Vicki Goodman’s Message on Grief Will Start a Movement!
About Vicki Paris Goodman
Vicki Paris Goodman grew up in Los Angeles and now resides in the mountains of central Arizona. A retired mechanical engineer and real estate appraiser, she also served a Long Beach-area newspaper as theater critic for over twenty years. She is a singer and semi-professional violinist, and enjoys hiking with her greyhound, Hugo.
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Introduction
Good, beautiful day, beautiful, beautiful souls! This is Charla Anderson, host of the Charla Anderson Show~Collector & Connector of Fascinating People (& EVERYONE is Fascinating!), especially you. You’re not going to believe this today… we’ve got someone whose message is on grief and a new way of dealing with it. Vicki Goodman is going to just wow us with some different perspectives on grief. …BUT FIRST…
We’re going to do our 22 second mini vacation, our little breathing exercise. We’re going to breathe in calm for 7 seconds. We’re going to hold for 4 seconds and release gratitude for 11 seconds. So would you join me here? Let’s breathe in some calm. Here we go.
Hold, release, relax. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I love to have my little mini vacation there and get us settled in a little bit.
So today, Vicki, I am so excited to have you with us. You showed up on my radar, I believe through the need a guest program or something along that line, right?
Yes.
So it’s Vicki Paris Goodman, and inspire grief, InspiredGrief.com
Yes, although that’s actually been updated now to https://vickiparisgoodman.com, because I have a new book out.
Okay, cool. I’m excited about this. So I wanna just open it up. Let’s just have our conversation. A little girl time here, and just tell me who you are in this world, and we’ll talk about what you do. And how did you come up with a new way to grieve, so to speak.
Oh, my God, it’s quite a story, Charla, and thank you so much for having me. Well, I am a retired mechanical engineer, and actually I had a second career as a real estate appraiser. I live in the mountains of Central Arizona and I lived the 1st 60 years of my life in Southern California, which is where you know I worked and I grew up. Then we retired to Arizona with my husband, Sam in 2016, and then he passed in 2019. But a little more about me. I have written 2 books now, one about my experience after losing Sam. I have been singing and playing the violin since age 7. I was a theater reviewer on the side in Southern California for over 20 years, which is where I got most of my writing experience.
Once, I decided it was pretty pretty easy. So yeah, that’s me. And now, I am really making a huge effort to get this message of mine which we’re going to talk about out to the world. It really needs to start a movement so that people don’t grieve so long and so hard because we really need to see death and loss in a whole new way than our culture has conditioned us to think of it.
That’s fascinating. I agree with you. There are people that grieve for decades right? And there’s people that I was told once in a course I was taking everyone. I think we think you minimize loss.
I didn’t know what that meant, really. But you know I had lost my dad, my mom. And then I’d lost my dad, and I had just retired from my 34 year career, and you know, and and I just it’s like spilled milk. Just keep going right? So it doesn’t mean that we don’t grieve, but hanging on to it might be another story. So I want to feel like there’s some moment I mean, you lost your husband in 2019. Your love of your life is what you said, and.
Yes.
And you rebounded, so to speak, pretty soon.
Yes, very, very quickly, actually, while I was grieving. So first of all, I want to tell you that I was raised in a very secular family. Nobody in my family believes in anything. Spiritually speaking.
I had begun, along with Sam some years ago, to believe in a higher power, just because it no longer made any sense to me that all of this around us just kind of spontaneously appeared on its own. But I hadn’t taken that belief very far. It remained a pretty rudimentary faith on the day Sam died, and a very interesting thing happened. He was sick for 2 years from the diagnosis we received soon after moving to Arizona until his passing. We had 2 years and a year and a half of that was actually really good. He did so well on treatment.
He didn’t lose any weight. He just remained, you know, he kept working out. He did really well, and we weren’t expecting that. So that was a real blessing. So it wasn’t until the last few months that he kind of went into decline. On the day he passed, I was suddenly flooded with optimism. It was unseemly, I thought, what is going on here? And it was as if a helping hand. That’s what I call it, the helping hand that came from outside myself to kind of guide me. And the reason I recognize this is something that wasn’t me, or or at least it didn’t seem like it was all coming from me was because it just wasn’t my nature. It’s not that I’m a pessimistic person, but I’m not particularly optimistic, and the helping hand that seemed like it was coming from outside of me to guide me in a particular direction didn’t feel like something I had experienced before, so I thought, “What’s going on here?”
But I made the decision to go with it even as unseemly as the timing was, I thought you know, I was so strong during our 2 year ordeal and I took such good care of Sam during the last couple of months of his illness when he needed taking care of that. I thought, if good things want to come my way, even on the day he passes. Maybe I should let them. Anyway, I decided to go with that and it was the best decision I could have made. Insights began to come my way, serendipitous events happened that made me think, oh, Sam is maybe still with me.
And the timing of things just seemed perfect. All of a sudden, you know, when is timing perfect? Over and over and over again throughout our lives? Something was divinely inspired about this, and you asked about a moment. Well, it may not have been exactly a moment, but it was a thing that happened. The Hospice we used offered me a support group that they sponsored. And I said yes to that. But the really relevant thing that happened was that they also offered me meetings with their chaplain about once a month, for an entire year after Sam passed, and I said yes to that. I had met her before, and I liked her, and I thought, that’ll be good.
So, on my first meeting with the chaplain, I wanted to know about the afterlife. You know this belief system was so rudimentary. I hadn’t taken it very far, as I said before and suddenly it mattered about the afterlife, because I wanted to know if Sam’s soul was still around, and if so, where it was, and she told me some things. But the best thing she did was, she recommended that I read the story of a secular neurosurgeon who had had a brain infection, been in a coma for 7 days, and during that coma had a near death experience.
He had always poo-pooed the near-death experiences of his patients. His story is so divinely inspired. He had no wound of the kind that to even contract this infection to begin with.
Then his colleagues, who were taking care of him in the hospital, couldn’t get the infection under control. He was going to die, which was, they said, a good thing because his brain was destroyed from this infection, and if he did come back he would be in a vegetative state for the rest of his life. So, anyway, without going into too much detail on that, the unbelievable thing about his story is that he came back to write the book, go on speaking tours, resumed his neurosurgery career, no brain damage whatsoever. I found his story and his description of the afterlife so convincing, so persuasive, that it brought me. It alone brought me the rest of the way to fully believing in God in an afterlife, and it’s now been 5 and a half years since Sam passed, and all of this happened and I haven’t wavered at all in that time.
So here I am, fully believing in God, and an afterlife after being raised so secular and one of the things that happened after Sam passed also was opportunities started coming my way to do things that I maybe couldn’t have done had Sam lived. For example, I wound up going on this exotic vacation to Antarctica. It was an expedition cruise and you know, I needed an adventure after Sam passed. I just felt like I needed to go somewhere. Well, I didn’t get to go for another 2 and a half years because Covid happened. And so that trip was postponed twice 2 years in a row. But I finally got to go. Sam didn’t like cold weather vacations.
So you know, here I was doing things I didn’t know I could sing. Now I sing in public. Some friends said, come to Karaoke. You don’t have to sing, but it’s a great group of people, and you know you need to get out and do things. So I did, and it turned out I could really sing. So you know, here I am having new experiences while I’m grieving and I am so grateful. I am so filled with gratitude for the way this happened. I am simply the messenger of all of this. I don’t think most of the insights I received, and I haven’t even begun to talk about the insights yet.
Well, I’m this is so, to me, it’s fascinating. So he died. And all of a sudden you’re filled with optimism and kind of excitement which is not the normal grieving reaction. And you took it. You received it as a gift, I suppose. And then take this optimism and find out that there’s, you know, find it. Talk to a chaplain, and find out and read a great book. I mean to me. All this is really fascinating. While you’re grieving while you’re having to deal with the aftermath of a death and all that.
I know when I send a sympathy card, I wrote something one time, and I was, and I use it in there a lot, I said. Imagine that you know your loved one is dancing with the angels, and knows and has all knowledge. I love that.
Yes.
All knowledge. They know everything, and then in my world I have guardian angels. I know that I have folks that are, you know, protecting me or guiding me at times. I just know that I do. And so I I like this conversation that you’re
you were able to receive his gift of living a fuller, happier, more optimistic life. You feel like it kind of was coming from him. Is that right?
From God.
God, through him.
It’s funny what you said about knowing everything, because not everyone knows about that. The neurosurgeon talked about having known everything while he was having his near death experience. You know it makes sense because God knows everything. And if you’re at one with God, you’re going to know everything that God knows, you know, and he says I knew everything about history, the history of the universe.
Maths, physics, chemistry, everything he says, you know. Then you come back. And your brain is the limiting factor. And it’s funny because he says, not in his book, but in something else. I read something by this same neurosurgeon online. He says the brain is like a filter or reducing valve that takes all the knowledge of the universe down into a manageable amount for us to deal with as human beings. I guess God designed us that way.
So he didn’t know everything when he came back. Obviously, but he remembers having known everything during his near death experience. And what’s convincing about these near death experiences, in my view, is that if you read or watch Youtube videos about some which I have done. Now they report a lot of the same things, and they report some different things, too.
They’re not all the same by any stretch of the imagination, but they have a lot of things in common which lends credibility to their existence. You know, like the light at the end of the tunnel. And yeah, you know, and being greeted by someone you knew who passed before you. you know, when you first arrive those kinds of things. Everyone seems to report that.
And why would anybody make that up? I don’t think if you didn’t experience it, it would be easy to make something like that up, so I don’t know. That’s me.
Yeah, I mean, none of this is a hundred percent. But it’s pretty close. Once you read or listen to enough of these experiences. you know, and a lot of these people are reporting it, obviously not really knowing that much about other people’s near death experiences. There aren’t that many people that actually study these things. So you know, they’re just reporting what they experienced.
Did you read 90 min in heaven?
No, I haven’t read that one yet.
I guess I didn’t actually meet him. I think I shook his hand, but he was speaking somewhere, and I was like. It’s pretty fascinating, you know, to see these. you know, reemergence, and most and many. He, for one, did not want to come back out of that beautiful space, right? So.
Well, the neurosurgeon didn’t, either.
He?
He heard his youngest son crying next to his bedside, and he said, I really want to stay, because it’s such a beautiful place, even though he had a wonderful marriage. Wonderful family, wonderful career. He wanted to stay. and he said, No, I can’t. I’ll have to wait and go later. And he came back. And that’s reported by quite a few people, too. That kind of thing.
Yeah, wow, I just found it. I love it. I just love the topic. Years ago. Was it Kubler, Ross, Elizabeth Kubler, Ross, or someone who was 1st putting these stories together decades ago. Right?
Right.
So when this time happens and you’re trying hard to, or you’re not trying hard. Things are coming easy for you. The synchronicities are flowing, all of those kinds of things which other people around you find it odd for you.
I don’t know. My closest friends, you know. We’re sort of in on all of this as it was happening, because I was sort of telling them about it on a daily basis.
Other people, acquaintances, interesting. I felt like I was happy, but I couldn’t.
You know a lot. Some of them would see me, and in deference to my loss they would sort of diminish their smiles, and, you know, speak in a way that was extra sensitive to me, and I felt compelled to sort of minimize my you know the way I was coming across, too.
So because I didn’t want to have to explain this weird stuff before I understood it myself. It took me a while to kind of get a handle on all of it. And so I was kind of glad when a year had gone by and they stopped doing that. And I could be, you know, I could feel okay about just being happy if I was happy that day. And you know, having a big smile on my face. So, yeah, that was kind of interesting. So acquaintances. Yeah, it was a little bit of a problem in terms of my having to kind of diminish me.
He’s in heaven dancing with the angels. I’m optimistic, you know. This is not the norm. And this is what I believe. The movement you’re talking about. Our people are saying you’re starting a movement, or it needs to be a movement to handle grief differently, to handle it in a more optimistic way, and to realize that they’re in such a better place. And yes, it’s our loss. And, in fact, as a flight attendant all those years when I started flying internationally, I told my kids I was like, look you know, if something happens to me. I’m okay. I’m gonna be. I’ll be fine. It’s just, you know those have been left behind. Having to deal with the void is kind of the way I saw it even back then. Right? So does that.
Well, you know it absolutely does. You need to process the loss. You know this was a person. If it’s a spouse, it’s someone you shared your entire life with in your home. And suddenly, they’re not physically present anymore. Yeah, you need to process those changes to your life. You know, as human beings. We don’t like uncertainty, the unknown, radical change, you know. We’re just not comfortable with it, and all of that needs to be processed. So one of the tips I’ll call it that I would give to survivors of loss is to create a balance between all those new exciting activities.
That you that I’m hoping, after. I tell you what some of my insights were that you can have immediately after, after a loss. You have to create a balance between those things that you’re doing. that are giving you pleasure and giving you fun out of life.
And some quiet time which can be just sitting and thinking, or reading a book, or taking a walk or a hike. You need to have that time to process. What’s happened to your life, even if you can be happy about the fact that your loved one has gone to this beautiful place maybe earlier than you might have expected.
So what I did was, I wrote my book before some of the best of these insights came to me. So the book is more about my experiences moving into this next chapter of life so positively because I thought the story could help others, regardless of their belief system.
So the book is called to Sam with Love and the byline is a surviving spouse’s story of inspired grief.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Sandwich love, and they can get that from Vicki.
vickiparisgoodman.com
That’s VICKI, because ultimately, this is more podcast. More than TV, you know, visual. So VICKI PARIS GOODMAN. I like to spell it out for folks, but that. Thank you.
Book at discount on that, and you’ve got a second book coming out as well.
Yeah, the second book is out, but that’s on another topic. And I would like to talk about that a little bit later, Charla.
Sure. Yeah, let’s just keep going with this to me. It’s fascinating to just feel like you’ve been inspired by grief right? I mean inspired to be and have an optimistic outlook after loss.
Well, it’s the story of my inspired grief, and I’m hoping, you know, that this movement that I’m making a big effort to put out there the message that I’m putting out there that I hope will start a movement. Let’s put it that way.
will allow others to experience what I call inspired grief. You know it’s kind of an oxymoron until you understand my experience and my message, and then I think it makes all the sense in the world. So what I did with Sam, with love. I spent about a 3rd of it talking about my husband, Sam’s life because he was a wonderful man. Everyone adored Sam because he was so decent and so kind and he was funny. He had the best sense of humor. So those 2 things sort of defined him. And so I talked about him, and a little bit about me and our marriage, too, and then the middle 3rd of the book is more about. You know the diagnosis to those 2 years we spent from diagnosis to Sam’s passing. and then the latter portion of the book roughly. A 3rd is about what I experienced afterwards that was so surprising to me.
And so uplifting to readers.
So what happened after I published the book was, I got some of the best I received. I’ll say I was blessed with some of the best of the insights that came. So I put those in 3 audio episodes that you can also access from vickiparisgoodman.com, and those are free.
You know they’re not long. They’re 12 to 15 min a piece. There are 3 of them, and they’re really good. So I will tell you about some of the things that are in them. But the audio episodes go into greater depth, and I’d say the single most profound of those insights occurred to me one day, is death really tragic?
I say no. If if you believe in a loving God and a beautiful beyond words, afterlife, where souls are enveloped by a love surrounded by a love so intense, so profound. So profound that we can’t even begin to comprehend it as human beings here on earth.
Then what exactly is so tragic about them going there and being surrounded by that love. And I say nothing, and I find that most people have this belief system in a loving God and a beautiful afterlife.
So I’m saying. And when I tell people about this insight of mine, so many of them like yourself, Charla nod knowingly.
And I’m thinking, okay, there’s a disconnect here. People are not connecting the dots. And I think it’s because this cultural conditioning that tells us to awfulize death is so. It is, again , profound. It’s so strong that we don’t connect the dots, and we grieve hard, and we grieve with a lot of guilt, and I’ll I can talk more about that in a minute.
We think there are “have to’s.” You know, that we owe to the world and to our deceased loved one. We have to grieve and suffer for a certain amount of time before we can kind of move on, and some people don’t think they can ever move on completely, you know. Like, for example, one woman said, well, I’d kind of like to have another relationship now that my husband’s been gone for a few years, but I don’t know. I’d feel funny. What if it became a sexual relationship, you know if he’s watching from the afterlife. You know what? I don’t know, it just seems all wrong to me. So I’ve avoided starting another relationship.
Something that I kind of extrapolated another insight from what I read from the neurosurgeon. I don’t remember exactly what it was, he said, but given that souls are surrounded by this beautiful love. In this beautiful afterlife it occurs to me that souls are perfected there, and what I mean by that is, they can’t possibly experience negative emotions like anger or jealousy. That’s just not possible, especially if you know everything there is to know in the universe. You’re just not going to experience those emotions anymore. You’re only going to have positive emotions. You are only going to want the absolute best in the way of happiness and fulfillment in the loved one you left behind, who will join you there later and all it means, yeah. So.
I’m so. I just heard this in the last week or so, something similar like their father, for instance, is only can only see the good. He can’t see the bad, or something along that line. Where there is just no negative, and there they can only send encouragement and good things. If there’s no, there’s none of this going on. There’s, you know, and I’ve said for years. My underlying message is love. If God is love, he can’t be, not love. So you’re perfectly and loved by God, no matter what you’re doing and where you are.
But I just heard this recently as well. So it’s triggering that remembrance that, you know, you know you’re worried about. Say, say, you get a you go to Palm Reader, or one of those people, you know, whatever I don’t do that. But they say, Well, your dad wants you to, or sees you, you know, whatever. And this message was that it wasn’t possible. It’s not what’s going on.
No validating, maybe absolutely, you know, and if you take it a little bit further, you can say that God has a plan for each one of us for our lives, and you know for some people that plan is for them to marry the love of their life. You know when they get out of high school, let’s say, or in their early twenties, and they both live into their eighties or nineties, having been married for 60 or 70 years. and that’s considered the ideal. But I say, no, there is no ideal. I say there’s a plan for everyone, and for some people. Maybe they’re with someone for their entire life.
For others, God has a more segmented plan or compartmentalized plan, where they are to live their life in chapters or segments. And so that’s clearly what God’s plan was for me. So Sam and I were together, for you know, about 24 years, and
if God’s plan was for him to pass when he did, and for me to join him there later, and in the meantime I have more to do, more to experience, more to learn, perhaps even things, to teach others. Then I am going to get with the program and do those things and enjoy it to the max, and I know I’ll be joining Sam in the afterlife later. I just have no, no question of it anymore.
So how can I feel bad that he went there. Yes, I grieved because I missed him so much for a while, and so the way it was, what that looked like right after he passed. If people are wondering well, this doesn’t make any sense. What it looked like for me is so I would have things to do during the day, and maybe I’d meet a friend for lunch, or maybe I’d go to karaoke. Once I learned I could sing, or maybe I’d go to an orchestra rehearsal, or whatever it was I had going on that day or maybe I’d write part of the book, you know. in the evening, you know I’d come back home from whatever fun I’d been having, let’s say, and I’d start feeling a little sad and I’d start thinking about Sam.
And I realized that oh, and the other thing was everything I had done seemed meaningless. There was no meaning to any of these things I was doing. And I thought, okay, that’s probably because Sam isn’t here to share these things with anymore either to have done them with him or have done them apart from him, but being able to tell him about it when I got home, he wasn’t there for that anymore.
I guess I could speak to his soul. But you know, anyway, the point was, things had changed, and I did feel sad in the evenings, and when I realized a lot of that, the fact that all of the things I was doing had no meaning.
I thought, Okay, that’s the thing I have no control over. I’m just gonna have to accept that. So, even though things are good. they won’t be great, and maybe they won’t be great for a long time to come. I don’t know. But it was okay, because I realized I had no control over it, and that I was on the right path forward into the next chapter of life doing some new things, and some of the old things that I enjoyed. and I wasn’t letting the fact that life didn’t seem to have any meaning anymore. Get me down?
Because I, you know, like I said, I had no control over that aspect. And it was about a year and 7 months before I felt like I wanted to meet another man.
And so, you know, for a year and 7 months things didn’t have a whole lot of meaning. But I was having a lot of fun, and and you know, just doing the best I could, and the best I could was really really good. And so so, you know, this is kind of I’ve been trying to make sense of all this, and probably not speaking as articulately about it, as I would like. But that’s kind of the way it was. And so, you know, I finally, a couple of years later, entered into another relationship, and life took on meaning again.
And so I’m very happy with the way things have gone. You know, I feel like I’m the messenger of this message, and maybe God chose me to pass along this message because I speak fairly well. I write very well. And you know, I’m kind of an analytical type, having been an engineer who was raised secular, which maybe makes me pass along this message.
Maybe it makes it a little more believable and plausible, because this.
Talking about God here. I don’t. I don’t believe we’re talking about religion at all. God is the Creator, or however you want to call him, you know, the orchestrator of something. But I talk about God and my faith, and all that all the time, but it has nothing to do with religion? Right? So there is a difference in secular. I was raised very fundamentally, and I so is my perspective. God had a box, and you know, everybody had to stay in that little box, and and you know, anyway, I don’t. I don’t think that way anymore. I think God is love. He can’t be, not love. And let’s just love each other as he does unconditionally, you know, and so that.
Yeah, take it on.
Yes, Charla, having taken on this belief system so late in life, you know I don’t really feel comfortable with organized religion. For myself. It’s just sort of my belief system now, I guess. I guess that’s what it is. It’s just my belief system. And I’m so happy to have acquired it. You know I actually feel sorry for the rest of my family, because they don’t believe in anything.
and I remember when my Dad passed he looked scared to death and at the end, and I thought.
Okay, what’s this about? First of all, I said, give him some morphine. I can’t stand seeing him so terrified he couldn’t speak, but his eyes were open wide, and it was as if he was saying to me without being able to speak. Vicki do something… I don’t want to die, you know that, knowing my dad, I think that’s what he was trying to communicate.
And so I said, would you please give him some morphine? So he’s not so, or whatever it is that will not make. And they did so he wasn’t so scared. But you know, I wish he could have had this belief system so that he would know he’s going to a good place and didn’t have to be afraid of death. I was always afraid of death until I acquired this belief system, and then I thought. It’s funny. I’ve had a total transformation. I am no longer afraid to die. Do I want to die today or tomorrow? No, because I still have fun things I want to do, some places I’d like to travel, and you know whatever. But I’m not afraid of it.
No, I’m gonna live to be a hundred 20 at least. I think so. I’m you know. I’m halfway, and I’m middle aged. If you look at it that way.
Yeah.
That’s fun. So these insights continued to come to you. And now you’ve got a free offer 3 free
Free audio episodes.
It’s on Youtube, it’s on a Youtube channel, @VickiParisGoodman and but it can be accessed also through a link.
Well, the Youtube channel is something else. But Vicki Paris Goodman, is the Youtube channel.
I think if we keep a sign in front of yeah, or something like that, we’re so techie.
Yeah, we just put them there from somewhere else where they were before. Anyway, they’re easy to access now from vickiparisgoodman.com and you know, so those are. Those are something that you should get those audio episodes. They’re really good. And they go into more detail about all of this. So.
A friend, a really good friend of mine that I’ve known since I was a baby unexpectedly lost her her husband just in the last month or so, and her her mom had just passed and buried her just a few days before that. And so I’m just wondering. I mean they had such a great relationship. So we’ll have to, maybe I’ll have to.
Might be helpful for her. Yeah, in fact, I know it will be.
When Sam passed we had a flurry of loss, too. We had lost his mother, my mother-in-law. And then, while we were in New York, burying her. We got a call from our dog sitter that our greyhound Sid passed in the night. He was perfectly healthy, and you know the vet thought maybe a blood clot.
But then, a few months later, Sam passed. But when we got the news about our dog, I remember, I looked up to the sky, and I said, the man has terminal cancer.
He lost his mom a few days ago, and now you take his dog. You know I was so angry. And it’s funny because I talk about this in the book. I tell this story that I loved our dog, too, and my mother-in-law. But I was healthy and so I wasn’t thinking of me so much. I just thought, don’t do this to my husband, you know, who’s battling cancer.
Wow. So yeah, so you were minimum. I mean, you were projecting for him right? Instead of feeling the loss yourself, you are projecting his feelings in a way sounds like.
Which isn’t my nature, you know I’ve always been. I’ve always been kind of self involved to be honest with you. It’s not my best characteristic, which is why it feels so good to be working day in and day out to get this message out there.
Because it’s something I can do for others. Finally, you know, I’ve never been one to volunteer around town for the local food bank or anything, and now I realize I was just waiting for the right way to give back something that felt right to me.
That’s interesting to me, totally. But it is a message that is needed. and I think you are the vessel, you know, to.
Yep.
To promote it. And are you speaking? Are you going? Are you doing stage speaking or podcast? You’re doing a lot of podcasts? I’m guessing.
I’m doing a lot of podcasts. I’ve been asked to speak a few times, and every time I have, I’ve said, Yes, yes. absolutely, I will, and I did, and you know, whatever comes my way.
Who is your audience? I mean, everybody probably could benefit from all this. But are you targeting something specific?
Yes, I do think everyone can benefit from it. But I think the target audience is realistically, because we’re so busy in our lives and we don’t take the time to do things that aren’t of immediate benefit to us. Let’s say so.
I think the target audience should be either people who have recently suffered a loss and are maybe having a tough time over it, and also those who maybe have a loved one who has a terminal diagnosis and you know those. I think someone in that position will also greatly benefit from this message.
So, coming to me at this moment I met a wonderful lady, another show host, and she has a book called Grief Without Chaos. What message is to totally get? Get your stuff, your affairs in order before you’re going through chaos so that could be a good connection there, that you have similar audiences on different and different dynamics.
Right. I talk a little about that in the book. You know. I was fortunate in one way. I took care of all the stuff in our marriage. You know the bill paying the insurance, you know all that stuff. So many people, women especially, I think, are not the ones who took care of those things, and then they’re really thrown in the midst of of their life undergoing all these changes and the grief
they’re you know, they’re they’re faced with having to take care of things that they haven’t taken care of before, you know, and and having. And suddenly they’re on a learning curve on top of everything else. So yes, that’s what’s important.
Things, and if you know, and if you don’t feel up to it, if maybe someone else, a close friend or someone in your family can learn how to do those things from the person who got the terminal diagnosis so that you don’t have so much of a learning curve. Someone can help you with it.
Or if you feel up to learning those things in advance of the person passing, maybe you can take them over early, whatever it is, you know it. It’s a yeah, that’s a toughie.
And I mean I’ll just say this. She tells a story about, Ann Cuevo is her name. Grief without chaos is her book, since I’m mentioning it, but she has a story that a young man who went into a coma for several weeks, if not months. I don’t remember the details, but
the very first thing. When he woke up, his wife said, What is your password to your computer passwords? I mean things like that are so challenging in the grief moments. Right? So even that simply, it’s not always just death. Sometimes it’s something else. But you know, when that’s just death. That was a little flippant. I didn’t mean it that way.
So I think it’s just those things that are not pressing, unless there is a terminal diagnosis. And so and then a lot of people don’t want to talk about it at all. But when you get it done and it’s on the table, and you’ve got everybody knows your wishes and all those kinds of things. Then you can relax and live your life.
Right. I’d love to know what Ann has to say about when someone dies suddenly, when it’s unexpected, and they’re the ones who took care of everything you know. It makes it a lot easier if the person who. if the other person in the relationship can learn at least something about how to take care of these things, at least get their hands on the passwords and all that, and all the different companies, you know. Maybe maybe just have one sheet of paper, a list with all these things that will need to be figured out when you know if and when the time comes.
Yeah, it’s a yeah, that really kind of goes through makes it simple. And yeah, it’s important. Keep just to get those things in order, and you know the confusion of someone dying unexpectedly, and nobody knowing. Did they want to be cremated or buried? I mean even that. And so, letting your wishes be known is huge.
It’s just a blessing. I read, I think it was Ann Landers when I was in my twenties, probably, and talked about someone who had gone through the aunt. I don’t think she’d ever been married, but she had taken care of every single thing.
knew what she was going to be buried in, had everything arranged, wrote everything out, knew where it had everything in, and while she was healthy, put that away, know everybody knew, and she was able to go and enjoy the rest of her life without having that that anchor hanging, that that albatross going. I should do that, you know. Some one of these days one of these days. Right?
Exactly, and you never get the idea of that way back. I’ve not done it, but I still love the idea of it.
Yeah, yeah, no, I do, too. I think it’s. You know, very few people. Probably my guess is, very few people actually organize themselves to that extent. But, boy, what a blessing it is for those left behind when they have to take care of everything.
Exactly, and even young people I mean her. She lost his son unexpectedly right in front of her at 17, and they never have found out what was wrong with him. But you know, and and listening to those stories, and just if he had been 18 it had been a whole different ball game, right? I mean, really, it’s something we don’t like to talk about. And we don’t like to think about. So I think you’re doing a great service to just bring these things up and giving people an option.
And permission, I would say, it’s almost a permission to. It’s okay to be happy even when you’re sad. It’s okay to have joy even when you’re sad or when you’re missing. Someone I call God needs people with skin on right? That’s the way I call it, you know God. And so, you know, when you are missing the physical someone to talk to, you know those are valid as well. Right?
So we’re coming to the end of the time. It always goes so fast. I am always shocked when I’m like it’s time to go. So you say the name of the book again. Say, spell your name. Let’s get all those things in right now and and then, if you want to offer the next anything else you wanna leave with, and then also mention the name of your forthcoming. Oh, the book you just published.
Yeah. Yeah. And it was literally published the other day. So my name is Vicki Paris Goodman, and it’s V I C K I PARIS, like the city in France, GOODMAN, and my website is vickiparisgoodman.com. I’ve got both books discounted there, even though they are also on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and I don’t even know where else.
But they’re both discounted. If you use the links from my website. The audio episodes can also be accessed there. So the book we’ve been talking about today is to Sam with love, a surviving spouse’s story of inspired grief.
And the audio episodes are the path to inspired grief. That’s what I’ve titled the playlist. Again, they are about 12 to 15 min each. There are 3 of those audio episodes, so they don’t take long to listen to. They’re very good. Get the audio episodes by the book.
The message is very powerful. My new book is on a completely different topic. It’s called speed Bumps and other impediments to life in the fast lane. And it’s about the trials of life of a type, a personality. I am a type, a. It’s a little self deprecating in places. It’s very funny. I was just reading the acknowledgements at the front of the book.
Even the acknowledgments in that book are funny. I really had fun with it. and it’s a great book, if you know, as a type a I’ve sometimes behaved with impatience. I haven’t always liked the way I’ve behaved. Hence the self-deprecation, a little bit of shame. Involved, I think, in being a type. A, if we think we’ve behaved badly in some situations.
So other type A’s can relate and not feel so alone. Type B’s who have type A’s in their lives can begin to understand the behaviors and motivations of those type A’s in their lives because they are perplexed. I know my husband Sam was. He was scratching his head half the time at the way I reacted to things. So that’s speed bumps.
That’s cute. I mean other impediments to life in the fast lane. That’s cute. It’s clever, and I love you know, even around my home. I want a touch of whimsy here. I want to. I want to have fun. I want to have a light, and you know, just have some whimsical little things that I got my crown up here right. You know I like where there’s my crown, and right in.
Oh, I see!
Yes.
More like a tiara.
It is. Well, it’s kind of a tiara, but it’s my crown. I’m a little queen of everything, you know. I mean, I just. I have fun just having fun, right? Just living life and loving life. And I’m so grateful to have reached out to me from need a guest. I I put my stuff in that form over there, and I gotta kind of got active for a minute, and you caught that and thank you for reaching out. And I just haven’t been very active over in that group. But I I think it’s a wonderful. I’m glad that they have that Angel Tucci I think, too.
Yeah, she’s wonderful.
That’s great. Well, what so is there anything else you want to leave us with? And
You know, just, you know, if you’re faced with the situation we’ve been talking about where you know you’ve you’ve lost someone, or you’re going to be losing someone, in all probability, because of a terminal diagnosis.
Be open to guidance that you feel may be coming your way from outside yourself. Trust it, and let yourself be led and be open to opportunities that come your way, you know, moving into the next chapter of life doesn’t have to wait for a certain amount of time we talked about that. You know all the guilt that’s involved that need not be a part of this at all.
So be open to those opportunities, and if they come your way, grab them, and maybe think about things that you have always wanted to do and haven’t done yet.
Start doing them, you know. Join that quilting group, or or that orchestra, or learn to play the musical instrument that you always wanted to learn to play whatever it is, do it.
Limited opportunities are out there, and I think you said something about connecting the dots between a more realistic view of loss and a more immediate and optimistic. Next chapter.
It doesn’t have to wait.
Doesn’t have to wait, and I’ll give another quick example of that. A really good friend of mine lost everything in the California fire. She lost her home. She lost everything. And and you know, next thing doors open, she’s going to be studying Italian in Italy, you know. So when, remember that old song, Freedom is nothing left to lose. I didn’t understand that in high school when I heard that song, but when you know freedom is. That’s Janice Joplin. If I’m not mistaken, and Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.
Great iconic lyric.
I know it’s perfect, but I could not catch it. I did not understand it in high school when it was, you know, that was in my era. But here now in the seventies, you know. You think you know it’s unlimited. Possibilities are out there. There are unlimited possibilities all the time, but we’re so busy being busy. But I wanna thank you so very much. For joining me today and and let’s having a fun conversation on
in a difficult topic. But you’ve you’ve you’ve made it fun, and I appreciate you so very much, and I can’t wait to. We’ll do it again sometime, especially when you have a whole new book out. So maybe maybe in the future.
I’d love to.
Well, thank you.
Yeah, thank you so much.
Thank you, and remember to always, always, always choose joy.
Important Links
- WEBSITE:
https://vickiparisgoodman.com/
Purchase ‘To Sam, With Love’ at a discount
Subscribe to Vicki’s FREE belief-shifting 3-episode audio series
Contact Vicki and read her blog.
SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS: - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vickiparisgoodman
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/samnvic28/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vicki-paris-goodman-1021a6270/
MENTIONS: - “Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife” by Eben Alexander
https://amzn.to/41uJRrj - “Grief Without Chaos” by Ann Cueva
https://amzn.to/43dKiGR
Connect with Charla Anderson:
For more insights and to follow Charla’s creative journey, check out her website and her other projects:
- Website: CharlaAnderson.com
- YouTube: Check out her channel for beginner art tips, life wisdom, and more!
- Win Win Women: Catch her on winwinwomen.tv to watch her shows and learn more.
About Vicki Paris Goodman
Vicki Paris Goodman is the author of “To Sam, With Love: A Surviving Spouse’s Story of Inspired Grief.” After the death in 2019 of her husband Sam, the love of her life, she was unexpectedly flooded with optimism and presented with a host of possibilities for an exciting and meaningful future. She received valuable insights, seemingly coming from an outside source, enabling her to conceive a more realistic and uplifting understanding of adversity and loss. She knows these concepts will free others to face the passing of a loved one with a far more optimistic outlook.
Having lived most of her life in the Los Angeles area, Ms. Goodman now resides in the mountains of central Arizona. She is a retired mechanical engineer. She sings and plays violin semi-professionally. And for over twenty years she served a Long Beach (CA) area newspaper as theater critic. She has just completed her second book, “Speed Bumps: And Other Impediments to Life in the Fast Lane”, a slightly self-deprecating memoir on the trials of life of a type A personality.
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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.
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