Sustaining a Bold, Adventurous Spirit Despite Setbacks

  My guest today is Heather Bond. Heather is the author of a book called Athena Rising, a memoir about the extraordinary experiences she's had in her life and how they ultimately led her on a path of self discovery and transformation. Some of the experiences I'm referring to, I have to mention, include Heather's careers as a forest service firefighter, a Los Angeles firefighter, and a Hollywood stunt woman, her participation in numerous extreme endurance races, and her spiritual journey to India with her mother that landed them both in an Indian prison.

In our interview, Heather discusses some of these past experiences, what she's doing now, and her conviction to live life to the fullest with no regrets. Heather, it's so nice to have you here. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. I look forward to this. I have so many things that I want to talk to you about.

There's just so much. That you've done, I'm not going to list it all, but you were, you are a stunt woman. You were on the show, American gladiators. You've been a firefighter. You've started a business and a nonprofit. I mean, you seem very full of drive and energy. So I'd like to kick it off by asking where does this drive and energy come from?

Do you think that's a good question? Because I was actually just talking to a client about this a little while ago. And I believe there are truly people that kind of. Come out, just very self motivated and I always have been. However, my parents were always a huge support system for me. I always had curiosity and I was exploring something or adventuring somewhere I probably shouldn't have been at a very young age.

But I just always had that innate drive within me that really just as I got older and older just started catapulting into so many different fields. And part of that really is the physical strength and mental toughness. And so for you, it just seems like that's something that you were drawn to. Would that be right to say? 

Yeah. You know what? I think you're right. It's interesting because as a very young girl, I was also very curious as to my mind and the strength of my mind and the, the power of my mind and my perception, how I saw things. I was obviously always very physical from the get go. That has always been the backbone, but I think the curiosity of.

Driving myself to all these different levels more was from curiosity of, gosh, if I could do that, I bet you I could do that or my gosh, that is so inspiring what I saw this individual do, I could probably do it and I could probably end up https: otter. ai 

But as far as I'm concerned, I want to engage in life fully, and it can be at so many different levels of physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and there's so much out there. And I want to feel it all, and maybe by me wanting that, I've had some kind of interesting things happen, some unintentionally.

There's also a real confidence there. There's a curiosity, but also confidence in thinking, Oh, I see somebody doing something. I think I could do that too. Where do you think that comes from? I think a lot of it, if it wasn't just innate within me, I think my dad, again, I'll go back. My parents are still to this day, great supporters, but my dad always told me.

He goes, Heather, just be like a sponge, absorb it all. You can do anything. You set your mind to it. And he goes, just stay curious. So he's almost 86 and he's going amazingly strong because his curiosity still keeps him going and wanting to learn more. And so I think there is an inner strength and confidence.

That comes, not all the time, I've had so many times that I'm like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, how is that going to work out? But through the years, through failure, through many different types of failure or trial and error, you build a confidence. Some people walk around with more confidence, for sure. But I also think you have to do a lot of work on yourself to build that muscle.

I think it is a muscle too, I definitely do. I saw in your book, Athena Rising, you mentioned that your dad did do, it sounded like survival sorts of things. Like you had to actually kill animals that you consider maybe not, not like the pet dog, but  animals that you raised on your property. So, where does that come from, you think, with your dad teaching you that sort of thing?

My dad was born in a time, he was born during World War II, and he was one of four boys, and he was the second youngest, and he ended up living in an orphanage for ten years of his life. So he had to get into that survival mode, especially back then, if anybody knows about the old Oliver Twist movies, that's my analogy, you had to survive.

You had to be resourceful. So my dad, always with us, me growing up in the 70s, we grew up on land, on property, growing our own vegetables, raising our own animals, chickens, rabbits, sheep. And he was very specific of what to get attached to and what not to, and it was strictly because we raised our animals sometimes for meat for ourselves.

And he wanted us to learn how to do it because for him, what if there was always the what if. And I took that a lot. I took that throughout my life. What if and it started making me do different things and learning things a different way because honestly what if  What if I had to go out there and survive?

We don't know that but I'll tell you what my skill set is pretty darn High I just got asked to do a survival thing in Idaho teaching women. So if you never know I live on property now. I have chickens and stuff, but I'm actually not slaughtering my own animals right now, but I do know how to do it if I had to. 

That's fascinating. And it makes sense. And especially given his background as well, I think it makes it much more ever present in one's mind when they're having to scrap and get by and feel that fear of not feeling safe and having a stable family life. Yeah, absolutely. So tell me about when you were doing things like being a firefighter, these extreme endurance races around the world.

It sounds like you were a woman generally in groups of men. And so what do you think all of those experiences taught you? There were many of them for sure. It's been the thread and theme of my life. Uh, I have always really been around male dominated areas and I will say, even as a younger teen, let's just take it back to even being in track and field, I was very driven.

I wanted to always be, I don't want to say always be the best. I wanted to do my best. Okay. Back then there was a lot of more ego than I have now. So if I was honest with myself, I did want to be the best at what I did. I just did. I was extremely driven, but so when it came to the guys could push me physically more for the most part.

So even back then in like track meets, let's just say in practice, I would try to be with the guys. So it would push me that much harder. Being more with the male, it allowed me to understand them a little bit more. I definitely got them a lot more, I think, compared to a lot of my other girlfriends. I'm like, Oh yeah, it's just the guy thing.

That's just the way they are. But it really made me appreciate moving forward in my life through those areas. It made me appreciate who I am and I think just earning the respect from people, earning it, not expecting it, but earning the respect. And I think that was a huge thing for me is not seeking it, but earning it and going, okay, those people would put their life in my hand.

And that's a really empowering feeling when you're on Navy SEAL teams or Marine Corps teams and you're putting your life in each other's hands. It does drive your confidence levels up extremely. You mentioned in your book though, that also there were times, I think when you were at the LA fire department or some other times where you felt like you were just being a little bit passive and going along with things, even when you knew it was like being too hard on you because you're a woman pushing you too far, this sort of thing, and you would let it go.

And so where do you think that you have all this confidence you're building up and all of this. Sort of just courage and you're out there pushing yourself. And then there's a part of you that you discuss in the book. That's has a little bit of a lack of self worth, let's say, and accepting things that you shouldn't be.

What has your journey been with that aspect of yourself? Yeah. That is a good question, because it's interesting where I am right now in my life, and when I look back on certain situations, I think, oh my gosh, how could I have let certain things happen like that? But when I take it to the fire department, with the fire department, and this was with L.

A. City Fire Department, that was frustrating. That was, I had just come from the Forest Service. Where I had incredible camaraderie with my crew. I was on a type one hotshot crew, also on an engine. And I had an incredible experience there. I was moving through the ranks, et cetera. But when I got to LA city, it was different.

And I had never actually at that point experienced. Anything quite like this, a lot of them didn't like women there. So there was a lot of, you shouldn't even be there type of thing. And I think what I ended up in the scenario. Was my task force commander. He didn't think women should be there. He was almost waiting to retire, but he just kept, he was trying to just break me like emotionally.

And it wasn't going to happen. I'm like, I'm just going to play this game. I'm just going to ride it out. And this is horrible. Everything that he would. Do I just kept trying to be like a duck with water just rolling it off my back It didn't feel good at all and I wanted to say something but it's like, what do you say?

What do you say? It's like you can say stuff but then Only because I know the game and it is the game. There's a lot of bureaucracy involved in that. And I didn't want to get blackballed  at all by anyone, but then he tried to start breaking me physically. And then that was starting to take a toll and it did end up taking a toll.

That's how I ended up. That's not how I ended up breaking my neck. But because of him pushing me and probably, well, I was, I was writing it in my station journal. I had these things written out back. It's not feeling good, starting to hurt, taking me out on the 35. That was the 35 foot wooden extension ladder.

So I had journalized it. I just hadn't verbalized it to anybody else, but it had been in the station journals. And that particular day, July 25th, 2005.  It shouldn't even have happened. It shouldn't even have happened. I had been training at a company drill hard all day. We had triple digit heats going on.

And when we got back to the station, we all ate dinner. Then it should have just been a relaxing evening. 8. 05 at night, he calls out over the loudspeaker and says, we're going out. And I knew that only meant one thing because I was the only person there that happened to. And 8. 05 at night. After six, seven hours of drilling all day, he took me out specifically to have me throw the ladder that injures the most firefighters in that department.

And that's what happened. That's exactly what happened. And I C4, 5, 6 and 7, L4, L5. Compression fractures, they wanted to go and do two fusions, lost my career, lost my racing career, and that was the beginning of a very long journey.  Yeah, would you say, I know that you said in your book that you started on a journey, I would say a spiritual transformation or a death and rebirth of the identity that had come before.

So when you look at that now that it just sounds horrible, these fractures and ending your career, it just sounds awful. Yeah. But is there a, if you look at it now from a different place, from a place of peace or that it was part of the journey, is that totally the hair on my arms are standing up?

Absolutely. And we're talking how many years ago, 2005,  and it took a long time. I opted not to do the surgeries. I was determined not to become what they thought I was going to. I was determined to heal myself to the best of my ability. And it made me. Seek out so many different modalities of different healing aspects from Eastern medicine.

And it took me down this truly a rebirth back then. If you ask me who Heather Bond was, pretty much the only word that would have probably come out of my mouth was, I'm an athlete. That's what I am. That's what I identified as. And that got stripped away. Boom. And that devastated me physically. It broke me, right?

But the mental and emotional, however, I think just because of the person that I feel that I've always been, there was a little gut feeling in there. That even through the worst of this, I knew deep down because of who I am, I knew that it would be okay. I knew that I was going to dig myself out of here and transform something somehow.

I didn't see it. I had no idea what was going to happen. I had no idea. Racing career, fire career, gone. Who's Heather now? Who's Heather? And that's what actually set me out on that spiritual journey to head to India with my mom.  And that's a whole different story. And you know what? I won't ask you to go into the whole story about how you ended up in prison in India with your mother.

People can read that in your book. But you did end up in prison in India with your mother when you set out on this spiritual journey, which is just another, wow, you can't even believe it, tough experience that you faced. So looking back on that time with your mother, what did you learn from that? What part of your journey do you think that supplied?

Again, I think even just like with the fire department, I truly would not at this juncture of my life, I wouldn't trade. It at all. The experience was, again, it was a  traumatizing, really traumatizing experience, but again, see, here's the thing. We all have choices, right? We all can make those decisions. Am I going to go trail A or trail B?

Am I going to go this way or that way? Am I going to think this or am I going to think that? How am I going to react to it? How am I going to react? We're all given the opportunity to react a certain way. It's just, what's that reaction going to be? So when that happened, I, again, lowest of lows, I thought all this with my neck was just traumatizing enough.

It's like it wasn't enough. I had to really be broken down. It's like the Phoenix rising, right? It's like when you ask this, is that all you've got? Don't ever ask that.  Don't ask that. Because no, it can throw more at you and not everyone is going to rise up. Not everyone will rise up, but I had to go that low.

But when I say that I wouldn't change it for the world, because there were incredible gems of me sitting in that prison. Yes, I got emaciated. Yes, I lost hope at times.  There were times when I had these women that I didn't speak their language and I had them doing like little workouts with me. I felt like Diane Sawyer.

I said that in my book. I felt like Diane Sawyer undercover interviewing these women, finding out their stories. Again, I had that glimmer of hope. Knowing, I was looking at three to seven years in that prison, but yet something in my north compass within me knew, gather what you can, take all the positives you can away while you can.

So you surf those waves of life. You have to, because otherwise you're going to go just insane. So again, for me. It had to happen to bring extreme empathy and compassion to myself. So what I see through the lens of my eyes now. Is so different than those two prior events that had happened. And how do you see yourself now in your identity, as opposed to Heather, the athlete that you felt back then?

Oh, so much more. So much more. I feel like I know I'm still an athlete, but oh my gosh, I'm so much more than an athlete. It's all these different avenues that have just opened. I'm a creator. I create beautiful things for kids, for adults. I've just tapped into all these other sides that I know as a kid, I had that too.

But I was so set in my sports that I may have done it for half a second over here. I'm like, Oh, I'm pretty good at that. But oh, no, just kidding. Keep driving. So now I've just opened up and you just open up and surrender to all the possibilities. I don't try to conform things. I don't try to shove things so hard because.

I might be missing out on a whole lot of something much better. So I've been able to train myself to just go,  big deep breath. Don't try to push it, Heather. Don't try to make it happen because that's not when magic happens. Magic happens when you just let go and you get in the flow of stuff. Now, I'm also diligent, but I'm not conformed and rigid. 

Yeah, it's a tough thing. I think we can sometimes get to that, at least bringing it to our consciousness to be mindful when we're trying to force something and let in that balance. It's hard to do. It's hard to do sometimes when you're busy and you're trying to get things done. So that experience with your mother, you definitely talk in your book about your relationship with your mother, which sounds yeah.

Wonderful. She sounds like a wonderful person and that you guys are so close. So with the time in India and just in general, what has that been like to have a mother like her? Really a blessing. We were very close before there became strain at certain parts when people read the book. And if they read the book, they'll Here, how it definitely got strained, but those were due to outside forces that happened, but we celebrate our coming home from that experience every year and we go out for Indian food and we laugh about it.

We cherish.  Now, when it was happening, that wasn't the case. I was extremely grateful that we were together, but it was an experience that I think if we didn't have a relationship close before, which we did, it amplified that. Unbelievably, and we are grateful that we got to experience that side of humanity, if you will.

Yeah, because just a tourist experience, you talked about people you met, even a child who was in the prison with you. This gives you a whole different look. And also, later when you got out of prison, but you still had to stay there, there were riots there, you saw the poverty, all of that, and that's a whole different experience than just going to see tourist sites.

so much. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's like we, we delved into,  we immersed ourself. Not intentionally, but we were immersed. India is truly a unique place. It's the web of humanity. And if you want to go into it on the most deepest level, you go into a prison like that, because so much is happening in there. So much is happening.

You had three different languages being spoken. You don't realize.  How one man's trash is another man's treasure, like a bag, for instance. And I mentioned this, I bring this story up in my book and it was like over a plastic bag where most people just recycle them, chuck them out, this and that. I gave one to one of the prisoners and it became like world war three in there because everyone wanted that plastic bag because it was worth a lot to them.

So my mom and I look at it as a very incredible experience. And we're grateful to have gotten home safe and sound. But we again, cherish that time that we got to share that way.  And then at some point you became a mother. That's a whole different kind of aspect of your identity. So what do you think that brought to your life?

It brought a whole lot. I absolutely love being a mother. Again, she came off of an extremely hard situation. I mean, she was conceived when I got back from India and I had always wanted to have a family. Children, but my lifestyle wasn't really conducive of having that. And I didn't know if it was really ever going to happen.

And when I was in India, I have to tell you, I was doing chance. I was doing all kinds of like fertility ceremonies. I'm like, I'm going to have one. It's not getting any younger, getting closer to 40.  And she truly has been the biggest gift in my life. She has opened up so many doors to really hold you accountable.

They really hold you accountable. This one does she's smart. She's witty. She's an old little soul. And, and it's just, she and I. And I just, I love it. I've been very clear on how I wanted to really raise her as far as my personal stuff, because I've always, as she got older and she's 14 now, but I've always told her I call her lovey most of the time.

And I said, lovey. So you Keely. You have your own little life doing all these fun little things. And I'm all in mommy over here, Heather, she's got also her life. She's going out and she's doing all these things. She's known me to do extreme things her whole life, but I explained to her. I am taking off, et cetera.

And I said, and then you and I together, we have this whole other life, you and mommy's life. He's got her own life. Mommy's got her life. So as she's gotten older, I've given myself very specific  timelines,  if you will, of when she gets to be about, you know, eight. I'm going to start building my business a little bit more because I wanted to dedicate my time, especially being a single mom.

I'm like all about my daughter. I love her with every ounce of my being. And I want to make sure that she just has a wonderful childhood. And I want to be a part of that. I don't want to be the person that leaves. I don't even see her. She was my mascot at the gym for about four years. And so I gave myself very specific increments.

So when she's about eight, I'm going to start building my business a little bit more. And then it's just increment by increment. And that's what I've done. And it's been incredible. It really has. And you know what it does? It shows that child that it is our journey to this is my journey as well as it is our life together.

And I think for her. It shows her what an independent, hardworking person, male, female, doesn't matter, son, daughter. It just goes to show if you want something, you go out and get it. You got to put the work in. Right. I think it's a disservice. If I were to go, I'm not going to do anything that I desire, even though I really want to X, Y, Z, P, D, Q, whatever it is, I just don't, for me, I just feel that's not the right approach.

I feel for me, the right approach is to show them, boom, you can go out and you can do it. You can do it all. You just have to choreograph it well. You talked about incrementally building up your business as she got older. Tell me about your business. What are the goals with that? What have you been doing?

So when I did end up going back to work, which was after the fire department, after all of India, now Keeley's about a year old. I went back into a, if you will, a fallback. My first degree was in exercise physiology. So I thought, I'll become a trainer. And so I did. And I absolutely loved doing it. But then it just started morphing and shifting.

I don't just go into a gym. I come to people's homes. I help people post surgery. I help people train for races. My gamut is huge. That's kind of the bread and butter. And then I started taking women out on adventures, couple day adventures, whether it was hiking, rappelling, combination of kayaking. And then I started seeing bigger and I started seeing international.

And then about three years ago, I thought throughout my whole racing career, I really loved the humanitarian aspect. Every time we went into a different country, we would do a big humanitarian something. And I love that. I just really enjoyed it. So I started thinking a few years ago, I want to start my own something.

I don't know what it looks like, but I'm still going out and doing all these adventures. And I knew that I was going to be going over to Everest to base camp. And I was going to be doing a big journey through there. And I thought to myself, you I don't want to just do it nowadays to just do another check off my bucket list.

I want there to be something more meaningful to it. So I started just writing stuff down and started talking with a couple of my clients. And I thought, I'm going to try to get maybe like a nonprofit going, or maybe I'm going to, while I'm out on my journeys, I'll start bringing supplies to some of the villages.

So anyhow, it all started with the seed. So now bring it to here where I am now. So I am a program under a nonprofit. My program is called Trekking Ambassadors. And what we do is I have a team of four or five people and we take off and we go into far, remote villages. Most of them have no road access. We hike in supplies like solar powered reading lights.

We make solar light libraries for far remote schools. We bring in reading eyeglasses, little cheaters to the village clinics and hospitals. So we have now got two missions under our belt. We started two solar reading light libraries in Tanzania. It was just absolutely incredible at two different secondary schools.

I've been communicating with the headmaster. We're going to be going back in July of  2025. And now we've got a hospital and a clinic that we have brought on board with us, and we're continuing to build out the solar light libraries for the students. Most of these places don't have electricity. Some of them have a little on the grid of electricity, but it's very limited.

And then in this past March and April, we took off and my trip that was going to be at one point, the bucket list for Everest Base Camp became the most Incredible journey through the high remote villages of the Everest region, and we went to four different schools, bringing the solar reading everything we're carrying on our back.

Our packs are heavy, and we brought in the solar reading lights to the libraries.  We went to four clinics, one hospital, and brought the reading eyeglasses to them. And a lot of them, it's not for reading so much in these villages, it's a lot for artisans. This little bracelet I have on is like the little woman that I met along the trail in the middle of nowhere who does all the beading.

They don't have a dollar tree or go down to CVS or whatever. So these are extremely valuable pieces of equipment that we're bringing in, and they seem. So minor to us, but they are everything. One little solar reading light can change the educational trajectory of a student's life. Just being able to study after dark.

It's huge. It's huge. So that is what I'm doing now. We're getting ready for our big mission coming up in Peru. And we've got a couple schools and clinics that we have on board that we're going to be working with. So we're really excited about that. Next one. I love it. I love it. So when you have hyped in some of these supplies, what sorts of reactions have you gotten?

Do you have an example or two that you can share? Absolutely. First of all, the kids,  I just, you want to talk about a heart opening experience. On, on every level there. That's the obvious it's wonderful, just the gratitude and stuff and true, like just graciousness really. However, my favorite story as of right now is this is only about day three into my journey through the Himalayas.

And we are at the capital of the Solukumbu region. It's a hillside town, it's called Namche Bazaar. And, um, it's just beautiful. It's in the middle of nowhere. It sits about, just a little over 9, 000 feet. It's very low. We got up to 18, but it's beautiful. So we had a couple schools there and we had a hospital.

So the hospital that we were delivering the reading glasses to, so proud, they're very proud people and they're extremely clean and just gracious. And the doctor, he wanted to give us a tour of the hospital. And it was just wonderful. A couple very small little rooms. That looked like a tiny little house really and he's showing us all this and we're walking around and you know He's just beaming from you know, uh, um, just his whole smile is just huge And so we got the paperwork done.

We got all the pleasantries. We were Interacting with him and then we thought we were ready to leave and he comes out and he's holding You This beautiful saffron kind of marigold saffron colored Nepalese like Buddhist shawl and it's got all this ornate wonderful scroll on it. And he's walking over towards me and my team and he walks over and he starts saying stuff and he goes, Oh, on behalf of blah, blah, blah.

And then he puts it and he presents it to me and he puts it around my neck.  And he pulled it together in the front, and he put his forehead on mine, and he said this little prayer in Nepalese, and I got so  emotional, not like crying, but like, my heart must have just gone,  like the Grinch, when his heart went,  and I just went.

Day three, I was on that trail for 15 more days, but that right there was just the epitome of this is why I'm doing this. This is why I'm running around trying to get this fundraising, doing all these things because it's not easy work. And plus getting them into these places is a lot of work and it just, it's hard to describe the feeling.

So that's, to me, that was one of the best. So far, that's been the topper of the stories for sure. That's awesome. Yeah. Just that connection with someone from somewhere completely different. It's pretty amazing. I would imagine these places, they don't see people coming in. Generally speaking, it doesn't sound like.

Not at some of them. Now that place in particular, they're a little used to the trackers coming through, but there were definitely there's offshoot ones. That are not used to big, a lot of traffic, foot traffic. And it's fascinating. It's just like these trails. They're just, there's no roads. There's no bicycles.

They're just trails. Everyone hikes. That's how you get around. That's it. You've got the horses or the yaks and the people. That's the modes of transportation. And I'm glad you said that about the connection, because that is my new word really to describe my work. Because in this day and age, the lack of connection is a lot.

And to me being able to connect and especially even like in the prison to connect to those women. And you're sitting here like you and I are talking and I might be talking like this, and you're not understanding a word I'm saying. But I'm still going. Oh my gosh. Yes. And you're cheering up and you're crying and you're hugging to me.

That's what it's all about. That's what living life to its fullest is, is just holding all that and being able to experience all of that. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it. Do you have anything else that you'd like to share that you'd like to talk about? Everyone is on this journey. Everyone is on this journey doing the best that they can with the tools that they have.

And I just, my mission, like with my clients and people I work with, is really to, this is our one shot as far as we know. And I'm just determined to live my life to its fullest extent. And I really encourage people also, To get out there and it doesn't matter what it is because it's all relative of what you want.

It's everything. We can't measure ourself against somebody else. You can do the best that you can. Your life wants to be different than my life. We don't have the same desires. I always say to people whatever it is that you desire, that you want, go after it. Don't be afraid. I have a thing and this is for my life anyhow.

If I'm not living on the edge, I'm taking up too much room. To me, it's like that stage. You gotta live on that stage. This is the stage of life. And you don't want to go sideways, because then you're just going through that same mundane thing. It's predictable what's gonna happen. And that's fine, if that's what people are comfortable with.

But there is something within each person that has a desire. It has a longing to do something a little bit more. And I just say, you know what? Where that stage is, you got to just take that leap. You got to just jump off because you know what? What if you fail? What if you do fail? But what if all of a sudden something extraordinary happens?

You don't know. Until you open that door, you have no idea what's going to happen. But if you never do, you'll never know. And I'm all about when my time has come, I am going to be scarred and scraped and bruised, and I'm going to be sliding in there and I'm going to have no regrets, no regrets of all the failure, all the life that's been lived, all the trials and heartache.

And it's all learning, take it all in. And just Be with it. And that's what I would want to say. Yeah, I, I love that. And what you said about each person, they have their own, let's call it an inner voice, their own authentic self that like you're saying, everybody has something, maybe sense of purpose, something that they'd like to do, but it is scary.

It's scary. No matter what that is, it might not be. Extreme sports or it might be that they want to write a book or they want to start an organization or just whatever change their life transform, but it is really tough to come up against those fears. It is tough. It's tough for people to think I might fail when, like you said, you might fail, you might not fail, but even if you fail, it might lead you to the next place.

So the starting on the journey is the key. Absolutely. You have to. I never thought that I'd be sitting at writers conferences and going to writing retreats and sitting in amongst a core of people telling their deepest, darkest, emotional stuff and crying. But, wow, how empowering is that? It is empowering when you become vulnerable and just Open yourself up, it's amazing what transpires, and to reiterate again, piggyback on what you said, what I said, everyone's stuff is different.

I don't care if it's you wanting to start a cookie shop and create this, that is awesome, and yeah, that's scary, but go out and try it. You've got to do it, because You would rather, I know, I would rather sit there when Father Time's telling me it's my time. I'd rather me think, wow, I tried it, didn't happen, instead of, gosh, I wonder what would have happened if I ever would have, oh, no woulda, shoulda, coulda.

No, woulda, shoulda, coulda, because that's what wears people. When I talk to a lot of people in their later years and I have older clients and they say to me, gosh, I always wish I would have, that's heartbreaking. And it's many people it's prevalent. And I say, go for it. And this is what I think of too, exactly what you're saying resonates with me so much because on our deathbeds or what I envision thinking of it from that kind of a perspective, we're going to look back and say, why did I care?

Why did I care about the fears? Why did I care about what other people thought or if I was going to fail? That's how I envision it for myself that it might be for other people is because we would say that stuff doesn't matter. So having to get ourselves to that perspective at a younger, younger year is a little bit tough, but I think that exercise, what you're talking about when father time is telling you, Hey, thinking that through for oneself can make a difference. 

Absolutely. And actually here is a great exercise. And had I not been at that writing retreat, this was one of my prompts and it is an extremely powerful exercise. And to this day, I still have this little notebook that I was given to write this exercise in. And this exercise was this. Your soul is going to talk to you when this body is done, you are going to have a conversation with your soul and your soul is going to tell you something.

And the prompt was, what does your soul tell you? And I'm going to tell you what  about a powerful, unbelievable, Oh my gosh, these people and whoever wanted to share, shared. Otherwise you don't have to. Because. And mine I was just like it was almost like getting channeled through me and it was just like it's  So powerful.

It was like, I am so proud of you and I am still, there's still so much. I want to experience and do. And it's really for the experiential. It's not to prove anything. I have at this point in my life. I don't have anything to prove. I want to help. I want to experience and I want people to experience and be able to Get them to be able to write a prompt that will say heather You did what I was meant to do You had an opportunity to go this way or this way and you did your soul's purpose You came down and you fought for it and you worked for it and you failed Miserably and you got up and you pulled your it makes me tear up when I say it You But that's, to me, one more powerful thing to, we, it doesn't matter, you are an incredible mother to those mothers that stay at home, that pour themselves into it.

It doesn't matter what it is, define it in your own way. Exactly. Exactly. Very well said. And I love the idea of that prompt. All of what you're saying really resonates with me, and I really appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, so I just appreciate you taking the time, sitting here and talking through all of this with me, and I want to thank you for being here.

This has been wonderful. Thank you. I appreciate you having me on here.  And if I can ever inspire anybody in any way, I'd love to do that for sure. Awesome. Thank you so much. You're welcome.