Carlene McCaughey shares her journey of resilience, from overcoming personal loss to empowering communities. Discover how she transforms adversity into purpose and unites people through storytelling.
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Resilience & Purpose With Carlene McCaughey
I’m so excited to have, in person, in my own house, my really special friend Carlene McCaughey, and we’re going to have a fun conversation. First, we’re going to do my breathing exercise. We’re going to go 22 seconds of mini-vacation, and we’re going to have so much fun getting grounded. We’re going to breathe in calm for 7 seconds, we’re going to hold for 4 and breathe out gratitude. Here we go. Let’s breathe in some calm, hold, release, and relax, please. Thank you.
I don’t think I held it in enough.
If we did those multiple times a day, put this little thing down, and did this thing multiple times a day, I think society would be better because then we would have this grounding. A little bit, be still and know, hear the still small voice.
Mindful healing.
Mindful healing, exactly. Carlene lives in California. She used to live out here. We became friends in, what? 2011, I think.
Yeah, you’re on another show.
That’s right. We just hit it off and have had magical things happen ever since, every time. Yeah, they’re magical. They see what.
A chicken.
Carlene McCaughey
I figured we’ll talk about that because I was a witness to miracles. This girl’s got gifts. We’re going to just let you get to know her. I hope that we will bless you with this episode on the Win-Win Women Network, streaming all over the place. Carlene, who are you in this world? We’ll talk about what you do.
Who am I? I am a human being who loves people and nature. I look at things in my life that others consider painful, and I find great purpose. Anytime something happens to me, I’m like, okay, what’s this? Who am I going to connect to?
What’s this for?
What am I going to learn from this? Who am I going to connect to? This is going to be an amazing journey. It doesn’t mean that it’s not a struggle. It just means that I know there’s a big picture that I’m able to see.
The perspective. It’s a perspective that is powerful when you receive, when you accept where you are.
Support Group
When you can’t, there’s my late husband, Patrick. We were married for almost 22 years, and he passed from younger-onset Alzheimer’s. It’s a rare form that strikes the young, so he’s forever 59. When you’re faced with a disease like that, where there’s no cure, there’s no explanation, it’s been around since 1906, discovered in the elderly in 1970. In 1906, it was in a 52-year-old woman from Germany, and you can’t change this. There was no amount of anything that I could do that seemed to be able to change it. I couldn’t change my circumstances. I had to change my perspective. That’s what I did. That’s what I do each time I’m faced with a challenge that my circumstances cannot change. I just seek with all my heart a change in my perspective.
I’ve witnessed it firsthand multiple times. You were raised in California, you ran to Louisiana, and you’re back in California. You have a little farm out in East Texas, which you brought. I told that whole story on my show when I was talking about it.
The farm out in Texas, one of the reasons I’m here, my son’s getting married. I’m excited about that. He’s getting married, but I have a farm that’s still out there. It was placed on my heart to make it a healing retreat for caregivers who walked what I had walked. I run a support group on Facebook. It’s very specific. It’s for females caring for their significant other with younger-onset Alzheimer’s. It’s very specific. There are almost 2,000 women in there, which is unreal, from Australia and all over the world.
We’re the only group like this. It was placed on my heart that we needed some space to heal while we were walking this journey. One of the things I kept saying when I started the support group was that I started it because there was nothing out there. I couldn’t relate to those who had parents going through it with elder care because this was my husband. I first tried to get him diagnosed when he was in his 40s and was actually laughed at. It was placed in my heart. I like to call it the gift of knowing, but I’ve learned that when you speak and live your life authentically at all times, you just receive the messages and the knowledge you need.
That’s how it’s worked for me. There’s no other explanation for it. It was placed in my heart, too. When we were married just two years, I knew that he would have Alzheimer’s. I did not know how crazy I actually sounded because I didn’t realize that younger-onset was extremely rare, less than 3%. He doesn’t have any genetic components to it whatsoever. I went so far as educating myself, becoming vice president of a nonprofit to help people with it, but it was all for the elder. I knew it was placed in my heart. When things are placed in my heart like that, the visions that I get, I act on them.
With purpose and intent, I made sure that for the next eighteen years, we would be able to be debt-free when this was over with. I set up the things that I knew I had to, like life insurance, all the extra things needed to care for him. The other vision that was placed in my heart was to turn the farm into a retreat for women like me who were walking that journey.
That’s another reason why I’m down here. I’m meeting my niece, and she’s going to meet me up at the farm, and we’re going to work on that. I meant to say earlier, one of the things that I kept saying to my support group was, it’s okay. When somebody would vent, it’s okay. We walk this together. I realized I kept saying that over and over, “We walk this together.”
Years ago, this wonderful lady Jessica wrote a book, and she included me in her book. During the time when we all had to come and people were meeting the people behind the stories, it came time for my turn to speak. After listening to everybody that was ahead of me, I was like, “I’ve been through that one, domestic violence.” It went through all of these different things that people went through in their lives that they had survived.
I kept going, “I feel like a filing cabinet for all of this.” I realized that connected me with empathy. When you walk the path that somebody else is either walking or has walked before, you connect with them at a level that’s just surreal, the me-too kind of thing. I knew there were other women out there like that. I would always say, “We walk this together, and I won’t leave you behind.”
When you walk the path that somebody else is walking or has walked before, you connect with them at a surreal level. Share on XThat’s the name of your website.
We Walk This Together. We have our website, which is WeWalkThisTogether.org. I have a board of directors. Sunny Rath leads it. We’re actually doing our first gala, and we’re planning it in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Our vision is to provide opportunities for women. When you connect with somebody on that level, creating that platform is just one step. I wanted it on social media, but I also wanted to create a platform where they can meet together as well.
The retreat center. I mentioned you on my show. Anybody that reads regularly sees Carlene’s name because she was very instrumental in getting me out of a comfort zone. I was perfectly content in my beautiful little home that I love so very much, and I ended up moving out, putting everything upstairs in storage here, and going on a six-week trek, then getting robbed at gunpoint. All of those things happened. That trek was planned. I was coming back to East Texas to help you build a retreat center.
You enrolled me in that idea, and I acted on it. Obviously, it wasn’t what I was supposed to do, but it got me into action to do something different. I ended up moving upstairs with my ex-husband, and it was good. It was good because I was able to help him, and ultimately, I got the house. I bought the house back from him. It’s good. You’re getting to visit.
Mindful Healing
I know. It’s like a whole circle. We’ve been wanting to do this. After Pat died, I had a lot of complications with my health. I had been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s, mixed connective tissue disease, and spasmodic dysphonia that affected my voice. I had been seeing doctors and all of this for probably fifteen years. I was getting sicker and sicker. I had opened up a restaurant. The stress was unreal.
When you moved up to Northern California.
When I moved up to Northern California after he passed, correct. I realized even though I thought I was doing everything right mentally, my body had another story. My body’s like, “I think you’re not really handling this. You think you are.” I started having seizures and body jerks, myoclonic jerks and all of that. I was like, “I’m going to heal.” I saw the vision.
You have a knowing, and so this is about the fourth time we scheduled you for a show because your voice wouldn’t be available.
Correct.
We wanted you to, actually.
I was jerking around and all this. I had to use a wheelchair once. I’m remarried to my childhood friend, Robert, from my hometown, which brought me back out there to California. He had to go get a wheelchair and wheel me out of a meeting that I had to do. I physically couldn’t even walk. I was having such bad body jerks. I wanted to heal, so I did it with intent. I did it with absolute purpose. Mindful healing is what I called it.
I went from a cane for a year and a half and even having to use a wheelchair and walking four miles a day. It’s been wonderful. I did a lot of meditation, a lot of nature, a lot of removing toxic things in my life, people that, as they say, can drain you. My mother’s passing freed me up from having to have forced relationships with certain family members that were causing harm. I was determined to heal, and I did.
Nature mindset. I’m a mindset coach. Mindset is everything.
Everything.
If you want to lose weight, if your mindset and your mouth aren’t in tune, it doesn’t work. In fact, I saw a picture from when I was out at your place and being in the tub.
Memories. My cowboy tub, which is a metal trough.
We were swimming in there, just soaking in there and having fun. I think I lost some weight since then. I didn’t do anything other than I do believe we have the power to do so much more than we think we can. Years ago, I was like, “I’d like to get down to this number of weight.” I didn’t really change much of anything, but now I’m like, “Some of these clothes don’t fit or are too big. This is interesting.”
Mindful healing.
This is my whole thing. Speak what you want, not what you don’t have.
I say that all the time. A childhood friend of mine, Jodi, there was a meet in my new little town where we could talk without being cut off by our local leaders, if that makes sense, to get some changes. In Red Bluff, it’s ranked fourth worst in crime in the whole state of California per capita. It was just a quaint little town, a Victorian little town when growing up, just a beautiful little town. When I’m creating something and I see a vision, and if there’s somebody that wants to point out, and people will say, “The devil’s advocate, let me just edit it up.” I’m like, “Okay, but what about this? What if this happens? What if this happens? What if this happens? If we’re going to talk about what ifs, let’s talk about what happens. Wouldn’t this be exciting?”
What can happen instead of what can’t?
We were walking, and I had to stop her. I said, “I have to tell you, if you’re going to work with me, this is how it works.” I focus on what I want, not on things I don’t want. When you focus on what you don’t want, you’re going to get more of that. What you focus on is what you’re going to get.
Split-second transformation, change your words, change your life. Thirty-one daily practices. It works.
Even with people being with me, I’m like, “If you’re going to work with me on this, I need that energy just for us to speak about the things we want. We can draw more of that to us.” It’s called Let’s Talk About and we’re going to do a little talk show on it. My husband, Robert, when we got together, I’m like, “I’m on a healing journey, and I’m going to be selfish on it. I’m going to be selfish on my healing journey.” I have to focus on the good energy around me so I can draw more of that. I cannot have anything negative because I was not at the strength to absorb somebody’s negative energy. He’s not on that. I just wanted to make sure he was on the same page as me to walk that path with me. He did a great job.
It was fast.
It was a year and a half.
I wanted you on my show 2 or 3 times.
After my mother passed, I was doing really good, from October to January. When my mother passed in January, some drama came out with a family member, and it was unhealthy. I started having episodes again, and I just went, “No. My health is more important than somebody’s negative energy. I’m no good to anybody if I allow that in my life. I just don’t.” When somebody does approach me with that energy, I’m just like, “I love you. Yeah, I love you. When you’re ready to be authentic in your life, I’m there for you.”
Chicken Story
We all carry an energy, and it’s not woo-woo. It’s science. They can look and take pictures of your aura and your energy, certainly in your brain, and literally, negative thoughts cause your brain to get darker.
It’s awful. I would do this thing, and you experienced it with the chicken.
I witnessed, and I knew she has this gift, and she calls it her knowing. I believe it’s just the spirit in her that she’s attuned to in a lot of ways.
We all have that ability.
We all have it. We’ve not just been taught about it. We’ve been cut off from it. Intentionally, I think, in a lot of our systems that are out here, especially in the United States.
Not just that, too. I find that a lot of people want to label and study it and define it as, “You are this,” or, “You’re this,” or, “You’re that.” Every being in my body, every ounce of me, I remember when you had a friend that was a healer, and you were like, “You should meet her.” Not because of that, but because I had a sense of falseness about her, and it turned out to be true, that one particular person. I just know, for me, as long as I’m authentic and I am transparent in that authenticity, I’m just provided with the knowing. The chicken story, I’ll share that, and you can add to it.
Absolutely. We have pictures of it.
We even have a picture of it. I had met a mutual friend who has since passed. I don’t want to say. I don’t know if I can, but yeah.
Sweet friend.
Yes. He had identified in his world who I was and was like, “You can do these gifts.” It’s like they’re unlimited. The first time I did it, my little dog got hurt and jumped off the bed. I just instinctively touched her hip. The way I can explain it is I just push all my energy out. It’s like a physical feeling and so much. My hands were on her. My hands kept sweating . She was fine within seconds, but my hands kept sweating over and over again. I had to reach out to this particular friend of ours and say, “I had never done this. What’s going on? My hands won’t stop sweating. It’s been a couple of hours.” It’s like the other side’s waiting for acknowledgement. The moment you acknowledge this, it’s going to go on. It was true. The moment I acknowledged it, it stopped.
You said, “Thank you for your help.”
What actually happened was that whatever energy I had was able to be transformed or transferred over to my little dog at the time. That’s it. As long as I acknowledge that that actually happened, and not just, “Okay, was this real?” When it first happens, you’re like, “Is this real? Did this really just happen?”
It was just a coincidence.
I’m way better at it. I would say a year later, you were visiting, and I had this dog, a rescue dog that would take my chickens and bury them alive. Marley was my little Crested Polish that we just love to death.
I couldn’t remember Marley.
She had like a little rocker hair, feather hair. We had come home, and Marley was missing. I’m like, “Willie has buried her somewhere. We looked all over the property, and the grass was tall because the flowers were coming in. The wildflowers were all in. It was really tall. We looked and looked and we could not find her. We went to bed, and there was a huge storm that night too..
The next morning, we were sitting on the porch, and I remembered one time my late husband had lost his book, this little planner book. He had told me about it, and I just closed my eyes and visualized it. There it was, in the trunk of my car. He drove like four months ago. I just went right to the car. I’ve done that with keys. I opened the door, and there they are. I was sitting with you on the porch, and I was like, “I know where she’s at.” I got up, and I walked straight towards her, and I looked down.
This is a silly detail. It doesn’t matter in the story, but I feel like you’re like, “I’ve got to go find her.” You turned that way and then that, and then all of a sudden, you stopped. “No, that way.” You went to the corner.
Of the house, the property. When you looked down at the ground, you could not tell at all. It wasn’t like a dug-up spot or anything like that. On top of that, there were moles, groundhogs. There were moles everywhere, too. After the storm and everything, I looked down, and I just started digging and pulled her out, and she had been there for 24 hours.
Buried alive.
She was in a coma. She thinks I brought her back from the dead, but she was in a coma. It was just so intense. I’m like, “I’m going to do this.” I did it. I put my energy on her, and you were taking pictures. I did that thing where I just pushed all of that energy out that I had. She stood up.
She stood up, and you had a towel there, and you wrapped her up, and we put her in the house. She got to visit with us in the house for a couple of days. She was ragged, muddy, and lots of feathers missing and had blood. She had been just buried.
I think she might have had a superficial injury.
Anyway, I’m watching this energy. Carlene, you’re sitting on the porch. Next thing we know, we’ve got a chicken.
We have Marley bouncing around.
I’m so glad you remember the name because I loved it.
Healing Oneself
I had over 70. I’ve got Marley, Ozzie. I had so many chickens. That was an experience, but just like with the foundation or anything else that I do, I get these wonderful visions. I remember after Patrick had passed, and I bought the restaurant and sold the restaurant. I was not able to walk. I wasn’t able to talk. I was super sick. I wasn’t seeing anything. I realized it’s because you’re looking at your sickness. I said, “If you get something in the diagnosis.” I said this in 3 talks in 2 weeks. You get diagnosed with something, but you don’t claim it. You might have it.
That was the issue. You shift and quit claiming, and you do what you got to do, but you see yourself. You’ll see the vision of what you want. If you get this ease is just something out there, but it’s not who you are. You speak what you want, not what you don’t want.
Not what you don’t want. I found myself saying things that I didn’t want. I was like, “What are you doing?”
Cancel.
I’m like, “This isn’t one of those things where I have to change my perspective because I cannot change my circumstances. This is one of those where I can change my circumstances.” I did that in San Francisco. I have no traces of any of those autoimmune diseases, almost to where it made me feel nuts at first. I was like, “While I’m here, I’m actually going to get my medical records from my doctors,” because it almost makes you feel like, “Were all these doctors wrong for eighteen years?”
I know they were not, but to have a doctor look at you, a rheumatologist, and be like, “Why are you here?” I’m like, “For you to tell me that I don’t need to be here.” Everyone’s going, “Where are you going down there?” I said, “To get confirmation that I’m healed through their perspective, through their eyes too.”
You have a story with an ending. It’s like you’ve got this happen in the story. I lived it.
I’m still blown away by it because to have a doctor tell you you have no traces. Even Hashimoto’s, it doesn’t go away. You have no traces. My doctor had told me my thyroid, which is what it would attack. Normally, after twenty years of having something like that, it’s trashed. Not at all. Not only that, I had some nodules on my parathyroid that just disappeared, just completely gone.
I’ve said this many times, and some of the people that have been healed, if God can create it, He can heal it. If it is created by the creator, then why can’t He heal it? Are you kidding? I watched a heartbeat on an ultrasound, and my first guest when I started my show was Michael Parker and Dale, because we found out later it was less than a 1% chance of him being alive the next morning. I was watching the heartbeat, and I wouldn’t let him speak death at all. I was like, “If God can create that heartbeat, then He can heal it.” It was on the ultrasound. I was the only one in there besides him.
I live that way. My belief is I don’t believe in getting sick. I don’t get sick. I don’t attract that. It’s not arrogance. Jesus said we can do what He did and even more, which I was never taught growing up. I don’t think that verse was mentioned very often. John 14:12, if you want to look it up, says we can do what Jesus did and even more, and this isn’t religion at all. He gave us the authority to do what He did and even more. Why are we so powerless?
I think it comes back to being, again, 100% authentic and transparent. It’s like, “Yes, this is what I did. Yes, this is how I felt.” Yes, you receive the answers that you need. It’s when we’re not authentic that the negative energy doesn’t. It’s not going to come to us. Being faced with a disease like what Patrick had, there is no explanation. There is no cure.
There is always a beautiful message in it all. No matter how painful that was to walk, the hardest walk I’ve ever done was to walk Patrick home. It was very hard. A disease with a younger person like that, they’re strong, they’re healthy, everything, but their mind and the violence, the things that these women go through with this disease, is just unreal. When you’re faced with a disease like that, one of the things that can change your perspective is that it changes your circumstances. When you cannot change your circumstances, change your perspective. It does change your circumstance.
When you cannot change your circumstances, change your perspective. Share on XThings show up. I just don’t attract something that said, and the bad, the evil. I’m outrageously optimistic, even if things are as bad as they look out there. I’m not naive. It’s not that I don’t know, but I’m outrageously optimistic that in my life, me, Charla, I just don’t attract the bad stuff. I’ve got a resistance to it.
Nobody can hurt your feelings, make you angry or get you upset without your permission. These people, this is one of the things that I liked telling my grandkids at one time. Maybe it was blessed, but I’m not; it was just maybe blessed. A master is one who blesses. We don’t have unconditional love, unconditional forgiveness, or unconditional boundaries.
We do not have to surround ourselves with the negative. When we’re there, I say often, “Everything is working out for me. Everything is always working out for me. Thank you.” I just walk in this stance of, “I just don’t attract the negative.” There are so many people who are attracted to our energy and want to be with us, even if they don’t understand why.
Glass Ceiling
I remember we were talking about perspective and things that are negative and how we view them. I was at a conference once in my old world, and they had said, “When you think of a glass ceiling, what do you think of?” When you think of a glass ceiling, I’m like, “It’s a window of opportunity. I just love it.” I can just see unlimited potential because most ceilings to me are solid. If I have a glass ceiling, that means I have a window that I can see so much opportunity. Everyone’s like, “That’s not what we think about.”
You get what you think about.
I had not heard of the glass ceiling metaphor before. I had not heard that expression. My thought was instant, a window.
What a gift it was to those ladies to have that shift of perspective if they allowed it.
A glass ceiling, to me, is just a great, big old window of all of these opportunities that we can reach. Windows can be opened, and windows can be broken. It’s there for me when I’m ready.
Exactly. There are no limits, and there are no limits. We put them on ourselves. We put ourselves in these little boxes, but if you don’t like where you are, you can change that. You can’t change the second, but you can only change the next one, and you get to choose. You get to choose what you’re going to say or do. Unlike your circumstances right this second, your next word or your next step should be towards what you want.
Zig Ziglar, what was it? I just lost it. I’ll get it back. You’ve said it before.
You can do everything in life if you have enough people.
I’ll get it. I’ll get it again. It’s one of my, “If you don’t like change, you’ll like irrelevance a lot less.” I think that was one of his.
I do not recall that.
If you do not like change, it might not be his, but I believe it was, “If you do not like change, you’re going to like irrelevance a lot less.” I love change.
I don’t think I’ve heard that. That may not be Zig.
It may not be.
It doesn’t matter. It’s the truth, nonetheless. I’m happy you’ve said it.
Moving Forward
Moving forward, I’m actually a caregiver for my brother-in-law, and we live with him. He can’t live on his own, and it’s nice creating my own little environment there. I planted flowers, got my bird feeders going, got my garden and my little fish pond going. I love growing food. I still love cooking. I’m definitely excited to get this property in Texas as a caregiver retreat. I have another property that I bought up by Lassen in Northern California, which is in the woods. It’s so beautiful. I would love for that to be a widowed retreat.
Something really cool happened. I was on my way with my mother to look at properties because I was going to buy a property out there. We were driving, and I was just taking roads, not following my little directions. We were headed to this one property. I turned in a direction my map wasn’t supposed to go, but apparently, I was. We pulled into this part. There was a sell sign. We pulled into this property, and I’m like, “Mom, this isn’t on my list. This is where I need to be.” I kept feeling Patrick with me as we were turning the corners. I kept telling my mother, “I feel Patrick. I feel him.”
We got to this property, and I’m like, “This is it. I don’t know how or why or where, but this is what I’m supposed to have.” There was a sell sign on it, but it was not listed anywhere. I got in touch with the people behind me. I got a realtor up there, and it turned out the property had sold but didn’t go through because that Friday before I came up, this was on a Monday, the deal had fallen through. It gets even more beautiful. It was my first piece of property to buy, and I was widowed at that time. The lady I bought it from was widowed. That was her fee, and she’s remarried.
It was her first piece of property she bought when widowed from somebody widowed. It turned out that the history of this property since 1956 was that the only people who had ever owned it were widowed people. Before I knew that, I had already told my mom and the other lady, “The neighbor behind me, I think it’s sold. Let me check with my friend.” I said, “No, it didn’t. This is mine. I’m supposed to be here.”
This is going to be a widowed retreat. I didn’t know the story behind it, didn’t know anything about it, I just felt it. That’s our next project. I bought it. That one will be a widowed retreat, but the ladies in my support group want to do the same thing. They want to open up their homes, the ones that are on the widowed side, and allow.
Healing.
Correct. Allow women to.
Mostly who’s lost their husband.
Currently walking. For that one, yes, that one’s the widowed one. I was saying earlier, after losing him, I just felt like I needed a place to just veg, and that’s what that place was. It was beautiful. It’s in the woods. I have my own little woods by Lake McCumber. It’s just beautiful.
What do you collect?
What do you mean? Heart rocks.
Heart-shaped rocks.
I probably have about 2,000 of them. I can’t help but see them anymore. Actually, when I’m walking, I’m like, “Don’t pick it up. Don’t touch it.” Sometimes I’ll pick up a bunch of them and then I’ll put them in piles so people can get them and see them. It doesn’t matter where I’m going, I’m going to see a heart rock. I had asked for signs.
Remember the ladybug signs? The first time it happened, I was reading this book called The Light Between Us, and I read it in one day. I’d never read a book about anything like this, but I was drawn to read this book and I read it in one night. There’s thirteen certified psychics, as they would say, in the United States, and she’s one of the thirteen. Everything she was saying, I was like, “I could relate to. Yes.”
You’re just not certified.
I don’t go that route, but I’m losing my train of thought. Sorry.
The ladybugs.
Asking for signs. That went with my heart rocks. I would find a few and stuff. I told my mom as she was crossing, “Show me all the heart rocks, Mom.” I’ve found at least, like I said, close to 2,000. They’re all over the place, all over our property. Laura Lynne’s book showed me you can ask for a sign that you’re getting this right.
If I’m not mistaken, you were in your beautiful closet, bathtub, or wherever you were reading.
I had just finished reading it the night before.
We were on the phone.
When Patrick was still alive, he was in the living room. We were getting ready for a drive. It was like 7:00 in the morning, and we were going to drive a back road. I had a vision. I kept saying, “Okay, I want to try this with purpose,” because I would just have things come to me without explanation. I would go to complete strangers. I’m like, “Does this make sense to you?” Sometimes, I couldn’t eat dinner, and I couldn’t do anything until I was at a restaurant. I couldn’t do anything without having that conversation because it wouldn’t leave me. It made sense to all of them, whoever I would speak to, I’d be in a bathroom for an hour and a half at dinner with some strange
That sounds weird.
We were crying, and it was a lady in the bathroom. That would happen a lot. You can ask for it. You can control it. I’m like, “You can ask for signs.” I had this thing where I saw, “Okay, I’m going to try this.” I’m in the bathtub and I’m hollering to Patrick, “There’s a horse in a field. It makes sense, Old Yeller, a horse, a field.” I would describe a trucker hat. I said, “Did your grandpa wear a trucker?” He’s like, “No.”
Mind you, my late husband was struggling with dementia because of the Alzheimer’s. Nothing was correlating, but I kept getting Todd, his cousin, in my head, too. I’m like, “I can ask for a sign. Okay, show me ladybugs in December.” I kept getting Todd and I’m like, “No, I don’t want this for Todd. I want this for Patrick.” It was important for him, for me, to have him believe that this can happen, even though he would see it all the time in my life.
He would just say, “You’re lucky. You’re intuitive. You’re just lucky.” I’m like, “How do you get so specific, though?” I called Jane, Todd’s wife. I left a message at 7:00 in the morning, because they were sleeping, “Does this make sense to Todd? I don’t know.” We go for a drive, we come back, and no ladybugs. I take off my boot, and there’s one ladybug as I take it off on the porch. I’m like, “Okay, I know I have it.”
Patrick was going to go to this funeral. I don’t go to funerals, but he was going to go to a funeral for somebody who was a family friend. I want to say his name was Lee. He goes out, and in the meantime, I call her because I’m so excited that a ladybug was on the porch, one ladybug, after driving around for an hour and a half, not seeing one. One was on the porch when I got back and took my boot off. I’m all excited. I’m telling her the whole story. Todd comes in. He had just got back from the funeral, and he has this funeral thing.
The brochure thing.
I’m on the phone with her, and I’m doing dishes. I take it he’s talking to me. In the meantime, he’s telling me, “They even had his horse there.” I look at the picture. It’s this man in a cowboy hat. I’m like, “That’s not him.” He says, “The horse, Old Yeller or something like that.” I’m like, “What?” She’s on the phone with me.
I’d already told her all of this story. I’m like, “Give me that.” I open it up. There’s the trucker hat. There’s the face I saw. I’m like, “Patrick, Old Yeller, a horse, a field, the trucker hat, you and Todd.” I’m like, “Was he with your grandpa?” He goes, “Yeah. We used to ride horses when we were little together in this field with him.”
All the things I saw. I’m freaking out. Of course, he’s ignoring me because he’s like, “Okay, one of her weird stuff.” He goes up to meet a man for the road. I’m still on the phone with her. I’m so excited. I’m telling her about it. I’m walking in the bedroom to pull up the mini blinds. I’m like, “There’s another ladybug on the window,” and as I’m pulling it up, I see another one, and another one. I opened it up, and the whole window, just where I slept on my side of the bed, was covered in ladybugs, probably like 1,000 of them. It was freaky.
It gives me chills because I was witnessing this.
I’m on the phone with her with the face. I’m showing her, but I’m also having to take pictures with my other camera because I’m on the phone. I can’t take pictures with that phone. I go outside, and the whole wall is just covered with it. It was my first experience like that. Unreal that you can ask for a sign that you’re in the right thing. My signs are a lot more simpler. I get chills.
Goosebumps.
I would get those. I acknowledge that that’s what it is when I’m on the right.
You mentioned a while ago something, one of the first things, I think, that you acknowledged was we had a mutual friend, and you said no, another mutual friend. You mentioned the name. Does this name mean anything to you? It was a really weird name.
Wait. Theresia.
That’s something. Shinigwa.
No.
It doesn’t matter.
That was with Janice Ballard. I barely knew Janice. I had just met her at a party, and she was drawn to come and talk with me and I was living in Grapevine at the time. What was that name? Sharicia?
Something really strange. It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t Debbie.
I was talking to her, and I said, “Does this mean anything to you? Just this crazy name,” back when I was boldly just doing it. She just looks at me, and I’m like, “Okay, hold that thought.” There’s no way I would know that name. She’s like, “No.” Tears started coming down. I’m like, “Okay, here,” but it’s always the same message. It doesn’t matter who I’m talking to.
It’s so cool. You can confirm that there’s no way I would know this. I would say, “I’m not a psychic at all.” I would say, “What you’re feeling is accurate. You’ve been praying and asking for signs.” I’m like, “Foxworthy, here’s your sign.” That’s what happened. What she was thinking and feeling was absolutely correct about this particular person. The whole message is this. Listen. Listen to the other side. They’ll tell you, and I’m just giving you a confirmation of it. That’s all. It’s always the same. You have the same ability. You just needed some encouragement to show that you’re on the right path. That’s what that is.
I’ve seen it too many times with you, certainly even with me and with others. When we choose, choose to listen. Be still and know. Listen a few minutes. Just turn off your devices for a second, get grounded, and start listening to that still small voice inside of you. It’s the God in you, the breath of life in you, the I am in you.
That was interesting. We’ve done a lot of, well, I’ve done a lot of meditation, a lot of grounding. I didn’t know what grounding was. It just felt really good to go outside, take my shoes off, and put them on the ground when the sun was rising. I called it recharging. People would always put labels on it, “That’s what you’re doing. It’s called grounding.” It’s like, “Okay.” I hate labels. I’m not a fan of labels at all.
Once you get a label, you get it in the system as a label. You’re going to be that forever, no matter what, as far as the medical systems are out there wanting to keep us.
In that box.
Yes.
Labeling People
Let’s put you in a box and label you. I found out that if you label a child early enough, and I’m just going to speak from California because that’s the only place that I know about, but I’m sure it’s everywhere, you get paid as a parent every time your child has another label added to them. “They’re ADHD. They have this, they have this, they have that.” They actually send you a check and pay you.
To disable your child.
Exactly. Yes. The money’s supposed to be used to help them and whatnot. It blew me away. No wonder there are so many kids with so many labels.
Mental illness is so high, and people are so anxious all the time. “I got my anxiety.”
I’ve never seen a generation that can’t stand labels yet wants to label everything. “Don’t label me, but yet I’m this, this, and this, and you better recognize that.”
“I’m going to be offended if you don’t, even if you don’t know I have that.”
Correct. I’m not a fan of that.
Nobody can offend you without your permission. It’s not all about you.
Stop it. Quit labeling yourself.
Episode Wrap-up
What do you want to say? We’ve got just a couple more minutes, and I’m so happy to have you back in my presence and space.
Thank you. I’m glad to be back in here.
It’s not been a lot of times over the years, but it’s been impactful times every time. You’re getting to be a guest with me, and I spent a few days.
With you. Beautiful house. She’s done such a fabulous job. She’s got an Airbnb here, in case you didn’t know it. I’m drinking the mushroom.
I’ve been drinking the mushroom memory-enhancing coffee. She’s drinking that. I’m drinking my zeal. I’ve already taken my Zenzino. We’ve got some things that are physically just natural, amazing things. I would love for you to reach out at Charla@CharlaAnderson.com and we can find what works best.
We’ll be updating our website, WeWalkThisTogether.org, and updating it once we get our committee done and our gala stuff out there. I’m excited for that, where we can raise some funds. Women will be able to leave their significant other in care with someone and come and have a retreat.
At really no cost to them.
Zero costs.
They get to have a freedom vacation. That property is lovely, and that’s a nice, sweet town.
We’ll do an Airbnb during profitable days. I’m going to be booking it out because it has to be self-sustaining. It doesn’t always work for women to be able to take the weekend to come because it’s harder for the family member to come and care for their loved one. It’s easier for them to leave with a paid caregiver on the weekdays. Weekends are just hard to get caregivers. I said that reverse, but yeah, we’re excited about that. They’ll be able to come out and just be. No agenda.
It’ll just be peaceful for them to get away. People find you on Facebook primarily. Your email is jacked up.
I’ve had three email accounts get hijacked. I don’t understand how. The one I just opened up, they shut it down immediately and said illegal stuff is happening, but they won’t tell me what’s illegal. I’ve never even done anything on it yet.
You haven’t got a response.
No, it’s just crazy.
Anyway, so Facebook.com/CarleneMcCaughey. Anyway, we’ve had a great time. Thank you so much for being my guest.
Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Finally coming together, and you flying in a day earlier than you were going to so that you could do this live in person and with skin on.
Love you.
Love you too. Thank you so much for reading and having fun with us and hope you learned a lot. Don’t forget that you are perfect exactly who and where you are, no matter where that is. You can’t do one thing to make God love you more or less. Just learn to love yourself enough to receive that. Remember to always choose a joy.
Important Link
About Carlene McCaughey
Meet Carlene Clark McCaughey, a resilient and compassionate leader. With a journey spanning California, Louisiana, and Texas, Carlene has overcome challenges with courage and determination.
As a seasoned Business Director, Carlene has driven success in medical, dental, and surgical practices. She also owned a restaurant and an international consulting company, guiding businesses globally, with projects spanning London and Kuwait. Her achievements earned her numerous awards, including Business of the Year and Volunteer of the Year.
After losing her husband Patrick to Younger Onset Alzheimer’s, Carlene founded ‘We Walk This Together’ (www.wwthistogether.org), supporting women caring for their significant others affected by Younger Onset Alzheimer’s.
Carlene’s inspiring story has been featured in multiple books, showcasing her business acumen and resilience. In Red Bluff, California, she unites the community through her social media platform, ‘Let’s Talk Red Bluff.’ She’s served on executive boards, chaired galas, and wrote and directed an award-winning film.
With husband Robert, Carlene explores Northern California, gardens, and collects heart-shaped rocks. Her mantra? ‘Creating the changes I wish to see in this world.
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I’m Charla Anderson, host of The Charla Anderson Show, Collector & Connector of Fascinating People (and EVERYONE is Fascinating!) on live TV, streaming and podcasts. As a Ziglar Legacy Certified Trainer, a retired award-winning flight attendant, Olympic Torch bearer, personal development junkie, Inspired Speaker, Published Author and Your Courageous Coach, I want to share my passion of living life full-out, saying YES to intriguing opportunities, and encouraging YOU to do the same. Let’s jump on a discovery call and get to know each other. Find all things Charla at CharlaAnderson.com/links.
On The Charla Anderson Show, We discuss Mindset, How much Your WORDS matter, Princess to Queen energy, mantras, HOPE, Faith, Miracles, Overcoming, and much, much more, including learning from amazing guests.
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