January 18, 2025 • 48 mins
As founder and designer for Jordan Alexander Jewelry, Theresa Bruno designed pieces for Oprah, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Hudson, Pink, and Michelle Obama, who named her a favorite designer. She is now host of The Soul Talks Podcast.Theresa Bruno’s life reads like a fairy tale in many ways. Like life, though, fairy tales are often darkened with tragedy, and Theresa’s life is no exception. She has suffered more than her share of pain. However, she is still writing her story, and in this chapter she is vanquishing the fear and shame that gutted her after her husband’s death and the sudden collapse of her business by bringing it into the light and talking about it- fearlessly.About The Soul Talks Podcast:Soul Talks Podcast with Theresa Bruno launched on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2024 in honor of Theresa’s late husband, James, the love of her life. Born of tragedy, Soul Talks is a testament to the abiding power of gratitude, acceptance, self-compassion, honesty, connection, and love in overcoming adversity. Filmed at the Spots Films studios in Atlanta, GA, Soul Talks airs weekly every Wednesday on Youtube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello everybody, and welcome to the best ever You show.
I'm your host, Elizabeth Hamilton Garno and I am here
with the fabulous Teresa Bruno. How are you, Teresa?
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Oh hey Elizabeth, and happy New Year.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Yeah. I am doing.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Great and just so excited about this new year and
always honored to talk to you. You know, I just
sit in a huge admiration for you, the platform you've built,
all the books you've written, and just so excited to
have this morning with you.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Oh, thank you, And you know you are doing great
things yourself. I think that you know, we came across
each other and we're like, Okay, this is meant to be.
I appreciate you having me on your podcast, and so
we're gonna do a little podcast with you and celebrate
all the amazing things you do and celebrate your life
and you just you know you you are out there
(00:52):
finding people and sharing their stories and really helping the
world be more peaceful. So I love it. So everybody,
go to Soul Talks with Teresa dot com and Teresa's
t H E r e s a dot com.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
While you're listening.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
You can find her on YouTube, also Instagram, TikTok and
I'll put all of those links with the radio show. Uh,
so you have them. I don't know the fate of
TikTok so much as of today, but so maybe Instagram,
YouTube and website for now might be better. But Teresa
is the host of the Soul Talks podcast, which I've
(01:29):
had the privilege and honor being on. And I think
that one of the things that is that you focus
on a lot with your own messaging is repurposing grief
into hope. And I want to go there with people
because the world aches right now and so many levels
in so many ways. And grief isn't just the loss
(01:54):
of someone it can be. It's so multifaceted with the
various losses that we may have. So grief is a
part of us. And I think more and more add
to this, I think more and more we're all learning
how to process grief, hopefully better. It doesn't seem like
it's such a taboo topic.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Right what do you think?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I agree one hundred percent of Elizabeth, And you know
so many things that you hit on really fast there
that we can kind of unpack this morning. I think
we all have I would say survival. We're all on
a survival journey of some sort. And in that survival,
we're surviving a grief. And it can be you know,
(02:38):
a loss of a person, a parent, a partner, a child.
You know, it can be the loss of a pet.
I had to put my fourteen year old Maltise to
sleep the day after Christmas. And you talk about triggering
a bit of grief I had from the loss of
the suicide of my husband five years ago. I mean,
there are so many things and I you know, I
(02:59):
have this also a story of having to shudder a
beloved business. And there's so much grief that comes with
loss of a job. There's so much grief that comes
when we think or we define ourselves as having failed
at something. So so you know, to put a period
right there. Everybody has grief. And one several things I've
(03:23):
noticed in my journey my journey now is I'm five
years in since the death of my husband and about
five and a half years since I lost a business
that was just a beloved, you know, heartfelt you know,
pulled up from my bootstraps creative business and learned a
(03:44):
lot along the way. Some of the first things I
would say to your listeners are, you know, do what
you gotta do, if that means you need to cry, cry,
if that means you need need to sleep, sleep, if
it means you need to eat, eat, But everybody seems
(04:04):
to tell us what we're supposed to do in grief,
and my theory is that our bodies and our spirits
tell us individually how to help ourselves when we grieve,
if we can get quiet enough to listen to it.
Probably the most profound thing I learned early on in
my grief journey was that it's not a short haul.
(04:28):
Our American culture doesn't give us a lot of time
space to grief. There are other cultures who I think
do that, whom I think do that better than us.
But you know, we don't really have a lot of
verbiage around it. But as you said, it's getting less
less taboo, and we do talk about it more. You know,
every time I do talk about my survival journey and
(04:49):
I talk about grief and sorrow, what it feels like,
what it looks like, there's nobody in that audience who
doesn't nod or cry or raise a hand, you know.
So yeah, I think it's less taboo. But that said,
I don't think we have a. We have a real
language in our culture for death and grief. So I
(05:10):
guess that's part of my platform is to open it up,
open that up as much as I possibly can as
a vessel on this earth. And then the most powerful
thing I learned early on, because I kept saying, and
this is what everybody asks me. They say, when will
it end? How long is this going to last? How
long am I going to be in this kind of pain?
Because you know, we want quick fixes. The truth of
(05:33):
it is, I learned that you have to learn to
live with grief. You learn to eat with it, and
sleep with it and bathe with it, and you learn
to walk alongside the grief. It's almost like you've got
a cup in each hand and you're trying so hard
(05:53):
to survive and to recover, and you've got this cup
of grief that's, let's say, in your right hand, but
you learned a whole that while in the other hand
you've got this cup that's about survival and recovery and
learning to find whatever it is that gives you a
rope to tether to hold on to keep going. You know,
(06:13):
I would still say five years in, yes, my grief
is lighter and I have tools to help me with it,
but is it gone? No, it's not. So you know,
I just kind of stopped there for a moment.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Well, you know, I want to bring in doctor Katie
Eastman into this discussion. So she's my co All Things
Best Ever You and co author on Percolate and we
just signed for a new book due out in twenty
twenty six about peace, and she's one of the you
just keep rolling and grace. Well, well, where I want
(06:53):
to go with this is so she's one of the
foremost experts on grief and loss in the whole world.
Like she's studied under al Sabeth Koobler Ross and she
would be such a great guest for your show and
just yeah, oh my gosh, and just for you to
know her as a human. But she she specializes in
helping people recreate their life after loss and and the
(07:17):
and growth grief with with growth, and so that you
know exactly what you're saying. You know, you walk alongside it,
and you learn how to maneuver with it, and you
and you continue to move forward as a human being
in different directions, and you turn that that pain that
you're feeling into some purpose, Like you have you are doing.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
So.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
She's a marvelous human being. And we did a we
did a pretty cool workshop last night on peace, passion
and prosperity. And one of the first questions we asked
of our participants was, you know, what's something going on
in their life causing them, you know, stress or grief
or feelings of loss and things like that. And you
(07:59):
know your draw d when you when you really stop
pause and hear other people and what's actually going on
in their lives?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Oh my gosh, and you know right now, just may
I say sending so much love, prayers, energy, help, financial
support to all of our friends in La. Oh yeah,
there are a number of avenues everybody can give to
help support. But the loss, the you know, the collective
loss and the individual loss that's happening has happened in
(08:34):
the last four days and continuing today. I just want
to put our arms and prayers around all of l A.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Yeah, I'm loving it when I'm seeing send angels angels
are what oh yeah, yes, yes, and and things like that. Yeah,
it's it's it's hard to comprehend what's happening out there.
I don't think we've even scratched the surface of what's
happening out there, and it's you know, it's unfolding on
(09:03):
TV and all of these things, and I think we
just really need to hold space for everyone affected. I
couldn't agree with you more. So I'm gonna I'm going
to bring this conversation back to you and go back
to you as a young kiddo. Okay, yeah, And and
keep in mind we have we're probably going to do
thirty minutes or so on the show. So, but I
(09:25):
want to and and I've got so many things I
want to ask you. I've got like ten questions I
want to talk to you about, so use.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
I think answers.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
So just I'm happy for you to stop so you
can get every everything you want.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
So so take us back to Juilliard because you you know,
oh my goodness, gracious you are so you're such an artist.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Thank you. I am.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
I am, And but not because I did anything to
get that. That was really a gift that came so
early in childhood. And I don't think I certainly didn't
understand it. My my family didn't understand it. It was
just there and as a little girl, you know, I
came from late sixties rock and roller parents. I had
(10:11):
heard of classical music, and you know, I probably about
three or four years old. I just heard classical music
in my head. And then you know, it was begging
my mom for a piano, was begging to play, and they,
you know, they just weren't. We weren't that family. We
weren't cultured at all, really, And so I learned to
play very very quickly, and it was a real fast
(10:33):
matriculation into you know, just about a teacher a year
until I got to be about twelve years old and
we found somebody who could take me all the way
through to graduate school. And it was a god given talent. Yes,
I was very disciplined, but I was disciplined because I
loved it. It drove me. You know, nobody ever had
to say practice. I think by the time I was
(10:54):
about ten, I was practicing three hours a day. I
only went to high school for four hours every morning,
and then I practiced all afternoon, five hours a day
in high school. And I was just I just it
was me. It consumed me. I was one of the
lucky ones who got right connections. I had amazing teachers.
(11:14):
Teachers shaped me, teachers healed me. Can't say enough about that,
and I was lucky enough to be walked into study
with Adel Marcus at Jillilliard and that was one of
the highlights.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Of my life. Yeah, you know, so what is it
safe to say you were like a prodigy?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
That's a great question, and I asked myself that all
the time. You know, I will back up on this
one thing and not I don't want it to be
too dark a topic. But I didn't come from happy
home at all. There was It was a very very
unhappy home, and so I've often asked the question, you know,
was I really a prodigy or was my need to
(11:57):
escape the turmoil and chaos of my home so great
that the gift I was given from God at to
be an artist, to be creative, to explore beauty? Did
I just run at it so hard so I didn't
have to face the other parts? So I've always asked
myself that question, but others would have said product she was.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Do you have you ever seen on TikTok where they
have a three year old playing the piano and they're like,
it must be sow and so reincarnated, you know, kind
of have you seen that?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (12:29):
I kind I'm asking you do you feel like you're
Beethoven reincarnated or.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
I don't know about Maethoven. You know, I'm a fairly
small woman. But who I most would like to have
been was Rock money Off with hands that spanned, you know,
almost two octaves and played the biggest, most beautiful repertoire
in the world. So yeah, I think I would have
wanted to be Rock money Off.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Okay, all right, we'll take it.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
So so maybe right.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
You don't know for sure.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
We all of us are like.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Oh okay, yeah, so okay.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
So in all seriousness, though, tell us what happened to you,
because it's your first bout of you know, Oh my,
what am I going to do with my life?
Speaker 2 (13:12):
The first place where you know, everything seemed like it
was always on an upward trajectory and then it was
an absolute fall to the earth and crash. I was practicing.
I was in graduate school. Everything was shiny and no warning.
I was practicing and this anybody who hears this will
(13:33):
go well, that was dumb. Yes, now we would say
it was dumb. But I was practicing about ten hours
a day, and again, I'm a small person. I was
trying to make great big sounds on the stage and
play a big romantic repertoire, and all of a sudden,
just it was a morning I was practicing Chopin's forth ballode,
I was practicing a coda. It's quite hard, and my
(13:56):
left wrist just in one second was so scrushating, painful.
I can't explain it. And it just froze. It stopped working.
I couldn't move it, I couldn't do anything. So over
the course of the year, it was determined that you know,
I had just stressed my body so much that the
body responded, as doctor Bessel vander Kolch would say, the
(14:19):
body keeps the score. And had placed a cygnobule cyst
right on the wristbone, right where the wrist goes up
and down to play, and takes all the force that
your body puts into those great mixed strings on a
ten foot grand And it took a year in a
cast of determining whether I needed surgery or not. Surgery,
(14:40):
of course, had to drop out of graduate school. All
the shininess of my life was absolutely not shiny. And
then ultimately I had surgery. It was not a successful surgery.
The cyst was removed, but they also had to take
out a piece of the wristbone, and my concert career
was absolutely unequivocally over.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
That sucks.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Yeah, And you know, I was a kid, you know,
I think I was twenty four and no tools, no psychological,
spiritual tools to deal at all. And I had done
absolutely nothing since I was tiny, but studying music I had.
I didn't have anything that qualified me for any kind
of job. I had no dream. I had no dream
(15:28):
for anything else. And I think it's one of the
biggest things is when you don't dream, you don't create.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Yeah, when you say no tools, you know, I think
about today's kids and the vast array of tools they have,
and it feels like they're starting to use them. I
know when our son had our son's a profess, was
a professional baseball player and he got injured when he
was at Georgetown pitching line drive came back at his
(15:58):
head and he put his pitching hand up, and so
he's got a pin in his left hand, and he
drew upon every tool in the book to get through that.
But you know, oh, you know those moments when we're
really great at something and then it ends in injury
(16:19):
or whatever it is, or just got wrenching and heart
wrenching and wondering with hanging. I'm gonna keep going for
one second with no tools available to you. How did
you cope with that?
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Like?
Speaker 1 (16:32):
What did you do?
Speaker 2 (16:35):
I didn't do very well. Yeah, I cried. Probably, I
mean like probably he had a nervous breakdown but wasn't
being treated, you know, didn't go to therapy. I mean
I went to physical therapy, but not emotional therapy. I
went to a little place in the mountains in North Carolina,
right outside of Asheville, and I walked and I cried,
(16:57):
and I walked and cried, and I walked and cried.
That that was I did breathing tools. I have always
been a person of prayer, not a prayer that's driven
by doctrine or a certain kind of religion, but truly,
just from the time I've been a child, I prayer
has been easy, and so prayer was and a belief
(17:22):
in something greater than me, a belief in the divine.
Even in the worst of it, Elizabeth, with no dream
and no idea what life would be next for me,
there was this little, teeny tiny voice that went, this
is divine, This is for a reason, this is a
there's a bigger place in your life. You don't you
can't see, you don't know it, but there is something
(17:43):
good on the other side of this. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Yeah, I think the world put us together for a reason.
We've You and I have definitely met for a reason.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
I don't quite exactly know what.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Yeah, I don't exactly know what it is yet. But
when when you say angels or prayer or anything like that,
I get like little goosebumps and I'm not cold. I'm
I'm actually warm, and I'm like, okay, because I so
thoroughly believe in angels. I think they're just around us
for various reasons.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
And sometimes every day.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Yeah, it doesn't feel like it though, and you have
to really work through that.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
I'll tell you a quick little story. When it was
about three, I had twin beds in my room and
my little sister had not been born yet, and hanging
over my bed with my little pink bedspread was this
painting of a guardian angel. I think my grandmother put
it there. And my favorite color to this day is
a light pink, and there was this guardian angel was
(18:44):
bathed in pink and in light and like I said,
outside of my door. My bedroom door often was a
lot of turmoil and chaos, and as a little girl,
I would pray to that an angel and I would
just say, you know, help me, show me how to
get out of this. Music became way out, but I
had that was my first kind of pathway into prayer divinity.
(19:08):
And I hold that angel clothes all these years later
and still pray to her.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Yep, I love it. Yeah, I got the same thing.
I've got certain little things where I'm like, yep, that's
my angel right there. So yeah, and yeah, one of
them is I'm looking as you said that. One of
them is actually this little yellow angel.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
It's a little angel ornament. Uh.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
The Selvaski's here in Maine. Their daughter passed away from cancer.
And and again I'm summarizing here a little bit, but
the mom keeps her memory so alive through books and
these angels and things like that. And I have one
of the angels.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Oh and it's just beautiful.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Yeah, would yeah, I will, I will. Actually, I just
I have it right here. Yeah, it's it's it's really beautiful.
So anyway, yeah, I love my little things that I
have hanging around that remind me of people and their
and their their journeys, and it's just a don't you
think it's just so powerful to be mindful when you're
(20:11):
in the presence of another human being and like pause
for the power of like what in the world might
actually be going on in their actual life.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
I think I love the word pause because I do
believe it's a powerful word if you if you see
it as an action word, and it seems to connote
the opposite, But so much happens in the pause.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yeah, yeah, so much when you like hold space for
other people to you know, don't don't brush by people without.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Thought exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Yeah, I just right.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
I love to have a number of exercises I do
with this as I coach and mentor others. But also
you know, holding other people in the light. Yeah, you know,
so often we find the little things that annoy us
about others or that poke at us. And if you can,
you know, just put a complete sort of pillar of
light or uh, you know, coming down on the person
(21:13):
you're looking at, and all you see them in is
bathed in light. Then what you see is all their
greatness as well as it's equal parts greatness and pain.
But your spirit up to see their spirit, I think
in a very different way.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Yeah, well, put all right, take us into the what
you segue into from from piano to the next part
of your life, like because you've had you're quite an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Yes, I am an entrepreneur. I love creating businesses. I
just love it, the raw, messy parts of creating a business.
I don't create perfect businesses, but I love the in between.
I love the in the middle. That's what you get.
Think it's my heart racing, and you know, I just
love the creation of the messy business, which I'm absolutely
in the middle of right now.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah. I keep wanting to drag you over into best
ever you and and help it fly, take it. I
need you on the way. Well, I think one of
the I think one of the biggest mistakes we're making.
I love all the you know, the appearance of all
the different brands. So we've got a lot of individual
(22:26):
brands out there, and I keep looking at people going,
you know, if you three would team up, and you
three would team up, and you find would team up
and everything, imagine the magazine industry might come back, you know,
a little bit stronger. We've just got all these people
trying to launch these individual magazines and these individual memberships
(22:47):
and all these things. And I think if we, if
we could, you know, team up and support each other
a little bit better as women, we'd have some brands
that emerge bigger than they could be versus me, for example,
sitting here in my office since two thousand and eight,
you know, chugging along, yeah, but not really breaking through.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
I was, I was in my per meditation space this morning.
And it's so bizarre you said that, because that dropped
into me about a couple of different people. Go on,
why aren't we doing like a monthly together? So I
support you and you support me. You know, why are
we doing these one off things together as women? So
you know, I couldn't be more honored than to be
(23:28):
on the team with Elizabeth and doctor Katie.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Yeah, and you know, and it's funny because it changes
because people. The best ever you change is because people
don't really understand or have the stomach for being an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
I always find that interesting, but it's true because I mean, gosh,
I've it all and lost it all. You know, being
an entrepreneur is a scary place. I've also had extraordinary
successes but they aren't all successes. You know, one success
out of five businesses started kind of is my is
where I've been.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, I go one out of ten, like you do
ten things and one of them works.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Yeah, exactly, But I agree with you. It's something I'd
like to put some pause time into.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
All right, So tell us more about you as an
entrepreneur and some of the businesses that you've had. It's
pretty cool. I mean, if you're out there and you're
listening and you are a female entrepreneur, this is a
human being that you can engage to reesa Bruno as
a resource because she's seen it, done it, been there,
all of it up, down, good, bad, whatever. So yeah,
(24:30):
all right, I'm being quiet, let's listen.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Well, first of all, I would say to that end.
I also, I don't publicize it at all, but I
constantly have women come to me as a business coach.
It's one of them. It's one of the things I
do that gives me the most happiness and pleasure is
to coach women in business, women entrepreneurs in business. It's
just pure delight to me. But my first business I
(24:55):
ran out of the music business, taught for a minute,
knew I wasn't a teacher, cried every time every student left,
and just just was like, God, what do I do?
And I landed in the advertising and marketing business, and
I worked for two firms. Then I was a marketing
director for Regions Bank, which is now I think P
(25:18):
and C Bank nationally or internationally. Very young, you know,
that was I was twenty seven years old and I
was in this huge job and I immediately it taught
me that I did not want to be in the
corporate world.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
I loved, I loved, you.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Know, at twenty seven seeing a huge business run, but
I I and you know, they were bank was amazing me.
You know, they were like, you could be our first
female bank president. I was like, yeah, no, that's not
what I want. And so when I quit to create
my first business, I was twenty eight and a half
when I when I when I first incorporated that LLC,
(25:58):
and it was an advertising mark getting firm and it
was full service. I was partner creative director. I had
two partners. It was again I've had some fairy tales
happen in my life. It grew so fast, I mean
I think in three or four years we were billing
twenty million dollars, which at that time was a whole
lot of money. And I was early married and had
a little baby. I took to the office all the
(26:19):
time and worked, you know, tons of hours, and it
was just so much fun. Probably ten years later, I
broke off from that partnership and created my own agency,
and I was creating sign of kind of small businesses
underneath my big business, small businesses of doing writing in
(26:41):
LA for small and large you know, kinds of projects
like your dad, but not as successful as your dad.
And so that was a business. You know, there there
were just always small businesses happening underneath the big business.
I kept my marketing firm that I started, I guess
at thirty nine until two years ago, and I have
(27:04):
to say, interestingly enough, I never had one penny of
debt on the business. And that made me very proud
because I didn't go into business with an MBA. I
went into business, you know, really as a musician basically
and three jobs, you know, three jobs and three years
before I started a business. But I had no debt
on the business. It was always successful. It morphed as
(27:26):
the world morphed, you know, going into social media, and
you know, very different kind of way of marketing. My
expertise became in filmmaking, commercial filmmaking, and I got to
travel the world and I had office in Toronto, office
in LA you know, making commercials for large, large companies.
(27:47):
So that was a blast. And somehow in the middle
of all that, I got bored and creatively bored, and
I was working in La a lot and started just
I loved jewelry. I loved fashion, So it's just started.
LA has this huge jewelry district and so for about
two years, every weekend I drag my youngest son and
(28:07):
he would say, oh my god, Mom, are you kidding?
We have to look at pearls again. I just was asking,
how do you I didn't at that point have an
intent to start a business. I just wanted to make
amazing pieces for myself. And so it took two years
of just asking and learning and how do you source things?
And then finally finding a craftsman who could create my designs.
(28:31):
And I'll just stop right there and let you ask questions.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Well, no, you know, I think it's I think it's
pretty amazing. But I was giggling back in the financial
services part of it, because I think you know, you know,
a lot of me is in the financial services industry
still to this day, and it's such a there are
few and fewer females than there should be, so it's
a it's an interesting industry. So I love the fact
(28:56):
that you you know, you were like, I love the
fact that you define things by I Nope, I don't
want to do that. And that's sometimes how we have
to find what we truly love. So that's a teaching
point right there. And you know, commercial TV, filmmaking business,
all of these things, and then the jewelry making business
where you've I mean, I'm guessing I think we've talked before,
(29:16):
so I kind of know. Actually I'm not guessing it.
You know, you've put jewelry on really famous people and
things like that. Tell me something, why are you still going?
Why not just stop?
Speaker 3 (29:30):
There?
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Go, been there, done it? You don't need a podcast, really,
maybe you know that kind of thing. Tell me your
purpose for continuing on with helping people and turning it
around and flipping it around so that you are dedicating
your life to lifting other people up.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Where I think you just said it for me, Elizabeth,
when I lost that jewelry business, that was again in
a fairy tale. In my world, just crazy successful became
global fast and twelve years old, I've been on every
major fashion mag I dressed million, you know, a lot
of major celebrities, and that that business really fed the
(30:10):
ego a lot, I have to say, but it really
fed my my need to create. I lost that business.
It was a face plant in all kinds of ways,
and I lost it to internal fraud that was happening
underneath my notes for about two years. Then my husband
died tragically. He took his life just a few months
(30:32):
after I had to shutter that business. So it was
a double whammy of nothing pared to the loss of James.
But I was walking into that loss caring a pile
of shame over losing my business. So I kept my
marketing business somehow, going by the grace of God for
three years after James died, you know, And and then
(30:54):
I decided to close a healthy, thriving, successful business. And
that's not an easy thing to do, right That's that's
a choice. That's a life choice. And so to answer
your question, as soon as I, as soon as James died,
and I began walking out of just abject grief and sorrow.
(31:21):
Every every step I made forward in my survival, I
felt more and more aligned with my truest self spiritually.
And my truest self spiritually wasn't that crazy, driving driven
person to create businesses, to create success, to create wealth,
to create materialism. That just was gone. And I kept saying, Okay, God,
(31:47):
you know what, what do you want from me? And
at the three year mark, you know, I sold Anne,
closed to that business, set real still for a year,
but I was writing constantly, was asking questions. I had
at that point a really good mental spiritual practice of prayer,
(32:09):
meditation tools I was using to be quiet, to listen.
My life was in the pause, and I realized that
I couldn't put a period behind James death, and I
couldn't put a period behind what it felt like as
a woman to close, to have to close, to shutter
(32:30):
a business that was so much of my heart, and
that every time I talk to people, they needed to
hear what I was learning. And it wasn't because I
was so great, and I don't think it was necessarily
because I had answers. What I've learned in grief, and
I think you and I've talked about this is that
they really just needed somebody who had the bravery to
(32:52):
sit alongside them and their grief.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Yeah, so today, why.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Am I still doing it. I'm doing it because I
want to create a space for others to talk about
this really hard stuff and to get in the mess
and the raw and the junk of it. I didn't
have that five years ago, and maybe it was there
and I couldn't find it. But I'm driven right now
(33:18):
to be of service.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Yeah, thank you for sharing all of this. By the way,
I don't know if I think too properly along the
waiters we've been talking, but yeah, it's so it's it's
if somebody's listening to you right now, chances you know
needs you. You've you know, you've had an impact on them.
I'm near certain. So I think that's so important.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Thank you for giving me the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Yeah. You know, when my dad died in twenty eighteen,
I came back here and I'm like, I mean, for
two I had to get picked up by my bootstraps
by somebody actually kind of because I just wasn't doing
very well and I wanted to close best ever you
and you know, I just was like, oh, this sucks.
(34:08):
Kind of thing, and when you see somebody take their
last breath, as I did with my dad, it was
like a movie played backing everything up like like a tornado,
almost going nothing matters, None of this material stuff matters.
Like I came home from that and for like, I
(34:30):
didn't even care if I had two different shoes on.
I know, I know, or my socks didn't match. I'm like,
none of this mattered. All the things that we think
about the mattering, like what kind of car you drive,
or house you live in, or what schools your kids
go to or all this stuff. It just was so
oddly not important. And I still can't quite explain it.
(34:55):
I was maybe a little depression in there.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
I don't know, but still is it right there? Everything
I ever defined is success? Oh j just completely fell
away and none of it mattered.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Yeah, it made me. I mean I just released the
Success guide Book and it made me write a book
on it. Like, hey, folks, wake up, call here. Everything
that you're defining a success.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Just like.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
People want to hug. They don't care how much money
you make. You know, they care if you're nice to them.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
They don't know it's a way it looks like they
need somebody to walk alongside them, stumbling through their grief.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Yep, or even in happy moment, you know, happier joy
or what life just life in general. We need pals
and people who truly understand what we've gone through, rather
than superficial you know stuff and faky stuff put on,
faky stuff put all over social media and things like that,
(35:55):
where you're just seeing somebody's you know, excellent moments twenty
four to seven and none of the real. So I
don't know, I just I don't even know how to
explain it or articulate it. But do you have any
more words for it? Keeping in mind, it's ten we
were on here for. We got to go in about
maybe like five minutes or so, it's not too long, Elizabeth.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
You and I have talked about the story of your dad.
I remember the first time we did a pre interview together.
I mostly live in South Florida, and I was taking
this walk, beautiful walk, and you were telling me, you know,
in detail, the story of being with your dad, the
things he said, how those moments felt, and I was
(36:39):
just tears running down my face as I walked, you know,
this beautiful street, and I think those are moments that
are absolutely covered and intended by the divine. Whatever your
understanding of God is as a listener, whoever the God
of your understanding is, your God, Elizabeth was so present
(37:02):
with you and your father in that moment. I think
you are so blessed to be with him as he
crossed over. But in those moments, you opened yourself and
he opened himself up, and the universe opened up for
you to experience something spiritually that was so profound for
you that it shifted your life.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
I don't think that was an accident that you You're
one of eleven kids, right, Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Right, it's back in the middle. I gotta ask you something, though.
I'm going to flip this a little bit, and this
is gonna be a really gross question. I'm going to
just be okay that brace yourself. Okay, So I saw
my father pass away and things like that. You have
a different situation here with the suicide. Yeah, tell me
(37:51):
what's what you really think? Say that again, tell me
what you really think? You know, like you're you're you're
telling me, you know, it was blessing that I got
to hold space and things like that with my dad
and things like you didn't have that.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Well for what I'm saying, and that is it forever
shifted your life as to what your life's purpose is.
James suicide, And I'll go back to the hard part.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
Go back.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
Yeah, forever shifted my life, My life's purpose, my definitions
of success, who I am, my spiritual drive, that all
shifted in that moment, and a big piece of my
What happened to me was that I did find him.
And this is you know, listeners, if children are nearby place,
(38:34):
I'll put a warning on this.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
He was. He was missing for a number of hours
on a morning we were supposed to go to our
lake house together and plants sunflowers. So I went looking
for him and he was in his office and he
had shot himself in the head. And I found him.
So there's so much that happens as a result of
(38:59):
seeing that kind of horror and even the knowing that
there was so much betrayal in that he knew I
would find him. Yeah, like he you know, that's that's
a horrible thing to do to a person. And this
was a marriage I thought was pretty idyllic. We didn't
(39:21):
we weren't screaming and fighting and having problems. I'm about
to get a divorce. He was depressed. He was a
very depressed man. But did you know that only marginally?
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (39:32):
He really important that part of his life off. We
had been in therapy for a year. The therapist didn't
have a clue that he could be suicidal, got it?
Speaker 3 (39:41):
You know?
Speaker 1 (39:42):
And then I want to ask you, and and this
might help people who have had this happen and things
like that. You know, how just pissed were you?
Speaker 2 (39:52):
I was really pissed.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
I picture you being pissed what I was.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
I was. I was just a non person. I was
broken everything. What it did is it stripped me of
my core belief system and what I built my life on. Yeah,
and to rebuild that is.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
You're one tough girl, boy.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
But I'll tell you what I was pissed off about
was James was an incredible dad. I had two boys
in their early twenties, and he was so close to them,
especially the younger one who was under just finished undergraduate school.
They talked, they text, they went to football games. They
were in constant contact. And I wanted to punch him
in the face for leaving those boys and for leading
(40:37):
me with what those boys had to work through there's yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
I And let me just ask you, you know, how
trained are you at this point to deal with that?
You know, like, how do you make sure that you
know you don't have moving forward to twenty year olds
going into their thirties and forties and fifties pissed rad
and angry at the old and you know, you could
really have a like plummet into every kind of grief
(41:06):
known to mankind and worse. And as I see it,
you've very beautifully and gracefully guided your children into air
quotes here beautiful success, you know, beautiful lives.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
That's a nice ribbon on it. But it didn't look
like that.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
No, I'm sure it didn't.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
It was.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
It's been maybe it doesn't know even.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Some days it doesn't. You know, I have a son
going through something right now, and I had to say
to him the other night, Hey, buddy, I know you
feel like the world is falling down around johny to
ask the question, are you having suicidal thoughts because their
dad opened that door? Yep, to quit on life when
things get hard?
Speaker 1 (41:50):
And now do you sit and just worry twenty four
to seven about your boys? I mean, as mom of
four boys. Even without this happening to us, I just
worry anyway all the time.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
Yeah, just part of it. You know.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
I drive them crazy. I drive them absolutely crazy because
if I can't find them.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Yeah, you know, worried.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
If eight hours go and I can't get a caller,
a text, I have PTSD. I am still the woman
driving around Birmingham, Alabama looking for my husband in grocery stores.
You know, I will always have. I've worked, and I've worked,
and I've worked on it, I know, but I'm not done.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
Yeah. There's that's that's forever healing right there, and it's
that's it. And I bet too that you don't. Again,
if Katie were on here, she could probably articulate this
way better than me. I'm just this is raw for me,
from my heart to yours kind of questions. You know,
I can't imagine either too. What could unpredictably like trigger
(42:51):
those feelings.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Either, which feelings just.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Whatever, whatever feelings.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
It's just like when I have my little dog to
sleep too.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Oh, I'm going to go back there with you too,
because let me ask you something. Is that not the
worst thing?
Speaker 3 (43:09):
Oh my god?
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Yeah, our dog died right before COVID and I can't
even handle it still.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
Well, the thing too was he was kind of my
He was definitely a part of my James journey. You know,
I'll tell you a sweet little story. The morning that
James took his life, I was sleeping so hard I
didn't hear him get up. He got the dog, he
took the dog out, he fed the dog, and left
(43:38):
the dog outside the bedroom door, and then James was
gone before I was out of the bed, and my
sweet little Jewels was still there for probably more than weeks,
probably the months afterwards, Jewels would go over to the
place where James sat on the sofa and with his
little he's only seven pound Maltese, and he would pall
(43:59):
and palm, paw at the throw that I would very neatly,
you know, fold every morning and put in place. He
would paw at the throw that James had used until
he added in a circle, and he would sit on
top of it and he would not move for hours.
That was, you know, Jeules grieved James too.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Yeah, but Jules was.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
A really big part of my survival journey animals and pets.
You know, he helped me be resilient and that was also
God's way. I had to get up and let the
dog out. I had to feed the dog, even when
I didn't want to feed myself.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Yeah did you Yeah, exactly? Did you get a new dog?
Speaker 3 (44:35):
Yet?
Speaker 2 (44:37):
It was so funny. I thought. I thought it would
help Jules if I got another dog. He loved being
around other dogs. So I had contacted a breeder in
Indiana about a little toy mini golden doodle and had
decided to get this little female puppy at the end
of January. She'll be about three months old, and so
(44:58):
I thought I was getting her. I helped Jewels with
his end of life, and he didn't make it for that.
But yes, I'm supposed to get a puppy. I'm already
named her honey God, okay, good, and I get her
at the last week of January.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Good because I don't know about you, but I don't
do well without dogs.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
I'm a person. I will have an everything person. But too, Yeah,
I'll have a dog around me all the time.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
Yeah, me too. I have three rescued cats and two dogs.
And when our dog passed away in January twenty twenty,
it took us a while to get a dog. But
then there are two of us in the household who
must have dogs, Me and Quinn. And so we went
with Quinn first, and he picked out Harley, and so
it's Harley Quinn.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
I love the name. Yeah, and then yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
Yeah, so her name's her name is Harley, And so
have Harley and Quinn. And then I was like, well,
I need one that kind of thing, that's your dog.
So I have Bahama. And but you know what is trippy,
here's more angels. Then we're gonna go. So I used
to have a dog. It was a the same dog
(46:06):
as Bahama. As the story is where the story's going.
And when I was a kid, about six or eight,
we moved and the dog.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
I don't know where the dog is still to this day.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
You know, my mom and dad were like, yeah, the dog,
she ran away or whatever.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
I can't even remember what.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
I always felt like they were making stuff up, like
the dog ran away, they gave the dog away, the
dog died. I have no idea what it was, but
something was something. I never saw my dog chance again, right.
I have prayed my whole entire life and not done
too much action toward praying, just prayed for chance to
come back right, just kind of missed that dog love
the dog, best dog ever kind of thing. And so
(46:44):
the place called and they're like, we have a dog
that isn't getting adopted, and Kent, would you like the dog?
We'll give the dog to you for free, And I
kid you not. The dog looks exactly like chance.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
Oh my go actually talk about age. Oh my god,
I'm my dog back.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
And I swear to God my dad died. My dad died, and.
Speaker 3 (47:06):
Was like, okay, I hear her.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
God, here's the dog back already. That kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
I love that, the dogs having sent I swear to God.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
But Bahamad, oh yeah, Mohammad doesn't leave my side nothing,
you know, kind of thing. And it is just amazing.
So anyway, all right, Teresa, we've got to go actually
have I actually have a hair appointment.
Speaker 3 (47:36):
I have not seen you.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
I mean, you need to have a show on hair biolage.
Speaker 4 (47:41):
People, biolage. It's the secret to hair at fifty five. Anyway,
all right, I love you very much. Thank you for
being here with us, Honor, thank you, thank you for
sharing your story and to everybody listening. Teresa Bruno, Teresa's
your website.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
One more time.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
So Talks with Teresa dot Com perfect.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
All right, everybody, thanks for listening, Thank you Teresa for
being here.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
Thank you Elizabeth, You're amazing. Such a gift.
Speaker 3 (48:08):
Thank you.
Hello everybody, and welcome to the best ever You show.
I'm your host, Elizabeth Hamilton Garno and I am here
with the fabulous Teresa Bruno. How are you, Teresa?
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Oh hey Elizabeth, and happy New Year.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Yeah. I am doing.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Great and just so excited about this new year and
always honored to talk to you. You know, I just
sit in a huge admiration for you, the platform you've built,
all the books you've written, and just so excited to
have this morning with you.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Oh, thank you, And you know you are doing great
things yourself. I think that you know, we came across
each other and we're like, Okay, this is meant to be.
I appreciate you having me on your podcast, and so
we're gonna do a little podcast with you and celebrate
all the amazing things you do and celebrate your life
and you just you know you you are out there
(00:52):
finding people and sharing their stories and really helping the
world be more peaceful. So I love it. So everybody,
go to Soul Talks with Teresa dot com and Teresa's
t H E r e s a dot com.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
While you're listening.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
You can find her on YouTube, also Instagram, TikTok and
I'll put all of those links with the radio show. Uh,
so you have them. I don't know the fate of
TikTok so much as of today, but so maybe Instagram,
YouTube and website for now might be better. But Teresa
is the host of the Soul Talks podcast, which I've
(01:29):
had the privilege and honor being on. And I think
that one of the things that is that you focus
on a lot with your own messaging is repurposing grief
into hope. And I want to go there with people
because the world aches right now and so many levels
in so many ways. And grief isn't just the loss
(01:54):
of someone it can be. It's so multifaceted with the
various losses that we may have. So grief is a
part of us. And I think more and more add
to this, I think more and more we're all learning
how to process grief, hopefully better. It doesn't seem like
it's such a taboo topic.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Right what do you think?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I agree one hundred percent of Elizabeth, And you know
so many things that you hit on really fast there
that we can kind of unpack this morning. I think
we all have I would say survival. We're all on
a survival journey of some sort. And in that survival,
we're surviving a grief. And it can be you know,
(02:38):
a loss of a person, a parent, a partner, a child.
You know, it can be the loss of a pet.
I had to put my fourteen year old Maltise to
sleep the day after Christmas. And you talk about triggering
a bit of grief I had from the loss of
the suicide of my husband five years ago. I mean,
there are so many things and I you know, I
(02:59):
have this also a story of having to shudder a
beloved business. And there's so much grief that comes with
loss of a job. There's so much grief that comes
when we think or we define ourselves as having failed
at something. So so you know, to put a period
right there. Everybody has grief. And one several things I've
(03:23):
noticed in my journey my journey now is I'm five
years in since the death of my husband and about
five and a half years since I lost a business
that was just a beloved, you know, heartfelt you know,
pulled up from my bootstraps creative business and learned a
(03:44):
lot along the way. Some of the first things I
would say to your listeners are, you know, do what
you gotta do, if that means you need to cry, cry,
if that means you need need to sleep, sleep, if
it means you need to eat, eat, But everybody seems
(04:04):
to tell us what we're supposed to do in grief,
and my theory is that our bodies and our spirits
tell us individually how to help ourselves when we grieve,
if we can get quiet enough to listen to it.
Probably the most profound thing I learned early on in
my grief journey was that it's not a short haul.
(04:28):
Our American culture doesn't give us a lot of time
space to grief. There are other cultures who I think
do that, whom I think do that better than us.
But you know, we don't really have a lot of
verbiage around it. But as you said, it's getting less
less taboo, and we do talk about it more. You know,
every time I do talk about my survival journey and
(04:49):
I talk about grief and sorrow, what it feels like,
what it looks like, there's nobody in that audience who
doesn't nod or cry or raise a hand, you know.
So yeah, I think it's less taboo. But that said,
I don't think we have a. We have a real
language in our culture for death and grief. So I
(05:10):
guess that's part of my platform is to open it up,
open that up as much as I possibly can as
a vessel on this earth. And then the most powerful
thing I learned early on, because I kept saying, and
this is what everybody asks me. They say, when will
it end? How long is this going to last? How
long am I going to be in this kind of pain?
Because you know, we want quick fixes. The truth of
(05:33):
it is, I learned that you have to learn to
live with grief. You learn to eat with it, and
sleep with it and bathe with it, and you learn
to walk alongside the grief. It's almost like you've got
a cup in each hand and you're trying so hard
(05:53):
to survive and to recover, and you've got this cup
of grief that's, let's say, in your right hand, but
you learned a whole that while in the other hand
you've got this cup that's about survival and recovery and
learning to find whatever it is that gives you a
rope to tether to hold on to keep going. You know,
(06:13):
I would still say five years in, yes, my grief
is lighter and I have tools to help me with it,
but is it gone? No, it's not. So you know,
I just kind of stopped there for a moment.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Well, you know, I want to bring in doctor Katie
Eastman into this discussion. So she's my co All Things
Best Ever You and co author on Percolate and we
just signed for a new book due out in twenty
twenty six about peace, and she's one of the you
just keep rolling and grace. Well, well, where I want
(06:53):
to go with this is so she's one of the
foremost experts on grief and loss in the whole world.
Like she's studied under al Sabeth Koobler Ross and she
would be such a great guest for your show and
just yeah, oh my gosh, and just for you to
know her as a human. But she she specializes in
helping people recreate their life after loss and and the
(07:17):
and growth grief with with growth, and so that you
know exactly what you're saying. You know, you walk alongside it,
and you learn how to maneuver with it, and you
and you continue to move forward as a human being
in different directions, and you turn that that pain that
you're feeling into some purpose, Like you have you are doing.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
So.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
She's a marvelous human being. And we did a we
did a pretty cool workshop last night on peace, passion
and prosperity. And one of the first questions we asked
of our participants was, you know, what's something going on
in their life causing them, you know, stress or grief
or feelings of loss and things like that. And you
(07:59):
know your draw d when you when you really stop
pause and hear other people and what's actually going on
in their lives?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Oh my gosh, and you know right now, just may
I say sending so much love, prayers, energy, help, financial
support to all of our friends in La. Oh yeah,
there are a number of avenues everybody can give to
help support. But the loss, the you know, the collective
loss and the individual loss that's happening has happened in
(08:34):
the last four days and continuing today. I just want
to put our arms and prayers around all of l A.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Yeah, I'm loving it when I'm seeing send angels angels
are what oh yeah, yes, yes, and and things like that. Yeah,
it's it's it's hard to comprehend what's happening out there.
I don't think we've even scratched the surface of what's
happening out there, and it's you know, it's unfolding on
(09:03):
TV and all of these things, and I think we
just really need to hold space for everyone affected. I
couldn't agree with you more. So I'm gonna I'm going
to bring this conversation back to you and go back
to you as a young kiddo. Okay, yeah, And and
keep in mind we have we're probably going to do
thirty minutes or so on the show. So, but I
(09:25):
want to and and I've got so many things I
want to ask you. I've got like ten questions I
want to talk to you about, so use.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
I think answers.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
So just I'm happy for you to stop so you
can get every everything you want.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
So so take us back to Juilliard because you you know,
oh my goodness, gracious you are so you're such an artist.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Thank you. I am.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
I am, And but not because I did anything to
get that. That was really a gift that came so
early in childhood. And I don't think I certainly didn't
understand it. My my family didn't understand it. It was
just there and as a little girl, you know, I
came from late sixties rock and roller parents. I had
(10:11):
heard of classical music, and you know, I probably about
three or four years old. I just heard classical music
in my head. And then you know, it was begging
my mom for a piano, was begging to play, and they,
you know, they just weren't. We weren't that family. We
weren't cultured at all, really, And so I learned to
play very very quickly, and it was a real fast
(10:33):
matriculation into you know, just about a teacher a year
until I got to be about twelve years old and
we found somebody who could take me all the way
through to graduate school. And it was a god given talent. Yes,
I was very disciplined, but I was disciplined because I
loved it. It drove me. You know, nobody ever had
to say practice. I think by the time I was
(10:54):
about ten, I was practicing three hours a day. I
only went to high school for four hours every morning,
and then I practiced all afternoon, five hours a day
in high school. And I was just I just it
was me. It consumed me. I was one of the
lucky ones who got right connections. I had amazing teachers.
(11:14):
Teachers shaped me, teachers healed me. Can't say enough about that,
and I was lucky enough to be walked into study
with Adel Marcus at Jillilliard and that was one of
the highlights.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Of my life. Yeah, you know, so what is it
safe to say you were like a prodigy?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
That's a great question, and I asked myself that all
the time. You know, I will back up on this
one thing and not I don't want it to be
too dark a topic. But I didn't come from happy
home at all. There was It was a very very
unhappy home, and so I've often asked the question, you know,
was I really a prodigy or was my need to
(11:57):
escape the turmoil and chaos of my home so great
that the gift I was given from God at to
be an artist, to be creative, to explore beauty? Did
I just run at it so hard so I didn't
have to face the other parts? So I've always asked
myself that question, but others would have said product she was.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Do you have you ever seen on TikTok where they
have a three year old playing the piano and they're like,
it must be sow and so reincarnated, you know, kind
of have you seen that?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (12:29):
I kind I'm asking you do you feel like you're
Beethoven reincarnated or.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
I don't know about Maethoven. You know, I'm a fairly
small woman. But who I most would like to have
been was Rock money Off with hands that spanned, you know,
almost two octaves and played the biggest, most beautiful repertoire
in the world. So yeah, I think I would have
wanted to be Rock money Off.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Okay, all right, we'll take it.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
So so maybe right.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
You don't know for sure.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
We all of us are like.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Oh okay, yeah, so okay.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
So in all seriousness, though, tell us what happened to you,
because it's your first bout of you know, Oh my,
what am I going to do with my life?
Speaker 2 (13:12):
The first place where you know, everything seemed like it
was always on an upward trajectory and then it was
an absolute fall to the earth and crash. I was practicing.
I was in graduate school. Everything was shiny and no warning.
I was practicing and this anybody who hears this will
(13:33):
go well, that was dumb. Yes, now we would say
it was dumb. But I was practicing about ten hours
a day, and again, I'm a small person. I was
trying to make great big sounds on the stage and
play a big romantic repertoire, and all of a sudden,
just it was a morning I was practicing Chopin's forth ballode,
I was practicing a coda. It's quite hard, and my
(13:56):
left wrist just in one second was so scrushating, painful.
I can't explain it. And it just froze. It stopped working.
I couldn't move it, I couldn't do anything. So over
the course of the year, it was determined that you know,
I had just stressed my body so much that the
body responded, as doctor Bessel vander Kolch would say, the
(14:19):
body keeps the score. And had placed a cygnobule cyst
right on the wristbone, right where the wrist goes up
and down to play, and takes all the force that
your body puts into those great mixed strings on a
ten foot grand And it took a year in a
cast of determining whether I needed surgery or not. Surgery,
(14:40):
of course, had to drop out of graduate school. All
the shininess of my life was absolutely not shiny. And
then ultimately I had surgery. It was not a successful surgery.
The cyst was removed, but they also had to take
out a piece of the wristbone, and my concert career
was absolutely unequivocally over.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
That sucks.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Yeah, And you know, I was a kid, you know,
I think I was twenty four and no tools, no psychological,
spiritual tools to deal at all. And I had done
absolutely nothing since I was tiny, but studying music I had.
I didn't have anything that qualified me for any kind
of job. I had no dream. I had no dream
(15:28):
for anything else. And I think it's one of the
biggest things is when you don't dream, you don't create.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Yeah, when you say no tools, you know, I think
about today's kids and the vast array of tools they have,
and it feels like they're starting to use them. I
know when our son had our son's a profess, was
a professional baseball player and he got injured when he
was at Georgetown pitching line drive came back at his
(15:58):
head and he put his pitching hand up, and so
he's got a pin in his left hand, and he
drew upon every tool in the book to get through that.
But you know, oh, you know those moments when we're
really great at something and then it ends in injury
(16:19):
or whatever it is, or just got wrenching and heart
wrenching and wondering with hanging. I'm gonna keep going for
one second with no tools available to you. How did
you cope with that?
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Like?
Speaker 1 (16:32):
What did you do?
Speaker 2 (16:35):
I didn't do very well. Yeah, I cried. Probably, I
mean like probably he had a nervous breakdown but wasn't
being treated, you know, didn't go to therapy. I mean
I went to physical therapy, but not emotional therapy. I
went to a little place in the mountains in North Carolina,
right outside of Asheville, and I walked and I cried,
(16:57):
and I walked and cried, and I walked and cried.
That that was I did breathing tools. I have always
been a person of prayer, not a prayer that's driven
by doctrine or a certain kind of religion, but truly,
just from the time I've been a child, I prayer
has been easy, and so prayer was and a belief
(17:22):
in something greater than me, a belief in the divine.
Even in the worst of it, Elizabeth, with no dream
and no idea what life would be next for me,
there was this little, teeny tiny voice that went, this
is divine, This is for a reason, this is a
there's a bigger place in your life. You don't you
can't see, you don't know it, but there is something
(17:43):
good on the other side of this. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Yeah, I think the world put us together for a reason.
We've You and I have definitely met for a reason.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
I don't quite exactly know what.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Yeah, I don't exactly know what it is yet. But
when when you say angels or prayer or anything like that,
I get like little goosebumps and I'm not cold. I'm
I'm actually warm, and I'm like, okay, because I so
thoroughly believe in angels. I think they're just around us
for various reasons.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
And sometimes every day.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Yeah, it doesn't feel like it though, and you have
to really work through that.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
I'll tell you a quick little story. When it was
about three, I had twin beds in my room and
my little sister had not been born yet, and hanging
over my bed with my little pink bedspread was this
painting of a guardian angel. I think my grandmother put
it there. And my favorite color to this day is
a light pink, and there was this guardian angel was
(18:44):
bathed in pink and in light and like I said,
outside of my door. My bedroom door often was a
lot of turmoil and chaos, and as a little girl,
I would pray to that an angel and I would
just say, you know, help me, show me how to
get out of this. Music became way out, but I
had that was my first kind of pathway into prayer divinity.
(19:08):
And I hold that angel clothes all these years later
and still pray to her.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Yep, I love it. Yeah, I got the same thing.
I've got certain little things where I'm like, yep, that's
my angel right there. So yeah, and yeah, one of
them is I'm looking as you said that. One of
them is actually this little yellow angel.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
It's a little angel ornament. Uh.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
The Selvaski's here in Maine. Their daughter passed away from cancer.
And and again I'm summarizing here a little bit, but
the mom keeps her memory so alive through books and
these angels and things like that. And I have one
of the angels.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Oh and it's just beautiful.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Yeah, would yeah, I will, I will. Actually, I just
I have it right here. Yeah, it's it's it's really beautiful.
So anyway, yeah, I love my little things that I
have hanging around that remind me of people and their
and their their journeys, and it's just a don't you
think it's just so powerful to be mindful when you're
(20:11):
in the presence of another human being and like pause
for the power of like what in the world might
actually be going on in their actual life.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
I think I love the word pause because I do
believe it's a powerful word if you if you see
it as an action word, and it seems to connote
the opposite, But so much happens in the pause.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yeah, yeah, so much when you like hold space for
other people to you know, don't don't brush by people without.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Thought exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Yeah, I just right.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
I love to have a number of exercises I do
with this as I coach and mentor others. But also
you know, holding other people in the light. Yeah, you know,
so often we find the little things that annoy us
about others or that poke at us. And if you can,
you know, just put a complete sort of pillar of
light or uh, you know, coming down on the person
(21:13):
you're looking at, and all you see them in is
bathed in light. Then what you see is all their
greatness as well as it's equal parts greatness and pain.
But your spirit up to see their spirit, I think
in a very different way.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Yeah, well, put all right, take us into the what
you segue into from from piano to the next part
of your life, like because you've had you're quite an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Yes, I am an entrepreneur. I love creating businesses. I
just love it, the raw, messy parts of creating a business.
I don't create perfect businesses, but I love the in between.
I love the in the middle. That's what you get.
Think it's my heart racing, and you know, I just
love the creation of the messy business, which I'm absolutely
in the middle of right now.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah. I keep wanting to drag you over into best
ever you and and help it fly, take it. I
need you on the way. Well, I think one of
the I think one of the biggest mistakes we're making.
I love all the you know, the appearance of all
the different brands. So we've got a lot of individual
(22:26):
brands out there, and I keep looking at people going,
you know, if you three would team up, and you
three would team up, and you find would team up
and everything, imagine the magazine industry might come back, you know,
a little bit stronger. We've just got all these people
trying to launch these individual magazines and these individual memberships
(22:47):
and all these things. And I think if we, if
we could, you know, team up and support each other
a little bit better as women, we'd have some brands
that emerge bigger than they could be versus me, for example,
sitting here in my office since two thousand and eight,
you know, chugging along, yeah, but not really breaking through.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
I was, I was in my per meditation space this morning.
And it's so bizarre you said that, because that dropped
into me about a couple of different people. Go on,
why aren't we doing like a monthly together? So I
support you and you support me. You know, why are
we doing these one off things together as women? So
you know, I couldn't be more honored than to be
(23:28):
on the team with Elizabeth and doctor Katie.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Yeah, and you know, and it's funny because it changes
because people. The best ever you change is because people
don't really understand or have the stomach for being an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
I always find that interesting, but it's true because I mean, gosh,
I've it all and lost it all. You know, being
an entrepreneur is a scary place. I've also had extraordinary
successes but they aren't all successes. You know, one success
out of five businesses started kind of is my is
where I've been.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, I go one out of ten, like you do
ten things and one of them works.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Yeah, exactly, But I agree with you. It's something I'd
like to put some pause time into.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
All right, So tell us more about you as an
entrepreneur and some of the businesses that you've had. It's
pretty cool. I mean, if you're out there and you're
listening and you are a female entrepreneur, this is a
human being that you can engage to reesa Bruno as
a resource because she's seen it, done it, been there,
all of it up, down, good, bad, whatever. So yeah,
(24:30):
all right, I'm being quiet, let's listen.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Well, first of all, I would say to that end.
I also, I don't publicize it at all, but I
constantly have women come to me as a business coach.
It's one of them. It's one of the things I
do that gives me the most happiness and pleasure is
to coach women in business, women entrepreneurs in business. It's
just pure delight to me. But my first business I
(24:55):
ran out of the music business, taught for a minute,
knew I wasn't a teacher, cried every time every student left,
and just just was like, God, what do I do?
And I landed in the advertising and marketing business, and
I worked for two firms. Then I was a marketing
director for Regions Bank, which is now I think P
(25:18):
and C Bank nationally or internationally. Very young, you know,
that was I was twenty seven years old and I
was in this huge job and I immediately it taught
me that I did not want to be in the
corporate world.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
I loved, I loved, you.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Know, at twenty seven seeing a huge business run, but
I I and you know, they were bank was amazing me.
You know, they were like, you could be our first
female bank president. I was like, yeah, no, that's not
what I want. And so when I quit to create
my first business, I was twenty eight and a half
when I when I when I first incorporated that LLC,
(25:58):
and it was an advertising mark getting firm and it
was full service. I was partner creative director. I had
two partners. It was again I've had some fairy tales
happen in my life. It grew so fast, I mean
I think in three or four years we were billing
twenty million dollars, which at that time was a whole
lot of money. And I was early married and had
a little baby. I took to the office all the
(26:19):
time and worked, you know, tons of hours, and it
was just so much fun. Probably ten years later, I
broke off from that partnership and created my own agency,
and I was creating sign of kind of small businesses
underneath my big business, small businesses of doing writing in
(26:41):
LA for small and large you know, kinds of projects
like your dad, but not as successful as your dad.
And so that was a business. You know, there there
were just always small businesses happening underneath the big business.
I kept my marketing firm that I started, I guess
at thirty nine until two years ago, and I have
(27:04):
to say, interestingly enough, I never had one penny of
debt on the business. And that made me very proud
because I didn't go into business with an MBA. I
went into business, you know, really as a musician basically
and three jobs, you know, three jobs and three years
before I started a business. But I had no debt
on the business. It was always successful. It morphed as
(27:26):
the world morphed, you know, going into social media, and
you know, very different kind of way of marketing. My
expertise became in filmmaking, commercial filmmaking, and I got to
travel the world and I had office in Toronto, office
in LA you know, making commercials for large, large companies.
(27:47):
So that was a blast. And somehow in the middle
of all that, I got bored and creatively bored, and
I was working in La a lot and started just
I loved jewelry. I loved fashion, So it's just started.
LA has this huge jewelry district and so for about
two years, every weekend I drag my youngest son and
(28:07):
he would say, oh my god, Mom, are you kidding?
We have to look at pearls again. I just was asking,
how do you I didn't at that point have an
intent to start a business. I just wanted to make
amazing pieces for myself. And so it took two years
of just asking and learning and how do you source things?
And then finally finding a craftsman who could create my designs.
(28:31):
And I'll just stop right there and let you ask questions.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Well, no, you know, I think it's I think it's
pretty amazing. But I was giggling back in the financial
services part of it, because I think you know, you know,
a lot of me is in the financial services industry
still to this day, and it's such a there are
few and fewer females than there should be, so it's
a it's an interesting industry. So I love the fact
(28:56):
that you you know, you were like, I love the
fact that you define things by I Nope, I don't
want to do that. And that's sometimes how we have
to find what we truly love. So that's a teaching
point right there. And you know, commercial TV, filmmaking business,
all of these things, and then the jewelry making business
where you've I mean, I'm guessing I think we've talked before,
(29:16):
so I kind of know. Actually I'm not guessing it.
You know, you've put jewelry on really famous people and
things like that. Tell me something, why are you still going?
Why not just stop?
Speaker 3 (29:30):
There?
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Go, been there, done it? You don't need a podcast, really,
maybe you know that kind of thing. Tell me your
purpose for continuing on with helping people and turning it
around and flipping it around so that you are dedicating
your life to lifting other people up.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Where I think you just said it for me, Elizabeth,
when I lost that jewelry business, that was again in
a fairy tale. In my world, just crazy successful became
global fast and twelve years old, I've been on every
major fashion mag I dressed million, you know, a lot
of major celebrities, and that that business really fed the
(30:10):
ego a lot, I have to say, but it really
fed my my need to create. I lost that business.
It was a face plant in all kinds of ways,
and I lost it to internal fraud that was happening
underneath my notes for about two years. Then my husband
died tragically. He took his life just a few months
(30:32):
after I had to shutter that business. So it was
a double whammy of nothing pared to the loss of James.
But I was walking into that loss caring a pile
of shame over losing my business. So I kept my
marketing business somehow, going by the grace of God for
three years after James died, you know, And and then
(30:54):
I decided to close a healthy, thriving, successful business. And
that's not an easy thing to do, right That's that's
a choice. That's a life choice. And so to answer
your question, as soon as I, as soon as James died,
and I began walking out of just abject grief and sorrow.
(31:21):
Every every step I made forward in my survival, I
felt more and more aligned with my truest self spiritually.
And my truest self spiritually wasn't that crazy, driving driven
person to create businesses, to create success, to create wealth,
to create materialism. That just was gone. And I kept saying, Okay, God,
(31:47):
you know what, what do you want from me? And
at the three year mark, you know, I sold Anne,
closed to that business, set real still for a year,
but I was writing constantly, was asking questions. I had
at that point a really good mental spiritual practice of prayer,
(32:09):
meditation tools I was using to be quiet, to listen.
My life was in the pause, and I realized that
I couldn't put a period behind James death, and I
couldn't put a period behind what it felt like as
a woman to close, to have to close, to shutter
(32:30):
a business that was so much of my heart, and
that every time I talk to people, they needed to
hear what I was learning. And it wasn't because I
was so great, and I don't think it was necessarily
because I had answers. What I've learned in grief, and
I think you and I've talked about this is that
they really just needed somebody who had the bravery to
(32:52):
sit alongside them and their grief.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Yeah, so today, why.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Am I still doing it. I'm doing it because I
want to create a space for others to talk about
this really hard stuff and to get in the mess
and the raw and the junk of it. I didn't
have that five years ago, and maybe it was there
and I couldn't find it. But I'm driven right now
(33:18):
to be of service.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Yeah, thank you for sharing all of this. By the way,
I don't know if I think too properly along the
waiters we've been talking, but yeah, it's so it's it's
if somebody's listening to you right now, chances you know
needs you. You've you know, you've had an impact on them.
I'm near certain. So I think that's so important.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Thank you for giving me the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Yeah. You know, when my dad died in twenty eighteen,
I came back here and I'm like, I mean, for
two I had to get picked up by my bootstraps
by somebody actually kind of because I just wasn't doing
very well and I wanted to close best ever you
and you know, I just was like, oh, this sucks.
(34:08):
Kind of thing, and when you see somebody take their
last breath, as I did with my dad, it was
like a movie played backing everything up like like a tornado,
almost going nothing matters, None of this material stuff matters.
Like I came home from that and for like, I
(34:30):
didn't even care if I had two different shoes on.
I know, I know, or my socks didn't match. I'm like,
none of this mattered. All the things that we think
about the mattering, like what kind of car you drive,
or house you live in, or what schools your kids
go to or all this stuff. It just was so
oddly not important. And I still can't quite explain it.
(34:55):
I was maybe a little depression in there.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
I don't know, but still is it right there? Everything
I ever defined is success? Oh j just completely fell
away and none of it mattered.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Yeah, it made me. I mean I just released the
Success guide Book and it made me write a book
on it. Like, hey, folks, wake up, call here. Everything
that you're defining a success.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Just like.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
People want to hug. They don't care how much money
you make. You know, they care if you're nice to them.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
They don't know it's a way it looks like they
need somebody to walk alongside them, stumbling through their grief.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Yep, or even in happy moment, you know, happier joy
or what life just life in general. We need pals
and people who truly understand what we've gone through, rather
than superficial you know stuff and faky stuff put on,
faky stuff put all over social media and things like that,
(35:55):
where you're just seeing somebody's you know, excellent moments twenty
four to seven and none of the real. So I
don't know, I just I don't even know how to
explain it or articulate it. But do you have any
more words for it? Keeping in mind, it's ten we
were on here for. We got to go in about
maybe like five minutes or so, it's not too long, Elizabeth.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
You and I have talked about the story of your dad.
I remember the first time we did a pre interview together.
I mostly live in South Florida, and I was taking
this walk, beautiful walk, and you were telling me, you know,
in detail, the story of being with your dad, the
things he said, how those moments felt, and I was
(36:39):
just tears running down my face as I walked, you know,
this beautiful street, and I think those are moments that
are absolutely covered and intended by the divine. Whatever your
understanding of God is as a listener, whoever the God
of your understanding is, your God, Elizabeth was so present
(37:02):
with you and your father in that moment. I think
you are so blessed to be with him as he
crossed over. But in those moments, you opened yourself and
he opened himself up, and the universe opened up for
you to experience something spiritually that was so profound for
you that it shifted your life.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
I don't think that was an accident that you You're
one of eleven kids, right, Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Right, it's back in the middle. I gotta ask you something, though.
I'm going to flip this a little bit, and this
is gonna be a really gross question. I'm going to
just be okay that brace yourself. Okay, So I saw
my father pass away and things like that. You have
a different situation here with the suicide. Yeah, tell me
(37:51):
what's what you really think? Say that again, tell me
what you really think? You know, like you're you're you're
telling me, you know, it was blessing that I got
to hold space and things like that with my dad
and things like you didn't have that.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Well for what I'm saying, and that is it forever
shifted your life as to what your life's purpose is.
James suicide, And I'll go back to the hard part.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
Go back.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
Yeah, forever shifted my life, My life's purpose, my definitions
of success, who I am, my spiritual drive, that all
shifted in that moment, and a big piece of my
What happened to me was that I did find him.
And this is you know, listeners, if children are nearby place,
(38:34):
I'll put a warning on this.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
He was. He was missing for a number of hours
on a morning we were supposed to go to our
lake house together and plants sunflowers. So I went looking
for him and he was in his office and he
had shot himself in the head. And I found him.
So there's so much that happens as a result of
(38:59):
seeing that kind of horror and even the knowing that
there was so much betrayal in that he knew I
would find him. Yeah, like he you know, that's that's
a horrible thing to do to a person. And this
was a marriage I thought was pretty idyllic. We didn't
(39:21):
we weren't screaming and fighting and having problems. I'm about
to get a divorce. He was depressed. He was a
very depressed man. But did you know that only marginally?
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (39:32):
He really important that part of his life off. We
had been in therapy for a year. The therapist didn't
have a clue that he could be suicidal, got it?
Speaker 3 (39:41):
You know?
Speaker 1 (39:42):
And then I want to ask you, and and this
might help people who have had this happen and things
like that. You know, how just pissed were you?
Speaker 2 (39:52):
I was really pissed.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
I picture you being pissed what I was.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
I was. I was just a non person. I was
broken everything. What it did is it stripped me of
my core belief system and what I built my life on. Yeah,
and to rebuild that is.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
You're one tough girl, boy.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
But I'll tell you what I was pissed off about
was James was an incredible dad. I had two boys
in their early twenties, and he was so close to them,
especially the younger one who was under just finished undergraduate school.
They talked, they text, they went to football games. They
were in constant contact. And I wanted to punch him
in the face for leaving those boys and for leading
(40:37):
me with what those boys had to work through there's yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
I And let me just ask you, you know, how
trained are you at this point to deal with that?
You know, like, how do you make sure that you
know you don't have moving forward to twenty year olds
going into their thirties and forties and fifties pissed rad
and angry at the old and you know, you could
really have a like plummet into every kind of grief
(41:06):
known to mankind and worse. And as I see it,
you've very beautifully and gracefully guided your children into air
quotes here beautiful success, you know, beautiful lives.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
That's a nice ribbon on it. But it didn't look
like that.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
No, I'm sure it didn't.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
It was.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
It's been maybe it doesn't know even.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Some days it doesn't. You know, I have a son
going through something right now, and I had to say
to him the other night, Hey, buddy, I know you
feel like the world is falling down around johny to
ask the question, are you having suicidal thoughts because their
dad opened that door? Yep, to quit on life when
things get hard?
Speaker 1 (41:50):
And now do you sit and just worry twenty four
to seven about your boys? I mean, as mom of
four boys. Even without this happening to us, I just
worry anyway all the time.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
Yeah, just part of it. You know.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
I drive them crazy. I drive them absolutely crazy because
if I can't find them.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Yeah, you know, worried.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
If eight hours go and I can't get a caller,
a text, I have PTSD. I am still the woman
driving around Birmingham, Alabama looking for my husband in grocery stores.
You know, I will always have. I've worked, and I've worked,
and I've worked on it, I know, but I'm not done.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
Yeah. There's that's that's forever healing right there, and it's
that's it. And I bet too that you don't. Again,
if Katie were on here, she could probably articulate this
way better than me. I'm just this is raw for me,
from my heart to yours kind of questions. You know,
I can't imagine either too. What could unpredictably like trigger
(42:51):
those feelings.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Either, which feelings just.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Whatever, whatever feelings.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
It's just like when I have my little dog to
sleep too.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Oh, I'm going to go back there with you too,
because let me ask you something. Is that not the
worst thing?
Speaker 3 (43:09):
Oh my god?
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Yeah, our dog died right before COVID and I can't
even handle it still.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
Well, the thing too was he was kind of my
He was definitely a part of my James journey. You know,
I'll tell you a sweet little story. The morning that
James took his life, I was sleeping so hard I
didn't hear him get up. He got the dog, he
took the dog out, he fed the dog, and left
(43:38):
the dog outside the bedroom door, and then James was
gone before I was out of the bed, and my
sweet little Jewels was still there for probably more than weeks,
probably the months afterwards, Jewels would go over to the
place where James sat on the sofa and with his
little he's only seven pound Maltese, and he would pall
(43:59):
and palm, paw at the throw that I would very neatly,
you know, fold every morning and put in place. He
would paw at the throw that James had used until
he added in a circle, and he would sit on
top of it and he would not move for hours.
That was, you know, Jeules grieved James too.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Yeah, but Jules was.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
A really big part of my survival journey animals and pets.
You know, he helped me be resilient and that was also
God's way. I had to get up and let the
dog out. I had to feed the dog, even when
I didn't want to feed myself.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Yeah did you Yeah, exactly? Did you get a new dog?
Speaker 3 (44:35):
Yet?
Speaker 2 (44:37):
It was so funny. I thought. I thought it would
help Jules if I got another dog. He loved being
around other dogs. So I had contacted a breeder in
Indiana about a little toy mini golden doodle and had
decided to get this little female puppy at the end
of January. She'll be about three months old, and so
(44:58):
I thought I was getting her. I helped Jewels with
his end of life, and he didn't make it for that.
But yes, I'm supposed to get a puppy. I'm already
named her honey God, okay, good, and I get her
at the last week of January.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Good because I don't know about you, but I don't
do well without dogs.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
I'm a person. I will have an everything person. But too, Yeah,
I'll have a dog around me all the time.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
Yeah, me too. I have three rescued cats and two dogs.
And when our dog passed away in January twenty twenty,
it took us a while to get a dog. But
then there are two of us in the household who
must have dogs, Me and Quinn. And so we went
with Quinn first, and he picked out Harley, and so
it's Harley Quinn.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
I love the name. Yeah, and then yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
Yeah, so her name's her name is Harley, And so
have Harley and Quinn. And then I was like, well,
I need one that kind of thing, that's your dog.
So I have Bahama. And but you know what is trippy,
here's more angels. Then we're gonna go. So I used
to have a dog. It was a the same dog
(46:06):
as Bahama. As the story is where the story's going.
And when I was a kid, about six or eight,
we moved and the dog.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
I don't know where the dog is still to this day.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
You know, my mom and dad were like, yeah, the dog,
she ran away or whatever.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
I can't even remember what.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
I always felt like they were making stuff up, like
the dog ran away, they gave the dog away, the
dog died. I have no idea what it was, but
something was something. I never saw my dog chance again, right.
I have prayed my whole entire life and not done
too much action toward praying, just prayed for chance to
come back right, just kind of missed that dog love
the dog, best dog ever kind of thing. And so
(46:44):
the place called and they're like, we have a dog
that isn't getting adopted, and Kent, would you like the dog?
We'll give the dog to you for free, And I
kid you not. The dog looks exactly like chance.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
Oh my go actually talk about age. Oh my god,
I'm my dog back.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
And I swear to God my dad died. My dad died, and.
Speaker 3 (47:06):
Was like, okay, I hear her.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
God, here's the dog back already. That kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
I love that, the dogs having sent I swear to God.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
But Bahamad, oh yeah, Mohammad doesn't leave my side nothing,
you know, kind of thing. And it is just amazing.
So anyway, all right, Teresa, we've got to go actually
have I actually have a hair appointment.
Speaker 3 (47:36):
I have not seen you.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
I mean, you need to have a show on hair biolage.
Speaker 4 (47:41):
People, biolage. It's the secret to hair at fifty five. Anyway,
all right, I love you very much. Thank you for
being here with us, Honor, thank you, thank you for
sharing your story and to everybody listening. Teresa Bruno, Teresa's
your website.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
One more time.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
So Talks with Teresa dot Com perfect.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
All right, everybody, thanks for listening, Thank you Teresa for
being here.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
Thank you Elizabeth, You're amazing. Such a gift.
Speaker 3 (48:08):
Thank you.
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