Episode 277: 16 Minutes Dead: The Hockey Player’s Miracle & The Flying Nun.

This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. And you're here. Thanks for choosing the I Heart Radio and Coast to Go Stay in Paranormal Podcast Network. Your quest for podcasts of the paranormal, supernatural, and the unexplained ends here. We invite you to enjoy all our shows we have on this network. And right now, let's start with Shades of the Afterlife for the Sandra Shandong. Welcome to our podcast. Please be aware the thoughts and opinions expressed by the host are their thoughts and opinions only. And do not reflect those of I Heart Media, I Heart Radio, Coast to Coast AM, employees of Premier Networks, or their sponsors and associates. We would like to encourage you to do your own research and discover the subject matter for yourself. Hi, I'm Sandra Shandong. For over 25 years, I've been on a journey to prove the existence of life after death. On each episode, we'll discuss the reasons we now know that our loved ones have survived physical death. And so will we. Welcome to Shades of the Afterlife. We have a busy episode for you today. Soon you're going to meet a woman nicknamed the Flying Nun. She is a fifth degree black belt in martial arts, a former hospital chaplain and a woman who had a near death experience as a baby and then won later in life. And this is all developed into her being an incredible medium with a very rare gift called spirit art. So she doesn't just give messages, but many times she draws portraits of the loved ones. She is seeing in spirit and their great drawings. I'll tell you in a minute how you can look at these pictures on a website if you'd like while you listen to this episode. But first, I want to tell you a story that's been in the news lately. It's about a man named Billy Garafa. Billy isn't a mystic or a monk. In fact, he's a hockey player. And recently he shared a story that proves miracles can be built into our very bodies. Years before we even know that we need them, it started on an ordinary game day. Before Billy stepped onto the ice, he felt a strange urge to do something he'd never done in the locker room before. He asked his teammates if he could pray. He prayed for protection. He didn't know it then, but that prayer was setting the stage for a battle between life and death. Just moments into the game, Billy collapsed. He went into cardiac arrest right there on the ice. For 16 minutes, Billy Garafa was clinically dead. Now, on the outside, of course, it was chaos in the hockey rink. But on the inside, Billy was experiencing something very different. He says that the moment he left his body, he didn't smell the stale air of the ice rink. He said, I smelled the sweetest smell. He said he felt the Holy Spirit leading him. He described being enveloped in a piece and a love that was so powerful that he said that it felt like real life. This life, the hockey game, the ice, the noise, that was the dream, the love that he was in, that was reality. While this was happening, his wife Isabella was watching from the stands. She saw him drop. In that moment of helplessness, she screamed out, Jesus helped him. And it seems that cry was answered in a way that had been planned years in advance. So get this. One of Billy's teammates, a man named Ben, rushed to a side. Two years prior, Ben had a vision that he would be at a sporting event. Someone would die, and he would pray for them to bring them back to life. Ben was there holding Billy's hand, fulfilling a vision he had two years before. And the miracles didn't stop there. When doctors examined Billy later, they found something that stunned them. It's called collateral arteries. These are extra vessels in the heart. Most people don't have them, but Billy's heart had grown them. Extra pathways to keep blood flowing even when his heart had stopped. Billy said, it's like God built this miracle into me ahead of time. Billy came back from those 16 minutes with a message when the struggle of life ends, we are all invited into God's love. So when things look chaotic in life, perhaps there's an orchestration going on underneath that is always propelling us forward in life. That brings me to our guest today. Her name is Tammy Lee Anderson. Tammy has done a lot in her life. She is the author of the new book, Into Love, A Journey of Near Death, and Surrendering into Love. She is a former psychotherapist, hospital chaplain, and holds master's degrees in kinesiology and marriage and family therapy. She's not just an academic. She is also a fifth degree black belt in the martial art of Ikeeto and spent over a decade living in monastic communities which earned her the nickname, The Flying Nun. Tammy is a soft, spoken, gentle soul. And the first several minutes of our conversation, she sets the scene of who she was to become. She talks about her background, her childhood, her near death experiences as a baby, and the need for being quiet. And of course in the quiet, that's where sensitivity comes from. Then her story takes some twists and turns. As an adult, she had a near death experience where she met her grandfather and says she stood in the presence of Jesus. She talked about a magnificent being who answered questions about why we suffer and talks about her gift of spirit art, sketching portraits of loved ones as she is doing readings. So while you're listening, if you wish to go to her website, which is healingwellness.com, you can find her spirit portrait gallery. Let's meet her. Here is Tammy Lee Anderson. At 17, I remembered, I had the experience of remembering the first two near death experiences when I was just a baby. And that was quite life changing for me at the time. I've always been attracted to the quiet for some reason. And as a young person, I felt an absence like a yearning or something I forgot, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was. I guess it's best described as homesickness. I felt homesick from most of my young life. And I did have childhood depression and I feel like that had something to do with my near death experiences because there was something I just felt like I was missing. And what I want to share mostly is how I integrated these experiences into my life. Because there's lots of near death experiences people are telling now, but how did it change your life? What did it do to your life? I would often go to a church that was near my home. I was 17 at the time when this happened. The church I just loved, I wasn't religious, I wasn't brought up in a religion. I just was drawn to the quiet. So this church was a great place for that. And I would go there when people weren't there because I couldn't relate to the service at all, but I could relate to the quiet. And I loved the smell of incense. I liked the candles happen to be a Catholic church. And I would just sit there and it was so peaceful and it reminded me of all. I remember the peace and I remember the love and just sitting in that essence. There was a priest there at the time and he would notice that I was coming in and out often and he asked me one day what brings you here and I really couldn't tell him. I didn't have words to it. I just said, I just like the quiet. I like it here, you know? And he said, can I pray with you? And I thought he would just say a few words or something. I didn't really know what to expect, but I said, okay. And he laid his hands on me. What happened was this, this warmth just went through the top of my head and it just went through my body and it just kind of settled in the solar plexus. It just was like an explosion of memories. I was actually born dead, I was still born and I remember that and people say, how in the world could you remember that? And it sounds really out there, but I do. And I remember the emotions of my mother in particular. I remember her fear, I remember her shame. My parents weren't married, they kind of did it in a rush because my mom got pregnant and so at that time they kind of tried to hide it, but I was born almost two months early, so that kind of broke the secret. And so I felt that shame and my mom never shared this with me. After this experience, I did share it with her and the tears flowed because she had held that in for so long. You know, it was a beautiful letting go in that moment for her, I think. I remember going into the light, being in the light and remember being held and I remember it was like home. It was like, that's where I belong. And it was just incredible love and I was aware of the rush of the operating room that people trying to bring me back. And I was aware of my grandparents, I was aware of mostly emotion in that one, but also a deep, deep, deep piece that just kind of permeates everything. You know, this is so challenging and that's why, you know, I do my best to try and explain what it's like, but the words don't come close. They just don't even come close because it's an experience, it's dissolving into love like it being held. And the second one that I remember was two months later, I had a surgery because the soft spots in the head closed. They're called font nails and so they allow the head to grow. Well, they closed, I don't know if it was because of the pressure of 38 hours and labor my mom had. But anyways, they had to do a surgery. When I was born, I weighed 3.2 something ounces. And so I was really tiny, I could fit in a shoe box. And I went up one pound, so four pounds, but I was very small. When they were preparing for the surgery several months later, I believe it was actually at five months. They had to give me anesthesia and they miscalculated. And I died again on them. And they had to shock my heart to bring me back. And in that one, I just remember not wanting to be back in that body. I do remember being held and I remember being held by familiar beings, like light beings that I had known all my life for forever. And it was just so familiar. And just like, I was watching all the chaos because it seemed like chaos going around people trying to solve the problem of my heart's stopping. I had no desire to go back into that. And then they brought me back. And this next experience, they did do the surgery successfully about I think a couple months later. And that was successful, of course, here I am. They basically had to do this surgery else I would have died. I didn't experience this as a near death experience, but I experienced this third experience as like being in between. And throughout my life, I've had many, I guess you would call them spiritual experiences or mystical experiences. And on that third experience, I felt held in the light. I felt like I was in between. I wasn't completely out of my body. This is kind of a hard to explain, but I felt the terror of all of it because they didn't give me enough anesthesia. I think they're afraid of losing me. So I felt everything. I could smell everything. And I remember incredibly cold. I can still, to this day, if I go back into it too far, I start to shake because the body remembers. We need to take a quick break and we'll be right back with more of Tammy Lee Anderson. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the I-Hard Radio and Coast to Coast A.M. Paranormal podcast network. MUSIC Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain and you're hearing Tammy Lee Anderson's story. I'm always fascinated when I hear near-death experiences because it seems like they remember their near-death experiences clearer than any memory they've ever had in their life. And this includes if they're babies or they are children. So Tammy first described being stillborn as a baby and revived and remembering it. And now she's describing being about five months old and going into surgery. Soon she'll share how this sensitivity grew within her, even to the point of premonitions and seeing her brother's death before he passed. Let's continue with Tammy. This is kind of a hard to explain, but I felt the terror of all of it because they didn't give me enough anesthesia. I think they're afraid of losing me. So I felt everything. I could smell everything. And I remember incredibly cold. I can still, to this day, if I go back into it too far, I start to shake because the body remembers. I was going in and out, basically. I didn't die in that one, but I experienced the bright lights, the operating rooms and just offensive. Those bright lights in your eyes compared to the light that I was experiencing when I was in the in between. That light was all enveloping, peaceful, not hard on your eyes at all. I just felt like a dissolving into peace. And so it was really quite an experience to feel both going in and out of terror and fear to being held in complete peace and no fear. So those are the rough beginnings of my life so I did not remember these experiments until I was 17, but the sensitivity was with me always, since I was young. I was super sensitive. My mom, she babysitted, she had like some 20 kids at our home and she did babysitting. And I was so affected by the smells, the sound, the emotions of the children. I would often just want to escape, I'd escape into the backyard or hide in the tree. There was a big plum tree that I would climb up and just sit in the quiet. So that sensitivity was from early on. I remember at seven years old being quite sensitive, our neighbor, their son had died in a motorcycle accident. And I remember at seven I was sitting on the side of the house and I was watching people come in and out of their house. And I was feeling the grief that people were feeling, the loss of his son, he was 18 years old. I just was really struck by the emotions of that. I also remember walking across the grass and thinking, you know, it's really hard to be in this world without causing any damage. And so I made like a little vow, it's up here so that I wanted to cause as much good as I could in the world and as little as bad as I could. I am no saint, that's for sure. And I have all my foibles, but at seven I decided that I wanted to be a more serviceman love in this life. And I do believe that desire came from knowing love at such a very early age. Now that depression was with me, I just wanted to leave my body all the time. And that didn't leave until I was 23 years old after my brother's death. My brother was killed on a motorcycle accident when he was 18. Now one thing that came with this sensitivity was pre-cognitive experiences. I've always had, since I can remember, and I called it unfortunate because I didn't see any good in this, but I would know what people were passing. I could feel them passing. And my brother, I felt him, every time I'd see his back, I felt like he was going away. I remember sitting in that same church and the priest he went off for a moment to be like a counseling session with someone. And I didn't know who he was meeting with, but I just decided that I was going to join in prayer whoever he was praying for. I tuned in somehow. I was a wearable little girl, and she told me her name was Cassie. I thought it sounded like a dog's name because it sounded like lassie. And I was laughing. I go, that's your name. And she says, yes, and she shared him that she was passing soon. She was just a young little girl. And I told my sister after this experience that we need to keep an eye on the paper because this little girl was going to pass soon. And it was true. A few days later, she had passed. So she had come there for prayers from the priest, healing prayers. I never told any makes up my sister because it wasn't my place to do such a thing. It was just for me a validation of that sensitivity of that tuning in. I don't think that mediumship is special. I really want to say that. I think that because we're all spirit, we all can connect with that eternal aspect of each of us. So this pre-cognitive sense that I call the unfortunate time with my brother, I kept feeling this feeling of him going away. And I shared that with my mom. She got really kind of freaked out because she knew that it was a bit weird. So she was trying to get rid of the motorcycles. And I never know how it's going to happen. It's not that clear. It's more of an overwhelming feeling that often feels like I'm dying. And I had this with another person who's very close to me. And he ended up committing suicide. And for months, I felt I was dying. And that was crazy one because I even purchased a coffin. I was preparing for my own death. When he jumped from the bridge, I realized that wasn't for me, it was for him. That one was one of the most difficult ones. I think of the losses because you always think, well, if I could have said something, but I know that you can't. People's walkers are on. I loved him very much. So it's never easy. I've had people on my left that die quickly and I've had people die slowly. And neither is easy. They're all challenging because we feel like we're separating from our loved ones, which were not. But there is a sense of that loss, of course, of the physical body. So I did share with my brother the experience of my third near death experience. I often went into the mountains. This was something that I just love to do, be I love being in nature. I was very attracted to the mystics when I was younger, little idealistic I have to say. And that sense, so I would go on fast in the mountains and pray and connect with God, whatever. You want to call, I was connecting to life from love and that home that's within. And what happened was I overdid it. I didn't eat for a week and I didn't drink enough and it was hot. And I collapsed. I had a heat stroke and I went out of my body and it was absolutely amazing. It was like a tunnel of light going towards the light, but there was no boundaries to this tunnel. Like the edges were light as well. So it was an infinite space. It's so hard to put into words. I'm sorry about that, but I felt like I was being drawn towards the light. It was just so enveloping and I felt like I was dissolving into it. And there are infinite amount of souls going towards this light. And so it was like being in a river of souls going towards this light. And I noticed the person in front of me was my grandfather. I saw him from his back and I said, Papa, he turned around and it was just absolutely amazing. It's more than telepathic, I want to say it's more like soul-to-sol communication where you're just kind of dissolving. And there's no unknowns and it's just love, love, love. There needs to be a bigger word than that because it's like millions times more than that word can ever express. Just so good to see him. My grandpa was a quiet man. And I mean, I don't number too many sentences in his life. He was just a good old man, good old character. And I loved him dearly. And I asked him, I said, okay, so what's Jesus really like? He heard all these stories. As soon as I said that it was instant and I was looking into the eyes of Jesus and gosh, no words for that either. It's love. I was looking deeply into the love of him, his heart. He is much more than the stories we hear. And they have been misunderstood in many ways. And I don't talk too much about what I experienced other than that because it can upset people. And I don't want to do that. But I understood a depth of love that I had amazing. And I was going into that love and into his light, into the love. And all of a sudden I felt this beautiful being, magnificent being pulled me to the side. And then I just started asking questions. I didn't know I had so many questions, but I wanted to know why people suffer. I wanted to know why this and why that and why do babies suffer? Why is there wars? And all the questions you have as a human being, I was asking. And first I was using my words. And then I realized as soon as I thought it, I got the answer. Then what happened was it was just sort of going faster and faster. And then it was like these darts of light and lights of so many different colors. And it was like these each piece of light that was coming into me as an answer felt like download of information, of knowing. But it wasn't just telepathic. It was like dissolving into, and it was like ecstasy on top of like, there was here being filled, but there's no limit to that feeling. That's hard to explain. Did you get an answer on suffering? Yes, suffering, there's a lot to it. But what I understood is suffering is like a doorway. We can use it. It is an opportunity to step deeper into love. The contrast that we experience here gives us a depth that we wouldn't have otherwise. And so we expand love, not just for our own souls, growth, but for the whole. Forward backwards. Infinitely, we bring our light as souls, as light beings as well, into a lineage, into a story, into an experience, to the extent that we are conscious, we bring our light and our love into that, suffering, into that contrast. I've always thought that I would never want to meet a person who had no dysfunction in their family. They'd have this much compassion, this much depth. I'm sure that most people listening, if you look back at the times that were the hardest in your life, you know, when you're in it, it's not so easy. But when you have the birds I view, yeah, that made me who I am. Yeah, they gave me a depth. I wouldn't have, that gave me a compassion. I wouldn't have otherwise. It's time to take a quick break and we'll be back with so much more. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the I Heart Radio and Coast to Coast A.M. Paranormal, HODCAST, Network. MUSIC Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain. We're here with medium Tammy Lee Anderson, author of the book, Into Love, A Journey of Near Death and Surrendering into Love. She's telling us about her near death experience where she saw her grandfather looked into the eyes of Jesus and got to ask a magnificent being about some big questions, including the meaning of suffering. Suffering can, if we let it, be an opening to profound compassion and love. Let's continue with Tammy and find out about some of the After Effects with her near death experience and also how mediumship is like martial arts. I'm sure that most people listening, if you look back at the times that were the hardest in your life, you know, when you're in it, it's not so easy, but when you have the birds I view, yeah, that made me who I am. Yeah, that gave me a depth. I wouldn't have, that gave me a compassion. I wouldn't have otherwise. And I guess the best way I can say is that our suffering is an opportunity for love, greater love, and a growth and an expansion of who we are, polishing in a sense. Yeah, I agree 100%. I wouldn't be here talking to you right now that I not come to the deepest, darkest time in my past siblings that I fought and relationships fell apart. It was rock bottom. And no one who hasn't experienced grief, I don't think really can share with somebody who's grieving. Absolutely. You're never in somebody else's shoes, but it gives us that compassion and empathy. Yeah, I was in graduate school in psychotherapy and we had practicum where you would practice being a client and being a therapist. And from her sitting with somebody who was in graduate school, is a therapist as well. She had never been in therapy and I thought, how in the world, if you haven't walked the walk yourself, if you haven't been vulnerable enough to work on your own stuff, how can you walk with somebody else and their vulnerability? Our suffering offers us, it's challenging. And the question always arises for me, can I even love this? Sometimes just know. But sometimes it's yes. I grow into my yes and yes, I can I even forgive this? No. And then I grow into my yes. Can I forgive myself? You know? I ask you some questions, Tammy. Absolutely. First, I hear a lot of near-death experiences from all the people I've spoken to. Yeah. And they can't put into words what that's going on is. But they're these after-effects that people have heard of being in service and love and all these wonderful things. It seems like you were born into these after-effects because you had this happen so young. And I've also talked to people who've had NDEs as a child, really young age. And how it works that the memories are just as clear as they happened yesterday. I don't know. But everything that I know of you and in the bio that I read, you have made your life about being of service. And it sounds also like through martial arts, through psychotherapy, through monastery, all that, you're still in search of the quiet. Could you talk maybe a little bit about that journey of going into the quiet and then how in the world did you become a medium? Like how did that come? Yeah, how in the world? I never in my life sought to become a medium. I heard about Suzanne Giesman in 2018. Her integrity, her background attracted me when I heard her story of messages of oh, and I thought, well, I want to learn more about this. Because I mean, I have a undergraduate degree in theology, a philosopher at art. I studied philosophy most of my life. And so I was drawn to this mediumship because of her integrity, because of her background. And I thought anything that brings me closer to a connection, alignment. So I just started practicing. I went to Arthur Frily College after I took many classes with her and read everything she had. And then I just dove in. And I don't do anything halfway. So I went to Arthur Frily College. What seemed to help me grow the fast, as speeded up really fast, was when I connected with Sally Hawk, I was invited to be part of a prototype gathering called Very Soul. What this offered me was a structure so I could practice with other people. And so I kind of made it like my martial art, in a sense. My martial art, I live and breathe it. For 44 years, you're not practicing just on the year of living it. I equit domains the way of harmony. And there are a lot of similarities between mediumship and martial arts I found. I never intended to become a medium. I was just doing it from my own spirit to practice. And you practice with practice partners. And I did that, I think, for like a year now, for maybe two years. Well, the feedback I was getting after doing that for so long, Sally was going, you know, you need to kind of do this for real. Because you're having such impact on people. And I had to, oh, no, that's not my thing. And I resisted it for a while. And then I thought, well, OK, I give it a try. And it has blown me away the impact. And it almost is kind of a parallel to like martial arts when you become like a brown belt. And you kind of got the techniques down. Then I have my students at Brown Belt start teaching the younger belts. So they have to not only do it themselves, but they have to figure out how to teach it. And you start to learn on a whole different level. Now it's kind of like what it felt like moving into working with the public. And the trust that ultimately the spirit world is your teacher and mediumship. I have the grace and the opportunity to study with some amazing mediums. I mean, Davies is my teacher. And still, I go to class every other week. I'm in class with her. I've even after all these years. And more so that I have people come into my dojo. And they'd often say, how long does it take to become a black belt? And I'd say, well, you can go on eBay and get one for yourself. And then come back and we're going to start training. Because it's the practice. And actually, black belt is beginning. That's where you begin to become a serious student. And so I feel that the mediumship that I'm practicing, I continue to be a serious student. And the thing I like about it is that I'm always growing. I love the challenge. I want to talk really quickly about the similarities I see in mediumship and martial arts. One is beginner's mind. There's a beginner's mind in martial arts where even after 50-year-old black belt, I still can walk on the mat and feel like a beginner. By emptying yourself, you can be filled more. If your cup is so full that you have no room and you think you know it all, then you might as well just chalk it up and just stop. It's boring. And so I come in as a beginner in a beginner's mind and I find coming into a session with a sense of awe and a child like wonder, like, what are you going to share with us now? In every session's different. And I love that. I'm surprised every day by the sessions. I'm surprised, energized. I'm surprised as anybody else, one of the stuff happens. And it's like, wow. And so that sense of child like wonder and that playfulness. And then the beginner's mind, then there's the no mind. That's also a principle of martial arts. The no mind, the still mind. The emptying. When you get still in self-defense, I taught self-defense for many years. Women's self-defense, men's self-defense. If you're thinking about a technique in a self-defense situation, you're dead already. It's too late. You have to be in a place or you're just responding. In fact, that happened to me, no longer. And it was just a response that somebody was attacking. It was this arm, immediate disarm. And you hiss that stillness is core and mediumship. You have to be empty. You empty the ego. You empty the trying aspect. And all you empty the part that really wants to satisfy this person who's in front of you. You let go of all of it. That's the practice I've found similar to martial arts. You empty and then you can respond. Then you can move with the flow. Then you can harmonize with the energy that's coming through in this session. And so I just love that because it's very I key. I key means the way of harmony. So you're harmonizing with the flow of energy that's coming through. There's another aspect of martial arts. When you get knocked down, you keep getting back out. It's crudge. It's the heart of a warrior. Love is not passive. Jesus wasn't. His life wasn't passive. Gandhi's life wasn't passive. It's a very active. Love is, doesn't mean it's all sentimental. But love is the ground of life. It is the structure. It is the ground substance of all that is and all that arises. So you go back into that state of the ground, which is love. And you move from there. And with the courage, sometimes in mediumship, that's why I like it because you're always growing and stretching and expanding and challenged. And you just keep getting back up. I just think this is really interesting because I was aware that my thinking mind jumped in. So the reading was, I had a lady and I said, I'm aware of this young man. He was in a car accident. He's showing me an ambulance going to the hospital. And then I just get like stillness, like nothing. I feel like I almost went into coma. And she said, yes, he went into a coma. And he never came out. And I had to make the terrible decision as mom to turn that machine off. And I don't know if I made the right decision. And he had not pouring up. Thank you for making such a hard decision. And the next thing I saw wasn't so clear. What I saw was an arc of stars. And I laughed because it makes me think of Tinkerbell. And her jaw dropped. She said that was the name of his dog. He took Tinkerbell everywhere with him and Tinkerbell died in the accident with him. You gave me goosebumps. Yeah. And then the next thing that I was aware of, I said, he's showing me a red and white flag. Do you understand that? She says, no. He's got me looking at a blue sky. I see a blue sky. And I see a red and white flag. Do you understand that? No. And I love these nose because their miracles happened from these. I said, okay, just write, don't see what happens. Two weeks later, was his birthday weekend. She's taking a walk and missing him terribly. She's sad and she's taking a walk outside. She looks up in the sky and what does she see? An airplane carrying a red and white flag. And a day when she's missing him and he just brought that to her in the most unexpected time. Let's head off to the break and we'll be right back. We'll find out about the spirit art and circle back to our hockey player. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the I Heart Radio and Coast to Coast A.M. Paranormal Podcast Network. Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain. Our guest, Tammy Lee Anderson, was just talking about a reading letting the mom know her son died in a car accident, went into a coma. Dog's name was Tinker B. Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain. Our guest, Tammy Lee Anderson, was just talking about a reading letting the mom know her son died and a car accident went into a coma. It's Tinker Bell, but she couldn't verify the red and white flag until days after the reading, an airplane flew by, dragging a red and white sign. Tammy doesn't mind getting a no in reading. Let's continue with her story. So I love the things that people often find out later. I love getting emails after I figured it out. I had a list of things. And I said, this young man's telling me the name Brian and he's telling me, I've never had anybody say spell it. And he's saying, it's not B-R-I-A-N, it's B-R-Y-A-N. I dissed it twice, no, because he was so insistent. And she said, no, I don't know any Brian. Thaizen, okay, write it down, see what happens. Within minutes, she's writing me out for the session. And she says, oh my gosh, I figured it out. My daughter's getting married in three months. And her surname is going to be B-R-Y-A-N. That's great. How did you get into the spirit art than the sketches? I looked at your website. I'll tell you, I was doing a reading from Mom and Seattle, I believe it was. I was doodling. I've never learned how to draw. I'm not an artist. In that sense, I had painted when I was 18. I did oil paintings, but I never did sketching its whole different thing. But I was just doodling to get myself out of my thinking mind because you really have to be empty. So I was doodling. And this young man says, turn the paper over and start again. And I said, okay, doodling became a beautiful sketch and a portrait. And his name's John. And ever since, he's been influencing portraits for people. I get them 60 to 70% of the time, not always. And not always do people recognize them. What I do is pretty amazing. I have people sending me photographs, you know, and side by side. Sometimes it looks like it could be a negative. I do have a gallery on my website so you can see side by side. So that's pretty fun. And I had one young man who came for a session in me that I'm very skeptical. And I said, that's okay. You know, I have to sometimes. And it's good to just, you know, to keep that healthy skepticism, but don't lock it if you can. And let's see where it goes. Well, he got one of the most accurate drawings that it ever came across. And I sent it to him at the end. And he said he was floored by it. And unfortunately, he doesn't want to share that one because it's very personal to him. His picture of his father. Some people are gracious enough to give me their photograph. And I can put it in the gallery, but I do ask permission for that. In my book, I didn't put pictures because I didn't want to deal with the technical part. Yeah, if you get permissions and all that. So I did include the drawings in my book. And I just really liked the feeling. Everyone seems to have a different feeling. I encourage people to go to Tammy's website, healingwellless.com, because you can see the pictures, the drawings, and then also the people as they lived. And remember her book is called Into Love, a journey of near death and surrendering into love. Tammy, could I ask you about your book? Now that I know there's pictures in it, right? I didn't want to write a book because, you know, I thought, why does a world need another book? There's so many books out there. And it's a lot of work to write a book. It took me two years. I wrote it as an offering of love because people kept asking me, when are you gonna write a book? When are you gonna write a book? And it's like, okay, I'll write a book. There's a collection of stories. The way I wrote it was to be like a love letter to your soul and invitation for your remembering. I love it when people say, oh, I can relate to this and that in my own life because that's how I wrote it. You know, it's not our differences that brings us together. It's our common ground that brings us together. And so I write the stories in a very vulnerable way. In fact, a lot of this stuff, my family didn't even know. And so I open my soul to people I shared with my heart and the feedback I'm getting is quite amazing. I have an invitation to pause so that people can consider questions and their own stories and their own journey of love. Our stories are a walks of remembering who we really are, which is love. We're deeply loved and we are love. And this is written in a way that helps your remember. I love it. Here's another question for you. Based on your, your death experiences, your work as a hospital, chaplain, your decades of work as a therapist, the martial arts, mediumship and all that, we have some folks listening right now that are experiencing the deepest, darkest grief with the loved one who has passed. What message would you have for someone like that who is feeling this grief and maybe just feels lost? There are no words that are going to touch the depth of that pain, which is just no, you're not alone. There is a presence of love that's holding you during this time of deep grief. This is not the end. An effect or life is a testament to that in a sense that we are dying and being reborn each moment of our lives and we continue. We're being reborn each moment. We are the death and resurrection. We are that what we are searching for and you don't lose. It feels like you do. And remember that this is a doorway. Our suffering is a doorway. On my dear one, he passed, he died of cancer and I lost him before I lost him. In the sense that it was a slow painful death, he went under 100 and something pounds, you know, I felt like I was dying. And now, as the time has gone by, I just think every day of how grateful I am that I had the opportunity to be loved so deeply and loved so deeply. And so at a certain point, you turn your grief into gratitude and that takes it to a whole different level. And we will see our loved ones again. This is a blank, this is like a daydream here in a sense. We're that which has never been born and that which will never die. Go into that aspect of who you are again and again and again and be in that stillness and you will breathe in peace. It's that state of peace between the tears that depths goes there often. Yeah, there are no words really. Amy, thank you. Thank you, thank you for being our guest today. You're welcome. Before we wrap up today, I wanna go back to where we started. We opened with the story of Billy Garafa, the hockey player who died for 16 minutes on the ice and came back with a miracle heart. But I saved the best part of the story for last. You see, while Billy was in that ocean of love, while he was basking in the presence of God, his human brain had a very human thought. He looked around at the light and the peace and he thought to himself, wait a minute, what about man's theology, where are the pearly gates? Where is the judgment? Where is all the stuff we read about in books? And in that moment, he felt God answer him. And I love this because Billy said, it wasn't a booming, scary voice. He said, God kind of laughed at him and the message he got was this, man's theology is nothing but silliness to me. Isn't that the best news you've heard all day? All the rules, all the boxes we try to put God in, all the ways we worry about doing it right and wrong, it's just silliness. God then told Billy, do you remember the two most important commandments? Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. Everything else falls underneath that. That is the whole exam, my friends. Love God, love people, that's it. And remember my definition of God, just like many religions represent different lampshades, but there is only one light. So whether you call it God, the divine, the universe, that spark that runs within us all, that's the light. When Billy woke up in the hospital, he told his wife Isabella something that gives me chills. He said, babe, that place, that is real life. All of this down here, this is the dream. So as you go ahead into your week, carry that with you. The real life is waiting for you. It is full of love, not judgment. The struggle really is over because the final destination is secure. Also, did you know that people who have had near death experiences have no fear of dying, not even an ounce? So if you're missing someone today, remember Tammy's words, they aren't gone. They have just woken up from the dream. If you want to dive deeper into incredible mediumship, we have a new film, evidence of the afterlife, saving, evidential mediumship. You can find it on Apple TV or the link right there on my website, which is wedon't die.com. I also offer a free Sunday gathering, inspirational service with medium demonstration included. You can get a free copy of my book, We Don't Die, a skeptics discovery of life after death, and so much more. We have a Facebook group of over 8,000 incredible human beings. You can join that as well. We try to remind each other not to be afraid of the dark because the light is here within us and all around us. Our loved ones are very much alive, continuing to support us in our lives. Quiet your mind best as you can, recall some fond memories with them, and let them communicate back to you with fond memories as well. Go back to our last episode and we talk about that inspirational or automatic writing to communicate with our loved ones. Don't forget, you are a divine soul, having a human experience. You are safe, you are one of a kind, and you are so very loved. Tamily Anderson reminded us of this beautiful truth. We are that which has never been born and that which will never die. So go into that aspect of who you are. Tap into that stillness, and remember that you're not just a body, you're the peace between breaths. I'm Sandra Champlain. Thank you so much for listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the I Heart Radio and Coast to Coast A.M. Paranormal, Podcast Network. Thanks for listening to the I Heart Radio and Coast to Coast A Imperial Podcast Network. Make sure and check out all our shows on the I Heart Radio app, or by going to iHeartRadio.com. This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.