Episode 24: Becoming Boundless: Grief, Creativity & the Power of Awe with Kathy Eldon

Welcome to Super Connections. I am your host, Jennifer K. Hill, helping you with the Golden Triangle of Connection, where you will super connect to yourself, others, and your purpose. Join me each week as I will share from some of my favorite tips and tools for super connecting, and I'll bring in some of my favorite friends and thought leaders To help support you on your journey to super connecting to the life of your dreams. Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Super Connections Podcast. I'm Jennifer Cahill, and I'm so delighted to bring to you a new dear friend, soul sister, award-winning filmmaker Kathy Eldon. We'll be talking today a little bit about her new book, Boundless, And how in these times that we find ourselves in that are giving us greater opportunities than we've ever had before as human beings and as humanity, how do we learn to become boundless? Not only has she written this book, she's an author, a filmmaker, founder of Creative Visions, a global hub for creative activism that has sparked over 400 projects. And reached more than 100 million people. After the death of her son, Reuters photojournalist Dan Eldon, Kathy transformed her grief into a worldwide movement to empower changemakers through art, media, and storytelling. She has authored 18 books and produced Emmy-nominated and OWN-featured documentaries, spoken on Oprah's network, on CNN, and on TED stages. Her life's work reflects a passionate belief that even our deepest wounds can become sources of world-shifting wisdom. Thank you so much, Kathy. I'm so happy to know you, to be with you, and to get to share your wisdom with the world.

Delighted to be here. Thank you. An honor.

Yeah. So Kathy, let's talk about this. When we talk about this idea of superconnecting, I think a lot of us disconnect when we experience grief, when we experience loss or heartache. In fact, somebody is coming to my mind right now who I was with at a dinner thing in New York last night, whose daughter lost her husband suddenly at 30 years old and just completely shifted. And she has 2 young children. How do we move past this grief, this hurt, this heartache, whether it's the loss of a loved one, a job, an identity, how can we reconnect, superconnect, and in your words, become boundless?

Oh, it's very personal right now. My grandson, with whom we're staying following the fires in Malibu, was walking home 2 nights ago and there was a drunk driver who killed a gorgeous young man who was steps behind him. And I'm Plunged back to that pain of the family, of the community, of my beautiful grandson who was there as a witness. And I'm reminded that often now, after many years since my son was murdered— By a mob. Together with 3 other young men, I remember the true horror of that raw grief. Because I'm far away from that raw grief, and that's where I can give people hope that you can get through it and come out the other end. Right now, I think the family feels they will never find joy again. They will never find meaning or purpose in their lives again because of the loss of this beautiful 19-year-old spirit. And I'm here to say, yes, you will go through that profundity of grief. And I'm going to use Grief for more than specifically the loss of a loved one. That is perhaps the most profound and horrifying thing that we can go through, and in particular, the untimely death of someone we love. But grief is also, I think we're going through a lot of grief now as individuals and as a collective. of grief for what was. There's a climate grief. A friend of mine is specializing in climate grief. And there is grief for simply what was. There's grief for jobs lost and for relationships with that we trusted. So I'm going to expand grief beyond just loss of those we love and to say that grief is a very powerful force. And you need to go through grief. A friend of mine was the president of the Elizabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross developed the 5 stages of grief, and we probably go through those over and over again and not in a chronological order. You need to do that. Absolutely need to do that. And then for me, it was critical to take that grieving energy, which I swear would have killed me off. And to try to turn it into a force for good. So that's the beginning.

Yeah, it's funny, you remind me of a dear friend of mine who is a prolific entrepreneur and has created thousands and thousands of things as part of her company and her existential crisis and depression. And when I asked her, tell me about your journey, she said, I had to create, otherwise it would destroy me. And so how can we still super connect in some way To ourselves or to even the people in our lives when we feel this crushing sense of loneliness? So many people are going through this right now, Kathy, this loneliness, this grief. What did you do and how did you pull yourself out of that dark night of the soul to where you are now, helping 100 million people around the world?

And very rapidly to say that our projects and productions, our global youth empowerment, those are the things that are reaching all those people. And I was a spark. Dan was my spark, and then I've been a spark, and then all those other sparks light other sparks. So that it's certainly not me standing there inspiring 190. I'd love to, but— and you do. But I think honestly that there's— when Dan was little, we moved to Kenya and we had a record player, stereo, it was called a stereo, and we had about 3 or 4 records. And one of the records was The King and I, and on that record is a song called Make Believe You're Brave. Mm-hmm. We must have listened to it 100 times because we didn't have anything else to listen to. And when my son was a young Reuters photojournalist in Somalia, there was a terrible sort of mortar was flying and it was really scary. And he stood beneath a plane wing with a young journalist who was like, he was 21 and she might have been 23 and she was terrified. And he taught her the song Make Believe You're Brave. And it's make believe you're brave and the trip will take you far. You may be as brave as you make believe you are. And she told that story at his memorial service. So I would say that at times we have to make believe that we're braver than we are. We have to put on not a happy face necessarily, but have to just get out there and do. Now that's really difficult. And I'm again speaking from immense Current experience where that family is somehow managing to get up and turn up for what is absolutely excruciating. I think the sense of connection for me, I believe if we're going to talk about energy of those who have gone before us, I actually believe in spirit energy. And I, this new book that you mentioned, I attribute this to my noisy spirits. And in this book, which is called A Roadmap for a Limitless Future. I have a poem that is written as though it were a year after Dan was killed, and I was still in profound grief, although I was doing a lot around Journalists at Risk. For me, early on, the way I could transform that anger, rage, shock, bewilderment, horror of what had happened, murder of 4 young men, was to roll up sleeves and say, okay, I'm going to tell the stories of these young journalists. And everybody's going to know the sacrifices that journalists make. That was right away after Dan was killed. And I tell another story, which is now, where I say, I know he went to some distant shore, but why is it that I feel that he's around me all the time? And for me, the feeling of energy, of— I say spirit energy, the belief that energy surrounds us and that we can tap into that energy. We can listen inside and perhaps hear that wisdom. You can call it intuition, you can call it muses, you can call it higher consciousness, call it whatever you will. But I really believe we can listen inside. And you, Jennifer, you started this entire conversation before we even got going with an intuitive moment.

Yeah, I was sharing with Kathy before we hopped on here that every morning, one of my practices, I don't believe I've shared this on this show yet, Is to ask a set of questions to higher self, God, source, the universe, whatever you want to call, whatever you consider your inner guidance. And every day I ask these questions, and then I ask questions that are verifiable. Will all my meetings happen? Will it rain? Will my flight be on time? All these simple little things. And then I'm consistently and constantly validating the accuracy. So if I hear like Kathy and I and one of her team members were talking about. meeting together in Lisbon for a party. I said, oh, first I have to meditate on it and see which day is best. And if we do this, then we tend to have guidance and we tend to be met with less resistance. I think whether or not you even ask, like some of you out there might not believe in a higher self or a higher source, and that's okay too. Whatever, wherever you're at is totally okay. And I will say that even the act of pausing before we make a choice or before we commit to something and just give ourselves a moment to reflect, whether you consider yourself to be connected to any sort of higher source or wisdom, the act of pausing will transform your life before you make a choice. Because so many of us react to circumstances, people, things, and then that causes us and them pain.

I love listening to you, Jennifer Hill.

Thank you, Kathy. I feel the same about you, my friend. I feel like we're all just playing and dancing in this Yes. And the more we see it as a dance— I will give you a great example of this. I had a flight get canceled the other day, and the funniest thing happened, but even that worked out well. The other day, I had a dinner I was supposed to have in New York on the night I was supposed to arrive, and I was in— where was I? Palm Beach with a client and friend. And I am sitting on her couch, and my flight is supposed to be at 1:30 the next day on United. And all of a sudden, 8, 9 o'clock at night, we are about to sit down for dinner, it says, your flight has been canceled. And then they put me on a later flight, and I would have missed this dinner meeting I had booked in New York. So I was like, okay, what do I do? And then I wound up getting on a 7 AM flight instead, and it actually turned out to be even more miraculous than if I had gotten on the original flight because I got to see 2 friends I would have never gotten to see otherwise because they were both heading out of town if that hadn't happened. So before we react and get angry, frustrated, mad, judgmental, blaming, Can we ask, how is this happening for us, not to us? And I think that's a lot of what you're talking about too, Kathy, is when we go through a loss of any sort in our life, we tend to want to blame or project out of this person, the government, this person did this to me. But could we instead go within, super connect to ourselves and say, why am I allowing this to trigger me? What is this bringing up that I have an opportunity to witness and to pause and reflect upon before I send that angry email back, before I— say or do the thing that I didn't wanna do.

The, and I don't know whether it's Mandarin or what, but the Chinese character for crisis holds within it the great opportunity, the 2 symbols for great opportunity. And I feel like that's go. And the, I think in this crisis that we're going through right now, there are great opportunities for transformation. And what you were talking about earlier is often described as flow, by the way, as, as that this sense that It's all happening. It may not be happening for our betterment, but we can perceive it that way and in so doing, try to make it that way. So you go into flow mode and you think, okay, pivot. 7:00 AM, you probably sat next to somebody amazing. Maybe you did or maybe you didn't. But this opportunity in crisis and this concept of flow is transformative in our lives for sure. Yeah. I wish A lot of people around me would do more of that, like husbands, but I haven't seemed to be able to convince them. We'll get there, maybe.

Yeah, we're all here to learn from each other. So on that note, Kathy, I know we're about to wrap here. We always just want to give people short little bite-sized pieces, whether you're walking in between meetings or catching a quick Uber somewhere, just little bite-sized pieces of wisdom to super connect to yourself, others, and your purpose. Before we tell people where to get the book and where to find you and connect, Do you have any last words of wisdom or a little takeaway that you wanna share with our audience?

For today, I would say go for awe and wonder. Remind ourselves of that which is around us, and we can go so quickly that we forget. But just maybe today, just find something that makes you feel awe-filled, not awful, but awe-filled and wonderful, full of wonder. I don't know, it just came to me, so I'm gonna try it myself.

Yeah, I love it. On that note, Kathy, I write down my miracles every day. Years ago, I was sharing an evening practice I had with this brilliant genius-level guy, and he says, I'm going to add— ask that you add one more thing. Every night I write down before I go to bed, how could I have lived today better? What am I proud of myself for that maybe nobody else has shared? And what are a few things I'm grateful for? And this entrepreneurial friend of mine and scientist said, why don't you also write down the moments of awe, miracles, and synchronicity and wonder every day? And now every day I write down miracles, I taught a whole class for a year called Miracle Making, and people had wild results raising $2 million for charities, writing bestselling books. And it all begins with just putting that, putting the filter on of looking for the awe. So Kathy, where can people connect with you and find the book?

Oh, thank you. KathyEldon.com is very simple. CreativeVisions.org, you're going to find out what it is to be a creative activist in the world. And we all are. We all have a creative spark that we can use not only for ourselves but others. And the book, little funny little book, is on Amazon. It will be, it will be, but when this comes out, Amazon, it's called Boundless: A Roadmap for a Limitless Future. Thank you very much.

Beautiful, Kathy. And for anybody who wants to hear other wisdom that I share, I also invite you to, you can follow the YouTube channel where you'll find all of these videos in case you wanna see the book or see different things that our guests share. You can follow me on @JenniferKHill on YouTube. And you can also catch a weekly newsletter that I write called Inspired Living Tools. So if you Google Inspired Living Tools, it's the first thing that pulls up, and I invite you to subscribe. Every week I write a newsletter that comes out on a Monday with wisdom, and it's real-time problems that clients have come to me with, business partners, and real things that people are struggling with in the world that inspire these weekly articles. So I intend that you have an inspirational week that is filled ahead with awe, wonder, and miracles, and that you have the wisdom to recognize and appreciate all of it around you. Thank you.

Thank you.