Shine On Success

Triumph Over Tragedy A Tale of Loss and Rebirth

February 21, 2024 Dionne Malush Season 1 Episode 14
Triumph Over Tragedy A Tale of Loss and Rebirth
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Shine On Success
Triumph Over Tragedy A Tale of Loss and Rebirth
Feb 21, 2024 Season 1 Episode 14
Dionne Malush

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When life hands us unimaginable loss, is it possible to forge ahead with a heart both heavy and hopeful? This question guided my heartfelt conversation with Cindy Little, a beacon of resilience and a self-improvement coach who bravely opened up about her journey through the deepest valleys of grief after the loss of her son. Together, we examined the transformative power of sorrow and how Cindy's profound personal tragedy led her to a place of gentleness and self-renewal. Her story is a testament to the human spirit's capacity for growth, even in the darkest of times.

Grief is an inescapable part of the human experience, yet each journey through it is as unique as the individual who walks its path. In this episode, Cindy and I reflected on the intricacies of mourning and the self-discovery that emerges from it. We discussed how vulnerability and leadership can intertwine, serving as a wellspring for resilience. Her lens on loss provided a poignant viewpoint on endurance amidst heartache, offering listeners a profound look at the strength that can be forged in grief's crucible.

The process of healing from loss is neither linear nor uniform. By sharing our personal narratives of sorrow and the multitude of therapeutic approaches that have aided us, Cindy and I hope to offer solace to those on a similar path. Whether through psychotherapy, meditation, or finding closure in the mental revisitation of last moments, the importance of honoring one's unique grieving process was underscored. Looking forward, Cindy's anticipation for her upcoming book, "Reflecting on Life Growing Through Grief," promises to extend a healing hand to those in search of understanding and we both embrace the possibility of emerging from grief with newfound purpose.

Connect with Dionne Malush

Instagram: @dionnerealtyonepgh
LinkedIN: /in/dionnemalush
Website: www.dionnemalush.com
Facebook: /dmalush

Connect with Dionne Malush

Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Send us a Text Message.

When life hands us unimaginable loss, is it possible to forge ahead with a heart both heavy and hopeful? This question guided my heartfelt conversation with Cindy Little, a beacon of resilience and a self-improvement coach who bravely opened up about her journey through the deepest valleys of grief after the loss of her son. Together, we examined the transformative power of sorrow and how Cindy's profound personal tragedy led her to a place of gentleness and self-renewal. Her story is a testament to the human spirit's capacity for growth, even in the darkest of times.

Grief is an inescapable part of the human experience, yet each journey through it is as unique as the individual who walks its path. In this episode, Cindy and I reflected on the intricacies of mourning and the self-discovery that emerges from it. We discussed how vulnerability and leadership can intertwine, serving as a wellspring for resilience. Her lens on loss provided a poignant viewpoint on endurance amidst heartache, offering listeners a profound look at the strength that can be forged in grief's crucible.

The process of healing from loss is neither linear nor uniform. By sharing our personal narratives of sorrow and the multitude of therapeutic approaches that have aided us, Cindy and I hope to offer solace to those on a similar path. Whether through psychotherapy, meditation, or finding closure in the mental revisitation of last moments, the importance of honoring one's unique grieving process was underscored. Looking forward, Cindy's anticipation for her upcoming book, "Reflecting on Life Growing Through Grief," promises to extend a healing hand to those in search of understanding and we both embrace the possibility of emerging from grief with newfound purpose.

Connect with Dionne Malush

Instagram: @dionnerealtyonepgh
LinkedIN: /in/dionnemalush
Website: www.dionnemalush.com
Facebook: /dmalush

Connect with Dionne Malush

Dionne Malush:

Welcome to today's episode of the Shine On Success podcast, where we explore the journeys of remarkable individuals who have turned adversity into triumph. Have you ever faced a challenge so profound that it changed the course of your life? I'm Dionne Malush, your host of Shine On Success, and today's guest, Cindy Little, has not only faced such challenges, but has emerged stronger, using her experiences to empower others. Cindy is a beacon of resilience, a self-improvement coach and the voice behind a healthier you. Little by little podcast. Join us as we dive into her inspiring journey, from navigating personal tragedy to helping others achieve their fullest potential. And remember, we love hearing from you, so connect with us on social media to share your thoughts and questions. Hi, Cindy, welcome.

Cindy Little:

Hey, thanks for having me on your show today. I'm super excited.

Dionne Malush:

I'm excited too, and ever since I first met you, I just felt something so powerful that I think we could be friends forever. So I'm glad to have you on the show and I have some questions for you, so let's get started. Awesome. So your journey of growth through grief is both moving and inspiring and, as you all know, my father passed away less than six months ago. It's like 158 days later and you know I'm heartbroken, but I feel myself doing things constantly to fill up my time, so that I'm not grieving. So can you share how this experience has shaped your approach to wellness and self-improvement?

Cindy Little:

Well to wellness and self-improvement. I'd say that you know a lot of people look at death as a tragedy or an ending, but I see it as a beginning and I just completed a book that I wrote and it was inspired by the loss of our 21-year-old son who died in a car accident over two years ago. And even on the second anniversary, which just happened last October, I was very lost. The day after the second anniversary, like when you usually have anniversaries of loved ones that have passed you, you start, you know, thinking that's going to be a special day and that you're going to be a wreck.

Cindy Little:

On that day, I put the week off of all my scheduled appointments and stuff and I was actually quite fine on the day of the second anniversary of the loss of our son and then the next day I felt like I was going through an identity evolution where I didn't want to be old Cindy anymore.

Cindy Little:

I didn't want to be the go, go, go, do, do, do, sell, sell, sell Cindy, and I am a top income earner of a network marketing company. I have been in the top income earners of that company for a long time, but over the last few years it's been steadily coming down and well, especially after the loss of our son, I wasn't really focused on it, although I joined a mastermind group five months after my son passed because I didn't want to lose inertia. And so, deon, when you said that you wanted to keep yourself busy after the passing of your dad, that's good and bad in the fact that I hope that you've taken the time on off that you needed to grieve him, and if you haven't, yeah, and that will patch up with you, deon, like it did for me. Two years later, I got that real kind of pause where everything told me not to do anything anymore and I really listened to it for the first time in my life and I'm 54 years old.

Cindy Little:

I know, I'm just close to your age as well. It's not like menopause has a way of playing on your mind too. It tells you when to slow down or when to stop doing stuff, something that you don't like doing and I got those messages pretty loud and clear, and I was told my spirit and my soul was telling me to completely take a break from everything that I'm. And I was doing everything podcasting, running two businesses, marketing and social media and all these things you know, and writing a book too. And I'm thinking, okay, when does Cindy stop? Or when do you stop and listen, right?

Dionne Malush:

Yeah, I haven't heard the stopping yet. I do know that I'm doing things, and my creativity is an all time high. I'm constantly doing something and it's just not stopping right, and so I don't know, and I hope that I don't have that, but everyone's telling me that I will.

Cindy Little:

Well, everybody's different when it comes to grief, and I write about the stages of grief in my book and the do's and don'ts about grief, and I talk about the experience of losing a son, and losing a son or losing a parent or losing a loved one, loss is loss, grief is grief, and you can have grief over losing a job, you can have grief over the pandemic and what our governments did to us. There's just so many different ways to experience grief and that's what the book that I felt compelled, at the one year anniversary, to do something, cause I'm sitting on my son's memorial bench and I'm asking the universe what do I do now? Like I feel so lost and I was going through Perry menopause at the time and now I'm full menopause and I was like I just didn't want to go back to doing things the way I used to do them, like go, go, go, do, do, do, sell, sell, sell. I just don't feel that old and I call it old Cindy versus new Cindy and new Cindy's really gentle on myself and I think that's the gift that my son wanted me to see was the bigger picture and not to be sad.

Cindy Little:

I've gotten that message a number of times and I talk about how I got messages through signs, through birds, through snakes and animals and nature. And even my neighbor had a dream and my son went to her in the dream and said tell my mom not to be sad. And it's, you know, like I and people on the other side, they don't feel sad. They're living a wonderful life in the newness of what they're learning and doing. And so it's us that are left behind to pick up the pieces and move on. And I am moving on. I mean, I still am making sales, I'm still maintaining a wonderful marriage of 30 years and I'm very blessed in so many ways. But it really is the pausing of life. And when they say menopause, I didn't think it would be like a real pause.

Dionne Malush:

Like yeah, I didn't know that. So, oh, it's so much what you've been through and you're just, you're on the other side and you know, I think about, like you said you were a top earner in your company, and like when you say you kept pushing yourself, what did that look like? How did you get to be a top earner? It's hard, network marketing it's hard. So what did you do? Like what are some things that you did to get there and how do you maintain that now?

Cindy Little:

Well, I listened to a few of your episodes before hopping on today and you know you always are talking about the Think and Grow Rich book by Napoleon Hill. I read that three times and I've highlighted it and earmarked up pages and I definitely recommend that for any entrepreneur, but I do. I'm a very big reader, I am. I listened to one of your other guests who said he recommends reading, meditating and writing, and I've been doing all of those.

Cindy Little:

And so scheduling yourself like you have to have a schedule if you wanna be highly successful. You need to make priority lists and you know what my philosophy, and my husband's too, because my husband retired from the military, who's a special operations guy in the Canadian military for 27 years and he was away a lot when I was raising our children and running a home gym. I was a gym owner and a personal trainer and then I was introduced to a health network marketing company, which married well with what I was trying to help people with their health anyway and I was running on the clock Like I had to be highly organized, highly scheduled, and you basically cut out the fluff and you just do, do, do, go, go, go, sell, sell, sell.

Dionne Malush:

I love that so much, I'm gonna take it. I'm gonna use that, I'm sure, around here quite a bit. So you grew your business and so you had 30 years in fitness, nutrition and health. So how has your philosophy on wellness evolved and how do you integrate this into the coaching Cause you are a coach as well, now, correct?

Cindy Little:

Yeah, I'm a lot of things. Me too, I'm a lot of things, yeah, and know health is definitely very important. I think we all know that when you eat crappy, or if you eat a crappy meal, you feel like crap right.

Cindy Little:

And don't work out Like. We all know that when we get out in the sunshine and we get out into the into nature, we always feel like it's transformed us by the time we get home from that walk. We feel so much better for doing it and I still prioritize those types of things and although I mean I competed at the age of 48 and I competed at the age of 26, like in fitness competitions, and I'm not as fit as that in the schedule Now, that took a lot of scheduling, a lot of nutrition planning and I'm not that Cindy anymore.

Dionne Malush:

That's the question. I mean 48 and you're competing. That's amazing. So tell us a little bit more about that.

Cindy Little:

You know what. Everything is a decision, right? If you want to look for it way and perform that way, then you lean towards that and it's like, if you want like I heard you say on your previous podcast you want to associate with people that are doing better than you and learn from them, right?

Cindy Little:

So you get the wrong one, yes, correct, and that's who I've always associated with People that are doing something, that are better than me. I like to associate with people like that, because then I learn from them or I ask them for help. And how do you grow if you don't ask?

Dionne Malush:

I love that so much. It's definitely one of the secrets of thinking, for a wretch is seeking expert counsel, and I literally have spent most of my career in real estate doing that. Now I had my other company prior to. I didn't even understand any of this until the secret came in my life and I understood what that looked like right. So now I know, and if I have a question or if I have something in business that's not working like today, I was having an issue and I went to my coach and we talked through it and then by the end of the call, it just made so much more sense because I could talk about it with someone that's been there.

Dionne Malush:

And you can talk to your friends and family, but sometimes they've never been through what you're going through and I think some of the things that happen to us is that we go through them so we can teach and help other people. Right, and, like you're teaching me right now through your grief, you're sharing with me some things that could possibly happen in my future because I am going at such a high level right now. So I hear you because you've been there, but if you hadn't been in that situation, I couldn't, I couldn't. You couldn't understand how I feel. And you're right. Everyone, whether it's a parent, a child, a spouse, it's different, but it's the same.

Cindy Little:

Well, you know, you're right and I, you know, I always thought I knew so much and I always, you know, thought that you know my fitness, my nutrition, my communication and relationships, they've all all been where they need to be and I thought that those, those types of things would help me through the grief, and they did. But then I had a realization like whoa, I never really did stop, like I kept my armor up, I kept my my walls up, I kept my strength up and I kept going because that's what people expected of me as a leader. And I don't think I was, I don't think I was nice enough to me.

Dionne Malush:

I say that a lot. What if I don't get through this, if I don't push myself, if I don't show them all that I can do it, then how do they ever believe in me? Right, and that's how I feel. Like, if I fall flat on my face and they're going to say this is our leader, she runs this company and she's there's 200 of us and we're watching to see what she does yeah, what if I fall? Yeah, right. And so I don't know who will pick me back up again. But I know I have no choice but to. But you're right, and I don't know.

Dionne Malush:

A lot of my grief came before my dad passed, because we knew that he was sick, but we didn't know how sick. In fact, the day before he passed he actually said I'm ready to go to the ER, which three years he hadn't went to the doctor. So the night before he says that. So we all had hope. So we said he's going to the doctors, he's going to get, maybe get more time. He literally died the next day After. He was wrong with him, he just was so tired and it was so sad because we didn't know he was dying that day or the next day.

Dionne Malush:

So it's been so much since then that I feel like I haven't. I've said that a couple of weeks ago. I haven't taken the time to grieve, but I know that he wouldn't want me to either, like he would want me to get back up, pick up the pieces and continue to honor him. One of my friends was in the military and he may have heard this, but he said you know, in the military we don't grieve, we honor. So spend your life honoring your dad, because if we grieve, then we couldn't defend our country, right, we wouldn't. If we're sitting there grieving, how are we going to do that?

Cindy Little:

So yeah, so go ahead. That's funny that you mentioned the military, because as a medic in the military, I spent six years as a military medic and I spent six months in Croatia during the war, just right after the really heavy part of the war in 1994, 1995, before I got married and we weren't taught how to grieve. We weren't taught how to deal with that. Even as a medic, as a medical assistant, we weren't taught that and I write about that in my book. You were just taught to suck it up and get back doing what you need to do and that's all fine. And, dandy, I came from a military family. My dad was military, my husband was military, my two brothers were military, I was military, my mom was military, I've had a lot of them over at World War II. So it's in my DNA to be strong and to continue and charge forward.

Cindy Little:

But something happened after the second anniversary that made me just halt completely and reassess who am I and what have I been doing? And then it wasn't until this trip to Nevada recently where I was with a healing friend who's a universal healer universal healer and she didn't attune in on me and she did a couple of different healing treatments on me and I I saw myself outside of my body about how controlling I've been with my life, from the military to my gym ownership and running a network marketing business on top of that and just go, go, go all the time, and, and, and. Now I'm like in a position where I'm coloring in adult coloring books and I'm meditating, I'm writing and I'm doing, I'm doing me, the new me. And so do you like her? I do, but you know what it's really challenging, I have to admit. So you know, take yourself, for instance, or anybody listening, take your life and then take yourself, like, just stop being you.

Cindy Little:

And let's say, if you were in a coma tomorrow, you wouldn't be doing all the things that you're doing, but that stuff will continue getting done somehow, or it won't matter. But if you were in a coma or if you had a life-threatening disease diagnosis tomorrow, what would change in your life? And then you start realizing what's important and what's not important. Like I was an area director for Toastmasters. I was giving speeches with Toastmasters, I was doing all of these extracurricular things and I had to let them go. And it's okay to let it go and it's okay to just say it's my time. I got to take this time and I never thought I would ever say that. To be honest, I was like go go, go charge forward, do do too Right.

Dionne Malush:

And your background sure didn't help that be different, right? Because of what you know in the military life. And so there's just. Do you have daily habits now that support this new you, that help you to be the difference that you are right now? What do you do every single day?

Cindy Little:

Yeah, absolutely, and so one of the first things that I do is read for either 15 to well, 15 minutes to an hour, and then I typically journal, or actually, first I journal my dreams, if I have dreams and I've been having a lot of dreams lately and dreams are your subconscious way of saying, hey, this, what's going on, is what you should think about and I Google all the stuff that's in my dreams and you'll be shocked to learn what you are dreaming about, whether it's water, fire, different things that come up, animals. They tell you they're there to tell you something. And if you're, if you're not listening to your dreams or writing them down and diagnosing them, or searching, researching them, then you're not getting the clues that you need. I'm looking for the clues right now. I was looking for the signs too, and I was seeing the signs and thanking Dylan, my son, for the signs that he was leaving me.

Cindy Little:

And so, dream, dream, journaling and reading something, usually self-improvement, and right now it's Dr Joe Dispenza's. I just finished his becoming supernatural, or superhuman, I think supernatural and then I. Then I go down to my son's room where I set up a massage table and a treatment room and I do my own meditation and I draw an Oracle card as well. I learned how to do Oracle cards and I I shuffle the deck and the one that falls out is the one that's meant for me, and today it was. It was to continue to follow the plan, like rest, basically rest up like, rather than be in such a rush to figure out who I am now or what I want to do. It's still telling me to trust in the plan. We all have a plan, like if you believe in God or the universe, or spirit, or your angels. We were all put here for some reason. But if we continue to run, run, run, we may not figure that out. But, dionne, you might be in a profession that you absolutely adore, and I was too. I was in a profession that I completely adored. I love sales, I love, I love relationships, I love networking and meeting new people, I love podcasting and now I love writing a book.

Cindy Little:

And so there you know, there's when we say that it was an ending. Yes, it was an ending of my son's life, but a new beginning, and we look at it that way. What can we become? What can we begin? And they say that grief is selfish because the person who's dead doesn't care if you're you're crying or grieving. Really, they're on the other side and they don't want us to be sad. I know that in my heart, that they don't want us to be sad. They do want us to continue on, but maybe in a different way, if you have to, and that that's my path.

Dionne Malush:

It might not be your path, You're right and that you know I keep looking for those signs and I think it's. You know it's been less than six months and he's not coming to me on my dreams. I haven't seen the blue bird because we told him to come back as a blue bird, and you know I. But I am I feel different, I feel more confident in knowing that I am honoring him. So I kind of really am working with that idea of honor versus grief and I'm watching my mom, who's the saddest person that I've ever met, and they were together 56 years and they worked at home together. So they they've been together I think four to five nights in their whole 56 years that they they spent alone because my mom went to her sisters or something, that was it and all of that time. And they met. In May she met him. She saw him on the street, at this, at this little store. She saw him standing outside and then in August of the same year, so the last three months they eloped and been together for 56 years.

Dionne Malush:

I came the following June, so I pretty much known them almost as long as they've known each other. So when I think about it, you know I think, oh, why, why hasn't he come to me Like, why am I not dreaming about him? So I feel a little sadness in that, because I want to see his face and I want to say more. And I know that I said so many things like I have saved so many things that had special meaning, that we're not worth money, but little things that mean so much. But yes, it's hard, it's definitely, it's difficult and so sad.

Dionne Malush:

But watching my mom who just gosh, she, I don't know how to, I don't even know how to help her. So she came in, came back here. She lived 600 miles away, so she moved back in a hurry, like we had to get her back quickly, and she lost everything her house, her, her furniture, her, you know everything, have his, for the most part, you know. And now she and she lost her person, everything to her, like her. He was like her, her best friend, she was like her father, you know, because he'd been with her when her dad had passed away, when she was 35. So there's just so much happening right now and I think if this is the way that I am dealing with it, it's because they're I Don't know any other way to do it, and that's perfectly fine if it's protecting you and and you are sidetracked, like I know.

Cindy Little:

Five weeks after a sunday, we left our province and drove across the country To go to the mountains to stay with our friends for a little while, and grief free followed us. Grief, we can't agree, but it did feel good for change a scenery and I think that with your mom it's got to be hard like I, I'm, I'm, I'm thinking about my husband and I. We love each other so much and we're together. Like he's been retired almost ten years now and we've been together almost inseparable as well, and it's not something that you want to imagine, right like I, when, when people used to say to me I can't imagine losing a son or losing a child, while I say don't imagine it because it's not friggin fun. No, no, it was, it was, it was horrible. Like the first year was just just Unbelievable and I actually took me two and a half weeks for me to really get the sucker punched for the realization that he, he's not we didn't get to say goodbye, you know right, but he didn't get to do that.

Dionne Malush:

So that's for me, like People are. Like what if someone dies suddenly because our nephew, he, he got killed in a quad accident. He, literally two seconds later he would have survived, and he got hit by a Mack track on a quad and we didn't get to say anything, right?

Cindy Little:

the only thing we heard was you know he's dead, and so that I think that loss in that regard, like when it's an unexpected loss and it's sudden, that is really jolting on everybody, everybody like, like every family member, every friend, like they're. Just there was no preparation, there was no like diagnosis, there was nothing that you could try to do to stop it right. It just happened and that's. That's the.

Dionne Malush:

The real sad Part of that was dealing with that I'm sure, and I think that that for us, just knowing that happened five years ago and then watching my dad, you know, we were able to say I said everything I possibly could say and I did everything that I could do and I Felt good in that. But then, when I still after he passed, I was like I should have and I didn't, and I could have said this and I could have said that I can't. I know how that was with with Levi too. He was, you know. We didn't get to say anything. The last thing he said to me was a text message on his birthday and that was it. Like you hold on to those little things that you had. But when my dad, I got to say it all.

Dionne Malush:

So if there's something in that versus the suddenness, I mean, I think there's it's a difference. But you know, life, life is hard, but I think we go through this and it sucks that it happens, but we go through it so that we can help other people go through it. And I feel like in my whole life that that's been a big part of my life is this will happen or that happened, or, you know, someone died or there was a stretch in my life in two years. I 14 friends and family died in two years and I remember thinking God, why does this keep happening? Like every time I answer the phone, I'm scared to answer the phone, but you know what happened. I learned a lot about how to deal with it differently. So maybe in my preparation for my passing of my father, maybe that was my the way that God prepared me and it I can't say that helped, but it did Make it different. So I don't know.

Dionne Malush:

I know that there's always a positive and every negative. Right in the Napoleon Hill and the Bible, everything teaches us. There's, you know, as positivity and every negative. We just have to be strong enough to find it and I think a lot of people they don't Push forward to find it. I think you're finding it and you're going through this and learning and you're changing people's lives. Cindy, you're doing so much to be proud of. It's beautiful to watch. I know your heart. Your heart hurts, but I also know what you're doing is is amazing. So Thank you, you're very welcome. So let me ask you this if let's talk about the future, what are you most excited about in the future? You?

Dionne Malush:

have an upcoming book, now the new book with the name of it. Is it reflecting on life growing through grief? Yes, okay, yeah, so let's talk about what? What's excited you right now?

Cindy Little:

Well, I think I've always been in the helping professions.

Cindy Little:

I I want to help people, and how I help people may look different in another year from now, but right now I need to finish the book and get it out, because I know there's a lot of other parents that have lost children and I know that there is not. And again, it's not just about a parent who's lost children, it's about even like what happens when people die, like what really happens, and I give up different options for people to think about, because people people Think of grief as, and death as something really bad, but it really isn't. It's. It's a rebirth or a. It's a new beginning. And If we could all think that way that they're, they're there to help a guide us. Now they're gonna be our angels to help guide us. And, yeah, I just I really feel compelled to get this book out so that I can help some other people going through grief, because it's it. It was a challenging journey, for sure, and how both parents manage it is quite different. People handle grief differently than you think they would.

Dionne Malush:

I don't have kids, so I'll never know that feeling of any of what you're going through. In some ways, I'm kind of glad, because I don't imagine how that feels to have someone that came from you past. Right, I hope that this, what you're doing, will just let you see the positive impact that he's had on your life, that you're sharing him and you're sharing with all of us and you're helping me right now, like this project. We didn't know where it was going to go today. We had no idea, but you're helping me a lot, so thank you for that. And what message do you have for those that are facing a challenge or grief right now? Like, give us one really good message that we would say from your book.

Cindy Little:

To help people with grief, mm-hmm. Well, knowing what I know now, two years later, I'd say don't rush your grief, and listen to every emotion and absorb it and accept it and deal with it. But also, you're not alone in this process. There's lots of people who can help. And I wasn't ready for help beyond. I had we hired a group counselor, like a family counselor, a psychotherapist or a psychiatrist or something, and the three of us went together online and it just wasn't the right time for us, it wasn't the right mode for us.

Cindy Little:

And it wasn't until almost two years later where I had a psychotherapist friend come to my house and she did a little thing where she did eye movement, like I followed her finger and got out of my brain and I was able to just not think. I was following her finger more than thinking, and she had me replay the whole scenario of me finding out about our son and what's the worst thing that can happen? What was the worst thing? She asked me what happened to us, and it was when the cops came to our door and told us our son died and I said no, no, like I was in denial, like no, that can't be our son. He just went to a new job today at seven in the morning and it didn't really hit me, but when it hit me it really hit me. And then so she says, well, replay that. That like the worst case scenario.

Cindy Little:

And then what I want you to do is edit this as if it's a film and say what you wanted to say to your son prior to him dying, because that's the worst thing when it's a sudden death is, you didn't get to say everything you wanted to, I'm sure. So. So when he told me before he died he gave me the biggest hug that I've ever gotten from my son in the kitchen and I said, dylan, are you okay? And he says, yeah, I'm okay. I said, are you sure? Because that hug felt like it was more and I had a sense that he knew before he died that he was going to die, and so at least I got that one hug. But what I would have wanted to do was to take him for a walk and talk like, and tell him how proud we were, tell him everything that we didn't tell, I'm sure. So re-near rating, re-narrating the film really helped me because I was able to say everything I could say or needed to say so that was helpful.

Cindy Little:

So, I'm sorry, that's a technique that I talk about in my book. Actually, different things are going to work for different people and the healing that I did out in Nevada at the Healing Sisterhood with my friend, jenny who owns it, she was on my podcast. She's on my 95th podcast of the Healthier you, little by Little, if you want to listen to it, and we talk about what happened and even in the meditation, how that was so powerful and how. You know, I don't think I ever really meditated properly before. Like, I'm a yoga instructor as well.

Cindy Little:

I did my 200 hour yoga certification and back then I thought that I learned how to meditate, but I don't think I really did. You can take the time, like really take the time to do it, and that's a gift. That's a gift that we can give ourselves as time. So that would be my biggest. My biggest thing is give yourself time and ask other people for healing, because I didn't know what I didn't know and I was so strong I didn't think I needed anybody's help, and that was in hindsight, but I wasn't ready and I think everybody has their time when they're ready for true healing.

Dionne Malush:

And it takes you back to thinking very rich and the Bible seek expert counsel, no matter what right. Yeah, yeah. So we're going to wrap up and I am. I hope I didn't make you upset. I'm so glad we talked. I mean, you had an incredible journey and your story is powerful testament to the strength of the human spirit. So if Cindy's message resonated with you, we encourage you to reach out and connect with her. Cindy, how can our listeners get in touch with you to learn more about your work and your upcoming projects?

Cindy Little:

Well, the upcoming project the book is the pre-launch is at CindyLittlecom. So if you go over there, you can read about me and the book and sign up for a copy and it will come to you at the least expensive price when I first launch it. So with that, that would be really great. And then my other website is health, the number two wealth dot C8. And I'm on LinkedIn as well as Cindy Little and Facebook and Instagram.

Dionne Malush:

So if you guys could follow us on social media, that would be great. And until next time, keep shining and striving in all areas of your life. And thank you Cindy, thank you Dion.

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