When Your Dream Collides With A Nightmare- Patricia Crisafulli

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Hi, this is Brian. I'm back with another episode of Grief to Growth. And today I've got with me Patricia Crisafulli. And Patricia is the award-winning New York Times bestselling author author of House of Diamond, and she's co-author of Rwanda Inc., as well as a collection published by Hallmark, Hallmark, uh, titled Inspired Every Day: Essays and Stories to Brighten Your Day, Give You Hope, and Strengthen Your Faith. Her first novel is The Secrets of Anita Harbor, which launches the Anita Harbor mystery series by Woodhull Press. Um, the thing is, in this book that she's— we're going to talk about today, she had a dream come true in the fact that her getting her book published but at the same time, she was dealing with the death of a sibling. So we're going to talk today about her, how that happened, and the lessons that she learned from it. So from that, with that, I want to welcome Patricia Crisafulli to Grief to Growth.

Thanks so much, Brian. I'm thrilled to be here.

Yeah, I'm really interested to talk to you more about, you know, what happened with your getting your novel published. And as we kind of said before we start recording, the confluence of sometimes these tremendous events in our life, along with tragic events, kind of at the same time. So tell me about your sister, first of all.

Well, thank you. Yes. So my sister— I have— I am one of 3 sisters, and I'm the youngest in the 3. And we've always been close. Our lives are very different, but we're always very supportive of each other. When our middle sister Bernadette, the one who passed a year ago, January, January of 2022, She had gone back to school at 40, became a teacher, got her master's degree with honors, you know, had a successful teaching career. So, you know, she went in one path. My, our oldest sister Jeannie is very creative. She's a fabric artist, as you know, as an avocation. And I am a former journalist and a writer. So very different paths. I moved across the country, but we always stayed supportive and October of 2019, Bernadette was diagnosed with a rare cancer and was almost beat it and then came back. It came back and it was very clear by the end of 2021, beginning of 2020— excuse me, I'm getting my— yeah, '21, '22, that she was losing traction against in her battle. And then Suddenly she died and we were scrambling and want to keep certain family things, you know, in privacy. But, you know, there was a dependent child who was a little older but needed help. And suddenly we're kind of reeling with the emotion and the practicality of all that needed to be done right within the family. And, and she was a single parent. And the fact that I, in my other life, had this dream come true, what was my creative thesis for my MFA, a first novel, was literally launching into press. So this was a train I couldn't stop or say, "Hey, I'm going to be a little late delivering a manuscript." In fact, I had just delivered the second book, which is coming out. So I had this, this dual world. Of dealing with a sibling's death. And the— and I'm a doer, the practicality of that, and that helped me and hurt me. I will talk about that in a minute. And the fact that I had a busy day job and this creative dream coming true and how to deal with parallel tracks, because it kind of felt disloyal to say, hey, me, while I was mourning my sister. But I want to— the little spoiler is she actually gave me the key to how to do that. Hmm.

Okay. Yeah, I like to hear about that.

Okay. So I live on the West Coast and my sister lived on the East Coast, so I flew back and it's— of course it's COVID and you can't get into a hospital to see anybody, but she passed in hospice and inpatient hospice. And I could go in there. So I jumped on an airplane and flew across the country to say essentially goodbye to my sister. And while we were there and she was lucid enough to kind of in and out, in and out. I don't want to cry. Much of what she said didn't make a whole lot of sense because, you know, she's on fentanyl patch and— but then she looked at me And she raised up and she said, "So," like this, "So what's new with the book?" And I felt the first thing I wanted to say is, "What? We're not going to talk about that." And then I just said, "Oh, everything's good. You know, it's going to come out in fall of 2022, and the next one, and it's good. Thank you." so much, it's so kind. And then she was back into, you know, closed eyes. But I never forgot that in her animation, she knew who I was, and she knew who I was, Sister Tricia, and she knew who I was. She knew this little girl who grew up writing stories from the age of 7. She was okay with me having this dream. That I was going to carry forward. Wow. We live on pair. And what that taught me was we live on parallel tracks. You know, I know stories, you've probably heard them, of someone saying, I lost this dear person in my life and another family member had a baby. You know, I mean, sometimes it's like we were balancing so many conflicting emotions. And events. And it can feel— well, what do I feel today? The answer is all of the above. And I did not do a good job in the beginning. I'm a doer, and I got really into the doing and not so much in the feeling. So it kind of eked through. And I had to work through being happy and thrilled and on and promoting and doing what I needed to do, and grieving and mourning and, and doing a lot of guardian legal stuff too. And whenever I would say I felt disloyal for being kind of happy for myself, I would remember my sister's words and say, she knew who you were. Like, this is Tricia, I recognize her. And she knew who I was. It was okay with her that I had this dream coming true because she specifically asked me about it, literally in the last moments of our conversation ever.

Wow. Wow. That is such an important lesson for us all to learn about. There is this— a lot of times there's a sense of survivor's guilt. And it doesn't matter how our loved one passed. It doesn't matter what the relationship is, whether it's a parent and a child or sibling or whatever. There's something about being in grief where we feel guilty for when we have those moments of joy.

Right. Yeah. Because it feels like, oh, you know, that I'm not really sad, or I'm not really— I didn't love this person enough, or I'm self-centered. You know, that inner critic, my inner critic is like, just never rests, you know, sits right here on my shoulder and just tells me all kinds of terrible things.

Yeah.

But I also made friends with my inner critic to say, okay, well, that's a question I need to ask myself. Am I being disloyal? Am I being disingenuous? So I was able to squeak in an in memoriam on my book. They call it page proofs, the very last stage of production before the book goes to press.

Wow.

And this is a murder mystery. Okay. I mean, isn't that ironic, right? It's a murder mystery and, you know, people die in murder mysteries, kind of the classic Agatha Christie-ish kind of mystery, right? And I have grieving people in my book and I was able to take some of my emotions and put them in book 1 and also book 2 and 3 that's coming down the pike. But I was— so I was able to put a stamp on it, to put a time, to give her a presence in the book. Of course, of course, I had thanked her for being my sister. But I made it— I was able to change that and to honor the dates, the bookends of her life, and to say she was a champion, and to say, as I am reading these pages, she has passed. It was literally within weeks. So I was able to do that. But then I answered that inner critic to say, well, what do I do about these? So I listened to my inner criticism and used it as a teaching moment to say, all right, well, how do I— and I'm big on ritual— how do I ritualize the processing of these two very, very different emotion sets, right? Yippee! And oh my gosh, this is so sad. I feel so completely overwhelmed. Overwhelmed was like my go-to. Like, I'd wake up in the morning, say to my husband, I'm so overwhelmed. I go to bed. I'm so overwhelmed. And I do a lot of walks and prayer and meditation and talking to folks and just going through it. I made sure I kept some time for feeling and not just doing. Yeah. And not like I had a choice because the feeling was just bam. I mean, it was just going to get my attention. And spa, and there were— I had the beautiful hiking trail just up the hill from me. And there was an awful lot of crying and yelling that would go on from the top of hills. And then began to talk to Bernadette about it, you know, talk to her about my feelings about missing her and letting her know that we're all okay. You know, getting frustrated because this should have been done before you went. And why didn't we have this conversation? And also just making it real. And it's been slow. But it, it's been holistic.

Yeah. So, so, Rabbi, how long has it been since your sister passed?

It has been a year and almost a year, almost 14 months. Pretty quick.

Yeah, that's, that's relatively short period of time when it comes to a loss like that. You know, I think it's really interesting that that moment of lucidity, your sister, was that, was that one of her only moments of lucidity then?

Yeah, she was coming in and out. You know, like she was able to ask us certain questions. And I mean, God bless her, about 75% of what she said to us at that moment was complete nonsense. But you know, because I mean, it's the medication and the painkiller and the fact that I think maybe the cancer at that point had spread to her brain. So it was one of maybe like 8, you know, in an hour and a half, because that's about all the time she had, like, to really converse. Ismaela, maybe 8 or 9, maybe, maybe less, you know, moments of, of conversation. My, my other sister's husband had driven me Ben. And so he was there and she said hi to us and then she closed her eyes and she was talking to me and then she looked over and she said, "Well, Ben, when did you get here?" And he'd been sitting there all along. So there were a lot of those kinds of— we just went with it, right?

Yeah.

Oh, well, I was— yeah, we, you know, and she— so it was, that's what kind of made it such a pearl is that it was this very moment of I see you.

Yeah, there, and there's, there's no explanation, no medical explanation for these moments of terminal lucidity. Sometimes people that have had Alzheimer's or people that have been in comas for years, suddenly, right toward the end, something breaks through. And their, their spirit somehow reconnects with their brain, and they'll be able to get a message through like that. I can only imagine how much comfort that probably brings you even to this day.

It does. And it's funny, because in the moment, I was kind of shocked, like, wow, that's weird. She'd ask that, you know? Yeah. You know, because I mean, I'm, I'm processing because I hadn't physically seen her and since her decline, and I'm just, it's, you know, it's, it's kind of sensory overload. But over time, I've replayed that. And it wasn't a mumble. I mean, it was this full-on eyes open and, you know, like this little burst of spirit.

So, right.

You know, and I was like, that's her. And it's, it's been such a gift. You know, I can't remember the author's name. And I so apologize to you, author, the amazing book out there called Signs. And I'm so sorry, I cannot remember the author's last name. Her first name is Laura. And I just read it recently, kind of about, you know, how the other world you know, intersects our lives. And there's one—

is it— is she a medium?

Yes. And a teacher.

Laurel Anne Jackson.

Yes, thank you. I knew there was three names and I could not— yes, yes, yes. And it's amazing.

Okay.

And there's a line in there when she says, the people on the other side, our loved ones who have passed, they want us to be happy. And, um, you know, whatever someone's either philosophical or religious you know, point of view is, and I have mine, and we all have our own, you know, what's next. And that was such a comfort. Because if I truly believe in my belief system, and, you know, hereafter, right? We say things, what do we say? We say rest in peace. We say you're never forgotten. We give our love that way. Well, it was astounding to me to think of that. It's coming this way too, at the same time. So of course, you know, they want us to be happy. And I think our loved ones are buoying us up in our grief and in our, how do I figure this out, and anger and abandonment and any other feeling we're feeling, that it's coming the other way, that there is a relationship that continues. And our lives well lived are a tribute to them. And it is not disloyal. And, you know, my sister gave me that gift. She could have asked me a million other things.

Right.

But she asked me that question.

Yeah, I think, I think such important lesson for us all, because there is— and when my daughter passed away, I had this sense also of like, well, it's my duty to mourn for the rest of my life. It's my duty to show everybody how sad I am. But if we really, as you said, if we really hold on to our beliefs, and we believe that they're, they're, they're in peace, and they're happy, and they're healthy, they want us to be as happy as they wanted us to be when they were still here in the physical, if not more so.

Yes. Yes. And when we have these, these emotional, these intense emotional experiences, they do infuse our lives. I mean, I used to say when I got my heart broken, God gave me a bigger heart. Didn't give me a stronger one, didn't give me an unbreakable one, just gave me a bigger one. Right. And I'm so sorry for your loss and the loss of every person on this podcast listening in. These losses are devastating and we can't imagine losing a child or someone losing a spouse, losing a sibling was different than losing my parents. It's a very— each one, as I I'm learning is very different. They affect us differently because of that, you know, who we think we will outlive, who we think we won't outlive, you know, it's just, and but that we, we exist in time, you know, our linear time, and they're outside of time. So we are living an ongoing relationship with that person who has passed. So our linear time is going to come along. They're going to continue with us, but they're in a place of peace and wholeness. I'm sorry to preach, and I hope I don't offend somebody, but this is just my belief system. They are full and complete. Their journey is done. They are where they are, and they can then help our journey as our linear journey goes along until I believe we kind of meet up again. But I didn't want to miss the point that this love, this help— you can tell I talk with my hands. Without them, I would be mute right now. Without that help, our journey is not as easy. It is not as whole. I mean, we need their help. And I had, as a doer and as somebody who was self-reliant, I had to actually— that was a point of humility for me. Yeah, I need her help.

Yeah. And do not apologize for preaching here. Because, you know, I work with people that are in grief. And it's interesting, because, you know, we're not supposed to impose our beliefs on other people. And I tell people I don't. But I don't even like the word belief, because I believe there's so much evidence that we are spiritual beings having a human experience, that our loved ones do go on. And I approach it from a very scientific point of view. But in our society, we feel like we have to apologize for stating what to me is just plain fact. So I, I respect what everybody chooses to believe. But on the other hand, I don't back down from— I was telling somebody today, it's my mission to make this normal. Because it is so helpful to put meaning into life, to relieve that guilt. I mean, you have a choice. You could believe that your sister you know, her life was cut short, and she died a very painful death, and you're never going to see her again. You could choose to believe that. That's, that's about— that's a, that's a choice. But what good is that going to do you? Where is that going to leave you?

And where is that going to leave anyone else?

Right, right.

You know, and I, as a, as a creative writer, you know, and again, the irony is, is that I write murder mysteries. So I'm dealing all the time with death and whodunit. Right. And, you know, I have to say the title of the book, The Secrets of Oneida Harbor. I have characters I've created, who I created when my sister was alive and well, because this was my thesis when I got my MFA at Northwestern. So I was a lot of character study. It's very character-driven as well as plot-driven and all this. And I looked back in my own manuscript and in my own book and realized that As an artist, as a writer, my, my path of having lost my parents, you know, previously— my mother died when I was in my 20s, my dad died when I was in my 40s, so I lost my mom pretty young— I was able to take that, I think it was unconsciously, and create characters that were more in depth, that felt more real, that were dealing with loss in the book, because it's a murder mystery, and also people who are dealing with danger and dealing with feeling vulnerable and all this, because our life experiences infuse everything else. And for me, it comes out that way. For someone else, it might be a whole new register of singing. It might be a whole new genre of music. It might be creating a podcast. Like, what we do, all of us, every part of us, infuses what we do every day, our day job or a creative job. And I see that that, you know, part of my honoring those who went before me was the creation of my books. Even though they have nothing to do with the topic of grieving, there are grieving individuals in there. There are people who are living real lives, there are people who have escaped tragedy, who are then able, because of the protagonist, to go on. And I look back and I said, well, maybe that's The more I feel, the more I can emote through my characters. And again, that's been a teaching cycle as well. And I thought, "Well, am I using my life experience?" Like, well, yeah, because that's the toolset that we're given is every day, our life experiences. So whatever that pushes us to create, whether it's a garden, or a screenplay, or just the next conversation we have, the more of all of our experience we can bring, the more we can heal and teach ourselves and share those learning and experiences with others.

Yeah. Well, as you said, you know, using your life experience, that's, that's what makes the characters real. That's what makes the characters, you know, relatable. So it was interesting. I don't, I don't read a lot of fiction. And I was interviewing a guy who had written a fiction book not too long ago. And I said, well, is the protagonist— is it based on you? And he goes, no, no, it's not. He's a totally fictional character. And as we started going through the interview, I said, I looked at him, I said, it is you. This is— I don't, I don't know if he was in denial, or he didn't recognize it. But I'm like, this is you. We write what we know.

Yeah, I'm in all of my characters, including the villain. But it's my, you know, my protagonist is, she's 20 years younger than I am. Gabriella Dominici, you know, Italian American and living in a small town. So the life, so I get it what the other author was saying, my character's life circumstances in The Secrets of Anita Harbor are not mine. I did not have to leave New York City to move back to my hometown. I don't live there now.

Right.

But So the light, so the details, but the essence of the person, you know, oh, what a surprise. She is a doer and tries to push down her feelings. She tries to barrel through. She has a hard time trusting other people. She has a hard time asking for help. Hello, have you met me?

Yeah.

And that allowed me to relate to her also. You know, she has an Italian American mother, Agnese, who came from Italy. And Agnese is of the kind of the comic relief in the book. And I infused in her, you know, certain characteristics of people I grew up with, but also this, the fierceness of a mother. And I took that from myself. And I also see that, you know, there's people that surround her that view things a little differently. And I think that's part of the sisterly relationship. The ones that can kind of call truth on you. And I, you know, that definitely, you know, is a reflection of the relationship, the loving relationship I have with both my sisters, my oldest sister Jeannie and Bernadette, who passed, is that when you're sisters, you can kind of go, I gotta tell you, like, I see this. Yeah. And you're not taking care of that. Not in a judgmental way, like you're not taking care of yourself. Or, you know, I mean, God bless her, Bernadette, looking at me on her deathbed saying, "So what's new on the book?" Also, I mean, that one line just keeps echoing back to me, which if I want to take it to the ultimate degree is, "I know where I'm going. Where are you going?" I mean, you can take that so many ways. And maybe that's the fiction writer storyteller in me. But truly, you know, we are each other's stories. We have a starring role in each other's stories.

Yeah, exactly. And humans are, always have been, we're fascinated by stories. Our lives are our stories, you know, we, so that's, that's, that's who we are at our essence. And I believe that, you know, we were talking about what we believe, I believe that what we're living in is like a play. It's, it's it's real in terms of the experience, but on some level, it's not certainly not final. It's a thing we come in, we play these roles, we, we do these things with and for each other. And when our loved ones step off the stage, they're still involved. I mean, it's interesting, because I used to say the analogy is like, well, their role is over there, you know, they're out. That's not even true. They're still involved. I think they're still involved in our lives.

They're part of the chorus offstage, right? You know, sometimes you go to a play and you hear like someone, you hear shouting and they need more voices, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Once upon a time I was in a play and I had to sing offstage, you know, with a bunch of people because they needed more voices on stage. I think that's what's happening. They're singing offstage. And I've listened, you know, like, you know, my dad passed in 2006. And he used to have a favorite saying. He'd say, "Trishy," he was a tough guy, you know, Italian guy. "Trishy, most people in life go for the fast nickel. You gotta go for the slow dime." Which, you know, it's a great saying. And I actually put that into one of the financial books that I wrote in my, you know, very interesting patchwork of a writing career.

Yeah.

And no surprise, soon after Dad passed, I began finding dimes everywhere. Now, there is a thing where if you buy a red sports car, all you see on the highway are red sports cars. I get that. This is different. One time I'm in LaGuardia Airport, about to sit down on one of those plastic seats in the gate, and there's a dime on my chair. Nobody else, the millions of people, picked up the dime. It's on my chair. As I'm about to sit, and it's the only chair open. Like, hello?

Wow.

Like, does, like, anybody else not see this? Um, I opened up the dryer one day and one shot out at me, and I'm like, now you're showing off, Dad.

Yeah.

So listen, is there just a bunch of loose change being thrown up by unseen people? I don't know. But here's the thing, whether it's a rainbow or a four-leaf clover or a song or whatever, it's a trigger And it's mine. And I can claim it to say it's a pause to remember and reflect and to feel you're still here. You're still aware of me. I'm still aware of you. Touchpoint, touchpoint, touchpoint, touchpoint. I'm believing that my Bernadette sign is rainbows. Because one day when I was out kind of like doing one of my grousing processing, like, I live in Oregon, so there's a this rainbow shot across the sky. And I was like, "Oh, okay, that'll work." And then I'm like, "Well, come on, that's a little cliché, isn't it?" You know, well, then I'm sitting in a— I had to fill out some paperwork, you know, the doctor's office. And the music soundtrack was Over the Rainbow. And I'm like, "Okay, next day." And then I'm watching I think it was, I think it was Jimmy Fallon, The Tonight Show. And someone's talking about a remake of The Wizard of Oz and Over the Rainbow. And I'm like, okay, 3 times.

Yeah.

In 12 hours. All right. It's your sign.

Yeah, exactly. And it's funny you mentioned that because just this morning I was doing my walk and I was listening to a book and they referenced the song Somewhere Over the Rainbow. And you know, then you bring it up in our interview here, you know, couple hours later. And rainbows are, you know, people might say, well, those are, those are common signs. But it is these— it's interesting how these things, you know, happen. I mean, I was working with someone, she's an intuitive, and she said, you're going to start seeing more, more signs and synchronicities. And so this morning, I get up, I'm on Facebook, and I see that— I can't remember his first name, but the last founding member of Leonard Skinner that passed, just passed away, last name is Rossington. And I'm like, okay, that's interesting. I read this. And then I'm on my walk, I'm listening to this book. And the woman says, well, I went to this club that people used to go to, Leonard Skendrick would play there and the Allman Brothers Band. And she only mentioned those two bands. And I'm like, that's an interesting coincidence.

That's an interesting coincidence. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So what if when we start to look for those things, and like, even what your sister said to you when she passed, someone might say, well, that was just, you know, she's had a moment of lucidity. I think it was a message for you that you can carry forward now. And there's something about when people are again going through those final stages, they get these bursts of energy, these bursts of clarity. It's called terminal lucidity. And they will deliver messages that can impact you for the rest of your life.

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 in 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 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.

And I— and why not pick them up, folks? Why not take that gift? Why not? If I came over to your house and I said, here, I have this wonderful book, you enjoy this author, and here's this book, and I saw it at the bookstore and I got two, one for me and one for you. Are you not going to open it? Are you not going to read it? Are you not going to say, what is this? Right? Are you not going to pick it up? Somebody comes over to your house with a peach pie and thought of you. I know you like this. Are you not going to taste it? Like, like, so why are we not going to pick up these messages? You know, it kind of doesn't matter to me whether the rainbow is her or if it's not her or whatever. It makes me think of her. And it gives me hope and comfort. And oh, by the way, when these coincidences become almost to the point of being ridiculous, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna give in and say it is you. And that you're sending me something because it drives me deeper into my feelings and into the feeling of especially the one of being supported and loved. I get more at peace, I get clarity, I'm able to do the stuff here that I need to do for her, you know, state stuff and trust stuff and all that stuff. And I feel like it's just a smile. It isn't a prediction of like, your life is gonna be great. It's, I'm here. Don't worry, I'm here.

I think what you just said is brilliant. Because I think sometimes people might say, well, what is, what is the point of these signs? Right? What's the point of the dimes or the feathers or the you know, for me, it's dimes too, by the way. My— when my daughter passed, I said, I want dimes, and I could tell you lots of dime stories. So I get that. But what you just said is really profound. It's like, it gives us what we need to continue while we're here. It's that— it's that inspiration that it gives us. It gives us the ability to do all the, all the stuff that we have to do while we're here. Just like little nudges along the way.

Yes. Nudges along the way. And I love what you just said. Like when people say, what is the purpose? Like, why should I pay attention? Well, that's the question they should ask themselves. It's a great question.

Why?

Because I kind of said like, rainbow, huh? What do you think? I mean, and I was like, well, why not? So I answered my question with a question. Like, you know, I could have kept it in the privacy of my own mind, right? And what harm is it? What is it if it's just a touchpoint? Even if it's every time I hear— there's that great old Four Tops song, Bernadette. You know, I don't know if you're younger than I am, if you remember it. And, you know, every time I hear it once in a blue moon, right? I got to turn it up because that was her her name and her song. Right. It's a moment of pausing. It's kind of like sometimes in some churches they have like a memorial, like when somebody's— it's the anniversary of a death or whatever, or we remember all those who've passed or we read names. It's the same kind of thing. It can be a moment of just remembering. So what's the point? The point is it's an opportunity to step out of daily life to just to remember, you know, and I don't know, I used those dimes. I had, I collected so many over the years, I finally gave it to him. When, when change became really scarce during COVID I gave up my dime collection to, to a charity. So that it would go into circulation, right? I mean, think of all the metaphors.

Yeah, yes, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And the thing, again, I, you know, why not? We we have allowed our people around us to say there's no, there's no magic in the world. You know, it's all just mechanical. Don't believe this. Again, we apologize even for saying our beliefs out loud, because we feel we're scared we're going to offend somebody. But the question is not why, but why not? Why, why shouldn't I believe? And I'm an engineer, you know, I, everybody that listens to my podcast already knows this, but I'm a very rational person. I'm a chemical engineer by training. I— when something happens, like my wife, pretty much every time she sees a cardinal, she's like, it's a sign. I'm like, no, we live in Ohio, it's the state bird. So quite a few cardinals here. So one day though, I was, I was out doing my walk and this cardinal flies in front of me. And I was like, to my daughter, I'm like, well, okay, I don't know if that's a sign or not. It's a cardinal, you know, I see cardinals all the time. And then immediately, like, this little yellow finch flew like right in front of my face and landed in the yard next to me, kind of like, okay, you didn't think the cardinal was a sign, how about this?

How about this? You got to send the bluebird over here next. Like, what's going on? Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, why not? Why not? I mean, I think we can live a life and it's nothing. It isn't constant. I don't think I could live in constant, right? I mean, if— but it's about noticing. I think that's the other point is that because we have this little bit of beveled glass in our house, the sun comes in, it refracts, and it's a prism, right? Which is what a rainbow is. It's light is refracting through water vapor and it's refracting. So every once in a while there's like a little mini rainbow on my kitchen counter, on my floor. And I now notice it probably was always there and I notice, right? Hi, Bernadette. And I think noticing is one of the biggest gifts. Whether I'm noticing the cardinal or the dime or the rainbow, or I'm noticing, you know, you know, that pain in your shoulder that maybe you want to take a look at or whatever, or you're noticing I haven't seen my neighbor and I want to check in on that person, or I'm noticing that we're out of milk, or I know there's— I mean, I'm saying things that are sublime and ridiculous, But it's so easy to get wrapped into the doing, the overwhelming pace, just everything that's been going on that we forget to notice. How do I feel? How do you feel? When's the last time I talked to this person? When have I— am I taking care of myself? What am I behind on? A dentist appointment or whatever or anything. Like, the more we are reminded, notice your life, notice your environment. You're not forgotten. They're not forgotten. Like, that to me kind of just completely frames it. Notice, because life gets richer with the cardinal and the yellow bird and the dime and the rainbow and the song on the radio and all of it. It's a moment, refresh, center, move on, knowing you're loved, they're loved, and we're all supported.

Absolutely. And you talked earlier about being a doer, and, and in grief, the importance of feeling as opposed to doing.

Oh, you know, I'm, I'm a, you know, this is still a struggle for me. Someone said to me, have you grieved your sister yet? I was like, yeah, I'll put that on the list, the to-do list. Okay. And I— same thing happened with my dad. I was his executor. And again, not to get into too much, but my dad was the victim of a huge fraud just before he died, like, real bad. And it was complicated and lawsuits and, you know, this criminal investigation and some of it went on after he died, because he was the victim of it. And when we— it was, I think it was years before I could even— it took me 7 years to get that cleaned up. And I had— and I thought, well, I never really grieved my dad. And I thought, well, you know, maybe that was how I did grieve, was in my doing. Because I had intense feeling through this mess, in his case, right? And I had to allow myself to feel when I did feel. It wasn't like, okay, I got 15 minutes, I'm going to grieve. No, because I'm a person who can go through a funeral absolutely dry-eyed. But I could walk into the— when we lived in Chicago, the, you know, the Italian grocery store and see a man who looked, you know, had reminded me of my dad and burst into tears over the arugula. Go figure. Or we heard a church hymn two Sundays ago that happened to be one that they played at my sister's funeral. And that kind of undid me a little bit, kind of quietly, but it was like, I wasn't expecting that. And to let these moments be kind of organic. Of feeling. It's just making sure I don't compart— I'm trying because I'm a work in progress, not compartmentalize so much that I save feeling for some other time, that I let it come up in the moment. I ask myself what I'm feeling, but not to make it look like something else. I was told this and I believe it. Everyone does grieve a little differently.

Yeah, and you said something there, again, really fascinating, I think, about, about grief. And it reminded me of someone I was just talking to recently, you know, us being doers, but we all grieve differently. So, you know, and working in the grief field, I— you just kind of maybe changed my mind on this a little bit, because I've seen some people that when someone passes, it's almost like they go numb, because there's so much to get done. So they go into doing mode, right? They've got to deal with the doctor, they've got to deal with the coroner, they got to deal with the attorneys, they got to deal with the will, they've got to— you have to make all the funeral arrangements, you have to go through all this stuff. So you don't really have time to feel. But I was, I was talking with someone the other day that this person is almost like manic after their, after the passing of their, of their loved one. I don't want to respect their privacy. And I'm like, it seemed like you're just doing too much. But Maybe that's part of, part of his process, you know, right? Because the important thing is, you said, is that it's the feeling. It's the— and this person is doing a lot to honor their loved one, too. It's really about the respect that they have for the, for the loved one. So there's no one right way to grieve or to not grieve. And we do compartmentalize because we have to, you know, because we do have to get things done and I'll never forget being, you know, at the funeral home, you know, with my daughter, and she was 15. It was unexpected. And they're asking me all these questions. And I'm like, okay, I don't want to make any more decisions right now. But those decisions all had to be made, you know, we only had a few days to make all these decisions. And so you have to kind of turn off your feelings for a little while.

And, and I love what you said about this individual you were talking to, that they had so much to do, and a lot of it was in honor of that person. You know, I used to say that, because I would wake up at 2 o'clock in the morning and think of like the next thing I had to think about or worry about, right? And finally, I was like, Bernadette, can you not wake me up at 2 in the morning to give me this next message?

You know?

And then I realized that was the time that my brain would stop doing my day job and my creative job and everything else.. And finally I just said, well, you're gonna wake up at 2 o'clock in the morning. I think it was part of the processing of everything. So just go with it. And guess what? You know, it went on for months. I mean, not every single, but I mean, there was a lot of waking up and a lot of thinking and a lot of this and a lot of worry and a lot of hand-wringing and a lot of this and that. And finally just said, well, whatever the thought is, catalog it. Deal with it in the light of day, because some of it was nonsense, and some of it was just my anxiety. There was usually a little nugget of truth of something I had to do. And guess what? The more things got done, the less I got awakened at 2 in the morning. And finally, it kind of subsided. And I think that was my body and my mind processing grief, and a real— a different daily linear time reality of someone not being here. And I did not hear in daily interactive life. Right. And I chose to see that as part of my, part of my grieving process.

Yeah.

Because it was gonna happen anyway. And it was concurrent. And so, so rather than judge it, I said, well, this is just where I am right now.

Yeah, and that reminds me of something you said that because I asked you for some topics to talk about beforehand. And you, one of the things you said was how to embark on solving the mysteries of your life by turning every frustration into a fascination.

Yes, absolutely. So one of the things, okay, let's use the example of science. You know, it's a mystery, you know, so much of like, what happens next? There is scientific proof, we know that we know that we are, I believe, as you said, spiritual beings having a human experience. But you know, what does it, you know, look like? And what does it feel like? And where and how? Like, folks, that's the big mystery. And, you know, and I'm gonna go when my time comes with a big list of questions.

Yeah. Yes. Yes.

So there are these mysteries. And there are, there are the why, the why is always the most compelling of any question, right? Of Everything from why am I here? Why did this happen? Why do— am I the one? Why, why, why, why, why? Um, when we, um, some of those we, we can't have a definitive answer, but as we go toward the why, I think we begin to chip away of it a little bit. You know, why You know, you know, the big existential, why am I here? Right? Well, what do I believe about that? Is this all nonsense and folly and life is meaningless and whatever? Or, well, I am here and I have relationships in my life. And I believe that, you know, so I can start to— I can't maybe solve the big why, but we go toward the mystery. It's like reading a mystery novel. You, you see another clue and you see another nuance and you see another connection, and it becomes interesting and engaging. And it should be a metaphor for life because rather than— yes, there's going to be frustrations along those Ys, but we are going to see that there are hints of where we can find meaning and where things begin to make sense. Where there are parallels, where there are connection points. And if we go toward them, we're going into the mystery of our own lives. And things— some of those answers that we want will be delivered to us.

Yeah, I love that. I love what you just said there. Because, and as you were saying, I was thinking, you know, we're going to ask why, anyway.

Yes.

But we can ask it and we can ask it from frustration, like, why? Why did this happen to me? This shouldn't have happened, you know, from that perspective. Or we can ask it from a point of curiosity. Why? What's, what's, what's the lesson here? What's the bigger, what's the bigger thing? What's yet to be revealed?

No, because I'm sorry, I got so excited.

I want to go ahead.

Okay, so my older sister Jeannie and I, we lost our middle sister. I'm going to grab a picture. Just don't go away. Here we go. It's right behind me. So you can see the three of us when Bernadette got her master's degree. Oops, that's me. That's Bernadette in the gold and Jeannie. Okay, so here, put the sisters here so we can peek.

Yeah.

So we were talking about you know, what do we do? You know, how do we handle certain family custodial things, right? And our relationship, which was always good, got even deeper. And got even— we made more time for each other. And we make sure that we don't lose— like, we enhance that sisterly connection of the two surviving sisters. And so that's Bernadette's gift to us.

Yeah, yeah.

She didn't die for that. I'm not saying that. But in every awful thing that happens, there's a— your show is called Grief to Growth. There is a growth opportunity. And whether it happens because it's delivered to us, or we wake up and say, this is just so awful, I have to do something good with it. Like, those moments, those moments happen. You know, one of the most profound places I saw that was in Rwanda. And as we all recall, in the early '90s, there was the horrific, just unfathomable genocide in Rwanda, a million people killed in 100 days.

Right.

And, you know, going back in the book I wrote with, co-authored with my friend Andrea Redmond, was on the economic revival post-genocide. So it was an economic and business book. But in talking to individuals who had gone through the genocide, who had been in country, they were not part of the diaspora, but the people in the diaspora also suffered. The whole country suffered. I mean, they would tell these stories of, um, of a profound loss of neighbors killing neighbors, and because they were incited by evil of— I see— an evil regime outside, right? And the profoundness of— and I don't want to minimize this because it's not my story to tell, but I was privileged. I say privileged, I was honored, I was humbled to hear someone explain this, like what happened, you know, of finding healing because you can't go on without forgiveness. And when I read about this and I heard these stories, I'm like, think about all the reasons we have to be angry with each other. Your car alarm went off in the middle of the night, woke me up. Your dog pooped on my lawn. You know, the things that used to piss me off. And you're among people who have had to overcome the loss of an entire family in a genocide. And if they find a way to move on and find meaning and create a nation out of this, it's like, folks, what are we doing with our grief and what are we doing with our loss? Yeah, I hate to say it's a gift because I feel so cheap saying that, but we're going to— if we are the survivors who move on, I think we have a responsibility. Responsibility to do something with it. Even if it's just among two siblings who can then just say, you know what, make sure that we spend one holiday a year together. It might be Fourth of July, it might be, you know, Columbus Day. This year it's Thanksgiving. Like, we're gonna be intentional. To be intentional, because that brings healing. And I think it honors those who've gone beyond. Who are, you know, our predecessors, those who've predeceased us, and even all the way back into ancestors.

Absolutely, 100% agree. And, you know, there's something I teach called positive intelligence. And one of the things that we say is every, every situation presents a gift or an opportunity. And you can take that as a philosophical thing that says that everything in life is, is meant to be, and there's, there's some mystical forces turning things into gifts and opportunities. That's one way to look at it. And I happen to actually kind of believe that. But the other way to look at it is, I can make this into a gift. I can, I can, I can imbue this with meaning. It might not necessarily have any meaning by itself, because meaning is what humans give to things. You know, it's like, the same situation could happen to you or me, you look at it one way, I look at it completely differently. So we're the ones that put meaning into things. And we could, we could take, like, the passing of a sister and say, I'm going to use this to, you know, to enhance my other relationships. I'm going to, you know, looking at the richness of life, how it can be both things at once, you know, your book getting published, and your sister passing, and feeling all those feelings and not dishonoring any of them.

We're multifaceted people. And, you know, the most important thing we can do is, I think, is creating meaning. We did it. You know, my son is 29, and when he was little, you know, I'd tell him stories about things. I'd tell him stories about the grandmother he didn't know. She passed before he was born. I remember one time he was 5 and he was coming out of— I brought him home from kindergarten. And, or the after-school program, because I was a working mom. And he stood on the back porch and he turned up and he looked at a cloud and he went, "Hi, Grandma! Hi, Grandma!" Next day, same thing happened for 3 days. And the 3rd day I said, "Hmm, you saying hi to Grandma in heaven?" He goes, "Yeah." Now he never met her. And I said, "You see her?" And he goes, "No, you kind of have to look past the clouds." He did this with his hand. And he made meaning for himself. Now, of course, I've asked him now, he's 29. He's like, yeah, I don't remember that. I think, which means is code for I don't want to talk about that with you, Mom. But I saw that in telling him the story about, you know, the people that he didn't know, but they were in photographs he would see around the house. It created meaning for him. And he created his own little meaning experience at 5. I don't know, did it last more than a week? I don't know. But it was a profound moment to witness and to see he had a moment of connection. He gave it to himself. You know, why not have that experience? I think people get afraid— people, which, that's code for Tricia gets afraid. Okay, I should have said I, right? Am I making this stuff up? Am I getting delusional? You know, am I looking for dimes and rain? Like, so, I mean, it's the one gift of being a fiction writer. It's like you're making stuff up anyway, and they pay you for it. Okay. But I mean, I'm being silly. But we, we heard our stories and we have a lot of subjective experiences, right? Do people go to a party and they say it was wonderful, it was amazing, and I saw these folks and whatever? Somebody else says, are you kidding me? The people in the corner weren't talking to me. Like, we notice different things. It is subjective. We have a lens of life experience. So why not just claim it and just say what meaning can I mine out of this moment? Because it will sustain me. And in my storytelling, I, I, my, in book or in interactive, I might be able to lift someone else up and then their story continues. And they listen to this, our conversation. We are each other's stories.

I want to talk for a moment about subjective versus objective, because that's something that I'm it's been fascinating to me lately, because again, I'm a scientist. And, you know, so we discount the subjective in our society. Oh, only you saw it, then it might or might not be true. But if two or more people see it, we call it objective, because two people witness the same thing. But as we just said, we can witness the same thing and have very different experiences from it. And I was reading this book, and the guy was talking about near-death experiences. And he was making a case for why they are proof of the afterlife. And he used the word proof. And so people say, well, I believe in science. And I'm like, well, let's think about every— even everything in science experiences is subjective. He's running an experiment, he is subjectively recording it, you know, there are instruments, but he's got to read the instruments. Nothing is— nothing happens to us until it happens in our consciousness. So ultimately, everything in our experience is subjective. And I think, again, I'm on a mission to stop dismissing things that are subjective, because That's all any of us knows. All you know is your consciousness. All I know is my consciousness.

If you and I decide to take a, you know, have a look at the genome sequence, which, okay, that's about as far as I could get on genomic sciences to say genomes. And we say, you know what, this little hunk of the genome right here interests us because we think it's all about Are we left-handed or right-handed?

Right. Right.

Okay. And so we're going to look at this genome right here, this little gene pair, and we're going to do our scientific hoo-ha on that. Well, that choice, it doesn't mean our data is bad or that our conclusion is wrong, but we've made a subjective choice to look at this part, right? Whatever we're doing. I mean, I've been listening to a wonderful novel. I listened on Audible, The Time of Our Singing, which is amazing. And it's talking about science and it's talking about experience and racial relationships over the '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s, etc. And it's looking at this, you know, it's an amazing book, this family. And there's the father is always, he's the scientist and he's looking at the proof, Einstein's proof, wave particle theory. And he wants to look at life as a wave particle theory. It is or it isn't. It is or it isn't.

Right.

Everyone around him is like, "There's the duality," including the good and evil and the duality. I think this is where we kind of coexist. That's the great thing about being a writer is I leave it to you scientists to worry about subjective and objective. I think those lines kind of blur. If it's my truth and I believe it, and I always like to put the caveat in, "Isn't it leading us someplace good?" right, then my subjectivity can become my— I took this from somebody— little t truth. I don't know how many of us own the capital T truth. You know, you know, certain things, maybe we, you know, we believe in, you know, the dignity of all human beings. I think that's a capital T truth. But a lot of our personal truths are little t truth. And this, this is how I see it. And this is how you see it. And together, we get enough of those together, and we find it's a whole lot a commonality here. And I think that's where the dataset builds in our subjectivity. And we say, there's something going on here. Human beings have been honoring their dead. Certain— the great apes, they have, you know, they find— the silverback gorillas of Rwanda, they will, you know, when the elder passes, they'll sit with that body until they know that it's not going to wake up. I mean, there's a cognition of here and now. We know elephant mothers grieve the loss of their babies forever. And that is counter survival of a species, you know, better to kind of like go, right? Waterhole, food source. But no, we are encoded. So there is a lot. There's something is here and then not here. Something was animated and not, that energy, that thing, that spirit, that soul, whatever, you know, these are things that can pull us into that mystery. But enough of us have that little t subjective truth, that we have a data set that clearly points us to something that's objective. As you said, it's proof.

Yeah, I think so. I think absolutely so. And I said, I think, and you touched on something that I say all the time, too. It's like for, for all of mankind's history, for the last however many hundreds of years or thousands of years or millions of years there's been mankind, we have been spiritual beings, we have understood that our loved ones are in the next world. They're in, you know, in some, some societies, it's almost like they've just moved to the next room. And then only in the last couple hundred years has man said, no, that's not true. We're just biological accidents, and we die, it's over. And I think that's where we've really lost. And I love the you know, with your— with the mystery that you're talking about and the finding and the seeking. And that's what's great about, you know, mysteries is that they keep us engaged, they keep us asking questions, they keep us moving forward. Whereas I think science has kind of closed the door on that whole thing, or had— the door's being blown open again now, because as they're studying consciousness, they're like, we don't understand what consciousness is, we don't understand, we don't understand this double slit experiment, we don't understand why Sometimes light looks like a particle, and sometimes it looks— we don't, we don't get it. Because they're realizing there's more than we can understand from that material perspective.

And that's— and that, and that why, I mean, it pulls us, it just pulls us into some bigger thing, some bigger truth. And we'll— I don't know, we're going to get there, maybe not in this world. But it pulls us up into accepting that we are spiritual beings. How uplifting is that? To know that I am not just defined by my stuff, right? Or lack of stuff, or, you know, you know, what I do, that I— that my life has value simply because I am here. And the same is true for every other person on this planet, that we are here. And that's all that really matters. Fundamentally, that's the ticket to admission. You are here. We are so glad we're all here coexisting in this time.

So Tricia, let's talk about— let's talk about your book, because I think, again, as we've had this conversation, is I don't, I don't read a lot of fiction, but I do love movies, right? So I love, I love stories. I love mysteries. I just watched a great mystery not too long ago. So tell me about your book.

And oh, you're very kind. So The Secrets of Oneida Harbor, I set it in a fictionalized version of my hometown in northern New York State, on the shores of Lake Ontario. And it is about my favorite subject. And you won't be surprised that the themes of my mysteries is the intersection of the ordinary and the extraordinary. So my characters go along in daily life, and something happens, you know, and then today kind of a thing. The then today is my protagonist. The first book is called The Secrets of Oneida Harbor. It came out last fall.

It is—

my protagonist is Gabriella Dominici. She's had worked in the New York Public Library and archives and documents. She had this wonderful life back in the city. And she got divorced. She's a single mom, couldn't afford to stay in the city. Her mom got sick. She's an only child and had to come home to her hometown. Defeat, defeat, defeat, defeat. And now she's 40, and now she's saying to herself, I gotta get back there where my real life is. That's kind of the backstory. And then one day, insult to injury, as she's working in this circulation department of her hometown library— it's the best job she can get— there's a rummage sale. So now instead of handling the poetry of Emily Dickinson or Ralph Waldo Emerson's letters at Archives and Documents, she's looking at chipped salt and pepper shakers on the, on the, you know, on the secondhand table. Except someone has donated something to the rummage sale anonymously that looks like a tchotchke. It's a little tiny cross, colorful tiles on the front of it. And she dismisses it as one of those things you buy in a museum gift shop, you know, kind of nice replica of a replica of a replica, except it turns out to have been the real thing. So what unfolds is, what is this thing? Spoiler alert, it's a medieval artifact. Why is it here? And the first person who saw it in the rummage sale is found floating in the harbor. So there's a— there's the mystery of the artifact, right? And then there's the whodunit in a small town as the bodies kind of pile up on the library lawn. So the ordinary— and Gabriella's caught in the middle of it and has to go through everything we just talked about, objective and subjective, and what is the truth and where are the clues and what is this thing and is there danger and who is this? And of course, surprised at the end. Couple of times over. Why ordinary and extraordinary? Because I think it's a metaphor for the rest of us that we have those extraordinary moments. And each of my books in this series, the second one will come out this fall, has an artifact, something lost in time. It's— they're fictionalized, but they're grounded in truth. Is it— it's a thing. It's an inanimate object but it kind of almost wants to be found. They're inevitably misplaced, misidentified, misappropriated in one case. And that, uncovering that story from the past brings it into the present with new meaning. So The Secrets of Oneida Harbor is about the, you know, the whodunit of the people who are murdered in the murder mystery.

Right.

But the through line is the artifact that seems to have, I want to say a presence, but it evokes in people some pretty complex emotions from avarice and greed because somebody clearly wants this thing, to fear, even religiosity. I mean, there's a kind, there's a host of interactions. So, you know, it's many, many layers. There's— it's a mystery within a mystery in a lot of ways, as is book 2, and then book 3, which I'm currently finishing. I'm getting ready for the second draft.

Yeah, awesome. I love that. Because as you said, there, there— when we read, when it's good fiction, there's always truth behind it, even though, like you said, the story changes, the details change. But there's that— that's an overarching thing of like the mystery, the lost, the found, And, and that's life, which you just said, the blending of the extraordinary and the ordinary. And the more we open our eyes to that, the more— there's an Einstein quote, he says, you can live life as either everything's a miracle or nothing is a miracle. And when you start to really open your eyes to that, then you realize everything is a miracle. It's all miraculous. It's all extraordinary. And that what we call the, the beyond and the afterlife and paranormal is just what we don't understand yet. It's, it's really, it's all, it's all part of our daily lives. And our loved ones, you know, your sister Bernadette, my daughter, they're still here with us. And it's not just, in my opinion, not just in our memories, they're still here with us. They're still— I love what you said earlier. I'm going to take that from you, that they're in the chorus, maybe offstage, but they're still part of the process.

Yeah. And I think we know that at our core. I think sometimes it's scary because there's part of it's kind of like they don't show up on demand. Like, why? I don't know. Maybe they're just— I know there's times when my dad has been like, I've been my mom, like, I feel them, like, right here all the time. I'm like, did you go on vacation? I feel more the distant Maybe that's me, maybe that's them, maybe it's just though, I guess we'll figure it out our way, our own little wave particle theory, you know.

Yeah.

Um, and maybe they're on the wave mode, right? Um, but, but here's the thing, I have to remind myself that we're on linear time and they're outside of time. So they're the, the now and the now and the now and the now and the now. And the more we kind of see that in our own lives, that now, folks, like what happened here, then I can put more intentionality into finding that connection. And maybe it doesn't have to be a rainbow 24/7 or a dime 24/7. Maybe it's just the stepping stones along the path. And in the gaps, we are reminded to live.

Right? Right.

Because if all I look— if I spend my day doing nothing but dimes and rainbows, well, then I, I'm not living.

Exactly. And I think you just answered the question. I was just working with a client a couple days ago, and she asked me this question. It's like, you know, why, why can't they be more involved? Why don't we get signs all the time? And I, I made up some answers. I— they're, they're educated guesses. I'm like, I think part of it is we live in a very dense environment. The energy here is just totally different. So it is more difficult to get things done. Because in the afterlife, it's— you do— you think things and they happen. Here, it's not the same. But the other thing is, I was telling her, because she and I have had a lot of discussions about Star Trek, I said, there's, there's the Prime Directive in Star Trek. You can't interfere with the course of the natives' lives, right? You can't introduce to them technology that's going to change their lives. You can't give them knowledge that's going to change their lives. And I think we come here, we're meant to live in the mundane, We're meant to go through the difficulties we're going through. We're meant to do our taxes and all the crap that we hate doing. It's part of the process. So they're not— they're not here to take all that away from us. Just like when you said you have children, I have children. We can't do everything for our children, right? We look at them as parents and we're like, that's a lesson you got to learn on your own. So I'm here if you want help. I'm here to advise you if you need advice. But you've got to learn some things on your own, and that's part of being human, right?

And what, what they know is never changing is that, you know, I love you and I'm here for you.

Yeah.

But, you know, in the gaps of when those questions get asked, and the older they get, and as they go out wider, is that's when living happens, you know?

Yeah, exactly. Well, Patricia, uh, remind people, I want to spell your book because we've been saying Anita Harbert, people might not know how to spell it. So it's The Secrets of Anita, O-H-N-I-T-A Harbor. And where is it available?

Everywhere. It's online. It's in your— if your favorite bookstore doesn't have it, they can order it for you. I am big on independent bookstores, or obviously, you know, Amazon, Barnes Noble. Uh, it's there. It's an audio, it's, um, an ebook, and it's in print, uh, paperback. So awesome. Enjoy.

And are you open to people contacting you? Can they contact you through your website?

Yes, they can. They can. Um, I have a website called faithhopeandfiction.com. faithhopeandfiction.com. You can find me.

Yeah, it's been great getting to know you. Thanks for doing this today.

Oh, thank you. This has been wonderful. I, I've so enjoyed it. I really feel uplifted.

All right, enjoy the rest of your day.

You too. Thank you.

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Deal.

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