So he's at, at the meeting, and he writes to his friend Johann Kepler. And he says they won't look through the telescope. They won't even look.

Yeah.

So, so anyway, and we have this happening with Descartes in 1500-something, where he's camped with the French army near Ulm, Germany, which is where Einstein was born later. But so he has this dream, where an angel of truth comes to him and says, the conquest of nature is to be done through measurement and number. So he, of course, was extremely well equipped to do that. He you know, he's the father of so many things, different numerical methods and this and that. So what kind of was a compromise, because to publish scientific material could get you executed. This split was made where they said, okay, we're going to look at the world of matter. We're just talking about the world of matter. Spirit stuff is staying over here with the church. So So the church could then have, you know, a field of expertise. And it was just a compromise. It was a compromise of dividing a reality into two fields of investigation.

Right, right.

But then that compromise kind of morphed into this belief that there really was two separate realms. Spirit and matter. And then that further morphed into this idea by material realists now that say, well, the only world that's real is the world of matter.

Yeah, and that's, that's a very, very important history for people to understand, is that because that's what happened. And you put it exactly right, it was like a compromise. And they said, we're going to put science over here, we'll do our thing. Religion, you go over here and you do your thing. But they still respected each other, they existed. But then the materialists said, well, now you don't even exist anymore. You know, you guys are studying something that, that's just meaningless. And I just want to tell this story here because this happened to me just a couple days ago. We were talking about one of my groups, the spiritual, uh, thing. We're talking about soul planning or life planning. And this person said, I've got enough evidence that I know that this is real. She said, but I don't know that it's really proof. And I said to her, that is coming from that mindset that has told you that the only thing that matters is what, what's repeatable that can be done in a lab, and that your experience is meaningless. And we've gotten to the point now where not only do we not trust other people's experiences, we don't even trust our own.

Right, right, right. Because, you know, there's a book that's nicely— it helped me a lot. It's by, um, Charles Tart. And I don't remember the title of it offhand, but inside of there, it's in the, in the book, though. It's Pathologies to Knowing and Learning. And he says in there that our deeply absorbed and unexamined beliefs that guide everything we experience, that we unconsciously defend those unconscious beliefs. And the one example he, he gave, one of them, he has many very beautiful worded defense strategies. And one of the strategies is to start to question the experiencer. You know, like you start to say, well, you know, she's, you know, she's pretty messed up over Aaron's death. And, you know, she got into this really weird stuff. When Aaron died. And yeah. And so you dismiss, you dismiss the person giving the evidence. But what I did was I dismissed myself. And that's what she's doing, too.

She's like, we do what we do. We say, well, I must be just grieving. I didn't really experience that. And the thing about your book, I mean, before we got on, you mentioned your book is almost like a textbook. And I can see why it took you 5 years to write it, because it is so detailed. And you can tell the audience, you know, listen to Kathy, she's, she's read all these scientists, she knows the history. And then she also catalogs her own experience in great detail. When you were going through, like, the dates, I mean, you know, the dates, and you've taken pictures, and you've got notes, so that you can't even go back and question your own experience because you've documented it. And I really wish I had done that. And I say to other people that have lost people, do that, write it down, document these things. Because as I'm reading your book, I'm like, wow, this is just amazing. But we tend to forget things, and we start to dismiss them.

Right. And not only that, you know, one of the reasons I have done a revision is during, during this 2 years of COVID I've spent that time studying. And there were some more things I wanted to add. But, and I'm far more confident now about adding those. And one of them is more of a model about the evolution of consciousness, just a model, you know, there's many, but a model. And in this model, it talks about one of the components for changing our minds. It's not our beliefs, but actually changing our mode of experiencing. So if you remember Campbell's words, our mode of experiencing, is to pay very close attention to, to things that seem disconnected but feel connected. And you start writing it down, and something changes in you. And Leibniz, who's in, in the book also, I use his quote because he says, "Notation eases the labor of the mind." And it's not only for not forgetting, it's somehow the physical act of writing things down changes your mode of experiencing, you know, slowly but surely, it opens up. It's like it opens up new views. But actually, literally.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, and you document a lot of synchronicities, you know, in the book.. And I know Gary Schwartz, who I do some work with, he's fascinated by synchronicity. He's got a brilliant mind. And so, you know, since I've been working with Gary, I've been open more to synchronicities. And you're absolutely right. It changes the way you view the world from this Newtonian cause and effect, you know, where I have to figure out why this happened or that happened. And these two things are unrelated, therefore, it must be coincidence. To you get to the point where it's like you start to expect it. And you start to look for it, and the world looks completely different.

Right? You know, in synchronicity, that was the other— there are 3 big things in the revision. Synchronicity is one of them. Because I'm just speaking for myself, I used that word for many years. But I didn't understand really what I was talking about. And of course, there's always so much more to learn. But at this point of understanding, which is further along than I was, So synchronicity, it turns out, the huge thing about synchronicity was it, you know how the model, material realism, it has this causal model where everything happens because of matter in motion. So they always use that famous example of the billiard balls, like you hit one ball, it hits another. And so an event manifests. And behind that, are all these movements of matter bumping into each other, even our thoughts, everything according to this model. But what Carl Jung's huge contribution with synchronicity is, he says, it doesn't have to be matter upon matter. The mechanism for the manifestation of the event into the material world, an objective event, can be meaning, meaning so that two minds, two psychics working with these material objects, that is the mechanism for those events to manifest. And once you start to think about that, well, psyches certainly do not have to have a body. To, to work. So if you think about it in relation to our quest, finding our kids and understanding death, you have two psyches, mine and Aaron. Yeah. And together, together, these events manifest into the objective world, which— this is the key point. If you don't participate, you can't be a recipient. You have to be a participant to be a recipient.. And it's not the idea, well, I just have to believe it. That's not it. You have to participate in the manifestation of that hierophany or opening door event or whatever you want to call that, that event that is not explained by matter moving upon matter.

We'll get back to Grief to Growth in just a few seconds. Did you know that Brian D Smith is an author and a life coach? If you're grieving or know someone who is grieving, His book Grief to Growth is a best-selling, easy-to-read book that might help you or someone you know. People work with Brian as a life coach to break through barriers and live their best lives. You can find out more about Brian and what he offers at www.grieftogrowth.com, www.grief, the number 2, growth.com. If you'd like to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/grief2growth, www.patreon.com/grief2growth to make a financial contribution. And now back to Grief 2 Growth.

Yeah, that was a point I took out of your book that really resonated with me and really made a lot of sense because again, we, we, we still have this, this mindset of the, the billiard balls, right? And people will tell me, so say, well, if you give me all the conditions, I can tell you what's going to happen next. And you, and you are just a biological robot. You are, right? You know, you think you have free will, you think you can choose your thoughts, but you really can't. It's all a matter of chemistry, it's a matter of DNA, it's a matter of what happened to you in the past. And all those inputs, you know, come to this point. But like you said, what Jung said was like No, it's, it's not that. That's, that, that's the mindset. There's only material, but there is this, there is this, the spiritual, as we want to call it. And I say to people, through my studies, I don't like the word supernatural because there is no supernatural, right? There's only what we can't explain yet, right? Not— it's not, it's not all matter. It's not all physical. But there's, there's something, there's this consciousness that we cannot explain yet. And we call that supernatural. And people say, I don't believe in that woo-woo stuff.

Right, right, right, right.

Yeah.

That's your first warning. I mean, not warning. It's your first gift, that your pathologies to knowing and learning are rearing up. You know, when you see yourself, I don't believe in that. That's your first— it's your unconscious defense against information that goes against your core beliefs. You know, and it's scary. It's scary to think that you, you're core beliefs, you don't know what they are. You don't really know what they are, unless you investigated them. But you— and that's why, you know, we can't talk about politics and religion, because it's— they're based on belief systems. And people, people don't— unless they're highly motivated, you know, which I think many of us are— you don't go beyond the beliefs, you just kind of go through life with these beliefs you've absorbed from your community. Kind of, you know, going along there. And you won't, you won't question it until something happens. When those beliefs no longer there, they no longer will do. They're like such a precarious vehicle. But belief is just so fragile a vehicle to carry, to carry us through life. It's, yeah, it's— belief's not the answer, you know, it's the problem.

Well, yes. And that's, you know, and it's, you know, it's interesting, you said earlier that some people seem to be born with this, this gnawing that you have to know more. And I was, I was born like that. So I always questioned everything. But I still had to have that precipitating event of Shayna's passing that just really kicked it into hyperdrive. Before that, it was kind of, it was a hobby. It was like, I need to know, it's like, you know, there's something wrong. But, and I see this again with so many parents, and you said belief is such a precarious thing. And it is, because I've seen on the other hand, like people, I think, think of a great friend who evangelical Christian believed in the Bible, literal belief, you know, member, you know, member of the staff of the church and all that stuff. And then one day when it just occurred to him that, you know, Noah didn't put all these animals on the ark, or, you know, there wasn't a talking snake, whatever it was. Then he went to the other extreme, because now his beliefs were shattered. And then he had no more belief. So now he's a materialistic atheist. It's like, therefore, all this stuff is garbage. And I realized, and I love the title of your book, A Spiritual Practice Beyond Belief, because that has double meaning, right? It's beyond what we could believe. But it's like, you don't just believe it. And you and I talked about this when we did the pre-interview. You don't believe this, you know this, you're investigating it.

Right, right. And then the most important thing I think for that I've come to realize is that, you know, we can't have any final model of any final truth. Because the thing that we're investigating consciousness or spirit is what we are. And as we investigate, we evolve, but so does what we are seeking. I mean, the whole— so You know, there's a beautiful quote by Huston Smith, and it goes, the only unqualifiedly good is extension of vision and enlargement of understanding. And it seems like if that's, that's our goal, like your friend, well, in our work, and it really is a mission, we have a lot of banners and things that say, bridging the gap between belief and knowledge. So your friend probably, hopefully, you know, will, will go on that bridge, because it's built by science and religion. I mean, those two, they're questing for the same information. The same quest is to expand our knowledge, our understanding of what we call reality. And yeah, so I feel, feel bad for your friend. My husband always told me that too. He said, no,. But if you, if I, you know, destroy someone's belief, then they're left with nothing. So that's not the idea.

Right, right. Yeah. We want to help people explore and we want to help people realize it's not an either-or proposition. It's not either you are scientists, you know, to use that term, which science is a method. It's not a, it's not a conclusion. But either you're scientific or you're religious.. And it's not— and I'm— and I would say I'm probably— I am scientific. But I know the science can only go so far. And I don't limit my experience based upon what science tells me. And, you know, the thing is, science has done a really good job, our society, of burying the truth. Like, you know, you talk about Einstein and Planck, and Bohr, and Heisenberg, and all these guys who believe in the spiritual world. And Science was first founded because people believed in a God, and they believed in an orderly universe. And they said that the way to study this God, the way to get to know this God, is to study his creation.

Sure, sure. Yeah. So, you know, and those guys didn't believe it, they knew it. That's what I did when I was doing my research. I made this big long list, and I updated it all the time of all these incredibly, you know, smart people. And I would like— they believed in it. They believed in it. They believed in it. But no, of course they didn't believe it. They knew it. They knew it.

Yeah.

Yeah. In fact, Einstein discovered a few things like when he's, you know, quantum mechanics. He's like, I don't like this. I don't like the idea that— but he finally came to the conclusion, you know, it has to be real because the evidence shows me that it's real.

Right. And you know what, I think if there's also Viktor Frankl, he says in there, so the man who lost you know, really everything in Nazi concentration camps. And he says in his book, he says, you know, it's not our task to just accept that the world is meaningless. Our task is to accept that we cannot understand the unconditional meaningfulness of life in rational terms. So a man who lost everything, He says the unconditional meaningfulness of life. But the thing that stuck to me was that rational terms. So what Finding Aaron, I realize now, what, what it attempts to do is to show people that by using your brain, which God gave you, which consciousness evolved, by using it, you can study and learn your way out of fear. You don't have to be afraid that you're somehow insulting God by wanting to learn more. And you don't have to be afraid that you're falling for some sort of malarkey. Yeah. Because science, I mean, science really says you investigate all data, right? It's only this latest model, which we've already worked out of, you know, just that, you know, I didn't know it. But you can only accept data that falls within these very narrow parameters. But once you realize that that's not science, that's pseudoscience. Science investigates all data. Yeah. And makes— which is what's happening now.

And that's a, that's a really good point you made there too, because science kind of closed down some of the scientific community. I don't like to keep— because science is, again, it's a tech, it's a, it's a method.

Yeah.

So some, some people, materialists, said we, we can't investigate that because it doesn't exist, because it's impossible. And I've told the story before, I was talking to someone said, there's no evidence for any stuff you believe. And I said, well, read Dr. Julie Beischel's work on mediumship, read Gary Schwartz's work on mediumship, you know, read Penny Sartori's work on near-death experiences. And he comes back to me and says, well, that's about mediumship. That doesn't exist. So therefore, I'm not going to read it. And I said, right, that's not a very scientific approach. A scientist would put a medium in a situation and control and say, let's see if there's anything to this. And that's been done.

Right? Right. Absolutely.

So it's just— Kathy, I'd like for you to talk about some— because we've talked a lot about the science and the philosophy in your book, which is all great. But talk about some of the experiences that you outline in the book, because those are also just as fascinating.

Okay, well, first of all, you know, things started This idea I have in the book called claiming a number. Okay, well, I'll just go with some of the major experiences, let's say. So Aaron passed, and we go to Spain, and then we go to Des Moines, Iowa, to have a funeral service here. And we're— a lot of us stayed at his grandma Schaefer's home. And he had a Land Rover, and we had the car parked in Joanne Schaefer's driveway. And this is after the service, and Alejo was outside and I came out, and all of a sudden Aaron's car started. And so Alejo had his keys in his pocket and he thought, okay, well, he has a remote starter. So then Candy came out, and being from Venezuela, he tells her, oh my gosh, it gets so cold in Iowa, and Aaron has a remote starter. And he took that little fob thing. And he pressed the two buttons and the car started up. So then he got inside and he put the key in and had to turn it on and then off. And then like 5 minutes later, my sister Christie came out and he said, hey, look, Aaron has a remote starter. And the same exact thing, the car started. So then like 3 days later, we're having this farewell dinner for Candy, who's going back to Spain. And I was telling the story and my sister-in-law Debbie whose family has a business where they install like speakers and remote starters and all these things. She said, well, let me see the fob. And she goes, she looks at it, she goes, there's no remote, remote starter on this. So then, you know, it kind of hit me, but not really. Not really. So then we go out to Washington State to stay with my sister Ellen. Then the fob like kind of starts vibrating. And what we don't really pay attention either. And the light bulb said, hey, look, you guys, Aaron has a remote starter, and he goes, and it didn't work. And I was reading at the same time a book about a girl who went to her father's grave, and his car started spontaneously. I said, you know what, maybe so we go, we check the battery. No, it's not that. We get back to Des Moines, I immediately go to this Land Rover dealership who had done a pre-trip check on the car, because it'd been sitting for a year. And we were driving to Washington State. And, and I did— all I said was, you guys accidentally disconnected the remote starter when you did the check. He said, okay, they comes back in, he goes, well, I need the fob with the remote starter. And I said, that's the only fob we have. He goes, well, doesn't have a remote starter. And then I started bawling. But my sister-in-law Kim, she had come into that because she knew it was important. So she told him what happened. They went and they checked the car out, took about an hour, then they came back in and they said, okay, well, we're gonna check again. Okay. They checked again, he came out and he said, there's no way the car started by itself. There's no way that, you know, it must have been a ghost. And then I just was in shock. And Kim said, yeah, that's what we think. Well, the same car, Brian, a month later, for Aaron's birthday on November 3rd, I decided to have it detailed. So I take it into Casey's Car Wash in Fort Collins, Colorado. I go around, you know, crying every place. And this really nice kid in Spanish invites me to meet his aunt and all this. I get back to the car wash. And I say, well, you know, you didn't do such a hot job. And the kid said, yeah, you're right, we'll do it again. So they're gonna go run it through again. And I walk off. But when I come back, The owner's there. And he said, oh, I'm so sorry, we had an accident with your car. Then I fall to the floor and say, I didn't take care of the car and this and that. But then he tells me this, he said, you know, I don't know why we started the engine. We never start the engine unless we're going to clean the motor. And it was on some kind of a conveyor belt. That car somehow moved and hit the car in front of it. And he goes, we're gonna have to get you a new bumper. And the only thing that was wrong with that Land Rover was it had a nick in the front bumper. But it was like $1,600. And we weren't going to do it, you know, because we'll have to get you a new bumper. I called my sister Ellen, like, oh my god, Aaron's car. And she goes, oh, he got a new bumper for his birthday. The guy who owned the car wash, he said he'd been working there since he was 12. And he was about 50 or so then. He said he'd never, ever, ever, ever seen that ever in his whole entire life. Those, you know, those, those things don't happen. So Candy, who's an engineer by her studies, when she came to the States, we went to check to make sure that somehow it couldn't have been moved along. The guy's like, no, no, no, there's no way. He said, I've been here. And she, you know, she looked at the conveyor belt, all this. So those are two, you know, quite quite in-your-face experiences and things like that. There's a lot of small things that happen with numbers. There's a lot of huge things like one time in Elche, in Spain, I was standing in front of this shop that had a lot of candles and some woman came up to me and said, did you have a child who died? I see a kid standing beside you. I mean, I had things like that, that you just And of course, the importance of documenting everything. Because not only, not only did I document, I then started to take the pictures I took of everything. Somehow it felt like a mission. I mean, all of these things happened. And it kept feeling like a mission that Aaron and I were supposed to do this together. And some of the pictures I then put in picture frames. So that you start to sink into that despair that the physical body is gone. And I would look at those pictures and remind myself, but this happened, and that happened. And it kind of, you know, pulls you up. And a story with my dad, who passed just 8 months before Aaron, I told him when he went into hospice that my father-in-law had communicated with us by using numbers. Now think about this, Brian, I had had those experiences with my father-in-law. Yeah. But I just kind of accepted them at some level, but not really, right? But not really. Because if I had, I would not have been so disoriented and so broken by Aaron's passing. So, so they happened, but I just kind of filed them away. Then I told my dad, you know, Alejo's dad communicated, my dad chose a number, and my dad passed. And I use this book, The Tibetan Book of the Dead. And I did this, all these kinds of different rituals with my dad. And it says, about 17 days after death, a person can start to send signals. So start to pay attention. So I did. Yeah, on the 19th day, Alejo says to me, I'm gonna got bad news for you. I'm going to go on your walk with you, which is he never does, not in the morning, ever, ever, ever. So we're walking along, this was in Trinidad, in the West Indies. And I had my earphones on and my dad's song, which was Memories Are Made of This. So you know, as a kid, he used to sing that to us. And he'd say 6 little kids for the flavor instead of 3. And anyway, that song was on and Alejo tapped me on the shoulder and he said, "What daughter are you for your dad?" And I said, "Baby girl number 2." And he goes, "Kiss, kiss, kiss." So then Brian, he took me on this path off the sidewalk down. We had to crawl underneath the barbed wire fence. And he showed me in this little rickety old dock, this boat. That said baby girl number 2. And it had my dad's number on it.

Wow.

You know, and I felt it. I felt it. And later, I'm like, why did he just— you know, so my dad didn't put the boat there. The boat was there, right? But who put the idea into Alejo's head to walk with me? You know, which he never does. Who convinced him to go off the sidewalk when he had to go through this path and on private property? So those, those sorts of things have happened and still continue to happen.

Yeah, and I want to, I want to just slow you down there for a minute because I want people to really absorb what, what this is. I mean, and again, you're kind of like I am where it's like, okay, who, how did this happen? Who caused this? Let's investigate the key fob. Let's investigate this. And, and we investigate it, we find out we can't find a rational explanation. Uh, and there's something about, and it's great hearing other people's stories because you realize something about the spirit world and numbers. They seem to come to us in numbers. As you said, your father chose a number.

Right.

And so I want to say to people, if you start seeing numbers on license plates, or you start to see repeating time on the clock, and as we're doing the interview, it hit 11:11. I was— I happened to look at the clock when it did.

That occurs.

So, you know, pay attention to those things. And just because we don't understand how they happen, doesn't mean they don't happen. That is not a scientific point of view. People say, well, it's not scientific because I can't rationally explain it. We don't, we don't have to be able to explain it.

No, but we can see that's the whole point. We can. And I think that's key. Because rational thought has many layers of meaning, right? You know, one is like this logical, based on materialism.

Right, right.

That one, that's one use of rational thought. But, but by synchronicity, and Jung says clearly, synchronicity is always connected to numbers, right? So if you, when, if you need to make a model, choose a model, design a model that allows your data in, allows the data in, you start recording all your evidence. As you do your research, you start seeing all of these other people that have had the same experience. Yeah. And you, you can't— we— you can understand it rationally. I think that's the key.

Well, you made a good point, and I, and I misspoke. So let me just— let me clarify that. We can't explain it from our known material models. Exactly. And that's when we say we can't explain it.

When we— exactly—

when we expand our model of the universe to include consciousness, then we can explain it. We're all connected. The, the material is derivative of consciousness, not the other way around, right? Therefore, consciousness can have an effect on the material. And we have shown that scientifically. We've done the double slit experiment where we can show that consciousness does have an effect. Um, so you're absolutely right, we can explain it, but not from the point of view that we usually come from, not from the old model, you know.

And people think, like my brother, who's— oh my God, she's smart as a whip. I was talking with him the other day. And I said, you know, it's easy for us to see when we look to the past, that old models didn't work, and they had to expand it.

Right.

And he said, yeah, that's true when you talk about the past. But now we really do know what we're talking about.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Well, that's what scientists said in the 18th and the early 1900s, is that everything that has been discovered or can be discovered has already been discovered. Let's close the patent office.

Yeah, right, right.

And that's— and everybody at all stages of human development has said that, which, you know, not to pick on your brother, but no, no, no, no, we think now we know. Okay, well, well, now we know, you know. Well, now we know.

Yeah, exactly. Is it just as they knew? I remember my nephew telling me about how they used to beat sick people, like to beat the devil out of them. I'm like, oh my gosh. So it's so, so easy to see when we look back. And then it feels to me also very uplifting and very motivating to think about humanity, all the struggles we've gone through and all the struggles we are going through. And always, always it works for the good, always. That really extension of vision and enlargement of understanding is what we are about. And it I don't know, it fills me sometimes like with awe and admiration for humanity.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I think it was, it was in your book. I read this about the guy who discovered that washing hands.

Oh, Simon Weiss.

Yeah, yeah. Tell people that. I think that's really important.

Okay, well, now there's this tendency for people to not investigate beyond their beliefs. It has a name. It's called the the Simmelweis effect. So there's this man named Simmelweis, like in the 1800s, he's in Vienna. And he's like what maybe would be a chief resident nowadays of two different clinics. One was a midwife clinic for, you know, for midwives and women to go have their babies. And the other one was a hospital where deliveries were part of what they did. So the hospital where he worked, it had a death rate incredibly higher than the midwife clinic. And, and so people were afraid to go into the hospital, you know, women were giving birth on the street, well, in their homes and having a much higher survival rate than in the hospital. So what happened was, he was interested in that, and then his friend was doing an autopsy of a woman who died of what they called childbed fever. So his friend was doing an autopsy, he cut himself with the scalpel. And he died of childbirth fever. So Simmelweis thought, you know, there's a connection. And so he, he noticed, of course, he became aware, the only place they did autopsies was in the hospital.

Yeah.

So he thought, there's some way they're carrying something from the autopsy, they're carrying it to, to this, to women, and they're infecting them somehow. So he just put this experiment for 2 months. He had people wash their hands in chlorinated climb, which I— lime, but I don't know what that is, but some kind of an antiseptic. The death rates decreased by, I don't know, like 85%. Yeah. So then he spent years researching, he did research, he documented, he researched, he documented, he published his big finding. And his colleagues refused to read it. Most of them refused to read it. Some of them said it was an insult, you know, like, doctors wash our hands, for goodness sakes. Another one said, well, only God can take away somebody's life. There's no little particles— he called them cadaverous particles— there's no little particles that can kill somebody. That's God. And so if the person died, you know, it was God's will.

Yeah.

Then he harassed them, you know, he was so angry. And he was like, here's all this documentation, they won't read it. Then they tricked him, this group of people tricked him into inspecting a mental institute. He went to the mental institute and they locked him up. They didn't let him out. He was beaten, and he died of infection. And he was like 42 years old.

Yeah. Yeah, and it's, it's such an important story about— and this is, we can— you, you've mentioned some others before that, you know, when you go beyond the current paradigm, people will try to literally beat you back into it, right? And, and scientists, quote unquote, will look at something and say, well, that's impossible, you know, there are the— there aren't these little particles floating around that are killing people, invisible, invisible. And but now we say, oh yeah, that's common knowledge.

Exactly.

And the reason why this is important is for, for us people that are explorers, that are on the edge of the stuff, when someone tries to put you back in the box, when, you know, like Gary Schwartz I mentioned a couple of times, or Julie Beischel does scientific research, people will, will laugh at them, they'll ridicule them, they'll try to destroy their reputations because they're studying something that's impossible, right? Right. And we know, we absolutely know that it's not.

I like that term pseudoscientist. I don't remember who— where I first came across that. But maybe, maybe that quote about like, science and religion can be open-ended, growth-nurturing endeavors, or they can be little neurotic defense mechanisms. So he used the word pseudoscientist and pseudoreligion. And I don't remember where I read that, but I like it.

Yeah, I think it's really important. So Kathy, talk about your, your nonprofit and where you're going with that.

Oh, okay. Well, I have, um, Alejo and I have a foundation. It's called the Aaron, um, Schaefer Jensen Family Foundation. And we're doing, um, for example, on July 2nd, this summer is gonna be our very first animated garden retreat. And that's Aaron's, the anniversary of his passing. Date, which is very significant. And what we're going to do is we're going to go up to this Girl Scout camp in Boone, Iowa. A group of us are going to stay all night together. And I'm going to— what I did before the pandemic, I used to have seminars and lectures. And, and because I taught English for so long, I have all kinds of different games and things you manipulate with your hands. So you're not just sitting down and having a lecture. But you're actually moving around, mixing with the other groups. And the idea of these retreats is to get people conscious of their unconscious beliefs about death. And I have these little bells so that, you know, like those little ringing bells at a hotel or something, you know, so if somebody gets trapped into a belief, and they're asserting it as a fact when it's a theory, we have these bells so we can ring them on each other, you know, bing, bing, and then we can just take a step back. And that way, we're hoping to not so much avoid fights, because people that are grieving and trying to find their kids, they're, they're not interested in enough to fight about stuff, I don't think, or anyway, that's my experience. But to step back a little bit, and take a look at what we're doing, you know, what belief are we defending and like, bring that out into the open. So, and I also, we're going to do it at no charge. Because when Aaron passed, and I couldn't find anything without spending a fortune, everything was so expensive for grievers. I mean, like, I found one weekend in California once a year, this place did a free workshop. Otherwise, I mean, it's just so anyway, that was part of my deal. I wanted to share what I was learning in a way that people could be motivated to do their own research. That's the deal. I'm not telling anybody to do anything. I'm just offering a whole bunch of resources is my idea. And, and also, once COVID is over, I'll go back to doing like lectures. And I, I wanted very much to work with hospice and to try to offer an opportunity to their volunteers when people are having an experience, for them to have a background that would be useful. When, when my dad passed, and I went to hospice counseling in, in Colorado, but so my dad passed, and then Aaron passed. And it was within the same year. So I had access to this counseling. And I told 3 different counselors, some of the stuff that's in the book, you know, this happened, and that happened in this. And they were just like this, Well, yeah, you know, they say that that stuff does happen. Yeah, yeah.

Kind of patting on the back of the head.

There you go.

Well, you know, time, time will heal. So they didn't have a clue of how to use the information I was giving them. So that hospice is an area I would really very much like to, to get my foot into the door. And so that's the work of the foundation, to answer your question, is to try to help by motivating, motivating people to bridge that gap between belief and knowledge.

Yeah, that thing gets really— I know that's really important work. And it's interesting you talk about hospice because I work with someone who works with a chaplain. She is a chaplain. And the thing about chaplains is they're not supposed to impose their beliefs, their beliefs on anybody else, right?

Right.

Which this is a time where— and you and I, again, we'd say it's not beliefs. We're trying to give people hope. We're trying to get people— you know, there's, there's data out there. This is not a matter of belief. And we've, we've categorized everything we've— you and I talk about as belief. And I love, you know, when you and I spoke the first time, because you said, I'm trying to get people beyond belief. And I'm like, that's exactly what I'm trying to do. So I know the mission that you're on. And I know Aaron is right there with you every step of the way, just like my daughter Shayna is.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And you know what, I think it's like the kids work together. Because people, people get in touch with me. And then it turns out that our kids have a lot in common. And I was going to talk about it. I have a friend who's a chaplain also in hospice. And she told me, she said, gosh, Kathy, if I had a dime, every time I had to explain the difference with an opiate-induced hallucination and a visit from grandma, right? I could retire. And the point I tried to make in the hospice— I went to the hospice volunteer program, hoping that maybe I could somehow talk to the volunteers. And the young women, they were beautiful. But they said just what you said. They said, no, we can't put our beliefs. But in fact, the fact that they won't allow a discussion is endorsing their beliefs. Right, that it's a belief. So they're actually endorsing their own culturally imposed belief rather than opening the door to, to different ideas.

Yeah, absolutely, 100%. I am so excited about the work that you're doing. Uh, I think it's, it's really awesome. So I know the book is incredible as it is, but I know you're coming out with the second edition. So tell us about that and when it's going to be available.

Well, it's— I decided to call it a revision. Because when I chatted with people about adding information, so some people told me, oh, great, great, because I wanted to, you know, I wanted to hear more about that model. And I wanted this and that. But then other people said, no, no, no, no, it's perfect like it is. And other people said, no, no, no, it's too hard. So don't put anything else in there. You know, I got dizzy, you know, so What I did was I added 3 revisions, and maybe a 4th, but I mean appendices. So the basics of the book stays the same. And in the revisions, in the book, I had to put in more information about synchronicity, because it's key to be able to rationally process what's going on. And then my friend Donna, she's the one who convinced me to do this. This is a woman who was raised very, very, very dogmatically inside of this Lutheran Church Missouri Synod group. It's very, very strict. And so she— but she's a reader. And so she and I got in touch. And she told me the very first beginning, she told me, but you know, I'm afraid it's the devil. And then she said, but now I'm afraid that I might end up where, where my daughter's not. And so working with her, I've decided— and so she and I went on this quite an intense reading of early Christian texts, which I had been like you before Aaron passed. I had read dozens of books about the Bible, you know, Elaine Pagels, I'd read a lot. But now I started looking at really the very, very, very early texts. And I know about the Gospel of Thomas and this and that. But so with that work, you know, in the very beginning of this, one woman told me, she said, I think it's supposed to be for Christian groups. And Aaron told me in this dream, he wanted me to work like in a church. And so then I started thinking, the very most painful belief is that you're forbidden to talk to your kids after they've died. That's, that's the most harmful, most painful, most restrictive belief. So anyway, I added an appendix about that. And she's actually, she's writing a little piece in there. Because her daughter, Brian D Smith, 2 months before that young woman died of a brain aneurysm, no warning, no nothing. She posted a thing about why do we believe what we believe. And she says in there, to her daughters, you know, don't just listen to me and your dad. Don't just listen to the pastor. Don't think you know about the Bible, read about the Bible. And 2 months later, she's gone. So what's helping her mom more than anything else? Kim, her daughter, that post, that post left her instructions, really. So that's the difference. I've just added more information. But at the back of the book so that people who found it just right, are fine. The people who found it too soft, they're fine. And the people who found it too hard, I just, I put in a little letter and said, you know, please, just everything is too hard until you, until you learn a bit more. This book will soon become, you know, just right, and then way too soft, and then you reach for a book that's wider.

Yeah, I tell people, you know, we, we have to kind of uh, reach beyond our grasp sometimes, you know. So sometimes, sometimes there's a book, and I've read some that are like, the first time through it's like, wow, that was a lot. And then you have to read it again. And your book, uh, it is very almost academic, uh, because I actually listened to it. And so there are all the footnotes. So when you get to the end of the chapter, you know, she's— the thing is reading off all the footnotes, but it's well documented. So for somebody who's scientifically minded Um, if you're like, okay, well, I don't know, I'm not just going to take Kathy's word for it, you've got like, you've got it, you've got to document it. So it's, it's really great, and I encourage people to get it and to, and to read it. And even if you don't get 100% of it, if you get 75% of it, it's a lot more than you've already got.

Well, my sister told me that she— one of my sisters, she read it first without looking at it in the footnotes, and she's had a lot of experiences working in hospitals. Hospitals. She's had a lot of experience with after-death communication. So she read it through for the stories, that's what she liked the best. And then she read it through for the footnotes. And something else I've added to the new revision is an extensive bibliography, not alphabetically, but in little groups. Like, for me, the things I kept reading, reading, reading were about after-death communication, and then to kind of expand you know, that way. So that's another—

that makes it a really great jumping off point, because I could see reading this book and then going to the bibliography and just— and you and I talked about this earlier, because I asked you, how you have you been doing since the last time we spoke? And you were so excited telling me about all the stuff you've been reading. And it just— once you get on this, on this path, things just fall in front of you.

Right? You know, and this is, this is a method. It is a method of Evolution of consciousness, individuation, self-transformation, inner transformation. There's so many names for it, but this is a very valid path, you know. And, and where could there be more motivation? That's why it feels to me important that because people are grieving, depending on the person, they're, they're just more open in the very beginning. They're more open. You know, and they're, they're, they just, and then later on, there's that one quote, I don't want to use the word fool, but this is how the quote goes. When we're separated from someone we love by death, fools cry for a while and then forget. But the wise find the impulse to seek their lost loves in the heart of the eternal. By that seeking the lost loves in the heart of the eternal, you change, right? You know, you and I'm, I'm willing to bet that they change also. Evolution of consciousness doesn't stop just because you don't have a physical body.

Yeah, we're definitely working together. Okay. Anything, any last thing you'd like to say before we close today?

No, just thank you very, very much. Thank you for your interest. And thank you for inviting me. And I really, really do appreciate it. And I just I just say to people out there that, you know, it's up to you. It's up to you. It's— they're your beliefs. It's your— you do what you want with them. But there's so much more to our whole experience. And the ones that'll be most motivated to help you are your kids or your loved ones. You know, it could be your mom and your dad. I don't want to just say children, but it's just And can people still find you at mission7255.net? Yes. Yeah. And you can order the book from— it's on Amazon, and it's on the website. I'm the one who fulfills the orders. So I, you know, kind of try to write a little note. And I've made friends that way too, that, you know, friends that are—

and I want to get this all be in the notes, but I like to get it on video and audio. So people that don't read the notes. So the book is Finding Aaron: A Spiritual Practice Beyond Belief, and it's by Kathy Jensen—

Kathy Jane Jensen.

Jane Jensen. Kathy Jane Jensen. It's J-E-N-S-E-N. Again, that'll be in the notes. Kathy, really fascinating conversation. I knew it was going to be. Thanks for being here today and enjoy the rest of your day.

Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Till the next time.

Thanks for listening to Grief to Growth. Brian hopes that you find this episode helpful, and we'll come back for future episodes. Episodes. Brian D Smith's bestselling book, Grief to Growth: Planted, Not Buried, is a great resource for anyone who is coping with grief or knows someone who is. If you enjoy the podcast and would like to support it, there are 3 things you can do to help. The first is to share the podcast with someone that you think it will help. The second is to go to iTunes, rate and review the episode. The third way you can support the podcast is by becoming a patron. Head over to www.patreon.com/grief2growth. That's P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/grief, the number 2, growth, and sign up to make a small monthly donation. Patrons get access to exclusive bonus content and knowledge that you are helping to spread the message of grief to growth. For more about Brian D Smith and Grief 2 Growth, visit www.grief2growth.com.

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