💔 How to Rebuild Your Life After Loss — Weston Brandon Life After Losing His Young Bride | EP 445

You know you need something, you're just not sure what. You've been listening, you're doing the work, but there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place, like you're waiting for the thing that finally moves you. Now maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back, the timing, the money, or you're just not sure you're ready yet. I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you. I built a resource for exactly this moment, guided meditations for when the waves hit and you just need to breathe. Workbooks to help you get out of your head and onto the page, ebooks on what near-death experiences tell us about the people we've lost, and whether they're really gone, a full course for widows and widowers who are ready to find their way back to living, and a full course for the evidence of the afterlife. And all of it is available for pay what you want. Nobody gets turned away because of money. I think these resources are valuable, but I don't want to hold them back because you don't have the money to pay for them. You don't have to wait until you're ready for coaching. The next step might be a lot smaller than you think. To find out, go to grief2growth.com/store. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/store. And check out the resources I've made for you. Close your eyes and imagine. What are the things in life that cause us the greatest pain? The things that bring us grief are challenges, challenges designed to help us grow, to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried. But what if, like a seed, we've been planted? And having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is Grief to Growth. And I am your host, Brian D Smith. Hey there, and welcome to Grief to Growth. I'm your host, Brian D Smith. And whether this is your first time joining us, you've been with us on this journey with me for a while, I want to say thank you for being here today. This show exists to help you navigate the most difficult times in life, loss, uncertainty, the big questions about why we're here, where we're going. My goal is to bring you stories, insights, and practical tools to help you transform pain into purpose. And today's episode is one I know that's going to move you deeply and offer you hope if you're in the midst of of your own overhaul. I'm joined today by Weston Brandon. Weston is a speaker, a coach, and the bestselling author of The Overhaul: Fixing Your Mindset and Driving Success. His story begins with an unimaginable loss. At just 23, he lost his wife suddenly, only days after their son was born prematurely. That moment shattered his world, but it also marked the beginning of a powerful journey through grief, identity, and ultimately purpose. Now Weston is a father of 3. He's remarried, and he's devoted his life to helping others navigate major life disruptions and personal transformation. In our conversation today, we'll dive into the story of his loss at a young age, what it was like to find love again and rebuild a blended family, and how he created his powerful DRIVE, D-R-I-V-E, framework— 5 pillars that helped him not just survive grief, but to grow from it. If you're looking for guidance on how to find clarity through committed movement, how to become more magnetic to purpose and growth, or how to rebuild after your world is falling apart, this episode is for you. And remember, this conversation doesn't have to end when this episode does. So head on over to grieftogrowth.com/community to join our supportive space where you can interact with me and other fellow listeners who are walking the path of healing and growth. And with that, I want to welcome Weston to Grief 2 Growth.

Thanks, man. Good being here.

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to having this conversation with you today. First of all, I have to say, sorry for your, your loss. It's— at the age of 23, it's— loss is bad anytime, right? But at 23, I can only imagine how difficult that must have been to deal with. But before we get into that, tell me about your, your wife.

Um, I assume you're talking about my first wife, Lauren? Yes, right? Yes, yes. I got two, right?

Yeah.

Um, yeah, so, so Lauren was obviously the first love of my life, and, uh She was very spontaneous is probably a good word to use to describe her. She, she took life as it came and she intentionally made it fun. You know, she, she was very spontaneous, did, did things because she wanted to do them when she wanted to do them. And it took me along for those rides, you know. Um, we got married in Vegas on April Fool's Day. Oh yeah, 2017. Um, that wasn't our original plan, but, uh, Um, we had been dating for a while, had decided we were getting married, you know, I had proposed and everything, and we were planning on doing it like later that year after the summer, probably September time, because I had committed already to go do some door-to-door sales for pest control out in Colorado. And was— we were still going to be doing that, but she had a full-time job at a hospital as a pharmacy technician. She did compounding down there, and So we're thinking, well, she'll just stay in Utah, you know, she had a 7-on, 7-off schedule, you know, um, and then I'll be gone for 4 months and come back. And we both quickly decided that that sounded terrible and didn't want to deal with that. So, um, we hadn't talked about getting married before, but we were, you know, kind of griping about that was going to be the situation for a minute. And then one day we just— we had went out to dinner at a burger joint and she kind of back proposed to me, almost like she's like, will you marry me this weekend? Because we were already actually going to Vegas that weekend, um, with, with some family members. There was a place we were going to do some self-defense training out there outside of Vegas. My dad, my cousins, we were all going there as kind of a family thing for a few days to go do this, this class. And she was coming and she says let's just do it while we're down there. And I'm like, I grew up very religious, and I'm like, these things are playing like, like the whole Vegas thing. I was like, my grandma's gonna freak out, you know, she's gonna lose it if we do this. Um, but I was like, she's like, well, if you can think of a good reason why not to do it, then let me know. And I couldn't think of a good reason why not to do it, so I was like, all right, yeah. I mean, um, I don't want it to be just us. I'd like maybe our parents to come, you know, so it doesn't— it looks like You know, somebody supports our decision. And she's like, don't worry, I've already talked to my mom about it. I'm like, of course you have. She— that's just how she was.

Sounds like a force.

We talked to my mom and our parents were all cool with it. So they met us, you know, my family's already coming anyways, so her parents drove down and met us there. We got married on April Fool's Day. And then the only wedding announcement that we did was we took a picture. I think we had her mom take a picture of us on her phone, and then she put, uh I think she put a Snapchat filter on it that said "fooled," some type of April Fool's Day filter on the picture, and then just posted that to our Facebook and Instagram, but without any caption or anything. And it was a picture of us holding our wedding certificate, wearing wedding rings. So for, I don't know, a couple of months after that, we'd randomly get texts or calls from friends or people like, did you actually get married? Because you guys are crazy enough. I could see you doing that, but you're also crazy enough to pull it off as a joke. And I can't decide which one. Yeah. Um, but that just gives you kind of a taste of like, that's, that's how she was. She, she liked doing things. She, she ran to the beat of her own drum, and, um, she was comfortable with that, you know. Her, uh, her biggest, her biggest goal in life and her dream was to be a mother, and that was something that she aspired to, you know. She really looked up to her own parents, and she talked about that often. And we, uh, after we got married, we did the whole you know, door-to-door sales thing for a few months, and then decided to switch to a different type of sales profession that took me to Texas. I actually lived just north of Dallas for a couple of years, and it was there in Texas, that's where she passed, and at the same time that she gave birth to my son. And she gave birth to him at 26 weeks.

Okay, okay. And so how long was this after you were married?

We were married 20— April Uh, like I said, April Fool's Day, April 1st, 2017. And then my son was born in March of 2019, and she passed away April 12th, uh, April 2019.

Wow. Yeah, I'm, as I said earlier, I'm really sorry. I, as, as a 23-year-old, you know, new father, uh, what resources, what, what were your beliefs? How, how did you— what was that like for you going through that experience at that young age?

Yeah, I mean, the— it sucked, you know, that. Yeah. Um, is anybody— I'm sure you have lots of people listening to your podcast that are both fresh in their grief and maybe not so fresh, you know, a few years or even decades out. And, um, my background was heavily spiritual and religious as well. Like I said, I served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and so I, I dedicated 2 years of my life to teaching people what my beliefs of both the afterlife were, the purpose of life, you know. I had introduced a lot of people to God, and I had had some very powerful experiences in my life that I guess you could say converted me personally to, to Jesus Christ. And I— it's something that I, I held on very strongly to. So while I had done plenty of scripture study and read about, you know, the resurrection and all these things, you know, um, and I believed it suddenly in— at the moment that it happened. And of course, in the months that following, that became— that came into question, I guess you could say. Like, yeah, you know, it forced me to actually decide, like, like, I was pretty strong in my conviction, but am I? Like, is, is this— you know, you start asking those kind of questions. Absolutely.

Yeah.

Those soul-searching questions. And I had an experience— I, I mean, I had multiple experiences earlier in life, um, that I guess you could say were part of my ongoing conversion to, to Jesus. But one of them in particular happened the day that she passed away while I was in the ICU waiting room. Um, because what, what happened was my son was born at 26 weeks, super, super early. Right? He's small enough he can fit in my hand. Luckily, he didn't have anything wrong with him other than a couple really minor things that they kind of expected would be with such a premature baby, but nothing, nothing crazy. And my wife delivered him through C-section and was discharged a couple days later. And then, you know, for the next couple of weeks it was work, then go spend the evening up at the NICU, and then work, and, you know, just doing this routine. Um, but she suffered a pulmonary embolism as a complication from the C-section and the birth, you know, all of the, all the things. And it happened while we were at home. I had gotten approval during that time to work from home because my house was so much closer to the hospital than where the office was at. And so luckily I was home when it was happening. But she had started having these episodes of shortness of breath. And I've posted videos on TikToks that have gotten hundreds of thousands of views and mentioned something about this pulmonary embolism. So many comments of people saying they experienced the same thing but kind of get brushed off by by lots of medical professionals just brushing off his anxiety. And that's honestly— we didn't, we didn't talk to any doctors about it, but Lauren herself brushed it off as anxiety because she was already on anxiety medication even before she got pregnant. She— that was one thing that she did struggle with. Um, so then with everything happening, you know, the birth and all this, we have a baby in the NICU, like, she just says that she's anxious. I'm like, sure, I'm not with her, you know, but while we're at home, she's starting to have another one of these, what she thinks is a panic attack, and having a hard time catching her breath. And I'm there holding her, trying to get her to calm down, and she was never able to catch her breath, and she passed away there in my arms. And I had to do CPR on her for a while until the EMT showed up and took her, took her off to the hospital. And, you know, so we, we follow them there, and, and there's a waiting room in the ICU specifically for a family who have people in the ICU, and there's a social worker that's going between, you know, operating room, whatever, and coming back. Delivering, you know, the updates. And the social worker comes back one of these other times and says, we finally have her pulse back. It's weak, but we're getting stuff out of the room. There's enough room for mom and dad. My in-laws were actually there with me. They were in the area when it happened, so we rode up to the hospital together. And so social worker comes and says, we have room for mom and dad. We'll take them real quick. Um, husband, we'll come back for you in just a minute once we get more people out of the room. So they left, and I had I had some alone time right there to have this kind of holy crap moment, you know, because from the time that she collapsed and until all the way up there, it was just like going 100 miles an hour, right? You know, so that was the first time where I'm just in this room by myself and it's, for all intents and purposes, it's silent. You know, I think they had a little tiny soft music playing in a speaker somewhere, but That was when I was like, I, I need to talk to God right now. Um, there's— I have some concerns, some questions. Obviously I want a miracle, you know, but it had already been over 30 minutes that she— they were having to do CPR on her, so I knew that even if she did pull through, it probably wasn't going to be good. And life was about to change super drastically, but I, I was leaning towards that. I don't think she's gonna make it, just based off how things have been going on. So I knelt down on the couch right there, um, because anytime that I had had a conversation where I felt God speaking to me, it had usually come through either music or through getting into the scriptures in some way. And I spent a lot of time studying both. Um, I, I prefer the King James Version of the Bible myself, as well as the Book of Mormon, something we use in the LDS Church. And so I didn't really care where it came from. But I had an app on my phone that had both of them on there. So I just knelt down and prayed, and I'm like, if I've— if I ever need you to talk to me again in my whole life, like, this is it, this is the moment I need you to say something. So I just pulled up, opened my phone, and had all these different, you know, religious resources there. And I didn't even really care if it opened a particular book of scripture, it could have been a magazine for all I cared. And I just started tapping, you know, I closed my eyes and started tapping on my phone to see whatever would pop up. And it happened to open to a— actually, I've got a whole big old, like, combination version right here. It opened up to a particular verse. It was in— is in the Book of Mormon, but this one particularly punched me in the face as soon as I opened it because it was— I didn't even realize that this was what I was worried about at the moment, but When I tapped open to it, and I opened, and it opened up to the scripture, it says, now, my son, here is somewhat more I would say unto thee, for I perceive that thy mind is worried concerning the resurrection of the dead. And I just like sat, I'm like, whoa, uh, yeah, yeah, it is. And then, you know, I kept reading through, through the rest of that chapter, and every time I would immediately have another question, that question was like answered in, in the moment that I had the question, you know. And then I started going through footnotes. It's got footnotes to a whole bunch of places in the Bible. And, you know, it turned into this like super high-speed like scripture study thing for me for the— for about 10 minutes where I felt just this wealth of— I don't know, I just felt this presence of God talking to me and calming me down and teaching me, kind of reaffirming what I already knew. But it was, it was kind of God's way of saying like, now you, you know how this is going, um, and you can lean on this, you can trust me with this. But it was also kind of his way of not saying it, but saying it, that she wasn't gonna make it. And after that, I knew. I was like, she's probably— like, I don't— she ain't making it, and I'm gonna have to lean on this. So for the next, you know, we were in the hospital for, I don't know, 14, 15 hours, something like that, you know, all that's going on. And after that, you know, still holding her hand and, and just praying for a miracle, praying for her to pull through, and never did. And I had to sign, you know, organ donation papers, and eventually got to see her the last time in the operating room where they're going to do the organ harvesting to facilitate the, the donations, and had to say goodbye right there. And that was the last time I saw her before the, you know, the viewing at the funeral home.

Yeah.

So that particular experience was the first of many after that, um, that I had to lean on. But it didn't fix my— it didn't fix being angry. You know, I was still just as mad, but it was more like I was mad at God. For, for taking her, you know.

Sure.

And I didn't care that supposedly there's a bigger, higher purpose for everything, you know. I was like, I kind of felt that, well, apparently I'm not important if whatever she needs to go do is more important than me. Yeah. You know, or my son for that matter, who's in the NICU, you know. And so I struggle with that for, for a while, but that one That one was at least— it at least grounded me enough in my faith that I never denied him and I never quit talking to him, even though the only things I was saying to him for a long time was pretty upset, you know. Yeah, I don't remember who told me, or some— something I heard somewhere previously in, in my life somewhere, that even if you're mad at God, at least keep telling him that you are because he can take it. You know, don't ever shut off your communication with him. So that's all I could do. I just, I was just mad for, for a while, you know.

Certainly. And, you know, I appreciate you sharing that and being so honest about it because people, you know, people— well, many people say, well, God had a higher purpose for, for her, or he needed another angel or something like that, and not understanding that when you're in that person that's going through the grief, I, you know, you're like, I don't want to hear that. There's no higher purpose. Yeah, there's no higher purpose than me, my son. What could be a higher purpose than that? So that's a, that's a very natural, you know, thing. And I also appreciate you saying, you know, you keep talking to God. God can, God can take it, right? It's, it's better to keep that line of communication open. So that's, that's, that's a great thing. And you had your faith to lean on. But being 23, I would also imagine it must have been like scary, like, what am I going to do? You know, having a son and never having had that experience before. So how did you navigate that?

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, that was, that was a time that I, I still remember very vividly what those feelings felt like, you know. And it was, it was petrifying. Yeah, I found times where, you know, I'm, I'm sure I'm not alone when, when I say that sometimes I felt rather accomplished because I was able to get out of bed to go to the bathroom.

Yes.

You know what I mean? Like, that was my movement for the day.

Yes.

And because a lot of time in those— in, in bed, I wake up in the morning and I remember those moments of bliss for about 2 seconds where I would wake up before the reality would hit again. I just wake up and I'm in my house, I'm like, oh, another day. Oh shit. Yeah. You know, just, just that little blissful time. And then all those thoughts, those like, what do I do now? Would come crashing down again. I, I, it kept me stuck for a minute. But I, I know in, in your show, and you talked about on some other podcasts, you talk about synchronicities and experiences of messages and dreams with, you know, with your loved one through the other side. And I certainly had a few of those, um, ones I hold very sacred, very close to me. But, but one of them, in a nutshell, um, I was informed in some way or another that Lauren either had found who was supposed to be the mother of her child on this side of the veil, you know, physically here, or she was at least aware that there was, there was a plan in place maybe, or something like that. Either way, she, she knew what was, was going to be going on and would take me, you know. And I, I don't, I don't even say that with, with the sense like there is a very, very specific person that I had to find. But she knew that there were like— I, I could move forward with that and that she was going to help me do that. And that I was basically told that it was up to me to do the internal work within, within my own mind and in my own heart to make myself open to that and keep myself open to that should, you know, should God put someone in our life that could fill that. Um, so admittedly that rubbed some people the wrong way at first when I did, you know, start going down the dating again. Road because understandably people that were very attached to Lauren, um, I, I think that they not consciously perhaps, um, and I'm not even talking about her parents. Her parents are actually amazing, um, were some of my biggest support going through this because, um, they, uh, her mother did give me permission to mention it anytime I talk about it that they had been through something similar when they were in their 20s. My father-in-law had lost his first wife and had quickly remarried my my wife's mother. Um, the only difference being that he didn't have any children with his first wife, but the ages were very similar. Like, he talked some of those synchronicities, like, oh wow, it was odd how, how closely some of those things lined up. So they were very, very, um, well, of course it made them nervous when I first started getting into dating because they're not sure how that's going to go, and they certainly aren't sure how this person that I'm now dating or is going to marry is going to— if they're going to feel comfortable interacting with them very much, or, you know, So, you know, there's some, some shakiness there at first, but, but they were, they were very open and very encouraging to being okay moving in that direction. And, uh, specifically my mother-in-law had told me, she says, I'm not, I'm never going to hold you back from doing that, um, as uncomfortable as it may make me at first. I know that it's not my place to do that and that you need to find happiness so that you can take better care of my grandson. So, you know, for all intents and purposes, you'd be able to better take care of your grandson if you if you're, you know, making yourself whole again, if that's how you want to do it, then do that. So as I go down this, this road in, in dating, I had had that experience very, very quickly within the first couple of weeks after my wife had passed that I needed to do whatever it took in here to, to be okay doing that. And as I mentioned, this happened in Texas, and My son was in the NICU for a couple of months after my wife passed before he was able to come home. But once he did, you know, it was kind of limbo there for, for a couple of weeks. And through some prayer and some pondering, I decided that it was best for me to move back to Utah where my family was because there were so many people that wanted to help and that were capable of helping, but they were thousands of miles away, you know. And I had a really good church home in Texas. There were some amazing people there and you know, people were bringing meals over and, and taking care of me. But, uh, that closeness of my family support, I, I felt pretty strongly that I needed that again. So I moved back to Utah and moved back into my parents' basement and was living in the same bedroom that I was in when I graduated high school. So it was like, you know, starting over in every, in every sense of the term. And it was when I got back there that I kind of felt another little nudge that I needed to do that. So something and you wouldn't have to swipe. It would just tell if somebody swiped on you and you could just go through the people who had already said yes kind of thing. I was like, all right, cool, take my money. I don't even want to look at this thing. And so I put in the, in the bio, in the picture, you know, as much as the, as much room as I had, that, you know, here's the story, you know, here's everything that happened, here's the situation I'm in, me and my son. I had pictures of both me and my son there, so anybody that swiped in there, like, the very first picture that would show up would be me with my boy. So it was like, it's impossible for somebody to swipe and not know that I've got this little guy with me, you know, and I can read situation was. So for, for a few days, I, I disabled notifications on that app. I didn't even want to look at it because it made me feel sick, you know. And then one night, Vance wakes up. Nick, you has him on a pretty steady schedule of feeding, and so he wakes up like 2 o'clock in the morning, and I'm feeding him and finally putting him down. And I go to lay back down, and for some reason, I feel like this pull towards my phone. I look at my phone, I'm like I need to look at that, you know. And I kind of, kind of feel her like, hey, you know, go check this out. And I'm like, can I have this argument with her in, in my own head? I'm like, no, I don't want to do that. And but I finally do, and I pulled up, and I pull up on the app, and there's like 4 or 5 either absolutely crazy women or some really cool, like, emotionally intelligent women. I wasn't sure which it was gonna be. Yeah, that, that had swiped And I'm like, all right, so, you know, I sent them all a message at like 2 o'clock in the morning just to start a conversation. Over the next few days, um, I had some really, really profound conversations with, with these people. And like, all right, maybe, you know, maybe, maybe I could give it a shot and meet in person and just, you know, see what happens. This is— I'm still feeling super freaking weird about this whole thing, but I feel like I need to do it, so let's give it a shot. So I scheduled some dates and My wife, her name's Kearsley. She was the first one that I went on a date with, and I canceled all the other ones after I went on that date with her. Oh wow, wow. And it was, uh, when I went on that date, I remember praying, still angry with God, you know, I was still not— and I didn't feel like I had— I was very happy with him, but I remember praying. I'm like, whatever you've got her doing over there, I'm gonna call in some PTO, and I need her to go with me on this date. And because I don't fully trust my own mental cognition here to know if this is something I should pursue, you know. So I was like, I need her to come with me and tell me if she approves of this person or not. So we go on this date and we have a great time. We go out to eat, and I— one of the, the fads going on at the time was hatchet throwing. Everybody was doing that. So, you know, we went and did that and got some ice cream after. And then as she was driving away to go back to her place, I remember saying out loud, I was like, well, babe, what do you think? Talking to, to Lauren. And Holy cow, the feeling that hit my chest after, like, that's just— and it's, it's hard to describe when you have those, you know, spiritual experiences what that feels. I'm sure they feel different for every person, but I knew right then, I'm like, wow, I haven't felt something that powerful that also felt so peaceful and warm at the same time, um, since a couple of, you know, these, these initial experiences I had when I kind of found Jesus, you know, at a younger age. And I'm Okay, all right. So, uh, you set up another date with, with my wife, and, um, and it, it took off from there. And, and she, uh, she fell in love with— my son's name is Vance— she fell in love with Vance so fast, and she just kind of inserted herself into the whole routine of, of taking care of the baby, of making herself kind of a part of our family, and not that she was forcing herself into it. It just all just kind of just fell into— it just happened so naturally. Like, everybody's like, yeah, this, this feels so normal in the weirdest way, you know? Like, just fits so well. And not to say that again, there weren't people that thought we were absolutely nuts and let us know about that, but, um, you know, for us it was, it was perfect. And we ended up getting married a few months later.

Wow. So for— obviously you feel like Lauren approves, you know, but that's one of the things that people go through when, when they've lost a spouse at any age, at any time. It's like, how is my, how is my person on the other side going to feel about this? Um, so I guess I really don't need to ask you that question. I think you've answered that pretty well. So in terms of, uh, Kearsley, how does, how would she, how does she feel coming in been after Lauren, you know, uh, I don't want to say taking Lauren's place, but raising her son, you know, with you? Has that been— how has she adjusted to that?

Well, yeah, there's certainly been some phases to that, you know. Initially, it's like a— not, not necessarily questioning, but it was like, this is, this is so different than what I thought life was going to be, you know. And certainly maybe a little bit of trepidation and questioning there. She didn't tell me this at the time, but she had her own pretty powerful experience with, with prayer, feeling that this was something that she should feel okay doing and, and was, you know, felt like that that's what she should do. Um, she had that experience only a few days after we started dating, and, you know, I had had a similar one like I just mentioned with, with my wife. So we both had these experiences where a spiritual experience in some way that told us to, to go ahead and pursue this, that this was a good thing for us. But neither of us wanted to tell the other one. We're like, how the freak is it? Yeah, you know, so it's like, like this kind of not walking on eggshells, but it's like, you know, this kind of balance. Almost feel like you're walking on a tightrope. Like, I don't want to screw this up and scare them away, but I, I also, I know that if this goes right, if I don't screw this up, this has potential to go all the way to, to being married and, you know, to going to what, what we all strive for. And so when she had that experience, we ended up talking about though, uh, soon after that. It was a few days later, but that conversation kind of happened on accident. It was, uh, um, my wife had had some experiences before. My Kiersey had had past experiences in life with other relationships that had not been good, not been healthy, and she was sharing some stories about some of those. And, um, in my head I'm like, I had I, I loved Lauren. I had such a— I love Lauren, not, not past tense, but I had such a good— I feel like I had a really good relationship for, for only being, you know, I was married from— to her from 21 to 23. Yeah, age. And I'm like, obviously it wasn't perfect, but we were happy. Like, like, it was good. I can't wait to show you what a happy, good relationships feels and looks like. And that was the thought process going on in my head, but that accidentally started coming out of my mouth. So when she's sharing these she— I, I said, I was like, I can't wait to— and I'm like, whoa, what are you saying right now? Like, pump the brakes. So I bit my own tongue. I was like, you can't just like out of nowhere, like, I can't wait to show you what a good marriage looks like. Like, what? You can't say that right now. Um, but so she stopped and she knew exactly where I was going with that comment. Um, she's very, uh, I don't know if observant or intuitive person. So in, in, in her own way, she's like trying to pull it out of me. She's like, what are you gonna say? What are you gonna say? You know, I know you're gonna say something. I'm like, I don't want to talk about it. Um, but I was like, all right, fine, I guess we're gonna have this, you know, define the relationship kind of conversation. You know, where, where's this— where we— where are we taking this? And so that's what we did. We're like, well, I mean, if this progresses, where do you see this going? We're both like, well, I mean, logically, as long as nothing else is discovered that would throw it off, if it keeps going the way that it is going, then I would assume that we eventually get married. You know, if the projection keeps going the way that it is. And so we're like, well, I guess we need to have a conversation about anything and everything that could possibly come out of the closet that, that might derail that and make sure that, that it won't, you know. So for the next couple hours, we had the whole like vomit everything inside of your soul that you've ever done that you're ashamed of and all these things that have happened, you know, just get everything out and on the table. And we both did that and You know, we're rather emotional after that, after a few hours of some heavy conversation. Um, but at the end of it, both were like, well, is any of that a deal breaker? And both of us were like, I mean, not gonna lie, it's kind of heavy, some of those things, but no, none of them are deal breakers. So we're like, all right, I guess does that mean we're gonna get married? We're like, I guess so. Okay. You know, and so we, we got engaged, uh, a few weeks later, and Kearsley had some, you know, she would— she described it to me as maybe a little bit of jealousy there at first, you know, of my first wife and feeling like maybe she's living in her shadow taking care of her kid kind of thing. And, um, there would be so many people that, that knew me very well growing up in our neighborhood and stuff, that, that knew Lauren very well, and now kind of through social media, through talking to people, now know Kearsley fairly well, but she's never met them. So she had— there's this period of time that was kind of awkward for her where people would come up to her and talk to her and like, like, you're so amazing for stepping into this, for, for this, that, and the other, and like feeling like they know her. And Kira's just like, it's just kind of weird, like, I don't know you from, from Adam kind of a thing. Um, so it was, it was an interesting experience for her for a while.

Sure.

Um, but she, she had to go through her own, you know, discovering herself is in her own value separately from, from Lauren. Um, but also getting to know Lauren in her own way and feeling like she was one of her friends. And I told him multiple times, knowing both of them very intimately well now, that while there are certainly differences, um, they would be absolute best friends. And I told him, I was like, it's a good thing that polygamy is not a thing and that I'm not married to both of you on this side of the planet at the same time, because I would not be able to handle both of you together. Yeah, yeah, that'd be too much. But I, I feel very, very strongly that, that they would get along extremely well. And she's had some of her own experiences with, with my first wife, you know, and getting to know her in her own unique ways outside of me.

Yeah.

And those have been some cool conversations to have for sure.

So you're, um, you know, I, I love talking about this. I, again, I appreciate how open you've been because a lot of times when people have a faith background You know, we feel like, well, we're not allowed to be angry. We're not allowed to, you know, to feel scared, you know. Um, so your faith helps— has helped you through this, but how, in what ways has your faith changed or matured or developed over, over the time, you know, going through this experience?

Well, my perspective of God as a loving Father has certainly matured. Um, and it— I mean, it's also matured simply because I am now a father of 3 children and kind of get to see that perspective of my own with my own children and learn a little bit. And I think all of us as dads have a little bit of those conversations, maybe some wake-up calls like, oh, this is how my dad felt, or, oh, you know, maybe we might even have some like, oh, like, I can— I understand a little bit maybe more how God feels about me now. You know, but in particular going through some of those experiences. Yeah, I was certainly angry at him for a long time and let him know it, but then I made sure to keep myself open to communication with him and try my best to quiet my mind and quiet my soul, my anger enough when I would talk to him to allow him to get a word in. And I think that's important that while, yes, it's okay to be angry And it's like, if you lose your spouse and you're not angry, I'm going to call bullshit.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, or you lose a child, you know, my, my in-laws lost their daughter, and for anybody to lose someone that close to them, um, and to not be upset about it is ludicrous in my mind. Like, that's completely denying your, your humanity, really. Um, so Actually, an experience that I even had recently within the past few months was I felt like another big level up in my own relationship with God. Um, I felt like, I felt like my perception of God was that of an abusive father, even though I didn't realize it. It was more of a drill sergeant, kind of like, this is the way that your life is going to go, this is what you're going to do, you don't have a say in it, I'll just check in once every 6 months and make sure you're not dead, kind of a thing, you know. And I didn't realize that that's how I viewed our relationship. I, I still had many experiences where I felt— where I had felt such deep love and connection to him in, in these experiences, and to my first wife, and to my family now. Um, but in particular, when I, uh, I, I felt this call, I guess, for lack of a better word, to share my story publicly, to, to speak about it, to write a book, to do all of these things, um, that wasn't, that wasn't even a twinkle in my eye or, or a thought in my mind at all even last year. It was— this is, what are we, April? No, sorry, July now. When I say April, we're in July now. And the experience that I had feeling like I was called to do this was like late January. It was very, very recently, and I had spent a lot of time in widows and widowers groups or circles or things, you know, and had lots of conversations. But I had unfollowed them or left them entirely quite a while ago because I felt like I had found my life again. I had found myself and my purpose again. At the time, I felt like most of the, the things that were going on in those groups were just dragging me down and just depressing, woe is me kind of stuff. And I was like, it's not helping me. That's— but also at the time, I wasn't necessarily making an effort to help anybody else. I was, you know, more what can I get out of this kind of thing. It was more of a selfish outlook there at first, which I say selfish in the sense like you have to be a little bit selfish when especially going through grief. Like, sure, if you don't take care of yourself, like good luck taking care of anybody else.

You know, exactly. Yeah.

Um, so at that time, once, once I reached a point where I felt like I was being dragged down more than I was being helped, then I just, I was like, I'm gonna get this out of my environment so it's not affecting me. Um, but then a few years down the road, I started getting back into it because I felt like I wanted to help some people. And, um, as I mentioned, and even last year I wasn't even thinking about this because my day job right now, I, I fix commercial kitchen equipment. Mostly ice cream machines, actually. I work on lots of ice cream machines and commercial kitchen equipment, grills and ovens and stuff like that. And I had completely changed careers. If you remember, I said I was in sales before, um, when, when Lauren was, was alive. I was— I did the door-to-door sales thing first, and then I transitioned into a corporate, more high-ticket engineering software. I actually sold SolidWorks. I know you're, you're an engineer yourself, so I don't know if you— what kind of engineer? What engineering do you do? I've only heard you mention it briefly.

That was a long, long, long time ago. I was, I was a chemical engineer, but okay, that was several decades ago.

Sure, sure. So I sold mechanical engineering software.

Okay.

Did stuff with some 3D printers, so I had to dive into, into that world a lot. And then after Lauren had passed away, and I, you know, I was on FMLA and doing, you know, all these things to make my ends meet and was basically just living off of death benefits just to pay my parents a little bit to let me stay with them. And when I finally decided, like, I need to get back into the zone of things and get back to work and try this again, I found that my mind was too broken to handle the stress of a sales quota again. Yeah, like it was debilitating.

That's right.

What used to be so motivating in the, the possibility and, you know, of sales that used to— before all that happened, it was, it was very motivating. It was— I was driven to achieve, you know what I mean? But then my focus shifted after that to security. I needed security, and so I changed careers to what I do now. And I had— I— my goal for myself was to work. I knew I could make pretty good money. I went to HVAC and refrigeration school, and there were guys in the field that had made really, really good money. I'm like, if I can go and at least make as much money as I was making before I got my, my big promotion— it sucks, I only recently gotten a big promotion at the company I was looking— that I was working for at the time that she passed away. But for the whole time I was married to her before that, it was more of a referring sales opportunities and getting piece of the commission if they close the deals. And I averaged probably $80,000 that year that I was doing all those referrals. And I'm like, at the time, like, I can, I can sustain a family off that. I'm not going to be rich and driving Lamborghinis by any means, but like, I'm not going to be worried, you know. Um, maybe that'd be a little bit different now after COVID, but at the time I was like, we'll be all right. And so that was my goal, was kind of make it back there. And I worked my freaking I can tail off to get there. And I climbed, you know, I took on any additional training that I possibly could and worked myself up there. Once I got to that kind of same level, I was like, okay, now I can coach the rest of my life. Now I'm, you know, I'm good. I've made it kind of a thing. And I feel like God gave me about 2 months to exhale and take a breather before I had another experience like, no, this is what you need to do now. Whether it replaces this job or not, you know, I don't particularly care, but but it's like, this is the new venture that you now need to put all that same tenacity that you've had your whole life. You need to, you know, not let that go to waste, but now put it into this. And so now that's, that's what I'm doing now. And I've been, I've been going around speaking about it. I'm actually putting on my own event on the 23rd of July this, this month, um, where I've written some songs and I'm gonna put on almost like a keynote concert kind kind of thing, sharing my story, sharing what I learned from it, and inviting some other people that are big into the men's mental health space, you know. Um, honestly, I don't remember what your original question was now that I've rambled for so long, but maybe, maybe that answered some of it.

Yeah, no, you answered it perfectly well. And, and this kind of segues in, so I do want to talk about your— what you— what is you're doing now. So you said you felt this calling, it sounds like about 6 months ago, and you came up with this, this framework, your DRIVE framework. So tell me about your DRIVE framework.

Yeah, so in a nutshell, the acronym stands for Discover, Resolve, Invest, Visualize, and Elevate. And I'm sure it was— probably went through a similar process of you finding your gems thing, right? Where, where I just looked back and like, how did I, I, I got successful again? Whether you look at career, whether you look at spiritually, whether you look at relationally, like all these things. I, I kind of— I forced myself to be successful because I put myself in do-or-die situations. Like, I have to do it or else the alternative is something I'm not okay with, right? So as I cast my mind back on this, as, as I felt like I need to help other men who have had the rug pulled out from under them— maybe it's losing someone they love to death, maybe it's a divorce, maybe it's a something else that just pulls everything out from under them, right? And I was like, I, I have been not officially, but like unofficially through friends or coworkers, like coaching people through their own life overhauls. I'm like, hey, this is what I did when I did it. And, you know, try this, do this, do this, do this. And had some phenomenal experiences with some transformation in these people. I'm like, okay, let's cast my mind back on this. And how did I do that? The situation that I actually found it was a good friend of mine. I grew up in a little tiny town called Rush Valley, Utah, and there's a guy that lives there named Chad Hymas who's a motivational speaker. He's a quadriplegic in a wheelchair, and he's extremely successful. He's in the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame. Like, he's been doing it for a long, long time. So he's the only guy that I knew that did any type of speaking of, of whatever. So when I have this experience that I feel like this is what I need to do, I text him. I'm like, I don't know what to do with this new feeling. I have no idea. Never been down this road. Can we chat? Because I have no idea what the heck I'm doing. So he's like, yeah, I'll be gone for a few days, but come over to my house and we'll chat. So I sit down with, with him, me and my wife, and tell him like, this is what do I do? And of course he gives me, give me lots of good feedback. And one of the things that he told me to do, he says, you need to go, um, the National Speakers Association, of which he used to be a former president of for one year. He says they have this thing called the Speakers Academy, go hop in that, and you know, some people can help you figure out what your messaging is and then, you know, maybe develop a keynote or what, all these things, right? I'm like, okay, that's at Step 1. So I go in that and, and the very first meeting that I show up to, apparently this was like for people that had been speaking but just wanted some help refining some stuff. And I'd never done it. So they're like, hey, for this first meeting, you're going to get up for 3 minutes and give us an abbreviated version of your keynote and we're going to critique it. I'm like, what? I don't even have— what is that?

Yeah.

So there was a friend of mine named Aaron that I became friends with named Aaron, and he introduced me to something called ChatGPT. I'm like, I've never heard of that. And he's like, well, let's take everything that you've learned. You, you've been teaching these things for a long time. What are all the things that you're so passionate about? So I, I— we start coming up with this just, you know, big long list of all these things, these opinions that I have, and the things I feel very, very passionate about. He's like, let's see if we can come up with some type of an easy system to teach. And it starts spitting out acronyms or, or like visual representation stuff, and I don't like any of them. So we're sitting there critique, like, change and change, change, change. And I finally see one that's pretty close, but it wasn't drive, but it was something similar to that. And that's when like the drive idea kind of hit my mind. I'm like, what if it's— I was like, discover, resolve, invest, visualize, elevate. And I wrote that down. I'm like, that in a nutshell is everything that I've ever felt passionate about teaching through my experience. And so dive in a little bit. I'm sure you want to know like, what is— describe the drive a little bit more than just the words, right? Um, I found for me that, uh, people say— well, actually, I think Simon Sinek is the one that kind of made it famous, like, start with your why or find your why, you know. And so I'd heard that a bunch of times, but for me that didn't resonate very well because while my why was my son, you know, I could hold him in my hands, like, that's why I'm— that's why I'm not taking my own life to follow my wife is because I have this boy here, you know. Know. And but that still didn't help me figure out what the crap to do. They didn't give me any direction. So as I thought back at that, I'm like, how can I teach this a little bit better? And I discovered— it's that first word— I discovered some things within myself that formed the way that I thought, formed my thought patterns, you know. And I had gone through therapy for a long time, and I realized that through training a lot of these guys, both in sales profession before that and in this more blue-collar kind of job, that for for technical knowledge to stick effectively or for skills to be developed as effectively as it could be, a lot of times there was some character development that had to happen first with these people and with myself, of course. Understanding why you think the way that you do and putting intentional work into changing the way that you think so that it's actually constructive. Like, you got to go and discover some things by yourself. You know, discover your strengths, discover your weaknesses, sure, and all that. But you have to dive into those things that, like your traumas, and figure out like, how have those shaped my perceptions of the world? How have those shaped my perceptions of myself? And then when I started, I was like, we got to discover what is your why. And what I realized when I was thinking, what is my why, I was really actually trying to find the answer to the question, what hails you? So why is like its own little acronym there, like what hails you, what's calling to you. And I would share an acronym, or not a metaphor, with these guys of like, if you do enough work inside yourself to be able to understand what your own voice sounds like, as opposed to the voice of your trauma or the voice of, you know, these, these negative thought patterns that you have or these other things you don't need to keep around, if you don't understand what you sound like you can also understand only what you sound like, but what God sounds like when he talks to you, and you can understand the difference. And then if you do enough discovery work inside yourself to figure that out, and then the R is resolve. If you can resolve the negative things in there that get in the way, and you can start kind of pulling away the weeds and really get to know yourself, then you'll start to feel like there's a trumpet calling to you in the distance somewhere. You don't really know where it is, but like, there's, there's something more that I want to do, or I feel like I need to be doing something more, whatever, however however you want to describe that, you know. And you're never going to know exactly what that is. You might have a decent— some people get a pretty good idea, um, but I'd be hard-pressed to say like somebody has a pretty good idea of what they wanted to do, then they start chasing it, it probably ended up being a little bit different than what they originally thought, right? So I tell people like, if you can do enough of the inner work with yourself to clear away the weeds, and then so you can tell what general direction that trumpet's sounding from, you're never going to know exactly exactly. But say, say like you're a high school kid graduating and you're going into college, you're like, what major do I go into? I don't know. You know, if you can clear away the weeds, you, you might be able to feel like maybe the medical field is just kind of what calls me. I don't know what specifically in there, but I want to, you know, work with people in that, or, or whatever. For me, after my wife passed away, it was what, what was calling to me was security. I wanted something that I could— that I felt confident doing that gave me the security that I was looking for. And once I got that, I kind of reached whatever that trumpet was. Once I got there, suddenly there was, there was another trumpet. Yeah, even further off somewhere else. And, you know, that's just a— it just keeps going, you know. And once I got the security that I was looking for, suddenly that gave me the space to start to work even more on myself and rediscover part of who I was even before my wife passed away, of why those certain things about sales called to me so much, why I enjoyed those things and rediscover some things that I lost and also discover new things. Like I mentioned this keynote concert thing, like I had done plenty of singing as a young— as a teenager I'd been in like show choirs and theater and stuff and had kind of left all that behind, even though I still, you know, I'd sing rather loudly while I'm driving by myself all the time. Um, but in, in getting into the, the speaking and stuff and having some of these downloads from God come, it kept hitting me. It's like, you need to have music as part of your message. And I'm like, okay, I'll put that on the back burner, not think about it. But it kept coming and kept coming and kept coming, you know. And as I did more work in myself, feel like, what is inside of me that I want to share so much? Music very apparently became part of that. So the I of DRIVE is invest, specifically invest in yourself. So if you've gotten to the point where now I know which general direction this trumpet's coming from, I've discovered some things, I've resolved some things. Not that you never do that again, it's a whole system, you continually do that, of course. But now that I've done enough that I can kind of hear where that's coming from-ish, now it's time to invest in myself as heavily as I can in that direction. You never need to know exactly where it is, but you have to start moving. That's where the, you know, clarity comes through committed movement. You might have an idea of where you want to go, but how you're going to get there is never going to be clear until you actually start moving, you know.

Yeah.

In my profession, I have to do a lot with electrical and electrical controls, and I have to— you know, magnets are a big part of that, learning how motors work and all sorts of things. And I use a lot of those analogies in my book where we know that a magnetic field is not produced unless a charged particle is in motion. So if an electron's moving or a charged atom is moving, then an electromagnetic field is produced. Boost, and it starts attracting or repelling things. So using that as a metaphor for ourselves, if we want to attract to ourselves the things that we need to accomplish what we want to accomplish, if we're sitting on our hands not doing anything, we're not going to attract anything to ourselves at all. You got to be in motion towards it, you know, and investing heavily in yourself for that is how you do that. And that's one of the things I'm, I'm putting that principle into play, as well as the next one. The V is visualize. Um, it does no good to invest in yourself if you don't have a solid, like, idea of where you want to go with it, right? That's that, like, the whole trumpet thing. Where's that coming from? And visualize that as vividly as you possibly can, even though it might end up looking a little bit different once you get there. Oftentimes it's, it's at least pretty close.

Yeah.

Once you get there and you, you visualize, like, once I get there, who am I? Am I like after I've gone through everything that whatever it is that I have to go through to get to that point, whatever I have to accomplish to get there, how do I think differently? How do I behave differently? What, what beliefs do I have? And make that who I am now, right? And I could talk for a freaking hour more on the visualize thing, but the next one is elevate. This is where a lot of my faith comes in, that I believe that, um, a lot of— I believe that if you ask God what you should do with your life a lot of times you won't get an answer because I don't think our entire life is scripted myself. I don't think that, you know, we, we signed a contract to do absolutely every decision that we're going to make while we're here. But I believe that, um, God's work and glory is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man and get us together back home with him as families and whatever, whatever that looks like. So if we come up with a plan of something that we want to accomplish and it helps God accomplish that purpose with the rest of his children, I think he's on Lord personally. And I think that if, if we just check with him, like, hey, this is what I want to do, this is what I feel like my heart's pulling me to do, um, this is, this is kind of the plan, this is the direction I'm going to start going, this is my idea, and I'm going to do that unless you tell me not to. I'd appreciate a confirmation just to make me feel better, but even if I don't get one, I'm gonna go this way and just correct me if I'm wrong. I've, I've changed the way that I pray too, to, to go with that. Instead of being like, what, what do I do? What do I need to do? How do I get through this? Kind of a thing. I found a lot of times I didn't— I would get some answers sometimes when I had prayers like that in real moments of desperation, but a lot of times God left it up to me because I feel like our purpose here on Earth is to co-create with him, not just to listen to him the whole time. Yeah, to make our lives the way that we want them to be. And that if what I come up with is a pretty good way to accomplish in general what I want to accomplish, and it's a good way to get to the end goal, then he'll be totally willing to help us to do that in whatever way that looks like.

Hmm.

So that's, that's the elevate thing, is just elevate other people along the path with you, you know, just like you're doing with your podcast. Like, you turn Shayna's passing into something that's helped— I don't know how many people now listen to your podcast, you know. Um, I only recently found it just a couple of months ago as I was, you know, I've been kind of on this hiatus of not listening to anything in the grief space for like 4 years because, yeah, I was like, at the time I needed it, and then I kind of got out of it. I'm like, I'm focusing on my job now, so I'm listening to like personal development podcasts more than anything.

Yeah.

And then I get back into this, I'm like, oh, there's this— I don't know why I had never seen Brian D Smith's Grief to Growth podcast, but I'm like, dude, if I was gonna do a podcast, that's probably what I'd do. So I'll just talk to you.

Well, I, I appreciate that, and I love you talking about, you people always talk about phases of grief and level, and it's like, I don't know that there are— there are not 5, 5 stages of grief. First of all, there's not that. But I understand what you're saying. You're talking about, like, for me, as you talked about going into grief groups and then kind of moving out of it and moving back into it from a different perspective, it reminds me of when I was growing up and going to church. I went to church for a long time for certain reasons, and then I felt like I wasn't getting as much out of it as, you know, as I wanted to, and I left. And then I came back more to help other people. And I've seen the same thing in the grief space. You— some people get in the grief thing, you know, and they just get stuck with that identity. And as you said, you know, as a widower, no, yeah, that's a part of who you are. But that's not all of who you are, you know. And so you don't need that, that going back and regurgitating and going over it again, except maybe as it helps other people. So you're coming back to the same thing with a different perspective, with a different purpose.

Yeah, um, that was exactly like my biggest gripe with, with why I felt like I was being dragged down, up after a certain point. Yeah, at first people sharing all these negative things they're feeling was— I, I don't know the right word for it, but maybe a little therapeutic because I'm not alone. Yeah, and you need that. Yeah, right, you need to know that you're not the only person on the planet dealing with this and there's some support that you can kind of lean on each other and cry on each other's shoulder, and, and that's certainly awful. Um, but at a certain point, the crying about it for 8 hours a day isn't productive anymore, right? And I'm not getting anything out of that. So I need to start doing some things to purposely develop myself. And at the time, um, this may— this probably was just a perspective thing on my part. I didn't feel like there's a whole lot of that being shared in the post that I was seeing in those groups. Um, as I go back now, I'm like, I want to be a voice of light, of obviously acknowledging the pain that people are in, because I still feel feel that, you know, as I'm going around speaking about this. And to anybody listening to this podcast, just because of— just because Brian and I are talking about this and that, you know, we've both written books and things, doesn't mean that we don't have— you know, the grief never goes away because we're still physically separated from this person that we still love. Like, Lorna's still in my heart.

Sure.

You know, she's in her own little corner, sealed up nice and tight, and that has never drunk. But what has happened is my heart has grown to let other people in. So proportionally, as to a percentage of my heart, yeah, Lauren's a smaller piece of it because now there's more people in there. Yeah. And maybe I feel a little bit of that, but I still love her just as much as the day she passed away. And probably I would argue I love her more now because I've had continued experience with her. You know, she's not dead in the sense of like completely gone to me.

Yeah.

It's more the way that I feel like about it is like, you know, during World War II or something, people would go off to the other side of the world and fight, but they didn't have cell phones, right? Couldn't talk to them. You just had to, you know, hope that they're okay and pray for them. I hope I see them again kind of thing. Maybe send a freaking letter every once every couple months. Like, that's kind of how I feel about it now. Like, there's— she's still here. Um, that's something we believe as Latter-day Saints, is the spirit world is here on this planet. We just can't see it, right? Of the things going on there, you know. And she's just on the other side of this veil doing other things. And I think she's also— a huge piece of her being my wife and a mother to my children, including my other children, is that she has a unique ability to influence the world for our benefit, being where she is.

Wow.

Than she ever would have been able to do on this side of the veil. So I feel extremely lucky, extremely blessed. And that I have two of the most amazing women to ever walk the planet, the face of this planet, in my own humble opinion. I'm probably biased, but that I have one on both sides, you know, that, that can do so much work for me. And it's taken me a long time to reach that level. I don't know if you call it understanding or acceptance or, or whatever, um, but But I love your, your GEMS framework. The first one is gratitude. You know, I, uh, I don't think that we can do anything without gratitude. Um, in, in my book, I actually talk a lot about gratitude when I'm, when I'm talking about the analogies of being a human magnet for what we need to succeed. Um, there were some studies done by HeartMath Institute and some other places that were measuring frequencies coming off your heart and your mind, and that the frequencies, the electromagnetic frequencies coming off your heart were like thousands of times stronger than, than the ones off your mind. And discovered that when those frequencies were strong, cohesive, and stable is when you're feeling authenticity, and then closely behind that, gratitude. Yeah, I imagine you could put those two together, you know what I mean? And then if, if this whole world— I learned in school, we had to study thermodynamics and how heat energy transfers, or just in general how energy transfers, right? And guess what it's through vibration and frequency, molecules moving around, and they only like to hang out with other things operating at the same frequency. So if your heart and your mind is putting out a frequency, like, why not make that cohesive with the things that you want? And there's certain things you can do to accomplish that. And the gratitude is a huge, huge piece of it. If you're, if you're feeling just angry and bitter and doubtful and fearful all the time, like, that's, that's what you're gonna get is, is, is those kinds of things. You're going to attract those kinds of people. You're going to attract those kind of situations. You know, that, that's literally what you're putting out into the universe, and that's what the universe is going to give you. It's just law. It's not that anything is like biased against you, it's just what you're creating, you know, and it's up to you to create something different. And I'm very, very, very passionate about that.

Well, you've obviously created a very good path for yourself, um, and, and I, and I really, really enjoyed our conversation. We're coming to the end, but before we— I want to talk about your book and what you offer and everything thing. But tell us about your family. We talked about you, we talked about your wife. Tell us about your kids, right?

Yeah, so I have, like I said, I have 3 kids now. Um, Vance, he's my oldest, he's 6. Um, Rowan, I had my first child with my second wife, was a little girl, um, and she's a spitfire. I don't know if you heard any background noise at any point during this, this podcast, but one of those was my daughter and the other one was my youngest son. His name's Ripken, he's about 20, 18 or 20 months now, and and, you know, they're, they're the light of my life. And, and my wife Kearsley, um, I don't know if I can like turn this a little bit, but right, right here. So this picture of Jesus was Lauren's favorite painting by far. We didn't have it when she was married, but I got a little life insurance money, so I splurged and spent a couple grand on a nice painting that she liked. That's her picture way over there. That's Lauren with her organ donor badge and a little statue that I was gifted after she passed of husband and wife holding a baby. That's a picture of me as a missionary. That's a picture of Kearsley as a missionary.

Wow.

And so there's a little sketch of Ohio right there. You can't really see that, but that's the, the shape of the state of Ohio where she served.

Oh, nice.

And then in this credenza down below is just all of our photo albums and things that have to do with our family. So there's a photo album there developed— uh, not developed, uh, dedicated to Lauren and her childhood. And she played college softball at Yavapai College in, in Arizona. And so there's— she's got, uh, some softballs in there that are all autographed by who her teammates were. And we had like a memorial service with all these softball girls after she passed away. And all of our family stuff is in there now. And so Lauren is, is a very active part of our family. It's not something that, you know, we'll tell my son when he turns 18 and drop this bomb on him kind of a thing, right? It's a all of my kids know Mommy Lauren. That's how they refer to her, as Mommy Lauren. And it's not just Vance's mommy, it's Lauren's Mommy Lauren and Ripken's Mommy Lauren as well. And I have to admit, maybe you shouldn't have done this, but a couple times getting really mad at bedtime, I told him, I was like, you don't straighten up, freaking Mommy Lauren's gonna kick your butt. You know, I may, I may have pulled, pulled a card like that a time or two. Um, but also on the opposite end of that, a couple times my kids have woken up from, from nightmares, you know, having, having a hard time at night. And we teach them they can pray, you know, ask Jesus to, to help them to feel better. But also I was like, you can pray, you, you can talk to Mommy Lauren too. Like, like, she's, she's still here. You can't see her. She's, she's doing some other stuff, but she can see you and you can have your own experiences with her and ask her to come, you know, ask her to come sleep with you or something like that. And not in some like creepy ghost hunting kind of way, but as a, you know, like, yeah, I love kids know that they have extra, extra help, spiritual help outside of even just God, but they, they have another mommy on the other side that's— that her job is to make sure they're taken care of.

Man, I love that. Thank you so much for sharing. I've got goosebumps all over. So let's, um, tell me, tell people, remind people the name of your book and where they can reach you, Wes.

Yeah, so, uh, I should have a copy. Jeez, I may have— I keep giving my books away. I don't have a copy with it in hand right at the moment, but the name of the book is The Overhaul: Fixing Your Mindset and Driving Success. And in the preface of the book, I kind of share my story, like, this is the context of what happened. But then the rest of the book is like, this is how I climbed out of it, this is what I learned from the experience, and this is how I forced myself to be successful again. And I'm— the same framework that I teach, like, I'm using that right now to now develop the speaking and the coaching and thing, you know. So it's not just a, this is what I did and it's only for people whose life has fallen apart and needs to do that. Like, no, this is like, everybody can use this. And I'm— I still use it every day myself. And my website is just my name, westonbrandon.com. Um, Facebook, the same thing. Um, on any of the other social handles like Instagram or TikTok, it's @WestonBrandonspeaker. And Yeah, that's, uh, the book's on Amazon. I'm working on right now doing a separate bookstore on my website to buy it just directly off my website. But yeah, that's, uh, that's the thing. And I'm, I'm pushing really hard to, to get out there speaking more. Like I said, I'm hosting my own event, so there's hopefully going to be some footage from some of those with some of the songs I've written performing those as part of the thing. And yeah, sounds great.

I, I really appreciate what you're doing. I think it's— I know it's going to be inspiring, or is inspiring to a lot of people. People. Um, I, I, you know, it's really interesting. I go through these different waves of people that I speak with, and I'm speaking with a lot of widows and widowers right now. And, you know, so having, having you come across at this time is, is this perfect timing. So I'm thinking of a lot of people that this, this episode in particular is going to help. So thanks for doing this today.

Good. Hey, thanks for having me, Brian. It's, it's been a pleasure, and I've enjoyed getting into your podcast a little bit and starting to listen to it more. It's all It's cool.

And enjoy your afternoon.

Okay, thanks Brian, have a good one.

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