Latest / Destination Unlimited with Victor Fuhrman / Kathleen Ready Dayan – Bridge Jumping

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Kathleen Ready Dayan – Bridge Jumping · Destination Unlimited with Victor Fuhrman

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My name is Victor Furman. Some call me the Voice. I've always been
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fascinated with human nature, spirituality, science and the crossroads at which they meet.
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Join me now and we will explore these topics and so much more with
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fascinating guests, authors and experts who will guide us to Destination Unlimited. How
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do our beliefs, both religious and spiritual, reflect in the way we process
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grief and our understanding of life after death? My guest this week on Destination
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Unlimited, medium and author Kathleen Ready Diane, shares the story of a woman
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who transitions at the age of forty and her request that her ashes be divided
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into twelve vile for distribution by her family and friends, each with a different
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spiritual viewpoint. Ten years ago, Kathleen Ready Dianne was working as a lawyer
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and writing in her spare time. Some personal losses led her on a spiritual
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journey that ultimately resulted in her being able to channel the spirits of her loved
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ones and also spirit guides and teachers. The information she received changed her perspective
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and her life, and she left the practice of law to write novels based
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on the principles she had learned. Her website is Kathleenreadydianne dot com and she
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joins me this week to share her path and new novel about our beliefs and
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how we process grief Bridge jumping. Please join me and welcoming back to Destination
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Unlimited. Kathleen Ready, Diane, Welcome, Kathleen, Hello, Victor.
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Thank you so much for having me, and so nice for you to join
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us again with this amazing book that you've come out with. We're going to
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be talking about that shortly for our listeners. Meeting you for the first time.
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Please share with us your early path and the events that shaped your life.
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Oh boy, my early path. Well, I think I probably shared
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this with you before, But I grew up in a small town. I'm
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the youngest of five girls. I had parents who were, in my mind,
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the original feminists, and I dedicated my latest book to my dad because
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he really empowered all of us girls. He always, you know, pushed
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us forward to do things. And it was the motto in my home that
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you know, there's nothing you can't do, you know, and certainly not
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something a boy could do that a girl couldn't do. They were really very
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strong with us. I feel very lucky about that. I went to school
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to study literature. I love reading, I love writing. Eventually I went
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on to law school. I am an attorney. I don't practice anymore.
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I haven't practiced in maybe ten years now. But I started writing a novel.
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And my first novel was about being in recovery from alcoholism. I was
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in my twenties, my mid twenties when I really was in bad shape and
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went into a rehab for two months. And I wrote a book about that,
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and I wanted to share with people the idea of you know, this
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powerful experience you can have, and that it was just so unexpected to me
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that I didn't. I walked in there feeling so much shame, and I
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felt like my life was over and it was really the beginning. And I
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feel like that was the beginning of my spiritual path because I started to you
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know, once I had a clear mind, I start my spirit started speaking
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to me more. I started having spirit dreams, I started having past life
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dreams. All kinds of things unfolded for me nicely that way, and I
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started writing more. I started with poetry like you, and I wrote quite
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a bit of poetry and short stories. I self published that first novel and
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got that out, and then I was really focusing on, you know,
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practicing law. At the time, I had some losses in my life.
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I lost my mom at a young age. I was in my you know,
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in my late twenties, not so young, but felt very young.
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I lost one of my sisters, and I really did not have a strong
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connection to the spirit world at that point in time. And I ultimately,
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you know, became very interested in that aspect of life, and I started
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seeking out mediums at spiritualist churches, and I started to learn and I one
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of the things I learned that was really life changing for me was that if
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I wanted to be able to have that kind of ability to speak with people
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on the other side of life, a good way to do that is to
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open my channel by meditating and with intention to do this. And I really
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dove into that, and so, you know, this is I know,
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I'm putting a lot of information in a short amount of time here, but
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I became a medium and I started speaking to I spoke to my family members.
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Ultimately in the beginning, I was speaking to guides, people who were
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guiding me and my husband and I have always sort of worked together in this
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spiritual pursuit, and we were given so much incredible information about life that I
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started feeling feeling my burden being lifted. And when I say that burden,
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I mean my fear and my grief, and I didn't worry so much about
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what, you know, death and what was going to happen. And I
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felt better knowing that my loved ones were alive and well, just in a
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different form. And I understood that this is this is not you know,
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a it's not some kind of a wall that drops that you know, keeps
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us apart. That there are ways to communicate. And we spent a whole
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lot of time learning how to do that. And after after really you know,
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coming quite a ways with that, I decided to write this book,
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which was called Before We Were Born. The reason I wrote that is because
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I had heard a lot about reincarnation during these communications, and we you know,
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would ask a lot of questions and they would tell us anything, you
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know, these different people in spirit, some of them were guides. And
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then you know, ultimately I was able to talk to my mom and my
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sister and various people that I had lost, a very close friend of mine
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that I had that I had lost. He became very close to me in
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spirit form and gave me a lot of information and and some of it is
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just that you know, we've been here, we've you're not going to stop
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existing. You exist before you came into this body that you're in right now,
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and you know this is life is a continuous thing, and love is
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a continuous thing. It doesn't break, it doesn't stop, it continues.
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So I wrote this book about two soulmates who reincarnate together through different lifetimes.
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And I went into a lot of discussion in that book about spirit communication because
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one of the main characters passes prematurely. So that's how I got to that
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book. And that's probably enough information to you know. So that's a wonderful
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sharing. Just a couple of follow up questions on that. When you say
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spirit guides, who were the spirit guides that came to you, they were
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people that I did not know. They weren't people that had been friends with
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mine here. They're just people that are that in the spirit side of life.
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I know them. And there was a there was a gentleman when you
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first got coming through, you know, I was learning how to hear clear
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audiently so it's uh, it's not you know, I wasn't hearing the word.
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I would hear it in my mind, and I kept picking up the
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J, the J sound at the beginning. And so I said to him
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one day, I said, can I just call you Joe? Because that
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was as far as I could get with the J. And it sounds silly
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because this is probably this soul who was, you know, not of this
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lifetime, not of this era. And but you know, there was this
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very lightheartedness with these communications and it felt very positive that you know that it
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was almost like a joke between us. So I called him Joe for you
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know, the longest time. That was that's who he was to me.
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And I would talk to him when we purposely communicated. I learned to channel
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and I would get you know, direct messages. And also I always talked
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to him before I went to sleep at night, almost like he's a guardian
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angel. But you know, the words that I got were spirit guide.
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Do you think that that ability is open to anyone. I think it's quite
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possible. Victor, my husband tried to open and get messages and he never
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got them the same way that I do, although he was able to do
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automatic writing. You know, I don't know if I shared this with you
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the last time, but I've been getting guidance of this nature since i was
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a child. And one of the most demonstrative episodes was in nineteen seventy five.
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I was stationed in Korea. I was in the United States Air Force
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and I had this message I heard in my head, your mom needs to
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hear from you. She has a challenge and she needs to hear from you.
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And I never connected it with a specific guide or just the inner voice
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as guidance. And I called her, and this is six thousand miles away.
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And in those days we had extension telephones, and my sister and my
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mother picked up the phone simultaneously the extensions, and I said, Mom,
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is anything wrong? And I heard my sister exclaim, oh my god,
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how did he find out? And it turned out that she was scheduled for
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major surgery the next day. And the voice told me to tell her she
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will have a complete recovery, everything will be fine, and she needed to
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hear that from me, and it was reassuring, and of course that's exactly
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what transpired. So I think that I think if we learned to listen to
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that inner voice. Each of us has the capability of doing that, and
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regardless of the source of the message, if we listen, whether I used
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to call the still quiet voice within, that will get valuable information that will
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enhance our lives and enhance the lives of those we love. Yes, that's
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a remarkable story. I've had two experiences in my life before I opened up
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as a medium where I was sleeping and suddenly heard a loud, booming voice
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say things to me. The first time, it was ten more days,
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that's what I heard, and I was scared. I woke up and I
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was really scared about it, and I talked to one of my sisters about
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it, and she said she had had a very very scary dream that night.
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And I don't know if it was ten days, but it was roughly
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that right in that area. That sister passed away very suddenly, and I
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think I was being given some kind of a you know, a warning of
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just just to prepare me a little bit. And I had another time when
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I heard this voice. This was maybe, oh, I don't know,
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seven or eight years later, same thing. I was sleeping and I suddenly
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heard it was a question, It was a man's voice, and it said,
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would you like thirty more days? And I heard myself reply yes,
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And then I woke up and I'm thinking, what's in thirty days? And
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that was when I lost my friend, the one that I said who came
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in. That really was such a pivotal thing for me, Victor, because
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when he crossed over, I had a lot of grieving to do over him,
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and he came right in. And that's really the first time that I
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understood how almost physical the spiritual presence can be, because I started sensing him
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in my house and he really kind of, you know, in a metaphorical
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way, took me by the hand and pulled me through this process that I
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went into where I learned to be a medium. And I just I feel
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that there's it was not him that was saying the thirty days. He was
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still alive. It was a guide or I don't know who it was,
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but it was somebody trying to prepare me. Absolutely. You had talked about
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before we were born on the topic of reincarnation. And my mom passed in
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January of twenty twenty, and after she passed, I started seeing these visions
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of circles and rings and it brought this poem through me measure that with you.
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Oh, I'd love that the path of great beauty in so many things,
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from Adams to galaxies, circles and rings, natural wisdom that dwells there
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within, from not to three sixty, that magical spin. We circle each
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other in gravity's dance, as gay A circles soul, the solar romance as
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Luna circles us, in life giving motion, drawing the tides and inner emotion.
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And the age of the oak is found in its rings, as in
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woman and man and all living things. And when the ring stop and life
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comes to an end, we'll all circle back and dance once again. That's
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beautiful, and that's my belief. I'm firmly not even believe. I know
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that when we leave this each lifetime, we have the opportunity to come back,
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and that each lifetime is an educational experience for us and helps us to
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grow on a soul level. Yes, with you, that's exactly how I
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feel. Before we were born and your latest book, Bridge Jumping, are
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novels that encompass spiritual truths. Why did you choose this form for expressing your
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ideas? I am a storyteller, I love stories. I have since I
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was a little girl. I've always loved to read, and I'd love to
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be told stories, and to me that they just resonate more deeply with me
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than if I try to read something that is nonfiction. There are always truths,
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you know, embedded in stories, and for me, I thought that
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was the right way for me to tell the story of these souls, particularly
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you know, the first book. I didn't want to take the information I've
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been given from spirit and try to dictate to anybody what they should understand or
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think or feel or believe. It's not my place to do that. I
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believe that we're all very individual in the way that we grow as spirits,
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and I wanted to just offer this story and put it inside the concepts that
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had been very freely given to me, so that people could do with it
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what they wanted. And it wasn't the idea of this is what you should
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do or anything like that. I'm not an expert on anything, and I
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didn't want to come across that way. So I wrote it, you know,
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as a novel, and then again with this new book, it's this
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It gives me a little distance, Victor. When I'm writing to be able
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to say, this is what I want this character to say if I'm trying
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to intimate a certain level of thought or emotion, and then to step back
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and give that voice to the next character, so that it's not just my
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voice speaking, but it's various perspectives. Yes, absolutely, what inspired bridge
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jumping and what are the main themes you express? You know, it came
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from a very simple conversation the idea. Another one of my sisters made a
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comment one day that she had heard about people. Somebody she heard about was
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going to divide their ashes when she died. She had asked for that,
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And as soon as she said it, I said, that's a novel,
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And I decided I was going to write this little compact book where there were
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going to be twelve vials of ashes of someone who had passed, and every
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chapter was going to be where the vial went, wherever it traveled. So
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in my mind, ultimately like it became something very different from that, because
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when you sit down to write a story, you know a lot of times
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the character will take you in a direction you didn't see coming yourself. But
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what I did with this is I don't know how many chapters are in there,
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to be honest, but there are many more than twelve. Because as
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I started writing this, I realized I am taught talking about different spiritual perspectives.
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This is really what I want to write about, so that you know,
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the book opens up. We're at Page's funeral, her memorial service,
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and there are these vials of ashes, and the people closest to her step
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forward to claim them. And that's really you know, it's not nobody's designated.
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It's not you know, my sister, my brother, it's not that.
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It's just whoever feels they are closest come and take a vial and bring
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it to a place that honors me and our relationship. And so that's what
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happens. And each one of these people sees life differently, as we all
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do, and they all have a different religious or spiritual background and perspective,
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and I wanted to look at how that influenced the decision that they made about
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where to bring these ashes. And while they're doing this, they're talking,
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you know, to whoever they're with, or even if it's just the conversation
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with the reader, about what they thought about Page. And she has left
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a journal behind, and I have the journal entries in between each chapter so
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that we can also hear her perspective on what she felt about these people and
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what she thought about, you know, the way they saw her it.
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The book has a lot to do with perspective. Now, page is a
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forty year old woman who passes from liver cancer. Why did you open at
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her funeral rather than starting with her life? Well, I wanted to set
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up all the characters. I wanted them all in one place, and I
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wanted to show how they were behaving toward each other and really the way that
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they were behaving towards death when it happened, before we got into the story
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of her life. And then I wanted her to tell most of the story
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of her life going backward a bit. So the journal that we're looking at
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started about a year before, so it was six months before her diagnosis.
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So when we first meet Paige in those journal entries, she's quite healthy and
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as far as she knows, and she is starting this new part of her
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life because she's recently been divorced and she's on a new path, and she
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knows she's on a new path, and so she says at the top of
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the journal, she says This is a journal of empowerment, the book of
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my Rebirth, and she's actively choosing how she wants to live, and she's
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setting out a new path. And that's how I want us to meet Page,
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and that's how I want But I wanted the characters to sort of stand
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on their own, you know, to show us what they think without leading
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us to it. Now we both have the same belief I believe I know
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about reincarnation. But from the standpoint of the characters in the book, is
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that the end of life? Or is it a continuation? It is an
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continuation for most of the characters in the book. So Page the name of
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the book is Bridge Jumping. So I just put in a little something here.
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We can talk more about this later if you want. But Page meets
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this man when she's you know, she has decided she's going to study theology,
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right, get a master's degree, and so she starts digging into different
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kinds of religions and she finds out that there is a wigwam in this town
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called Onset, which is here in Massachusetts, and she's reading about it and
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she wants to go and visit it. So she's driving around looking for this
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place and she crosses this bridge. She starts to cross the bridge, and
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she's like, I've already gone through, coming around in a circle, I've
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already gone over the bridge. So she pulls over in the packing lot and
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she notices there's a young man standing on the edge of the bridge, up
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on the railing, and she's thinking, what's happening? Is he going to
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commit suicide? Does this guy doing on the bridge? And as she sort
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of comes closer to him, she realizes it's not that high, he's probably
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okay, and and you know, she's she's trying to make a decision.
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Do I do I run away from this guy, or do I, you
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know, do I kind of engage with him and have a conversation and and
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he says to her, you know, can you check for boats coming on
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the other side. And so they start this conversation and she realizes that she's
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really quite compelled to know him more. And they start this relationship. And
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he's twelve years younger than her, and she's thinking, I should probably not
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be pursuing this, but she really has this strong, you know, feeling
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to do so. And so it begins with this idea of bridge jumping.
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Is it becomes a metaphor for what you know, following your gut, following
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your intuition, like okay, you know, society, my brain are going
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to say, don't do this thing. But something inside of me is saying,
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follow this man, and you get to know this man. And so
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that's that's where this started from. And I think I lost your question in
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there. I apologize, not a problem, we'll pick this up. My
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guest is Kathleen Ready Diane. Her new book is called Bridge Jumping. Kathleen,
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please share with our listeners where they can get your books and find out
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more about you and your work. Oh well, thank you. I have
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a website and it's my name dot com, so Kathleenreadydiane dot com, and
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you will see what stores are carrying my book and you can also easily get
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it from Amazon. I have a contact information on my website, so if
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you'd like to email me, I would be very happy to receive an email
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and respond to you, and we'll be back with more of Kathleen after these
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words. On the Own Times Radio Network, the best of the holistic,
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eleven a m. Eastern on Old Times Radio back on Destination Unlimited. My
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guest this week is Kathleen Ready Diane. We're talking about her new book Bridge
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Jumping. Kathleen, how do our spiritual or religious beliefs influence the way we
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look at death? Oh boy, I think in a profound way. I
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think the way we're raised and also so the religion, our spiritual viewpoint that
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we're given as a child. I think that's very hard to change. And
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I think that the ones that we acquire our own outlook going forward. Also,
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once we you know, sort of understand who we are and how we
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see the world, I think that tremendously influences how we feel about death.
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For me, as I mentioned a little bit a little bit ago about learning
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how to communicate with people in spirit, to me, that changed my my
25:00
belief about death entirely. I wish I had that kind of connection, you
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know, maybe you know, ten or fifteen years earlier when my mom had
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passed, because I was really just you know, mowed over by that death.
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It was it was very, very difficult for me to get through that
25:18
grieving process. And you know, by the time my dad passed, I
25:23
was already a medium, and I had an understanding that even though I haven't
25:30
figured everything out, I'll never figure it all out. But I had heard
25:33
enough and understood enough to know that this was not the end. So for
25:37
me, it's that. But some people are very you know, they're they're
25:41
rigid in their belief of you know, heaven or hell or we have some
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of the characters in the book Page's dad, her mom had passed and he
25:52
remarried, and you know, her dad and his new wife are very you
25:57
know, strict Catholics, and when they go to visit Paige, she's at
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home, she's dying. They go to see her, and and the you
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know step mom so to speak, she's she's a you know, a girl
26:10
woman by this point, but she's her stepmom, and she says, you
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know, we need to have last writes. We need to get a priest
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in here right away. And Paige's partner, Gabriel, says, no,
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I'm not going to have anybody upsetting her. And the stepmom is really quite
26:25
offended by that, and she thinks, you know, that he is in
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no position to be making that decision, and so she takes to you know,
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praying that Page be released from purgatory, because in her mind, she
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has to be in purgatory. So that's just one example, but every one
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of the characters sees it somewhat differently. Do you think Page attended her funeral.
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I do think she attended her funeral, And I think the way that
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we know is because she had there was a she loved the cranes that lived
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near them, and her boyfriend, her partner had been looking for this crane
27:08
to come because he thought that would be the sign she would send to let
27:11
him know that, you know, she was safely on the other side,
27:15
and just to make contact with him. And he was sitting down at the
27:19
funeral and the crane flies over and everybody's sitting there. It's an outdoor sort
27:26
of little park where they're having the memorial, and everybody looks up and they
27:32
notice it, you know, and his mom says, it's Page's crane,
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and he says, yes, it's Page's crane. And at the moment he
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was he was angry at Paige's sister because she made a negative remark about him,
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and he was just about to make a snarky remark back, and he
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said, you know, if I hadn't looked up, I might have done
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that. I might have come at that direction instead of realizing. You know,
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it's not my business to tell anybody else. I'm not shared this before,
27:59
at least on these shows. My personal friends know the story. But
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as I had cheered with you offline, I lost a very, very wonderful
28:07
partner. Her name was Judy, and she passed in January of nineteen ninety
28:11
eight, and after the funeral was over. I came home and I was
28:17
exhausted and obviously grieving, and I decided I had to lay down, and
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I laid down stomach first on the bed, and we had two cats,
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and these two little cats jumped up on the bed, sitting in front of
28:29
me, in front of my face, like two little sphinxes. And I
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looked at them and they were looking at me, and all of a sudden,
28:36
their gaze turned up towards the ceiling and they started bringing their gaze slowly
28:41
down, down, down, until it was level with my back. And
28:44
I started feeling the presence of two hands on my back, rubbing my back,
28:49
and I knew it was her. I knew she was telling me that
28:52
she had loved me and that she was fine and that everything would be okay.
28:57
It changed my life. Yes, that is remarkable, Victor. You
29:03
talk about getting a sign from someone that was probably the most wonderful sign I
29:08
could have received. That is that is really a beautiful sign. And I
29:14
love that the the animals, You know, a lot of times animals can
29:19
can see and sense spirit. Absolutely absolutely. I've seen that happen with the
29:26
dogs also, where dogs will look as if someone is standing there even though
29:30
people can't see it right. Absolutely, so Page attended her funeral. Would
29:37
you want to attend your funeral? Yes, absolutely, I'm going to be
29:44
sitting in the front row, Victor. That's my plan. I had my
29:48
friend I told you about that that when he passed. He's the one that
29:52
kind of pulled me along into all this, and he's he's still the easiest
29:56
person for me to connect with and talk to. And I said to him,
30:02
you know, he really shocked me when he passed, and so as
30:04
soon as we were able to start communicating with each other, I said,
30:07
you know, I always thought you'd be sitting in the front row of my
30:10
funeral. And he goes, this is what he says to me. He
30:14
goes, I will be well, it's you know, it's just he'd still
30:18
be there. That's beautiful. What does Bridge Jumping share about grief? Oh
30:29
boy, so much. You know. Each one of these characters has to
30:36
really get introspective about what they think and feel about losing Page, and they
30:45
each do a very nice job of it. Most people grow, not everybody,
30:48
but most of the people do grow. You know, I have one
30:53
person who is an atheist, and she and another friend and who is sort
31:00
of a more like I guess what you and I the way we see it
31:04
in more of like a new Age kind of way. And she's she's called
31:07
the new Ager. So everybody has a has a you know, a tag
31:11
name. You're the atheist or the agnostic, or I have a pair of
31:15
Buddhists. They have different everybody's got a different spiritual outlook. And so I
31:21
have the Atheist and the new Ager. There are two you know women.
31:25
They were also forty years old. They met Paige in college. There were
31:27
roommates, and they travel up to New Hampshire to go to go to the
31:34
falls up there. Was escaping me right now, but uh, you know
31:38
along the along the river you get to this waterfall starts with an S but
31:44
I can't pull the word out anyway. As they're heading up there, they
31:48
pull into the parking lot near there where they're going to hike through the woods,
31:52
and this song that was meaningful to them when they were in college comes
31:57
on the radio right as they pull in and one of them says, you
32:00
know, the new Ager says, does that make you feel like Page is
32:04
here? And the atheist says, no, it makes me feel like she's
32:07
not, and so there's this sort of like crossroads, and then they go
32:10
forth and they bring the ashes up to the bridge and they you know,
32:15
they sit down to the bridge and they start talking about when they used to
32:19
come there together and the things they did, and they sort of find like
32:25
more peace with letting her ashes go there. And the new ager girl share
32:31
some things that she's learned about making things in your life, like the secret,
32:37
you know, or law of attraction. She's telling her some of those
32:39
things, and you see this other woman who's the atheist decide to just try
32:45
some of these things on let's see if it works. Like she doesn't believe
32:47
it, but she wants to try it, and she shifts and she does
32:52
and her life does change and it's not in the you know, unrealistic way,
32:58
but things change and they go in a good direction for her. So
33:01
that's how it is. Every character has to kind of come to terms with
33:06
it. In my experience as an interfaith minister and counseling those who are grieving,
33:13
I've learned that this is a very individual process. What would you say
33:17
is the greatest gift we can share with those who are grieving, I think
33:24
to be there to listen to them if they want to talk about it,
33:28
and not to force anything, because everybody, like you said, is individual,
33:32
they handle their grief differently. But I think to show up. I
33:37
think showing up for someone who is pretty much the best gift you can ever
33:40
give, just to be there, to give them your presence and to even
33:45
if you don't know the right thing to say, just to sit with them
33:49
absolutely presence and listening without opining or interjecting your thoughts or ideas. I've had
33:57
a lot of people who are in grieving situations say to someone, I know
34:00
how you feel, and you really don't. We really don't know how each
34:02
of us feels or reacts. It's a very different process. And that gift,
34:07
as you say, of presence, of what we call creating sacred space
34:10
and just listening and giving compassion is probably the best gift that we can give.
34:17
Yeah, so the person doesn't feel that they're battling it alone. Yeah.
34:22
Absolutely. What signs have you received from those who have passed in addition
34:28
to that friend you were mentioning? And does this help with grieving? It
34:32
does help me. I have received so many different kinds of signs. I
34:40
also have received messages from mediums. I don't know if that's in the same
34:46
you know, sort of topic of conversation here, but would be okay if
34:52
I shared share absolutely wonderful, thank you. When I was writing Bridge Jumping,
34:59
I mean when I was writing Before We were Born. There's a scene
35:02
in this in this book where there are two feathers and uh, these this
35:09
little boy and this little girl, Jeremy and Joy, who are the two
35:13
soulmates who have incarnated, and there they live on the same street. And
35:16
because it's they did that intentionally, and they're very bonded children. And the
35:23
boy is about to be taken away. He gets taken by the social services
35:29
because his mom is is neglectful and and you know, before this happens,
35:34
he has these feathers. He's read about that Native Americans would give each other
35:39
eagle feathers as a way of saying, you know, I cannot fly without
35:44
you. So we each have one twin feather to show our connection, our
35:49
inability to be separated from each other. And so he had read about that,
35:52
and he has these birds that they're you know, doves, and he
35:58
takes he takes them, he takes the feathers and he gives one to his
36:01
friend, and it's a significant part of the book. It really symbolizes what
36:06
their relationship is to each other. And as I was writing this, it
36:10
was on a Sunday, and that night I went to church at a Spiritualist
36:15
church and I was sitting there and the medium called on me and she said,
36:22
you know, there's a there is a man here and is it your
36:27
birthday? Is it something? He's got a gift in his hand and I
36:30
said, well, no, I had no idea what she was getting at.
36:35
We went around for a minute and then she said, yeah, he's
36:37
saying, he's laughing a bit, he's smiling, and he's like, you
36:39
know what this is? And I said, I really don't. I can't
36:42
think of it, you know. And she said it's long and flat.
36:45
It's in a box. And I said, you know, I don't know.
36:49
And so she said, okay, he's opening up the box and it
36:52
was one feather and she held her hand up she goes, it's one feather.
36:55
And I was like, that really floored me because I knew that I
37:00
was writing that because of this, you know, relationship that I had had
37:06
with this guy that passed over and she brings them into me and he's I
37:10
knew he had seen what I wrote on that exact day. It just really
37:20
that was a really significant thing for me. The scattering of pages ashes and
37:25
the way it is done by each of those who took a vial of those
37:29
ashes. As you had mentioned earlier, it's a very significant part of the
37:34
story. What does the show us Often it shows a reflection of the person
37:40
who's carrying the ashes. It's what the way that they're seeing it. It
37:45
shows us their perspective on life, on death, on their relationship with page.
37:52
So as an example, you know the stepmother that I mentioned before,
37:59
she thinks that, you know, Gabriel, the partner has just made a
38:04
mess of the funeral and that it was you know, it needs to be
38:08
redone in some way. So she takes her she takes the ashes. She's
38:13
married to Paige's dad, but he has dementia, and she kind of leads
38:16
them through his life in a lot of ways. And she brings him to
38:21
the cemetery where his his late wife is buried, and she tells him,
38:25
you know, to kneel down here, and she has the ashes and she
38:30
pours them on the grave because she thinks it's the closest thing to a funeral.
38:36
And while he's because he has dementia, he is, he is,
38:40
he is not as tapped into this belief system that he shared with her before.
38:45
And instead, you know, he's he's looking around the gravesite and he
38:49
finds some quarters. And we learned that from her. You know, one
38:52
of Page's journal entries that you know, he used to give her quarters to
38:58
go get ice cream when she was a little girl, and she said,
39:00
you know, he told her once, you know, when i'm an old
39:02
man, you can take me for ice cream. And it was always five
39:07
quarters that she would you give her to get her ice cream cone. And
39:09
so he finds in the dirt these five quarters. Because he's not coming there
39:14
with any kind of expectation. He's coming there, you know, very like
39:20
pure of spirit, pure of heart, and he's looking around, he finds
39:22
these and he's smiling. He knows that it's a sign from his daughter.
39:28
But the but you know, his wife is seeing it very differently. Give
39:32
us another example of the one of the friends taking pages ashes and what they
39:37
did. Okay, well, her sister who is also Catholic, but a
39:40
little bit you know, a little bit younger, a little bit more newer
39:45
generation. She doesn't know what to do with the ashes, and she's very
39:51
confused about it, and so she decides that she wants to go to Italy
39:54
and bring them to the Vatican, because she said Paige always wanted to go
39:59
to I'll find a place for them somewhere, And so she convinces her brother
40:04
to go with her, and her brother doesn't share that belief, and her
40:07
brother is gay and he's been in a relationship with the man for about ten
40:12
years that no one in the family knows about because he's he's afraid that they
40:16
will just disown him, and so he goes with her, but he knows,
40:22
like to him, it's he's just following her, sort of little bit
40:28
of a wild goose chase, you know. And they go to Rome and
40:30
they wander around and the sister finally says, you know, I don't feel
40:35
Paige here to you, And he said, well, no, but Paige
40:38
would be Paige would be happy to be set for you anywhere. You know,
40:42
you don't have to you don't have to worry about that. So she
40:45
says, well, let's go to Venice, and they go to Venice and
40:50
Paige was this really like bohemian wild child kind of girl. And she says,
40:55
you know this is this is Paige, this, this fits Paige,
41:00
this place, and she ends up dropping the ashes off of one of the
41:04
bridges in Venice. And you know, it's some growth for her because she
41:09
went on this trying to fit page in pages life into her own belief system
41:15
instead of seeing page for what she really was. And by the time she
41:21
leaves, you know she comes to terms with that. Beautiful. My guest
41:27
Kathleen Ready Diane her latest book, Bridge Jumping. We'll be back with more
41:30
after these words. On the Own Times Radio Network. Hello, I'm Sandy
41:36
Sedgeby, a host of Home Times Magazine's Flagshit radio show. What is going
41:39
on? My passion is sifting through information, research and innovations from new thought
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teachers, speakers and researchers, pushing back the boundaries of what we know about
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who we are, why we're here, and how quickly impossible be comes normal
42:00
when we open our minds, expand our awareness, and accept that the only
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limits that exist are those we place upon ourselves. So if you're the kind
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of forward thinking, eager investigator of what lies beyond the current reality that most
42:14
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42:16
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together we can discover what's really going on. Grab a cup of tea or
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Tuesdays at two pm Eastern. Linda creates sacred space for leading female luminaries,
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Brought to you by the AD Council. Welcome all. This is the
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to you by AARP and the ad Console back on Destination Unlimited. My guest
44:50
this week Kathleen Ready Diane her new book Bridge Jumping. Kathleen, how does
44:55
life experience determine the way we bring our childhood religious experiences and education forward?
45:02
And how is this reflected in Bridge Jumping? M Well in general for myself,
45:14
for example, I was raised Catholic. I was raised, you know,
45:17
with the idea of heaven and hell and behaving a certain way or going
45:22
to hell, and you know that there was a devil and that, you
45:27
know, you better stay on the straight and narrow, and not that my
45:30
parents were very strict like that with me, but that's you know. I
45:32
went to CCD and all that, and those were the kinds of lessons that
45:37
were taught. And as I got older, even like delving into mediumship,
45:44
I wasn't sure it was okay to do that, you know. I started
45:47
thinking, maybe this is going against God somehow. It took me a long
45:53
time to feel like this, just to allow myself to experience this thing that
45:59
I could feel was coming from love and to make that determination on my own.
46:04
And it's a big determination. To make if you're raised in a certain
46:07
religion to say I'm going to trust what my heart is saying and not trust
46:14
the words I was told when I was two, three, four, five
46:16
years old. I think that I think that really controls a lot of our
46:23
lives, particularly if you don't have any reason to step back and re examine,
46:29
you know. So for me becoming a medium speaking to people in spirit
46:35
and also speaking to people of lots of different spiritual backgrounds and being willing to
46:39
hear other people, I think that, you know, changes the way you
46:44
approach death. It changes the way you approach you approach your life. You
46:49
know, it's funny. I don't know if I share this with you the
46:51
last time, but my mother was Catholic and she converted to Judaism when she
46:55
married my father, which her mother never forgave her for doing. My grandmother,
47:01
but when I was about a month old, she had visited her Catholic
47:07
aunt and her aunt said to her, you look like you're really tired.
47:12
Why don't you take a nap and we'll look after Victor for you. And
47:15
while she was napping, they spirited me, literally spirited me away to their
47:20
church and they baptized me. Oh my gosh. And this was in the
47:23
nineteen fifties, so this is something I think that may have been very common
47:27
back in the nineteen fifties. But it's fascinating how the drive to conform to
47:32
the beliefs that you're raised with creates the activity the way you react to things
47:37
in the world. It really is. It's very interesting. I have two
47:43
daughters and they're ten years apart, and my first daughter, I had her
47:47
baptized, I had her in the Catholic Church. I had her christened,
47:52
and ten years later when my other daughter was born, my second husband is
47:55
Jewish, so that played into it too, But I had no desire to
47:59
have that, to have her christened, And I just didn't have that fear
48:05
that I had the first time around, because the first time I wasn't attending
48:07
church. I just I had it in my mind, if I don't have
48:10
her christened, she may burn eternally. I thought that was a possibility,
48:16
And by the time my second daughter came around it that was not in my
48:20
mind anymore. You know. It's fascinating to me. When I attended interfaith
48:24
seminary in the nineteen nineties, one of the things that I learned is that
48:28
virtually every faith has an iteration of the Golden rule, doing to others as
48:34
you'd have them doing to you, Love thy neighbor as thyself. If everybody
48:37
just let go of everything else, I just practiced those two tenants, what
48:42
a wonderful world we would live in. I agree. It's so much of
48:46
the dogma that gets us separated and causes all the issues. Yes, it
48:52
really does. It just creates so much fear, and it comes from control.
48:58
Absolutely, absolutely, It's all about control, isn't it. I believe
49:01
it is. Yes, much of what you share in Bridge Jumping is about
49:07
family and relationships. What is it that works to keep us close and what
49:12
are the things that disconnect us from each other? Yes, So a big
49:17
focus in this story is page in her relationship with her two siblings. So
49:25
her younger brother is Joey and her sister is Abby, and I've spoken of
49:30
them. They're Abby and Joey are the ones that go to Italy. They
49:36
all have this belief that they're the black sheep and the family, and you
49:40
find that out in their chapter when it's talking about them. But you know,
49:45
Paige felt very strongly that she was the one, you know, she
49:49
always said the wrong thing, she would speak out of turn. She was
49:52
just not really like them at all. Her brother was quite shy and quiet
49:55
and kind of a gracious, sweet boy growing up, and then her sister
50:01
was very controlling, you know, and we find out that, you know,
50:07
Paige really resented her sister because she tried to control her so much.
50:12
And as we're getting through the story, we find out that, you know,
50:15
Abby, the sister never wanted to be in that position to begin with,
50:19
but she felt like that's what her parents expected of her. And she
50:22
felt left out by the relationship between her younger siblings because they would share things
50:28
with each other and and not with her, and because of course they feared
50:31
her judgment or her reprimand and so, you know, I just think it's
50:37
interesting in a family how we sort of make a lot of assumptions about each
50:43
other, about about what our siblings are, you know, the way they're
50:46
viewing us, and we're not. None of that's really objective, Like all
50:52
of this is subjective, and we're all kind of living our lives thinking that,
50:57
you know, we're all in the same reality, but of course we're
50:59
not. We're the reality that's in our mind, and so I wanted to
51:02
kind of have those realities, you know, bang up against each other a
51:07
little bit and so that you know, people can see this in themselves and
51:12
get closer. And so that's that's what happens, you know, and you
51:15
know, by the end, there's a change. There's a shift in the
51:17
relationship between the two surviving siblings because they're starting to let each other in,
51:23
you know, and they aren't massive ways, but Joey finally opens up and
51:30
tells her, you know, that he has this partner and he wants,
51:32
you know, her to meet him, and she opens her arms to him,
51:37
you know, and it's things like that, you know, and then
51:38
they're both able to help each other. Here. One of the things that
51:44
I've done, in addition to my day job, my industrial job as an
51:51
interfaith minister, has been to officiate funerals. And at every funeral that I
51:55
officiate, I always include a message about how to tomorrow is never guaranteed that
52:01
today is the only day that we have to say to someone, I love
52:07
you, to say to someone if I've hurt you in any way, please
52:09
forgive me to say to someone if I've perceived hurt from you in any way,
52:15
I forgive you. That is so important to have closure like that before
52:20
we transition, isn't it. I think it really is. And the process
52:25
of doing so, we're sort of bridge jumping, aren't we. We are?
52:30
You know, it's that leap of faith because it's not easy to say
52:35
all the time, you know, and yeah, I believe that, you
52:39
know. For me, the bridge jumping is a metaphor for taking a leap
52:44
of faith in life. And yeah, that is that is definitely a leap
52:46
of faith when you come out and you tell somebody if there's bad energy between
52:51
us, you know, like you said, I love you, I'm sorry,
52:54
and you know, please forgive me, or you know, clearing the
52:59
air on these things is it's clearing energy and in a way, it's also
53:04
creating a sense of gratitude for the opportunity to share that, isn't it.
53:07
H Yeah, that's very lovely. Yes. What would you like readers to
53:12
take away from bridge jumping? You know that we're all going about life a
53:17
little bit different and that's okay that you know, these paths intersect in the
53:23
In the beginning of Page's journals, she has this this vision in her mind,
53:30
and she says, you know, I I see us all connected and
53:32
there's this you know, like this giant you know, hand or something that
53:38
she can see Like, okay, so this is you know, my brother,
53:42
my sister, and but you know at my feet, there's also you
53:45
know, my friends from middle school, my my friends from high school,
53:49
the neighborhood, all this, and she talks about how they're all connected even
53:52
if they don't know they're connected to each other yet, and like this idea
53:57
that there are connections amongst all of us even when we don't see them or
54:00
understand them, and really we're all part of the same web. And you
54:07
know, just being kind to each other and accepting each other is going to
54:13
go a long way. What's next for Kathleen Ready Diana, Well, I'm
54:17
working on the sequel or Before We Were Born, and it's the next incarnation
54:24
of these two soulmates who are traveling together through lifetimes. Someone recognize if they
54:31
found their soulmate. How does someone recognize it? Yes, yes, you
54:38
know, it's an individual thing. I think you feel it. I think
54:43
it has to be something. It's not your mind, it's your soul that's
54:47
feeling. This is this poor person is important to me and you just have
54:52
to listen to your intuition. And do we also travel together in soul families?
55:00
We do often do that. I believe. I know that I have
55:04
traveled with some of my family now, I have traveled with them before.
55:08
And I've also been told that we play a role in making those decisions before
55:14
we're reborn, that we are able to, you know, as a group,
55:17
come together and make some decisions about how this is going to go.
55:22
My guest Kathleen ready Diane her new book Bridge Jumping. Kathleen one more time,
55:29
please share with our listeners. Let me get your book and find out
55:31
more about you and your wonderful work. Thank you, Victor. So it's
55:36
my name Kathleen with the Quareadydiane dot com. That's my website. That's the
55:42
best way to you know, learn more about my book and also you can
55:46
buy it on Amazon and yeah, the list of books will be on the
55:51
website. Kathleen, Thank you so much for joining us again and sharing this
55:57
wonderful story. Thank you, Victor. There is always a pleasure talking to
56:00
you, and thank you for joining us on Destination Unlimited. I'm Victor the
56:07
voice Firman have a wonderful week.