Kristin Joy Lavin on Love, Loss, and Signs from the Afterlife

  📍  I'm Beth Huddleston, host of the World Circle. My guest today is Kristin Joy Lavin. Kristin is the author of a book called "The Butterfly Promise," a memoir about eternal love, grief, and the wonder of the afterlife, particularly as they pertain to her relationship with her beloved grandmother. In our interview, Kristin talks about her book, spirituality, messages and signs from the afterlife, and grieving the loss of the ones we love. 

Kristin, it's so nice to have you here. Thank you for being here.

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

You wrote your book, "The Butterfly Promise," and there's a lot of themes in there, love and life and grief, but the central character, I would say, it's a memoir, but the central character in it is your grandmother, who you call Gram. Tell me about her.  

She was a force of nature, and I feel like she was way ahead of her time. She was such a... dynamic personality, but yet she was like this little lady that her father was from England, so she was always into like proper English etiquette. And I always had to say the right words.

She'd say that's not proper English. So she was like a little bit of everything. And so she was really interesting and ahead of her time. She was always into little spiritual things and even like Edgar Cayce, who was a psychic medical medium, she always was interested in that type of thing. So maybe that's where I get it from my interest in spirituality and other worldly things, but everybody that met her always said, your grandmother is amazing.

We love her. Every time somebody would meet her, they would just fall in love with her. So she definitely makes a good subject for a book for sure.

In part of it, with your relationship with her, and I think in your book you call it a soul connection, you call yourselves kindred spirits, and there is a whole spirituality aspect that I want to get into, but for now, there's also just so much of a sense of unconditional love between the two of you. Which plenty of people can relate to that with a grandparent or a parent, but there's other people who really can't. They just, for whatever reason in their lifetime, they're not having that same experience. So how would you describe that? What would you say that was like to have that kind of love between you and your grandmother?

I didn't realize how rare that was until I started telling people about the book that I was writing, or I had people read chapters. I workshopped it in Manhattan for a while and I would have people say, Oh my gosh, your grandmother. I. wish I had that. I wish I had that kind of relationship. Either I didn't have a grandmother, I wasn't close or some people were very close, but they had lost their grandmothers at early ages.

So it really resonated with people. I think it filled a void in them, whether they had a grandma wasn't around anymore or they wish they had that type of maternal relationship. So I always knew my grandmother was special and we were always close, but it's as you get older, like anything you learn to appreciate so much more your relationships and the value of that.

I guess I knew it as I was growing up, but I started to really appreciate it as I got older.

So getting into the spirituality aspects peppered throughout your whole book, there's this thing of you exploring spirituality and having psychic experiences or medium experiences, and then ultimately getting to some after your grandmother's passing. So tell me about that. What do you see spirituality as for you?

Ooh, good question.  I think I really feel that it's a feeling. It's a feeling you have about the world. It's how you see the world, that maybe things are happening for a reason. You're putting faith in maybe a higher power and also of yourself and how things will ultimately work out as they are supposed to be, even when it's not the outcome you really want. Of course, I didn't want my grandmother to die, but I feel like it is part of nature and I had to have faith in that process. And as I look back, our time together and our life together and all the things that had happened, including the painful loss that I had with her kind of all led me to the book.

So I think faith is a big part of it. I guess you could say some people are spiritual. Some people are religious. Some people are a little bit of both, but I think it's how you view the world, in my opinion, just believing in something bigger than yourself.

And also, somewhat related to that, in your book, I noticed throughout there is such a fear, which I think a lot of people relate to, a fear when you love someone that you carry with you of losing them someday and with pets as well. And you have some pet deaths in there as well, and you have to carry that with you. I'm going to lose this person or this pet at some point. And then at the end, you say death and grief were your biggest fears, but then you allowed them to become your greatest teachers. And so how would you speak on that, the intense fear that you felt and then letting that transform into something different?

That's a lesson I'm actually still working on. I can't say I'm perfect at it. Death is part of life and losing someone and that fear when you really love somebody is very genuine and it's really...grief is I heard Elizabeth Lesser say that wearing it is a badge of honor because it's really showing you how much you've loved another person and your relationship was strong and your bond was tight. So I feel that it is a work in progress. I just had a friend that lost her dog. And she said, I don't think I can go through this another time. I don't think I can get another dog.

And my first reaction was, cause that's the way I felt when I had lost my pet. I said to her, the reward is so much greater in having that pet than the loss of it. And that's the way you have to look at it. You can't just shut yourself down because grief is painful. It is. But I feel like when I wrote the book, I knew that it was painful to write and also I was hoping that it would reach people because we're all going through the same thing, ultimately, no one escapes this world without losing someone or feeling grief and pain. So knowing that we could all have that in common, and that is a shared bond of humanity, I felt was a really important aspect and theme of the book because it was part of my life and my beliefs.

The book, as I said, the book's called "The Butterfly Promise," and that is because of a promise that your Gram made to you. Tell me a little bit about how that came about.

When my grandmother was very sick, not before she died, but a few years before that, she was getting older. She had an accident. She was in the hospital. We didn't know if she was going to make it because of her age and her injury. And she began to recover and I just broke down and I was like. What would I do without you? You're my everything. I love you so much. And I don't know what I'm going to do. And she said, what makes you think you'll be without me?

And I was like, what are you talking about? And she just said, I'll always be around. And I said, how will I know that? And she said, I'll send you a butterfly. So that kind of opened up a whole new world for me. Is this something that people do? Like people send other people signals and signs from the afterlife?

I just was like, wow. I believed in angels and afterlife before. I had a few little psychic experiences myself that I just brushed off. But when I got this solemn promise from my grandmother, I knew she was a person that would not let me down. She never let me down in life and I just felt she's not going to let me down now.

So I was ready for it. I said, okay. That was maybe my way of coping too, that I would have a little sign from her and that I would know she would always be around.

And then you did get some signs as you talk about in your book, so tell me about those.

Part of that process was the journey of whether or not to believe in things that were happening along the way. And some of them were really unbelievable things that had happened that I just felt like, wait, that cannot be a coincidence. This has to be something. And I feel like the more you're open to things, the more things can happen. The more aware you are and also the less distracted you are, I think also helps and that's very hard to do right now because we are inundated with information constantly, whether it's social media or we're always on the computer doing work or watching TV or whatever. Electronics is really kind of taking over our lives in a sense.

As we sit here through the web and do this interview, but it also allows us to do this, which I don't think we would have done this before. So there's are good things also about it, but I think it is a major distraction and I think there is a place for it. And so you need to be aware of the signs if you are looking for them and quiet yourself and be open.

I think that's the most important thing. I know there are skeptics out there that don't believe things, but there's no proof that it isn't. And there's an awful lot of people like myself that have had experiences. So who's to say that we aren't right and that they're wrong?

So that's the way I live my life. I choose to believe, and I know a lot of other people choose to believe, and they've had things that have happened in their lives, too, and there's plenty of other books and stories out there, aside from mine, that are really validating.

So one thing that I noticed, too, at the end of the book, you said that you've learned to listen to your inner voice more. And over these years of dealing with losses and grief, how did you feel like you learned that lesson to listen to your inner voice more?

I think it's a process. Things like that don't happen overnight. I think, you know, you're born a certain way, and hopefully you grow throughout your life. And I think we are put on this earth to have different lessons presented to us, and it's how we handle certain things. And the joyful moments are amazing, but it's sometimes the hardest moments in life that make us grow. And sometimes you do have to listen to your inner voice and know that you're on the right path, or you're doing the right thing, or the things you believe in are who you are. So I think it is a process.

It doesn't happen one, two, three, but I think awareness is really one of the first keys to that. Just being a conscious person and self aware and also examining your own life and what that means to you and who you want to be in the world, I think is important. And going back to you talking about the distractions of our daily lives, which as you said, there are so many, what are some things you do to get in touch with spirituality or just get outside of that distracting daily inundation of information. So that is definitely the key is outside. I feel like being out in nature, and I talk about this in my book. There was a few moments in that I felt so connected to something bigger than myself when I was in nature. To me, that's the ultimate healer. Even if you're just like sitting in your backyard and you're watching the birds or you watch a butterfly go by or you go for a hike and you do a walking meditation or I love to ride my bicycle.

Sometimes I like to just be quiet when I'm riding my bike. And I just like to look around and enjoy the scenery and take in everything, take in the scents, the sounds, the visuals, instead of having earbuds in. I love earbuds and I love listening to podcasts and music while I do things, but I also feel like there's time when you shouldn't do that or I shouldn't do that and I need to decompress from it all. So that is definitely one way. And I just think maybe everyone has their own thing on what brings them back to center. Do you have something  for you as well?

Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. For me, it's outside, meditation, just time not doing anything. You know what I mean? Just being outside with the quiet of it is huge for me.

Yeah, if you just sit on your couch and do nothing for five minutes...I can't say I sit there and meditate, but I really do focus on breathing. And I think that's definitely the starting point of meditation. Meditation I find is hard, but I feel like a walking meditation is great. I have something in my book about that, or just like deep breathing and just saying, Okay, I'm going to sit here for 10 breaths in and out and not think about anything. And that is just like a time to center yourself. And it's very calming too. If you're going through a difficult time, I feel like that is very calming as well.

Yeah, it's the same with working out, sometimes just even a tiny bit of working out or just like you're saying, taking time to just breathe. Taking time to just sit there and breathe, in my mind, is meditation. Or doing five minutes of squats or jumping jacks or something is working out. It's getting that flow going. It doesn't have to be something huge. Every little break, every little movement, makes a difference in my mind.

Absolutely. Yeah, conscious moving or something you're doing very consciously  is the key to it and not having all these distractions all the time.

So switching gears in writing your book, how was that experience?

That was very cathartic, as you can imagine, because I think I needed something, I needed an outlet for my grief. My friend at the time, when my grandmother was ill, said, you should be writing all this down, like all this crazy stuff that's happening. You should just be like journaling. And I started journaling about it. And then after everything that had happened, I guess it was always like a dream of mine to write a book.

And I said to myself, I think I have a book here, but I didn't really know how to go about it because I never wrote a book before. I had just done writing here and there. So I basically looked up how to write a book. And I went to Gotham Writers in New York City and I workshopped it, which is a really great experience.

And I got to share my story and also read other people's story and we would critique each other's. And you get a lot of feedback to, are people interested in what I'm saying and the story that I'm telling? And I had the idea for the book, but I didn't know where it was going to go.

So at first it was cathartic, but then I felt like it was very rewarding as I was writing it. And I met this great group of women that were all on the same path as well. They were writing about some of the things that they had gone through. And it was just such a joyous experience and I really enjoyed it.

I have to write another one. It was great. Hard. Challenging. Don't get me wrong. It's hard to think about what am I going to write about today? But I think when it's a real story, you have more of an idea. I think when it's maybe fiction and you don't know where it's going, I would imagine that's very challenging.

But I think I had an idea of the beginning and the end of my story, and I just had to put the middle together. And the universe filled that in for me, for sure.

Yeah, sometimes you just have to open the creativity portal. And let it happen. What sort of responses have you gotten to the book so far?

Like more than I could have dreamed of. I've had such great feedback. I've had people come up to me and cry. It tears me up just thinking about some of the beautiful things people have said. And that's all I could have imagined. I really wanted to touch people in a way that they felt connected to what I was saying and also didn't feel so alone in their grief or their loss, no matter how long it was.

Cause I had people come up to me and say, Oh, I just read your book. I loved it. I'm buying it for someone that just lost their so and so, so grief could be immediate. But then I had a man come up to me, I was at a book signing and he came over to me at the end and he said, I thought this was going to be like a girly book and I wasn't going to read it.

And I don't know, he was an older man and he just said, but I had heard good things about it. A couple of people in the shop were talking about it and I decided, let me give it a whirl. And he started to tell me that he was in Vietnam and he had lost one of the guys in his I guess troop and he passed away and he felt like, why did he survive and this man died?

And he lived with that grief his whole life. And he had gone to a healer, and I guess he was a doubtful person about everything. And he had gone to this healer, and this passed away soul came to the healer 'cause she mentioned his name. He said, I never told her, this was something so private, he said, and he goes, and I ran out of the room basically.

And I buried it. And then he started crying as he was talking to me. And he was saying, I just feel so validated. I should have been more open when this happened. And I just thought I was crazy and she was crazy and he was like crying as he was telling me this. It's hard not to choke back tears when someone is telling you that, but I felt, wow, here I am consoling him, but he's giving me this amazing gift.

So I feel like it's just been, it's been great. And look at this,  I'm doing podcasts.  You never know where life is going to take you. You really don't.

Yeah. And I have the personal belief that we all have our unique experience, but that we're all also connected and we all have something to create, whatever it is. If we are open to it, if we have the time for it, sometimes people in their lives, they just don't, but it can come flowing through our unique personalities and our unique experiences and then come out into the world and connect with others. And so I think that's what I'm hearing when you talk about that, the response to your book. When we bring our own unique experience and let come through whatever is our creativity, it connects with other people and it can make a difference. And so that's pretty great. And it is a lot of work. Writing your book. But it's like you said with grief, the reward is bigger than the downside.

Absolutely. Yeah, it is. And publishing is a whole other task in itself. There's a lot to writing a book. It's writing it and then it's publishing it and it's also promoting it as well. So you have to really be passionate about the project that you're doing because it really is a commitment. And of course, there's part of me that I'm like, oh, I hope my grandmother's proud of me.

I hope that she's thinking like, you did a good job, and it's so rewarding that people know her now and love her the way that real people did in her own life. Other people are feeling connected and I think yes, it's all about perception and your own experience, but I think no matter what we are all connected through certain things in humanity, and that's what's really important. It's not how we get there, it's how we are achieving the same thing and feeling like we're not alone.

So if you had to say something about grief now to others going through it, or just any lessons you've learned from it, what would you say?

I would say that it's a process and no matter how you think you're prepared for something, like maybe someone's old and you think, oh, they're probably going to go. If they're important to you, it's never easy. And the same thing with a pet. Sometimes we have pets five years, 10 years, 15 years, sometimes longer if you're lucky enough, but it's never easy.

And even when you lose somebody older...I  think people, their natural reaction, they lived a good life and it's so true, but when you're talking to the person that just lost that person that was important to them, it's never long enough. The time with someone is never long enough, whether it's a pet, a family member, a friend, a partner, it's never long enough, but it's part of life, and acceptance is one of the things that I think makes everything easier.

When you accept where you are in your life and you accept things that happen that sometimes you don't have control over. And it's how you go through it and your reaction to those things. And we all can just do the best we can. Really.

Yep. That's so true. And when you say that, it's never enough time. I've had many pets and when it's that moment where things are really going downhill and okay, I think this is the time. I always have that frantic feeling of I'm not ready. I need more time. I need more time. You got to do this. But it's that I feel that I'm not ready. I'm not ready for this. It never will be. It's not like two more years is going to make me ready for it. Yeah, it's just always awful. It's always awful.

Yeah, it's always awful. You're never ready. And I think sometimes my natural nature is I want to fix things. When something's wrong, I want to fix it. But sometimes you can't fix things like this. Sometimes if someone is dying or sick, it's out of your hands, it's out of your control. And you have to learn to just cope with the situation and do the best you can.

So I think that's definitely another lesson that I had learned over this experience and subsequent experiences.

That's so true. It's so true. Sometimes we just cannot control it. And it's awful. And then sometimes it just takes time. It takes time too. You have to go through the grief. There's no getting around it. But then you can move more into acceptance. Sometimes it's not so easy to accept right then.  Is there anything else that you want to make sure that we cover? Anything else you'd like to say about your book or life lessons, spirituality?

You don't have to believe in angels and afterlife.It's a fun read anyway, I would say. There's a lot of great stories in it. There's a story about my grandmother meeting the love of her life many years after they had been separated when they were in early twenties due to religious reasons, actually, unfortunately. And then they had reconnected years later.

So there's a little bit of a love story in there. And also I do have the question of even if you don't believe in spirituality or you're not a spiritual person or you're not religious, you can also believe in physics. And that is another aspect of the book is comparing the two because even physicists believe there's something with energy.

And if we are energy and we die, where does that energy go? It has to go somewhere. So a lot of, oh, as I'm saying this, it's 1111.  Wow, which is a chapter in my book. In numerology, it's a very special number. It means you're on the right path and you're moving in the right direction. And that's funny that I'm saying this at this exact time.

But yes, so there's many aspects of the book and you don't have to be a spiritual or religious person. You could be a doubter because there's aspects of believing in physics or you might have lost a pet that was special to you. And that's relatable too. So there's a couple of different themes and things going on in the book.

And even though it's a memoir, there's many components to it. That's why sometimes it's hard to explain my book because genuinely it's about me and my grandmother, but there's other things that go on in the book that are fun and it's not totally sad, so I think people think they're going to read it and they're going to be like crying the whole time or it's sad or depressing, but it's not, it's uplifting. So I hope people will give it a shot. It's on Amazon. It's in local bookstores. You can ask for it. It's on Apple. There's an audio version that you can download. And I narrated it myself, which was a really fun experience. And I feel like when the narrator tells the story in her own words, you can feel what the writer was really trying to say, and that was rewarding as well. But I thank you so much for having me on and for reading the book and supporting me. I'm an independent author, so it's always a treasure to have this opportunity, and I really do appreciate it.

Oh, I appreciate you being here so much. I loved the book. I love doing this. So I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much.