Sense of Soul - Surviving Domestic Abuse and Parent Alienation

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

Today on Sense of Soul Podcast we have Dr. Marni Hill Foderaro. She is an award-winning educator and celebrated author. She earned her doctorate in education and completed postdoctoral studies at Harvard after a very successful and rewarding 35-year career as a high school special education teacher, with 12 years as a university adjunct professor. Marni’s 2020 Best Books Award Winning Spiritual fiction “God Came to My Garage Sale” is prominently endorsed by the infamous James Redfield, best selling author of “The Celestine Prophecy” series of books, among other celebrities and founders of IANDS (International Association for Near Death Studies). Her newest 4 book series, TRUE DECEIT FALSE LOVE Survivor’s Acrostic Poetry Workbook on Domestic Violence, Narcissistic Abuse & Parental Alienation, is now available and Dr Marni shares the benefit of this series. Dr Marni is a lover of animals, nature, music and world travel who handles life’s challenges with love and compassion. She values honesty, integrity, equality and goodness and prays for peace on earth. She was born in the South, raised her children in the Midwest and lives in the Caribbean. In addition to her speaking engagements (including gracing the bLU Talks stage in 2021 at Columbia University in New York) and various writing endeavors on embracing Spirituality after surviving Domestic Violence, Narcissistic Abuse and Parental Alienation, Dr Marni is a contributing author to numerous anthology books, including: “The Last Breath,” “The Evolution of Echo,” “We’re All In This Together,” “The Ulti-MUTT Book for Dog Lovers” and “bLU Talks Presents” (Business, Life and the Universe.)  Dr Marni’s 4-book series entitled TRUE DECEIT FALSE LOVE is now available!  Just released earlier this week, Book 4 with free-verse poetry! Visit her website to learn more and to order her books. http://www.godcametomygaragesale.com/ Learn more about Sense of Soul at www.mysenseofsoul.com Join our Sense of Soul Patreon!! Our community of seekers and Lightworkers  get exclusive workshops, live events like SOS Sacred Circles, ad free episodes and more. You can also listen to Mande’s mini series about her two NDE’s and Shanna’s Untangled mini series. Sign up today and help support our podcast! https://www.patreon.com/senseofsoul NEW!! SENSE OF SOUL’S NETWORK OF LIGHTWORKERS! Go check out our Affliates page, adding new amazing programs each month. Check it out! https://www.mysenseofsoul.com/sense-of-soul-affiliates-page

Welcome to the Sense of Soul podcast. We are your hosts, Shanna and Mandy. Grab your coffee, open your mind, heart and soul. It's time to awaken. Today we have with us Dr. Marnie Hale-Fedaro. She is a award-winning educator and celebrated author of God Came to My Garage Sale, which won 2020's Best Books Award for Spiritual Fiction and was endorsed by the infamous James Redfield, bestselling author of The Celestian Prophecy. Dr. Marnie has contributed to many other books and has recently released a four-book series entitled True Deceit, False Love, releasing her fourth book just this past week. And we are delighted to have Dr. Marnie on with

us today. She joins us from the Caribbean. Hey, good morning. So how long have you been living there? About two and a half years. Oh my gosh. And you're loving it? Definitely. Well, I retired from being a high school teacher for 35 years. Yeah. In the Chicago suburbs. Oh, you went from real cold right now. It's a great place to write and live. And I'm on a different wavelength than I was before. So yes, I know. I can't wait to hear about it. One of our main things that we always talk about is turning pain into purpose. And it seems like that is exactly what you have done. Yes. We also talk a lot about how the divine just kind of meets you where you're at and will show up where you can understand. And it sounds like you had a

very unique case of the divine shown up at a garage sale. Yeah, most definitely. I mean, of course there was, you know, a lot more to that story and, and a lot of investigation afterwards, but it was really life-changing. And so I actually do believe that surviving traumas and making choices in your life to overcome them, you know, actually does go hand in hand with spiritual awakenings. And, you know, it surely has for me. So. If you don't mind, we always like to just kind of take people back to the beginning. Talk a little bit about where did you grow up? What did your life look like as a child? And as a teenager, I know that you are an empath like Shanna and I, if you could just

talk about that for a moment. Sure. I was born in Miami, Florida, and it wasn't too long after that our family moved to Lake Forest, Illinois. So a North Shore suburb of Chicago. And that's where I grew up. And my parents were educators. They were very liberal thinkers and kind of raised us.

My brothers and I was just kind of a free and easy attitude. We were not micromanaged. We were kind of left on our own to create our own entertainment and forge ahead in our lives kind of independently, which is just, I think, a really nice way to be. And so after high school, I started college early. For some reason, I always had this dream that I would move somewhere exotic, whether it was the Caribbean, whether it was Paris or something, but no, I stayed in Illinois, but I actually love Illinois. I love the prairies. I love the seasons. And that's where I ended up raising my family. And I was a special ed teacher for 35 years at the high school level.

12 of those years, I was an adjunct professor at Northern Illinois University. Was living the American dream, raising a family and, you know, just enjoying life. And then after 27 years of marriage, I realized that the person I was married to was not who I thought he was. And I made a tough decision to escape that situation, which I did. Went on, after I retired, I had lost everything. People that leave abusive situations or challenging domestic family situations oftentimes lose everything. I lost my home, found all my money was depleted, lost friends and family to a smear campaign, which is a very underhanded thing that happens oftentimes years and years

before you actually leave a situation. But I still had a strong feeling within me and always had a positive outlook. And I ended up having to have a garage sale to, you know, unload decades of material possessions, you know, that I had with this family at that garage sale. I did have some amazing miracles happen that were life-changing for me. So it prompted me to write, God came to My Garage Sale. And it was pretty well received. Even James Redfield endorsed it. And I did do a lot of research and reading on near-death experiences and just the spirituality and awakenings and that type of thing. Since I really was not raised that way with organized religion or spirituality. And it was just fairly new for me.

You know, just these were life-changing experiences. And after I retired, I decided I wanted to live somewhere where I could just be closer to nature to just make a change physically in my life as well. And so I moved to the Caribbean and that's where I'm at and writing books. Have you seen the Netflix series called The Maid is so good. And one of the things that I really like is that it really shows that domestic abuse doesn't always have to look like black eye, right? Like sometimes those wounds are within and you cannot see them with the physical eye and the difficulties of walking away and how many times that process is more than once. Like you end up going back at some point and having to redo it again and again. I remember

one time talking to a therapist once and she was like, well, that's abuse. And I was like, really? What do you mean? No. And she was like, yeah, it's mental abuse. And I was like, oh, like there's, there's a thing like it's not talked about as much. And I don't know if you experienced physical abuse, but I think that mental abuse is very common and not known about? Most definitely. In fact, I didn't experience the physical abuse until right at the end, three decades with this individual. Even before I got married, I realized that I was being put down and belittled. But you know, even though you can be a successful person, a kind, loving, have a degree, and you think that you can judge people pretty well. But an abuser is very, very calculated and can manipulate history.

They can manipulate your thoughts and kind of set you up with gaslighting for years and years where little by little you have cognitive dissonance and you start questioning your own worth or your own decisions or even things that you saw, like you would definitely see something and the abuser might say, no, no, no, you misinterpreted that or you did not see that. But you know you did with your own eyes. And so they little by little kind of shut you up and isolate you from friends and family and support systems. You know, people that find themselves emotionally abused oftentimes lose their jobs, lose their friends. They just kind of are kind of lost. They give up so much of the control of everyday things that normally they could handle,

but they give that up to the abuser. It's very, very calculating. And so, yes, there's most definitely emotional abuse. I mean, there's financial abuse where abusers can take your assets, forge your signature, jeopardize your credit and your financial standings. You know, there's sexual abuse. People don't like to talk about it that much, you know, but there are marital situations where rape occurs. And abuse is not gender specific. It's not just happening to women.

It's happening to men as well. And, you know, if parental alienation is involved in abuse, which is just a devastating form of domestic violence, when parental alienation is involved, you know, the kids are the ones that really suffer, whether they're young or whether they're adults. Oftentimes, even an intergenerational situation where after you realize, you know, and maybe escape from your abusive situation, you go back and you kind of analyze what was your role in this? How could you find yourself with someone who treats you so bad or is so dishonest, you know, whose values are so different than yours? You go back and you kind of look into

your own life and some of your own childhood traumas and relationships and kind of see why youies of people that have had near-death experiences or spiritual awakenings, especially if it involved some sort of trauma, you know, like abuse. Lots of times we sign up for this kind of experience, this learning growth, and that maybe the negative people in our lives, the abusers, you know,

or toxic individuals at work or whatever are part of our soul's journey to learn more about ourselves and decide what we will and won't tolerate and how we want to live our lives. And so actually, I choose to take the negatives, but make them into positives, because I really probably would not be the person I am today if I hadn't experienced just the huge emotions of deceit and betrayal and loss. And because I've experienced those things, I have a different perspective on life in general and our voices matter. So having discussions like this, conversations like this can be extremely healing, even if it just helps one person, you know, you've made a difference

in that person's life. Yeah. Shannon and I definitely believe in soul contracts, soul agreements. You know, I woke up at four 30 this morning, which I never do. And I went out into the living room and I was just looking over your bio and researching you a little bit more. And it was interesting because I know that part of your journey was also looking at, you had a lot of signs and synchronicities. So I grabbed my phone and as soon as I grabbed my phone, I don't know why, but I was pulled into this article. And it just so happened to be an article that came out this morning about a woman by the name of Rachel Bellison. And it was about how she was in this marriage that was very abusive. And there was the sexual abuse as well. What was really interesting was the statistics that I found in it. There was a study

done and they found that 94% of women that were in the prisons were at some point in their life experiences like extreme abuse. I could not believe that. And this particular woman, you know, had to escape. And I thought it was very interesting that you use that word escape as well. That's a really scary, scary word. And she ended up in self-defense, actually ended up killing him. And he was looked at for murder. So, I mean, this article was really intense, but some really good stats and statistics on abuse. And I love that Shanna brought up that abuse people think is only physical because I was shocked when I read that even like the silent treatment is considered a form of abuse. It's a topic that I feel like needs to be talked about more. And social media, I feel like people hide behind the keyboard and the monitor and the phone. And there's a lot of verbal abuse that goes on on Facebook. I think being passive aggressive is a form of abuse.

I think you see that it's being normalized through social media right now, the way people attack each other. And so people really need to know, you know, and it needs to be talked about how many different ways abuse can show up. Right. Most definitely. It's done so underhandedly, you know, so that these abusers are oftentimes in high ranking positions in their communities, you know, they're leaders of an organization or CEOs or presidents, you know, or they get involved, whether it's work or volunteer with, you know, very honorable organizations that just appear to the public, like they are the just the most caring, thoughtful individuals when really, they're kind of using that as a screen. And actually, in my four book series called True

Deceit, False Love, every single book has a picture of an abuser with a mask on and the mask is slipping. And that is a term that is used like with abusers, because they have a certain way they like to present themselves to the public, even to friends and family or neighbors. And so you could live next to someone for 20 years and think you know them. And in my case, be married to someone for 27 years and think you know them. But, you know but their biggest fear is rejection as well as being exposed for what they really are. And in my case, I didn't plan my escape. It would have been much better. I would have had a much more comfortable exit if I would have done a little bit more planning. But myself, along with so many other people,

so many other men and women that find themselves knowing they need to leave a situation, they just follow their gut instinct and get out as fast as they can. And thinking that, you know, there'll be some honesty and some justice and some fairness. But you know, when you leave an abuser, they're very much like a predator and you are the prey. So as soon as you don't buy into their narrative, they change on you completely. They really ramp up their game when you actually leave. So victims or survivors find themselves many, many years after leaving an abuser that they are still stalked and harassed, whether it is physically, emotionally, through the computer, like you said, you know, through social media,

that type of thing. Legal threats is a very big thing. You know, abusers are very obsessed with money. You know, they want money, money, money. They believe that money can control all sorts of things. And it does for a lot of people. Money is the barrier why some people don't leave an abusive situation because they don't feel they have the credentials or the money to be able to make it on their own. Abusers will use money with children, whether they're young or adult, and pay for their rents or buy know, or, or, you know, buy them flashy gifts. And lots of times it's through electronics because they want

to control, they want to track these adult children. So if they, if they buy them their cell phones and their cell phone plans and their computers and stuff like that, they can actually put tracking spyware on there so that they can kind of control the narratives of these young adults. So it's, yeah, it's a very challenging situation, but it's definitely something that once you are away and you start doing your research about how to stay safe and, you know, how to handle things and respond, don't just react, you know, and get yourself in a safe place, you know, you can go on to live a fulfilling life. But definitely spirituality can aid in that process as well. It can help

give reason and help explain things to you because it's shocking for an everyday person who's nice and kind and empathetic to find themselves in this situation where they've lost everything. And, you know, their intentions were always just good and positive. And then to even have children ripped away from, you know, a loving mom or dad, it's just devastating. When it comes to, you know, raising a family, oftentimes, you just don't have the space dad, it's just devastating. When it comes to, you know, raising a family, oftentimes you just don't have the space to be able to connect spiritually. You're so busy. You're so here and there and pulled in every direction, especially a mom.

Mom, mom, mom. I'm changing my freaking name. Call me mom. But, you know, I was in a situation once where, you know, I mean, I couldn't leave, there was absolutely zero, you know, place for a mom to go with four children. And, you know, so my alternative was to do the work in therapy by myself first to go back to find out why is it that I would be in this situation in the first place, which really came down to a lack of self-worth and love that I didn't have. Cause had I had any, I would have never been in that position in the first place to allow someone to treat me that way. And that was a huge, that was my big awakening. And with that, it was either,

well, better start, you know, being nicer. I'm out of here because I love myself now. And it did take years to do. I had to like retrain myself to be this woman that I had never saw in my own life, right? As a role model in a relationship that I had never saw demonstrated to me. So it was all like brand new, something that I had to learn, but it was possible. And I'm not saying my relationship was perfect in any way, but I am definitely not in a mentally abused relationship. And if it ever does come up, I put that shit in the quarter quick. You know, it's all part of our journey.

You know, we live and experience and grow and we take with us what serves us. And we educate ourselves like knowledge is power. Our voices matter. And so those things have an impact on the route that we take. Yeah, my parents did not show a very good, well, you know, and they both came from whatever they had, right? So unless you actually make a conscious choice to change this and to retrain, you know, your individual self so that because that's really

all you can do. You can't change the other partner, the only person you can change is you. And I had my spiritual awakening within all of that. Yeah. And so, you know, when I started to really look at myself, I've never ever thought of myself first, I've never thought about how maybe, you know, people talk to me and what I allowed and what I carried on me and what I believed in my head to be true. And when I started to work on that, I needed to create space. There was no way I could be just busy, busy, busy, unconscious living and not have done that. So I needed to have self-love and that self-care or it would have never worked. Right. But at the same time, you know, it's very important for people not to beat themselves up

for the decisions they made, you know, because you make the decisions you make at the time with your best abilities. I look at it like, wow, I had, instead of being negative and revengeful and depressed or anything like that, or angry, I am so grateful and thankful that I had 20 years before losing an adult child to parental alienation. 20 years. You know, there are a lot of parents that don't have that, you know, so you can always find someone's situation that's even, you know, more challenging than yours and to be grateful for what you do have and what you did get to experience, you know, realize that everyone has a journey, you know, but you can't beat yourself up on the decisions that you made, you know, we can only move forward. And, you know, like, if my light bulb went on when my kids

were in grade school or something, and I chose to get divorced, then I might have really had a completely different outcome here. You know, abusers, they want to keep portraying this image to the public. And, you know, they were, they will fight tooth and nail to discredit you, you know, to destroy you can't beat ourselves up. And we have to realize there were some reason there could be a higher purpose why we stayed and needed to go through all the different levels of relationships. Like for me, it was a pattern. It wasn't just one abusive relationship. Then it was another one. Then it was another one. And then it was another one. It took a lot of work to see, you know, why that was a choice I was making. Now I will say

good for you for staying in that grateful place. I always preach that I throw my hands up to God and say, you know, I'm here to learn. What can I learn? But I'm not going to lie. When I was in the storm, I was angry. I was hateful. I was revengeful. And you know what though? I was able to give myself grace for feeling that way and know that those emotions were okay too. Right. Right. Yeah. I, you know, of course you do have anger and sadness and that type of thing. I just chose never to act on that. I really worked hard to turn the story around. But yes, in your situation, like you said, you repeated the abusive relationships, and that's very, very common. I didn't do that, but most everyone I know has gone through one or

two or three or four or five relationships with narcissistic, you know, type abusers. But one thing I did realize after leaving the abuser, you know, and I'm very fortunate with, I believe, divine intervention and a series of events that, you know, I chose to live my life with a very, very close friend, and he and I are together in the Caribbean. And so turns out I took a risk there too, but I, it turns out he's a wonderful person, very honest and honesty is like one of the qualities that is so important to me because I was with someone so dishonest for so long, but I will say, even though I didn't jump into another toxic relationship, I sure evaluated some of the other friendships that I was in, you know, that were longstanding relationships and realized that some of those were not

as positive as in my mind, I thought they were, you know? And so I had to let go of some people that were very important in my life, you know, that I knew even much longer than my ex-husband. And that was very hard to do. But when you get to a point of where you realize what you will tolerate, and you know, you have certain values, you know, if someone doesn't jive with your integrity, or your values, so much so that you just can't have a relationship with them. You can't. And sometimes it's best to just walk away, even without any closure, just to realize, hey, this does not serve your highest good. And so I found I did have to let go of a

number of people. You've already lost a lot of people with a smear campaign, friends and neighbors that you might have been very close with, you know, now you don't have any kind of relationship with them and you're isolated. And then you find when you make these decisions, your friend base is even getting smaller. But you know, the quality is much more important than the quantity and takes a lot of strength to look at a situation and make these kinds of decisions. And it makes room for other people in your life to come in that you connect with more, that you resonate with more.

It sounds like for a very long time in your gut, you knew that something wasn't right. What was it that was forcing you to ignore that? And how can someone tap into that and know that this is truth, that what you're feeling is truth? Because I think for me, sometimes, you know, it's a process I had to learn. Is this ego? Is this intuition? Is this something coming from my soul? Or is this something coming from my brain? How did you learn to sit with it and live by intuition? Wow, what a great question. We ignore red flags. We don't listen to our intuition, our gut feeling a lot.

And there are a lot of reasons why people don't do that. In my case, personally, I wanted a perfect family. I wanted my 2.5 children, my white picket fence. I wanted, you know, working in a nice career, living in a beautiful home. You know, I wanted all of those things. And my desire for that outweighed me paying attention to my gut intuition and the red flags. And there were even red flags before I got married. So like back then, many, many years ago, I wanted to be married so bad. I had gone through a couple heartaches with other relationships. And I think abusers, when they find out your history, while they're love bombing you, and they're finding out about, you know, what makes you tick and what hurts you and what do you like, they find out that, you know, you have been damaged by other relationships, other situations. And, and then they come in as the perfect partner who will, you know,

take you away from all of that and just give you a beautiful life. So I bought into that just like a lot of other people do. So I think when we don't follow our gut and know something isn't right, but we just keep going along, it could be because of our own hopes and dreams. And we want to just ignore the bad. And then sometimes just like you were saying, you get busy and you are busy raising a family, volunteering, working full time, you know, getting together with your friends, doing things, you know, so it's real easy to get so busy that you don't really sit back and look at where you're at with, with your relationships. It's very easy to ignore these red flags and not act on your intuition.

And then on the flip side, I knew for many, many years something wasn't right. There was all this money manipulation. There were numerous extramarital affairs. There were just so many things I found on our family computer that were just so upsetting. And I could have even taken some of these things and been, well, I would say the truth. I wouldn't be revengeful, but if I brought some of these things to light, it might've had also another very negative outcome, but you know, I chose to ignore it, but you know, I knew something wasn't just right. And then after 27 years, just over pizza, my ex confessed to some very, very

terrible wrongdoing, but that was my light bulb moment. And before leaving any kind of toxic situation, you really need to have it all just come together one day. Like, oh my gosh, that really makes sense. Now I'm ready to act on this. So that was my turning point. So, you know, it was just by chance. I oftentimes think that if he didn't confess to some things that I might've just still been plugging along, you know, just in my bubble, you know, not paying attention. But I, I think we really do need to, for your listeners and viewers, I think people need to do a check of themselves. If something just doesn't feel right, you know, really pay attention to that. As an educator, how did you put that face on every day and walk into that school

with that smile? That had to have been so hard. I loved being a teacher and I was extremely passionate about it. And when I was there in the classroom and in the schools, it's about the kids. It's not about me. So that was easy for me to not address my situation. But I have to say, I probably wasn't a bubble for so many years because really the light bulb moment was just so defining. So I would say that it was challenging after I made that decision, but I was able to kind of compartmentalize and actually that skill of compartmentalizing has been very, very helpful. So I don't ruminate and I just don't keep on going over the negative experiences.

Because a lot of what happens with trauma survivors of any kind is that they relive the situation over and over in their minds, or they keep questioning themselves. What should I have done differently? You know, Kyle, I should have said this. I should have done this. I've learned to stop that. You almost have to kind of train yourself. That was part of my therapy. The huge part at the beginning, right? Like the baby steps of my journey was learning that cognitive therapy and to compartmentalize. Cause I absolutely, I used to call it the cluster fuck in my head. And there was no way that I could actually even see what was happening unless I kind of made that clarity and then put everything somewhere. And this is where I learned

like what was mine and what was somebody else's, what was true and what wasn't true or what wasn't my truth. Control and what you can't control. There's so many layers, so many, the healing is not, it's not just walking away. It is absolutely not just walking away. There's so many layers, whether you stay or whether you don't goes back to what your parents were like, and then your boundaries and how much you allow someone to treat you as exactly how you're treating yourself. Like seeing that, that was huge for me. Right. Everything that I was telling myself about myself was exactly what I was allowing people to treat me like. That was huge, huge for me. I mean, there's reclaiming that power.

You've got to reclaim your power. You've got to reclaim who you are at the soul level. And what I found extremely therapeutic was writing, you know, so, so I wrote my, my first spiritual fiction, God came to my garage sale. And actually in the beginning of writing that, it actually was a different story in the beginning, because I was trying to sort through not only the spiritual experiences that I had, but also just some of the devastation of having to leave this beautiful home and have this garage sale and losing everything. But I since, you know, rewrote and rewrote to make it a very positive, you know, fictional story, but I've gone on to write a four book series called True Deceit, False Love. And I have found writing to be extremely therapeutic for me. So this first book that has been out since September is 15,555 terms and phrases on domestic violence, narcissistic abuse, and parental alienation. And it is, you know, very prominently endorsed by Dr. Jennifer Harmon, who's a researcher out of Colorado with parental

alienation. Dr. Sam Backman, who is a professor who is actually a self-proclaimed narcissist, and he does a lot of informational videos and work on that. And there were a number of other people, Tracy Malone, Lisa A. Romano, Tamara Sweeney, that endorsed this book and found value in just reading these terms, even though there are so many. And it was all just born out of me writing down terms I didn't really know at first. In fact, when I started out trying to figure out what had happened to me, I didn't even know what gaslighting was, or love bombing, you know, or discard, or the harem closet, all these terms that are thrown around. And so I would just write them down and just look up later. And I found after I had 100 terms, you know,

wasn't long before I had 1000. And it just kept on going. But I have personally found writing to be very therapeutic. Now, of course, living in the Caribbean and swimming in the ocean every day and being around nature, that is very, very healing. But writing has been able to help me get my thoughts onto paper. And I've just completed books two and three. They're also very prominently endorsed by major influencers in this abuse recovery community. There's acrostic poetry, where I take 23 terms and phrases for each letter of the alphabet,

and I do an acrostic poem where you actually write the term vertically, and then you write your own kind of sentences or thoughts or words connected to that term. And then the third book is a survivor's workbook. So for people that are going through any kind of toxic relationship awareness or recovery, whether it's a you know, a very toxic boss or a co-worker that just is making your life miserable at work, or whether it's a romantic partner or even a family member who you find is, you know, has these cluster B personality disorder qualities, you know, I mean, none of these people get diagnosed. They very rarely, I shouldn't say none, but very rarely do they think anything's wrong with them. You know, the survivor workbook

is something that will be really, really helpful. So people have an avenue to work through some of their grief because understanding these terms and connecting the dots to your own experience, think through your experiences and putting them down on paper can really help validate this for you. Because you find you're by yourself a lot trying to navigate this. Not everyone goes to counseling. In fact, I didn't go to counseling. I remember early on, actually, within the first couple of years of my 27 year marriage, I knew something was so wrong. I wanted to go to counseling. And but these abusers have a way of even turning therapists against you or, you know, giving misinformation, you know, sabotage the joint effort to, it wasn't a joint effort to try to work on things. So I'm just trying to create with this true deceit, false love series, just one tool for people that need something tangible to help work through what they've gone through.

Yeah. You know, I think it's really important to say that I found that when I was looking up these terms and these labels, I was using them as ammo. A lot of times we're looking it up so that we can label the other person so that we can say, you're doing this, you're doing this. This information that you're putting out is for you, is for the listener or for someone who's in a relationship like this to use to heal yourself. Right, right. They heal, you can't control or fix or heal or correct any other person. But you can get away from it if you can. And you can work on your, you know, do they call it doing the inner work, you know, to, to try to realize what put you in this situation? You know, how do you contribute to it? And how can you value yourself

enough to get out of it? What's love bombing? I need to know that one. Yeah. Well, love bombing happens in any kind of relationship. It can be a friendship or romantic relationship. It even can be in a workplace, but it's where the abuser, okay, will find a target. Okay. Someone that they want as a victim, they want a relationship with, they see value in some sort of connection with that person. They will mirror your quality. So if you say, oh my gosh, I really like downhill skiing.

They'll say, oh my gosh, I really like downhill skiing. They'll say, oh my gosh, I really like downhill skiing. Even though they might not have ever skied before. They have no problem lying. They will like all the same things that you like. And then it'll also be your values. If you can say, I value commitments and where you're just with one person and then the abuser will say,

that is completely my value too. So they are mirroring your good qualities and their love bombing you that you feel on top of the world. You feel like you finally met your soulmate. You finally met someone who just really gets it. You, on all these different levels. But really, after a while, you know, and in my case, the light bulb was slowly going on even before I got married. But like after three years or five years, I started to realize, hey, that's not exactly what he said, you know, how he's acting or what his values are. And so that's what love bombing is. And that can happen even in a job situation where, you know, your boss can just say how great you are and wonderful. But after a month or so, they might not treat you as, you know, a respected member of the workforce team or something like that. So that's what love bombing is. And it also goes hand in hand with future faking, which is another term where the abuser will promise you,

oh, we will go do that. We will celebrate our anniversaries doing this. And even though they might have no intention of ever doing that. So there's future faking and love bombing that kind of goes hand in hand. Oh my gosh, I can't even imagine. How many did you say you put in this book? 15,555. Ooh, I wondered the fives, all those fives.

Yeah. Well, and I made the book sell for $15 and 55 cents too. So I didn't play on the numbers. Did you look into the numerology of the number five? Well, I did one time and I can't even remember it, but I probably need to look into it again. But there's definitely so many numbers. Like I'm definitely drawn to 11s, you know, 11, 11, and I'm drawn to my birth date. When I see that, you know, I get an overwhelming feeling that my late mother is with me. So yeah, I had to stop it at some point. And I use different tenses of the terms. For example, you can be a brainwasher, but you can also have been brainwashed, or you could be actively engaged in brainwashing. So there's different tenses to all the different

terms. And you know, past tense, present tense, you know, that type of thing. And so I included those. And actually, since I, this book came out in September, I've chosen not to make a running list anymore because I'm moving on to different, you know, other kinds of writing. But I have, I have learned so many different terms that I never heard before that are not included in this book. So terminology is being developed daily by people that are experiencing this. This is kind of why I had to stop at some point, you know, just, okay, I'm stopping at this number. So because I could go on and on and on. And I didn't coin any of these terms. Actually, Dr. Sam Bakken coined a lot of the terms. There are different

people out there in YouTube land, you know, that have coined some of these terms. You know, lately, I feel like I've been in a domestic abuse with our country. You know, feeling pulled in different directions, not being able to speak on certain things and having to tiptoe around things. I feel like I've been brainwashed in many ways and people aren't using their intuition when they're making certain choices. They're just picking groups and picking sides and alienation. Happening in the world right now, not getting too political, it can be very much compared to a domestic violence situation. They use some of the same terminology.

Seeing it all over social media, that's where I'm seeing most of this verbal abuse come out is when it's around our world and COVID and politics. So I'm right there with you, Shanna. So what do you do? Do you detach with love? I mean, how do you move on from the country you live in? Do we all have to go fly to the Caribbean?

Because I will. I'll tell you, it's probably a better situation here move on from the country you live in? Do we all have to go fly to the Caribbean? Because I will. I'll tell you, it's probably a better situation here than it is in a big urban city. And there are certain states that seem to be a little bit more free and open. I think what's happening is it's very slow in coming, but I think the truth is slowly coming out. Even before all this, you know, nonsense the past couple of years, we've always known that there was corruption in high places. But I think we probably didn't know to the extent. And so, you know, that is coming out. And the truth eventually prevails, just like in domestic violence situation, justice does not always prevail as we have seen, you know, sometimes it does. And a lot of times it doesn't just like in abuse situations, justice, you know, in the court systems, they don't always prevail on the

side of goodness and honesty. What you do personally, like, you know, do your part. Don't even have to tell the world that you're doing it. Because what are you telling the world for doing your part? Like do your part without feeding anything negative. People's light bulbs go on when they go on. And sometimes they need just one more piece of evidence to realize, oh my gosh, the narrative I was believing is so false, you know, but I don't think it's my job to impart my belief system or knowledge to other people. I think actions speak louder than words in many ways, just like the abusers can say all sorts of things. The actions are much different than the words that are spoken.

And so I think that when it comes to making decisions about all this divisiveness, unfortunately, a lot of destruction is happening before the truth comes out with all sorts of things. But at some point, you do have to hope for the best and let God take care of some things. You know, there are some things you just can't control. Be true to yourself, but it doesn't mean that you have to force your views on to other people. Maybe educate people rather than forcing views or beliefs or sharing experiences. You know, I think they're more valued. Or just ask people, you know, instead of just telling them your point of view when they're telling you their point of view and getting into that confrontation, inquire and say, well, why do you believe that?

Why do you have those beliefs? I have a question. What was God shopping for at your garage sale? Oh, my gosh, that's such a cool question. Well, I found in my experience that God could have been a number of people that were at the garage sale, whether they were shopping or just there, you know, so I can't really pinpoint that this one person was God, you know, or this one experience was a God experience. So it was just a combination of all of those things. The book is in 13 chapters. They're all little vignettes, different experiences where the

character experienced something at the garage sale. For example, there was this old man in a white suit. And in my mind, he looked just like my seventh and eighth grade English teacher. You know, I was inspired when I saw this man. He didn't buy anything. He came, but it was just kind of in a blur. He was in a white suit. He was an old man with white hair and drove an old white car. But I don't even remember the car leaving or I don't remember him even getting up and walking.

And so I had this one experience and I, and the character at the end of each chapter is questioning, did God come to my garage sale? So it's not just with one character, it's with all these different experiences. In fact, the question could be, you God are you in a state where you're divine in some ways I mean it's just it's all part of the questioning so yeah God could have bought some things at the garage sale or maybe not you know but God was certainly within me at the garage sale because I was clearly shown some miracles that were very hard to explain and, you know, regular, tangible, everyday life experiences. And I went on to go to IONS meetings, you know, the Near-Death Experience Group, the

International Association for Near-Death Studies. I also purchased numerous spiritual books to read about other people's experiences. And so many of them were similar with each one. It just provided some validation that, yeah, what I experienced really happened and it could be God. I was curious about that because, you know, I've had two near-death experiences in my life and I'm wondering like, how did your abuse and what you experienced at that garage sale lead you to looking at near-death experiences? Well, because I had what's called STEs, which are spiritually transformative experiences.

So you don't have to actually die, you know, flatline and come back to life to be able to experience some of the same things that happen when people do have a car accident and die or they're on an operating table and die and then are revived. So I think a lot of times these spiritual experiences, whether it's an STE or an NDE happen a lot of times after some sort of trauma and, you know, whether it's a physical accident or something like that, those are the people that are the ones that are writing the books, and they are compelled to tell their story of how they came back to life after, you know, dying and experiencing heaven or something like that. So I experienced trauma, you know, it was traumatic enough leaving a 27 year

marriage. You know, there was a lot of healing and self-awareness and dealing with toxic abuser years and years after this. But when my trauma involved losing an adult child to parental alienation. So someone that I was close with, my beautiful child for 20 years, that was just devastating. That would be devastating for any father or mother who was a normal range loving parent to just have their child ripped away from them. And that happened in some ways gradually, you know, so it was like a week of not hearing from them turned into a month. And then in my case, it's years and years and years. And that's kind of what happens. And so that trauma is like experiencing the death of a living child.

So it was so traumatic that it, I think, was part of a catalyst to awaken my heart and soul that there was something bigger going on here. So I think trauma can induce a spiritual transformative experience or a near death experience. They're very much similar. What did your faith look like before in your marriage? And how would you describe it now? Well, I would say my faith is much stronger now. I grew up atheist, no exposure to organized religion or spirituality. Still, I was exposed to being grateful and embracing humanity and the differences of people. I was always a very loving, caring person, but I just didn't have the religious or spiritual background. Found religion when I was in college, you know, was baptized Presbyterian. And it wasn't until after I got married in the Catholic church that

I decided, you know, I really wanted to have our family all be one faith. So I went through the program to become Catholic and really enjoyed that. It was a long program and it encouraged me to read the scriptures and that. But I also struggled a lot with the hypocrisy of organized religion and what supposedly it all stands for. You know, it just didn't seem to make sense that there could be bad stuff going on in the church, but yes, they're promoting love one another and be honest. So it wasn't really until after leaving my abusive marriage and having these miracles happen

that I really embraced spirituality and became more aware, which I think increased my faith. I do not attend organized religion services. I don't feel I need to. I really personally believe that I can connect with God or spirit or the divine wherever I am. That's kind of how it is evolved over time. Where's your forgiveness at and how hard was that? Forgiveness, you know, it's, it can have actually many different definitions to forgiveness and people talk about forgiveness a lot. Like, you know, you have to forgive and, or I will forgive,

but I won't forget that type of thing. I think part of the forgiveness comes with forgiving yourself. So you need to cut yourself some slack. I think that's where the biggest forgiveness needs to be. I think it's very helpful to realize that we all have our own journey. Even the abusers and the people doing malevolent things have their own journey. And it's not that they can't ever change if they wanted to, and many of them don't want to. But we can only control ourselves. So when it comes to forgiveness, I think that's something to look within yourself is to forgive yourself. Because then when you forgive yourself, then you realize that you're not responsible for how other people conduct themselves. And it separates you from that and helps you, you know, just live a more positive life with gratitude. Yeah. Thank you. That's a great reminder that I love that. The forgiveness starts with yourself. That's what I believe. Yeah. You know, you can resent someone, but really you're just poisoning yourself.

Right. In fact, someone very close to me told me that resentment, they're really expectations that you had of others that are not fulfilled. Expectations equal future resentments. Can you tell everybody where they can find your amazing series in your new books? Oh, thanks. I am not on social media. Most everything as far as my books and my author bio and the events that I'm involved in speaking, book signings, whatever, that's all under my website, which is www.godcamedomygaragesale.com. So even the

True Deceit False Love series is part of that. And the books can be purchased at Amazon. They can be purchased at barnesandnoble.com. And then my publisher is Balboa Press, which is a division of Hay House Publishing. So you can go to that website as well and find my books there. Well, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure. I think this is an important topic to talk about. Yeah. Thank you for coming on Sense of Soul and sharing how you turned your pain into purpose. So thank you for putting yourself out there and your story out there for the world. Well, thank you so much for having me on Sense of Soul and just for what you are both doing. You are really providing an amazing platform to have these very challenging and sometimes uncomfortable discussions. Yeah. And we need to have these very challenging and sometimes uncomfortable discussions.

Yeah. And we need to have those. So I really commend both of you for what you are doing to make a difference in this world. And now it's time for break that shit down. I would say, you know, we all have challenges in our lives, all of us. Just in this discussion, I'm sure it is triggering or bringing awareness of something that you have either experienced or someone else has. honesty, compassion, knowledge, you know, goodness, and love, then the outcome will be more positive for you. So just realize that there is hope, don't be so hard on yourself for enduring what you did, that there could be a whole nother spiritual purpose to why you

endured and experienced what you did. So stay positive, stay true to your own values and follow your gut intuition. Awesome. Again, very grateful for having you on. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much. Thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week. If you like what you hear don't forget to rate, like, and subscribe. Thank you. We rise to lift you up. Thanks for listening.