From Pediatric Anesthesia to Spiritual Discoveries: Dr. Michelle Grua's Journey

In this episode, Dr. Michelle Grua, a pediatric anesthesiologist, shares her journey into medicine, the personal loss of her husband, and her search for spiritual understanding. 

Dr. Grua describes how her husband's unexpected death led her to explore various spiritual and scientific texts, ultimately finding comfort in signs and after-death communications. 

She also discusses the concept of 'earth school' and the soul's journey, emphasizing the importance of recognizing and embracing signs from loved ones.

Transcript

1:29

we're here today with Dr. Michelle Grua. She's a California girl, and she practices pediatric anesthesia, and she's been doing that for a while, and good afternoon, Dr. Grua. Thanks. Nice to meet you. Yeah, it's nice to meet you as well. So tell me what got you going into do that medicine kind of stuff? Was that something you always wanted to do, or? Yeah. Oh it's, it's kind of funny. When I was in high school, I wanted to go into medicine and then I sort of got sidetracked in college and sort of forgot about that and went into respiratory therapy. And then I was working at a pediatric hospital. In the NICU, the neonatal ICU, and I was surrounded by residents who would rotate through, but they didn't know the preemies as well as those of us who worked in there every day did. Okay. They didn't understand the physiology, and I was really frustrated by their lack of consideration for our input. Like if I said, you know, this preemie is awake during the day. So his blood gases look great. So you're weaning his ventilator settings, but at 3 AM he's going to crash because he's going to be asleep. So I got frustrated by them not paying attention to me. And I just thought, you know what, I'm going to go to med school because I want to be the one giving the orders. And that was kind of the beginning of it. And, Yeah, that's kind of how I got into medicine, and I continued with PEDS just because I really love taking care of kids compared to adults. It's just much more, tends to be more joyful, more playful, and that speaks to my personality a bit more. Okay, okay. Oh, that's, that's great. That's great. So, I mean, it's an easy sentence to say, so I decided you're living life, you just, oh, I decided to be a doctor, it's like, well, that's a big, big road. It's it's not easy to do that. And maybe it was for you. I don't know. Well, I mean, yes and no. It's a, it's a long slog. It's a, it's definitely a commitment, but it's not really that hard. I mean, It's just, I mean it is in that it requires tons of time to memorize and read and learn and understand all of that stuff, but It's easier than, than a lot of things, I think. Okay. All right. All right. And now, we're going to be talking about some spiritual stuff today. And wondering, when you were young, was that something that you were filled with a desire to study spiritual things or things like that? Not at all. I was raised, I was raised in the South, and I was raised in a family that was Methodist in name only. Okay. And we, we didn't go to, I think we went to church a handful of times when I was probably less than fourth grade, and then it pretty much just quit. And there was never any, just, like, we didn't say grace at meals. We didn't, nothing. We were a totally secular household. And yeah, I never, it was never part of my consideration growing up. Okay. It's interesting, because I've interviewed some people for this show that started studying, these really advanced theological things when they were 14 now, me, I was like, I was looking for, I was getting on my bike and riding over to my friend's house or something and playing in a band. I didn't have any spiritual connection at all. And so it's interesting how different people do things differently. Yeah. Yeah, now it I would say the only the only spiritual thing I ever read or was drawn to was You probably remember Richard Bach the author that wrote Jonathan Livingston Siegel Oh, yeah was just that was just I I didn't like that book but he wrote another book called illusions the adventures of a reluctant Messiah and it's more in keeping with the things that I think the way the world works. And so that was kind of the first thing that I ever read that sort of made me open my eyes to the possibility of sort of manifesting what you want if you will, but that was, that was it. Okay. All right. No research into the Bible or anything like that. Well that was a pretty early book to be talking about manifesting things, right? Yeah. All right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't remember what year that or decade that was, but it was not, it wasn't, it's not a recent book. It's in, it was I would say it was like 1975, 76. Okay. I remember reading it when I was about 15 or 16, so. Okay. All right. Cool. Yeah. Cool. And at some point in time in talking with you before we started this recording, the, you and I talked about about your life and about. An unexpected tragedy or loss that you had in your life and how it affected you. And could you tell us a little bit about that involving your husband? Yeah, so, I, met my husband on a Grand Canyon River trip. He was the trip leader on this river trip. Fell in love with him and moved from Atlanta out to Arizona to live with him, be with him. And we were married for, Well, we were together for a little less than four years, and then he died unexpectedly in doing a mountain bike ride. He had a spontaneous aortic dissection. So he was gone for a mountain bike ride and didn't come home at the anticipated time. That was not my first experience losing someone that I loved. I had lost my mom and my grandfather, who I was not particularly close to, but my mom, I was. But it was that emotional upheaval that really. Set me on the path of trying to figure out really it started with like how can somebody just cease to exist like I can't understand how that can happen and then it just kind of progressed from there to sort of reading books from all different walks reading physics textbooks reading The Tibetan book of living and dying. Right, right. You know, lots of different books that sort of help me cobble together the place where I am now. Well, I think that we all need to do that when we're faced with something so substantial and so beyond normal day to day life, when I do it, I start to think to myself, I've got to get a handle on this. I've got to get a, a thought process that allows me to deal with this. And so what you did is you studied a lot of different things. And did something in particular that you were reading, did it make more sense to you than other parts? Did something really connect up with you? Well, I mean, I don't, I can't say that it was any one thing. Okay. I don't remember a specific aha moment. What I was trying to reconcile was the fact that he was no longer physically here. Okay. But that I was having all of these, I don't know what you would call them, after death communications. Signs from him that were unmistakably Specific to he and I and always timely and I was trying to figure out like I know these are real I know that they feel authentic. How can I explain how these work? Oh so a lot of the reading was kind of Trying to find an explanation for that and part of it was reading the Tibetan book of living and dying where the Rinpoche says someone's asking him about reincarnation and if if we truly reincarnate then why don't we remember anything of our past lives and his response was What did you have for lunch last Tuesday? Yeah, you're right you don't remember very much of your current life Much less your previous life and that sort of made sense to me. And then I read a lot of Brian Greene's writings. He's a physicist talking about the elegant universe and kind of explains how Einstein's theory of special relativity works and, just kind of drawing on my science thermodynamics that says you can't make or destroy energy. And I know that. I know that we are just. Bundles of energy. And so that sort of sparked my curiosity of, well, all right, if you can't make her destroy energy, then where does that energy go? Right. And is it possible that that energy, now that it's not contained in a human body, is it just dispersed everywhere, but it still carries a signature that I can recognize as my husband? Right, right, right. I'm not sure if that explains where I drew my. understanding from, but that it was kind of a culmination of a lot of different things and trying to relate them to the experiences that I was having. I think what you're saying makes a lot of sense. I want to step back to something that you said just kind of in passing there, which was the thing that, that drew you to do your studies was that you were receiving these kind of downloads or whatever from your husband. And do you recall like what were the early ones that you got? Not everybody that loses someone gets those. Right. And to that point, I never got those with my mom and I never got them with my grandfather. My dad passed away after my husband. I've never gotten them from him. Okay. But I get them all the time from my husband. The first one that I had was after his memorial service, we were up in an Aspen Grove and I'd gone off away from everybody yell and scream and cry and beat the crap out of an aspen tree with a tree branch. And when I was finally exhausted, I sat down and I cried until I was just kind of spent. And when I raised my head and looked, there was a fallen aspen tree on the ground about. 20 feet from me and it didn't have any bark on it. So it just was the grain of wood. And when I looked at the grain of wood, it was almost like an Escher drawing where like his image just sort of emerged in the grain of wood and, and it was exactly the same expression that he always had, and it's just, it's just really sweet smile with just a little bit of sadness in his eyes. And I'm like, God, that's you, but you know, you look sad, but. You're also smiling and I, I just felt this current of energy kind of passing between the wood and me and I dismissed it because I thought, well, you know, you're a grieving wife and you're desperate to see your husband and you're just imagining him everywhere. But but that was the first one, but that, feeling that you had. I was lucky enough to have a past life regression and I, when my first time I had done it and I really hadn't connected much at all with the other side, but I wanted to, and all of a sudden I was getting these things where I was just knowing something. I didn't see a picture or anything else, but all of a sudden, very clearly out of the blue, I knew something. And when I knew it. I had an internal feeling that, oh, this is real. This is the real deal. It was no question about it. And so, I think that you probably had that same thing. When you saw this aspen tree in the wood, you're like, this is real. But then you dismissed it after, kind of, right? But when you were having it. When I was having it it felt real and actually it was really interesting because you know as I already said I was not religious I've never considered God in any way a part of my life But when I was looking at his face, he had this really sweet smile like Almost like the piteous look that a parent would give a child who's crying over something That they just don't understand because they don't have the perspective of the adult, right? It was that same look in his eyes and I got the sense that he was trying to say Oh you poor human like if you only knew what I knew standing where I am now You would recognize that this You This is nothing. You're fine, and we're, we're still together. And I got the sense that, that God is, it's exactly what those signs say when you see those signs in church that say God is love. Yes. I think it's just that simple. Okay. God is just the collective, Loving energy of all of the souls who have departed the physical realm right and are now just on the other side of the veil and they're over there rooting for us going, Oh, come on, little humans, you can do it. You've got this. And that's the first kind of consideration of God that I've ever had. I still think that that's pretty accurate. Well, that's a pretty big lightning bolt that struck you there at that time. I just can't imagine what that was like because you were already kind of in a, you were, you were emotionally just wrung out, right? At that point and and then all of a sudden this comes and it's like well I would have thought you're like, oh, you know, come on I can't I don't know if I can cope with it, but it was such a positive thing, right? Yeah, it was very positive and And it just continued over the years and it's all he's always really funny in the way that he Shows up like one of the earlier times that he showed up. So he's As an anesthesiologist, you can't just show up to work and go through the motions. You have to be fully present or somebody's going to get injured. So I didn't work for quite a while, several months after he died. And when he died, he'd been in the middle of this big landscaping project. And so there was this big, yellow, brown, backhoe that he was driving, still sitting in our backyard with all these piles of dirt everywhere. And I thought, okay, well, monsoon season's coming and that's going to be a muddy mess and I'm not working. So I'm just going to drive the backhoe and finish this project. Having never driven a backhoe, fully confident that I could do this. I can do this. And, and every time I got into the backhoe, it felt like. I was almost slipping into his skin, and he was working the levers. I just had this preternatural sense of calm, like, I've got this, and I'm not alone. And, which I have no reason to believe that I could drive a backhoe. Yes, yes. But while I spent those hours driving the backhoe, Most of my thoughts were, what am I going to do with my life? Can I go back to anesthesia? Do I want to go back to anesthesia? If I don't go back to anesthesia, what will I do? Just kind of really questioning. And I was really struggling. And I was seeing a therapist. Crying with friends, reading every grief book ever written, nothing was helping, and finally a friend suggested that I talk to a medium that she had spoken to, and I was like, my first response was you know I'm a scientist, right? Like, I live in the world of data and proof, but I thought, well, I don't have anything to lose, so I Made an appointment and the very first thing the medium said with no preamble, he said, your beloved is here and he's showing me a big yellow bulldozer and this guy doesn't know me. I was living in Arizona. This guy was like in Vermont or someplace and he says he's showing me a big yellow bulldozer and you're not driving the bulldozer. But it's moving really fast and it's clearing a very definite path for you. And your job is just to follow behind the bulldozer and trust that it's going to take you where you need to go. He could have said you're flying in an airplane and there's no pilot or you're driving in a car and there's no steering wheel, but he picked a big yellow bulldozer. So that I would know, yes, this is definitely Kenton, my husband, coming through, and he's saying, just relax, you know, like the universe, it's got a path for you, and you're going to be fine, just trust. It makes me want to cry just hearing about that. I mean, that's a very profound thing for you to hear right off the bat like that. It's like, oh, wow, that's, that hit home. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And that, that must've been so nice to get that message. It was. And it, and it continues, you know, for me, it's actually been more and more frequent that he shows up and gives me messages. And it's always when I'm really struggling with kind of big life decisions. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And Mike, well the most complicated one was, so when he was a river guide he, he used to do this thing where he would dress up like an elf at this place called Elves Chasm in Grand Canyon. And He'd wear, you know, a little Peter Pan kind of hat. And these little curly, toed shoes, and he'd put green face paint on, and little mistress haired ears. And and he would even introduce himself to people as an elf. And many years after his passing, Daughter has serious mental illness and I needed to place her in residential treatment for her own safety and I was Distraught and oh, yeah I I really wish that you were here to help me With this and to help me know that i'm making the right decision. I feel really alone in this and so I called my medium again and And asked him for some guidance and he said, well, your beloved is here and he's showing up and he's wearing this Really interesting costume. It's red on top and green on bottom. Does that make sense to you? And I said, well Sort of but it's upside down like his costume was red on bottom and green on top But he said well, but he also wants me to show you this bottle this or a soma bottle and I didn't know what that was but it's these You bottles of plant extracts and they always put two different plants in each bottle. And the one that was red on top and green on bottom was the Robin Hood bottle. And he said the Robin Hood bottle is, the story of Robin Hood is that he, everybody knows he robbed from the rich and gave to the poor, but really what he was doing was he was going against the The law of the land doing what he knew was right. Okay. And I was going against what the school system said, what my ex husband, my daughter's father said, because I knew what she needed. And so I was like, okay, well maybe he's trying to tell me that, yeah, I'm doing the right thing. So and he said, but he's showing me two hats. And I was like, okay. When he asked me what that was about, I said, well, I think he's trying to show me that he's also connected to our middle son, who I dressed up as Peter Pan for a Halloween costume. And I have a picture of both of them wearing their Peter Pan hats. And so I think he's trying to tell me that he's still connected with our son. It's like, okay, so Peter Pan, Robin Hood, that's all going on. While she was in Residential treatment. I had sewn her quilt embroidered with all these song lyrics. And one of the song lyrics that I put on there was a weird selection because it was half of a verse. The last half of a verse and the first half of a chorus. Okay. And, so it was a weird choice. And, I took it out to a woman to have her quilt it for me. Yes. Yes. And, so as I'm driving out there to pick up the quilt, now that it's done, I'm crying and I'm listening to my husband sing. I have a recording of him and cars are whizzing past me. And, I'm, Kind of giving a pity party for myself and I'm telling him how miserable I am and you know this sucks to be without you and you know what it doesn't even matter because I'm going to turn 52 this year and I'm probably going to die when I'm 52 because my mom died at 52 unexpectedly, you died at 52 unexpectedly, that's probably going to happen to me too. The cars are whizzing past me in the other lane and I just happened to look up and notice the tag on a car going past and it said elf 252. I'm like, oh. Elf, only two people are going to die at 52. Okay, so I get out to the lady's house, and I'm going to write her a check, and I don't know her name. I said, Hey Mary, what's your last name? I need to fill out this check. And she's like, Oh, Martin. Mary Martin. You know, like Peter Pan. Oh my goodness. And she's like, Oh yeah, she played Peter Pan on Broadway or something. Oh, for years. Yeah. Okay. So then I get in the car, I drive home, and as I'm driving home, on this road that I've driven a thousand times, but I happen to glance up and I notice the street name on a highway overpass that I've never noticed before, Sherwood Forest Road. Oh my goodness. Okay, Robin Hood. Then I get home. And I notice on my email that I've got a letter from my daughter at, she's at Wilderness Therapy at this point. And I'm still wondering, like, do you know what's going on with her? And I open the letter and she says, you know, the only good thing about being here is that we camp outside. And every time I get into my sleeping bag, it reminds me of being on a river trip with my stepdad and him singing this song to me. And then she wrote just exactly the selection that I had put on the quilt. Without knowing that I was making the quilt. That is so profound. That is so wild. Right? And so I just took it as, Can I make it any more obvious? I showed you the Robin Hood hat. I showed you the Peter Pan. I showed you Sherwood Forrest. And Mary Martin. And I, she's writing the same lyrics that you put on the quilt. Yes, I know what's going on. Wow, wow, wow. You can't make this stuff up. You No, I mean you would never even imagine to think that and then and here it is it really happened your daughter Not even knowing that you had done the quilt and put that same Odd end of a first beginning of a course that you that you wrote. That's yeah, that's Tremendous. That's really really nice. Yeah. Oh, that's that's awesome. That's so great Well, You certainly are so connected in that way and I wanted to talk to you a little bit about, What happens to this person's spirit? I mean, it's energy. It doesn't cease to exist. And then you and I had talked briefly before we, we, we did this interview about souls coming to earth school. Could you talk a little bit about that? Because I think that, I think that's a very, very important thing to hear about. Okay, so when you ask me about souls coming to earth school and what I mean by that. Yes. Is that, The question that people ask often is, well, if we come to earth school and we actually Pick an agenda for what we're going to learn at earth school. Why would anybody ever pick to get cancer or to get murdered? That's a terrible way to live and right and I would agree with that and if you looked at it from a human perspective No, it doesn't make any sense. Why would anybody wish for hardship instead of rainbows and unicorns? everybody wants that and and the reason is because You have to look at it from a soul perspective. If you can only learn certain lessons in the human form, when you come to earth school, and your whole goal is to further educate, further elevate your soul, reach a higher plane of enlightenment, whatever term you want to use, then it makes sense from a soul perspective that you pick these experiences. to help you learn those things that you can only learn as a human. I don't think you can suffer cancer as a disembodied form. Does that make sense? It makes perfect sense. I don't think so either. And if, the evolution and the development and the progression of improvement of your soul can involve learning a difficult lesson that maybe you hadn't gotten before. You maybe had tried to learn it in some lesser way, but then it just didn't hit home. And then, one thing that I, I recently was talking with someone who does a lot of life between lives work. And she said that, basically there comes a point in time when we're between lives where we do make a decision, just like you said, that we'd make a decision. What am I going to try to achieve in this next life? and I think it is fascinating. I mean, for those people who are worried about what's going to happen after I die, well, there's a lot that's going to happen in a positive way. it's just the fact that you're going to get a chance to continue to develop. And whatever level you're at, some people are brand new souls. Some people have been through life many, many times and have developed little by little. So, I like that idea that we can, Pick something that's going to help us, and get born into this life, and really time wise, us as souls A 50 year life is no big deal. It's a, it's a blip. Right, right. Yeah, and that kind of, that, you know, I think about that in terms of, of Einstein's theory of special relativity, right? Because, because like the, the classic experiment for the special relativity theory is to demonstrate that bodies in motion experience time differently depending on how fast they're traveling. So the classic experiment is take two clocks, have one on earth, put one on a spaceship traveling at the speed of light. After 24 hours on the earth clock, bring the one on the spaceship back to earth. The one on the spaceship will have measured less time because it's traveling so fast. So, If I think of it from an energy perspective, we are just electromagnetic waves, and, and once released from this body, all electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light, so they travel really fast, meaning that what I experience as 24 years, My husband might only experience as 24 hours because time goes so much more slowly for him So you're right our human life when viewed from that soul perspective Takes up such a short amount of time takes up less than a day for a soul, right, right I do like what you say about when you're looking at people that are having really miserable lives, because I, I know people that, you know, there's a song or whatever that says, if, if they didn't have bad luck, they'd have no luck at all. There's, I, I know people like that, that just seems like if there's a bad thing that could happen, they, they get it. And it just is hard to. See that. But when you look at it from the point of view that you just were talking about is that they're getting they're getting a training here in this lifetime as humans and that they're going to benefit from it, no matter how hard it seems in human life. And that's what they chose. That's what their soul chose. And actually, like, I joke about that. I say, you know, my personality is like, okay, if there's something to, to get done, like, I'm going to do it and I'm going to get it done right now. And I just like check off the box. Right. And so I feel like my, my soul's personality is, Okay, if, if I have to go to earth school to learn these lessons, then bring them on. Give them all to me. Give me a cruel brother. Give me a mom who gets killed in a tragic accident. Let me meet the love of my life and have him ripped away. Give me a child with serious mental illness, like bring it on. And I feel like once I leave this human body and I I go talk to my soul. I'm going to be like, Okay, you could have, you could have taken it a little more slowly. Next time, let's ease up a little bit on the the, the how many things in one lifetime. Yes. Right. Yeah. I, I agree with you. It's like, yeah, what the heck? I have had people say to me, you know, that's a soul contract that I entered into to do this, and I'd like to revise that contract, please, you know, like, amend it and take away any more of these big challenges, but yeah, now, one kind of whack, I call it kind of wacky, but one thought that I has, I've heard people talk about is that Earth is not the only And I know that's about an honor to me. But I am just not here to try to skedaddle or try or try to place where souls can go, or souls can develop, and that there are other places that don't have the same type of challenges that Earth has. And I think that's very interesting. And it's what it falls into this category of I'm not sure I believe it, but I don't disbelieve it. I don't know what to think of it, but I'll have to keep thinking about it. But, It does seem possible, so. Yeah, no, I agree. I think it seems possible, and I think the reason that it's hard to believe it is that we can't envision it. Right. We can't understand, all right, well, if I'm just this disembodied energy, then how do I, what other form do I exist in? If there is this other place for me to incarnate, if you will. Right. And we just, we can't envision it. And in fact, when you read. You know the, kind of the traditional religious texts, they're all kind of struggling to say the same thing. They're describing these other realms, and they choose heaven and hell, or nirvana, or the imaginal. All these different realms, they're all trying to, to describe it in human terms. But I think we're all talking about the same thing. Yes. Well, you certainly have devoted your life to helping people. You saw children as needing help, And you went there, and I hope that you're still enjoying that work. I love it. It's the best job. I can't imagine doing anything else with my life. That's awesome. Now, I'm about ready to wrap up because our time is kind of running out. Is there anything that you wanted to add Dr. Guha? Well, I would say just to remind people to, Pay attention to the signs, and don't dismiss those funny little coincidences. Look for those little cosmic winks. And when you, when something happens and you go, Ah, that reminds me of my mom, or I think my mom did that, or whatever. It is your mom. Right. It is, it is your loved one. They're trying to get your attention. And the more you pay attention to it, the more it happens. The more you notice, the more it happens. That's You're just opening that gateway for that interaction to occur. That is such an important message, and I really appreciate that because people who do talk about receiving signs, it's about being aware of them and not dismissive of them. Right, because it's not a coincidence, it's a sign. Yeah, and we're working together. I feel like when we have these soul contracts with our partners, parents, children, whomever they are. Right. He's working on the other side, helping me. I'm also helping him. I don't know how what I'm doing is helping him, but I know that it's helping him, because you can feel that energy exchange. Oh, so awesome. Spoken from a scientist. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for this wonderful interview. I really appreciate it. Thanks. Thanks for having me. It was a delight.