You Believe In The Afterlife-Don't You? - Annette Marinaccio EP363

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That seems really woo-woo to me, but now I understand the real— but she enlisted my spirit guides, she enlisted the other deceased relatives of mine. And throughout the course of the next probably a year and a half of that 4 years, they left me one breadcrumb after another because they knew I couldn't just soak it up all at once. I was very accounting-like. So it was just like, okay, now that you understand where we still go on, now I'm going to tell you a little connection here. Now I'm going to tell you a little bit about why. Now I'm going to tell you a little bit about, you know, and even at the very end when I was like, you know something, I got this.

You know, that reading you just referred to, is that, is that one in the book? Hey, did you like what you just saw? Click right here to watch the full video now. Close your eyes and imagine. What if 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, welcome to Grief to Growth. This is Brian D Smith. I'm your host. And whether this is your first time joining us or you're a regular listener, and welcome to this, to this episode. Today, we're going to venture into a conversation that intertwines the realms of accounting, healthcare, and the metaphysical. Our guest is Annette Marinaccio. She's a New York-based certified public accountant, and she's an accomplished healthcare executive. She's going to take us on a transformative journey from skepticism to belief, documented in her book Your Soul Focus. I love the subtitle, You Believe in the Afterlife, Don't You? Uh, Annette's exploration in the afterlife began in an unexpected encounter with her mother-in-law's spirit on a 4-year quest through the metaphysical, challenging her perceptions and altering her life's path. Today we're going to dive into the intersections of professional credibility, personal revelation and the universal quest for understanding life beyond the physical. Stay tuned as we unravel the mysteries of the afterlife, the inspirations behind her penning such a profound narrative, and the profound changes it's brought to her life. So with that, I want to welcome to Grief to Growth Annette Marichello— Marinaccio.

Thank you. Thank you, Brian. Thank you so much for having me. I'm honored to be here today.

Yeah, I'm excited to have you here today. We were talking before we got started. That you and I— this is a topic we both are passionate about, but people don't talk about very much.

Yes, absolutely. I mean, when I first started learning about it, which was, I mean, I'll say 2006, my mother-in-law died. And when she was on the other side, so not before she went, she started to sort of open my eyes to the afterlife. And as you mentioned, I spent like 4 years after that really researching it and trying to understand And most importantly to me, if we go on, because that took me some while to appreciate that, but if we go on, what the heck are we doing here? Like, how does this connect? And once I had a good understanding about the fact that we do go on and an understanding about, in most cases, why we, uh, the connection between the afterlife and this, I was like, why isn't everybody talking about this? At least once a day, every day. I mean, this is— it's really big. And I had never focused on it or thought about it really, and certainly had not— certainly had not incorporated it into my day-to-day living. And I was just shocked. And also in that 4 years, I would speak to, I would say, hundreds of people, professional, personal, just saying, hey, do you know we go on and And I would say almost 70%— now again, it could be 70% of the people I surrounded myself with subconsciously, I don't know— but about 70% were like, oh yeah, of course. And they had a story of their own. You know, my deceased father sees me in my dreams all the time. You know, I go to mediums and I can connect with my loved ones. Or I thought, you know, that my mother was constantly reaching out to me because there's this dove that sits on my porch every morning for the 3 days before she died and 3 days after she— or whatever. And so I would say like 70% of the people had real great examples. And when I listened to them, I was like, how come this is the first time hearing about this? Like, why isn't everybody talking about this all the time? Or at least maybe as often as people pray or meditate, they should incorporate it into their daily routine.

So yeah, you know, what you've just said, you know, anecdotally, I think is what the data backs up. I forgot the percentage of people that believe in the afterlife, but I think it's like 80-some percent. And like over 50% have said they've had some sort of after-death communication. Yet we go through our day-to-day lives, and we don't talk about it. So in my experience, it wasn't until my daughter passed, and I started sharing some of my experience with people, it was the same thing. People hadn't known for years would say, oh yeah, of course, you know, my father came to me in a dream, or my grandmother came to visit after she passed. But we don't seem to want to talk about it on a day-to-day basis.

No, it's interesting, because the same way they say that children in their very early formative years are more in tune to the other side or spirituality than adults, I think what happens is when we're in those formative years, and we do have a connection, more of a connection to the other side, we learn very quickly that we have to try and physically survive on Earth. So that, that physical survival, which is, you know, food and air and dependence on others, those kinds of physical sustenance aspects of the day-to-day need to, they need to by design take over. And so when they take over and the spiritual aspect of things maybe takes a little bit of a back burner because we were learning to just physically survive, I think that conditioning from a very early age sort of carries into adulthood. And then it's many, many people when they get to maybe teens, maybe 20s, maybe 30s, maybe older, they start sitting back a little bit and saying, okay, now I've got the physical sustenance thing going. I wonder if there's more to life than this. And actually, a lot of teens and people, you know, in their early 20s start exploring that because they're on the front end really of a long adult life. And they just start thinking to themselves, is this all there is to it? Like working every day and, you know, making money and eating. And is that all there is to this? And then you get sort of swept up in that, you know, late 20s, 30s, 40s into— many people get swept up into either working very hard on their career or raising a family And then the day-to-day just gets very crammed with just day-to-day activities. And you don't really think about it until something like a lightning bolt or a gift, you know, hits you in the head, like my mother-in-law or your daughter, like hits you in the head, sort of like, wait a minute, guys, you're on an okay path, but this is a small path compared to what you need to do for your soul. So, you know, rejigger your— recalibrate your framework, your perception, you know, right? I think that's sort of, you know, why it happens that way, you know.

Yeah, I think you described the path pretty— it's pretty common, you know, we come in and we are connected to the other side. And but we are quickly— we have to, we have to attend to the physical. There's nothing wrong with that. But then we kind of lose focus. So tell me what happened with your mother-in-law that kind of brought you back around. 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, so, um, and yeah, that is good to say back around because certainly in my late teens, early 20s, I would say I was, um, interested in maybe not the afterlife, but like the Raymond Moody books and astrology and is there something to it, and, uh, you know, just those kinds of metaphysical things. Um, but then I got swept up in my day-to-day life and In 2005, I went through a really pivotal time where both my mother and my mother-in-law were diagnosed with cancer within a week of each other. My mother, breast, and she survived that. She ended up dying at 90 years old in 2022, 2 years ago. And my mother-in-law was pancreatic. And pancreatic is when you find it, you know, 99% of the time it's pretty pretty far along. So she didn't have really a chance of survival. So a year later, she died. That was 2006. And at that point, I would say that I thought my, my thinking was that when you're dead, you're dead. I didn't think about an afterlife, let alone the fact that the afterlife is actually far more important than we think it is. So I was just like, I just thought when you're dead, you're dead. And I was, you know, very upset. And, um, we— she died on October 14th, 2006, and we buried her on October 19th. And then like 2 days after that, maybe 3 days, my at that time 13-year-old daughter was, um, uh, getting ready for school and I was getting ready for work, and we were at the kitchen table and she said, guess what, like very matter of fact, uh, Grandma Lucille gave me a gift yesterday. Grandma Lucille, Lucille, my mother-in-law's name. And I'm thinking, obviously, she's going to give her a gift, right? She's not here. And so she said she gave me a gift yesterday. I said, what kind of gift? And she said, pom-poms. And I said, pom-poms? Like physical pom-poms? And she said, yes. I said, well, how'd she do that? And she said, I don't know. I wish I could have seen it. I don't know if they floated through the air or they just appeared there. I could see her mind had worked through all these possibilities. And I'm like, What are you talking about? Where did they appear? And then she told me her story. She said that she had gone to art class and their project was to make 3D cards, and she decided to make a card with 11 green and 11 red pom-poms. So she went to the art supply closet and took out the Tupperware of all these different color and size pom-poms, and she counted out 11 green and 11 red and put, put the container back. And when she came back to her desk, there were the 11 green, 11 red, and 1 lavender and 1 ivory colored one. And I was just like, I don't understand how'd they get there? And she goes, I don't know, but they were, they were the exact color of the balloons that we let go at Grandma's grave, you know, a couple days earlier. So I know that Grandma was saying she got the balloons. And so I was thinking, I said, well, was there somebody else at your desk? I went through all those questions. Did you drop them? Did somebody else pick them up? No, I was at the desk by myself. There was no one else around. And I could see she had worked through all the possibilities in her head too, and determined the only choices were they appeared or they floated through the air. And either way, she wished she had seen the event. So I assumed that she was going through some very— she was close to my mother-in-law. She was going through some really bad grief situation. And I, being her mother, I probably should figure it out and try and help. So I started telling everybody, my professional acquaintances, my personal acquaintances, the pom-pom story, figuring someone would say to me, oh, that happened with my teen when my spouse died or whatever. This is the grief counselor you should go to, or this is how they cope with it or something like that. But instead, what people were saying, like, of course, and I was like, what? So in particular, I had one girlfriend, and I had known her, I still know her, but I had known her about 10 years at that point. I guess we never discussed the afterlife. Hadn't really come up. As you said, it's not openly talked about. And so I told her the pom-pom story, and she waited for me to finish. The way I'm doing now. And then she just very, like, blank said, well, you believe in the afterlife, don't you, Annette? Which is the subtitle of my book.

Yeah.

And she was like, well, you believe in the afterlife, don't you, Annette? And I was just like, you believe in the afterlife? And she was like, oh yeah. And then she told me that she actually frequents a medium from Long Island, which is where I'm from, Josephine Guerangeli. And that medium connects with her deceased father, and she gets practical advice from him. Should we put mom in a home? Should we move her to a different neighborhood? Should we sell your house? I'm thinking of naming my son blah, blah, blah. Do you like the name? Like, she— and I was just like, are you kidding me? Like, this is part of your life? And she was like, yeah, of course. And then, as the universe would have it, because I was— it was intention for me to understand what was going on. So they had to walk me through it slowly. The following, maybe 2 weeks later, I was out for dinner with my husband, my son, and my son who was about 11 at the time, and my recently widowed father-in-law. And we were just on Main Street you know, a little restaurant, and there was a big poster sign facing the street, but we were seated at the window, and I could see from the back of the poster, and it said, 'Dinner and medium show with Josephine G,' the exact medium that my girlfriend had just told me about, because that's how the universe was like walking me down the path. And I was like, 'That's sort of ironic.' So I called my friend when I got home And I said, do you want to go? And she said, absolutely. I can't believe she's going to be in our town. And it was for— this was my mother-in-law died October. This was about November, December. The show that was being advertised was the end of April. It was like April 27th, 2007. So the last Sunday in April. So, so I, I called up and again, I wasn't thinking about this at the time, but afterwards I was like, what did I say? I called up and I said, Annette, party of three. It was myself and two friends. And so, and that's all I said. I didn't give them any other information, just a net party of three. And, um, then when the— between that early December, end of November date and, and April, I was telling everybody the pom-pom story. And I was shocked by the quantity of people who had experiences. I mean, I had this one professional individual that I interacted with all the time. He was, um, a, a senior leader at a, um, uh, healthcare insurance company. And, um, when I told him, he said to me, you'll never believe this story. And I'm like, everybody's got like a lot of people have stories. He, he was visiting, he and his wife went to visit his mother in the hospital, and while the two of them were in the car, his deceased father walked in front of the car, like just passed. And he turned to his wife, and his wife turned to him, and he was like, did you see that? And she saw it too. They both saw it at the same— that's big. I was like, Oh my goodness. So a lot of people have very interesting stories. Anyway, so April comes, and by now I'm thinking, I can't believe the amount of people who believe this. I just, it's amazing to me. And then, and then my mother-in-law really, I mean, listen, the breadcrumbs were there all along. But this is when she came through for me, like, okay, I've got to figure this out. The woman came out, Josephine came out with them after dinner, comes out with a microphone, like sort of like you see in a in the— on TV nowadays, you know, and reads somebody. Maybe there's 100, 150 people. She reads a family over there with a fallen police officer, and they're all crying. And I'm thinking, well, it could be planted there. She probably knows them, you know, whatever. I don't know, you know, I don't know. But then the second thing is she comes over to our table and she says, um, I see a woman here whose name is, um, Lucille. My mother-in-law's name is Lucille. She's got the exact name. And I'm like, I'm not taking— like, my mind is racing. Did my girlfriend say something? What? Like, how is this? This is just— it's impossible. You know, I'm an accountant. The statistics are not adding up here. How could you possibly know that? And my girlfriend is kicking me under the table, glaring. And I'm like, I'm not taking the microphone. And then she said, okay, if it's not Lucille, maybe Lou, Lou, something with an L. She's holding her stomach like she died of something like stomach cancer. My mother-in-law had died of pancreatic, something like stomach cancer. And I am not taking the microphone. I'm petrified. I'm like, I don't understand this. And she, the woman behind me raises her hand and says, my name's Elizabeth. It has an L in it. And so Josephine goes and reads Elizabeth said, oh, I see you're going to Italy in a couple of months. I had just booked Italy.

A trip to Italy.

And so when Elizabeth's like, no, I just came back from Florida. So I can see, like, she was getting— anyway, so she wasn't for Elizabeth. So she retreats out, reads somebody else, and then comes back. And I really have to credit my mother-in-law with that, because she, you know, made sure she came back around. And I think, you know, a lot of times people say, oh, the mediums are fake, or that— what— but I Why would they come back around and put themselves in a position when they're not even getting a bite? Like, you know what I mean? If they're really fake, they would read you and give up and go on to someone else or what. But she comes back and she says, you know, this woman is still here. If it's something with an L, she's got very dark hair. My mother's hair was black, very dark hair. She's holding her stomach. And then I'm like, all right, I'm just going to take this. And so I raised my hand at that point. I was feeling a little more brave at this point. She gives me the microphone and then she said the thing that just flipped for me. You know, that one line that I was like, oh my God. She said, oh yes, this is definitely for you. She's asking me how Rita is. Rita is still here, isn't she? Now, my mother and mother-in-law, as I mentioned, both were diagnosed within a week of each other, and they both went through surgeries, chemo, radiation separately, but at the same time. And when we would visit one— I come from a very small, close-knit family on both sides. As we visit one, they would always ask about the other because they were going through it. So I would visit my mother and she would say, "How's Lucille doing?" And I would visit my mother-in-law, and she would say, "How Rita?" is my mother's name. "How's Rita doing?" I named her Margarita in the book, but, "How's Rita doing?" And I knew, and she knew, my mother-in-law, that that would be the thing that would flip me. Because there's no way in the couple of sentences this woman said, she could have known Lucille's name and Rita's name. There's no way. And that one line, would be exactly what she would have said. You know, how's Rita? She's still here, isn't she? Meaning, because she would ask about my mother.

Right.

Now I understand the other side. She knew what my mother— my mother was fine, but still. And then I had a very, very evidential reading for the next, you know, whatever, 4 or 5 minutes before she retreated out and read others in the room. But that was the thing. I went home that night, and I was obsessed. I was like, I have to figure this out. I give up. So many people understand this. They sort of know it's out there. Because in that 4 months, I had a lot of credible people tell me they had seen or, you know, whatever signs or whatever. And now I had this experience. And I was like, that's it. I have to figure this out. And my mother-in-law, I like to say, enlisted my spirit guides, which is like, I did not want to have to believe in spirit guides. That seems really woo-woo to me, but now I understand they're real. So, um, but she enlisted my spirit guides, she enlisted, um, the other deceased relatives of mine, and throughout the course of the next, um, probably year and a half of that 4 years, they left me one breadcrumb after another because they knew I couldn't just soak it up all at once. I was very accounting-like. So it was just like, okay, now that you understand where we still go on, now I'm going to tell you a little connection here. Now I'm going to tell you a little bit about why. Now I'm going to tell you a little bit about, you know, and even at the very end when I was like, you know something, I got this. They shook, spun me around again with a reading in a large forum that was so involved and so intricate. That, and connected to other people in the room, that they were saying to me, "You think you get it? You don't get it. It's a fraction. What you think you understand, what you understand is a fraction of what we know." You know?

That reading you just referred to, is that one in the book?

Yeah, that's the John Edward ones. The John Edward. Yeah, I mean, I have several readings in the book because I was obsessed and going everywhere.

You, I have to say, I'm not gonna say luck, because it's not luck, it's orchestrated. But the mediums that you've encountered are just like off the charts. I mean, people that have been to mediums, we know there are good mediums, there's some mediums that aren't so good. There are some fakes out there. But for a medium to get like names like, like you got from, from the first medium, from— that's, that's a pretty unusual experience.

Yeah. And again, I credit my— like I like to say, my mother-in-law, chose Josephine G. Right, right. I mean, I didn't choose her. Right? I wouldn't have gone to that show. So my mother-in-law chose her from the other side. Like, we're going to open this chick's eyes. You come help.

Yeah. And knowing that you needed that kind of a thing, you needed somebody, not something vague, not I have somebody here, you know, that she's older and she liked to bake cookies, you know.

No, no, it was very very on target. And also, you'll see in the book, a couple of mediums that I went to, they were just very on target. Robert Hansen, very on target. I mean, it was just, you know, no, no, deny.

I recognize the names of a lot of the mediums you mentioned in the book, you know, Suzanne Northrup and Laura Lynn Jackson. So you, again, you saw some pretty off-the-charts incredible mediums. But I think with your— and your mind, I think, is similar to mine. I'm an engineer and you're an accountant. We're very left-brained. We're like, okay, how is this happening? How are they— how are they doing this?

That's right. And also, I do want to mention that in— during that 4 years, I came across an organization called Forever Family Foundation. If you've heard of them, but I now serve on the board. So I started volunteering, I started just attending their afterlife discussion groups and then I was like, I have to— it was great for the— the founders lived a half hour north of me. And it's an international organization. So I was like, this is a great organization for me to be around like-minded people as I'm learning this.

Yeah.

And, and so a lot of the— not all the mediums in my book, but like Laura Lynn Jackson, who you, who you mentioned, she is a Forever Family Foundation medium. A lot of them were certified, they certify— it's a Forever Family Foundation, we certify the mediums. So they go through a pretty rigorous test before they're approved. And, and so I've been fortunate, being that I'm a volunteer, to get a bird's eye view on group readings. So I put them in a situation, my spirits know, I'm not there for a reading. I'm there to help the other, the attendees, you know, so it's not like they come through for me, a reading for me, but I've been fortunate enough to be the person running around with the microphone or the tissues. Right. And that is the accumulation of experiences where I've seen pointed, specific readings is a lot. I mean, it's hundreds at this point. And so you just, you know, you can't deny that kind of thing.

So tell me about the experience with John Edward.

So Don Edward was really interesting because he was pretty far, far enough along into my— like, I certainly understood there was an afterlife. There was no, there was no denying it for me at that point. And I was figuring out how the other side connected to us. And most importantly, what are we here for? Then if we go on, like, what's the purpose of this?

Right?

So I needed to understand that. So I was pretty far along in the, in picking up the breadcrumbs and understanding how things worked to a large extent. So what happened with John Edwards— John Edwards is also from Long Island, and he, I think maybe still once a year, does a show, a reading at a large forum, has about 3,000 people in it. And I had bought tickets, 4 tickets, for myself, my husband, and my 2 kids. Maybe they were like maybe 15 and 13 at that point or something. To attend in December. It was a couple of weeks after Thanksgiving, but I bought them in like April. So I'm making the dates up. Maybe it was April 2008, and it was going to be December of 2008. And Thanksgiving, we had my in-laws over, and my mother-in-law had passed, and my sister-in-law had told me that she told all of us that she was getting these weird not prank, but mistaken phone calls from an individual, an older man who lived out east on Long Island also. And when he would forget to put the area code in of his sister in Las Vegas, the remaining 7 numbers were my sister-in-law's. And so she— the call would go to her. And after a couple of these calls, she started speaking with him. To understand what was going on. And that's how she understood he was older. And if you've got the area code, whatever, whatever. And his name was Corcione. And it would come up on her thing. And the interesting thing is he'd call his sister on holidays. So she would get these calls on Easter, on Christmas. Once it was on her birthday, which is July 1st. So maybe July 4th, I don't know, but whatever. But she said it's odd to her because they started after her mother died. And they've been going on for about a year and a half. And she thought it was sort of weird. So she said, you know, I think I'm going to take— and he had called Thanksgiving, the Thanksgiving. And she goes, I think I'm going to take this as like happy holidays from my mom. And I said, yeah, I mean, definitely, you know. So this was our Thanksgiving conversation. Now, a week after that or two weeks after that, I had the tickets to the John Edwards show. And my daughter, who was, let's say, 15 at the time, decided she didn't want to go. So I said to my husband, let's ask your sister. She might be— she'd be into it. So, um, so she came. So it was myself, my husband, my sister-in-law, and my son, who was maybe 11. And we're in a room of 3,000 people. And it's, it's in this— it's a circular room. So it's in the theater in the round. And, um, at one point, he is reading people across the room from us. And, um, he has them stand up, and it's a mother and an adult daughter, maybe she's in her late 20s, and somebody's coming through for them. And then he says, I'm feeling pulled from behind me. Somehow you are connected to somebody in this section. He makes a 180-degree turn, points to our section, and then, okay. And then so he turns back to them and he goes, where do you live? And they say, we live in Hicksville. He turns back around, he goes, okay, I'm in these 3 rows. And we're not even one of the rows. It's like the row in front of us and maybe two rows in front of them. And she— anybody in this section from Hicksville in these three rows? No. Okay. Turns back around. What's the name of your street? We live on Barbary Street. Turns back around. Does Barbary mean anything to anybody? No. Turns back around. Turns them again. He says, what do you do for a living? I work in a doctor's office. This is the doctor's name. Turns back around. Are any of you patients of the doctor? No. He goes, there's some connection between these mother and daughter standing and somebody in these 3 rows. Now it's a row in front of us, not us. Turns back around, he goes, all right, I'm going to ask the spirits to give me some more information. He goes, okay, I'm seeing a young guy here who dies in a bar fight. Does that mean anything to you, to the people standing? They start crying hysterical. Um, he goes, what, what does this mean to you? They— it's— it was my fiancé. So it turns out that the 30-year-old girl, the daughter, her fiancé had died in a bar fight 2 years earlier, and she has now met someone else and is going to get married. And the fiancé came forward and said I like the choice. I helped choose him from this side. I want you to get on with your life. And then he says, but somehow this is connected to the people behind me.

Yeah.

What was your fiancé's name? They say the name, John Corcione. And he turns around to us, all of us, and he says, does that name mean anything? I am not thinking of what my sister-in-law said. My sister-in-law is like, that's the name. That's the name on the— I'm getting choked up. That's the name on the answering machine. And I was like, and if she had not conveyed that story to me on Thanksgiving, I would not have acted as quickly as I did. Because I knew, and then I knew this reading's for us. This is coming to us. So I started raising my hand. This is us. This is us. They give us the microphone, and my mother-in-law comes through flying colors. I mean, there's a reading. She mentions 4 grandchildren, something about each of her 4 grandchildren. She had 4 grandchildren. So it was— and at the end she says to my husband, John Edwards says it, not my mother-in-law, but it comes through John Edwards. He says, you're going to Florida soon. Your mother says have a good time in Florida because my husband was leaving on a trip, a work trip for Florida the next day. So yeah, so we had a really— and connected to what? Corcyone on the other side. First of all, the phone calls stopped after that. But that, to me, was meant to, for me, to really understand the intricacy and the connection, that the intricacy that, that the universe has to play things out, all those things that had to happen. All those things. Wasn't just a regular reading. My— I had to buy the tickets. My sister-in-law had to tell us the story a week before. My daughter had to back out. Those people had to buy tickets. He had to feel the pull on both sides. The Corcione that she said had no connection to this Corcione here, just the same last name. You know, so the, the, the, the, the level of detail, the spiderweb that came together to just give me an evidential reading or give us an evidential reading, like the surface of it is the evidential reading, which to many people would be amazing in and of itself, right? But to me, it was— this was part— in my mind, it was part of my learning experience, because it wasn't just an evidential reading. It was understand that the universe is far more intricate and complicated than you appreciate on the surface. That's what the message was for me.

Right.

And I was, I was blown away, because I was like, I thought I was getting it. You know, and I was like, you know, something. This is, this is them saying to me, yeah, you've got it. But you're never going to be able to on Earth, your brain, your little pea brain is never going to be able to really understand the web of the universe. That's what that meant to me.

Yeah, I 100% agree. And I want to say there's so many great stories in your book, we're not going to be able to go through them. And I want people to get the book. But I— there, there, that was, that was one. And I've been in readings like that. I've been to demonstration readings at a comedy club here locally. And the medium, it's interesting that the connections between the people in the audience, she'll say one thing and 2 or 3 people will take it. And I've seen this in a lot of mediums, they call it piggybacking. And it's like they, they draw in people that have similar stories and people that similar things. And again, for someone like you and I, we're trying to figure out, okay, well, how does this work? It's, it just blows your mind. You can't get your head around it.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. But you're right also, the universe pulls the right people together. So at Forever Family Foundation, we hold 4 very intensive grief retreats annually, weekend experiences, and they go from Friday to Sunday. And we have mediums and we have psychologists on board. So, and just authors, and very, it's very informative. And people get readings. And we limit it to about 50, 55 people so that It's a great, great, great experience. And I marvel at it. Because I can see the universe brings people in who have similarities. It's like, like one grief retreat, and 40% of the people lost sons who are between 25 and 32 years old. It's like, really? And then another grief retreat. And it's the— it's couples, mostly couples who've lost children between 5 and 15 years old. That's interesting. And then it's another one, and it's maybe 30% of the women who lost their husbands, you know, so it's like the universe works it out. And then they connect with each other, they have each other in after the retreat, you know, they exchange contact information, they're from all over the world, right? And exchange contact. But I marvel at it, because I'm like, the universe does its thing. Yeah, does what it has to do.

It absolutely does. So for you, you know, so you first you get it back, okay, there is an afterlife, we go on. And then as you said, okay, so what does that mean? So what does it mean to you? What is it? Because obviously, you're very passionate about this now.

So what, so what it means to me is that what we're, what I've learned is that what we're what we are here is a teeny, teeny sliver of our soul's path and soul's existence. And we are intentionally born with these sort of dunce caps on, like little blinders, intentionally by design, so that we think— I mean, ego has a negative connotation, but ego, it's like we can relate to only what we can relate to. And so we become very— I don't want to say egotistical, but very self-centered in our earthly life. Because if we really understood here on Earth, all that we're part of, we would be extremely distracted. And chances are we wouldn't finish what we came here to do. We all come here with a purpose, or maybe several little purposes, maybe a big purpose, whatever. But we all come here with some mission or missions. And if we were really knowledgeable about what we're part of, we'd be so distracted, we wouldn't really get our, get our job done is really what it comes down to. So we're intentionally born with these blinders on. So in terms of what I learned, once I understood that, is that when, when I really feel that something on Earth is getting a little bit difficult or intense, or you know, getting frustrated with something, I have to force myself to just take— get the blinders off and understand that this is just, you know, my earthly life is a blip. It feels like it's everything, but it's really a blip of my life. So this little instance that I'm going through right now is really a blip. I just got to get past it, you know. So that's how it's changed me. It's basically allowed me the ability to change my perception about what I have going on. About what I have going on at times.

Yeah, I think that's extremely important. It's that— and it's interesting, you said we were born with blinders on, but I remember in the book, you tell a story about your daughter and her grandmother coming to her when she was young. Yeah, so, um, or your grandmother, I guess it was.

Yeah, my grandmother. Yeah, she had never met her. So you're right, when I say born with, um, blinders on, it also— you're right, in the, in the beginning, first like maybe 5 or 6 years, the spiritual blinders are, are not really that intense as they are. Start understanding that we have to physically grow. But yeah, what happened was, I mean, I did not understand. My daughter was only 2, and I, at that point, I did not understand anything about the afterlife. But she started singing this song. She would sing a lot of songs, but this one song in particular, she would repeat it. This was a song: I come to Falsanella, remember my soul. I come to Falsanella, remember my soul. So, you know, it was just that. And I thought it was interesting because my grandmother's maiden name was Falsanelli. Now it was her maiden— it wasn't any names in our family now, but grandma's maiden name. And I was like, that's sort of weird, Falcinelli, Falcinella. But I didn't think anything of it. But she sang it for months and months. And so after months and months of me not recognizing where the song came from, and her singing it repeatedly, she was like 2 and change. And I said to her, where did that song come from? Where did that song come from? And she said, "Grandma taught it to me." I said, "Which grandma?" She said, "Grandma Rita, that's my mother, not my grandma." And I was like, "Okay." So Christmas time comes and we were with the family and I was like, "Diana, sing the song for Grandma." And so she sings a song. "I come to Falsanella, remember me so." She sings a song. And I said to my mother, "Did you teach her that?" And she said, "No." And so I looked at Diana, my daughter, And I said, "Grandma Rita taught you that song?" And then she got all confused. She's 2 and change, like maybe going on 3 in a couple of months. She got all confused and she was like, "No, not that grandma. It was Grandma Lucille." That's my mother-in-law, not my grandmother. And so I was like, "Okay." So then like maybe another couple months go by, she turns 3, she's still singing the song. My mother-in-law's over, maybe like Easter time or something. And I said, "Nia Tanya, sing the song for Grandma Lucille." I come to Falsanella, remember, I'm like, to sing the song again. I turned to my mother-in-law and I'm like, did you teach her that song? And she said no. So I turned to my daughter again and I said, did Grandma Lucille tell you that song? And she gets— now she's getting like frustrated and she's like, no, no, it's not that grandma. It's the grandma who puts me to sleep at night. So I was like, okay, didn't ask one more question because I was like, I don't even understand this. Don't want— like, what? What? Because I'm thinking, "Falsanelli, the grandma puts you to sleep at night." I put her to sleep at night. Nobody— I'm like, right? I don't even— I don't— like, what? And I didn't think about that again until 2000. So that would have been 1995. I didn't think about it again until 2006, when my mother-in-law died. And then I was thinking, once I started understanding the afterlife, I was like, oh my God, I come to Falsanella, remember my soul. I think it's, um, Grandma Falsanelli, remember my soul. I think that's what that was. And I just, yeah, that was cool.

I love that. I love that for so many reasons. Because I do, we are, we do have a veil when we come in. But I think the veil is thin when we're little. And as right about the time we're becoming verbal, is when it seems to kind of firm up. So if we can catch kids, you know, when they're 2, 3, 4, 5, that's when they have sometimes pre-birth memories. They'll talk about past lives. They'll say, when I was big, you know, things like that. And, you know, it's, it's, it sounds to me like your grandmother was, was visiting her. And the universe is, you're, they're setting you up even though you had no idea at the time. They're setting you up for 10 years later, this is going to mean something to you.

Yeah, absolutely. You're absolutely right, because it's interesting. Um, after I wrote the book, my— one of my girlfriends said to me, um, your mother-in-law must have been such a strong woman. And I was like, well, she was strong, but I don't know that she's so much stronger than all of us or anybody. And she said, oh, you guys must have been so close then. And I was like, we were, we were close family, I love her, but I don't know that we were that much more close than anybody else. And she was like, well, why'd she choose you to come through to? And I was like, I don't know. And then about an hour later, she came back and she goes, I figured it out. I said, why? And she goes, because you're an accountant. She knew if she could prove it to you, you'd write a book and put it out there for everybody. Because, you know, and I was like, that's true. I think I was being set up back then to weave all of this together and get my book out because I, I will say from myself, first of all, I'm not a reader. I love numbers. Like you said, you're an engineer. I love numbers. I love Excel. I don't even like to read that much. I like magazine articles, quick things. So I can't even believe I wrote a book. I can't believe it. Like, I read it and I'm like, wow, it's a great book.

I wrote it.

But basically, I took a massive amount of evidence on an elusive, very elusive topic. And I skinnied it down so that people can get through it.

Yeah.

And that's— and I think that that's a benefit. So I think my friend is right. I think the universe was like setting me up to put something out there. And the interesting thing is, when I— after I wrote it, I was like, oh, thank goodness it's done. Because I, I knew I had to write it. I knew I had to put it out there. But I didn't want to have to do it, you know, like, whatever, like lazy, whatever. And so So once I put it out there, I was like, I don't know if this is going to help one person, 100 people, 1,000, I don't know. But I put it up on my social media, you know, hey, I wrote a book. And about 3 weeks later, a— and the first one, by the way, was printed on my mother-in-law's birthday. So that's the way the universe works. But anyway, now I understand that. But this woman from the other side of the country, the state of Washington, found me on Facebook and instant messaged me and said, I just want to thank you for writing your book. My 23-year-old son died 4 years ago, and I've been struggling with, you know, with the fact that he died. I've been reading so much, and it's hard for me to understand the books. They don't all relate to me. And you had things in your book that made me think about it in extreme— in a very different way. I just want to thank you for taking the time to write it. And I was like, oh, I'm done. Like, I knew it was gonna help someone. And now it's helped other people besides that too. But I was like, to me, that was the reason I wrote it for her. You know, I never would have come across her path.

Right.

And so I was like, wow, I think the universe did what it had to do. You know?

Yeah. Well, you know, as you said, we all, we all have a reason or various reasons for being here. And I think not I think, I know that, you know, we think of the universe as like a cold, uncaring place, or some people think of it as even almost, you know, adversarial. It's actually working in our favor. Our guides and our loved ones on the other side, they're all orchestrating stuff. And even the things that we don't think that we like, even things that we don't feel are for our own good, I believe more of it is planned than is not planned. And you— it's the great thing about your book is, is it condenses that down, as you said, and makes it a very— so we can see the threads weaving through your life. We don't see the, you know, all the other years of your life. We see the thread that weaves through it, and it's very apparent.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I think that that's the whole, like, that whole theory of relativity, right? We can only relate to what we can relate to. So we relate to things on Earth the way they happen. And when something is extremely negative, it just seems like it's, it's negative. How could it possibly be positive? And you're right, I believe that more times than not, maybe not all the time, but more times than not, the universe is really working for us. And something that we're getting that is a burden is actually a gift, because it's intentional to stretch our soul. And it's really not about this side, it's about the other side. And the more our souls— the more we can fast-track our— the stretching of our soul, which, which we can only fast-track over here because the other side really is very positive and warm and light and just great things. And sometimes it really takes adverse kinds of things to really stretch your soul to grow. So we sort of come to Earth to fast-track that stretching and, you know, grow as much as we can. And when we head back, I think our loved ones are really ready to say, high five, you did it, you did a great job, even getting through my death, or turning my death into something positive for somebody else.

Right?

They're really happy for us. I want to say proud, but happy for us. Because when we go back there, will be able to say, hey, I, you know, my soul stretched more than I thought it did, because of this negative thing I went through. But it just feels really negative over here.

Yeah, it does. So how do you feel people, when we're on the other side, view our grief over their passing?

So I have a great example in the book that I do love to say, because in the 4 years that I did the research, and before the 4 years I wrote it, for the year that I wrote it, it was a good number of 4 or 5 years where I was put— the universe would put me in the path of somebody who's going through something, and I would use an anecdote or a story to help get my point across. And so those are the things I put in the book. So my example of how they view us is everybody can— I think something everybody can relate to— everybody can see in their mind a picture of a child, 3, 4, 5-year-old child, totally melting down over something, a toy or a candy bar or something that they absolutely, absolutely want, whether it's your own kid or your niece, nephew, somebody in the store, you can all see it. I mean, it's absolute anguish and the kid is screaming, I want this candy bar. I want this candy bar. I need it for breakfast. And let's say you're the parent and you're like, I'm not going to give the kid a candy bar for breakfast. And you as a parent have a different view of what's going on. So this kid, he is devastated, devastated, crying and screaming. He wants this candy bar. He can't see past it. You as an adult are like, you know something? This candy bar means nothing. He's going to have a million candy bars in his whole life. He's going to grow up. He's going to fall in and out of love. Maybe I'll give him the candy bar, you know, in the afternoon. He's going to probably contribute to society. He's going to go through the loss of loved ones. This candy bar means nothing. But you look at the kid and you feel badly, empathize, because he's screaming like it means everything. And that's how the other side's looking at us. We're screaming and screaming and devastated and crying because it's so gut-wrenching, gut-wrenching, that, you know, their death is so difficult for us. But to them, they have a— they don't see everything, but they have a wider perception, and they feel really badly for us because they don't want to see us you know, on the floor crying and so distraught. They feel badly for us, but they have a bigger perception, a bigger, different perception. And they're just like, it really doesn't mean as much as you think it means.

Yeah, I think that's a great analogy. And that's one that I've used also. Because I— because as, as we start to realize more, we realize how much we don't know. And so as hard as it is to say it as an adult, to say that I'm basically a toddler, we basically are. You know, we don't have any idea. And I think sometimes like those demonstrations with John Edwards, it's to show, look, you don't even know. You don't even know how intricate this whole thing is, you know? And like you said, you don't— if you sit down, you do the math. Okay, well, I had to buy the tickets and I had to see it was coming up and my daughter had to decide not to go, and I had to invite my sister-in-law. And, you know, all the things that, you know, the odds of those things happening, they're infinitesimal. They can't happen by chance, right?

Exactly. And that, that's the end. You're absolutely right. The universe is so intricate, and it is to a large extent designed so. Not to say everything's fate and you have no free will and option to change and maneuver things the way you have to. But there are, I believe there are certain goalposts in your life, in your path here that really don't change that much. So, or very difficult to change. So you're going to hit certain points, like I think I was meant to understand the afterlife, however long it took them to open my eyes to it. I was meant to understand it. And once I understood it, I couldn't not understand it. It was like, wow. So it's that Maya Angelou's saying, which I love, which is, do your best until you know better. And then when you know better, do better.

Yeah.

And so, you know, I don't feel badly about things that I may have wished I now I would have done differently before I had my eyes opened. But now that I have my eyes opened, it's just a new world. So yeah, yeah.

And you know, what you said about the universe being designed, that's something I still struggle with. Because again, from our human perspective, it has to be one or the other. Either it's all predestined, and it's, it's like clockwork, or it's all willy-nilly, you know, random chance. And I don't know, there's a movie I love called The Adjustment Bureau. And they, they wrestle with this question. I think they do a really good job because there are these agents agents, and they're running around and no humans are running out with their free will. And the agents are looking at the probabilities, they actually have little books, and they look in the book and they're like, this is the path he's on, need to get him off that path. So make him miss the bus. So it does, it does a really good job of saying it's, it's both, right? The universe is working with us. But we do have free will. And I think we do, we have plans when we come in. But they're not guaranteed, there is some amount of of free will and randomness, I guess, if you want to say in it.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think it's a combination of both, which makes it very difficult for us to understand as, as humans and appreciate. So, so I think that at the end of the day, you can't— since you can't totally understand whether what you're doing is part of a design or not, I think the safe bet is to move forward in kindness, because if you're moving forward in kindness, you're going toward your goal. So I think that's the— and I also, if you can help people whenever you can, I learned that when I put the book out. I didn't know, you know, I was in— I'm an accountant. I still am. But accountants are very, you know, like worker bees. I like— I love working and, you know, And so I wasn't always a big sharer of things, like sharing experiences and stuff. But when I put the book out, I mean, that was a big thing for me because I was like, well, here goes. I'm sharing, you know, like, really the inside. And so inside of my thoughts and feelings. So I put it out there and I was really honored to be interviewed by a great host, hostess early on, Sandra Champlain. And she said to me before the interview, don't hold back, share things. People have a tendency when they put a book out or something to say, well, I'm not going to say too much because I want people to buy the book. But I wasn't— I'm not even, you know, it's not like if you don't buy the book, you don't buy the book. It's okay. Yeah, I have a good job. It's not like, you know, I just want— if you— if the book speaks to you, then you buy it. If you don't buy it, you know. And so I was— that when she said that, that resonated with me because I would be more comfortable sharing whatever I can. Instead of not sharing. So since I was going to be interviewed, so that was very early on. And that was a great something I learned. And ever since then, I'm like, I'll just share with anybody who wants to hear my story or anything about the afterlife. Because I think the more of us who understand it and know it, the better off we are as a universe.

Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And once you start to understand this, then you don't really have any choice but to share because you realize we're all connected. And we're all— every, every time I do something for somebody else, I'm doing it, I'm doing it for myself as well. And for people that don't know, have never written a book, most people that write books don't get, don't get rich from the books. People that, you know, go on podcasts and do this stuff, you, you do it because you want to share. You do it because you— it's like I said to people, like, if you go to a great restaurant, or you, or you watch a great movie, you want to tell people about it. You're like, you know, I can't wait to get on Facebook and tell somebody. You got to watch this movie. You know, you've got to, you've got to eat at this restaurant. And like you and I, we talked about it on the air, but also before we started talking, you know, we're both like, we have to do this. We have to, we have to tell people this. Why isn't everybody doing this?

You—

it's like when people have near-death experiences, they, they, they're like, I have to tell people. And so I feel like, you know, the universe has said, okay, right, it's time. It's time for you to get this message out to help, to help wake everybody else up.

And I think there is a shift, you know, for better or for worse, because people have said that some of the medium shows that are on TV are a little bit negative. Oh, they're too full of themselves, or this or that. And, you know, it's a television show or movie, so they're going to cut out all the misses because they don't want to have a television show where people are missing things. So in— and then reality, when you go to a medium, maybe, you know, 70 or 80% are hits and 20% are misses. And so yeah, it may not be— the TV or media may not be as reflective of real life. But having said that, it has put the afterlife and kinds of tele— metaphysical discussions out there in the mainstream.. And so you see more and more of that. So I think the universe has actually in the last 10 years shifted. I also think COVID's helped with that. I know, I know COVID has, you know, it's very bad connotation. But I think that, I think that when you come into the world, into Earth, you choose 3 things. You choose your purpose, You choose how you're going to head back. So, you know, quick death in my 50s, drawn out in my 70s, whatever. And you pick your upbringing, your parents or your family. So those are the 3 kind of goalposts that you pick when you come in. And when COVID was happening, and my parents died not of COVID but at the end of COVID my parents are 90 and 92, they died within 2 weeks of each other.

Oh, wow.

That's a whole other story. Yeah, good story. But when I looked at COVID and you looked at the millions of people who died and the 60, 80% are over 85 years old. And not that the way they died was okay because many of them had to die alone because people couldn't be with them because that was very difficult. But if I'm going to check a box on the way in, I might check 85 years old, live until I die, die quickly. I might check that box.

Yeah.

So it was a— and to me, like September 11th, the souls that died with COVID with COVID were banded together intentionally before they came here to shake the universe, spirituality, to make us shelter at home and understand the importance also to show how connected we are. I mean, we think we're not connected. The world got COVID like this. People on the other side of the universe got COVID, and all of a sudden, oh, we all have COVID. So we're not connected? You couldn't get more connected than that.

I think that was one of the biggest lessons of that, you know, because we're watching it in China, and then we're watching it, and then we're saying, well, we're going to shut down, we're going to close the borders, you know, and It's just not— yeah, you can't— it's just, you're right. We knew we had a connected world as far as the internet stuff goes. But we were still thinking things that happen on the other side of the world don't affect me. And that's— that was a huge lesson for us.

Huge lesson. So yeah, we watched China, then Italy, then us, like boom, boom, boom, United States. It was, you know, so to me that it showed how connected— so those, those souls on the other side, say, you know something, I'm going to head over there. You know, I'd like to— I'll take the COVID box, the 80 over 85, live till I die, go quickly and raise the understanding of the universe that number one, we're connected. Number two, the importance of a smile. You know, the mask, everybody had to wear a mask.

Right.

Also hugging. In the beginning, you couldn't hug. You had the people in spacesuits to hug their grandparents, you know, so the value of touch. Right. They really— and then they forced everybody into their homes. COVID forced everybody into their homes for a while. So you had to be with yourself and make sure you worked out any, you know, relationships with close people. You had to— yeah, there were a lot of learning lessons, positive learning lessons in that negative, negative situation. So I forgot how we got to COVID.

But in terms of all being connected, you know, the connectedness of the universe, the design of it, and I, you know, I would even go so far to say, you know, we view death as, as the end, we view death as a failure. So people would say, well, September 11, why do all those people have to die at the same time? Well, what if it was their plan? Because what we know that we all are going to go back that way, we all We know— you and I know where we came from. We know where we're going. And so sometimes these things can wake us up to that because it's realizing that, you know, this is inevitable for all of us. We spend so much of our times denying our mortality, which we're not mortal, but the mortality of our bodies.

Yeah, that's true. And it's very difficult because there— as rough as life is here, It's all— we're born intentionally with these blinders on. So it's always sort of no, and all we can relate to, right? And we don't really want to die. So nobody, you know, doesn't— people don't want to die. So because there are great things about being on Earth, too, including being able to hug your loved ones. So, you know, it's a, it's a tough situation. But my understanding is that even though you fight it till the very end, that in the, in the moments that you die, It's like being pried out of a cramped, hot, sticky shoebox into the Ritz-Carlton.

Yeah, yeah. You said something in the book, and I haven't heard too many people express this. You talked about— we have children. I have two children, one child in spirit, and I have one child that's still here in the physical. And I realized you grieve your children even when they don't pass away, because you grieve that 3-year-old or that 4-year-old that you're not going to get to hug anymore. It's like And I realized that when my girls started, you know, growing up. And I remember Shayna— Shayna was 15 when she passed. When she was like 10 or 12, she said, "I don't want to grow up." And I was like, "I don't want you to grow up," because I want her to always be a kid.

No, I used to say that to my kids too. "Come on, I got to fit you in my pocket. You can't keep growing. I'm gonna have to sit on you so you stay small so I can keep you in my pocket." But, um, but yeah, absolutely. And, you know, you get— you can get lost in that grief of what you had in the past, whether it's the kids being smaller, or I used to weigh less, or I used to be able to run track and now I can't. And you can, you can actually get so sick and tired and lost in that grief of what you used to have. And the only thing that typically pulls you out is, well, you know, something I can If someone's alive, I can see them tomorrow, and it's not going to be the same, but I'll be able to see them. I'll be able to hug them. Well, you know, I know I can't run the track anymore, but at least I know I can walk the track. Something will pull you out. And then when you have the grief of really somebody being in spirit, it's harder to pull out because you don't have the thing to pull you through it. The grief itself is very similar. The next grief is very similar, right? Grief is— it's love with nowhere to go, right? So it's basically, I want what I used to have, right? That's what it is.

Right.

And that's impossible. It's impossible to get— it's very difficult, not impossible, very difficult to pull out of that completely. You almost have to compartmentalize it in your brain and carry and acknowledge the pit in your heart. And carry on with your day.

You know, well, you know, what pulls me out is, is the work that you're doing with Forever Family Foundation. And the fact, like, for example, you know, your mother-in-law is still here, you know, she's still connected to your life, you know, she's still part of your life. And I, for me, it's like, I want my 3-year-old daughter again. But I also know I'm going to see my daughter again on the other end, right? So that, that the— to me that that insurmountable grief is the grief of like, never again. And it's not never again, it's just not in this body.

That's true. I say this, like two levels, two types of grief, right? There are the— there's the grief where people think you don't go on, right? And that is like so difficult for people to get out of, like, right, difficult. And then there's a grief where I know you go on, but I'm never going to have what I had before. Right, easier to get out of that grief on a day-to-day basis.

Right, right.

Because, you know, you'll see them again. And you just know it's— I'm not going to have what I had before. And actually, I don't have anything I had before. Like nothing I had before. I have, like, nothing. But, you know, but there's that too. And I've seen both, especially with the, the Forever Family Foundation. You see people who just, they have that, they're just really skeptical that life goes on. And right, you know, they think when you're dead, you're dead. And which is what I used to think. And it's very difficult. And they just hang on to other people's stories, but they haven't— they don't really incorporate it because they haven't seen something themselves. And then they have— then there are the people that matter of fact, I know, I know you go on. I'm not gonna have what I used to have, you know.

So I'm learning a lot about that, too. I want to save that for another conversation. But What I'm understanding is everything— our memories are actually perfect. We just can't recall them with this brain. And so when we, when we go back to the other side, it could be like a holodeck. So we can actually relive things we've had before. And I have a friend who's a medium who's told me that he's like, anything, you're not missing anything with Shane, and you'll be able to do anything you want to do with her. So that sounds really cool to me.

Yeah, for sure. I think the other side is from what I've seen from medium readings and, and being able to pick the brain of mediums too, is that the other side is really all about what you want and your intentions and positive and light. There's not the adversity on the other side that we have here.

Yeah.

So your growth is more about meditating and music and, and love. And here, we've got one additional thing. And that's adversity.

Right?

Right. That complicates things.

Yeah. Well, that's, that's, I think that's what we come here for. We come here for the diversity. And it's, and it's, it's, as you and I were saying, it's a very short time. It's, it's everything when we're here, but it's nothing when we're on the other side.

Yeah, I have that. Also another thing in my book, but it was something that helped me because people say, oh, I don't understand how time works. I have a saying, time is a man-made thing. There's no such thing as time on the other side. But really, again, Einstein's theory of relativity, you can only relate to what you can relate to. And what I tell people is one year when you're one year old is 100% of what you can relate to.

Right.

100% of your life. One year at 10 years old is 10% of your life. One year at 50 years old is 2% of your life. So now if you— and what I tell people who are math people is, let's say each year is a crayon, put a crayon on the box each year. Now you're 100 years old, you have 100 crayons. And if you pull any crayon out, that crayon is still a crayon, right? A crayon. But now it's 1 out of 100, 1 out of 50. Now let's say that your soul is a million years old, right? Million crayons in that box. You take one crayon out, one crayon is still one crayon, but it's so— its impact compared to all the million crayons is so infinitesimal, right?

Exactly.

That it means nothing. So that's why it's the illusion, or the discussion is there's time— there's no time on the other side. I think there is time on the other side, but I think it doesn't mean anything.

It's just very different.

Yeah, yeah.

So Well, Annette, we're, we're running over time. But thank you. Thank you for doing this. It's been great talking to you. So tell people, remind people the name of your book and where they can find you.

So I don't know if this will be visually the other way. I don't know. But this is Your Soul Focus. Yeah. And it's— you believe in the afterlife, don't you? My name, Annette Marinaccio. And I also have a website which where I post all my interviews. And, um, and where you can sort of go to buy the book. I think it's, uh, it's at Amazon and Barnes Noble. So, uh, yeah, and Your Soul Focus, Your Soul Focus, lots of O's and U's.

Yeah, well, I, I, again, thank you, thank you for listening to the universe and for writing the book. Thank you for being here today, and, uh, enjoy the rest of your day.

Yeah, thank you, Brian D Smith. It was an absolute pleasure. Thank you.

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