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Against All Odds Podcast, The Less than 1% Chance with Maria Aponte
Maria highlights stories of people that have been the "less than 1% chance" and have come out of their situations thriving and seeing life as happening FOR them and not TO them! Inspiring and empowering stories that will show you that against all odds you can make it through anything!
Against All Odds Podcast, The Less than 1% Chance with Maria Aponte
Healing Hearts and Finding Hope: Tara Wild’s Story
When Tara Wild's world was turned upside down in September 2020, her life took a tumultuous yet transformative journey. Join us for an emotionally compelling episode of "Against All Odds: The Less Than 1% Chance," where Tara—a bestselling author, speaker, and coach—opens up about the darkest period of her life. Discover the harrowing details of when her husband, Darcy, tested positive for COVID-19 and then vanished, stirring a desperate search and an overwhelming tide of emotions. From the initial shock to the agonizing uncertainty, Tara's story is a heartfelt exploration of resilience, love, and the human spirit.
Through a tapestry of spiritual connections and unwavering faith, Tara navigates the murky waters of grief and acceptance. This episode takes you through her spiritual journey, where moments of peaceful clarity provided solace amidst chaos. Tara shares how prayer, meditation, and intuition became her anchors, enabling her to move from heartbreak to healing. It's an inspiring testament to the transformative power of faith and inner strength, even when faced with unimaginable loss.
Finally, we delve into how Tara has found purpose and meaning in her journey through storytelling and community. She emphasizes the therapeutic power of sharing personal stories and the importance of embracing love over fear. Tara's narrative underscores the strength in vulnerability and the value of authentic connections. Through personal anecdotes and practical advice, this episode serves as a beacon of hope and a guide for anyone navigating their own trials. Join us as we uncover how Tara not only survived but thrived against all odds, finding purpose through her pain and inspiring others to do the same.
Find Tara:
Instagram: @theluminoushearthealing
Facebook: Tara Wild
Website: www.tarawild.ca
Book: Snapshots of My Broken Heart: How We Find Peace and Connection When We Choose To View Loss Through the Lens of Love
Follow Maria on Facebook HERE
Follow Maria on Instagram HERE
Follow Maria on YouTube HERE
Welcome back to the Against All Odds the Less Than 1% Chance podcast with your host, Maria Aponte, where we will hear stories of incredible people thriving against all odds, and my hope is that we can all see how life is always happening for us, even when we are the Less Than 1% Chance.
Speaker 2:It's all okay. Welcome back to, Against All Odds, the Less Than 1% Chance podcast with your host, Maria Aponte. I'm so excited for you guys to be back. I have an amazing individual. I already and it's all like I just met her, but I feel the energy, and when you can feel that vibrational energy just elevate, you know that you are in for something amazing. So let's meet Tara Wild. She is a bestselling author, speaker, coach and creator of the Luminous Heart Healing Collective. Her candid writing and storytelling leads people on a path to harmony and connection as she guides them towards understanding the wisdom and the gifts that come from adversity and the universal experience of loss. Listen, my heart is already so ready for this, just by saying that quick sentence, because I feel like people come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime, and we are going to get so many good nuggets today. So welcome, Tara, I am so excited to have you on.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me, maria. I'm looking forward to speaking with you. Yeah, share your thoughts with your audience today.
Speaker 2:I love it so much. Give us a little bit of background. What is your against all odds story, or what do you feel we need to hear from your story and guide us as to how you got to where you are today?
Speaker 3:Okay, that's a loaded question, isn't it?
Speaker 2:I know Mine is too, so I understand.
Speaker 3:It's like where to start.
Speaker 3:However, I guess I would start with the most recent story of my life, that's been informing the way that I move through the world and the way that I'm parenting my children and what I'm mostly talking about on podcasts right now because of the publication of my recent book. It is sort of a memoir, a book for helping people find tools to deal with adversity and, specifically, with the universal experience of loss, which I don't believe just pertains to the death of a loved one or a family member. I've been on quite a journey with it since 2020. In September 2020, after the world had been on a global lockdown for quite a while my husband and I were living in Vancouver, canada, with our two kids we had our son was about nine at the time and our daughter was five and my husband was a filmmaker working in the film industry there, and one of his projects was the first one to begin once the global lockdown had opened up.
Speaker 3:Now, it wasn't really maybe necessarily very easy to make a film at that time and, of course, as soon as they started working with this big cast and crew, everybody was still unclear about this virus and what was happening and how to deal with it, and naturally, there was a little outbreak on the set. Yeah, and my husband's name was Darcy and he and I were not worried at all about the virus and yeah or anything. But he did get. He did test positive and they had to go on a little hiatus. In those days where we lived they would have the person who was infected, even though he had no symptoms, quarantine in a different space in the house. So we had been in quarantine for about a week and he was upstairs in the house and the kids and I were downstairs and he was feeling pretty bad about us all landing back in quarantine after we finally were about to get out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was like working on some projects and everything got shut down. Anyways, we were. He had a little bit of cabin fever, right. I invited him to take a walk one day or just get out of the house. It had been about a week and he was trying to figure out how to get the show back on the road and it was all his responsibility, which was fine. He was not a person who got stressed about work. He was a very seasoned, seasoned film producer.
Speaker 3:But what ended up happening was I was encouraging him to get out, just to get some fresh air, and, like, really think about, is this a project that's worth doing? We work for himself. Do you need the money? Probably not, maybe.
Speaker 3:We were just having these beautiful conversations from our upstairs, downstairs kind of situations and I said why don't you just go out and catch your breath tomorrow? You're not going to infect anyone with the deadly virus. Just go, go, just get out. So he felt really reluctant about it because he felt bad about us being trapped in the house and whatever. But I was like it's fine, go take your time, whatever. So what ended up happening was he left the house that morning with I don't think he even had a coat, he was just wearing his like clothes. He didn't really have a destination. He thought he might pop into his office and make sure everything was okay there. He was gonna go get gas in the car, but he didn't go out with much of a plan and he never came back wow so that was the most unthinkable thing that could ever possibly happen and it was a perfect storm.
Speaker 3:So all morning him and I were texting each other, but what we were doing is we were texting each other about this beautiful conversation we've been having the night before about what's worth doing is the stress of a job like we're like, yeah, having really good conversations, like a lot of people did during the pandemic time when they had time together. A lot of people were working through stuff and him and I were figuring out the trajectory of what was next for us. So we were talking about that and what we weren't talking about was where he was and I had just made him a cup of coffee and sent him off, and we texted and texted and about 1015 that morning I went into a meeting and was feeling really good and peaceful and then I started calling again in the afternoon or texting and I wasn't getting a response, which is not uncommon. When someone's a filmmaker, he can be in telephone meetings for hours and hours from wherever he is. And so it didn't occur to me until about four o'clock, when I intellectually had no reason to be upset or worried, but I felt an incomplete full body experience that something was wrong. It was like it's so hard to explain, but I'll continue to try. I could feel in every cell of my body that something wasn't right and I called around like you would. I called his assistant and I said when's the last time you heard from Darcy today? He said oh not, since about nine 30 this morning. So that felt not okay and I called the hospitals and there was no nothing. And I called the hotel where some of his crew and cast were also quarantining, because I thought he might have just gone and done some work there.
Speaker 3:But he didn't. And he is a person who never didn't want to come home. He was a person who didn't need a lot of time to himself. He didn't like to go out and hang out with friends after work. He got to see his friends at work and then he just really wanted to come home and be with our family. He didn't like to go out and hang out with friends after work. He got to see his friends at work and then he just really wanted to come home and be with our family. He really lived for us. So it was a real indicator that something was off when he didn't come home, and all through the night. And the weather here in British Columbia we live in a temperate rainforest, so it's really really, really crazy rains at that time of year, and so it was all incredibly dramatic.
Speaker 3:And I sat on the couch all night just waiting to see what would happen and, under the circumstances, what I didn't know at the time was that he had taken a drive up this beautiful highway that runs up along the coast of the Pacific Ocean, through the Howe Sound, to an area nearby called Squamish, which is near Whistler. A lot of people, a lot of your listeners, will know of Whistler. It's a very world ski resort, very close to our home, 45 minutes from our home, and it took them nine days to find his car, to begin an actual search, yeah, so, although of course, I alerted the police right away in that afternoon, where I had that full body experience and a missing persons report was done, they can't really start looking until they know where he was last seen. He was last seen in my kitchen, so she was air kissing me across the kitchen, so they had to find something more concrete before they could start an actual, an actual search. So in retrospect, maria in, intuitively, that's a drive that I know he would take. It's relaxing. He wasn't going to come in contact with anybody. He was feeling responsible at this. At the time, we didn't really understand the level of harm with this virus. We we weren't worried, but he just didn't want to get in anyone's face, and so he would have taken that drive with that beautiful cup of coffee.
Speaker 3:I made him listen to some music and I'm pretty sure that he would have had to at some point, go to the bathroom, and that's honestly what I think happened, because where his car was found was up this logging road, which is off the main road and it's quite remote, which seems ominous to somebody else, but to me it's not, because that's where he had spent his early career filming car commercials and he knew every back road up there, and so if he was looking for a private place to get away to you to go to the bathroom and maybe even just get some fresh air and a walk, that's where he would have gone. Yeah, so nine days after the original sort of exit from the house, his car was found and for some reason I don't know how a 2016 luxury Lexus didn't have a GPS, but it didn't, and I don't know how it took three days or four days to get the records from the phone, how they could see that the last time I pinged was one of those final messages to me around 1015 that morning, and it took a long time to get credit card records to which only showed us that he had been to the gas station, as we anticipated. That was part of the plan, and so there I was left to really try to figure out what was going to happen moving forward in my life. When the search started, finally, there was people from all over people from our film community in Vancouver, and then, of course, the trained volunteers that work through search and rescue operations, and it's very formulaic they start in one spot and they work their way out to a certain point. But the forests in British Columbia are dense and ferocious and the rain had been torrential and there's a really, really crazy rushing river, the maumquim river, that runs through that area, and he wasn't geared for going for a hike at all and it was just the most unthinkable thing. The most unthinkable thing.
Speaker 3:This is a guy who came home to his family every single day, lived for us, very happy, human and and, of course, during the time during that nine days before they found the car. You're taking calls from the police on constantly and you have to entertain every single potential scenario because they have to ask all of these questions. Yeah, and that was a real challenge, right? Because all of a sudden you're in this place where you think you know someone and then you've got to answer all of these questions.
Speaker 3:Was he addicted to drugs or alcohol? The answer was no. Was he like depressed, or did he have mental health issues? The answer was no. Was he stressed a little? But he wasn't a, a person, he was a problem solver. It wasn't he never. He wasn't enjoying life in his little quarantine, of course, but it that that wasn't stressful to that level. And or, or does he have a family, like a secret family, living in central america somewhere, and he's just fled the board, crossing the border, right? So you have to entertain all of these things, and so it was a really excruciating and extraordinary experience to sit there and wonder what was going on and and why was this happening? Yeah, and that is the story that I tell in my new book, and that is the sort of story that usually sets off the talking points when I meet with people like you, who are trying to share cool stuff with their audience.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, that's wow. First of all, my heart is with you and I'm sending you so much love and your kids. That is so much to take in. And you're right, like you're, like I know this person I like and then come up with like all of these scenarios Did I really know this person? And then you start questioning all of that. Years of marriage and together.
Speaker 2:It's got to be so excruciatingly hard for your brain and your heart to be able to understand what was happening yes so when your husband disappeared and the search brought you no answers, and how did you manage to shift out of like that initial shock and start to to move forward? And because now it's been almost four years, yeah, wow, yeah that's a great question.
Speaker 3:There's multiple sort of pieces that contributed to my ability to take the next steps to move back into life. I was basically frozen on the couch for nine days and then, when the search started, there was hope. But to back track a little for you, I'll share a story that was very extraordinary and one of the most key pieces of how I've moved forward in my life through this whole experience since, which occurred on my back patio on the third day that he was gone. So at this point my cousin and my sister-in-law had come right away and they were distracting the kids because I didn't have anything to tell the kids. So I was taking calls and I was taking calls in closets and people were holding healing sessions for me on Zoom and I was hiding places. I didn't have anything to tell my kids, so they had distractions with their aunties, which was lovely.
Speaker 3:And on the third morning I woke up and I was just desperate for answers. Right, this is not a person who has ever not come home. This was not a guy who wanted to go out for beers after work with his friends. He just wanted to be with his kids. So I sat on my back patio in the sun and I was just bracing myself for the day, knowing the onslaught of text messages and all the calls I was going to have to take, and the sun was shining and I wanted this answer so badly what, where are you? What's happening? And at the time, Maria, I didn't understand my connection to the oneness. I was what I would call a person who believed in a higher power, but I didn't feel like particularly spiritual in my life yet. I was curious, but I didn't realize that we're all conscious channels. We all have the ability to receive information if we're open to it. And so I sat on my back deck that day and I thought I don't know what to do.
Speaker 3:So I'm going to meditate and I don't know how to meditate but I'm going to sit still and I'm going to close my eyes and I'm going to feel the sun on my skin and I'm going to just sit and intentionally ask what is happening. And obviously it was such an intense desire that some information came through for me very, very quickly, and I sat in that chair and I had a picture. I feel like it was a gift given to me and I had a picture. I feel like it was a gift given to me and it was almost like you're watching a movie, a close-up scene, where I could see Darcy walking, walking, walking, and he's walking into the frame and I can see him and he's fine. He's just looking around. Maybe his mind is elsewhere, but he's moving into the picture and there's a tree there as well, and when he gets the tree in my vision he just drops out of the picture and that is probably the most horrifying vision that you could ever wish for.
Speaker 3:But what happened in my body is that a flood of peacefulness came over me? Yeah, because I think what was happening is I was being shown the truth that something had happened, that he was, he was not with us anymore, that he had exited or there was an accident and and you know and I just the only way I can describe it is that no matter how hard the truth is, no matter how awful the picture it will always feel. Matter how hard the truth is, no matter how awful the picture, it will always feel really good because the truth is truly. They say. The truth will set you free. In this case, I literally had an experience. It only lasted about three minutes. I feel like I felt what is the God of my understanding? Right? Yeah, I all of a sudden sensed a higher power and an ability to receive a message that was meant for me because it was the truth and I was very intentional in calling it in, even though I was not a great meditator.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I truly believe that and I've said this before. I feel like when we pray, we pray to God, higher power, whatever right, we pray to whatever spiritual belief you have. Yeah, when we stop and listen to our intuition, our gut, our solar plexus, whatever you want to call it, it's that spiritual being speaking back to us. So, in my belief, it's God speaking back to me and the fact that you can sit there and allow yourself to listen or you can let the busyness of the day continue, to let you ignore that intuition. You have that choice and I feel like what felt to me in that moment that you're stating this to me is you prayed, right, you prayed that, that, that intuition to guide you in his response or their response yeah, it's so beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time, but I feel like it does bring a sense of peace to just knowing that the person that I love didn't just up and leave and off to his other life or whatever.
Speaker 2:because I would imagine all those scenarios were playing in your head with all during that time and with the conversations with the police, and I could just imagine it feels like a movie right, like all those things are coming in, and then you took a moment to just say I need to just listen.
Speaker 3:How beautiful. Yeah, and that was definitely like back to our previous conversation about this. That was definitely one of the ways that I was able to like reconcile what was happening and to go back into my heart and be like I do know him, yeah, and I know where he was and, of course, at this time, his car has not even been found so for me to visualize him in the trees and everything that came from somewhere else.
Speaker 3:I had no idea that's where he was. So that was horrifying and also incredibly helpful, because when the search did then begin and it was fruitless, it could have been really easy to just cling to hope, hope, hope, hope. But I remember, at a certain point, feeling like hope is exhausting and hope puts the outcome in someone else's hands. And so, after I was on the couch for all of that time and the search was starting to come to a close, I sat and I really realized. With that vision in mind, I did truly believe that he was gone, because he was a very capable, very fit human who could have got himself to safety if it was possible. Yeah, and I realized in that moment, while I was sitting there pondering I'm relying on a search and rescue team, I'm relying on police, I'm relying on passersby to find a watch, a wallet, a set of keys, a phone. I'm relying on all of these things outside of me. What if those things never come to fruition? That's a very, very possible scenario. So how does that find me? That finds me sitting as a hostage for the rest of my life, at the mercy of other people's ability to find a needle in a haystack, basically. And so in that moment I really realized that I needed to come to a level of acceptance and that meditation that day, that vision I had, that experience of the God of my understanding, was really helpful for me to land into acceptance. And I can't tell anyone how to do that Because it's like a deep gift gift. But I think open hearts and intentional thought can really, like you say, bring in a lot of information if we're willing to to hear it. And so at that point I felt that it was time to really draw some information on probability. So, thankfully, one of my cousins was part of the search party and he's a first responder and he was able to give me, like you know, a probability factor of if Darcy was alive out there somehow and he just hadn't been found like what would the state of his physical body be in at this point, and just weigh the odds a little bit.
Speaker 3:And then I had a lot of really good support as I prepared to share the news with my kids. Lot of really good support as I prepared to share the news with my kids. I knew that was the first thing I was going to have to do to really be able to start moving forward and head into this sort of trajectory of grief that was really, really new to us. I knew there was going to be a lot of learning coming up, but definitely that vision and then my understanding of not wanting to be a hostage and really landing into acceptance instead of just like the white knuckling of hope yeah, yeah, yeah. The alternative was is always waiting for an outcome that's coming from somewhere else.
Speaker 3:And this really started me on a journey of recognizing that my safety comes from within me and the outcomes that happen in my life come from the choices that I make. And in this case, it's the classic choice, right, am I going to stay in fear or am I going to move into love? And that's where I landed. And I think there's a part of me that is innately an optimist. But there is also a part of me that in that moment, when I had the meditation and I saw him basically fall to his death, I understood that this was happening for me, not to me, and that wasn't just an idea that I plucked out of nowhere. It's just that every other thing that was happening in my life, so every other person that was near me in my life at that time was exactly what I needed. So it was like I had everything I needed, except for Darcy, and I'll give you an example.
Speaker 3:At that time, two weeks goes by and a lot of like the bills and things in our family were in his name and a lot of our investments as a filmmaking family.
Speaker 3:We had investments and all of that was in his name. It's no coincidence to me that our investment banker lived literally across the street which was a coincidence and he had all sorts of ability to help me manage that. Technically I wasn't really allowed to manage, because when a body's not found, somebody's not legally dead. So I had that in place. I had that support system that was built because of our relationship with him over the years. In the event of having to tell my kids that their dad had disappeared and likely died, I somehow had access to one of the world's leading trauma psychologists, dr Gabor Mate, who I was connected to through my brother who had made a film with him, and he literally texts me from Europe, helping me determine what kind of verbiage to use when I delivered this news to my kids and what the key pieces were so that the trauma of the experience wouldn't would be minimized.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've had to experience that conversation with my kids before and it's definitely there's no manual on how to tell this particular kid this particular way so that it minimizes their reaction, their trauma, their pain that they go through, how to manage that pain. There's no manual to that and I have three different kids and they all reacted differently and they all had their own way of dealing and responding to the news. It was like how beautiful that you had these gifts right, that God, the universe, whatever, had these people in your life for a reason.
Speaker 3:Yeah, another person that came into my life at that time was a complete stranger and her name is Sophie and she is an EFT tapping practitioner. You might be familiar with EFT emotional freedom techniques, where we use talk therapy and tapping on acupressure points. I'm a practitioner in this and I was just starting my practitioner certificate at the time, so I'm a firm believer in it. Now Sophie came out of the blue and she's a very gifted mentor in that and she tapped with me eight, 12, 15 times a day over the telephone to help me process and continue to process instead of allowing that traumatic energy to be stuck within me. So you know that was super helpful. But, like, everywhere I was looking, I had exactly what I needed. The only thing I didn't have with Darcy Right. And so when you see what's happening here, everything that I need is being provided to me, including a vision right, which was was absolutely validated by another very gifted psychic medium three months later who I got connected with out of the blue, who showed me the exact same story with far more detail. But, like when all of those things are happening, you're like there's a reason that this is happening, and I know that can be really hard to hear and trust me.
Speaker 3:I went up and down with that. It was like maybe this is just random stuff that happens in the world and then I'd go maybe it's not, maybe it's meant for me and it took me a long time to come to realize. But the way that my life has unfolded since, the way that it's changed, the way that the way I parent my kids has changed I would never have wished for this experience for any of us. But do I wish that I was the person that I am now? Do I love my life the way I live it now? Yes, yeah.
Speaker 3:And if that situation hadn't happened, I like to think that I was growing and expanding, but under the circumstances I got dropped, drop, kicked into a spiritual awakening and expansion and I'm not going to not feel deep gratitude for that because acceptance, right, that got me up and moving.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I resonate so much with that and, yeah, I agree 100%. I think that it's unfortunate circumstances that have allowed us to grow and and do I feel my kids to hurt? No, obviously not. We don't want that. However, do I think that they've grown because of that pain? Absolutely yes, and so I don't find, I don't see it as there's a reason for it. Yeah, that saying of everything happens for a reason. I used to say that all the time, and there's an author that I've followed for many, many years now and she said something one time and I was just like yeah, that makes much more sense. There shouldn't be a reason that anything happens like that. Anything tragic happens. However, we can find purpose and meaning behind those things that happen, and then that changes everything.
Speaker 3:Indeed, and I agree with that a hundred percent. It's that sort of just brings me to what I always want people to take away from our conversations that I've been having, or from for anybody who reads my book. What I always want them to know is that we have a choice in any situation, even the most adverse situation, the most unthinkable thing, to find the meaning in it. And it's not always easy right away. And so I would say, with the deepest empathy for people who are going through this, where it's fresh, this wasn't. I didn't find this meaning instantly.
Speaker 3:I'm almost four years into this thing and I'm still rewriting the narrative of grief for me, but what I know for sure is that we have a choice at any time, and it's always love or fear, right, yeah, just like it was. Am I going to be a hostage or am I going to take control and find a way to move on, find a way to take baby steps to move forward, just getting my kids back and back to school and like little life things? And then I have made the choice and it sounds like you have as well to find a way to make it meaningful, not just for ourselves but for other people. And when my and not everybody feels like they want to share their story, and that's okay. Not everybody feels like they want to share their story, and that's okay. I'm a person who, in times of adversity, have always found that sharing my story brought me connection with other people even though no two stories are the same and connection to me has always been the fastest pathway to peace. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And, for example, we struggled with fertility for a long time. So my husband and I made a short movie of our IVF journey to help other people, and our son was born with a brain injury. So we live with a child who has CP and I tend to like, want to speak on panels with families around that and share our story. That is just the way that I am. That's my nature. So in.
Speaker 2:I think we're gonna be like best friends.
Speaker 3:Yay, because I feel the same way. Yeah, and in this situation I felt obviously called right. From very early on I was like, okay, there's something here and I need to just get into the experience of healing to begin with. But at some point I know that there's gonna be a way for me to find some meaning in it and I. It was solidified for me about two weeks after my kids had received the news for me. We were having a bedtime cry. It was that time of night where you that all the feels come and my son Miller was hugging me and his dad was. Dad, wasn't just his dad, his dad was his best friend, his dad was his champion. His dad was the one who was like meh, brain injury, that's not gonna stop you from anything kid.
Speaker 3:He was just like, lived for that kid right. And so my son was hugging me and he was crying and he said to me mom, is this the worst thing that's ever going to happen to us? And I said that's a hard question, right, because I don't want to lie to my kids. And I said I honestly can't imagine anything harder than this, but I also don't ever know what's going to happen in life. Uncertainty is a massive part of our lives. Going to happen in life. Uncertainty is a massive part of our lives. That's up to us to find our own sense of peace so that we can handle things when they come our way. And he said when we get through this healing, we're going to help so many people. And I was like, yes, let's try, right.
Speaker 3:And for me, I'm just, I'm a writer and a speaker and I have always, just naturally, loved writing and I use journaling to detangle a lot of my thoughts, and that was a big part of this experience. And so when I thought about how to find meaning, I was like writing is a big thing for me, so if I'm detangling it and journaling it, I wonder if there's value in this for anyone else. And I remember being out and it was Christmas 2020. And I had a friend who was going through a health diagnosis and a friend going through a divorce and the world was going through this massive change and I was like, wait a second. One day things are one way and the next they're another. One day my husband was there, the next day he wasn't. One day all of us could go to the movies together or go out and grab a drink, and the next day we couldn't. One day someone doesn't have breast cancer, the next day they do.
Speaker 3:And I was like, wait a second. I know nobody feels equipped to help each other with loss because we think, oh, my husband didn't walk into the woods and die, no, but you do no loss. And I was like this is crazy. We are connected, we are innately capable of helping each other here in one way or the other.
Speaker 3:We are all experiencing loss, and that just prompted me to start sharing our story in real time in a blog, and I started to become connected with people and created a small community called the Luminous Heart Healing Collective, where we talk about loss of all kinds and we talk about this idea of closure. Oh, how's Tara going to move on without any closure. A body's never found, nobody knows why cancer chooses their body. Nobody knows like what conversation went wrong that led their relationship off the rails, that to a point where the differences were irreconcilable. We can stay connected and focus on the things that are the same about our stories and really help each other that way, and so that's essentially like why I decided to then take it and write a book that incorporates some of the blog posts that are created for some of the ideas that I present in the story, but it also tells the story of losing Darcy and the.
Speaker 3:You know everything that came as a result of that for us and you know I said to my kids when this happened you know I never would have ever thought that this would happen in our lives and I would never wish it on anyone and I don't wish that you didn't have more time with your dad.
Speaker 3:But most kids never have a dad like that for one day of their lives yeah and so we're gonna focus on that because, like, he's here and he's in us yeah, he left his mark oh yeah, our, our lives are enriched for the having had the experience of him, and if we can stay in that kind of place most of the time, then our choice that we're making in all situations is over fear, yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love that so much. I connect on so many levels with your story. I have this conversation with all of the people that I speak to, these crazy odds. I was a twin in my mom's belly. My mom had a miscarriage in the 80s and I stayed. The survival rate of that at that time was very, very low and so I'm the surviving twin. So right in there, from in utero, like my life had greater purpose and I, looking back, I feel like all the things that I went through, I've had cancer four times. I went through infertility. I've always spoken about it.
Speaker 2:I my ex-boyfriend that was at the time we weren't together but he was like my best friend and he was like that person that I was going to grow old with. So even if we weren't together at the time because of distance, we were going to grow old together. So that time didn't matter that we weren't together. And he was in my kid's life for six years and that was their stepdad and that's who they thought that we're going to have him for the rest of forever. And at age 35, he dies of a massive heart attack. And it's that conversation Like how do you tell your kids that this person that they love, that they just spoke to, they just had a FaceTime, they just gave him all the updates of school and how we're doing and all of the things, and you have to tell them that this person is no longer here, this person's no longer here, and when you yourself are experiencing this like devastating loss because the blueprint that you had in your brain for what you were going to grow old with is no longer, and so I've been very open about my experience, but I just I felt, like the people that I, that that have listened to my story, the way that I feel like people can connect to stories and see it just like you said, like your friend, that that was had the health scare and all of this was connected somehow in loss. The way that I feel like people could see their against all odds moment is if I'm talking to you and I'm like, oh, my god, yeah, I totally connect with that, and it's me connecting to somebody else's story which I don't know, maybe it's a psychological thing, but if I can, if I feel like if I can connect to your story and it doesn't have a lot of the same fact, a lot of the same main characteristics, except for that underlying characteristic that we don't physically see, which is loss in this case. If I can connect to your story, then that means that whoever's listening could connect to your story and see how life can happen for them and not to them, and see that they've already survived their worst day and see that they have that strength within them, just like you do and just like I do.
Speaker 2:And I had this vision or this guidance in a quantum healing session that I had with my Reiki practitioner, reiki master, and we had this moment and I was in a meditative state and my higher self told me that I was going to have a podcast and it was going to be called Against All Odds and not even.
Speaker 2:Even. It was like 11 months after I created this podcast and it I'm in the second season and I'm like speaking to these amazing individuals and I'm like, oh my God, I understand, like how, maybe me not knowing anything about podcasting me, not knowing anything about editing me, not knowing any, it doesn't matter, I started messy and I've refined things and people can connect to these stories and there's purpose behind it and the fact that people can see how life happened for them and not to them. That's where the purpose behind this is, because maybe someone didn't experience the same kind of loss you did, but losses all the time losses with a career, losses with. There's so much ways that we experience loss and if we can learn how to overcome these things in a way that has helped, that will help us grow, how beautiful is that, no matter what kind of loss you're experiencing totally, you and I definitely speak the same language.
Speaker 2:I told you, I felt this energy as soon as it was crazy. I can't even explain it.
Speaker 3:It's funny. A lot of people have asked oh so you're doing like quite a lot of podcast interviews and doing some summits and stuff. How does it feel to talk about this story all the time? Because, like, it is a bummer of a story. What's not a bummer is no, it is like having this evidence, like just sitting with you or sitting with some of the other people who have interviewed me or talked with me of late. Is it's validating what I know to be true, which is literally the subtitle of my book.
Speaker 3:And this is not a plug, but no, totally plug, because when you're choosing, like, a title for your book and a subtitle, the title can be whatever you want Mine's snapshots of my broken heart, which refers to the blog, curated blog posts, their snapshots, their like ideas, things that were happening in the time and then for the subtitle, you have to really tell people what you believe and what they're going to learn from the book, and so mine says how we find peace and connection when we choose to be lost through the lens of love, and when I talk to people like you and you have that instant connection to me, like energetically.
Speaker 3:This is just, it just validates. That is the truth and it just feels so good and I feel so grateful for this conversation and because, like you and me, we didn't even know anything about each other and yet we have, like, massive things in common and little things in common and, to be honest, it's not everybody's calling to be storytellers, but when you act upon that intuitive guidance, whatever it is your guidance was to start a podcast knowing nothing about it.
Speaker 3:Right yeah, when you can just jump into the creative process of whatever is being asked of you that is purposeful, and it doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be big or small or perfect, it doesn't have to be a book or a podcast, it could be anything, it could be something within people's community. But, like when we can hear that intuitive guidance, it's just such a gift because it does start to help it us. It does start to help us deal with the uncertainties and the adversities of life better, and I do. I am really grateful for you and your storytelling on your podcast, because I think storytelling and sharing really allows other people to step forward if they feel called to share theirs as well, and that's where connection comes from. So, yeah, so grateful for this today.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I'm like it's so funny because, as you're talking, I'm like choking back tears, I'm like holding it in, but it's because this feels so purposeful and it feels so right, and I don't even know where it's gonna go, right, I don't know where, I don't have this grand vision of where it's gonna go, but I truly feel like it's gonna touch somebody that needed to hear it and that is all of the validation I guess you could call it that I need in order to say all of this work was so worth it, because this story is going to resonate so greatly with so many. I just, oh, I'm, I cannot wait to read your book. So plug away. I'm so excited Because I feel like it is something that it's number one. You storytell beautifully and that's a gift in itself.
Speaker 2:I really, truly feel like the people that I guess heed the call of their purpose. It doesn't matter the darkness that's happening around. They are that beacon of light. That fear is the darkness and that light is. What you chose is love and that lighthouse that you're just showing people, because it's like that constant battle between fear and love in our own heart and mind, especially during things that we've lost or people that we've lost, or when we experience that you are literally being the beacon. And that doesn't mean that it's easy. It's actually, I think, sometimes a little harder, because it's like the sense of responsibility on top of the fact that we are feeling all these feelings.
Speaker 3:One thing that I think I can see as a similarity is, I think, when, like I did, I felt like the creative process of blogging and then creating my book as well, which took a really long time, has been really a selfish gift to myself, and I think because of that, it's allowed me to step away from the need for perfection and the need to feel responsible for how other people receive what I'm writing or sharing. And I can see that with you as well, like your delivery is so authentic and that the creative process has value in it itself. And this is like a whole other podcast episode which we should totally get together for. But I believe in the big magic that comes from powerful create the creative process without, without a need for an outcome. Right, so you don't have to have the most listeners, the most followers, you don't have to have the most readers, you don't have to have a bestseller on your hands. But guess what happens when you create from such an authentic space of wanting to heal yourself?
Speaker 3:First of all, you heal and second of all, I know in your case, you have a lot of people gaining a lot of goodness from your podcast, and I did hit bestseller in all three of my categories and that was not through marketing. Yeah, that's not what it was from. It was. Somebody asked me what my marketing strategy was to hit bestseller and I said prayer, please. When we do things authentically because we want to share, we do things authentically because we want to share, we do things authentically. It doesn't have to be on this on a broad scale and it doesn't have to be on a screen or on pages. It can be in in community, with the way we interact with our neighbors or whatever, but it all comes down to choosing to go with it. And it's so cool how fast your purpose became so clear because you were willing to listen. And then here you are and you're finding healing through it.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh it is the coolest thing. I did 36 episodes in my first year, which I was like he told me he was like when I first started, my boyfriend said, statistically, new podcasters get up to eight episodes and then they quit. And I was like, okay, great, thanks, that's an awesome statistic. I am the less than 1% chance. So let's go Right.
Speaker 2:I did 36 episodes and that in itself I was like, oh, I wish I would have done one every week. I had life happen my daughter got hit by a car, like just a bunch of things, Right, yeah. And so when I stopped season one and I was already in the process of I had one episode for season two that I was editing and so forth I just told him I was like I just, I really just want, I really just want to have more than one episode. I wish I had the backlog of four so that I'm not like recording and editing and making it live the same week, cause that's a lot. And I found this Facebook group and put a post up there and you are my 28th or something like that recording and I've already uploaded two episodes of season two.
Speaker 2:It is craziness what happens when you know in your heart that you're doing the right thing. And then, all of a sudden, you ask for what you need or what you want, and it's in abundance. Here you go, yes, and it's just so beautiful because there is it, and I would ultimately just love to have an episode a week, right, just for the whole year. That would be amazing. And I'm like, oh my gosh, this Just for the whole year, that would be amazing.
Speaker 3:And I'm like oh my gosh, this is like a lot more possible when you think about it, not only through reaching out to get people from a Facebook group, to get people. But me alone, we could literally spin off 10 episodes from my book alone If we broke it down into chunks and the steps and the guide cycle of divine timing and all the things that I talk about in there. Right, we could really really dive into all of those things and you probably have the same experience with all of your guests where there's so much more.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I could talk to you forever.
Speaker 3:So this is like abundance, and so just let it soak in, because the energy of your podcast is so beautiful, so I really appreciate you having me.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, thank you so much so I'm gonna plug your book. It'll be in the show notes, it'll be everywhere I'm. I feel like, once I read your book myself, I'm messaging you because we're doing're right. It just feels so connected and so purposeful and this had a grander purpose. I am definitely putting in all of your information, how to reach you and everything on social media and so forth. Tara, this was amazing. I am sending you and your family so much love, truly from my heart, and thank you for the way you told your story. It was beautiful and my heart is with you and I'm so excited to to continue to connect with you listeners. Thank you for listening. I hope you got as much out of today as I know that I did Just wait because we're going to have her on more.
Speaker 3:I just can't wait. Thank you so much for your kind words. I really received that with gratitude and I feel that we are very connected and I would love to connect again. Definitely read the book, because I feel like it's really going to land for you, like it will for a lot of people. It's definitely a book that we can pick up over time as well as we experience different types of loss, and there's some really cool tools in there and, yeah, I look forward to diving into some of that with you after.
Speaker 2:Awesome. I cannot wait. Thank you so much, listeners, for jumping on with us today. I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. Peace out, guys. Love your life. Bye-bye.
