Learning to Tell the Story You Thought You Had to Hide

00:00 When grief hits early, it can feel like time stops. For Christina, that moment came when her 13-year-old brother Jay was struck by a car and died. It was an accident he had eerily predicted months before. What followed were years of silence, addiction, and searching for meaning. In our conversation, Christina shares how she found her way back through healing work, writing, reconnecting with the people who knew her brother. It's really a story that reminds us that even decades after loss, 00:29 it's never too late to grieve or to grow. But in the meantime, they had my brother Jay, who was also my best friend. When he was 12, he started telling us that he was going to die young, that it had something to do with the green car, that he would be up above his body watching the paramedics try to bring him back to life, that they wouldn't be able to, that there was nothing we could do. 00:57 So here we are in sort of a dysfunctional environment and but also, you know, totally normal and average and not at all in a context where where I could at least or my mother make sense of someone who's 12 years old going around saying, I'm going to die and I don't know how, but it's going to have something to do with the green car. I'm Maciel Hoolie. 01:26 And this is the Life Shift. Candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever. 01:43 Hi everyone, welcome to the LifeShift Podcast. I am here with Christina. Hello, Christina. Hello, Matt. It's so wonderful to be here with you and with your audience. Well, thank you for wanting to be a part of the LifeShift Podcast. This show is all happenstance for me. This show began as a class assignment in a second master's degree that I took during the pandemic because I was just bored. And... 02:10 This time, I got my MBA when I was like 22, 23, so I was just kind of in this perfectionist route of doing what I thought other people wanted me to do. So this time, I was like, okay, I'm gonna do this one my way and take the classes that scare me, and podcasting was one of them. So this show came out of a podcasting class, and here we are, 220-something episodes later. It's been just such a journey that I never thought I would have. The Life Shift. 02:39 The exists because when I was eight, my parents were divorced. I lived with my mom full time in Massachusetts. My father lived in Georgia. And one day after summer camp, my dad had to pull me into his office and tell me that my mom had been killed in a motorcycle accident. And for me, it was a big shock. I didn't really understand death, the finality of it. But I also understood that nothing that I knew was ever possible again. 03:06 My school that I went to, my friends, my family up in Massachusetts, my house, my bedroom, all the things were gonna be different. And it was because of the time period, nobody was talking about it. The people around me didn't have tools to help me grieve. And so I was like, I guess I have to show everyone that I'm fine and perfect. And behind the scenes, was like, wondering, do other people have like a moment in time in which from one second to the next, everything is different? And so. 03:36 Now I get to talk to people about lots of different life shifts from the external ones like mine, that something that happened kind of to me in a way, and then people that have this fire inside them to make their life shift changes. So it's just been a beautiful journey of just hearing all these stories and finding out really truly that old adage of like, we have a lot more in common than we have that separates us is like so true because. 04:05 We have so many different, like our experiences are wildly different, but the way we react and the way we feel and all those pieces are so very similar. So I'm excited to hear your hard but very important story because I'm sure there are people out there experiencing something similar, unfortunately, and feel like they're the only ones going through it. Yeah, right. That is so common where we feel so isolated with our pain and... 04:32 when you meet people who have been through a similar situation, it makes all the difference in the world. And also the commonality of the way in which people have these really hard things happen, death, and the way that life is so completely different and the way that things freeze. And it's interesting because, well, just to show my book, What My Brother Knew, before we get into it, now that it's out, 05:02 I'm having all these experiences. For instance, I went to my brother's 40th, so he died when he was 13. I went to his 40th high school reunion this weekend and the people who knew my brother, they were all in the space that you're talking about, Kind of frozen in that time. And so to meet me and to be able to hug me and talk to me and tell me their experience of what... 05:30 happened at that time. It was so profound. And I have that happen all the time now, where I get to meet people who knew my brother. But just like you, a big part of what my book is about is realizing that there was a life before my brother died, that he had all these friends and we had friends in common. And because when people die, yeah, blows up your life often, right? 05:59 I pretty much lost every single person that we were connected to because people just, it's like this big explosion that happens in the social fabric. for me, it was 35 years later and I had to be prompted by a guy I met on an airplane who happened to be an English professor because I'd just been at a Natalie Goldberg writing retreat. 06:26 I read him a little snippet that I've written at the retreat. And he's like, well, who else knew your brother? Because he's like, you should write a book about that. And I was like, people keep telling me that. But you know, it's so hard to remember things, blah, blah, blah. He's like, well, who else knew your brother? And he took out a sheet of paper. I said, well, my mom, but she won't talk about it. My stepfather, but he's dead. And he's like, well, who else? And I'm like, I don't know who else, no one. 06:54 But then he got me to start thinking about, oh, well, this person and this person, and he's the one that gave me the list of some people for the first time in 30-odd years that I could talk to that knew my brother. And then from there, I've gotten to connect to maybe 50 or more people since that moment, some of whom are in my book that I interviewed. And each one of them has this exact same experience, right? 07:24 They're literally kind of frozen in that grief. And to go through a process with me about all of this, we get to, you know, bond the two of us and also help both of us have deeper healing. sure. It's just, I mean, it's right there. It's the power of story and how much it could connect us. can give permission to other people to release the things that maybe they were holding in for no reason, but... 07:53 just fear or shame or whatever we're attaching to it or whatever we were taught to attach to it growing up because it's not true in most cases that we should be ashamed of these things. So I'm so glad that you're getting to talk to people about that. by sharing your story in this way, allowing them to share theirs in their way, you're just clearing the space for more people like that ripple effect of 08:22 Now they're probably going to do that for someone else in a different situation. And it just creates more connection. it's kind of what I'm trying to do here on the podcast is talk to people that I otherwise probably never would have talked to in life, right? And never come across and be able to have these real conversations about things that growing up in the 80s and 90s, for me, I just wasn't allowed to talk about certain things. Like there was this condition of society that we just don't. 08:51 We just don't share those. So now I'm just like, here's everything, guys. Let's just go. The deeper, the better. Exactly. For me, for sure. Maybe you can tell us who Christina is in 2025. Like, how do you show up in the world? How do you identify these days? Such good question. So. 09:12 so many ways and I'm a bit of a Renaissance woman, but I own a company, Optimal Health Network, that I started out of a tragedy also that is a global healing company. I got chronically ill when I was in my early thirties and I had to figure out how to get well. And I was struggling to find out through the mainstream medical community. And someone said, you should try colon-nidrotherapy. And so I'm like, what is colon-nidrotherapy? And 09:41 But anyways, I ended up trying colon hydrotherapy and then I ended up opening up a colon hydrotherapy clinic. And then from there opened up my website, Optimal Health Network, where I help people set up in-home enema programs and also diets and supplements. And we do a lot of testing, like hair analysis and hormone testing, things like that. So that's a chunk of it, but I also... 10:09 At 40 years old, I picked up the piano. I'd never had a musical instrument before that. I have three dogs, I have chickens, and I play pickleball. That's one of my great passions nowadays is pickleball. So, and also I try to bring my community together once a month. So I have big once a month house parties where we have a sing-along. have my piano and people play for each other and we sing with each other. 10:36 And then I have a DJ that comes in and we all dance. then around midnight or one, we all get back to the piano and play for each other. So, and I also work for the Center for World Philosophy and Religion. I do a lot of global work around trying to up-level the way we think about spirituality and religion and mysticism. 11:05 What does it take to move humanity forward at this time of great crisis? So that's Christina. So you're kind of bored all the time? Is that what you're saying? Don't have much to do? No, I mean, it sounds like you're doing a lot of meaningful work. And I'm sure a lot of that stems from your own personal experience that when we go through something, we kind of find a little bit more purpose or a little bit more like because we want to help others feel better because we know what it's like to feel like 11:35 garbage in both physical, mental, spiritual, all the places. So it sounds like you're covering the bases. So why don't you paint the picture of the life of Christina leading up to this pivotal moment that we're going to talk about today, the one that you feel really changed you and the trajectory of your life and however much you need to give to give a little context to who you were and what life was like. That'd be beautiful. 12:01 I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin in a very working class, raised poor community. A lot of alcoholism and violence and, you know, but also the greatness of kids go out and play and the parents really aren't that involved. That was a great part of it actually, because uh in the neighborhood I grew up, there was like 30 kids and a marsh right there with a big nature area. And so we got to run around and play a lot. 12:31 And so that's kind of the container, but also my mom and dad divorced when I was one and then she remarried when I was three and then that marriage ended when I was 13. But in the meantime, they had my brother Jay, who was also my best friend. And so when he was 12, he started telling us that he was going to die young, that it had something to do with the green car. 13:00 that he would be up above his body watching the paramedics try to bring him back to life, that they wouldn't be able to, that there was nothing we could do. And he was a happy, outgoing, popular kid. Like everyone I meet now, it's like they say, the one thing about your brother is he was like the kindest kid in class. He was always very kind. So it's been wonderful to hear and reconnect with. 13:27 So here we are in sort of a dysfunctional environment and but also, you know, totally normal and average and not at all in a context where where I could at least or my mother make sense of someone who's 12 years old going around saying I'm going to die and I don't know how, but it's going to have something to do with the green car. uh 13:55 and I just want you all to be prepared. So for a year and a half, he walked around, not constantly, not every day, not all the time, but key moments, he would say, or just random moments, like he's running through the kitchen, from the TV room to the bathroom, and he'd say, it's not gonna be much longer, just weird things like that. Was he like that at all before, like when he was younger? Like would he... 14:22 No. Okay. Very interesting. No. Yeah. And he was very active in the world, hockey, softball, riding his bike around. He had a newspaper route that he took over from me. Goes on and on. But different things like he was killed. He was hit by a green car while he was riding his bike. He lived for two hours from the time of the accident to the time that he was announced dead. 14:51 So he had time to, you know, have this experience that lots of people who have near-death experiences talk about about being about their body. But the day before he was killed, he was grounded. So my mother was quite traumatized by him telling her this, and she actually did try to stop it in the very best way that she could. He was like, well, we can't stop it. you know... Did he know, like, when it was gonna happen? 15:19 No. Okay. The day before, you know, I would just love to know him now, go back and there's so many questions. I want to ask him, but I can't ask him. And as you know, right, when you're young and stuff like this is happening, you have no capacity to ask the right questions or to, you know, for me, I was just like, shut up and go away. You know, you're bothering me. Like, you know, there's no way to comprehend this. 15:49 And like I'm saying, my mother, so I was 17 when he died. I had just turned 17 a couple months prior and he was 13 and a half. So, but the day before he was killed, my mother's birthday is July 3rd and he was killed on May 27th. And so on May 26th, he went out and he bought her her birthday present. You know, six weeks before he's killed and he bought her this 16:18 yellow rose bush and he was grounded but she said, I need a sprinkler and I'm going to go to the store. And he's like, please, please, please let me ride my bike and go to the store for you. And he comes home with not only her sprinkler, but this yellow rose bush and he gives it to her and he says, just in case here's your birthday present. So he did have some sense of it approaching. He also that same day on that same trip to the store, 16:48 Strangely, right, there's so many synchronicities around this situation. He bought the album, Fair Warning by Van Halen, which, you know, Fair Warning, and also it has that opening song with, That Poor Boy Down. And that's the last song he listened to before he was hit by the car. First of all, I think that's so fascinating that someone of his age would have... 17:17 I don't know. think someone of his age could say something like that as like a flippant kind of response, like just a thing, right? And just joking or whatever. But like this sounded like maybe he was just matter of fact, this is how it is. And then the fact that he kept bringing it up, it's like, like you, I have so many questions of him to what, you know, what. 17:40 what that was like or was he suppressing other things that he was thinking about? And this one he just wanted to tell you guys because to prepare you or some way, not that you could ever be prepared or even believe that, right? Right, exactly. You don't believe it. But like I said, my mother believed it to some extent that she was constantly grounding him. He was skipping school when the accident happened. But just a little bit of backstory there. Like I said, there was a lot of... 18:09 alcoholism in my neighborhood, but there was also a lot of drugs. It was the late seventies and early eighties. And the more I talked to people, the more I find out Madison was just inundated with LSD. He had been telling us that he had dreams. And so my whole life, I thought that he had a dream or a series of dreams that gave him this insight into his future. But I, for instance, 18:39 researched the dream database at the Harvard Divinity School. They have a huge database of dreams and there's nothing like this in the dream database. But then as I started to research for the book to write it, I ran into one of his friends that said that Jay had told him, because he didn't just tell me and my mother, he at least told a handful of friends and my cousin and 19:07 The only person that I know that he told, saw this vision when I was doing LSD was one person. And so that's more likely given the journey that people are on when they're doing LSD. It doesn't answer this big question of how is a 12, 13 year old who's dealing with all that dysfunction, how are they emotionally mature enough to handle? 19:36 And then even there's one story in the book, Todd, and you can't give away anything of this book because it's an experience in and of itself. But one of the friends, Todd, was his first, the two middle schools combined for his eighth grade year. And so there was all these new people that were suddenly in this middle school. And it turns out I find out that Jay was one of the kids who went around to all the new kids. Can I help you? 20:03 Do you need anything? Can I help you find a locker? Do you need to meet somebody? And he told me all these details about that Jay was like this person who would network people and help connect them. And so somehow he was doing LSD and facing his future death and living a normal childhood where I never knew that he was doing LSD. mean, I was all. 20:31 involved in the alcohol and the marijuana, starting when I was 13. So by the time he was killed, I had been using and drinking for a good three and a half, four years. Wow. Yeah. So I knew he was doing those things, but I never had any contact with the LSD. But even just yesterday, I was at a dog park with my dog and there was a group of guys standing around who were kind of my age and I went up to them. It's like any of you grow up in Madison and 21:01 Couple of them, yeah, I did. I'm like, did you ever get in touch with LSD when you were a kid? He's like, oh yeah, I started using LSD when I was 13. So something about the college and having older siblings and then that- The time period. Yeah, the time period that trickled down to young people using LSD. Isn't that crazy? It's nuts. But it gives us this insight into the nature of reality, right? 21:31 somehow see our future, we somehow can predict it, our death, you know, so even though there's answers, there's more questions that come out of the answers, which is kind of the nature of a life shift, right? Curious, though, before we talk about how it changed you, I'd love to know more about you as a teenager, like what what was your life because it would give us some context of how it 21:57 drastically a change thing because I was I would imagine even though you were into the drug and alcohol kind of stuff going on I'd imagine you were living a quote-unquote typical teenage life true or what would you like as a teenager before this happened? Well, you know, it's hard to remember because it blows your it blows you up and it's kind of like, you know everything that was before didn't exist in a way but 22:24 People that knew me say that I was also a very friendly and kind person. What I remember is that I was in a lot of pain because I was in unwanted pregnancy, my mom kept having difficult marriages, I was an oldest child. Your dad left. Well, my dad left when I was one and I never knew him. 22:50 And then my stepfather and I did not get along. He did not like me. It wasn't good. And my mom didn't like me either so much. I, even though I got to play and be outside and have a lot of fun and be free, I also had a lot of self-hatred. Was it like an escape? Escape when you would go out and play and do the fun things? that like, I can be myself? 23:17 Yes, yes, very much. Because I used to have a mantra in my head that said, no one loves you, everyone hates you. It was very sad, but I have any more things. Oh, well, that's good. But like growing up, as even as a young child, did you feel all that and that kind of just gets even bigger as you get older and have more feelings in puberty and all the things that come along with that? Exactly. right. Yeah. Well, and that is not, in my opinion. 23:47 a great place to start when big trauma happens, right? Because it feels like, and I don't know for sure, but it's like a cannon or something with lots of gunpowder in it, and something like that happens and just kind of lights it. Did that happen to you? Did it push you in the wrong direction further? Oh, It pushed me further into alcohol and drug addiction and into... 24:13 having sex with anyone I can get my hands on. Attention, yeah, love. Yeah, just, right, right. And so I had, I think after that five very, very wild, heavily using like, like when we're talking marijuana, like from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep. And then there was periods where I was drinking, you know, most of every day. Pretty dangerous life, would you say? 24:43 Well, that was the thing. Like I started to be like, oh my God, I'm going to kill myself, you because I was, I was blacking out all the time. I was drinking and driving. I drove off the road multiple times on highways, you know, going 55 luckily into cornfields and things like that. And I started thinking, I can now let, you know, I can not let my mother lose her second child or, know, her only child. Even though we had a difficult relationship, I started to be like, 25:13 you know, this is just dumb and it's too painful. And I started cycling into wanting to quit, but not being able to, you know, being like so hung over and feeling so bad about myself and so depressed where I was just binging on. This was like 10 years, right? Like 10 years. Well, I started when I was 13. And so I put myself into treatment when I was 22 years old. That's big. That's a big decision. Like, good for you because 25:43 Thank you. What happened is that I, in my drinking, I ended up meeting these people that went to the University of Wisconsin, Madison. And I suddenly was like, oh my God, there's a college in my town. Because no one encouraged me to go to school. And I'm on the north side of Madison doing my thing. And I'm working at McDonald's thinking I'm going to own a McDonald's and do that for the rest of my life. then I quit. And then I... 26:12 go to school and I get Ds and Fs, but I meet all these people who have bigger worldviews and from all over the world. One of my friends, she's volunteering for a peer and family crisis center. She says, should come do the three-month course with me and we hit alcoholism. It was funny because part of the backstory is my mom and dad 26:42 divorced when I was one, but my biological father shows up at my brother's funeral. When I'm 17, I meet my biological father for pretty much the first time. And my mother and father, they get back together from then. And so they're together for like, and then I get to meet my, so my brother dies and I get a whole new family. That's saved my life very much. Really? Because that could not. 27:10 It was a wonderful thing. That's great. It almost reminds me of your story about you lost your mother, but then you got your grandmother and what a big deal that was and how if that wouldn't have happened, then that wouldn't have happened. Yeah. When I heard you speak about that, like my heart just ripped open. But yeah, I got two new brothers and a new sister. So I was in the class and it got to alcoholism. And I went home and I said to my dad, Dad, I think you're an alcoholic. 27:38 And he says, no shit, Sherlock. That's what he said. And then it took me about another week to be like, well, I think I'm an alcoholic. And then I decide to put myself into treatment. And I put myself into a month long program. it's commendable for a 22 year old. Sometimes we think we know it all at 22. And that is a big choice. Like, I can do this myself. And you're like, 28:07 actually, I don't think I can. One thing struck me though, you said you didn't want your mother to lose another child. And that's maybe part of the reason why you decided to get rid of this stuff in your life. Was any of that part for you? Or do you think that was you were doing that for her? No, I very much also was doing it for myself. I started to get really tired of 28:37 pain I was in. I wanted to die at that point. so I... Because of the pain. Because of the pain, I wanted to die. I remember, like, it was just, you know, throbbing in my head, kill yourself, just kill yourself. It's so hard because this time period, it just sucks because had we had some of the tools that people have now, some of the outlets, some of the support, some of just like it more present in the world. 29:07 both of us would probably be on a different journey right now, right? Because we would have had the help, like when your brother died, maybe you had access to tools to help you grieve properly and not run into this. Or when my mom died, I could maybe grieve at nine or 10 instead of 30 something. And what would our lives look like? And so I think of how people going through things now have all these modalities to think about and to lean into. 29:35 think about like what that would have looked like for you if you had access or the tools to kind of process things? Do you think your life would be wildly different or do think you'd be kind of similarly on this path? um I feel very much like this path is where I belong. Okay. I've been guided through many synchronicities. Since Jay died, I have frequently... 30:04 very common, like the reason that I opened up a website that parallels my healing work is because I met a guy that came to me for colon-hydrotherapy and he had the same name as my brother, Jay Philip, not the same last name, but the same first and middle name. And he had the same accident as my brother. He got hit by a car while he was riding his bike. And when he came out of his coma, 30:32 His colon didn't work, so he couldn't poop anymore. So he had to do enemas. And he came to me and he said, you need to open up. And this is 1998. So before the internet is getting going, he came to me and said, you need to open up a web store. I'm like, what's that? But also, OK, because anything that parallels my brother's story, I always follow that. I'm listening. 31:01 So my life would be very different for sure if Jay hadn't died. And in terms of healing, it's hard to say, but I am very glad that people have a lot more, that a lot of people, obviously not all of humanity has access to the same resources, but in terms of, you know, the circles that we run in, it sounds like we have better access. Yeah, and I just think, you know, there's probably someone out here that is living. 31:31 your younger version story right now. And then here's you now talking about it in a reflective and also like very hard to say, I think this journey brought me to where I was supposed to be, kind of silver lining-esque feel to it. Gives them hope, gives them permission that like, okay, I don't want to just disappear or I don't want to die. I actually can do something like you did at 22, again, huge. 32:01 beautiful decision to put yourself into something that was probably going to be really hard. Was it really hard or did you find it easy to go through the rehab? It was very, very hard. And you stuck with it? And I stuck with it, yes. And you made it through the other side to become... Absolutely. So when you walked out that door, what did life look like for you in the following couple months when you walked out of that rehab? Well, the first thing I did is I went to a halfway house where you are still... 32:31 kind of an inpatient, but you're also given a lot of freedom, but I only made it a day. Why is that? I just, I don't know. enough freedom? I didn't like it there. um You know, and it was only like six blocks away from where I lived with my mother at the time. But I went to 12 step meetings every day. So I really had the opportunity to grow up to a certain level. 32:59 in the 12 step meetings and I met so many new friends and clean and sober friends through Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous and so huge gifts that came out of making a decision to face my pain and certainly I've had to scream and sob and fight and cry and rage for hundreds of hours. I don't come to this moment. 33:27 Perfect. But we're all human. Like, think tears are so underestimated, so underestimated, and really finding the holy, sacred healing power in tears is one billion percent a pathway to one's deeper self, one's deeper purpose, one's deeper knowing of oneself and being able to listen to the little nudges of 33:57 life to find out what is our highest purpose in life. And also just this constantly turning towards Jay's story. For instance, like with my mother, she would never talk about it. I couldn't get her to like, or well, she died in 2020. um thank you. But that was, and that is a big part of the memoir as well. Me like shaking her and locking her in rooms and 34:26 We have to talk about this, you know, this- A generation, no. Right, well, and there's a story in there of what the first day, the night that Jay, you know, he's pronounced dead at 3.20, right when school gets out. And her mother comes, my grandmother comes to our house at like five or six or whatnot. And my mother's like, you know, terrible, terrible mess. And as you can imagine, and she's holding onto, I think a sweatshirt of my brothers. 34:54 and her mother just walks up to her and takes it away and says, you know, you're going to need to let this go, you know, now. And so I have found that having people to tell the story to listen to me, hold me while I sob, there's just been nothing better. And also a lessons like, you know, I'm not, if I hadn't have looked at this and explored this, I wouldn't have gotten to. 35:22 understand about turning grief into awe and wonder or the continuity of consciousness, you know? What is the soul and what does it mean that someone could see their future and what is the nature of reality such that someone could be okay with dying? What do you mean up above the body watching people work on you? Like, what is this world? And for me, the doorways that Jay has opened for me by being curious, by healing. 35:51 by talking about it is just endless, know, to the point that I go to his 40th class reunion and I'm still opening my heart ever more and helping other people open their heart ever more. It just goes on and on. Yeah. I will say, I mean, just hearing it, yes, Jay plays a role in this, but I think obviously you play a huge role in this. Like you are... Thank you. 36:17 We don't give ourselves enough credit when we take things and like that part of our story, like for so long, this is probably a terrible example, but growing up, because I didn't have the opportunity to grieve, I used my mom's death as like a crutch for me to get through life. So for instance, if I did really well on something at school or I won some kind of award, it was because my mom was dead. I was the kid with a dead mom, so I got that award. And then if I did something bad, it was because my mom was dead. 36:46 And so it was just this wasted energy that I was using to mask whatever grief I was going through. And once we hit the point of being able to talk about it and letting it out and the messiness in our head, when we put it out in words, it kind of puts it into a nice stack and we can kind of deal with it in an appropriate way. That's when we get that self-awareness piece that comes in where we can just own. 37:17 all of the things that we chose to do, the bad things, the good things. Do you find the same? you find, do you own the not so great things that you did as a teenager and young adult? Absolutely, yes. Okay. Do you find that helps? Oh, 100%. Okay. Owning everything, because it isn't just Jay and his death that... 37:42 I have learned to face, it's all of the things. James Finley, he studied with Thomas Merton, who's a Christian mystic in the lineage of like Trisav Avila and these other famous Christian mystics. And he talks about the intersection of trauma and spirituality, that facing our pain, facing our shadows, going through dark nights of the soul, going through life shifts, welcoming life shifts. 38:11 and not trying to resist them. That's the hard part. You keep growing, you keep getting more wise, you keep awakening. It is the process that reality gives us, this whole, you know, that we are part of the evolutionary process and that our consciousness actually matters and the way that we love and show up in the world in the present ever more beautifully and powerfully. 38:38 really matters, not just to us personally, but everyone we touch, but also to reality. So, and the more I study physics and quantum physics and all of that stuff, the more I realize like, Dr. Mark Goffney, my spiritual teacher who I work for at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, he talks about it, it's like you're growing God. You're literally when you grow yourself and you're truly transforming. 39:07 You are literally growing the most beautiful thing that exists, like this eternal nature that is part of the cosmos. Do you think that you can be taught that from a young age, or do you think that you have to come upon it by going through something really hard and getting to the place of self-awareness or... 39:35 reflection or all those elements? Or do you think like we could teach a five-year-old how to live in this way? I think that's a beautiful question and I think it's both. think that if a person... Modeling? Well, right. If the culture is such that the values of the culture are quite mature and there is a standard of oh everyone living their hero's journey, then that's going to be more likely that 40:04 individual people can follow that path. But if you have a very immature culture, which certainly I was growing up in, then you don't have the resources to be able to follow that path. And so you have the resources of drugs and alcohol, right? Exactly. Exactly. But you're also reminding me one of the things that I've experienced recently that I had never strangely experienced before is that 40:34 And you too, right? When you lose someone when you're really young, there's no way, I think, for a lot of us to have the capacity to process it with wisdom. However, my brother, he seemed to process it with wisdom. But the reason I say this is because the publishing company that I work with, she writes press. 41:00 I'm now friends with a bunch of other authors who have also written books. And two of them I've read recently are about people who lose a sibling. And one of them lost a sibling when she was in her thirties, I think. And the way she could write about that, the way she could talk about that, I was just drooling on it. know, it's like, why couldn't I do that? You know, but it just put me right back to that. You know, I had to write a book that... 41:30 reflected the consciousness of when I was a child and how I would be with that. You know, it's beautiful and the writing is mature, but it isn't from the mind of a 30 year old or a 40 year old, right? It is from the mind of a child, a teenager. So both and. Yes, I would agree with that. And I also agree with the other. oh 41:57 a thought of, you you mentioned it before or after my mom died, had no clue, figured it out in my 30s. All the while after my mom died, I got really close to my dad's mom. And when she was diagnosed with cancer, I was like, we're gonna do this one, right? Like, I know what I need. She's not gonna tell me what she needs, but I know what she needs because I know her so well as well. And we had the most beautiful of endings together. 42:27 And, you know, I was by her side for the last five days, didn't leave her side. But before that, I got to have this conversation that everyone waits too long to have. And I was like, oh, Matt, you didn't get to do this with your mom. So let's just do it now while her brain power is still there, while we're still like feeling things. And when I left her apartment that night, after we I forced that conversation on her, which she wasn't too happy with at first, but we got through it. But after I left, I was like. If she dies tonight. 42:54 nothing is left unsaid. And it was like such a freeing, beautiful, I mean, it would have been very sad and dramatic, but it was also a very beautiful feeling that I felt like, oh, maybe this is what humanity's like, that we just like share everything and go through it. But I never would have done it had I not lost my mom as a kid and screwed up everything, right? Like, I feel like maybe now your relationships are far more rich. Now. 43:21 with the people around you and the people you love, this community that you have come over and have sing-alongs and stay up way too late for me to do fun things. You know, like I feel like a lot of that probably comes from the fact that you didn't do it quote unquote right the first time. Yeah, and that's so beautiful. When I heard you talk about how you were with your grandmother, I was just cheering you on and it just filled my heart with joy because as you learned and talked about 43:51 Being with someone in their death, you really get to taste infinity. You really get to taste the way in which these two people or this group of people have this connection beyond death. It's not, don't go there with the person, but somehow there is a depth, there is a felt sense, like, you know, we are together. I'm coming with you, even as I stay here, and I'm honoring that you're in this dying process, and it's so profound. 44:21 tragic all at the same time and we can be in all of that together. yeah, it's funny because and again, I do write about this in my book. My mother did not want to talk about my brother ever. So when she was dying the weekend, so she died on a Monday morning. And again, I tried to spend every second of every day with her, even though she actually disowned me and she was mad at me. 44:49 And for multiple reasons, partly because I was always trying to get her to talk about my brother. anyways, I didn't care. I didn't care how my mother felt about me because she's my mother. I came out of her body and we have an eternal connection that is real. But it was the weekend, she died on the Monday and she was in hospice and she knew she was dying. And I wanted her to spend some time. 45:18 with the people that loved her and she would have just naturally been with these people anyways. And I asked her, said, is it okay if I invite your sisters over and we'll have lunch and a card game? She was playing nuker even two days before she died. And then the next morning I left, I came back and she's on too much morphine and she's not with it, but she sees me. 45:46 She looks at me, she says, stop telling people I'm dying. That's your thing. Those were her last words to me. So yeah, that fear of death, that resistance to death or talking about it or sharing it as a community process, it just no. You broke it. You broke the family trauma. mean... 46:12 We kind of have to. One of us has to break it, right? So that the people that come after us don't absorb that generational piece. I didn't realize, I talked to someone on this podcast about epigenetics for like the first time and I was like, oh, I don't really understand that. But now it kind of makes sense why I was so close to my grandmother and why I had so many of her characteristics. Because when she was two, her mom died of tuberculosis. She had a terrible father. At one point, 46:41 When she was eight, he told her, why couldn't you have died instead of your mother? And so she had just this terrible sense of fear and worry that she wasn't enough and that why didn't she die instead? That was till she died. She felt that. And it was so interesting to then, after she died, be like, I gotta put that piece down. Because that can't, that doesn't need to go on. 47:09 And no one, like my dad didn't do it, he didn't know how, he didn't recognize it maybe. But then I was like, oh God, I gotta get rid of this one. So yeah, it's beautiful when we can talk about the things that our parents couldn't because of whatever's built inside them. But now we get to have these conversations. I'm super curious, as we kind of get close to the end here, was that writing retreat when you first started like writing about your... 47:38 your brother's death or was were you doing in little pieces like leading up to this? So I writing is hard. It is very hard. And so I don't so much identify as a writer. But what happens to me is that I went to Guatemala and with my two daughters. And when we were in the jungle at the beginning of the walk, 48:08 with a guide on this coffee farm, I said, oh, could we see a snake? Yo quiero un serpiente. He's like, no, no, no, we can't see a snake. And I was like, well, I want to see a snake. And then it's like three hours later and we're walking up the hill after this wonderful hike in the jungle with the volcano spewing off in the distance and people picking coffee beans. And my daughter grabs a 48:37 limb of a tree and she shakes it and she says, look, Jonah, to this other friend we had with us, it's a snake. And then he looks at her and then he looks behind her and there's a Faraday Lance, which is a Santa Barbara Amarillo, Barbara Amarillo snake. It's a yellow beard and it's a venomous poisonous snake. So it's poised to strike her and Jonah yells, snake. 49:07 pushes her out of the way. And then the guide comes and machetes the snake sadly to death. It turns out that if she would have been bit by that snake, she would have died because the venom, it dissolves you and it kills you within like an hour or so. We were like three hours from any antidote. so I really wanted to, cause the guide was like, 49:33 that snake is nothing. It's a garter snake. Don't worry about it. That snake wouldn't hurt her. But I had taken a video of it. And so everyone I talked to, so was taking notes on my phone. I was writing the story and I was just on fire with, you know, a mother's trauma and what just happened and what is this snake? And so I found someone who said, oh yeah, that was a deadly venomous snake. But then the whole time from that moment to being home, like four days later, I'm just writing, writing. 50:03 all the details. And when I get home, at that point, I wasn't doing the 12 step program anymore. was part of, for 20 years, I did re-evaluation counseling, which is a peer counseling organization and lots of turn taking and healing around everything. And I was having a co-counseling session with my friend and telling her the story and showing her all my notes. And she said, you should take this writing course with 50:32 this other friend of ours. And so I was like, okay. And it was contemplative writing in the tradition of Natalie Goldberg, writing down the bones, but also Julia Cameron daily morning pages. So I started once a week going to the class and we get prompts and for 20 minutes you write whatever comes to your mind. And then you read it out loud in the group. There's like eight of us. So we spend two and a half hours together or whatever. And my brother Jay would constantly come up. 51:01 And so people were like, you should write a book about that. You should write a book about that. And so that led me to writing a book about my brother, Jay. Well, congratulations. As you said, it's not easy and it's not an easy lift even when it's done. Right. Like you still have to go through the editing process and then dealing with querying or finding a publisher or however you need to do that. So congrats on you for crossing that finish line. And now people can read this story and 51:29 feel seen or validated or get inspired to do something because of the journey itself. So good on you. Thank you very much, Matt. Curious, as we kind of wrap up here, if you, this version of you, living purposeful, I would say, if you could go back to the Christina, the 17-year-old who had kind of dismissed a little what your brother was saying. 51:58 If you could tell her anything that night when you came back home from the hospital, is there anything you would want to let her know? It gives me shivers. I would want to just grab her and hold her and let her just sob and sob and sob and say this hurts and there's nothing we can do about the pain, but we can look at it together and you can go through it and no pain is too great to grow through. 52:28 It's beautiful and those of us that I've talked to that have gone through something pretty traumatic, it's a very similar response. We needed to feel seen. We needed to feel validated in how we were feeling. We needed just to know that someone was there if we needed them. Beautiful, yeah. All of that. Yeah, so important and I appreciate you going on this. 52:53 life-shift journey with me and talking wherever the conversation goes, think it's so meaningful to go down tangents if we find them, because we never know what we're going to find down those little roads. So I appreciate you going along with it. Thank you. Well, I appreciate you for doing this. It's really such a wonderful opportunity. I think of that eight-year-old Matt, if he could hear some of these conversations, he might feel a little different as he went through. But if he had heard this... 53:18 want to hear those conversations, know, because supposedly it's a black universe and all time exists all the time. That's true. He probably is listening now. I think he's listening. I hope he's subscribing. So if people want to check out your book, they want to find you on social media or connect with you or tell you their story, what's the best way to get in your world, in your universe and bother you? So multiple ways. One is there is a website. um 53:47 I mean, you can get the book on Amazon, et cetera, and reviews are super helpful. So if people do end up reading the book, if you write a review on Goodreads or Amazon or both, it's so helpful. But I have a website, christinayamalong.com. That's a good place to reach out to me about the book. If people want to reach out to me about my healing work, optimalhealthnetwork.com is that website. And both of those. 54:13 websites have my email so I totally welcome people to reach out to me with their stories or Yeah, whatever they have on their mind. Well, that's in my in my opinion and you probably agree with this in your journey is that sometimes Sharing our stories out loud is is so powerful for us for just being able to tell it and tell somebody and so I think listeners out there listening 54:41 They're like, oh my gosh, I resonate with that so much. I've never really told anyone. I wonder if I could just tell her this resonated and here's why we're giving that power to those people. So I hope you don't mind that I told them to reach out to you. No, I don't mind at all. Yeah. There's actually a story in my book. This is a good place to wrap up from, which is I meet this woman who had a near death experience and she never told anyone about it. And I wanted to listen to her over and over again. 55:10 What happened then? What was it like then? What were the sounds? What were the smells? What did you see? What did you feel? And literally, I could have listened to her every day. often these very painful stories that we hold are some of the most interesting places to be with a person around. So agree. Do share your story. Yeah. 55:37 I agree and I always or often say that I relate to people more in the valleys of their lives than in the tall, tall mountain peaks because I think that's where we really see that resilience and the grit and the scary part of how we got out of that valley. So kind of a lines. But in any case, thank you for being a part of the Life Shift podcast, Christina. You're very welcome. 56:02 Thank you all listening and listening for so many years now. I really appreciate it. And with that, since I haven't figured out how to sign off on these podcast episodes yet, I'm going to say goodbye and I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Thanks again, Christina. 56:27 For more information, please visit www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com