Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 3 (01:22):
We are here to dance and sing our connection with everything, understanding.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Who we are through the waves of the hearts. Let's
choose the inner piece, living one in harmony with the knowledge.
Speaker 5 (01:50):
At our core we are the ones we've been waiting,
or we can.
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Do it with the truth, new light and all we
do we are love out our best.
Speaker 7 (02:07):
In Louie Consciousness.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
And now, ladies and gentlemen, it's time for Angel Quest
with Karene on Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 8 (02:28):
Well, hello, everybody, Welcome to the Angel Quest Show. I'm
Karen Noe, author of Your Life After Their Death Through
the Eyes of Another and Weak Consciousness. My guest today
is Laura Corney, author of My Father's List. How Living
my Dad's Dreams Set Me Free. Her work has been
featured in magazines such as Good Housekeeping, People, Guideposts, and
(02:50):
Vanity Fair. Laura has appeared on CBS News Sunday Morning,
The Drew Barrymore Show, and NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt,
among other TV programs. My Father's List was one of
the best books of twenty twenty three in Real Simple magazine.
You could find Laura on her website by going to
(03:10):
buy Lauracarney dot com. That's b why l A U
R A c A r n E y dot com.
Hi Laura, thanks so much for being with us today.
Speaker 9 (03:22):
Thank you so much for having me. I love your show,
so I'm honored to be here.
Speaker 8 (03:27):
Your book is amazing. It's so much fun to read
to listen to. I actually listened to it on audible.
So are you ready to begin?
Speaker 9 (03:35):
Yeah? I am.
Speaker 8 (03:36):
Okay. Before we start, let's tell if you could share
with us how your dad passed and how you had
a premonition about his passing.
Speaker 9 (03:46):
Oh gosh, that's right, I did. My father died when
I was twenty five. He died because of a distracted driver.
It was a teenager who was making a phone call
because she was lost, That's what I was told, and
she was she was going straight and she went straight
through the red light while he was turning left. And
(04:07):
my premonition about it was I saw him about five
days before he died, and I was on a bus
going back to New York with the man who would
later become my husband, and I was looking at a billboard,
you know, just going along the highway, and suddenly it
was like I was looking at the billboard, but a
(04:27):
different message appeared in my head, and it was that
that was the last time I was going to see
my dad. And I told my husband, I mean as
as far as like here in this realm. It was
the last time I would see him. And I told
my husband that I don't think he's going to be
alive when we go home for Thanksgiving, and he's like, oh, no,
you know, I'm sure he'll be fine. And he had
(04:48):
had a heart condition, he had an enlarged heart, and
he was supposed to have something, some kind of a
procedure done that he was putting off. So we both
sort of assumed that was just my anxiety or something,
but it wasn't. It really was. And I even, you know,
even a month I didn't write about this in the book,
but even a month before that, I had this feeling
of dread come over me one day when I was
(05:09):
at my internship. So that's the reason I was in
New York was for a magazine internship, and I had
emailed my future husband about it, and I says, something's
going to happen and it's going to affect a lot
of people. And I'd only had that feeling one other time,
and it was the morning of nine to eleven.
Speaker 8 (05:24):
Oh boy, yeah, well, yeah, a lot of people had
that premonition on about nine to eleven. But that's incredible
you had about your dad.
Speaker 9 (05:32):
Yeah, it was like a warning, I think. And then
I even had the day the day that he passed,
I was on a train home going home from work.
I had a part time job. I was a hostess
at an out back steakhouse in New York and I
was on the train and this man came on and
he started talking to me, and he just seemed otherworldly.
He had it was almost the best way I can
(05:53):
describe it is he was a security guard and he
had this jumpsuit on, but it was like blood was
going through his vein for the first time, and like
his eyes were almost like vibrating. They were very brown. Oh,
and it was angel Yeah. I mean he was so
kind and just had so much peace about him. I
almost felt like he was Jesus actually, and it was
(06:15):
like he wanted to know where I worked. He was
telling me to call my family. You know, I was
only like twenty five and he's like, oh, are you okay?
You look so sad. And some of the things he
said even made jokes that were like my dad's jokes,
Like he joked that he was thirty nine, which my
dad used to say it on every birthday. And then
you know, he clearly was not thirty nine. And when
I got off the also when he got on the train,
(06:37):
and when he left the train, it was like he
was gliding. It was like he was just not even walking.
Like it happened so quickly. And I got off and
I called my my husband or my boyfriend at the time.
I called him to say I think I just met
an angel. And then I checked my voicemail and my
brother had left me the message that our dad had died.
Oh my god, it might have been my dad checking
(06:59):
on me.
Speaker 8 (06:59):
I think it was. Yeah, it was. That's amazing.
Speaker 9 (07:03):
Yeah, it's happened a few times too, did you and that.
Speaker 8 (07:07):
This is going to be a little bit different than
your other interviews. I'd love to hear about that. Did
you have those?
Speaker 9 (07:13):
Oh yeah, at least five other times in the next
decade or so, I would have an experience in a
train station or a bookstore. You know, it's always somewhere
where I just happened to be by myself waiting for something,
where someone it was clear to me something about the
person either they had his name, they smelled like old spice,
you know, it was it was a vibe. Why don't
(07:35):
usually use that word. I'm not young enough to use
that word, but it was a feeling that it was
my dad.
Speaker 8 (07:40):
Yeah, it's a without a doubt sign. I call it
without a doubt sign from your dad trying to let
you know he was with you absolutely, and.
Speaker 9 (07:47):
You always when I was worried about something, that was
always when it would happen.
Speaker 8 (07:51):
Right, how awesome?
Speaker 9 (07:54):
Yeah, so you did.
Speaker 8 (07:57):
You tried hard to get the message out there about
you to the public about talking on the phone and
driving ever come to anything.
Speaker 9 (08:05):
Yeah, I mean, I think I helped some people, and
I think mostly for me, I would find myself feeling
very frustrated when I was doing it in a very
literal way, because sometimes I think some people's reaction to
being told not to do something is almost like it
becomes like a guilty pleasure, like, oh, well, now I
(08:26):
know about it. I know it can kill people, but
it doesn't always kill people, so maybe it's okay, just
this one. And I have to say, you know, as
I've been learning more about you, Karen, I was very
excited to meet you today and talk about veganism because actually.
Speaker 8 (08:41):
That's one of my questions. Are you kidding me that
is a main thing in my life. I'm so excited
I'm a vegan.
Speaker 9 (08:47):
I'm sorry, that's what I was going to say. That
was the thing that really changed my activism because I
found out that a family member was texting and driving
and I basically lost my mind because I thought, oh,
my gosh, I can't this person would do this when
they I've told them so much about it, you know.
And my husband's like, well, I've told you a lot
about factory farming and you're still eating animals. And it
(09:10):
really was one of those flashbalb moment or light bulb
moments where I realized, Okay, yeah, I have seen those
movies with him, and you know, I've read some of
the books. There's a really great book called The Heretics
Feast if in case you've never read it again, which
one is it called The Heretics Feast?
Speaker 8 (09:26):
No, I never heard of that one.
Speaker 9 (09:28):
Yeah, it's a really great history of vegetarianism and veganism
that a lot of people aren't aware of. I'm a
researcher and a journalist. Of course, I had to read
like a really big book about it, but really, you know,
it's it's a very natural way to live your life
and to eat. And when I shifted, it helped me
to understand that, you know, my husband's veganism, it wasn't
(09:49):
a thing he was ever forcing on anybody, and he
was never shaming anyone for not making that choice. And
really it was more like him doing that was an
example other people, like, Hey, I'm living a great life
as a vegan and you could too. And it hit
me like, oh, I could be saying, hey, here, I
am doing my dad's bucket list for him, and I'm
(10:10):
never on my phone when I'm driving, Like I could
just be the example instead of being the person who is,
you know, looking for it and then pointing it out
on Facebook and like saying something about it. Like I
shifted my whole way of doing things so that instead
of like trying to make people change, I started to
be the change.
Speaker 8 (10:29):
If that mean it's the best thing you could do,
I'm sending you a big hug and your husband. But
it's true what happened with me. I actually felt the
pain of the animals that over twenty five years ago,
and I just couldn't eat meat anymore. If people could
feel that, they would never eat meeting. Yeah, there's a
wonderful slogan. I don't know if you heard it. It's
(10:51):
if you could live happy and healthy lives without harming anyone,
why wouldn't you. That's from Australia. What is the name
of that Edgar's Mission?
Speaker 9 (10:58):
Okay, oh yeah, yep.
Speaker 8 (11:02):
But yeah, so you beat me too, and I was
going to ask you about that later on. That's awesome.
Speaker 9 (11:08):
I went back, yeah, seven years seven years ago, seven.
Speaker 8 (11:12):
Years ago, and you never went back because you could
live happy and hoar they live right.
Speaker 9 (11:17):
Yeah. Well, and you know what I realized is when
people choose meat or dairy, a lot of times they're
just making that choice because it's convenient.
Speaker 8 (11:25):
A habit. It's a habit.
Speaker 9 (11:26):
It's a habit, but also it's what is around exactly
being sold to us. And I realized, well, people are
educated now about distracted driving, and if they get in
a car and they use their phone anyway, it's just
a habit. It's just out of convenience. I realized it
was the choice was very similar. So I thought, you
know what, in my life, I don't want to make
choices like that, And that is the best way I
(11:48):
could honor my dad because he was so all about
thinking for yourself, you know. So that's really how I
just started living.
Speaker 8 (11:55):
Yeah, it's not always easy for those who are thinking
about going being in right, it's not always easy go
you know, when you go out with friends. But there's
you can find always find vegan options or beforehand, you know,
Google where where is there a vegan restaurant or anything
like that. You know what I'm talking about, right.
Speaker 9 (12:13):
My husband's a great cook, so that helps. Oh, he
had already been introducing me.
Speaker 8 (12:18):
Do you have some recipes you could send me? You
have my email address?
Speaker 9 (12:21):
Yeah, yeah, The Nut Free Vegan. That's his website because
he's also allergic to nuts.
Speaker 8 (12:27):
The nut Free and I'm a gluten frey. Could you imagine?
Oh my god, everything right right, the nut Free Vegan.
I'm writing it in yeah, okay, So let's go to
your bucket list of your dad. Okay, sure, look about
his bucket list and how you knew? Oh yeah, everything
on his list.
Speaker 9 (12:46):
Yeah. I think I'm getting better lately at trusting when
I have a premonition or like a vision of something
that will happen in the future. You know, I don't
know what I'm tapping in too. I wouldn't say that
I'm you know, I'm psychic gifts or something that like
you do, of course, but I know you like to
talk about how everybody has that and everyone can can
(13:10):
learn how to use it. So I definitely would say
that this whole experience has helped me expand and trust
it when it happens. And it's funny because I used
to be such a cerebral person and now I'm I'm
learning more as I go that I really might have
a very strong intuition and that's that should be what's
driving the car basically, for lack of a better phez, Yeah,
(13:30):
but yeah, the day we found my dad's bucket list,
my brother had just moved into his first condo that
he had bought for himself and his fiance, and it
would he just discovered it while they were unpacking, and
he had seen it before, I think at one point,
but mostly I had been sitting in a box for
thirteen years and he hadn't really explored it. And as
(13:53):
soon as they saw it, they thought, well, let's let's
give it to Laura and let's have let's talk to
her about it when she comes up to visit. They
wanted to. I think I don't know which is which,
but one of them wanted to save it and give
it to me at their wedding, but then the other
one said, oh, let's show it to her because I'm
too excited. So when I went up, they showed it
to me and they said, my brother wanted to know
if I knew about it, and I didn't. Although growing
(14:15):
up my mom did talk a lot about the lists
my dad would make of famous people he wanted to meet,
you know, and things like that. Come to find out,
he was a big fan of Napoleon Hill, uh and
you know, like the power of attraction, law of attraction,
all of that stuff, like you never talked about that.
But he was very well read so and also a
new age stuff too, So I think that's why he
(14:37):
did it. I think that's why he wrote it, because
he knew the power of putting things out into the
universe and and the way that you thought he held
Carnegie fan too. Yeah, but uh, but yeah, as soon
as I saw it, it was like just I knew,
and I saw my dad's face in the back of
my head and he was smiling and he was nodding,
(14:58):
and I had that that that was weird for me
because I've never had like a mind's eye vision before
of him. Since his death, it was always just like
these strangers I would meet that sort of seemed like
they could be him, or a song that came on
the radio. The one big thing I used to have
was he died on August eighth, so I would see
the number eighty eight quite a lot. But that was
(15:19):
a pretty regular kinds of signs. But now it was
like I was setting off something new because now I
was going to start seeing his face, I was going
to start hearing full sentences. It was like everything just
started to open up for me. I actually think a
big part of it was because I had become a runner.
I had I was training for a marathon, and also
(15:42):
I had started pursuing my writing more. And I think
there's just something about the writer's mind where you're really
just channeling things. I always try to tell people that
when you're writing, you're actually just receiving something, which I
don't have to tell you I'm preaching to the choir here,
but I think something about doing that and letting go
(16:04):
of so much stress because of the running, it was
helping me to receive more. So I think he gave
me the idea, and obviously I think he physically left
that list there for me to find at the exact
right moment so that I was to do it.
Speaker 8 (16:18):
Yeah. Yeah, how many items were on the list?
Speaker 9 (16:21):
He originally wrote down sixty items, and it wasn't a
traditional bucket list. He wrote it in nineteen seventy eight
when I was a baby, so bucket list that term
didn't exist until the movie in the nineties. Actually, the
guy who made the movie invented it. Yeah, yeah, I
didn't know that before. I found that out recently. But
my dad wrote this list saying things I would like
(16:42):
to do in my lifetime. So it was a young
man who was just planning out his life. I had
just been born at the time, and he had checked
off five of them, and then he marked one as
having failed at which was pay his dad back one
thousand dollars. So I guess my grandfather had passed away
so he wasn't able to complete that one, but that
(17:02):
was Yeah, he had actually done it his whole life,
so that then I had fifty four that if I
wanted to finish this for him that I had left.
Speaker 8 (17:10):
Wow, I wanted to ask you which item was the
most challenging for you, because you honored all of them.
Speaker 9 (17:17):
I did some of them, I did more poetically than others.
But you know, at one point, some people ask me sometimes,
at what point did it stop being his list and
it started being yours?
Speaker 8 (17:28):
That was about that too, because you get a foot
bucket list as well.
Speaker 9 (17:31):
Now, yes, I do have my own, yes, but but
there was a point where I started to recognize maybe
I was always supposed to do this list. I mean,
he wrote it after I was born. I came into
the world at around the same time, and maybe his
parenting was always preparing me for because as I would
do the list items, a lot of times they were
(17:52):
way easier than I thought that they would be, and
I would remember things he had taught me. And that
was really nice, because up until that point I had
spent the decade or thirteen years before finding it, getting
really you know, caught sometimes in the weeds of remembering
the way he died and very sad. And now that
I was actually doing something in a way to honor him,
(18:14):
my childlike self was coming forward and I was living more.
I wasn't living in the past, but I was. I
always caught like I was going back and grabbing myself,
the innocent version of me, and bringing her back into
my body.
Speaker 8 (18:27):
If that makes sense, Oh, it certainly does. But yeah,
every step of the way to everything.
Speaker 9 (18:33):
Yeah, Oh I know he was. I know he was.
And that was cool too, because I wasn't the most
confident person, but suddenly I was. Suddenly, even if something
was really hard, like there was one that was swim
the width of a river, and I guess that's a
good example of when something would be challenging because and
that's another thing I do now differently. I never I've
rarely used the word hard or difficult. I'll say challenging instead,
(18:57):
because that was one of the things the list gave me.
It gave me so many gifts, but one of them
was watch your words. Be careful how you describe things,
because if you costming challenging, it actually means oh, it
can be overcome. It's subjective, whereas if you're costing hard
or difficult, it's always that you know you can't ever
get past it. But yeah, I always feel like he
was standing right behind me. The river swim was really
(19:20):
tough because it had been like I think there had
been a tornado or a hurricane or something that week,
and it made the water really rapid, and I just thought, God,
I must be losing my mind, Like I look so
crazy walking across this river. And some of it really
was walking because some of it was very shallow, but
there are all these rocks, so I kept slipping on
(19:41):
the rocks, and there was at some point, and this
happened a lot with the list items, I just had
this wave come over me of like this is fun.
You know, this is something I would never be doing otherwise.
And that is my dad's energy. That's always who he
was was when he was living, just someone who could
(20:02):
find the fun in any situation. So I mean those
it wasn't even just a belief or a feeling that
he was behind me. The list items would sort of
become that helping to remind me of what it is
to really have fun in your life, even if you're
forty years old and you're swimming across the river.
Speaker 8 (20:18):
Yeah exactly, Let's let's do one more and then we'll
take a break. But one of the items was talk
with the president. What happened.
Speaker 9 (20:27):
I wrote to every single living president, and Jimmy Carter,
his foundation was the only one who responded, uh, and uh.
You know, it's it's interesting because he was the one
I ended up meeting, and I also one of the
one of the items was correspond with the Pope. Yeah
I got to.
Speaker 8 (20:44):
Talk to Yeah, we have to talk about that too.
Speaker 7 (20:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (20:47):
I got to talk to him as well. Now they've
since passed in the just in the past, you know,
seven months that happened, and I thought a lot about that, like, oh, wow,
I really did that right at the right time.
Speaker 8 (20:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (20:58):
But yeah, he was amazing. His the people who worked
for him were incredible, just very kind, helpful people told
me exactly what to do. But you know, that was
interesting because like every single part of that trip, it
was like each one was a leap of faith, like.
Speaker 8 (21:14):
I could but the President.
Speaker 9 (21:16):
Yeah, the Pope was actually way easier than I thought it. Yeah,
but the President. Yeah, it was like, Okay, can I
get a couple of minutes with him? I'm not sure?
And then I found out he didn't do interviews after
he would teach Sunday school and play in Georgia, and
I found he didn't do interviews after. And then I
met someone who managed to make sure I would get
(21:37):
a seat in the in the church, because even that
could fill up, because I think sometimes he would get
like five hundred people on a given Sunday. You'd have
to like go into a separate room to watch it
on a TV. And obviously I needed to not be
in that room. I needed to actually be in his
presence to talk with him. And then I got a
I got a tour of the foundation. Of course, what
(21:59):
I looked up in his library was all of the
history of his involvement with cars, and he actually was
part of why seatbelts became required in vehicles, So Jimmy
Carter did a lot for car safety. But yeah, I
got to go up to him and shake his hand
and have a few sentences with him, which even that
(22:21):
you're not supposed to do. You're supposed to take a picture.
And I really believe that happened because at a very
crucial moment of that trip, my husband and I we
got to our hotel very late at night. It was
like eleven o'clock at night, and it was because we
had climbed Stone Mountain, and I insisted that we do
that because it was a special place for my parents.
They had actually gone up there around the time they met.
(22:44):
My mom was showing him her grad school because she
went to grad school in Georgia. But it was because
we did that that we recreated those photos that we
met a man who would later become a very dear friend,
my friend Art Milns, and he was in the parking
lot and we spoke for about three hours about Jimmy Carter.
He was one of Jimmy Carter's biographers, and we just
(23:06):
kept talking to him throughout the weekend. Because it's a
very small town, we just kept showing up in the
same places, you know, And I really think I think
he put in a good word for us. And that's
the reason that Jimmy Carter. I mean, we found out
later that he had actually set it up so that
we could have lunch with him after the Sunday school.
But then we got bumped because Christina Aguilera's fiance came so.
Speaker 8 (23:31):
To speak with Jimmy Carter.
Speaker 9 (23:32):
Yeah, she was supposed to come too, but I think
something happened with her plane, something went wrong, but she
was She's a big philanthropist, so that was the reason. Woh,
that's good too.
Speaker 8 (23:42):
Yeah, we have to take a little rite, but we'll
be right back.
Speaker 9 (23:45):
This is Hudson River Radio dot com.
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Speaker 10 (24:58):
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Speaker 1 (25:06):
Com, Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 8 (25:18):
Welcome back to the Angel Quest Show my guest is
Laura Carney, author of My Father's List, How Living my
Dad's Dreams Set Me Free? And it is an amazing
episode here. I'm having so much fun with you, Laura,
So i'd love to talk about your correspondence with the Pope.
That one is so cool.
Speaker 9 (25:38):
That was when I put off until the end because
I'd really believed that that's what's so. That's the other
thing about My Dad's List was it was always unexpected.
Like so often I would tell people, Oh, the opposite
always happens, you know, almost like it was a joke
of his, you know, like he was giving me a
puzzle to figure out. And that happened with the Pope
because I really thought it would be impossible. I thought
(26:00):
it was going to be you know, people would ask me,
what do you think is the one you might not
be able to do, and that's what I would say,
I'm worried that's going to be I'll try. And at
some point I started realizing, well, maybe the whole lesson
is in the trying, it's in the doing. You know.
Which pope was this, by the way, it was the
most recent one who passed away, Pope Francis.
Speaker 8 (26:18):
Okay, Oh, how nice.
Speaker 9 (26:20):
Yeah, And so you know, I still gave it my
best effort and I end up I ended up meeting
a man. His name is Tom Everson, and he is
an activist for safe driving and he's really fascinating to
me because he hasn't lost anybody that way. He just
really cared about what was happening in his neighborhood. That
(26:42):
his foundation was called Keep Kids Alive Drive twenty five.
And when I met him, I thought he was very
unique among the kind of work I'd been doing in
activism because he's very about what he calls it is
Living Forward. So he has a found where every year
in Pike's Peak, Colorado, the mountain that America the Beautiful
(27:06):
was written on, he has people climb to the top
of the mountain and they call it the Living Forward Race,
and he has all these families come out there, and
the families are connected and really just everyone who's lost
a loved one in a traffic fatality. They just help
each other. And I thought that was so cool, So
I really wanted to get to know this man. I'm
actually going to do it this year. I'm going to
(27:26):
climb to the top of Pike's Peak for my dad. Gosh,
so I'm in training right now, and it's funny because
it's become almost like a metaphor for my life at
the moment, which my races usually do. But anyway, I
met Tom, and Tom used to work at Boys Town.
He was he almost became a minister at one point.
So he had a connection with a priest, a Jesuit
(27:48):
priest in New York named James Martin, and he is
really interesting. He actually made a documentary with Martin Scorsese
a few years ago, and he's very active in LGBTQ
rights in the church. And my dad was a closeted
cross dresser. So I thought, well, this is the right
guy who I need to talk to. And he also
was known to have counsel with the Pope quite often
(28:10):
even though he lived here in New York. So I
just asked him for advice, and I was researching it online.
I was finding out, you know, if you're Catholic, you
can give this greeting and you can give this ending
to it. And so I had like the code down
of what I needed to say. But I think I
just needed someone almost like another Art Mills, you know,
who was like a president whisper. I needed to have
(28:30):
a Pope whisper so I could have some reassurance that
maybe he would actually look at it. And it turns
out and he was very like by the way, he
was very coy with me, like he would say in
emails back to me, like, oh, you never know, maybe
he'll respond. I just was so grateful he was responding,
because even Father Martin is very, very busy. He was
(28:52):
really active in the news and stuff right after the
Pope passed away. But anyway, I wrote out the letter
when I decided to do was I wrote to him
about phone addiction. And I feel so weird calling him
him because I actually found out he would never go
by him. The Pope always goes by his holiness. So
please forgive me whatever Catholics are listening to this, But yeah,
(29:14):
he used to teach children about the importance of putting
your phone away and going outside and playing, and he
was very concerned about the impact of using your phone
too much, using the internet too much on kids. So
you know, I basically said, I have a very real
world impact of that in my family and just thanked
him for what he was doing to help people. And
(29:35):
I said, you know, I really think phone addiction, you know,
And as we were saying before, the convenience about it,
that's the only real reason that it's still happening. And
I got a letter back only I think it was
only four or six weeks later, and it was from
one of his assistants. He has four assistants who are
in charge of responding to his letters. And they always
(29:56):
say that if you get a letter from one of
the assistants, it means it's from him because they represent
they represent his heart. That's how they say it. And
once in a while, he himself will dictate the letter
and it really is truly from but it's only in
the most urgent cases asking for prayer. But in my case,
he wanted to write back, I guess, but it wasn't
like view'd as urgent. And it's funny because my uncle
(30:18):
found out that the man who wrote me back he
had just started the job that day.
Speaker 8 (30:23):
Wow, So to me, that's priority there.
Speaker 9 (30:26):
Look at that. Yeah, to me, that says like, you know,
if someone had just started the job, they might be
a little more enthusiastic about responding to letters. I don't know,
to be it.
Speaker 8 (30:38):
Was mean, So yeah, that's amazing. So you got that
back from the Pope.
Speaker 9 (30:45):
It was a blessing for my father, Yeah, and for
my family, and that was It meant so much to me.
I have to say, I've never said this in an
interview before. I actually think that hearing that meant more
to me than if I were sitting in a courtroom
or in front of Congress and hearing some kind of
legislation that might make it more impossible for people to
(31:08):
use their phone will driving. Because at some point along
the way, I started caring more about mercy and grace
than I cared about justice, because justice is more of
like a human like that's a man made things resolutely,
whereas mercy and grace and being feeling that you've been
blessed that lasts into eternity.
Speaker 8 (31:27):
You know, that's beautiful. Absolutely. I know you felt your
dad when you were doing your events on his bucket list.
Could you tell us a little about the signs and messages,
for example, the score of fifty four at the Rose Bowl.
Oh sure, yeah, I like bring Grasshopper on the anniversary
of your dad. It's so many but yeah.
Speaker 9 (31:47):
Well, I mean, of course, today, as soon as I
logged into the computer, it was nine to fifty four
of course. Ah, Okay, lately I've been seeing two fifty
four a lot, which the way I'm internal that is
maybe it's like, you know, as above so below almost.
That's how it feels to me whenever I see it
(32:08):
that my dad saying I did the fifty four items. Also,
you know, like.
Speaker 8 (32:12):
What was the significance of fifty four he died.
Speaker 9 (32:15):
He died when he was fifty four, okay, and there
were fifty four list items, and then it just kept
showing up like when we were, as you said, when
we were at the Rose Bowl, that was one of
the list items.
Speaker 8 (32:26):
That's great if you could share that story, that's amazing.
Speaker 9 (32:28):
Yeah. Yeah, I at halftime at the Rose.
Speaker 8 (32:32):
Bowl and that was one of the things to go
to the Rose Ball, right.
Speaker 9 (32:35):
Yes, he wanted to go there. Yeah, and I was
a little I felt some trepidation about that because I
was not a big sports fan. I like playing sports.
I played basketball in high school, but I was not
My dad was a huge football nut, and so that
would have been like going to church for him, going
to that Rose Bowl. And I really felt his presence
at halftime and I was watching the sunset. You know,
(32:56):
and I said, not knowing very much, like I said
about football, although I knew enough, I knew enough to
understand how the game worked, but I didn't understand like
overtime and scoring and things like that. And I said,
can you please make University of Georgia's final score the
same age you were when you died? Like it was
a really really demanding request in prayer that I was saying, yeah,
(33:19):
And then I forgot about it. And then it went
into overtime, and it got very very exciting because I
had never happened in the whole history of the Rose Bowl,
had never gone into overtime. And then it went And also,
by the way, when I said this, Georgia was losing
when I asked, there was so a fifty four would
be a very high score for the Rose Bowl.
Speaker 8 (33:40):
That's that's amazing.
Speaker 9 (33:41):
Yeah, Oklahoma was beating them. And I had just arbitrarily
decided that Georgia was my team because I had just
been to Georgia to meet Jimmy Carter and my mom
my mom went to that school. So so anyway, as
the game was ending and it went overtime and then
it went into double overtime, I mean it was like
the most excited you imagine, like an audience watching a
(34:02):
football game, even though it was only college, Like they
were just losing their minds. And I'll never forget even
the stadium looked like a rose because everyone was in
red because both of the teams had the color red,
like a different shade of red. And then it after
it was over, we were just so happy that Georgia
had won. And also the other thing that was cool
(34:23):
about it was nobody seemed to care who won. It
was like somebody won, you know, Thank goodness, this game
is finally over. And what a cool performance that was.
And then I look up at the scoreboard and it's
fifty four four that was and I was just like,
oh my, that was really other than meeting Art Milns,
who helped me with Jimmy Carter, and then and actually,
(34:43):
like a lot a week before this happened this I
know this never made it into the book, but a
week before this happened, the day I checked off surfing
in the Pacific Ocean, we did that in California. Keanu
Reeves walked into the Vegan restaurant. Oh yeah, and I
had just point break like that's what I watched to
prepare myself for surfing, and the day I actually got
(35:06):
up on that board, he walks in and yeah he's vegan.
So I mean, you can maybe get a better chance
at meeting certain celebrities if you go vegan.
Speaker 8 (35:15):
Not all of them, but there are many.
Speaker 9 (35:17):
Yeah, yeah, there are there are so yeah. That was
that moment. And then the fifty four was just that
was at the very end of the first year of
doing the list, and I just thought, oh my gosh,
something something is happening, like there's some This is better.
Speaker 8 (35:29):
Absolutely without a doubt. Okay, we're going to pause for
a break right now. I guess today is Laura Carney,
author of My Father's List, How Living my Dad's Dreams
Set Me Free. We'll be right back.
Speaker 10 (35:41):
This is Hudson River Radio dot com. This is Hudson
River Radio dot com.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 8 (35:59):
So, well, welcome back to the Angel Quest Show. And
we were talking about signs from your dad. But you
got a little notice during the break. Would you like
to share that I did?
Speaker 9 (36:09):
I did. My husband was joking that he's my producer
and he wanted to let me know that Keanu Reeves
is not known to be vegan. Okay, I just wanted
to cry.
Speaker 8 (36:18):
Okay, that's good to know. Thank you, Steven, his name
is Steven.
Speaker 9 (36:22):
Yes, yeah, that's all right.
Speaker 8 (36:24):
So let's keep talking about the signs your dad gives.
I love them that the Grasshoppers shows up, they show
his anniversary.
Speaker 9 (36:32):
Yes, yeah, And you know, the first time it happened,
it was red. It was like this big. It was
very large, and it was maybe that's a cricket, I
don't know, but it was very big and red, and
it showed up on the screen window right behind my
couch where I write, and it was in that little
area that's like, uh, right over my right shoulder, which
(36:52):
is always where I feel like my dad is. And
I've actually learned since learning more about communication that that
is the feeling like the part of your subconscious where
they where you tend to have images appear as the
back of your right head. Or maybe that is the
more female side of the braid. I'm not sure, but yeah,
that's where I always feel like he is. And so
(37:13):
it made sense in that way, but it really was
like whoa Like I was just up all night writing
the book and it just showed up and then it
happened again on the next birthday, and then it happened again,
and it's even It happened when I was I was
on a trip with my cousin, my oldest Carney cousin
was helping me with one of the most items, and
we took this camping trip in California, which ended up
(37:36):
being quite disastrous in some ways actually, but it was fine.
We were fine. It was pretty funny in retrospect. But
I was in a hotel and I was taking these
little hikes, these little solo hikes, every day, and one
day I realized it was August eighth, and there were
crickets everywhere where I was. And then even like last
(37:56):
year or two years ago, I think it was, I
was on a trip for a family reunion and we
were in the hotel parking lot the day of August eighth,
and there was a cricket that was injured and it
was in a parking like a parking spot that was empty,
and I went over and I picked it up. And
you're gonna love this. This was really weird. So I
pick it up and a man comes over with all
white hair and he had his truck parked right there
(38:19):
and he goes, oh, cricket of the hearth oh, and
I was like, oh, yeah, I guess so. And he's like,
you know, like the Irish song, and of course my
dad was very Irish. And I looked that up later
and I thought, well, boy, you're really getting good at this.
Speaker 8 (38:33):
Now, that's amazing.
Speaker 9 (38:35):
This man just and he's in an all white pickup
truck with all white hair.
Speaker 8 (38:39):
He just showed up nowhere, without a sign, without a doubt.
Speaker 9 (38:45):
Do people tell you that a lot? Like they just
have Like it was just like when I would think
it was him visiting me when with strange men who
would come and talk to me, And that sounds eerie,
but it was in a good way. It's like they
think it was an angel. They just show up and
then they.
Speaker 8 (38:59):
Go yes, absolutely. I just had a quick question. I
thought it was grasshopper. Did I make a mistake.
Speaker 9 (39:06):
It's crazy, So it was a grasshopper, But I say,
crickets count.
Speaker 8 (39:10):
Oh absolutely, crickets count? Yeah, absolutely, YEA. What he does
is he uses his energy to go inside of a
bug to let you know that he's with you.
Speaker 9 (39:22):
I had a really crazy one happened just a week ago. Yeah,
a blackbird with a big yellow beak. But it wasn't
like a scary blackbird. It was like a very cute
little blackbird. It just showed up on that same window,
but it was on the window sill, and that's never
happened before.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
We at you.
Speaker 9 (39:39):
Yeah, and you know what, there was a little tiny
hole in the screen and it put its beak inside
and it was like opening its beak like a baby being.
Speaker 8 (39:45):
Oh my gosh, that's what doubt.
Speaker 9 (39:48):
Yeah, what do you think that means.
Speaker 8 (39:50):
That he's saying hello, Hello? He be in there trying
to say hello.
Speaker 9 (39:56):
That's amazing how they can do that. And it's been
all kinds of animals, not just the cricket. I mean,
I had I guess it was the day Oh I
wrote about how one of his list I ms was
grow watermelon, and I was so nervous about this watermelon.
I was like, I can't believe this is the thing
that scares me the most on this bucket list. You know,
I didn't think I had a green thumb, being a
(40:16):
New Yorker, you know. And the day that it got fertilized.
Finally I saw a butterfly, a monarch butterfly, just like
flying along with me as I walked down the driveway
to go to the train that day. So I think
that that's what it was.
Speaker 8 (40:34):
You know, what you have to do is just do
a list of every single sign you received. That's yeah,
I was going to say, that's it.
Speaker 9 (40:41):
I mean, and like another day it was a deer.
Another day I walked out and I'm not even kidding,
Like we live on the second floor behind a bakery,
you know, very kind of urban, and as I walked
on the steps, a deer was right there, almost like
it was about to climb the steps. As I walked,
I almost have chills just like remembering it. It was
like it was just going first stroll with me.
Speaker 8 (41:01):
So I looked down the drivers.
Speaker 9 (41:04):
Yeah, I mean he eventually ran over to another store,
but yeah, he really did go. Yes, that's happened a
lot animals.
Speaker 8 (41:11):
Would you say those are without adult signs? You know,
he's using his energy to go inside of an animal
to let you know he's with you. And the one
I see knowledge it the moyal do it.
Speaker 11 (41:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 9 (41:23):
Oh yeah, And I see hearts every day. Ever since
I started the list, I've seen a heart every single day,
and I think that's a big part of it too.
Like you said, if you acknowledge it, not just that
you're seeing it, but you're saying, oh, this means you're
talking to me. And as soon as I realized the
heart could be him, it just started happening more and more,
and it would always show up very well timed, because
(41:46):
it would be like I had just made a decision
which my dad's list required of me a lot. I
had made a decision that was not something that Laura
would normally do. You know, it was like a big
risk for me. And it was like I would see
the heart somewhere on the sidewalk or you know, on
a building anywhere, and suddenly I thought, okay, I'm still
following the path. It was like he was leaving little
(42:07):
breadcrumbs for me. And I still see it. Even during
the pandemic, when I was inside a lot, I would
still see it.
Speaker 8 (42:12):
It would say that it's always a reminder that he's
with you, and he loves the fact that you wrote
this book and you're getting his message out there. It's
just so cool.
Speaker 9 (42:22):
Yeah, well, I just won an award. I'm allowed to
say that. I won an award in the city of Greensboro,
North Carolina, it's called the one City, One Book, where
an entire city reads your book.
Speaker 8 (42:32):
Oh my good stop.
Speaker 9 (42:34):
Yeah, I'm not kidding. And even the library and the
other day referred to it as Lauraville, which my dad
would adore, like like I'm taking over a whole city,
you know. But that's very exciting. It's a lot of
book sales, it's a lot of readers I get to
connect with, and you know, it's it's like you said,
it's my dad just just getting me out there. And
(42:56):
I told my mom some things about it last night,
who she's just been incredibly supportive of this whole thing,
and she said, wow, your dad is going to change
so many lives. And it was just like, ugh, like, yes, that's.
Speaker 8 (43:09):
Exactly yea, his thinking you you are, thank you?
Speaker 9 (43:12):
Yeah, well I'm the vehicle.
Speaker 8 (43:15):
Yes, yes, It's just how long did it take for
you to go through all the items on your dad's list?
Speaker 9 (43:22):
It took me six years. I always consider December twenty seventh,
twenty twenty two as the official end, because that was
when I finished recording the music. He wanted to have
five songs recorded because he also used you wrote in
very many different mediums. He was a writer as well.
He wrote a book, he wrote screenplays, and he wrote songs,
(43:43):
so he probably meant his own songs, but I chose
to do the songs I most associated with him. And
that night I was in my closet recording my vocals
for the last songs, and that was it. Then I
had done all of it. Although I have to say
sometimes I feel like things that I took poetic license
with are now happening more for real. Like one of
(44:06):
them was talk to a TV audience, and I considered
that the time I checked off the skydiving. He said
he wanted to skydive at least once, and a local
new studio for TV said they wanted to do it
with me. So I just spoked. I spoke straight straight
into the camera, and I'm like, okay, this is talk
to a TV audience. But then of course, like after
I say, of course because this was my experience, but
(44:27):
it's not and of course at all, after I finished
the list and I finished the book and it was
about to come out, I got called to be on
the Tamar and Hall Show, and then I actually was
talking to a live TV audience. So it's like little
things like that keep happening where it's like, Oh, you
thought you were done, but you're not.
Speaker 8 (44:45):
You're not, You're not. Yeah, we're almost done. But i'd
love to hear a little bit about your own bucket list.
What do you have on there?
Speaker 9 (44:53):
Oh, I need to stop. I keep adding more items
and it's going to be so I have three hundred
items now. Oh yeah, And I really want, you know,
I really want to write a book about that too.
I don't know yet what that could look like, but
I think regardless of whether it becomes its own book
or it becomes articles that I write while i'm doing it,
(45:16):
I think it's going to be something that helps me
get my writing out into the world because it helps
me to be a better version of myself, making sure
I prioritize fun in my life. And a lot of
it is different hikes I want to take, just different
countries I want to visit. I've gotten very into visiting
churches and just old religious buildings. So one of the
(45:38):
things I really want to do is I want to
hike the Camino in the space.
Speaker 8 (45:42):
Yes, my friend did that. Yeah, it's amazing experience.
Speaker 9 (45:45):
That's really that's what it is. A lot of my
list is experiences like that that are known to be
on inspiring.
Speaker 8 (45:51):
Yes, because I.
Speaker 9 (45:53):
Think the more you have that in your life, just
you're living a better life if you're making sure to
include awed wonder mm hmm.
Speaker 8 (46:01):
Do you have any closing words of wisdom for our listeners,
anything you like to share that we didn't cover.
Speaker 9 (46:08):
Well, maybe I should say we were talking earlier about
you said you felt a lot of love surrounding me,
and I wrote down before this interview love helps you
see more clearly and take more risks and find your
true calling. And I always like to write a little
note for myself before I talk to someone because that
way you get an idea of what you're about to
talk about, you know, regardless of what they're going to
(46:29):
ask you. But now I feel like maybe my dad's
been the one writing those notes for me, you know,
because I also have lots of hearts and stars drawn
on this notebook and stars that's the one who shows
me the most lateliest stars. And I think what that
means is, you know a lot of us it's like
the week consciousness like you talk about, Like like doctor
(46:52):
Wayne Dyer taught you, a lot of us go through
life feeling like we're alone, you know. And there's a
loneliness epidemic right now, and I think it's because we've
just believed this illusion that we're separate from each other.
I felt very alone in my grief for a long
time and traumatized by what happened. But it was when
I started talking about it more and talking about my
(47:15):
actual feelings, and also I gave people an incentive or
just an idea of how they could help me. They
could help me do these list items. And not everybody
has a bucket list of someone who died, but they
do have memories. They have really wonderful memories of that person.
And if you can find a way to keep those
memories alive and incorporate their legacy into your life, you're
(47:38):
just going to live a better life because you're finally
living in a way where you're celebrating what it is
to be alive, as opposed to being afraid of dying
yourself maybe or focusing too much on the moment that
they died. And that's what I think people who are
grieving do quite a lot.
Speaker 8 (47:53):
Wow, it's beautiful, beautiful. How could our listeners get in
touch with you and get your book?
Speaker 9 (48:00):
You could go to my website. It's by Lauracarney dot com,
just like a reporter's byline. And I'm my Father's at
My Father's List on Instagram. My books available on Amazon
and bookstores everywhere.
Speaker 8 (48:14):
Beautiful, Thank you so much for joining us today. It
was so awesome.
Speaker 9 (48:19):
What all thankful?
Speaker 8 (48:20):
Adventure?
Speaker 9 (48:20):
Yeah, thank you as adventure continues. Thank you so much for.
Speaker 8 (48:24):
Having me, have you on again, love you, Thank you
so much for joining again. Laura's amazing book is My
Father's List. How Living my Dad's Dreams set me free?
Tune in again to next month's angel Quest podcast. While
Hudson River Radio is no longer streaming live, you'll be
able to find all the latest angel Quest shows, as
(48:44):
well as all archived shows by clicking on the angel
Quest podcast link on Hudson River Radio dot com. Also,
this and other angel Quest shows are offered as Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
and most of the podcast platforms out there, including the
one you're listening to now. For more information about me
or my books, you could go to my website at
(49:05):
Karenowi dot com or follow me on my Facebook or
Instagram pages at Karen Noi Author. Have an amazing day.
And always remember to focus on the beauty and love
all around you and spread the love that you are. Angel.
Blessings to you now and always Bye bye.
Speaker 11 (49:39):
From our spirit, we perceive we are one humanity, awakening, sanctity.
Speaker 7 (49:50):
Awareness, and unity.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
We are here to dance and see our connection with everything,
understanding who we are through the ways of the heart.
Speaker 4 (50:18):
Let's choose love, inner peace, living one in harmony with
the novel.
Speaker 12 (50:28):
At our core. We are the ones we've been waiting.
Speaker 5 (50:32):
Or we can do it with the truth and bring
new light into all we do. We are in love
at our best in.
Speaker 7 (50:45):
The weed the consciousness.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
As we grow consciously, we claim sovereignty.
Speaker 12 (51:02):
For our lives. Land Dan see.
Speaker 7 (51:06):
Ground it in equality.
Speaker 4 (51:12):
Let's choose love inner be, living one in harmony.
Speaker 12 (51:19):
With the knowledge.
Speaker 3 (51:22):
At our core.
Speaker 12 (51:24):
We are the ones we've been waiting before. We can
do it with our true.
Speaker 7 (51:31):
Bring new light into all we do.
Speaker 12 (51:35):
We are love at our best.
Speaker 7 (51:40):
Consciousness lis a child like the.
Speaker 12 (51:47):
Mother within us.
Speaker 5 (51:49):
All we come discof looking out for one and love
heart to heart.
Speaker 4 (52:00):
Sisters and brad, Let's choose love inner beas living one
(52:33):
in Harlem with the nove.
Speaker 3 (52:37):
At our corn.
Speaker 12 (52:39):
We are the ones we've been waiting for.
Speaker 13 (52:42):
We can do it.
Speaker 4 (52:44):
With that truth, bring new life into all we do.
Speaker 5 (52:50):
We are love at our best.
Speaker 7 (52:54):
In the way consciousness.
Speaker 12 (52:58):
We love at our first consciousness, venture to the.
Speaker 7 (53:21):
Consciousness.
Speaker 13 (53:30):
We are all one. Whatever we do to ourselves or
another affects the whole. May the divine within you guide
you as to what steps to take to be of
service to our beautiful planet.
Speaker 7 (53:55):
May peace prevail on Earth.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
Hudson River Radio dot com
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Speaker 3 (01:22):
We are here to dance and sing our connection with everything, understanding.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Who we are through the waves of the hearts. Let's
choose the inner piece, living one in harmony with the knowledge.
Speaker 5 (01:50):
At our core we are the ones we've been waiting,
or we can.
Speaker 6 (01:55):
Do it with the truth, new light and all we
do we are love out our best.
Speaker 7 (02:07):
In Louie Consciousness.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
And now, ladies and gentlemen, it's time for Angel Quest
with Karene on Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 8 (02:28):
Well, hello, everybody, Welcome to the Angel Quest Show. I'm
Karen Noe, author of Your Life After Their Death Through
the Eyes of Another and Weak Consciousness. My guest today
is Laura Corney, author of My Father's List. How Living
my Dad's Dreams Set Me Free. Her work has been
featured in magazines such as Good Housekeeping, People, Guideposts, and
(02:50):
Vanity Fair. Laura has appeared on CBS News Sunday Morning,
The Drew Barrymore Show, and NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt,
among other TV programs. My Father's List was one of
the best books of twenty twenty three in Real Simple magazine.
You could find Laura on her website by going to
(03:10):
buy Lauracarney dot com. That's b why l A U
R A c A r n E y dot com.
Hi Laura, thanks so much for being with us today.
Speaker 9 (03:22):
Thank you so much for having me. I love your show,
so I'm honored to be here.
Speaker 8 (03:27):
Your book is amazing. It's so much fun to read
to listen to. I actually listened to it on audible.
So are you ready to begin?
Speaker 9 (03:35):
Yeah? I am.
Speaker 8 (03:36):
Okay. Before we start, let's tell if you could share
with us how your dad passed and how you had
a premonition about his passing.
Speaker 9 (03:46):
Oh gosh, that's right, I did. My father died when
I was twenty five. He died because of a distracted driver.
It was a teenager who was making a phone call
because she was lost, That's what I was told, and
she was she was going straight and she went straight
through the red light while he was turning left. And
(04:07):
my premonition about it was I saw him about five
days before he died, and I was on a bus
going back to New York with the man who would
later become my husband, and I was looking at a billboard,
you know, just going along the highway, and suddenly it
was like I was looking at the billboard, but a
(04:27):
different message appeared in my head, and it was that
that was the last time I was going to see
my dad. And I told my husband, I mean as
as far as like here in this realm. It was
the last time I would see him. And I told
my husband that I don't think he's going to be
alive when we go home for Thanksgiving, and he's like, oh, no,
you know, I'm sure he'll be fine. And he had
(04:48):
had a heart condition, he had an enlarged heart, and
he was supposed to have something, some kind of a
procedure done that he was putting off. So we both
sort of assumed that was just my anxiety or something,
but it wasn't. It really was. And I even, you know,
even a month I didn't write about this in the book,
but even a month before that, I had this feeling
of dread come over me one day when I was
(05:09):
at my internship. So that's the reason I was in
New York was for a magazine internship, and I had
emailed my future husband about it, and I says, something's
going to happen and it's going to affect a lot
of people. And I'd only had that feeling one other time,
and it was the morning of nine to eleven.
Speaker 8 (05:24):
Oh boy, yeah, well, yeah, a lot of people had
that premonition on about nine to eleven. But that's incredible
you had about your dad.
Speaker 9 (05:32):
Yeah, it was like a warning, I think. And then
I even had the day the day that he passed,
I was on a train home going home from work.
I had a part time job. I was a hostess
at an out back steakhouse in New York and I
was on the train and this man came on and
he started talking to me, and he just seemed otherworldly.
He had it was almost the best way I can
(05:53):
describe it is he was a security guard and he
had this jumpsuit on, but it was like blood was
going through his vein for the first time, and like
his eyes were almost like vibrating. They were very brown. Oh,
and it was angel Yeah. I mean he was so
kind and just had so much peace about him. I
almost felt like he was Jesus actually, and it was
(06:15):
like he wanted to know where I worked. He was
telling me to call my family. You know, I was
only like twenty five and he's like, oh, are you okay?
You look so sad. And some of the things he
said even made jokes that were like my dad's jokes,
Like he joked that he was thirty nine, which my
dad used to say it on every birthday. And then
you know, he clearly was not thirty nine. And when
I got off the also when he got on the train,
(06:37):
and when he left the train, it was like he
was gliding. It was like he was just not even walking.
Like it happened so quickly. And I got off and
I called my my husband or my boyfriend at the time.
I called him to say I think I just met
an angel. And then I checked my voicemail and my
brother had left me the message that our dad had died.
Oh my god, it might have been my dad checking
(06:59):
on me.
Speaker 8 (06:59):
I think it was. Yeah, it was. That's amazing.
Speaker 9 (07:03):
Yeah, it's happened a few times too, did you and that.
Speaker 8 (07:07):
This is going to be a little bit different than
your other interviews. I'd love to hear about that. Did
you have those?
Speaker 9 (07:13):
Oh yeah, at least five other times in the next
decade or so, I would have an experience in a
train station or a bookstore. You know, it's always somewhere
where I just happened to be by myself waiting for something,
where someone it was clear to me something about the
person either they had his name, they smelled like old spice,
you know, it was it was a vibe. Why don't
(07:35):
usually use that word. I'm not young enough to use
that word, but it was a feeling that it was
my dad.
Speaker 8 (07:40):
Yeah, it's a without a doubt sign. I call it
without a doubt sign from your dad trying to let
you know he was with you absolutely, and.
Speaker 9 (07:47):
You always when I was worried about something, that was
always when it would happen.
Speaker 8 (07:51):
Right, how awesome?
Speaker 9 (07:54):
Yeah, so you did.
Speaker 8 (07:57):
You tried hard to get the message out there about
you to the public about talking on the phone and
driving ever come to anything.
Speaker 9 (08:05):
Yeah, I mean, I think I helped some people, and
I think mostly for me, I would find myself feeling
very frustrated when I was doing it in a very
literal way, because sometimes I think some people's reaction to
being told not to do something is almost like it
becomes like a guilty pleasure, like, oh, well, now I
(08:26):
know about it. I know it can kill people, but
it doesn't always kill people, so maybe it's okay, just
this one. And I have to say, you know, as
I've been learning more about you, Karen, I was very
excited to meet you today and talk about veganism because actually.
Speaker 8 (08:41):
That's one of my questions. Are you kidding me that
is a main thing in my life. I'm so excited
I'm a vegan.
Speaker 9 (08:47):
I'm sorry, that's what I was going to say. That
was the thing that really changed my activism because I
found out that a family member was texting and driving
and I basically lost my mind because I thought, oh,
my gosh, I can't this person would do this when
they I've told them so much about it, you know.
And my husband's like, well, I've told you a lot
about factory farming and you're still eating animals. And it
(09:10):
really was one of those flashbalb moment or light bulb
moments where I realized, Okay, yeah, I have seen those
movies with him, and you know, I've read some of
the books. There's a really great book called The Heretics
Feast if in case you've never read it again, which
one is it called The Heretics Feast?
Speaker 8 (09:26):
No, I never heard of that one.
Speaker 9 (09:28):
Yeah, it's a really great history of vegetarianism and veganism
that a lot of people aren't aware of. I'm a
researcher and a journalist. Of course, I had to read
like a really big book about it, but really, you know,
it's it's a very natural way to live your life
and to eat. And when I shifted, it helped me
to understand that, you know, my husband's veganism, it wasn't
(09:49):
a thing he was ever forcing on anybody, and he
was never shaming anyone for not making that choice. And
really it was more like him doing that was an
example other people, like, Hey, I'm living a great life
as a vegan and you could too. And it hit
me like, oh, I could be saying, hey, here, I
am doing my dad's bucket list for him, and I'm
(10:10):
never on my phone when I'm driving, Like I could
just be the example instead of being the person who is,
you know, looking for it and then pointing it out
on Facebook and like saying something about it. Like I
shifted my whole way of doing things so that instead
of like trying to make people change, I started to
be the change.
Speaker 8 (10:29):
If that mean it's the best thing you could do,
I'm sending you a big hug and your husband. But
it's true what happened with me. I actually felt the
pain of the animals that over twenty five years ago,
and I just couldn't eat meat anymore. If people could
feel that, they would never eat meeting. Yeah, there's a
wonderful slogan. I don't know if you heard it. It's
(10:51):
if you could live happy and healthy lives without harming anyone,
why wouldn't you. That's from Australia. What is the name
of that Edgar's Mission?
Speaker 9 (10:58):
Okay, oh yeah, yep.
Speaker 8 (11:02):
But yeah, so you beat me too, and I was
going to ask you about that later on. That's awesome.
Speaker 9 (11:08):
I went back, yeah, seven years seven years ago, seven.
Speaker 8 (11:12):
Years ago, and you never went back because you could
live happy and hoar they live right.
Speaker 9 (11:17):
Yeah. Well, and you know what I realized is when
people choose meat or dairy, a lot of times they're
just making that choice because it's convenient.
Speaker 8 (11:25):
A habit. It's a habit.
Speaker 9 (11:26):
It's a habit, but also it's what is around exactly
being sold to us. And I realized, well, people are
educated now about distracted driving, and if they get in
a car and they use their phone anyway, it's just
a habit. It's just out of convenience. I realized it
was the choice was very similar. So I thought, you
know what, in my life, I don't want to make
choices like that, And that is the best way I
(11:48):
could honor my dad because he was so all about
thinking for yourself, you know. So that's really how I
just started living.
Speaker 8 (11:55):
Yeah, it's not always easy for those who are thinking
about going being in right, it's not always easy go
you know, when you go out with friends. But there's
you can find always find vegan options or beforehand, you know,
Google where where is there a vegan restaurant or anything
like that. You know what I'm talking about, right.
Speaker 9 (12:13):
My husband's a great cook, so that helps. Oh, he
had already been introducing me.
Speaker 8 (12:18):
Do you have some recipes you could send me? You
have my email address?
Speaker 9 (12:21):
Yeah, yeah, The Nut Free Vegan. That's his website because
he's also allergic to nuts.
Speaker 8 (12:27):
The nut Free and I'm a gluten frey. Could you imagine?
Oh my god, everything right right, the nut Free Vegan.
I'm writing it in yeah, okay, So let's go to
your bucket list of your dad. Okay, sure, look about
his bucket list and how you knew? Oh yeah, everything
on his list.
Speaker 9 (12:46):
Yeah. I think I'm getting better lately at trusting when
I have a premonition or like a vision of something
that will happen in the future. You know, I don't
know what I'm tapping in too. I wouldn't say that
I'm you know, I'm psychic gifts or something that like
you do, of course, but I know you like to
talk about how everybody has that and everyone can can
(13:10):
learn how to use it. So I definitely would say
that this whole experience has helped me expand and trust
it when it happens. And it's funny because I used
to be such a cerebral person and now I'm I'm
learning more as I go that I really might have
a very strong intuition and that's that should be what's
driving the car basically, for lack of a better phez, Yeah,
(13:30):
but yeah, the day we found my dad's bucket list,
my brother had just moved into his first condo that
he had bought for himself and his fiance, and it
would he just discovered it while they were unpacking, and
he had seen it before, I think at one point,
but mostly I had been sitting in a box for
thirteen years and he hadn't really explored it. And as
(13:53):
soon as they saw it, they thought, well, let's let's
give it to Laura and let's have let's talk to
her about it when she comes up to visit. They
wanted to. I think I don't know which is which,
but one of them wanted to save it and give
it to me at their wedding, but then the other
one said, oh, let's show it to her because I'm
too excited. So when I went up, they showed it
to me and they said, my brother wanted to know
if I knew about it, and I didn't. Although growing
(14:15):
up my mom did talk a lot about the lists
my dad would make of famous people he wanted to meet,
you know, and things like that. Come to find out,
he was a big fan of Napoleon Hill, uh and
you know, like the power of attraction, law of attraction,
all of that stuff, like you never talked about that.
But he was very well read so and also a
new age stuff too, So I think that's why he
(14:37):
did it. I think that's why he wrote it, because
he knew the power of putting things out into the
universe and and the way that you thought he held
Carnegie fan too. Yeah, but uh, but yeah, as soon
as I saw it, it was like just I knew,
and I saw my dad's face in the back of
my head and he was smiling and he was nodding,
(14:58):
and I had that that that was weird for me
because I've never had like a mind's eye vision before
of him. Since his death, it was always just like
these strangers I would meet that sort of seemed like
they could be him, or a song that came on
the radio. The one big thing I used to have
was he died on August eighth, so I would see
the number eighty eight quite a lot. But that was
(15:19):
a pretty regular kinds of signs. But now it was
like I was setting off something new because now I
was going to start seeing his face, I was going
to start hearing full sentences. It was like everything just
started to open up for me. I actually think a
big part of it was because I had become a runner.
I had I was training for a marathon, and also
(15:42):
I had started pursuing my writing more. And I think
there's just something about the writer's mind where you're really
just channeling things. I always try to tell people that
when you're writing, you're actually just receiving something, which I
don't have to tell you I'm preaching to the choir here,
but I think something about doing that and letting go
(16:04):
of so much stress because of the running, it was
helping me to receive more. So I think he gave
me the idea, and obviously I think he physically left
that list there for me to find at the exact
right moment so that I was to do it.
Speaker 8 (16:18):
Yeah. Yeah, how many items were on the list?
Speaker 9 (16:21):
He originally wrote down sixty items, and it wasn't a
traditional bucket list. He wrote it in nineteen seventy eight
when I was a baby, so bucket list that term
didn't exist until the movie in the nineties. Actually, the
guy who made the movie invented it. Yeah, yeah, I
didn't know that before. I found that out recently. But
my dad wrote this list saying things I would like
(16:42):
to do in my lifetime. So it was a young
man who was just planning out his life. I had
just been born at the time, and he had checked
off five of them, and then he marked one as
having failed at which was pay his dad back one
thousand dollars. So I guess my grandfather had passed away
so he wasn't able to complete that one, but that
(17:02):
was Yeah, he had actually done it his whole life,
so that then I had fifty four that if I
wanted to finish this for him that I had left.
Speaker 8 (17:10):
Wow, I wanted to ask you which item was the
most challenging for you, because you honored all of them.
Speaker 9 (17:17):
I did some of them, I did more poetically than others.
But you know, at one point, some people ask me sometimes,
at what point did it stop being his list and
it started being yours?
Speaker 8 (17:28):
That was about that too, because you get a foot
bucket list as well.
Speaker 9 (17:31):
Now, yes, I do have my own, yes, but but
there was a point where I started to recognize maybe
I was always supposed to do this list. I mean,
he wrote it after I was born. I came into
the world at around the same time, and maybe his
parenting was always preparing me for because as I would
do the list items, a lot of times they were
(17:52):
way easier than I thought that they would be, and
I would remember things he had taught me. And that
was really nice, because up until that point I had
spent the decade or thirteen years before finding it, getting
really you know, caught sometimes in the weeds of remembering
the way he died and very sad. And now that
I was actually doing something in a way to honor him,
(18:14):
my childlike self was coming forward and I was living more.
I wasn't living in the past, but I was. I
always caught like I was going back and grabbing myself,
the innocent version of me, and bringing her back into
my body.
Speaker 8 (18:27):
If that makes sense, Oh, it certainly does. But yeah,
every step of the way to everything.
Speaker 9 (18:33):
Yeah, Oh I know he was. I know he was.
And that was cool too, because I wasn't the most
confident person, but suddenly I was. Suddenly, even if something
was really hard, like there was one that was swim
the width of a river, and I guess that's a
good example of when something would be challenging because and
that's another thing I do now differently. I never I've
rarely used the word hard or difficult. I'll say challenging instead,
(18:57):
because that was one of the things the list gave me.
It gave me so many gifts, but one of them
was watch your words. Be careful how you describe things,
because if you costming challenging, it actually means oh, it
can be overcome. It's subjective, whereas if you're costing hard
or difficult, it's always that you know you can't ever
get past it. But yeah, I always feel like he
was standing right behind me. The river swim was really
(19:20):
tough because it had been like I think there had
been a tornado or a hurricane or something that week,
and it made the water really rapid, and I just thought, God,
I must be losing my mind, Like I look so
crazy walking across this river. And some of it really
was walking because some of it was very shallow, but
there are all these rocks, so I kept slipping on
(19:41):
the rocks, and there was at some point, and this
happened a lot with the list items, I just had
this wave come over me of like this is fun.
You know, this is something I would never be doing otherwise.
And that is my dad's energy. That's always who he
was was when he was living, just someone who could
(20:02):
find the fun in any situation. So I mean those
it wasn't even just a belief or a feeling that
he was behind me. The list items would sort of
become that helping to remind me of what it is
to really have fun in your life, even if you're
forty years old and you're swimming across the river.
Speaker 8 (20:18):
Yeah exactly, Let's let's do one more and then we'll
take a break. But one of the items was talk
with the president. What happened.
Speaker 9 (20:27):
I wrote to every single living president, and Jimmy Carter,
his foundation was the only one who responded, uh, and uh.
You know, it's it's interesting because he was the one
I ended up meeting, and I also one of the
one of the items was correspond with the Pope. Yeah
I got to.
Speaker 8 (20:44):
Talk to Yeah, we have to talk about that too.
Speaker 7 (20:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (20:47):
I got to talk to him as well. Now they've
since passed in the just in the past, you know,
seven months that happened, and I thought a lot about that, like, oh, wow,
I really did that right at the right time.
Speaker 8 (20:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (20:58):
But yeah, he was amazing. His the people who worked
for him were incredible, just very kind, helpful people told
me exactly what to do. But you know, that was
interesting because like every single part of that trip, it
was like each one was a leap of faith, like.
Speaker 8 (21:14):
I could but the President.
Speaker 9 (21:16):
Yeah, the Pope was actually way easier than I thought it. Yeah,
but the President. Yeah, it was like, Okay, can I
get a couple of minutes with him? I'm not sure?
And then I found out he didn't do interviews after
he would teach Sunday school and play in Georgia, and
I found he didn't do interviews after. And then I
met someone who managed to make sure I would get
(21:37):
a seat in the in the church, because even that
could fill up, because I think sometimes he would get
like five hundred people on a given Sunday. You'd have
to like go into a separate room to watch it
on a TV. And obviously I needed to not be
in that room. I needed to actually be in his
presence to talk with him. And then I got a
I got a tour of the foundation. Of course, what
(21:59):
I looked up in his library was all of the
history of his involvement with cars, and he actually was
part of why seatbelts became required in vehicles, So Jimmy
Carter did a lot for car safety. But yeah, I
got to go up to him and shake his hand
and have a few sentences with him, which even that
(22:21):
you're not supposed to do. You're supposed to take a picture.
And I really believe that happened because at a very
crucial moment of that trip, my husband and I we
got to our hotel very late at night. It was
like eleven o'clock at night, and it was because we
had climbed Stone Mountain, and I insisted that we do
that because it was a special place for my parents.
They had actually gone up there around the time they met.
(22:44):
My mom was showing him her grad school because she
went to grad school in Georgia. But it was because
we did that that we recreated those photos that we
met a man who would later become a very dear friend,
my friend Art Milns, and he was in the parking
lot and we spoke for about three hours about Jimmy Carter.
He was one of Jimmy Carter's biographers, and we just
(23:06):
kept talking to him throughout the weekend. Because it's a
very small town, we just kept showing up in the
same places, you know, And I really think I think
he put in a good word for us. And that's
the reason that Jimmy Carter. I mean, we found out
later that he had actually set it up so that
we could have lunch with him after the Sunday school.
But then we got bumped because Christina Aguilera's fiance came so.
Speaker 8 (23:31):
To speak with Jimmy Carter.
Speaker 9 (23:32):
Yeah, she was supposed to come too, but I think
something happened with her plane, something went wrong, but she
was She's a big philanthropist, so that was the reason. Woh,
that's good too.
Speaker 8 (23:42):
Yeah, we have to take a little rite, but we'll
be right back.
Speaker 9 (23:45):
This is Hudson River Radio dot com.
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Speaker 10 (24:58):
This is Hudson Radio dot com, Hudson River Radio dot.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Com, Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 8 (25:18):
Welcome back to the Angel Quest Show my guest is
Laura Carney, author of My Father's List, How Living my
Dad's Dreams Set Me Free? And it is an amazing
episode here. I'm having so much fun with you, Laura,
So i'd love to talk about your correspondence with the Pope.
That one is so cool.
Speaker 9 (25:38):
That was when I put off until the end because
I'd really believed that that's what's so. That's the other
thing about My Dad's List was it was always unexpected.
Like so often I would tell people, Oh, the opposite
always happens, you know, almost like it was a joke
of his, you know, like he was giving me a
puzzle to figure out. And that happened with the Pope
because I really thought it would be impossible. I thought
(26:00):
it was going to be you know, people would ask me,
what do you think is the one you might not
be able to do, and that's what I would say,
I'm worried that's going to be I'll try. And at
some point I started realizing, well, maybe the whole lesson
is in the trying, it's in the doing. You know.
Which pope was this, by the way, it was the
most recent one who passed away, Pope Francis.
Speaker 8 (26:18):
Okay, Oh, how nice.
Speaker 9 (26:20):
Yeah, And so you know, I still gave it my
best effort and I end up I ended up meeting
a man. His name is Tom Everson, and he is
an activist for safe driving and he's really fascinating to
me because he hasn't lost anybody that way. He just
really cared about what was happening in his neighborhood. That
(26:42):
his foundation was called Keep Kids Alive Drive twenty five.
And when I met him, I thought he was very
unique among the kind of work I'd been doing in
activism because he's very about what he calls it is
Living Forward. So he has a found where every year
in Pike's Peak, Colorado, the mountain that America the Beautiful
(27:06):
was written on, he has people climb to the top
of the mountain and they call it the Living Forward Race,
and he has all these families come out there, and
the families are connected and really just everyone who's lost
a loved one in a traffic fatality. They just help
each other. And I thought that was so cool, So
I really wanted to get to know this man. I'm
actually going to do it this year. I'm going to
(27:26):
climb to the top of Pike's Peak for my dad. Gosh,
so I'm in training right now, and it's funny because
it's become almost like a metaphor for my life at
the moment, which my races usually do. But anyway, I
met Tom, and Tom used to work at Boys Town.
He was he almost became a minister at one point.
So he had a connection with a priest, a Jesuit
(27:48):
priest in New York named James Martin, and he is
really interesting. He actually made a documentary with Martin Scorsese
a few years ago, and he's very active in LGBTQ
rights in the church. And my dad was a closeted
cross dresser. So I thought, well, this is the right
guy who I need to talk to. And he also
was known to have counsel with the Pope quite often
(28:10):
even though he lived here in New York. So I
just asked him for advice, and I was researching it online.
I was finding out, you know, if you're Catholic, you
can give this greeting and you can give this ending
to it. And so I had like the code down
of what I needed to say. But I think I
just needed someone almost like another Art Mills, you know,
who was like a president whisper. I needed to have
(28:30):
a Pope whisper so I could have some reassurance that
maybe he would actually look at it. And it turns
out and he was very like by the way, he
was very coy with me, like he would say in
emails back to me, like, oh, you never know, maybe
he'll respond. I just was so grateful he was responding,
because even Father Martin is very, very busy. He was
(28:52):
really active in the news and stuff right after the
Pope passed away. But anyway, I wrote out the letter
when I decided to do was I wrote to him
about phone addiction. And I feel so weird calling him
him because I actually found out he would never go
by him. The Pope always goes by his holiness. So
please forgive me whatever Catholics are listening to this, But yeah,
(29:14):
he used to teach children about the importance of putting
your phone away and going outside and playing, and he
was very concerned about the impact of using your phone
too much, using the internet too much on kids. So
you know, I basically said, I have a very real
world impact of that in my family and just thanked
him for what he was doing to help people. And
(29:35):
I said, you know, I really think phone addiction, you know,
And as we were saying before, the convenience about it,
that's the only real reason that it's still happening. And
I got a letter back only I think it was
only four or six weeks later, and it was from
one of his assistants. He has four assistants who are
in charge of responding to his letters. And they always
(29:56):
say that if you get a letter from one of
the assistants, it means it's from him because they represent
they represent his heart. That's how they say it. And
once in a while, he himself will dictate the letter
and it really is truly from but it's only in
the most urgent cases asking for prayer. But in my case,
he wanted to write back, I guess, but it wasn't
like view'd as urgent. And it's funny because my uncle
(30:18):
found out that the man who wrote me back he
had just started the job that day.
Speaker 8 (30:23):
Wow, So to me, that's priority there.
Speaker 9 (30:26):
Look at that. Yeah, to me, that says like, you know,
if someone had just started the job, they might be
a little more enthusiastic about responding to letters. I don't know,
to be it.
Speaker 8 (30:38):
Was mean, So yeah, that's amazing. So you got that
back from the Pope.
Speaker 9 (30:45):
It was a blessing for my father, Yeah, and for
my family, and that was It meant so much to me.
I have to say, I've never said this in an
interview before. I actually think that hearing that meant more
to me than if I were sitting in a courtroom
or in front of Congress and hearing some kind of
legislation that might make it more impossible for people to
(31:08):
use their phone will driving. Because at some point along
the way, I started caring more about mercy and grace
than I cared about justice, because justice is more of
like a human like that's a man made things resolutely,
whereas mercy and grace and being feeling that you've been
blessed that lasts into eternity.
Speaker 8 (31:27):
You know, that's beautiful. Absolutely. I know you felt your
dad when you were doing your events on his bucket list.
Could you tell us a little about the signs and messages,
for example, the score of fifty four at the Rose Bowl.
Oh sure, yeah, I like bring Grasshopper on the anniversary
of your dad. It's so many but yeah.
Speaker 9 (31:47):
Well, I mean, of course, today, as soon as I
logged into the computer, it was nine to fifty four
of course. Ah, Okay, lately I've been seeing two fifty
four a lot, which the way I'm internal that is
maybe it's like, you know, as above so below almost.
That's how it feels to me whenever I see it
(32:08):
that my dad saying I did the fifty four items. Also,
you know, like.
Speaker 8 (32:12):
What was the significance of fifty four he died.
Speaker 9 (32:15):
He died when he was fifty four, okay, and there
were fifty four list items, and then it just kept
showing up like when we were, as you said, when
we were at the Rose Bowl, that was one of
the list items.
Speaker 8 (32:26):
That's great if you could share that story, that's amazing.
Speaker 9 (32:28):
Yeah. Yeah, I at halftime at the Rose.
Speaker 8 (32:32):
Bowl and that was one of the things to go
to the Rose Ball, right.
Speaker 9 (32:35):
Yes, he wanted to go there. Yeah, and I was
a little I felt some trepidation about that because I
was not a big sports fan. I like playing sports.
I played basketball in high school, but I was not
My dad was a huge football nut, and so that
would have been like going to church for him, going
to that Rose Bowl. And I really felt his presence
at halftime and I was watching the sunset. You know,
(32:56):
and I said, not knowing very much, like I said
about football, although I knew enough, I knew enough to
understand how the game worked, but I didn't understand like
overtime and scoring and things like that. And I said,
can you please make University of Georgia's final score the
same age you were when you died? Like it was
a really really demanding request in prayer that I was saying, yeah,
(33:19):
And then I forgot about it. And then it went
into overtime, and it got very very exciting because I
had never happened in the whole history of the Rose Bowl,
had never gone into overtime. And then it went And also,
by the way, when I said this, Georgia was losing
when I asked, there was so a fifty four would
be a very high score for the Rose Bowl.
Speaker 8 (33:40):
That's that's amazing.
Speaker 9 (33:41):
Yeah, Oklahoma was beating them. And I had just arbitrarily
decided that Georgia was my team because I had just
been to Georgia to meet Jimmy Carter and my mom
my mom went to that school. So so anyway, as
the game was ending and it went overtime and then
it went into double overtime, I mean it was like
the most excited you imagine, like an audience watching a
(34:02):
football game, even though it was only college, Like they
were just losing their minds. And I'll never forget even
the stadium looked like a rose because everyone was in
red because both of the teams had the color red,
like a different shade of red. And then it after
it was over, we were just so happy that Georgia
had won. And also the other thing that was cool
(34:23):
about it was nobody seemed to care who won. It
was like somebody won, you know, Thank goodness, this game
is finally over. And what a cool performance that was.
And then I look up at the scoreboard and it's
fifty four four that was and I was just like,
oh my, that was really other than meeting Art Milns,
who helped me with Jimmy Carter, and then and actually,
(34:43):
like a lot a week before this happened this I
know this never made it into the book, but a
week before this happened, the day I checked off surfing
in the Pacific Ocean, we did that in California. Keanu
Reeves walked into the Vegan restaurant. Oh yeah, and I
had just point break like that's what I watched to
prepare myself for surfing, and the day I actually got
(35:06):
up on that board, he walks in and yeah he's vegan.
So I mean, you can maybe get a better chance
at meeting certain celebrities if you go vegan.
Speaker 8 (35:15):
Not all of them, but there are many.
Speaker 9 (35:17):
Yeah, yeah, there are there are so yeah. That was
that moment. And then the fifty four was just that
was at the very end of the first year of
doing the list, and I just thought, oh my gosh,
something something is happening, like there's some This is better.
Speaker 8 (35:29):
Absolutely without a doubt. Okay, we're going to pause for
a break right now. I guess today is Laura Carney,
author of My Father's List, How Living my Dad's Dreams
Set Me Free. We'll be right back.
Speaker 10 (35:41):
This is Hudson River Radio dot com. This is Hudson
River Radio dot com.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 8 (35:59):
So, well, welcome back to the Angel Quest Show. And
we were talking about signs from your dad. But you
got a little notice during the break. Would you like
to share that I did?
Speaker 9 (36:09):
I did. My husband was joking that he's my producer
and he wanted to let me know that Keanu Reeves
is not known to be vegan. Okay, I just wanted
to cry.
Speaker 8 (36:18):
Okay, that's good to know. Thank you, Steven, his name
is Steven.
Speaker 9 (36:22):
Yes, yeah, that's all right.
Speaker 8 (36:24):
So let's keep talking about the signs your dad gives.
I love them that the Grasshoppers shows up, they show
his anniversary.
Speaker 9 (36:32):
Yes, yeah, And you know, the first time it happened,
it was red. It was like this big. It was
very large, and it was maybe that's a cricket, I
don't know, but it was very big and red, and
it showed up on the screen window right behind my
couch where I write, and it was in that little
area that's like, uh, right over my right shoulder, which
(36:52):
is always where I feel like my dad is. And
I've actually learned since learning more about communication that that
is the feeling like the part of your subconscious where
they where you tend to have images appear as the
back of your right head. Or maybe that is the
more female side of the braid. I'm not sure, but yeah,
that's where I always feel like he is. And so
(37:13):
it made sense in that way, but it really was
like whoa Like I was just up all night writing
the book and it just showed up and then it
happened again on the next birthday, and then it happened again,
and it's even It happened when I was I was
on a trip with my cousin, my oldest Carney cousin
was helping me with one of the most items, and
we took this camping trip in California, which ended up
(37:36):
being quite disastrous in some ways actually, but it was fine.
We were fine. It was pretty funny in retrospect. But
I was in a hotel and I was taking these
little hikes, these little solo hikes, every day, and one
day I realized it was August eighth, and there were
crickets everywhere where I was. And then even like last
(37:56):
year or two years ago, I think it was, I
was on a trip for a family reunion and we
were in the hotel parking lot the day of August eighth,
and there was a cricket that was injured and it
was in a parking like a parking spot that was empty,
and I went over and I picked it up. And
you're gonna love this. This was really weird. So I
pick it up and a man comes over with all
white hair and he had his truck parked right there
(38:19):
and he goes, oh, cricket of the hearth oh, and
I was like, oh, yeah, I guess so. And he's like,
you know, like the Irish song, and of course my
dad was very Irish. And I looked that up later
and I thought, well, boy, you're really getting good at this.
Speaker 8 (38:33):
Now, that's amazing.
Speaker 9 (38:35):
This man just and he's in an all white pickup
truck with all white hair.
Speaker 8 (38:39):
He just showed up nowhere, without a sign, without a doubt.
Speaker 9 (38:45):
Do people tell you that a lot? Like they just
have Like it was just like when I would think
it was him visiting me when with strange men who
would come and talk to me, And that sounds eerie,
but it was in a good way. It's like they
think it was an angel. They just show up and
then they.
Speaker 8 (38:59):
Go yes, absolutely. I just had a quick question. I
thought it was grasshopper. Did I make a mistake.
Speaker 9 (39:06):
It's crazy, So it was a grasshopper, But I say,
crickets count.
Speaker 8 (39:10):
Oh absolutely, crickets count? Yeah, absolutely, YEA. What he does
is he uses his energy to go inside of a
bug to let you know that he's with you.
Speaker 9 (39:22):
I had a really crazy one happened just a week ago. Yeah,
a blackbird with a big yellow beak. But it wasn't
like a scary blackbird. It was like a very cute
little blackbird. It just showed up on that same window,
but it was on the window sill, and that's never
happened before.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
We at you.
Speaker 9 (39:39):
Yeah, and you know what, there was a little tiny
hole in the screen and it put its beak inside
and it was like opening its beak like a baby being.
Speaker 8 (39:45):
Oh my gosh, that's what doubt.
Speaker 9 (39:48):
Yeah, what do you think that means.
Speaker 8 (39:50):
That he's saying hello, Hello? He be in there trying
to say hello.
Speaker 9 (39:56):
That's amazing how they can do that. And it's been
all kinds of animals, not just the cricket. I mean,
I had I guess it was the day Oh I
wrote about how one of his list I ms was
grow watermelon, and I was so nervous about this watermelon.
I was like, I can't believe this is the thing
that scares me the most on this bucket list. You know,
I didn't think I had a green thumb, being a
(40:16):
New Yorker, you know. And the day that it got fertilized.
Finally I saw a butterfly, a monarch butterfly, just like
flying along with me as I walked down the driveway
to go to the train that day. So I think
that that's what it was.
Speaker 8 (40:34):
You know, what you have to do is just do
a list of every single sign you received. That's yeah,
I was going to say, that's it.
Speaker 9 (40:41):
I mean, and like another day it was a deer.
Another day I walked out and I'm not even kidding,
Like we live on the second floor behind a bakery,
you know, very kind of urban, and as I walked
on the steps, a deer was right there, almost like
it was about to climb the steps. As I walked,
I almost have chills just like remembering it. It was
like it was just going first stroll with me.
Speaker 8 (41:01):
So I looked down the drivers.
Speaker 9 (41:04):
Yeah, I mean he eventually ran over to another store,
but yeah, he really did go. Yes, that's happened a
lot animals.
Speaker 8 (41:11):
Would you say those are without adult signs? You know,
he's using his energy to go inside of an animal
to let you know he's with you. And the one
I see knowledge it the moyal do it.
Speaker 11 (41:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 9 (41:23):
Oh yeah, And I see hearts every day. Ever since
I started the list, I've seen a heart every single day,
and I think that's a big part of it too.
Like you said, if you acknowledge it, not just that
you're seeing it, but you're saying, oh, this means you're
talking to me. And as soon as I realized the
heart could be him, it just started happening more and more,
and it would always show up very well timed, because
(41:46):
it would be like I had just made a decision
which my dad's list required of me a lot. I
had made a decision that was not something that Laura
would normally do. You know, it was like a big
risk for me. And it was like I would see
the heart somewhere on the sidewalk or you know, on
a building anywhere, and suddenly I thought, okay, I'm still
following the path. It was like he was leaving little
(42:07):
breadcrumbs for me. And I still see it. Even during
the pandemic, when I was inside a lot, I would
still see it.
Speaker 8 (42:12):
It would say that it's always a reminder that he's
with you, and he loves the fact that you wrote
this book and you're getting his message out there. It's
just so cool.
Speaker 9 (42:22):
Yeah, well, I just won an award. I'm allowed to
say that. I won an award in the city of Greensboro,
North Carolina, it's called the one City, One Book, where
an entire city reads your book.
Speaker 8 (42:32):
Oh my good stop.
Speaker 9 (42:34):
Yeah, I'm not kidding. And even the library and the
other day referred to it as Lauraville, which my dad
would adore, like like I'm taking over a whole city,
you know. But that's very exciting. It's a lot of
book sales, it's a lot of readers I get to
connect with, and you know, it's it's like you said,
it's my dad just just getting me out there. And
(42:56):
I told my mom some things about it last night,
who she's just been incredibly supportive of this whole thing,
and she said, wow, your dad is going to change
so many lives. And it was just like, ugh, like, yes, that's.
Speaker 8 (43:09):
Exactly yea, his thinking you you are, thank you?
Speaker 9 (43:12):
Yeah, well I'm the vehicle.
Speaker 8 (43:15):
Yes, yes, It's just how long did it take for
you to go through all the items on your dad's list?
Speaker 9 (43:22):
It took me six years. I always consider December twenty seventh,
twenty twenty two as the official end, because that was
when I finished recording the music. He wanted to have
five songs recorded because he also used you wrote in
very many different mediums. He was a writer as well.
He wrote a book, he wrote screenplays, and he wrote songs,
(43:43):
so he probably meant his own songs, but I chose
to do the songs I most associated with him. And
that night I was in my closet recording my vocals
for the last songs, and that was it. Then I
had done all of it. Although I have to say
sometimes I feel like things that I took poetic license
with are now happening more for real. Like one of
(44:06):
them was talk to a TV audience, and I considered
that the time I checked off the skydiving. He said
he wanted to skydive at least once, and a local
new studio for TV said they wanted to do it
with me. So I just spoked. I spoke straight straight
into the camera, and I'm like, okay, this is talk
to a TV audience. But then of course, like after
I say, of course because this was my experience, but
(44:27):
it's not and of course at all, after I finished
the list and I finished the book and it was
about to come out, I got called to be on
the Tamar and Hall Show, and then I actually was
talking to a live TV audience. So it's like little
things like that keep happening where it's like, Oh, you
thought you were done, but you're not.
Speaker 8 (44:45):
You're not, You're not. Yeah, we're almost done. But i'd
love to hear a little bit about your own bucket list.
What do you have on there?
Speaker 9 (44:53):
Oh, I need to stop. I keep adding more items
and it's going to be so I have three hundred
items now. Oh yeah, And I really want, you know,
I really want to write a book about that too.
I don't know yet what that could look like, but
I think regardless of whether it becomes its own book
or it becomes articles that I write while i'm doing it,
(45:16):
I think it's going to be something that helps me
get my writing out into the world because it helps
me to be a better version of myself, making sure
I prioritize fun in my life. And a lot of
it is different hikes I want to take, just different
countries I want to visit. I've gotten very into visiting
churches and just old religious buildings. So one of the
(45:38):
things I really want to do is I want to
hike the Camino in the space.
Speaker 8 (45:42):
Yes, my friend did that. Yeah, it's amazing experience.
Speaker 9 (45:45):
That's really that's what it is. A lot of my
list is experiences like that that are known to be
on inspiring.
Speaker 8 (45:51):
Yes, because I.
Speaker 9 (45:53):
Think the more you have that in your life, just
you're living a better life if you're making sure to
include awed wonder mm hmm.
Speaker 8 (46:01):
Do you have any closing words of wisdom for our listeners,
anything you like to share that we didn't cover.
Speaker 9 (46:08):
Well, maybe I should say we were talking earlier about
you said you felt a lot of love surrounding me,
and I wrote down before this interview love helps you
see more clearly and take more risks and find your
true calling. And I always like to write a little
note for myself before I talk to someone because that
way you get an idea of what you're about to
talk about, you know, regardless of what they're going to
(46:29):
ask you. But now I feel like maybe my dad's
been the one writing those notes for me, you know,
because I also have lots of hearts and stars drawn
on this notebook and stars that's the one who shows
me the most lateliest stars. And I think what that
means is, you know a lot of us it's like
the week consciousness like you talk about, Like like doctor
(46:52):
Wayne Dyer taught you, a lot of us go through
life feeling like we're alone, you know. And there's a
loneliness epidemic right now, and I think it's because we've
just believed this illusion that we're separate from each other.
I felt very alone in my grief for a long
time and traumatized by what happened. But it was when
I started talking about it more and talking about my
(47:15):
actual feelings, and also I gave people an incentive or
just an idea of how they could help me. They
could help me do these list items. And not everybody
has a bucket list of someone who died, but they
do have memories. They have really wonderful memories of that person.
And if you can find a way to keep those
memories alive and incorporate their legacy into your life, you're
(47:38):
just going to live a better life because you're finally
living in a way where you're celebrating what it is
to be alive, as opposed to being afraid of dying
yourself maybe or focusing too much on the moment that
they died. And that's what I think people who are
grieving do quite a lot.
Speaker 8 (47:53):
Wow, it's beautiful, beautiful. How could our listeners get in
touch with you and get your book?
Speaker 9 (48:00):
You could go to my website. It's by Lauracarney dot com,
just like a reporter's byline. And I'm my Father's at
My Father's List on Instagram. My books available on Amazon
and bookstores everywhere.
Speaker 8 (48:14):
Beautiful, Thank you so much for joining us today. It
was so awesome.
Speaker 9 (48:19):
What all thankful?
Speaker 8 (48:20):
Adventure?
Speaker 9 (48:20):
Yeah, thank you as adventure continues. Thank you so much for.
Speaker 8 (48:24):
Having me, have you on again, love you, Thank you
so much for joining again. Laura's amazing book is My
Father's List. How Living my Dad's Dreams set me free?
Tune in again to next month's angel Quest podcast. While
Hudson River Radio is no longer streaming live, you'll be
able to find all the latest angel Quest shows, as
(48:44):
well as all archived shows by clicking on the angel
Quest podcast link on Hudson River Radio dot com. Also,
this and other angel Quest shows are offered as Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
and most of the podcast platforms out there, including the
one you're listening to now. For more information about me
or my books, you could go to my website at
(49:05):
Karenowi dot com or follow me on my Facebook or
Instagram pages at Karen Noi Author. Have an amazing day.
And always remember to focus on the beauty and love
all around you and spread the love that you are. Angel.
Blessings to you now and always Bye bye.
Speaker 11 (49:39):
From our spirit, we perceive we are one humanity, awakening, sanctity.
Speaker 7 (49:50):
Awareness, and unity.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
We are here to dance and see our connection with everything,
understanding who we are through the ways of the heart.
Speaker 4 (50:18):
Let's choose love, inner peace, living one in harmony with
the novel.
Speaker 12 (50:28):
At our core. We are the ones we've been waiting.
Speaker 5 (50:32):
Or we can do it with the truth and bring
new light into all we do. We are in love
at our best in.
Speaker 7 (50:45):
The weed the consciousness.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
As we grow consciously, we claim sovereignty.
Speaker 12 (51:02):
For our lives. Land Dan see.
Speaker 7 (51:06):
Ground it in equality.
Speaker 4 (51:12):
Let's choose love inner be, living one in harmony.
Speaker 12 (51:19):
With the knowledge.
Speaker 3 (51:22):
At our core.
Speaker 12 (51:24):
We are the ones we've been waiting before. We can
do it with our true.
Speaker 7 (51:31):
Bring new light into all we do.
Speaker 12 (51:35):
We are love at our best.
Speaker 7 (51:40):
Consciousness lis a child like the.
Speaker 12 (51:47):
Mother within us.
Speaker 5 (51:49):
All we come discof looking out for one and love
heart to heart.
Speaker 4 (52:00):
Sisters and brad, Let's choose love inner beas living one
(52:33):
in Harlem with the nove.
Speaker 3 (52:37):
At our corn.
Speaker 12 (52:39):
We are the ones we've been waiting for.
Speaker 13 (52:42):
We can do it.
Speaker 4 (52:44):
With that truth, bring new life into all we do.
Speaker 5 (52:50):
We are love at our best.
Speaker 7 (52:54):
In the way consciousness.
Speaker 12 (52:58):
We love at our first consciousness, venture to the.
Speaker 7 (53:21):
Consciousness.
Speaker 13 (53:30):
We are all one. Whatever we do to ourselves or
another affects the whole. May the divine within you guide
you as to what steps to take to be of
service to our beautiful planet.
Speaker 7 (53:55):
May peace prevail on Earth.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
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