July 26, 2024 • 52 mins
Sandra talks with Chris Ryan who now helps Fathers heal through a support group and a book called "Helping Fathers Heal"
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM paranormal
podcast network. This is the place to be if you're
ready for the best podcasts of the paranormal, curious.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
And sometimes unexplained. Now listen to this.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Welcome to our podcast. Please be aware the thoughts and
opinions expressed by the host are their thoughts and opinions
only and do not reflect those of iHeartMedia, iHeartRadio, Coast
to Coast AM, employees of Premiere Networks, or their sponsors
and associates. We would like to encourage you to do
(00:41):
your own research and discover the subject matter for yourself. Hi.
I'm Sandra Champlain. For over twenty five years, I've been
on a journey to prove the existence of life after death.
On each episode, we'll discuss the reasons we now know
that our loved ones have survived physical debt, and so
(01:04):
will we. Welcome to Shades of the Afterlife. A recent
study says that couples are eight times more likely to
get a divorce when a child dies. I don't like
hearing that, and today I want to introduce you to
a dad that I think might help change this statistic.
(01:24):
Chris Ryan has worked professionally in marketing, communications, with radio,
and advertising for over thirty five years, and currently he
owns his own video production company. But he's also compiled
a book of twenty five stories called Helping Fathers Heal, Grief,
Hope and Search for Our Connection, Yes, a Connection with
(01:48):
children in the Afterlife. Chris is part of a group
called Helpingparentsheel dot Org. Let's meet Chris Ryan.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
I grew up in San Diego. That's where I am
right now. We lived here for the first twenty one
years of my life until I started in my radio career.
I wanted to be a DJ. I love music. My
son and I, Sean, we both shared this passion. Long
before he was born. I was on the air playing
kind of music that he would later come to love,
so we had that in common. Later in his life,
(02:19):
you know, radio led me into different avenues marketing agencies, communications,
and ultimately videography, which I've shot many, well hundreds of
videos here and around the world in different countries, mainly
for corporate types of business, instructional videos and those types
of things. But I love storytelling and I love doing
(02:42):
videos that have a story, and I have a passion
for helping people tell their stories, So that part of
my professional career kind of dovetailed into the spark that
led to the book, which is giving a platform for
other fathers to tell their story, which for more most
of them, was the first time they'd really ever tried
(03:03):
to put that in writing. So that was a whole
process in and of itself. But Sean was born in
nineteen ninety seven, so he would be turning twenty six
this year. In his teenage years, he struggled a lot
with self image, anxiety, depression, you know, as one of
those gen Z kids that he didn't isolate necessarily, but
(03:26):
he was an only child, so he did have a
lot of alone time. So like I was on the
radio for twenty years, he never once turned on the radio.
All of his music came from YouTube and Napster and
file sharing and different types of online resources. It's a
great kid, though. We had a good relationship, very funny,
(03:47):
very very headstrong. I can't wait to learn more about
his soul plan one of these days when I get
a chance to be in heaven with him and we
get a chance to do a life review, because yeah,
he's a perfect child for us. But it was a challenge.
Everything has been a challenge. He was independent, sometimes defiant,
(04:08):
and when he turned into his teenage years, he kind
of went dark, as some kids do, closed the bedroom door,
don't want to talk to mom and dad, they don't
know anything, not as coachable. We tried to give him
the space to mature and learn on his own and
develop his friendships. But some of the kids he tended
(04:30):
to kind of lean toward were the other kids like
him that were maybe a little They felt like outsiders
a little bit. I think he reveled in that he
was not the kid that wanted to be the center
of the main social group. He was kind of one
of the kids on the outside looking in and making
fun or cracking jokes at some of the other kids.
(04:51):
So he had a good sense of humor. I don't
think he was necessarily a lonely child. He had a
lot of friends, but he did have lot of alone time.
He did hang with some kids that influenced him a bit,
and when he was probably twelve or thirteen, he tried
marijuana then started drinking a little bit, things that probably
(05:12):
we all did when we were kids. So, you know,
we didn't try to tell him that that's wrong. I mean,
we really wanted to have him learn the consequences of
life and guide him as much as we could. But
at the same time, they talk about walls. You know,
you have brick walls for kids, which are hard barriers,
hard rules, and then you have softer barriers where you
(05:35):
kind of let them learn and do what they do.
We just kept expecting him to grow out of certain
things like most of us have, but he kept getting
darker and deeper into experimenting with different things. Ultimately it
led to rehab and well in intervention first of all,
(05:56):
and then rehab and sober living. So he did develop
a taste for alcohol. At one point, when he was seventeen,
we took the extreme measure because we had now started
to erect brick walls. We were really wanting to try
to stop the slide of his grades, his attitude, his
lack of respect around the house. That was just not working.
(06:19):
So we made the difficult decision to send him to
Utah for a summer. It wasn't a boot camp like
you've seen maybe some of the movies where they deprive kids,
they abuse kids, they scream in their face, they scare
the life out of them this was a therapeutic camp,
(06:39):
and we did a lot of research on that. Were
I to do it over again, I don't know, because
it didn't have the effect on him that it has
on a lot of other kids, which is to kind
of scare them straight. For Sean, it made him really
mad because he missed out on the summer before his
senior year. And you can imagine how important summer is
for kids when they're in high school and you want
(07:01):
to get out of high school and you want to
have summer with all your friends. And he had a
bunch of concerts lined up he wanted to go to.
So he came back pretty mad at Mom and dad.
He was going to show us even though we drug
tested him. He decided alcohol would be the easiest way
to skip out on drug testing, so that accelerated. Ultimately,
(07:24):
what did him in was fetanol. He thought he was
buying something else. He was trying to self medicate, and
he bought what he thought was ketamine online because he'd
done a lot of research and heard that that was
effective in treating depression. So he didn't know what he
was getting, but he did know that he was getting
into kind of treacherous territory with how much he was using,
(07:46):
how much it was changing his life, how it was
affecting his work life, and whatnot. At this point, he
wasn't living at home. We couldn't handle the disruption. He
had moved out and was living with some other roommates.
He chose his roommates, and he was twenty one when
he moved out. He made that decision. He was an adult. Yeah, fentanyl.
(08:07):
He passed on September. You know, it's funny because they
called us on the fourth of September. We think his
spirit passed at that point, but he spent three days
in the ICU, and on the seventh we had to
make the horrific decision to discontinue life support because he
just didn't have any brain activities. So we are between
(08:29):
the fourth and the seventh. One of those days his
spirit left and the other day his body shut down.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Sending much love to you and your wife much much.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Yeah, thank you for that.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Yeah, and you're pushing through, you really are.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
I know.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
All forms of grief hurts incredibly, and the more you love,
the harder it is. Yeah, And it is my belief
that the parent's grief is the all time hardest.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
I agree with that.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
With that you're pushing through and you're making a difference.
What happened next? How did you find helping parents heal,
helping fathers heal? And I know you've received signs from
Sean's now gone on to compile a book with twenty
five stories. Tell us about that journey.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Well, in the beginning, I was really kind of focused
on work. I had a busy schedule after we took
care of the arrangements for Sean, and being a solo
entrepreneurial business owner, I just didn't have the ability to
call in sick or delegate anything. So I put my
(09:39):
head down and dove into work, which was a good distraction.
I don't know that it's necessarily the healthiest way to heal.
It was just kind of putting off the inevitable for me.
My wife Sin she's a researcher, she's really good at it,
and she went online and started looking at different one
(10:00):
groups of grieving compassion. She started ordering lots of books.
So she started educating herself on signs and on the afterlife,
and she started suggesting certain books to me. We had
seen some signs, we had gotten a few signs from
Sean that we felt like we could attribute to him,
(10:22):
but we were also kind of questioning whether or not
we were maybe making things up or Okay, you know,
these things have always been there were just now noticing them.
There were some that were for me like they were physical.
I had an experience a couple of weeks after Sean
passed where I got up in the morning too. I
couldn't sleep very well the early days of grief. I
(10:44):
just sleeping and waking is all kind of mixed up.
And so it was dark, it was early, it was
cool outside. I went to jump in the hot tub
and just soak and watch the sun come up. But
as I turned the corner to the hot it's like
it's cool morning. And I walk around the corner and
I felt myself walking through almost like if you pass
(11:08):
a dryer vent, or you go to a laundromat, you
pass a wall of dryer vents. It was warm, and
I didn't know what that was. It was so strange
that I turned around and I kind of thought about
it for a minute, and I walked back and I
tried to retrace my steps, but I couldn't recreate it.
I just said, thank you, thank you, Sean, I attribute
(11:32):
that to him, and it's not the only time that
I've felt a physical touch. So I do believe that
our children want to help. They are closer than we think.
In fact, one medium that we met with several times,
Farah Gibson, she says that the veil is really all
(11:53):
around us. It's not like in the sky or some
other place geographically. It's like they are right here. It's
just that we can't sense that. Our senses don't pick
that up. Yeah, it's been a journey to learn about
the afterlife, to read books. Joe McQuillan wrote a great
(12:13):
book about his search for his son Christopher, who passed
tragically from a hypothermia. He fell off a boat in
a very cold lake. He started to be able to
connect with his son, and it was through more of
a meditative process. But we're just normal guys. You know.
We're not trained mediums, we're not psychics, we're not special
(12:35):
in any way other than you know, our heart is
just broken open and we're trying to figure out what
life means and what our life, our life means. How
do we fit into this puzzle of a shattered kind
of vision of what life would become.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back
with Dad Chris Ryan. You're listening to Shades of the
Afterlife iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.
Speaker 5 (13:08):
Stay there, Sandra will be right back.
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Speaker 3 (13:36):
You're listening to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM
Paranormal podcast Network. Heard on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you find your favorite shows. Welcome back to
(14:02):
Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain. Let's continue our
conversation with Dad Chris Ryan, who compiled a book of
twenty five stories of fathers looking to connect with their
children in the afterlife.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
We're just normal guys. You know, we're not trained mediums,
we're not psychics, we're not special in any way other
than you know, our heart is just broken open, and
we're trying to figure out what life means and what
our life, our life means, how do we fit into
this puzzle of a shattered kind of vision of what
(14:36):
life would become. Because when a child dies, you have
all these dreams of what your life will be. You
know you will have grandchildren, and your child will help
you in your old age, and you save up your
money because you want to pass your retirement onto your
kid or kids, whatever the case may be. So we
grieve so many things that are gone, and being an
(14:59):
only now it almost felt like we weren't able to
be parents again, not in an active way. So our
identity kind of shifted, and so educating ourselves was probably
the best first step, reading books and knowing that we're
not alone. And here's what other people went through. And
in the research, my wife found Helping Parents hel It
(15:21):
was an online organization both with a website but then
also with a Facebook group, and they at that time,
this was almost three years ago, they had maybe twenty
eight two thousand followers, and now it's up over that,
I think it's twenty six thousand or something. So a
lot of moms mainly, but there were a lot of
dads too. She went to a few of the meetings.
(15:43):
There are affiliate groups geographically located, so there's one here
in the southern California area. But at the time that
she learned about Helping Parents hel that was just about
the time that they were going to do their twenty
twenty conference, and it's just an eight hour drive from
US to Phoenix. So she asked me if i'd go,
and I said, sure, I'll go. We could do it.
We made the time for it, and I thought I'd
(16:05):
be supporting her, and I was willing to learn as well.
I'm not closed minded at all. It's just that going
to a conference of hundreds of people that all had
had their same tragedy, it wasn't probably the first thing
that I would have picked to do, and I thought, boy,
that's going to be a downer. Well, boy, I was wrong.
I was really an uplifting experience and it was great
(16:28):
to meet so many other parents who are healing and
connecting with each other and with their kids, which is
a part of the healing process for many of us.
It was really a very interesting experience. And at that
conference we had a reading. It was one of these
gallery readings where a medium is on stage and it's
in the main assembly. So there's eight hundred parents, so
(16:51):
you've got to figure there's eight hundred or more kids,
you know, that are all wanting to talk to their parents.
And again, Farah Gibson is the medium that kind of
just totally revolutionized our worldview on where Sean is because
she connected with Sean. It was so thrilling and maybe
a little I don't know if embarrassing is the right word,
(17:12):
but when you're in a group of people that big
and then your kids starts talking to you, and you
stand up and you realize that this is just absolutely
incontrovertible evidence, and the video is available online. I created
a YouTube video that is side by side of her
reading and then of the evidence. Because I have a
video background, I could put it together and actually show
(17:35):
the evidence, which was kind of fun. That really changed
things for us. That whole conference was a game changer.
And since then, I've learned about the Father's Group Helping
Father's Heal as one of the affiliate groups, and that's
where I came to know some of the other men
that helped write this book.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Could you tell us a little bit about that evidence.
Speaker 5 (17:54):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Yeah, Farah is very unique in that she was able
in the room to kind of endpoint where the parents
were sitting. That was kind of an unusual thing compared
to other mediums we've seen there at the conference. She
was able to kind of know the child was helping
to guide her to a side of the room, so
she kind of walked over to our side of the room,
(18:16):
and then she started talking about pulling up funny socks,
crazy socks, really stupid colors, and that was something that
our son loved to wear, you know, chili pepper socks
or flamencos or pelicans. In fact, he and I both
had the same pair of socks. My wife had gotten
us each repair, so that was kind of one of
(18:37):
our things was pelicans, which we got pelican tattoos at
one point, Sean and I did. So she'd started talking
about these socks, and nobody else really understood it, but
we were kind of ribbing each other, like yeash Sean
loved those, and so we put our hand up and
she came over and she said a little bit more
about the socks and how I would wear them as well,
(19:00):
and so that became a piece of evidence and so
she knew she'd locked on to us, and so we
stood up and she talked about his love of music.
She said, he's carving his name in something. Is somebody
carving would And we didn't know right off the bat,
and we were like unsure about that, and she said
the guitar. Did he do something with the guitar? And
(19:22):
then it clicked, because yes, his acoustic guitar he wrote
all over the back. He carved in it. He wrote
little messages. He even wrote I'm so sorry mom and dad.
And there's another message in the back of the guitar
that says this is my finale. Which we didn't see
any of this until after we'd recovered his belongings. So
(19:43):
she got the guitar part. Then she said, but Dad,
you're trying to play, and that was true. And then
she said, but you can't get the bar chords, and
she said it in a teasing way, just like Sean
would say it, and that is exactly true. I I'm
not good at that. And then she brought up a
piece of evidence about a deck that we were building
(20:03):
in the backyard. And this was the most mind blowing
because it was just two or three weeks earlier that
I had finished building a deck and I finished a
piece of wood with resin, and I didn't mix enough resins,
so I had to do another batch, which you never
want to do. Resin needs to cure all at the
same time. So Sean brought through this evidence about the
(20:26):
deck and then he said through Farah, but you didn't
do it right. You screwed it up. It doesn't even match.
Those were the words that he used. She used, and
so in the video that I created, you can see
the division of where the first pore of resin was
(20:47):
and the second pore. And by that time, my wife
and I we were just tingling, you know, we were
so blown away, and the people in the audience were
clapping because it was such a crazy, detailed kind of reading,
full of personality. So those were some of the biggest
things that come to mind immediately. I think we counted
(21:07):
there as maybe twenty pieces of evidence that she gave
us all in a seven minute period. But it was
life changing for us. At that point. We knew that
Sean was watching what we were doing, and that he's
still there and we are still having a relationship to
some extent, that we love each other and care for
each other, but we just can't touch each other the
(21:30):
same way that we used to be able to.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
It's still very much alive. Yeah, would you tell us
again where we can see the video.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
You go to Helping Parents Heal and go to the
affiliate group's page a little drop down for Helping Fathers
Heal and so if you go to that, you'll see
information about the book, and then a little further down
you'll see bios of the different affiliate leaders. I'm one
of the affiliate leaders and at the very end of
my bio there is a link to Farah Gibson's reading.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Thank you for that. You're an affiliate do you host
live events or online things or both?
Speaker 2 (22:04):
So we meet weekly on Zoom, which is a little
bit different than the other affiliate groups. I think they
have monthly meetings and they're in person and because they're
geographically located, whereas the Father's Group is guys from all
over Canada, the United States. We have one dad in Brazil.
We've had people join us from the UK, although it's
(22:26):
a hardship to the time difference, but it's not geographic.
So it is a weekly meeting, which is really good
because it helps us to really kind of get to
know each other on a week to week basis. In
this grieving space, things change so quickly week to week
that every week there's going to be a dad that
either's celebrating something like a sign or a dream, or
(22:51):
a dad that's having a hard week because of an
anniversary or something that may have triggered a certain emotional response.
You know, isn't a linear thing. You go up, you
go down, you think you're better, then you go back,
you regress, you progress. So weekly meetings are really good,
and even though it's on Zoom, i'd say that we
(23:12):
are a very tight knit group. There's over six hundred
dads that have joined Helping Fathers Heal as a Facebook group,
but the Zoom call each week is thirty to forty dads.
We're usually a core group of dads, but we always,
unfortunately we have new dads coming on because we still
have kids that are passing and the dads need to
(23:33):
go somewhere. So hopefully we're becoming more visible as an
alternative or as a resource for fathers.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
What day in time do you host that?
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Yeah, it's Wednesday nights Wednesdays five pm Pacific time, So
eight pm Eastern time, And if you join the Helping
Fathers Heel affiliate group, there's a Facebook page and there's
a couple of questions just to kind of verify that
you have a child in spirit. We don't want to solicitation.
We just wanted to keep it to be dad's you know,
real guys that are in the same boat.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Well, thank you for doing that. And I know we've
got lots of dads listening to this right now and
may feel at home with being part of it.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Yeah, it definitely helps.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
So Helping Father's heal to all of a sudden having
this beautiful book with twenty five chapters, well how it
brought that about? To tell us about that journey.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
I'm not an author, so I never really even thought
about doing a book. I did have a medium reading
after Farah. The first medium reading we had that was
a one on one was with medium Kareem. She's here
in San Diego but it was still online, and she
said in the reading that Sean was telling her that
there's a book in me, and I didn't know what
(24:49):
that meant. I'd never thought of that. It didn't appeal
to me, to be honest, I don't journal much. I
don't write a lot. I am a storyteller, and I
do enjoy the video part of storytelling. But to sit
and put the story down on paper, I'd never occurred
to me. I brought it up to some of the
dads in one of our affiliate group meetings, our Zoom call,
(25:12):
and I just asked, you know, does this appeal to anybody?
Does anybody think this is an idea that you'd want
to write a chapter? Would we have enough guys that
might want to write one chapter, you know, just four
or five six pages and tell us the story about
your child and what kind of a child was this,
and what was your relationship like? And so about eight
(25:33):
hands went up the first night that I brought it up,
and so I thought, well, I don't know how we'll
do this. I got to figure this out.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
We'll hear more from Chris after the break how he
engaged twenty five other dads to tell their stories. It's
so important to hear from the dads. Usually an afterlife
communication predominantly hear from the ladies. I'm not a dad,
I'm not a man, but I do believe men need
(26:00):
to hear from other men. So let's go to the
break and we'll be right back with more of Chris Ryan.
You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio
and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.
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Speaker 4 (27:01):
Thanks for being here.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Now let's get back to more with Sandra.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain. Next,
I ask Chris Ryan how he got the stories of
the twenty four other men about their journey and their
connection with their kids in the afterlife. For the book
Helping Fathers, heal.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
I wrote a series of questions, ten questions, thinking, okay,
this would help me. You know, it's more like a worksheet,
So I like homework to be able to answer questions
about tell us about your child and then taking us
through the whole narrative arc of a story about the
transition of your child and then what were the first days,
(27:57):
like what did you experience and where did you find
some help? What surprised you about grief? What kinds of
signs have you had? Have you had any Is there
anything that you would have as advice to another dad
who may be reading this. Every dad was given ten
questions that they could simply answer in a paragraph or
two and then they've got a story if you got
(28:19):
a chapter. Tom Madson helped me edit the book. Some
of the dads. We did a lot of phone interviews
to try to really pull out the story and help
them write it. So the editing process was quite extensive,
but the fact that we were able to spread the
writing out to twenty five other guys because ultimately after
asking this question. Over a two month period, I had
(28:41):
twenty five volunteers, and then the editing process took about
seven or eight months, and then we were able to
get the book out in April. So it surprised me
that we had so many guys willing to do it,
and it was so heartening for me. It was very
rewarding to hear the dads say that this was cathartic
for them, just the process of going back through not
(29:03):
just the transition and the pain of that moment, but
go back even further and start writing about the life
that they had with that child and some of those memories.
Some of the kids had physical illness, you know, had
suffered with cancer for years, and so there's a variety
of ways that these children had decided to transition and
(29:27):
that was their sole plan. So hearing how those children
lived and how their lives were celebrated, and the relationships
with their dads, and then learning the subsequent fallout from
that and how they found help. You know, that's really
the purpose of the book is just to give somebody
that's reading it a bit of a kind of charting
(29:49):
a course of you know, this is how it can
look and there's twenty five different stories, so they're not
all the same, but many of us had the same
in initial reaction of paralysis and fog and just inability
to think coherently or you know, right after a child dies,
(30:10):
you have to do all this crazy decision making of
making arrangements and then communicating with family and communicating with
that kid's friends' families, and it's just a really weird time.
But by connecting both with our children and then also
as dads in this group, we've connected with each other.
(30:30):
That's really where we've found a sense of hope that
our children are still with us and that we're going
to be okay, and that they didn't die. You know,
their life goes on, they're just their body isn't here.
So being able to kind of discover that as a
father in the midst of your grief, to be able
to feel that is just so relieving, as such a
(30:54):
wonderful feeling, a healing feeling, knowing that you're not alone,
really that there is a path to healing and you
don't have to feel isolated. That's probably the worst thing
many people choose to do when they lose someone that
they love is that they just lock the door and
go to bed and they never come out. Certainly there's
a time and a place for that, but you have
(31:16):
to reach out. That's what we're here to do, is
to love each other and to learn how to love.
And our children are still out there available to help
us learn that lesson. That's my son Sean on the cover.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Oh beautiful helping fathers Heal.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
It's not like a portrait for those of you that
don't see the book, it's it's kind of a shadow silhouette,
so you know, you don't have any real gender identification,
ethnic identification. It's just this child in a warrior pose,
you know, kind of that youthful energy. Yeah, we just
wanted to have everything be about the hope that can
come with having that relationship continue.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Is it a book for anyone or just.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Dad's Yes, it's a book for anyone dad's moms, you know,
because it could be a spouse might not understand how
the father's grieving, siblings or relatives, you know, anybody that
wants to learn about the grieving process and what's going
on in the mind of that other person that they
might not understand, and they might want to develop a
(32:20):
certain kind of empathy toward Wow, what are they going through?
What should I say to a person who's grieving? I
don't have the right words. What if I say something
and they start crying? You know, people are very uncomfortable
with us grievers, but if they can find a safe spot,
I think this book is a very healthy way for
(32:42):
people to understand what grieving looks like, what we're going through,
and what we need. And what we need is for
people to stay with us, to hang with us, to
have the courage to just ask us how we're doing,
and just sit there and listen and not try to
fix anything. And as dads, that's what naturally, you know,
we try to fix stuff. We try to protect our
(33:04):
loved ones. We may feel a certain special sense of
guilt because our child didn't have the full life that
everybody would expect. And so I do think that fathers
have an extra element of complexity with their grief because
of that societal expectation of the man being strong, not
(33:26):
showing much emotion, being able to carry on. You know,
your boss wants you to get back to work. It's
been four weeks. Are you over it yet? You know
you're having a bad day. Oh, I don't want to
talk to him. I'm going to leave him alone. No,
we'd love to be able to be human. And if
we look like we're having a bad day, just ask us.
You know, hey, can I do anything for you? Can
(33:48):
I buy you a cup of coffee? You want to
take a walk?
Speaker 5 (33:50):
You know?
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Just be with us. That's the message that.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Can be the simplest thing to say too. I don't
know what you're feeling or what you're going through, but
I just want you to know I'm here for you. Yeah,
excuse me. I'm here to listen. I'm here to be
your friend. That's right, Chris. Would you share some of
the stories that are in the book. I don't want
to say favorite, because I know they're all good, but
any stories that come to mind of signs or different reasons.
Your fellow fathers believe their kids are with them.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
I feel like they're all my children at this point.
I've read them so many times in the editing process.
I feel so intimate with all of these kids. And
I will share one thing. I had a reading with
a medium. Her name is Isabella Johnson, and this was
when the book was in the final editing stages, and
(34:38):
she said something about the kids are excited to tell
their story, and I thought, wow, this is cool, this
is great. So she didn't know anything about the book.
She knew I was from Helping Fathers Heal, because that's
kind of how we found hers through the Helping Parents
Heal list of approved mediums. And then she said, there's
(34:59):
more boys the girls. And she even said it looks
like there's only about seven girls in going back then
first time. Late in the process, I go back, I
count all the chapters, sure enough, with seven girls that
were featured in the stories, and the rest were boys.
Some of the dads that are the quietest in the
(35:21):
group meetings the Zoom meetings had the most heartfelt stories,
and some shared my experience with fentanyl because that is
such a killer of our children right now, and there's
lovely stories of kids. I believe our kids continue to
work with us through us, inspire us, nudge us, and
(35:44):
there's fathers that are doing great advocacy work on drug
awareness on mental health issues. The very first chapter in
the book is just a beautiful chapter, tragic, heartbreaking story
of a suicide. But the author, Harry Brule, has taken
it upon himself to quit his other job and is
(36:05):
now working in the mental health area helping other children,
especially with a disorder that is not typically diagnosed before
you're eighteen. It's borderline personality disorder BPD. It is what
happens when you have kind of a bipolar or two polls.
You go from anxiety, depression, isolation, nobody loves me, I'm
(36:30):
worthless to the other extreme. And so now this father
is doing advocacy work for that to help other young people.
Other dads are doing assemblies where they talk to kids
at schools. So many of these stories are really special
to me, and the kids just are so tender and
many of them very sensitive. Many of the dads describe
(36:52):
their children as seemingly having old souls, and that makes
total sense when you talk to medium or people who
are tuned into that that these would have probably been
perhaps advanced souls that decided they are going to make
that hard choice to leave early and make room for
(37:12):
a spiritual experience for the parents. So, without a doubt,
it's made all of the dads more spiritually sensitive and
more in tune with their child in a way that
they may not have been in physical form.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Right, and that relationship continues, which brings me to my
next question. How does your relationship with your son continue?
Are you talking to him? Are you asking for signs?
You include him in everything? I'm guessing you do.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Yeah, I've got him right here in front of me.
In fact, I always carry this around. This is a
little piece of glass that we had blown glass and
his ashes are in it, and I just keep it
in my pocket as a kind of a touchstone. But yeah,
we talked to him. We thank him for I have dreams.
My wife has had a couple of dreams, but not
(38:05):
as many, but we do have dreams. I know she's
doing a lot of meditation and she does get a
sensory perception of Sean being close by. But I would
say that we still maintain that personality and relationship even
though it's not as easy as picking up the phone
and calling them. That's what we miss the most, is
(38:27):
just being able to dial up a number or see
him in person. But yeah, we do still have a
relationship with him, and it's brought us closer together as
a couple, which I know grief can oftentimes be a
real difficult thing for a couple to survive. So I
do think reading this book or reading other books about
this so that the parents can kind of both be
(38:50):
understanding where each other is, give each other space when necessary,
but then help each other when the opportunity arises. A
lot of the dads have experience into a closer relationship
with their family and with their spouse because of the
passing of that child.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
We'll talk to Chris Moore after the break here a
very interesting dream he had and also give you some
tools whether you're a parent or not. You're listening to
Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to
Coast AM Paranormal podcast Network.
Speaker 4 (39:29):
Don't go anywhere. There's more Shades of the Afterlife coming
right up.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
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(40:02):
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Speaker 5 (40:19):
Hey everyone, it's producer Tom of Coast to Coast A
m and more Sandras starts right now.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain
and we're with Chris Ryan, who compiled the book of
twenty five stories called Helping Fathers Heal.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
I do look forward to signs in those dreams, really
vivid dreams. Just last week I had one. Sean had
a dog, and this is one of those things where
that dog was a piece of our history with him,
and you know, dogs only live so many years, and
we knew this dog was getting older, but we had
(41:10):
three years with this dog since Sean passed, so there
was always this feeling of that's Sean's dog, and we
always had memories with the two of them playing and
him growing up, loving on that dog. And last week
we did have to put it to sleep. I knew
it was going to happen. The day before, we had
already made the arrangements for the vet to come to
(41:30):
the house and euthanize the dog. So the night before
I did have a very vivid dream with Sean and
I was on a couch. He was sitting next to me.
I had my arm around him, and he was kind
of squirming around a little bit. He was probably about
eight or nine. He was younger about the age he
would have been when he got the dog, and the
(41:51):
dog was curled up on the floor next to the couch.
Most of the times in these dreams there's not like
verbal communication, but I just knew what he was telling
me was it's okay, and you're doing the right thing.
It was a difficult decision for us if the dog
was ready or not, and he was basically reaffirming and
(42:13):
assuring me that it was okay. And now I know
they're together in heaven playing, so I just passed that
doggy spirit on to him to take care of.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
Oh. Sending you guys love for that too. It's the
worst pain imaginable, but our animals are alive, and well
we're going to see them all again. I tell you
that welcoming committee when it's our time is just going
to be huge, and all those little animal faces are
going to be there as well. Yes, say little somebody
could have a horse, Chris, What else would you like
(42:44):
to share with our time together as any questions I
haven't asked you, or any thoughts you'd like to share
with those who are listening.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Well, I think if you're listening to this then you
probably are looking for help try to understand grief. I
truly believe that it does help to feel like you're
not alone, to try to connect with people who understand.
If you're a guy like me, sometimes it's helpful to
(43:14):
be in a safe space with other guys because we
do have a certain kind of rapport with each other
in our group helping fathers heal. I mean, we tell jokes,
we laugh, and we drop f bombs. We close each
meeting with stupid dad jokes, just so that we try
to end on a lighter note for anybody who may
(43:37):
be reluctant to reach out and try to find help
in a group, because for me, be sitting in a group,
you know, because we went to alan On for years
because Sean was in an addictive cycle. I got help
from it, but I didn't look forward to it, you know.
And sometimes for guys, being in a group setting just
(43:59):
doesn't as comfortable. But our group really is healing and fun,
and whether it's our group or another group, I just
encourage anybody that's listening to this and feeling that you
want some help during your grief journey to find a
group of people that you can feel safe with. I
think that's the most important thing. And it doesn't have
(44:20):
to be a bunch of people. It can be one
or two people. But sometimes your wife can't do everything.
That's too much pressure on a relationship to have that
other person be the person that saves you. So finding
your tribe, so to speak, and finding people who understand
you and that you can talk to and you can
(44:42):
reminisce and tell stories and not feel like that's a
closet door that you can't open. I like to be
able to share my memories with Sean with some of
my friends. For them, it doesn't have to be this
red flag of oh no, he's talking about his kid again.
We're going to go down that road, going to start crying,
and it's going to be uncomfortable. I got to get
(45:03):
out of here because I don't cry every time. Sometimes
I just hear a song and it's like I remember
going to this concert with Sean. This is great. I
would just encourage anybody in a grief state to reach
out and find people who that you can feel safe
being yourself with.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
People need people, whether we're grieving or not. And I
find the worst place that we can go by ourselves
is in our own mind.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
Yeah, amen, the story wild it's brutal.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
It's absolutely brutal. We would never be as hard on
other people or tell them the thoughts in our head
that we tell ourselves now.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Because there's multiple people in there. You know, there's the
spirit of truth and guidance, and then there's also all
the other stuff that you bring with you as a
human and all of your doubts. So sometimes you just
need to work these things out. And also in the
book Last Thing too, you know, in terms of tools,
there are a variety of tools that are mentioned that
(46:05):
different fathers have used, whether it's grief counseling or EMDR
or other types of physical work kinetic work. But not
everything is going to be the same for every person.
So I definitely believe in connecting with other people. But
I also think that there are therapies, whether it's meditating
or just getting out for a walk or binaural beats
(46:27):
which is kind of a type of meditation with an
auditory influence. There are ways that you can help yourself,
and there are tools in the book where you might
find different ways that you haven't thought of before. Again,
it's all about storytelling. This book is about the stories
of twenty five dads and how they've made it through
that initial valley. That we're not all healed. We never
(46:49):
will be, you know, it never ends, but at least
we're not where we were that first week, that first
few days. We're able to find a way to stary,
wretch and grow and reach out and connect with each
other and with our child and spirit.
Speaker 3 (47:06):
If somebody's heart is heavy because they're experiencing a lot
of guilt as a parent, what advice would you give them?
Speaker 2 (47:14):
If you're struggling with guilt, it may be helpful to
talk to somebody who can give you some professional, objective advice.
And it may be somebody that is not in your
friendship circle. You may need to have a grief counselor
or somebody just listen and try to give you some
sense of perspective, because I think grief a lot of
(47:36):
it is just about your own perspective and you're putting
too much importance on what you did or didn't do.
So sometimes an objective, professional, compassionate person can give you
that sense of reality that you did everything you could,
and that is one of the messages that we tend
(47:57):
to get from our children on the other side. And
I'm not talking about just Sean, many many of the
other dads and parents. That seems to be a theme
that is very consistent as our parents want us to
know that you did everything you could and they want
us to feel at peace. But if you've got a
really strong response, the guilt response, that can be very toxic.
(48:21):
So I would encourage talking to somebody. And medium readings
for me have also been very helpful. I've heard other
people say it's like a worth a year of therapy.
Just having a good medium reading can be so healing.
When you feel like you've connected with that child and
that child has reassured you that this is the plan,
this was the way it was supposed to happen, and
(48:43):
I'm alive.
Speaker 3 (48:44):
I'm going to see you again. A while of the
kids are helping others. There's some unbelievably wonderful stories I've
heard from parents and the kids continue to make a difference.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
Yeah, and there's other resources and even the conference that
they do every two years wonderful.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:01):
I would explore the website Helpingparents Heal dot org. If
you're in that place, educate yourself and then reach out
to somebody who can help you.
Speaker 3 (49:10):
And there's so much more on their website. Even like
I said, if you're not a parent or a sibling,
you can see their YouTube channel and there's so many
videos between mediums and experts and grief and afterlife.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
It's the and caring listeners. There's a list of people
who are just other parents who you can call. You know,
we're not professionals. We are caring listeners and you can
call us anytime.
Speaker 3 (49:37):
Oh wonderful. Well, Chris, thank you so much for being
our guest here today.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
Thank you. I appreciate it. It's been fun. Thanks it
has It's always fun to talk about Sean and I
celebrate his life. You know, I don't let that one
thing define my life anymore. We're his, So thank you
for allowing me to to share that story.
Speaker 3 (50:01):
And thank you Chris. That's Chris Ryan who compiled the
book Helping Fathers Heal, Grief, Hope, and our Search for Connection.
Chris can be reached through his professional website, which is
Chrisryanvideo dot com, but more importantly, go to Helping Parents
(50:22):
Heal dot org. You can click on the affiliate page.
If you're a dad and there's Helping Fathers Heal. There's
also Helping Siblings Heal. I encourage any parent to join
Helping Parents Heal. It's free. It's the one organization that
I know that not only gives grief support, but they
(50:45):
believe in the afterlife. They are my favorite organization, and
as Chris said, they're well over twenty thousand members. So
a shout out to all of our friends at Helping
Parents Heal dot org. I was discussing with Frenzy yesterday
how important it is to feel that connection with our
(51:06):
loved one. And even though you may not want to
be a medium, I always suggest taking a course in mediumship.
You learn just what those subtle feelings are and how
our soul communicates and perceives information. We practice on each
other in these zoom medium classes, and for less than
(51:28):
one medium reading you get six two hour sessions and
who comes through from the other side. It's your loved ones.
And what a marvelous feeling it is as a human
to deliver a message and evidence for someone else. You
think it's your imagination, but it's not. These classes are
(51:51):
so special. We always have classes coming up, but we
don't die dot com. They're recorded. If you can't join
live there's a money back guarantee. But your loved ones
come through in such subtle manners. When you hear a
favorite song out of the blue or memory comes in,
that is them and for you to get involved with them,
(52:13):
just take a walk down memory lane and they will
start to give other feelings and memories and that's a
sign to connect. So with that, my friend, our time
today has come to an end. But I thank you
really from the bottom of my heart for listening to
Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to
(52:35):
Coast am Paranormal Podcast Network.
Speaker 1 (52:41):
Thanks for listening to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Ghost
Day and Paranormal Podcast Network. Make sure and check out
all our shows on the iHeartRadio app or by going
to iHeartRadio dot com.
Welcome to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM paranormal
podcast network. This is the place to be if you're
ready for the best podcasts of the paranormal, curious.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
And sometimes unexplained. Now listen to this.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Welcome to our podcast. Please be aware the thoughts and
opinions expressed by the host are their thoughts and opinions
only and do not reflect those of iHeartMedia, iHeartRadio, Coast
to Coast AM, employees of Premiere Networks, or their sponsors
and associates. We would like to encourage you to do
(00:41):
your own research and discover the subject matter for yourself. Hi.
I'm Sandra Champlain. For over twenty five years, I've been
on a journey to prove the existence of life after death.
On each episode, we'll discuss the reasons we now know
that our loved ones have survived physical debt, and so
(01:04):
will we. Welcome to Shades of the Afterlife. A recent
study says that couples are eight times more likely to
get a divorce when a child dies. I don't like
hearing that, and today I want to introduce you to
a dad that I think might help change this statistic.
(01:24):
Chris Ryan has worked professionally in marketing, communications, with radio,
and advertising for over thirty five years, and currently he
owns his own video production company. But he's also compiled
a book of twenty five stories called Helping Fathers Heal, Grief,
Hope and Search for Our Connection, Yes, a Connection with
(01:48):
children in the Afterlife. Chris is part of a group
called Helpingparentsheel dot Org. Let's meet Chris Ryan.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
I grew up in San Diego. That's where I am
right now. We lived here for the first twenty one
years of my life until I started in my radio career.
I wanted to be a DJ. I love music. My
son and I, Sean, we both shared this passion. Long
before he was born. I was on the air playing
kind of music that he would later come to love,
so we had that in common. Later in his life,
(02:19):
you know, radio led me into different avenues marketing agencies, communications,
and ultimately videography, which I've shot many, well hundreds of
videos here and around the world in different countries, mainly
for corporate types of business, instructional videos and those types
of things. But I love storytelling and I love doing
(02:42):
videos that have a story, and I have a passion
for helping people tell their stories, So that part of
my professional career kind of dovetailed into the spark that
led to the book, which is giving a platform for
other fathers to tell their story, which for more most
of them, was the first time they'd really ever tried
(03:03):
to put that in writing. So that was a whole
process in and of itself. But Sean was born in
nineteen ninety seven, so he would be turning twenty six
this year. In his teenage years, he struggled a lot
with self image, anxiety, depression, you know, as one of
those gen Z kids that he didn't isolate necessarily, but
(03:26):
he was an only child, so he did have a
lot of alone time. So like I was on the
radio for twenty years, he never once turned on the radio.
All of his music came from YouTube and Napster and
file sharing and different types of online resources. It's a
great kid, though. We had a good relationship, very funny,
(03:47):
very very headstrong. I can't wait to learn more about
his soul plan one of these days when I get
a chance to be in heaven with him and we
get a chance to do a life review, because yeah,
he's a perfect child for us. But it was a challenge.
Everything has been a challenge. He was independent, sometimes defiant,
(04:08):
and when he turned into his teenage years, he kind
of went dark, as some kids do, closed the bedroom door,
don't want to talk to mom and dad, they don't
know anything, not as coachable. We tried to give him
the space to mature and learn on his own and
develop his friendships. But some of the kids he tended
(04:30):
to kind of lean toward were the other kids like
him that were maybe a little They felt like outsiders
a little bit. I think he reveled in that he
was not the kid that wanted to be the center
of the main social group. He was kind of one
of the kids on the outside looking in and making
fun or cracking jokes at some of the other kids.
(04:51):
So he had a good sense of humor. I don't
think he was necessarily a lonely child. He had a
lot of friends, but he did have lot of alone time.
He did hang with some kids that influenced him a bit,
and when he was probably twelve or thirteen, he tried
marijuana then started drinking a little bit, things that probably
(05:12):
we all did when we were kids. So, you know,
we didn't try to tell him that that's wrong. I mean,
we really wanted to have him learn the consequences of
life and guide him as much as we could. But
at the same time, they talk about walls. You know,
you have brick walls for kids, which are hard barriers,
hard rules, and then you have softer barriers where you
(05:35):
kind of let them learn and do what they do.
We just kept expecting him to grow out of certain
things like most of us have, but he kept getting
darker and deeper into experimenting with different things. Ultimately it
led to rehab and well in intervention first of all,
(05:56):
and then rehab and sober living. So he did develop
a taste for alcohol. At one point, when he was seventeen,
we took the extreme measure because we had now started
to erect brick walls. We were really wanting to try
to stop the slide of his grades, his attitude, his
lack of respect around the house. That was just not working.
(06:19):
So we made the difficult decision to send him to
Utah for a summer. It wasn't a boot camp like
you've seen maybe some of the movies where they deprive kids,
they abuse kids, they scream in their face, they scare
the life out of them this was a therapeutic camp,
(06:39):
and we did a lot of research on that. Were
I to do it over again, I don't know, because
it didn't have the effect on him that it has
on a lot of other kids, which is to kind
of scare them straight. For Sean, it made him really
mad because he missed out on the summer before his
senior year. And you can imagine how important summer is
for kids when they're in high school and you want
(07:01):
to get out of high school and you want to
have summer with all your friends. And he had a
bunch of concerts lined up he wanted to go to.
So he came back pretty mad at Mom and dad.
He was going to show us even though we drug
tested him. He decided alcohol would be the easiest way
to skip out on drug testing, so that accelerated. Ultimately,
(07:24):
what did him in was fetanol. He thought he was
buying something else. He was trying to self medicate, and
he bought what he thought was ketamine online because he'd
done a lot of research and heard that that was
effective in treating depression. So he didn't know what he
was getting, but he did know that he was getting
into kind of treacherous territory with how much he was using,
(07:46):
how much it was changing his life, how it was
affecting his work life, and whatnot. At this point, he
wasn't living at home. We couldn't handle the disruption. He
had moved out and was living with some other roommates.
He chose his roommates, and he was twenty one when
he moved out. He made that decision. He was an adult. Yeah, fentanyl.
(08:07):
He passed on September. You know, it's funny because they
called us on the fourth of September. We think his
spirit passed at that point, but he spent three days
in the ICU, and on the seventh we had to
make the horrific decision to discontinue life support because he
just didn't have any brain activities. So we are between
(08:29):
the fourth and the seventh. One of those days his
spirit left and the other day his body shut down.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Sending much love to you and your wife much much.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Yeah, thank you for that.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Yeah, and you're pushing through, you really are.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
I know.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
All forms of grief hurts incredibly, and the more you love,
the harder it is. Yeah, And it is my belief
that the parent's grief is the all time hardest.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
I agree with that.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
With that you're pushing through and you're making a difference.
What happened next? How did you find helping parents heal,
helping fathers heal? And I know you've received signs from
Sean's now gone on to compile a book with twenty
five stories. Tell us about that journey.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Well, in the beginning, I was really kind of focused
on work. I had a busy schedule after we took
care of the arrangements for Sean, and being a solo
entrepreneurial business owner, I just didn't have the ability to
call in sick or delegate anything. So I put my
(09:39):
head down and dove into work, which was a good distraction.
I don't know that it's necessarily the healthiest way to heal.
It was just kind of putting off the inevitable for me.
My wife Sin she's a researcher, she's really good at it,
and she went online and started looking at different one
(10:00):
groups of grieving compassion. She started ordering lots of books.
So she started educating herself on signs and on the afterlife,
and she started suggesting certain books to me. We had
seen some signs, we had gotten a few signs from
Sean that we felt like we could attribute to him,
(10:22):
but we were also kind of questioning whether or not
we were maybe making things up or Okay, you know,
these things have always been there were just now noticing them.
There were some that were for me like they were physical.
I had an experience a couple of weeks after Sean
passed where I got up in the morning too. I
couldn't sleep very well the early days of grief. I
(10:44):
just sleeping and waking is all kind of mixed up.
And so it was dark, it was early, it was
cool outside. I went to jump in the hot tub
and just soak and watch the sun come up. But
as I turned the corner to the hot it's like
it's cool morning. And I walk around the corner and
I felt myself walking through almost like if you pass
(11:08):
a dryer vent, or you go to a laundromat, you
pass a wall of dryer vents. It was warm, and
I didn't know what that was. It was so strange
that I turned around and I kind of thought about
it for a minute, and I walked back and I
tried to retrace my steps, but I couldn't recreate it.
I just said, thank you, thank you, Sean, I attribute
(11:32):
that to him, and it's not the only time that
I've felt a physical touch. So I do believe that
our children want to help. They are closer than we think.
In fact, one medium that we met with several times,
Farah Gibson, she says that the veil is really all
(11:53):
around us. It's not like in the sky or some
other place geographically. It's like they are right here. It's
just that we can't sense that. Our senses don't pick
that up. Yeah, it's been a journey to learn about
the afterlife, to read books. Joe McQuillan wrote a great
(12:13):
book about his search for his son Christopher, who passed
tragically from a hypothermia. He fell off a boat in
a very cold lake. He started to be able to
connect with his son, and it was through more of
a meditative process. But we're just normal guys. You know.
We're not trained mediums, we're not psychics, we're not special
(12:35):
in any way other than you know, our heart is
just broken open and we're trying to figure out what
life means and what our life, our life means. How
do we fit into this puzzle of a shattered kind
of vision of what life would become.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back
with Dad Chris Ryan. You're listening to Shades of the
Afterlife iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.
Speaker 5 (13:08):
Stay there, Sandra will be right back.
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Speaker 3 (13:36):
You're listening to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM
Paranormal podcast Network. Heard on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you find your favorite shows. Welcome back to
(14:02):
Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain. Let's continue our
conversation with Dad Chris Ryan, who compiled a book of
twenty five stories of fathers looking to connect with their
children in the afterlife.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
We're just normal guys. You know, we're not trained mediums,
we're not psychics, we're not special in any way other
than you know, our heart is just broken open, and
we're trying to figure out what life means and what
our life, our life means, how do we fit into
this puzzle of a shattered kind of vision of what
(14:36):
life would become. Because when a child dies, you have
all these dreams of what your life will be. You
know you will have grandchildren, and your child will help
you in your old age, and you save up your
money because you want to pass your retirement onto your
kid or kids, whatever the case may be. So we
grieve so many things that are gone, and being an
(14:59):
only now it almost felt like we weren't able to
be parents again, not in an active way. So our
identity kind of shifted, and so educating ourselves was probably
the best first step, reading books and knowing that we're
not alone. And here's what other people went through. And
in the research, my wife found Helping Parents hel It
(15:21):
was an online organization both with a website but then
also with a Facebook group, and they at that time,
this was almost three years ago, they had maybe twenty
eight two thousand followers, and now it's up over that,
I think it's twenty six thousand or something. So a
lot of moms mainly, but there were a lot of
dads too. She went to a few of the meetings.
(15:43):
There are affiliate groups geographically located, so there's one here
in the southern California area. But at the time that
she learned about Helping Parents hel that was just about
the time that they were going to do their twenty
twenty conference, and it's just an eight hour drive from
US to Phoenix. So she asked me if i'd go,
and I said, sure, I'll go. We could do it.
We made the time for it, and I thought I'd
(16:05):
be supporting her, and I was willing to learn as well.
I'm not closed minded at all. It's just that going
to a conference of hundreds of people that all had
had their same tragedy, it wasn't probably the first thing
that I would have picked to do, and I thought, boy,
that's going to be a downer. Well, boy, I was wrong.
I was really an uplifting experience and it was great
(16:28):
to meet so many other parents who are healing and
connecting with each other and with their kids, which is
a part of the healing process for many of us.
It was really a very interesting experience. And at that
conference we had a reading. It was one of these
gallery readings where a medium is on stage and it's
in the main assembly. So there's eight hundred parents, so
(16:51):
you've got to figure there's eight hundred or more kids,
you know, that are all wanting to talk to their parents.
And again, Farah Gibson is the medium that kind of
just totally revolutionized our worldview on where Sean is because
she connected with Sean. It was so thrilling and maybe
a little I don't know if embarrassing is the right word,
(17:12):
but when you're in a group of people that big
and then your kids starts talking to you, and you
stand up and you realize that this is just absolutely
incontrovertible evidence, and the video is available online. I created
a YouTube video that is side by side of her
reading and then of the evidence. Because I have a
video background, I could put it together and actually show
(17:35):
the evidence, which was kind of fun. That really changed
things for us. That whole conference was a game changer.
And since then, I've learned about the Father's Group Helping
Father's Heal as one of the affiliate groups, and that's
where I came to know some of the other men
that helped write this book.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Could you tell us a little bit about that evidence.
Speaker 5 (17:54):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Yeah, Farah is very unique in that she was able
in the room to kind of endpoint where the parents
were sitting. That was kind of an unusual thing compared
to other mediums we've seen there at the conference. She
was able to kind of know the child was helping
to guide her to a side of the room, so
she kind of walked over to our side of the room,
(18:16):
and then she started talking about pulling up funny socks,
crazy socks, really stupid colors, and that was something that
our son loved to wear, you know, chili pepper socks
or flamencos or pelicans. In fact, he and I both
had the same pair of socks. My wife had gotten
us each repair, so that was kind of one of
(18:37):
our things was pelicans, which we got pelican tattoos at
one point, Sean and I did. So she'd started talking
about these socks, and nobody else really understood it, but
we were kind of ribbing each other, like yeash Sean
loved those, and so we put our hand up and
she came over and she said a little bit more
about the socks and how I would wear them as well,
(19:00):
and so that became a piece of evidence and so
she knew she'd locked on to us, and so we
stood up and she talked about his love of music.
She said, he's carving his name in something. Is somebody
carving would And we didn't know right off the bat,
and we were like unsure about that, and she said
the guitar. Did he do something with the guitar? And
(19:22):
then it clicked, because yes, his acoustic guitar he wrote
all over the back. He carved in it. He wrote
little messages. He even wrote I'm so sorry mom and dad.
And there's another message in the back of the guitar
that says this is my finale. Which we didn't see
any of this until after we'd recovered his belongings. So
(19:43):
she got the guitar part. Then she said, but Dad,
you're trying to play, and that was true. And then
she said, but you can't get the bar chords, and
she said it in a teasing way, just like Sean
would say it, and that is exactly true. I I'm
not good at that. And then she brought up a
piece of evidence about a deck that we were building
(20:03):
in the backyard. And this was the most mind blowing
because it was just two or three weeks earlier that
I had finished building a deck and I finished a
piece of wood with resin, and I didn't mix enough resins,
so I had to do another batch, which you never
want to do. Resin needs to cure all at the
same time. So Sean brought through this evidence about the
(20:26):
deck and then he said through Farah, but you didn't
do it right. You screwed it up. It doesn't even match.
Those were the words that he used. She used, and
so in the video that I created, you can see
the division of where the first pore of resin was
(20:47):
and the second pore. And by that time, my wife
and I we were just tingling, you know, we were
so blown away, and the people in the audience were
clapping because it was such a crazy, detailed kind of reading,
full of personality. So those were some of the biggest
things that come to mind immediately. I think we counted
(21:07):
there as maybe twenty pieces of evidence that she gave
us all in a seven minute period. But it was
life changing for us. At that point. We knew that
Sean was watching what we were doing, and that he's
still there and we are still having a relationship to
some extent, that we love each other and care for
each other, but we just can't touch each other the
(21:30):
same way that we used to be able to.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
It's still very much alive. Yeah, would you tell us
again where we can see the video.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
You go to Helping Parents Heal and go to the
affiliate group's page a little drop down for Helping Fathers
Heal and so if you go to that, you'll see
information about the book, and then a little further down
you'll see bios of the different affiliate leaders. I'm one
of the affiliate leaders and at the very end of
my bio there is a link to Farah Gibson's reading.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Thank you for that. You're an affiliate do you host
live events or online things or both?
Speaker 2 (22:04):
So we meet weekly on Zoom, which is a little
bit different than the other affiliate groups. I think they
have monthly meetings and they're in person and because they're
geographically located, whereas the Father's Group is guys from all
over Canada, the United States. We have one dad in Brazil.
We've had people join us from the UK, although it's
(22:26):
a hardship to the time difference, but it's not geographic.
So it is a weekly meeting, which is really good
because it helps us to really kind of get to
know each other on a week to week basis. In
this grieving space, things change so quickly week to week
that every week there's going to be a dad that
either's celebrating something like a sign or a dream, or
(22:51):
a dad that's having a hard week because of an
anniversary or something that may have triggered a certain emotional response.
You know, isn't a linear thing. You go up, you
go down, you think you're better, then you go back,
you regress, you progress. So weekly meetings are really good,
and even though it's on Zoom, i'd say that we
(23:12):
are a very tight knit group. There's over six hundred
dads that have joined Helping Fathers Heal as a Facebook group,
but the Zoom call each week is thirty to forty dads.
We're usually a core group of dads, but we always,
unfortunately we have new dads coming on because we still
have kids that are passing and the dads need to
(23:33):
go somewhere. So hopefully we're becoming more visible as an
alternative or as a resource for fathers.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
What day in time do you host that?
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Yeah, it's Wednesday nights Wednesdays five pm Pacific time, So
eight pm Eastern time, And if you join the Helping
Fathers Heel affiliate group, there's a Facebook page and there's
a couple of questions just to kind of verify that
you have a child in spirit. We don't want to solicitation.
We just wanted to keep it to be dad's you know,
real guys that are in the same boat.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Well, thank you for doing that. And I know we've
got lots of dads listening to this right now and
may feel at home with being part of it.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Yeah, it definitely helps.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
So Helping Father's heal to all of a sudden having
this beautiful book with twenty five chapters, well how it
brought that about? To tell us about that journey.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
I'm not an author, so I never really even thought
about doing a book. I did have a medium reading
after Farah. The first medium reading we had that was
a one on one was with medium Kareem. She's here
in San Diego but it was still online, and she
said in the reading that Sean was telling her that
there's a book in me, and I didn't know what
(24:49):
that meant. I'd never thought of that. It didn't appeal
to me, to be honest, I don't journal much. I
don't write a lot. I am a storyteller, and I
do enjoy the video part of storytelling. But to sit
and put the story down on paper, I'd never occurred
to me. I brought it up to some of the
dads in one of our affiliate group meetings, our Zoom call,
(25:12):
and I just asked, you know, does this appeal to anybody?
Does anybody think this is an idea that you'd want
to write a chapter? Would we have enough guys that
might want to write one chapter, you know, just four
or five six pages and tell us the story about
your child and what kind of a child was this,
and what was your relationship like? And so about eight
(25:33):
hands went up the first night that I brought it up,
and so I thought, well, I don't know how we'll
do this. I got to figure this out.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
We'll hear more from Chris after the break how he
engaged twenty five other dads to tell their stories. It's
so important to hear from the dads. Usually an afterlife
communication predominantly hear from the ladies. I'm not a dad,
I'm not a man, but I do believe men need
(26:00):
to hear from other men. So let's go to the
break and we'll be right back with more of Chris Ryan.
You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio
and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.
Speaker 5 (26:17):
Don't go anywhere.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
There's more Shades of the Afterlife coming right up.
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Speaker 1 (26:55):
Hey, this is George Nori and you're listening to the
iHeartRadio and Coast to Ghost AM Paranoral Podcast Network.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
Thanks for being here.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Now let's get back to more with Sandra.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain. Next,
I ask Chris Ryan how he got the stories of
the twenty four other men about their journey and their
connection with their kids in the afterlife. For the book
Helping Fathers, heal.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
I wrote a series of questions, ten questions, thinking, okay,
this would help me. You know, it's more like a worksheet,
So I like homework to be able to answer questions
about tell us about your child and then taking us
through the whole narrative arc of a story about the
transition of your child and then what were the first days,
(27:57):
like what did you experience and where did you find
some help? What surprised you about grief? What kinds of
signs have you had? Have you had any Is there
anything that you would have as advice to another dad
who may be reading this. Every dad was given ten
questions that they could simply answer in a paragraph or
two and then they've got a story if you got
(28:19):
a chapter. Tom Madson helped me edit the book. Some
of the dads. We did a lot of phone interviews
to try to really pull out the story and help
them write it. So the editing process was quite extensive,
but the fact that we were able to spread the
writing out to twenty five other guys because ultimately after
asking this question. Over a two month period, I had
(28:41):
twenty five volunteers, and then the editing process took about
seven or eight months, and then we were able to
get the book out in April. So it surprised me
that we had so many guys willing to do it,
and it was so heartening for me. It was very
rewarding to hear the dads say that this was cathartic
for them, just the process of going back through not
(29:03):
just the transition and the pain of that moment, but
go back even further and start writing about the life
that they had with that child and some of those memories.
Some of the kids had physical illness, you know, had
suffered with cancer for years, and so there's a variety
of ways that these children had decided to transition and
(29:27):
that was their sole plan. So hearing how those children
lived and how their lives were celebrated, and the relationships
with their dads, and then learning the subsequent fallout from
that and how they found help. You know, that's really
the purpose of the book is just to give somebody
that's reading it a bit of a kind of charting
(29:49):
a course of you know, this is how it can
look and there's twenty five different stories, so they're not
all the same, but many of us had the same
in initial reaction of paralysis and fog and just inability
to think coherently or you know, right after a child dies,
(30:10):
you have to do all this crazy decision making of
making arrangements and then communicating with family and communicating with
that kid's friends' families, and it's just a really weird time.
But by connecting both with our children and then also
as dads in this group, we've connected with each other.
(30:30):
That's really where we've found a sense of hope that
our children are still with us and that we're going
to be okay, and that they didn't die. You know,
their life goes on, they're just their body isn't here.
So being able to kind of discover that as a
father in the midst of your grief, to be able
to feel that is just so relieving, as such a
(30:54):
wonderful feeling, a healing feeling, knowing that you're not alone,
really that there is a path to healing and you
don't have to feel isolated. That's probably the worst thing
many people choose to do when they lose someone that
they love is that they just lock the door and
go to bed and they never come out. Certainly there's
a time and a place for that, but you have
(31:16):
to reach out. That's what we're here to do, is
to love each other and to learn how to love.
And our children are still out there available to help
us learn that lesson. That's my son Sean on the cover.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Oh beautiful helping fathers Heal.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
It's not like a portrait for those of you that
don't see the book, it's it's kind of a shadow silhouette,
so you know, you don't have any real gender identification,
ethnic identification. It's just this child in a warrior pose,
you know, kind of that youthful energy. Yeah, we just
wanted to have everything be about the hope that can
come with having that relationship continue.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Is it a book for anyone or just.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Dad's Yes, it's a book for anyone dad's moms, you know,
because it could be a spouse might not understand how
the father's grieving, siblings or relatives, you know, anybody that
wants to learn about the grieving process and what's going
on in the mind of that other person that they
might not understand, and they might want to develop a
(32:20):
certain kind of empathy toward Wow, what are they going through?
What should I say to a person who's grieving? I
don't have the right words. What if I say something
and they start crying? You know, people are very uncomfortable
with us grievers, but if they can find a safe spot,
I think this book is a very healthy way for
(32:42):
people to understand what grieving looks like, what we're going through,
and what we need. And what we need is for
people to stay with us, to hang with us, to
have the courage to just ask us how we're doing,
and just sit there and listen and not try to
fix anything. And as dads, that's what naturally, you know,
we try to fix stuff. We try to protect our
(33:04):
loved ones. We may feel a certain special sense of
guilt because our child didn't have the full life that
everybody would expect. And so I do think that fathers
have an extra element of complexity with their grief because
of that societal expectation of the man being strong, not
(33:26):
showing much emotion, being able to carry on. You know,
your boss wants you to get back to work. It's
been four weeks. Are you over it yet? You know
you're having a bad day. Oh, I don't want to
talk to him. I'm going to leave him alone. No,
we'd love to be able to be human. And if
we look like we're having a bad day, just ask us.
You know, hey, can I do anything for you? Can
(33:48):
I buy you a cup of coffee? You want to
take a walk?
Speaker 5 (33:50):
You know?
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Just be with us. That's the message that.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Can be the simplest thing to say too. I don't
know what you're feeling or what you're going through, but
I just want you to know I'm here for you. Yeah,
excuse me. I'm here to listen. I'm here to be
your friend. That's right, Chris. Would you share some of
the stories that are in the book. I don't want
to say favorite, because I know they're all good, but
any stories that come to mind of signs or different reasons.
Your fellow fathers believe their kids are with them.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
I feel like they're all my children at this point.
I've read them so many times in the editing process.
I feel so intimate with all of these kids. And
I will share one thing. I had a reading with
a medium. Her name is Isabella Johnson, and this was
when the book was in the final editing stages, and
(34:38):
she said something about the kids are excited to tell
their story, and I thought, wow, this is cool, this
is great. So she didn't know anything about the book.
She knew I was from Helping Fathers Heal, because that's
kind of how we found hers through the Helping Parents
Heal list of approved mediums. And then she said, there's
(34:59):
more boys the girls. And she even said it looks
like there's only about seven girls in going back then
first time. Late in the process, I go back, I
count all the chapters, sure enough, with seven girls that
were featured in the stories, and the rest were boys.
Some of the dads that are the quietest in the
(35:21):
group meetings the Zoom meetings had the most heartfelt stories,
and some shared my experience with fentanyl because that is
such a killer of our children right now, and there's
lovely stories of kids. I believe our kids continue to
work with us through us, inspire us, nudge us, and
(35:44):
there's fathers that are doing great advocacy work on drug
awareness on mental health issues. The very first chapter in
the book is just a beautiful chapter, tragic, heartbreaking story
of a suicide. But the author, Harry Brule, has taken
it upon himself to quit his other job and is
(36:05):
now working in the mental health area helping other children,
especially with a disorder that is not typically diagnosed before
you're eighteen. It's borderline personality disorder BPD. It is what
happens when you have kind of a bipolar or two polls.
You go from anxiety, depression, isolation, nobody loves me, I'm
(36:30):
worthless to the other extreme. And so now this father
is doing advocacy work for that to help other young people.
Other dads are doing assemblies where they talk to kids
at schools. So many of these stories are really special
to me, and the kids just are so tender and
many of them very sensitive. Many of the dads describe
(36:52):
their children as seemingly having old souls, and that makes
total sense when you talk to medium or people who
are tuned into that that these would have probably been
perhaps advanced souls that decided they are going to make
that hard choice to leave early and make room for
(37:12):
a spiritual experience for the parents. So, without a doubt,
it's made all of the dads more spiritually sensitive and
more in tune with their child in a way that
they may not have been in physical form.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Right, and that relationship continues, which brings me to my
next question. How does your relationship with your son continue?
Are you talking to him? Are you asking for signs?
You include him in everything? I'm guessing you do.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Yeah, I've got him right here in front of me.
In fact, I always carry this around. This is a
little piece of glass that we had blown glass and
his ashes are in it, and I just keep it
in my pocket as a kind of a touchstone. But yeah,
we talked to him. We thank him for I have dreams.
My wife has had a couple of dreams, but not
(38:05):
as many, but we do have dreams. I know she's
doing a lot of meditation and she does get a
sensory perception of Sean being close by. But I would
say that we still maintain that personality and relationship even
though it's not as easy as picking up the phone
and calling them. That's what we miss the most, is
(38:27):
just being able to dial up a number or see
him in person. But yeah, we do still have a
relationship with him, and it's brought us closer together as
a couple, which I know grief can oftentimes be a
real difficult thing for a couple to survive. So I
do think reading this book or reading other books about
this so that the parents can kind of both be
(38:50):
understanding where each other is, give each other space when necessary,
but then help each other when the opportunity arises. A
lot of the dads have experience into a closer relationship
with their family and with their spouse because of the
passing of that child.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
We'll talk to Chris Moore after the break here a
very interesting dream he had and also give you some
tools whether you're a parent or not. You're listening to
Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to
Coast AM Paranormal podcast Network.
Speaker 4 (39:29):
Don't go anywhere. There's more Shades of the Afterlife coming
right up.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
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Speaker 5 (40:19):
Hey everyone, it's producer Tom of Coast to Coast A
m and more Sandras starts right now.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain
and we're with Chris Ryan, who compiled the book of
twenty five stories called Helping Fathers Heal.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
I do look forward to signs in those dreams, really
vivid dreams. Just last week I had one. Sean had
a dog, and this is one of those things where
that dog was a piece of our history with him,
and you know, dogs only live so many years, and
we knew this dog was getting older, but we had
(41:10):
three years with this dog since Sean passed, so there
was always this feeling of that's Sean's dog, and we
always had memories with the two of them playing and
him growing up, loving on that dog. And last week
we did have to put it to sleep. I knew
it was going to happen. The day before, we had
already made the arrangements for the vet to come to
(41:30):
the house and euthanize the dog. So the night before
I did have a very vivid dream with Sean and
I was on a couch. He was sitting next to me.
I had my arm around him, and he was kind
of squirming around a little bit. He was probably about
eight or nine. He was younger about the age he
would have been when he got the dog, and the
(41:51):
dog was curled up on the floor next to the couch.
Most of the times in these dreams there's not like
verbal communication, but I just knew what he was telling
me was it's okay, and you're doing the right thing.
It was a difficult decision for us if the dog
was ready or not, and he was basically reaffirming and
(42:13):
assuring me that it was okay. And now I know
they're together in heaven playing, so I just passed that
doggy spirit on to him to take care of.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
Oh. Sending you guys love for that too. It's the
worst pain imaginable, but our animals are alive, and well
we're going to see them all again. I tell you
that welcoming committee when it's our time is just going
to be huge, and all those little animal faces are
going to be there as well. Yes, say little somebody
could have a horse, Chris, What else would you like
(42:44):
to share with our time together as any questions I
haven't asked you, or any thoughts you'd like to share
with those who are listening.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Well, I think if you're listening to this then you
probably are looking for help try to understand grief. I
truly believe that it does help to feel like you're
not alone, to try to connect with people who understand.
If you're a guy like me, sometimes it's helpful to
(43:14):
be in a safe space with other guys because we
do have a certain kind of rapport with each other
in our group helping fathers heal. I mean, we tell jokes,
we laugh, and we drop f bombs. We close each
meeting with stupid dad jokes, just so that we try
to end on a lighter note for anybody who may
(43:37):
be reluctant to reach out and try to find help
in a group, because for me, be sitting in a group,
you know, because we went to alan On for years
because Sean was in an addictive cycle. I got help
from it, but I didn't look forward to it, you know.
And sometimes for guys, being in a group setting just
(43:59):
doesn't as comfortable. But our group really is healing and fun,
and whether it's our group or another group, I just
encourage anybody that's listening to this and feeling that you
want some help during your grief journey to find a
group of people that you can feel safe with. I
think that's the most important thing. And it doesn't have
(44:20):
to be a bunch of people. It can be one
or two people. But sometimes your wife can't do everything.
That's too much pressure on a relationship to have that
other person be the person that saves you. So finding
your tribe, so to speak, and finding people who understand
you and that you can talk to and you can
(44:42):
reminisce and tell stories and not feel like that's a
closet door that you can't open. I like to be
able to share my memories with Sean with some of
my friends. For them, it doesn't have to be this
red flag of oh no, he's talking about his kid again.
We're going to go down that road, going to start crying,
and it's going to be uncomfortable. I got to get
(45:03):
out of here because I don't cry every time. Sometimes
I just hear a song and it's like I remember
going to this concert with Sean. This is great. I
would just encourage anybody in a grief state to reach
out and find people who that you can feel safe
being yourself with.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
People need people, whether we're grieving or not. And I
find the worst place that we can go by ourselves
is in our own mind.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
Yeah, amen, the story wild it's brutal.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
It's absolutely brutal. We would never be as hard on
other people or tell them the thoughts in our head
that we tell ourselves now.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Because there's multiple people in there. You know, there's the
spirit of truth and guidance, and then there's also all
the other stuff that you bring with you as a
human and all of your doubts. So sometimes you just
need to work these things out. And also in the
book Last Thing too, you know, in terms of tools,
there are a variety of tools that are mentioned that
(46:05):
different fathers have used, whether it's grief counseling or EMDR
or other types of physical work kinetic work. But not
everything is going to be the same for every person.
So I definitely believe in connecting with other people. But
I also think that there are therapies, whether it's meditating
or just getting out for a walk or binaural beats
(46:27):
which is kind of a type of meditation with an
auditory influence. There are ways that you can help yourself,
and there are tools in the book where you might
find different ways that you haven't thought of before. Again,
it's all about storytelling. This book is about the stories
of twenty five dads and how they've made it through
that initial valley. That we're not all healed. We never
(46:49):
will be, you know, it never ends, but at least
we're not where we were that first week, that first
few days. We're able to find a way to stary,
wretch and grow and reach out and connect with each
other and with our child and spirit.
Speaker 3 (47:06):
If somebody's heart is heavy because they're experiencing a lot
of guilt as a parent, what advice would you give them?
Speaker 2 (47:14):
If you're struggling with guilt, it may be helpful to
talk to somebody who can give you some professional, objective advice.
And it may be somebody that is not in your
friendship circle. You may need to have a grief counselor
or somebody just listen and try to give you some
sense of perspective, because I think grief a lot of
(47:36):
it is just about your own perspective and you're putting
too much importance on what you did or didn't do.
So sometimes an objective, professional, compassionate person can give you
that sense of reality that you did everything you could,
and that is one of the messages that we tend
(47:57):
to get from our children on the other side. And
I'm not talking about just Sean, many many of the
other dads and parents. That seems to be a theme
that is very consistent as our parents want us to
know that you did everything you could and they want
us to feel at peace. But if you've got a
really strong response, the guilt response, that can be very toxic.
(48:21):
So I would encourage talking to somebody. And medium readings
for me have also been very helpful. I've heard other
people say it's like a worth a year of therapy.
Just having a good medium reading can be so healing.
When you feel like you've connected with that child and
that child has reassured you that this is the plan,
this was the way it was supposed to happen, and
(48:43):
I'm alive.
Speaker 3 (48:44):
I'm going to see you again. A while of the
kids are helping others. There's some unbelievably wonderful stories I've
heard from parents and the kids continue to make a difference.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
Yeah, and there's other resources and even the conference that
they do every two years wonderful.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:01):
I would explore the website Helpingparents Heal dot org. If
you're in that place, educate yourself and then reach out
to somebody who can help you.
Speaker 3 (49:10):
And there's so much more on their website. Even like
I said, if you're not a parent or a sibling,
you can see their YouTube channel and there's so many
videos between mediums and experts and grief and afterlife.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
It's the and caring listeners. There's a list of people
who are just other parents who you can call. You know,
we're not professionals. We are caring listeners and you can
call us anytime.
Speaker 3 (49:37):
Oh wonderful. Well, Chris, thank you so much for being
our guest here today.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
Thank you. I appreciate it. It's been fun. Thanks it
has It's always fun to talk about Sean and I
celebrate his life. You know, I don't let that one
thing define my life anymore. We're his, So thank you
for allowing me to to share that story.
Speaker 3 (50:01):
And thank you Chris. That's Chris Ryan who compiled the
book Helping Fathers Heal, Grief, Hope, and our Search for Connection.
Chris can be reached through his professional website, which is
Chrisryanvideo dot com, but more importantly, go to Helping Parents
(50:22):
Heal dot org. You can click on the affiliate page.
If you're a dad and there's Helping Fathers Heal. There's
also Helping Siblings Heal. I encourage any parent to join
Helping Parents Heal. It's free. It's the one organization that
I know that not only gives grief support, but they
(50:45):
believe in the afterlife. They are my favorite organization, and
as Chris said, they're well over twenty thousand members. So
a shout out to all of our friends at Helping
Parents Heal dot org. I was discussing with Frenzy yesterday
how important it is to feel that connection with our
(51:06):
loved one. And even though you may not want to
be a medium, I always suggest taking a course in mediumship.
You learn just what those subtle feelings are and how
our soul communicates and perceives information. We practice on each
other in these zoom medium classes, and for less than
(51:28):
one medium reading you get six two hour sessions and
who comes through from the other side. It's your loved ones.
And what a marvelous feeling it is as a human
to deliver a message and evidence for someone else. You
think it's your imagination, but it's not. These classes are
(51:51):
so special. We always have classes coming up, but we
don't die dot com. They're recorded. If you can't join
live there's a money back guarantee. But your loved ones
come through in such subtle manners. When you hear a
favorite song out of the blue or memory comes in,
that is them and for you to get involved with them,
(52:13):
just take a walk down memory lane and they will
start to give other feelings and memories and that's a
sign to connect. So with that, my friend, our time
today has come to an end. But I thank you
really from the bottom of my heart for listening to
Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to
(52:35):
Coast am Paranormal Podcast Network.
Speaker 1 (52:41):
Thanks for listening to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Ghost
Day and Paranormal Podcast Network. Make sure and check out
all our shows on the iHeartRadio app or by going
to iHeartRadio dot com.
Host
Sandra Champlain
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