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Energy and Emotion: Life After Losing a Partner (with Jenny Sellers)

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Summary

Grief is a profound and often isolating experience, especially for those who lose a partner unexpectedly. In a deeply moving episode of the LightAtTheEnd.com Podcast, Kevin Berk is joined by Jenny Sellers, a holistic energy practitioner and founder of True North Empowerment. Jenny shares her intimate journey through grief and healing after the sudden loss of her fiancé, Coll, and her mother, offering insights into navigating life after loss. This post delves into Jenny’s inspiring story and the powerful tools she discovered along her path.

Jenny’s Personal Story of Loss

Jenny Sellers vividly recounts receiving the fateful call that changed her life in 2014, when her fiancé Coll died suddenly in a work-related accident. The loss was compounded by the subsequent deaths of her beloved pet and her mother. These sudden and life-altering events marked the beginning of a profound journey through grief. Jenny reflects on the challenges of such unexpected loss and the absence of a roadmap for navigating the aftermath.

Navigating Grief and Finding Support

Jenny found solace and community through Soaring Spirits International’s Camp Widow, a program designed to support those who have lost their partners. Attending this event just ten weeks after Coll’s death opened a door to a world of support and understanding that she hadn’t experienced before. Jenny emphasizes the importance of finding peer support and the healing power of being with others who have faced similar experiences.

The Importance of End-of-Life Planning

A significant theme in Jenny’s conversation is the legal and emotional challenges faced by unmarried partners. She recounts the difficulties she encountered without legal rights to Coll’s belongings or decision-making power. Jenny highlights the importance of end-of-life planning, even for young couples, to ensure that partners are legally protected and considered in such unfortunate events.

Discovering Energy Healing and True North Empowerment

Jenny’s journey led her to explore avenues of healing she never anticipated, including energy healing through Reiki. Initially a skeptic, her experiences and a scientific approach to exploration led her to embrace these practices. True North Empowerment is Jenny’s way of offering a safe space for people to explore holistic healing methods, whether they face grief, life transitions, or personal challenges. Her dedication to meeting people where they are on their journey is a testament to her compassionate and inclusive approach.

Understanding Reiki and Energy Healing

Reiki, a Japanese energy healing practice, plays a central role in Jenny’s healing work. She likens it to acupuncture, focusing on realigning the body’s energy centers to promote balance and well-being. Despite initial skepticism, Jenny found Reiki and other energy modalities transformative, grounding her understanding of life and the afterlife, and allowing her to feel closer to Coll.

Final Thoughts

Jenny’s story is a powerful reminder that, despite the isolating nature of grief, we are not alone in our experiences. She encourages those facing loss or seeking answers about life’s big questions to remain curious and open to finding community and support. By sharing her journey, Jenny provides hope and guidance for others navigating their path to healing and empowerment.

We at LightAtTheEnd.com are committed to providing resources and support for those experiencing similar journeys. If you or someone you know is seeking answers or community, please explore our resources or connect with Jenny at TrueNorthEmpowerment.com for further assistance.

FULL TRANSCRIPTION:

Introduction to the Podcast and Guest

Kevin: Thank you for joining us on the LightAtTheEnd.com Podcast.  LightAtTheEnd.com is a resource for those who want to learn more about end of life topics, but don’t know where to start. I’m Kevin Berk, and I’m joined today by Jenny Sellers, a holistic energy practitioner focusing on personal, business, and spiritual guidance through her own company, True North Empowerment.

Jenny, thank you so, so much for uh, joining me. And it’s wonderful to finally meet you. I’m very grateful to be connecting with you.

Jenny: Well, thank you so much for having me, Kevin.

 It is truly a blessing, the service that you’re providing for people, offering resources for people who are either approaching end of life or who are on the other side of having lost somebody that they care deeply about who are looking for resources.

Jenny’s Personal Story of Loss

I found myself in that very position [00:01:00] too, looking for resources.

To kick off my story, in 2014, coming up on close to 11 years ago (which is wild) my fiancé Coll died very suddenly during a work-related accident in San Diego. It was obviously the most challenging thing I’ve ever walked through in my entire life. It was one of those instances where you, get a phone call that you never expect to get, and your world changes in an instant. I had just lost the person with whom I was expecting to spend the rest of my life and my world flipped upside down in that moment.

7 years later, I ended up very suddenly having to say goodbye to our beloved pet. And then a year after that in 2022, my mom died from a very sudden heart attack with no known heart issues. She literally collapsed and never recovered.

So I’ve had a [00:02:00] lot of experience with sudden loss. And it is an experience that I don’t wish upon anybody. No loss is easy, and no loss is any harder than the other, that’s my belief. But truly, the intricacies that come with dealing with a phone call and then having to figure out how to pick up the pieces afterwards has been a really challenging part of my journey.

Kevin: It would be enough to have to deal with it once and you dealt with it three times. May that be the last.

Jenny: Thank you.

Navigating Grief and Support Systems

Kevin: What do you remember most about the sort of hours, days, weeks after Coll died?

Jenny: That’s an interesting question because we all respond to trauma so differently. I am one of those people who has a hyper focused, memory of what went down, how it all played out. A lot of times people don’t really [00:03:00] remember. It’s almost like their brain in self preservation mode shuts off and then they come back online is how a lot of people explain it, days, weeks, or even months later. And so, my brain works the opposite. When I am in a very hyper- important moment, for some reason, my brain kind of records it all. And so I do have very vivid memories of everything from receiving the phone call to, like you said, the days, hours, and weeks afterward, but most especially I just remember having to make very important decisions, even just personal, emotional for myself, do I even go home after the hospital? because it is the place that he last was. My friends who were with me that evening asked, do you want to go home or would you rather stay with me? And it’s those kinds of just even “easy” decision making that really do have an [00:04:00] impact.

I remember specifically thinking no, of course I want to go home A) because that’s where I feel closest to him, but B) I don’t want our home to turn into something that I’m afraid of. If I don’t walk through those doors tonight, it’s going to become a thing. When do I go home? When do I walk through that space?

 I’m very lucky to say that I was enveloped by a community of support. I lived on the West Coast at the time that Coll died. My family lived on the East Coast. I called them on the way home from the hospital to tell them that he had died, and immediately they were on the next flight out. I’m really lucky that I had the support not only of my family, but of a community through the work that Coll and I did that just ended up showing up at our house. I walked downstairs the morning after he died to a living room full of people because people didn’t know where to go. And then it was honestly like a morning shift of people were there, and then there was an afternoon shift, it was like a [00:05:00] changeover. People just didn’t know what to do, but they knew that they needed to be together, and I had an open door policy without even having made that decision. People just showed up.

 And so, I remember feeling so well supported and yet on the opposite end of the coin, also feeling completely alone because there was nobody I knew around me who could answer questions for me or say, “okay, this is what we do next.” There’s no map. There’s no outline for this and nobody I knew my age had ever experienced it before. So…

Kevin: And you were 30, 31 at the time.

Jenny: Yeah, I was 31, Coll was 29.

There’s some crazy statistic out there that says widowed people under the age of 30 make up about 2 percent of the widowed population. And so when you think that a million people are widowed each year, but only 2 percent of that overall [00:06:00] population are your age…

 It’s a very different experience for somebody my age to lose their person who they were planning their future with than somebody who had been with their person for 50 plus years and have another couple of decades left in their own world. But, to face such a long road of life without the person that you have chosen to spend your time with is a different experience than others who have been gifted all those many years. I mean, Coll and I were only gifted with four years together. And so I missed out on a lifetime with him. And again, no better, no worse, there’s no comparison, but it’s just different.

And so how do you find people? And I was really lucky because I did a quick Google search one evening and… and that was a question for me too: we weren’t married yet. Am I “widowed”?

Kevin: Right.

Jenny: Does that classify as a [00:07:00] widowed experience? And to be honest, in a lot of cases, and in a lot of support options that are out there, I wouldn’t have [been] classified. There are support tools that I was turned away from because we weren’t married.

Kevin: Oh, wow.

Finding Community and Support

Jenny: In that, yeah, in that Google search, I came across something called Soaring Spirits International and the Camp Widow program, which was going to be happening in San Diego within the next several weeks. And so I remember printing out documents about the Camp Widow event and I took them to my therapist I said, “look at this. What do you think about this? I’m considering going” and she looked at it and she said, “I think if you think you can get yourself there, then it could be really valuable for you.” And so I decided on a whim, 10 weeks after Coll died, to walk through the doors of the San Diego Marriott Marquis and [00:08:00] Marina Hotel, and put myself in a space where there were hundreds, literal hundreds of other widowed people, all looking and searching for the same thing, which were answers as to how do I even begin to pick up the pieces of my life.

And kind of full circle going back to that statistic, at my first event I found a young woman who was 29, who also was not married when her fiancé passed. And it turns out she lived three blocks away from Coll and me. And so from the beginning, I was gifted with not only just Nicole’s friendship, but the community of other people who were walking through something very similar, and it served me so well. And it still continues to serve me to this day. So I was very fortunate.

Kevin: Yeah, very fortunate, but also, I give you a ton of credit for finding that [00:09:00] and recognizing that it might be a helpful resource for you, talking to your therapist about it, and deciding that was something that you needed to do for yourself and your mental health.

Legal and Emotional Challenges of Unmarried Partners

I do imagine, that something like Camp Widow didn’t treat you any differently because you were an unmarried widow or you had partner loss or however it’s generally phrased when you are not married to the person that you lose, but that’s an assumption on my part.

 Was that actually the case?

Jenny: It is. And, at the time in 2014, marriage equality had just become a thing. And so when I was looking at their website, they were very clear about the use of the word spouse or partner.

 They serve everybody. And if anybody who’s listening is an unwedded widowed person, please use that phrase when you’re looking up resources for yourself, because there’s a whole population of unwedded widowed people out there. But [00:10:00] knowing that the organization served the LGBTQ+ community with marriage equality having just been passed in the state of California, it was clear to me that they weren’t turning people away. The program listings showed they did have like a workshop for people who were not yet married at the time of loss. And so I was like, okay, this is for me, and thankfully it was.

I never once in my almost 11 years have ever been looked at sideways, had a raised eyebrow, or even a verbal question about, are you sure you’re supposed to be here? And that speaks a lot to the bones and the structure and the belief that runs through the veins of that organization. And I will forever be grateful to Soaring Spirits and Camp Widow for that.

Kevin: But that… that’s specific to them, you indicated that you actually did bump up against other resources that you didn’t [00:11:00] qualify for because you hadn’t been married to Coll yet. I don’t know whether I’m surprised by that or not.

Jenny: And to no fault of these other organizations or other support resources out there, I think a lot of these support resources come into being from people who are trying to provide support from their own personal experience. And so take, for example, an organization that might serve older widowed people or older people who are going through loss. For organizations overall, in the nonprofit world, funding is always a challenge, especially when it comes to grief. There [are] surprisingly few dollars available for grief support resources for adults. So I think a lot of times organizations are faced with making decisions on, okay, I would love to serve the whole population, but maybe because my experience is X, I can only seek grant money or funding [00:12:00] for X. And so sometimes they just have to do more with less. But yes, some support resources did require a marriage certificate, which just meant that I was not, it’s not that I wasn’t welcome to go at the time, it felt that way, it’s more… You weren’t eligible.

Kevin: That’s unfortunate, It makes sense. It’s just still unfortunate.

Do you feel like there is sort of a stigma of losing your person when you’re not married and, somehow that kind of negates the grief that you should be having or diminishes it where people think, ” Oh, well, it’s not like you guys were married.” “Oh, well, “it’s not like you guys had kids, so…”,

Jenny: Absolutely. Yeah. And I will also say that emphatic yes, while also saying that none of those judgments have ever come from within the grieving community. [00:13:00] It’s always been from people who are on the outside of my world looking in. Be that, workplace questions or, just like a supportive response from even a friend who can’t really understand. And, they mean it in a good way of “oh, my goodness. Could you imagine if you guys had kids, how much more difficult and challenging this would be?

Yeah, exactly. And it’s oh, man, that cut deep. And this sweet person sitting across from me has no idea. And so in, in many cases, I think it is well intended, but also just not necessarily delivered in a way that’s supportive. But I do believe too that people, unless you’ve walked through it, the devastating loss of somebody who you were spending the rest of your world with… The comparisons that we receive as widowed people as well from, Oh, I know exactly what you’re walking through. I lost my [00:14:00] grandfather last week or something, it, can just be challenging to find the support in comments like that.

But yes, the fact that we were not yet married meant that I did not have any access to any of the funds that were available during a workplace related death. It meant that I had no say on any of his belongings or what happened to them. It meant that I didn’t really have a say unless his family invited me to have a say in any of that… In what happened to his body after he died.

Legally, there’s a lot that goes against somebody who is not yet recognized in the eyes of the state as the next of kin. And then again, the emotional side of it all is another aspect to it. But then you throw in the fact that, yes, we did not have the opportunity to have children before he died. And that’s the way I always like to put it because his life was cut [00:15:00] short. We were talking about the possibility of children. and so it’s like, oh, at least you didn’t have kids. Could you imagine how difficult that would be? It’s like, well, we didn’t have the chance to have children. That’s a completely different way to frame that statement. And yeah, there are a lot of, you know, whew, you dodged that bullet!

Kevin: You’re like, I, I don’t feel like I did.

Jenny: Exactly.

Kevin: And as you say, it’s coming from people who mean well and just are trying to, I don’t know, misguidedly pull you back to a place of

 positivity or comfort, when maybe that’s, that’s not what you, what you need or it’s not delivered in a way that is, is what you’d want.

Jenny: I would say For anybody who’s listening who might be supporting somebody who’s grieving a significant loss, just be aware of any statement you’re going to make to the person who’s grieving that start [00:16:00] with the words ” at least” because anything that follows those two words is a self implied judgment that you’re exerting on their situation. and so “at least [whatever]”, is like saying, “I’m uncomfortable right now.” I’m going to try to make myself feel more comfortable by highlighting something that you may not be aware of, without knowing the intricacies of this loss and how it is affecting the person. So, anything that starts with “at least” or “should” are kind of yellow lights, if you will…

Kevin: Did you say should?

Jenny: Yeah, should.

Kevin: Okay, that’s a really important thing to hear. And I think because of a lot of what I’m trying to do with LightAtTheEnd.com is, is to help make the conversation easier for people who maybe aren’t going through it themselves, but are [00:17:00] trying to be supportive of the people who are.

It’s really important to hear what lands with a thud and is unintended because a lot of people just aren’t comfortable… myself included, just aren’t totally comfortable having the conversations, don’t know what to say, what not to say. So that can alienate the people we love if we are so uncomfortable with it that we’re not able to communicate effectively in, in times of grief or need from the other person.

 An important note that you and I got connected through my girlfriend, Sacha, who she and I have been together for 12 years now. And so when you had said that, you lost Coll, 11 years ago, like I, I remember that early on, hearing the story about it.

 She definitely feels the same concern about, what does this mean [00:18:00] if something were to happen to one of us and we’re not married. And so if you’re not in kind of a domestic partnership kind of situation, it opens up a whole lot of potential problems, as you just mentioned: logistical difficulties from medical decisions, legal decisions, financial matters. And it sounds like it’s a tough road if you don’t have that document, and that ring that proves that you are married.

Jenny: Yeah, it’s, challenging because, man, in the direct aftermath, which, of course, is when all of those things come into play, it’s hard to conceive of how the decisions that you make will have ramifications for years later, right? And so Coll and I were at the point in our relationship where we, three weeks before he had died, we had the conversation, right, which is, “I choose you. You’re my person. You’re the one I want to do life [00:19:00] with.” Looking back on it now in that conversation, I look at the words that he said to me during that conversation were my vows, the vows that I got to hear from him, which I’m so grateful we had at the time. I did not know that’s what they were, but we were able to express to each other the importance of who we were in each other’s lives.

We just didn’t have an audience and we did not have a notary and we did not have an officiant. And so because of all of that, I had no legal right to anything that was his. We were living together at the time. It was technically my home that he was helping to pay the mortgage for, which meant that, he died April 28th, here comes May 1st and then May 15th when the mortgage is due, and his portion was no longer available to me. He paid half the utilities, all of those kinds of things. I did not have access to any of his bank accounts. I was not listed as a beneficiary. There was a merger between his company [00:20:00] and, and a new company about, oh, man, I want to say 6 months prior to his death, which meant that everybody needed to go back in and add beneficiaries to their stuff, and… even though at the age of 29 and 31, you’re not thinking that “oh, I should probably add you to this if I die. “You don’t think of it when you’re that young. Neither one of us had named each other, because we just weren’t thinking that we were going to die at work. And so all of that, it definitely played a role in the decision making that came after the fact. I had no say in any of it. It had to be next of kin. It had to be the person who was listed on these documents.

Kevin: Right. Right. So you got the original call, but ultimately everything fell to his parents to make all the decisions. Were you included in that? Were you consulted?

Jenny: I was included [00:21:00] in The funeral planning, and the memorials that we had, I was, I never felt slighted or shunned in that way, which was a great gift, because I know very many people who have not had that experience, but when it came to the logistics of dealing with death, even straight from, medical examiners, they knew me as his partner, but only until his family arrived.

Kevin: At which point they stopped talking to you and just went straight to his family?

Jenny: Yes. And then, so it was like, whoa, hey,

 I was the person who had all the answers for everything. And then as soon as the family arrived, those questions and those decisions and all that went through them. And then I was consulted. I was no longer the person, the primary person.

 When we’re talking about the logistical details and all of that after death, his belongings and all of that, that was a really challenging experience for me. Within the two weeks [00:22:00] that he had died, his family went through attic to closet and took things that were his that I didn’t really have very much of a say over. And so within two weeks he was alive, he had died and then he was out of the house.

Kevin: So rough.

Jenny: Yeah.

The Importance of End-of-Life Planning

Kevin: Are there things that you, you know, hindsight being 2020 and having gone through the experience, are there things that you would say to people who find themselves in that incredibly unfortunate situation to make things easier, either in advance of anything happening with their person or afterwards?

Jenny: just would say the whole experience of grief of walking through the unexpected loss of someone at such a young age, when you’re having those kinds of conversations, when you [00:23:00] notice yourself in a space where you are really seriously committed to another individual, it’s hard to have these conversations, but it is so important so that you don’t end up in a space where, like me, I did not have a legal say in anything. And so if we look at it, would you want your person to be left standing there with no say in your resources, what happens to your financial assets, in what happens to your body, even. As partners, we have conversations behind closed doors. A lot of the time that involve our biggest fears, our biggest triumphs, our biggest successes are, the ways we want to die, the ways we would never want to die. All of that stuff.

 And in our case, his family knew that as well. So there was no divergence upon whether or not he was to be cremated. But if there had been, I would not have likely been welcomed to have a say [00:24:00] because they were his family. He wasn’t yet my family, in a legal sense.

 So I think end of life planning is so important, especially when you are choosing to share your heart and your life and your future with somebody. They are hard conversations. Nobody wants to think about your mortality, especially when you’re young, but it is of the utmost importance to really have these conversations and have them early, whenever you feel like you’re settled into your person.

And let me also just say that, even if you’re not yet ready with your person to actually grant them access to your financial accounts and, where your assets actually lie, you can still do a lot to help them in the event of your death. Have a will that names them as the beneficiaries in a lot of different ways. If you have a trust, make sure that their name is included in all of that.

If you don’t have those things [00:25:00] yet, consider making them.

And then if you have to make a change later, you just make a change later. Hopefully that won’t happen either, but everything you can do is reversible. But what I walked through is not reversible. I had no control and no power and no say legally, and that’s all the banks, and that’s all the financial institutions, and that’s oftentimes all that the family cares about is the legality of the whole thing.

Kevin: Right, right.

 Going back to Camp Widow as one of the resources that you said was a really powerful one for you. What was the sort of structure of it?

Jenny: And so Camp Widow is, well, it had been a weekend long event offered in 3 different cities every year, and so for the last 10 to 12 years, the Camp Widow event is an event that’s hosted by the nonprofit Soaring Spirits International, which provides peer based resources and programs for people who are [00:26:00] widowed. And here we are in 2025, that format is changing. Instead of being weekend long events, though, there is still 1 happening currently in Toronto, Canada every year for how long that may continue, we’re not quite sure.

But the remainder of the Camp Widow events are being changed to 1 day events in 4 new cities. And so, when I was walking through the early days of my grief, it was offered in San Diego, Tampa and Toronto, Canada, annually. Now, it’s going to be changing locations for 1 day events, and the idea is really just to provide a space for those who are grieving, whether that is a recent loss like I experienced, again, I walked through The doors of my first camp widow at 10 weeks post loss, which allowed me to experience the program from a very tender and raw position, which also [00:27:00] informed a lot of my work with the newly widowed community after the fact. But if you’re early in your grief, awesome, get yourself there.

If you’re 12 years post loss and you’re still grappling with some of the aftermath that does never go away – we will always carry this grief with us. Our person is always going to be a part of our hearts. so it doesn’t matter how long ago your loss was – they have programming and resources available for people who are well beyond 10 plus years. And the idea is that when you are put in a space with a community of other people who have experienced the death of a spouse or a partner who is a part of your everyday life in so many different ways, that loss changes your life, and when you can find peer support and a peer community of others who have been through it to ask the questions that you might not [00:28:00] feel comfortable asking your friends and family or who can shed light on their experience because they have lived it. There’s so much powerful healing that comes from not only the fact that the workshops are offered by widowed people for widowed people, but just putting yourself in a space where you’re surrounded by other widowed people. It was an experience where I felt understood in a way that I hadn’t throughout the entirety of those 10 weeks and truthfully over the last 11 years.

Because I was courageous enough to walk through those doors 10 weeks after Coll died, I had “only” 10 weeks of walking through this grief without a widowed community. So I have been so well supported by the organization and by the people who are making that same courageous decision to go, and to learn and to put themselves in that space. I only had 10 weeks without it, and I’m so grateful that [00:29:00] I, you know, put my eggs in that basket.

Kevin: Were there online components to this as well? Or did you need to be physically in a city where one of these Camp Widow programs was being held?

Jenny: At the time, there were not virtual resources. Camp Widow was their flagship program. It was held in those cities. There was, the regional social group program, which relied on volunteers. So if there was a volunteer in your area that had somehow been connected to Soaring Spirits, who wanted to step up and provide that same kind of safe space in your city. that was an in person program that was available as well. It’s actually where I met 1 of your previous podcast attendees or guests, Susan Hannifin McNabb who was the regional social group program manager for the San Diego group and that’s how I met her.

And there were other tangible [00:30:00] resources like the newly widowed packet that was, mailed to you if you so requested, but there was no virtual component and that was actually by design for quite some time because when you’re dealing with the heaviness of grief that comes after the death of a spouse or partner, there’s a responsibility that an organization has to make sure that the person that you’re speaking with, who’s right in front of you who’s really struggling is safe.

And so when you’re going through a Camp Widow event, we can keep our eyes on the folks who might need a little bit of extra TLC and really make sure that they are sent home with resources and tools, even making contact with family members, should they need additional support at home. There’s just a lot that you can do when you’re in person, that when we click off of this meeting, when the computer screen goes blank, it’s like, oh my goodness, are they going to be okay? You know?

And so, virtual programming did not start until the [00:31:00] pandemic, at which point we knew we needed to still provide the same safe spaces and heartfelt, heart led, heart guided programming, but to do it in a virtual fashion, which created this whole new world of virtual support programming for the organization. So

Kevin: How did you go from being a member of the group to being more involved in a kind of leadership capacity.

Jenny: It was strictly because of my love for what the programs gave me.

 And so I sent an email to the organization, And I said, I received so much from your program and I’m so grateful for the resources that I now have to rely on through the rest of my grieving life, which will be the rest of my life. And I just said, have you considered, some of these updates that might go to the newly widowed, workshop that I had attended and they were [00:32:00] very open and they said, “why don’t consult with the person who was running that workshop at the time and just see what they think about it?”

And so before I knew it, I was volunteering. I was pouring my heart into service to the widowed community and specifically the newly widowed group. Again, because I saw the program through such a tender and raw time. And so it just snowballed from there. I then joined Susan as a regional social group leader and by 2018, I was brought on as the global operations manager. I was the 2nd paid employee of the organization to help with a lot of the programs expansion that was happening in all different avenues, as well as the camp widow program. And from 2018 to 2022, when I left the organization, I was definitely geared towards the how of everything and, most especially, I think [00:33:00] during the pandemic was how are we going to turn our programs into a virtual offering that will have the same impact as they do in person.

Discovering Energy Healing and True North Empowerment

Kevin: So after you left that organization, you essentially started your own practice.

Jenny: So, True North Empowerment is a part of my world that I never saw coming. For those of you who are not aware, True North is a holistic offering that I came to honestly. I practice reiki (energy healing), I’m a reiki master.

I have a whole plethora of holistic options that I provide for anybody, either in person online, virtually, who are just looking for a little bit of reassurance, whether that’s through, astrology readings, card readings, angel card readings, tarot card readings, and combining them all into a space, [00:34:00] where we can really uncover more about who we are personally, and how that affects us throughout our world. Whether that’s through grief and loss, whether that’s through a hard time, maybe you lost your job or are going through a diagnosis, whether you’re just looking for some reassurance. And I say all of that, even hearing it still sounds crazy to me because this was not a part of my world that I believed in when Coll died.

He and I, again, working in a heavily science based industry, just believed that if you couldn’t hypothesize about it, experiment with it and write a thesis on it, that it didn’t really exist for us.

And then about six months after he died, I started experiencing his energy in ways that I couldn’t explain. For me, it happened as I would turn a corner in the home that we shared and just be washed over by his scent. And this happened so frequently, and every single time it happened, I would look out the window and [00:35:00] think, there’s gotta be a man who’s walking his dog right past the open window or something, and he just happens to wear the same cologne. There was never anybody there. So I was experiencing things I didn’t have a scientific answer for.

So, that was six months after he died. It took about four years before I ever really started to put any weight into what I was learning through this process. It started for me by seeking out a medium or two to help explain what in the heck was going on. And again, that is something I never believed in.

But I was put in touch with a medium who came very highly recommended from a trusted source. And he told me things about even my family that I didn’t know that I sat in front of him and was like, “nope, that doesn’t make sense to me. Nope, that does not ring a bell” that my parents then confirmed for me after the fact.

So when you have an [00:36:00] experience like that, that kind of puts your theory of life and the afterlife on its head. What do you do with that? These are questions that we either choose to look at, or we choose not to look at. And four years into my grief journey, I really started to look at it for myself. What is it that I believe? Because I’m experiencing Coll and I know he’s still present for me in a number of ways, but how is that even possible? And so I started studying and I applied a scientific method to my area of study for a completely non scientific thing.

So I basically just said, I’m going to give myself a year, [to ask] all the questions I have while turning off the logic in my brain. And at the end of the year, I’m going to sit down and I’m going to see how I feel. And that year led me down, a path with, like I said, some mediums, studying [00:37:00] the energy body and the chakra system through the Japanese modality of Reiki. It led me to a class that I took in London from the creator of an angel card deck.

And each step along the way, it was like an added piece to the puzzle. And at the end of the year, I had formed a personal theory on what I believe to be true about life, about death, about the afterlife, about what our purpose is. And I felt more grounded and rooted in an understanding of all of this than I had ever felt the entirety of my life. It wasn’t just about how I felt at the end of that year. I also felt much closer to Coll than I had throughout the 4 years prior to this year of exploration. And then it became this calling inside of me to offer these experiences to others who were also [00:38:00] skeptical, because I, to this day, can put myself back in that same mindset of there’s no way this is real.

But my whole approach to it is to meet you where you’re at in that and to say, it’s Okay. Let’s talk about this. And that call to give back yet again, just in a different form, became a true passion. And so I’m honored to be able to hold that space for people, for those who are questioning what the heck does all of this mean?

Understanding Reiki and Energy Healing

Kevin: I’m glad that you said that about the place that you and Coll both started out was from a place that was very scientific and analytical. I have to fess up to the fact that I personally have a bit of a bias against things that I can’t rationalize or explain or see.

 That said, I am a huge fan of acupuncture, which, you know, if you think about it, is just another form of [00:39:00] energy healing.

 I want for myself and for anybody who’s watching or listening to this, who is coming at it from a similar perspective of, “oh, that’s, that’s such like woo woo mysticism” or whatever, to understand more and to be able to say, “well, shoot, maybe there is a practical application to this, to my life, or my situation, my journey”.

I think we also probably need to back up for just a second because we jumped into Reiki without explaining…

Jenny: What that is?

Kevin: Yeah.

So, can you explain a little bit about what energy healing is and Reiki in particular?

Jenny: Yeah, and it’s interesting that you mentioned acupuncture because I put the two in similar boats, because acupuncture, for those who might not be aware, is the Chinese modality that deals with the meridian system [00:40:00] of the body and the meridians are our channels for energy. And so through the practice of sticking the tiny little, very thin needles at different points around your body, the goal is to realign and open up some of those channels for energy. I personally have had acupuncture done before. I’m sure you can speak to it as well. It definitely has an effect on the physical body in a lot of different ways. And it’s a really interesting process. Yeah, it’s really interesting to think that these tiny needles that are being inserted into my physical body, which are to help release and/or unblock the energy that is passing through those channels. That’s a really cool concept.

Reiki is a Japanese version of something similar, but it is about the balancing and the alignment of our chakra system. And each one of those energy centers is tied to different aspects of our physical [00:41:00] experience here in the physical world.

So things like our safety centers, our motivation, our inspiration, our ability to take action, how our heart expresses itself, how we speak, how we dream and visualize and see beyond just what our physical eyes see and our true connection to the ultimate source of energy from which we all came.

And so our human selves walk around in this physical world where we’re constantly being pulled left and right, up and down, and our emotions are constantly in flux, experiencing high highs and low lows. And as a result of just being here in the physical world, our energy body is really pulled in a lot of different directions.

And Reiki is the practice of realigning your energy body so that you experience a positive energy flow, just like acupuncture provides from the Chinese [00:42:00] tradition.

 I have studied and I have been attuned to the frequency of energy, that is Reiki energy. And so through that, we’re able to realign and re center those chakra energy centers inside of us, which can help us as we make our way through the physical world feel more aligned, more centered and more grounded. And it’s not just about the feeling. There are medical studies that have been done on the benefit of things like Reiki transmissions for those who are going through chemo, how it can have an effect on the physical body and experiencing things like nausea or pain in the body.

So there’s something scientific to it. It’s just that science hasn’t yet quite caught up, I believe. And for me, it has strong ties to our experience of grief. It’s just a powerful stress reducer in challenging times. So that’s how I [00:43:00] explain it.

The Journey from Skepticism to Belief

Kevin: It is very fascinating.

When it comes to things like tarot cards or astrology or mediums, again, I come at it from a very skeptical place but, in all fairness, recognizing I don’t have all the answers, and there’s a lot that I can’t explain.

 Years ago I was seeing an acupuncturist, this is somebody that I had a tremendous amount of respect for and trust in and I’d been seeing him for a while and one day he said, Oh, I can tell that you’re in a particular kind of mood today because you know, you seem very purple today or whatever it was. And I said, what, what does that mean? and he said, it’s just I can see your aura. And it’s something that up until that point, I would have just completely dismissed [00:44:00] as being like, you don’t see my aura. I don’t have an aura. But I had such a fondness and respect for this person, could tell that the way he was describing it to me he wasn’t trying to impress me. He wasn’t trying to extract money from me. He wasn’t trying to do anything. He just was making an observation, which made me a lot more open to it. And I think because he was so successful with helping me through acupuncture already, it really helped me to, to take a step back and look at it and say, “I don’t have all the answers. There’s clearly people who operate at different wavelengths than I do. If I can just open myself up to the fact that other people do have pieces of the puzzle that I don’t have, I’m probably going to learn a lot. All of this is to say that while I come at it and I think probably a lot of people come at it from a place of [00:45:00] skepticism, it’s wonderful to hear that someone who came at it from a similarly unconvinced place was able to end up convinced.

Jenny: Yeah. It took a lot of little light bulb moments, I think is a good way to describe it in this journey that led me here. And, I want to commend you for allowing yourself the space and the opportunity to consult with somebody who you did respect, for something like acupuncture, because in so doing, you allowed yourself to open the door to curiosity that you

 hadn’t necessarily opened before. And as you walked into that room, there was another door, it sounds like with this aura expression that you also allowed to crack open a little bit. And that’s the way I view all of this was all I did was open the door for the [00:46:00] possibility.

And I, again, from a scientific perspective was like, give yourself a year and see how you feel. And, I approached it from a very Type A personality because I was just like, turn off the logic. And every time the logic tried to kick back in, I was like, nope. I’m not letting it happen. I’m going to allow myself to explore all of what previously did not exist for me. It was a very vulnerable time and even in having conversations like this. It’s still a very vulnerable effort for me because I come from that space of man, how is this real? I still have that little piece inside of me that is constantly questioning, but in allowing myself the opportunity to ask the questions that I was not allowing myself to ask before, I also now have a very firm ground and foundation upon which [00:47:00] my belief system lies that was completely non existent for me before.

And it’s really cool because you commented on the fact that Coll and I did both come from this space of if it didn’t exist, it wasn’t really real for us. He has been so present at very pivotal moments of this journey for me. In ways that I was not expecting and not seeking.

I think a lot of people who are going through the challenging experience of grief, find themselves at a space like this where they want to connect with their loved one and they do it because they are thinking of it from that perspective of like, I want to feel closer to them. I need to feel closer to them. And in the beginning, that’s very much how it started for me. But afterwards, as I was learning all of these really powerful things like the chakra system, like the angels who are available and supportive to us, like our teams in spirit, including our lost loved ones and [00:48:00] our ancestors who are always calling us forward and cheering us on and helping to support us. He was ever present, and it was not because I was seeking him out. It started that way, but it ended up being I was enthralled with everything I was learning. I was like, how is this real? It consumed me. That’s how I knew that it was feeding my soul, because like almost every book I got, every class I took, every thing I read, and I’m still learning, everything I continue to read, fills my soul and it became less about him and more about me and rebuilding my life and that this is the way that I wanted to rebuild my life.

And so when he was present for me in these pivotal moments where I might have decided, I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I can meet Kevin on this podcast today. I don’t know if I can… whatever. his energy would be present in a way that was so palpable. It was like hey, babe, there’s something to learn here. Like you [00:49:00] don’t know how cool it is over here. It’s almost like he’s a guide for me in this.

 I truly believe that one of my biggest callings in this work is to open the door for skeptics, because I still have a skeptical heart from which I came and so, to meet people where they’re at in these kinds of conversations is really valuable. and I really appreciate the opportunity to do that with you, because it’s important.

Kevin: Do you feel like people can benefit from energy healing work if using your door analogy, if their door is closed to it.

It sounds a little silly to, to say it with that analogy, it almost feels like if the door is closed, you’re going to need to open the door before it’s going to work.

Again, bringing it back to the acupuncture thing, which I personally, feel like gives real tangible benefits. I suspect [00:50:00] if you were lying on the table with your arms crossed and feeling like, super tense, and I’m not going to open myself up to this, then it doesn’t matter where you’re putting the needles in to break up or try and unblock that energy. You’re working against, the tide at that point of somebody’s stubbornness and disbelief.

Jenny: The first time I sat down with that medium, I walked into my first door opening experience.

 I did internally come from a space of prove it.

 My resistance to it melted away as things went on, because I was like, whoa, how is this possible? There’s stuff he was telling me that is not posted online that nobody knows.

That were inside of private conversations that Coll and I had. Again, members of my family who I didn’t even know existed until a phone call with my parents later. Things [00:51:00] that were inexplainable. And even by just cracking open that door a little bit. Yes, I was resistant to it still, but the curiosity is what helped me crack that door open.

And from there, it was like the curiosity just built so strongly that it was almost insatiable. I need to be able to figure out what the heck this is and how can I do that through learning? And so that’s where the whole turning off the logical side and leaning into some of the softer side really served me well, because now I can stand fully on a foundation of answers, of theories of life that I never had before.

During which Coll has been a guide for me along the way, just saying, Hey, keep up.

Final Thoughts and Resources

Kevin: Looking back, were there things that you would have told your younger self, that would have made things easier as you were starting your journey.[00:52:00]

Jenny: That’s a great question. And it’s a little challenging to answer because my journey through grief was so well supported from the beginning. Had I not gone Camp Widow in the weeks after he died, my answer back would have been like, get yourself in a space where you are in a room with other people who have been through it.

Therapists are wonderful. I think therapy, especially in traumatic loss, is imperative. but there’s a whole ‘nother sense of a therapeutic environment that comes from peer support. So, if you’re listening to this and you’re maybe several years removed from the initial impact of your loss, find a way to connect with other people who have been through it, because I guarantee the support that comes from that connection is so important. And I say that myself as an introvert, I’m very much an extroverted introvert. I can, you know, sit and have conversations…

Kevin: I know just what you mean.

Jenny: Yes, but I am [00:53:00] wiped out afterwards and I need recovery time and I spend so much time introspective about all of this. It’s what’s led me down this path.

Like we just spoke about, pondering and questioning and going on that journey by myself. But that would be my key point find a way to put yourself in spaces with others who have been through it in peer support.

Kevin: Great suggestion. We’ll make sure that LightAtTheEnd.com has those resources available to people to access them.

 So, where can people find you? Is it best to connect with you through TrueNorthEmpowerment.com?

Jenny: Yeah, that’s probably the best way. On the website, TrueNorthEmpowerment.com, there’s a form that can be filled out just with, Hey, I’m looking for more information on this, on… whatever. If you have questions, you can send that through the form. You’re also welcome to email me directly. It’s just [00:54:00] jenny@truenorthempowerment.com. I’m also on Instagram and Facebook TrueNorthEmpowerment or Jenny Sellers. There’s a million and a half different ways to get ahold of me, and I’m always open and willing and truly honored to share in these kinds of conversations. So even if all you have is a question about whatever – oh, my gosh, I just lost my person and I’m grappling with some of the same stuff you did. Could we have a conversation? Absolutely. We can get on Zoom for 30 minutes. No cost. Just to talk it out and see where you’re at. If you are just starting to question all of the more energetic side of the world yourself, and you just have some questions you want to ask, same thing, get on Zoom, no charge. And then we’ll figure out what a path forward for you might look like, with some of these services that I do offer. I will always offer free consults.

Kevin: Great. And as you indicated earlier, it’s, it’s not just grief, it’s any major life [00:55:00] transitions or business transitions…

Jenny: Yeah. That’s a great distinction to make. And truthfully, believe it or not, I mean, as entrepreneurs, oftentimes, we have this vision of what we want to build and create and several years down the line, it ends up looking very different than we maybe intended for it to. And so much like our energy body and our physical forms go through challenges. So too does our business structure. And so, believe it or not, your business definitely has an energy signature all its own. And so it’s super cool to get to work with entrepreneurs and like minded individuals who are maybe struggling with the next big offering or whatever. And when we can get to the basis of what it is that you envisioned building, what is the energy signature of the business as it is now, and how can we kind of massage that back to where you intended it to be with the program expansion and everything you’ve [00:56:00] experienced between point A and point B. It’s a really powerful tool. So I love applying the energetic sciences, if you will, to businesses as well, because there’s a lot to be said there and a lot to be uncovered there.

Kevin: I hadn’t considered that at all. So I’m, I’m glad you referenced that.

 In the boundaries of this discussion about the perspective of someone who went through the loss of their person, not being married to them, having unique challenges that came from that.

Is there anything else that you want to talk about before we wrap this one up?

Jenny: Just a reminder in all aspects of the conversation we’ve just shared in today that you’re not alone, whether it’s the grief portion of it, I guarantee you, I’ve seen the magic happen when somebody who has one of the most challenging grief [00:57:00] experiences who feels like they’re the only one who could have ever experienced the death of their person in said way, meets or finds somebody, who has either the same or very similar experiences. There’s so much magic in that.

So really finding a way to put yourself in a space to find those connections, which I realize in the beginning, there’s not a whole lot of energy for. But any point throughout your grief: you’re not alone. If you’re questioning the reality of an afterlife or what the heck this world even means, how is all of what’s happening around us happening?

You are not alone. If you are like me, an unwedded widowed person who finds themselves having to halt all of the dreams that you had ahead of you, you are not alone. While grief and all of these other big questions that we ask about life and death and the world beyond are very isolating at times, finding that [00:58:00] community or a person, an individual who you can bounce ideas off of, it will serve you better than you could have ever imagined.

So putting yourself out there, being curious, and truthfully knowing that this experience is not yours alone would be my three big things.

Kevin: Wonderful. I’m so glad we managed to connect and talk about this stuff. It’s been eye-opening and mind expanding and we’ve got a lot more we can talk about now.

Jenny: Yeah, thank you so much again for what you’re creating here at LightAtTheEnd.com. It’s a very powerful resource for those who need it so desperately. And thank you for answering that call. So you’re doing great work.

Kevin: Oh, thank you. It’s my great pleasure. [00:59:00]