Hi Reader,

Several people have asked me how I got into doing what I'm doing. They wonder why I’m obsessed with this afterlife stuff being so focused on death and our survival of death. I share this with you with the hope it will inspire you

If you'd prefer video, you can watch the video here. If you'd prefer to read, scroll past the video.

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🎦 Watch The Video

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⛪ The Church

The church I was raised in taught a very fundamentalist viewpoint of God. That was that we were born in original sin, deserving of eternal punishment, and can only be saved through the shedding of Jesus' blood and our acceptance of that.

That scarred me deeply because it didn't make sense to me. I couldn't worship a God who would condemn me or anyone else to eternal hell just for being who he made us. This traumatized me because I pretended to love God, knowing he knew my heart. I did all the right things. I got baptized, received the Holy Spirit, and spoke in tongues. But I knew I was just pretending. So did God.

⚖️ An Impossible Choice

As I got older, I began questioning whether or not this view of God was true. I wanted to reject it. Rejecting it felt reasonable to me. But if there were no God, my fate would be annihilation. While annihilation is preferable to eternal torment, it was not appealing either. I was faced with an impossible choice which led to decades of fear of death. The fear was so extreme I had panic attacks on a regular basis.

😌 A Better Choice- Some Relief

This was the dilemma that I lived with for several years until I discovered Christian Universalism. This is the belief that Jesus’ death was applied to everyone (as the Bible says when read properly). That made more sense to me. If Jesus’ sacrifice was applied to everyone, at least God wasn't asking for double payment. If Jesus paid the price for sin, then why should we have to pay it just because we didn’t “accept” it? If I pay your debt to a third party, it’s paid.

It still didn’t make sense that God couldn’t just forgive since he is so adamant that we forgive. So was Jesus. Jesus was all about forgiveness. He never once demanded payment. This choice was better but still didn’t sit quite right with me. Books like The Inescapable Love Of God, by Thomas Talbott, spoke to my soul. God not only wanted everyone to be saved, but God also has the power to save everyone and will. Talbott’s work was still based on penal substitutionary atonement. Jesus’ death was still required. But it was a big step in the right direction for me.

I discovered more liberal Christian authors, like Marcus Borg. The light was turning up brighter.

It still didn't make sense to me that God would condemn us. But that was a little bit better.

Later on, as I kept doing more and more studies, I discovered more liberal ways of looking at things from a Christian perspective. Meanwhile, I started looking at Buddhism, Hinduism, Jewish Kabbalah, and more.

I saw that they had so much in common; that they had more in common than they had differences. And they all aligned with the true teachings of Jesus. I became a little bit more comforted that maybe there was a greater truth out there. I accepted the afterlife was real based on reason, science, philosophy, and even studying other religions.

😂 Final Relief

I became convinced of the reality that we all survive death, and none of us is cast into eternal punishment. This conclusion, based on years of study, became the foundation for my life, and finally, I was comfortable with who I was, why I was here, and where I was going.

🛑 The End of My Life

Fast forward to June 24, 2015. That was the day that my life ended. That was the day my 15-year-old daughter suddenly passed away. It was sudden and unexpected. On June 23, my life was normal. By June 25, it would never be normal again. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I couldn't imagine living for another day, let alone the decades everyone told me that I would have to endure. ”No. You do not understand. I do not want to be here!”

❓ The Thoughts Of A Parent- Who Am I?

Someone who loses a spouse is a widow or a widower. A child who loses a parent is an orphan. Losing a child is so horrific, there is no word for a parent who has lost a child.

When a parent loses a child, you want to know where your child is, you want to know your child is okay. You want to be with your child. But you know, you have to be here. All I wanted was to be with my daughter again. I wasn't suicidal. But I had no desire to live. Every morning, I would wake up wishing this was all a dream. When reality would strike me again, I would have a visceral reaction in my gut. It was quite literally like someone had punched it. It would take my breath away.

❤️‍🩹 Do I Even Want to Heal?

At that time, I couldn't imagine the transformation that would take place in the coming eight years. I knew I would never be the person I was before her death. I didn't even want to heal. I thought the best tribute I could give to my daughter was to have people say, “He was never the same again.” And I intended to live a life of misery for however long I was going to be here.

Quickly, I realized that I couldn't continue this, and I thought I should seek counseling. So I saw a traditional grief counselor a few times. And finally, my wife and I went to a grief counseling group. It was a group meeting. That was more than seven years ago, and I remember it like it was yesterday. One of the women in the meeting had lost her daughter about ten years earlier. She was so bitter. She was so angry and so difficult to be around that I knew at that moment that who she was was not who I wanted to become.

💪🏽 Forced Into Healing

I had no choice. The option of being with my daughter wasn't available to me. My wife and my other daughter needed me to be here. Being miserable wasn't an option either because I didn't want to do that to my wife or anyone else around me. The only option remaining was to heal. To heal, I had to grow. Staying the same would not do.

📚 Back To the Books

I poured myself into learning everything I could about life, the purpose of life, where we come from, and where we go after we die. I studied philosophy. I studied metaphysical schools of thought. I looked at cutting-edge science, including quantum physics or quantum mechanics, as much as I can understand it. I looked at mediumship, I looked at near-death experiences, afterlife communications, and more. Some of the studies had started before my daughter passed away. So by the time she passed away, I had a pretty good understanding that she was going to be okay, but not as deep as I have now, seven years after her transition.

🆘 Getting Help

Relatively soon after Shayna passed, I joined an organization called Helping Parents Heal. I joined first as a member, then I was a volunteer, then I was a group leader. And finally, now I'm a board member. Helping Parents Heal and other peer-to-peer organizations can be extremely helpful. Peer-to-peer groups have helped me tremendously. I’m still in several. Many of my clients have found me in some of these groups. They became my clients when they wanted something more than a peer-to-peer group can offer. They wanted someone dedicated to their healing. They wanted a place they could talk about their grief without feeling selfish or judged. They wanted someone who has been where they are. And they wanted a tried and true methodology for moving forward quickly.

🫴🏽 The Helped Becomes The Helper

As a volunteer with Helping Parent Heal, I spoke with hundreds of parents who have lost children. In those conversations, I learned what it takes to start on the road to integrating grief. Running the meetings I ran, I met dozens of experts in grief and the afterlife. I met near-death experiencers. I've met people who have overcome all kinds of tragedies. It was a crash course in everything I needed to start Grief 2 Growth. Once I was on my way to healing, I became a certified life coach and a grief educator.

I'm also a mental fitness trainer. I teach a method of thinking called Positive Intelligence, which helps cement these concepts and keep thinking rationally and correctly when our internal voices, the saboteurs, tell us otherwise. I continue my education to acquire tools to help my clients and me.

🗺️ My Methodology

I’ve developed a methodology I call the Grief 2 Growth Blueprint™ . It incorporates elements from my journey over all these years into a cohesive roadmap that I lead my clients through.

Here are a couple of examples:

Lessons from Near Death Experiences

I've categorized these into four areas that are really helpful in finding meaning and purpose in life again.

• Learning to Live with Purpose
• Trusting Fully
• Loving Unconditionally
• Forgiving Fully

GEMS

I've also developed a four-step daily practice to build resilience. The acronym I use for this practice is GEMS

• Gratitude
• Exercise/Sleep
• Meditation/Mindfulness
• Self-Care

A Client Example

I was speaking with a client one day. Her son had passed away a few years before. I asked her how she was doing because the holidays were coming up. His birthday had just passed. She told me everything she was doing to honor him to bring her community together to make meaning out of her time. She had created new rituals for the family for Christmas. She had a plan for the day of his birthday. She was doing GEMS (before I called it GEMS). It dawned on me that she was following the blueprint I had created. That is the basis for the program I share with clients now.

🌱 Thriving, Not Surviving

Today, I'm a public speaker, I'm a podcast host, and I'm an author. I've shut down the business I own for the last two decades to transition what I now consider to be my ministry. It’s my life’s purpose to help people transition from grief to growth.

I don’t believe it’s enough to return to who you were. In fact, it’s impossible. Instead, like the $6 million man, we can build you back better, stronger, faster, more vital, joyful, and purpose-driven. Why waste the pain? We've gone through this pain, so why not use it to transform ourselves to turn ourselves into something better?

Now, over seven years after my daughter's passing, I can confidently say I have more than survived. I have thrived. The lessons I've learned and the techniques I've developed are integral to the process I take my clients through.