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From Military Adversity to Holistic Healing: An Air Force Colonel's Remarkable Path · Moral Injury Support Network Podcast

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Hey, good afternoon.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: This is Dr Danny Roberts, president and CEO of Moral Injury Support Network for Service Women Incorporated.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Moral Injury Support Network podcast.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Today we have a special guest named Deanna Wan.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: She is a board-certified holistic health practitioner, international speaker and the visionary founder of Keynotes to Life.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: With a profound calling to guide individuals through chronic health conditions, emotional struggles and spiritual growth, deanna integrates her diverse expertise with a deep passion for empowering others to live purposefully and vibrantly.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: She's also co-author of the Amazon number one international bestseller Success University for Women in Leadership, where her insights inspire transformation on a global scale.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: A graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, deanna retired as a colonel after a distinguished 30-year career as a physicist specializing in lasers, electro-optics, launching satellites, missile defense, nato operations, nuclear, biological and chemical defense.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: At the pinnacle of her professional life, she faced a life-altering diagnosis of ovarian cancer and was given just four weeks to live in hospice care.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Through what she describes as a miraculous recovery, by God's grace, deanna was granted a second chance at life, a gift that now fuels her mission to help others heal and thrive holistically.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Welcome, deanna to the show.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Great to have you.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Daniel.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: I appreciate you inviting me to be here.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I first want to go into a little bit about your military experience.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Air Force Academy.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: A woman in the Air Force Academy.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: There couldn't have been too many of you, right?
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: No, there weren't.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: It was probably roughly maybe 200 of us or so in a class.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: We went in like 1,800, I think, or 1,500.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: And then, you know, through attrition it went down to 1100, but it was about 12% of the cadet population.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: And so so, what year did you go to the academy?
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: I was there from 1984 to 1988.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, I mean the 80s were still were still right a pretty pretty fairly new for women to be in the in the different academies, because most of the academies were all men up until I don't know the exact year, but the 80s wasn't far into that, you know.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the first class that graduated women from there was in 1980.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay, yeah, so you're fairly.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Were there some cultural adjustments?
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Were there some cultural things in the academy that were kind of negative for women, or had they sorted a lot of that out?
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Was it pretty positive?
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: No, it it was.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Uh, honestly it was.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: It was a challenging environment for women.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: Um, I personally encountered people that felt like the institution was supposed to be for men only and not women, and they they made that known.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure, and and you're talking about, like, instructors and leaders, not just students, right?
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: So that must've been tough.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Um, you know, here you're a highly qualified, competitive person.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Anybody who goes to an academy, they're elite, right?
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: You're probably in school top and top academics, athletics, all this stuff, right?
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Or you don't even get in and then to be told like you don't even belong here, and you know that must have been hard.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: It was rough.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: They did try to railroad me out of there.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: You know I can go in depth into some of the things that were said to me and things that were done.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: You know that my other female well, there were two things that I feel like I faced as far as a woman.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Not only was I a woman, but I'm a minority woman, and so it was kind of like a double whammy for me, things that even my own roommate did not experience, and she actually noticed that and pointed that out to me.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: So you know you learn how to, at least for me.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: You know how I got through.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: It was I just focused on my goal and my purpose versus all the things that were happening, on my goal and my purpose versus all the things that were happening.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: I just felt like some of the things were almost like, you know, psychological games if you will.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: But but you know, of course, when you're in an environment like that where you have to go through survival training, you know it can get physical as well, so that those challenges mental, emotional, perhaps even spiritual challenges that you encountered during the academy, was there some value in that?
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Other words, did it, did it strengthen you in some way to as you were, as you were going on to assignments and commanding and leading, or or did it, like sort of handicapped you as you went into the next phase?
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: no, I I actually feel like I was strengthened by it and, if anything, my faith was strengthened, because I fully believe that.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: You know, I believe that it was God that got me into the academy, because I didn't have any political connections or affiliations.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: You know you need to have like a congressional, you know, appointment nomination, all that, and so that was like the first hurdle.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: But once I got in, I just knew that if I didn't have a strength that was stronger than me, there's no way I would have made it through there, and so that was a major milestone being able to graduate from that place, and certainly it was something that I look back to during my entire Air Force career.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, you at the time, did you later.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: So was it your faith at the present, or was it later that you looked back and said you know what God actually carried me through all that?
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Because that's been my own experience?
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I go through some really tough things and you know I'm sort of ashamed to say that when things got really tough my faith often got weak.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: And then, you know, later on I was able to look through and say, you know, when I got my spiritual head back together and say you know what I really see God working during that time to carry me through and I wish I had been more faithful at the time.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: So was it the case of like me, where you look back later, or was it really?
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Was your faith really strong at the time you were going through it?
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: It was in real time when I got to the academy.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: I knew.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: At that point in my life I was 18 years old and I realized, you know, I can do one of two things.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: I can either veer off the path of you know how my parents raised me, you know to believe in God, because there were certainly many, you know, temptations, you know or I could continue on in the way.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, so After, after the Academy, graduate the Academy and you first get out into the to the Air Force, tell me about your first couple of assignments.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: So my first assignment was at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: I worked in an avionics lab back then which is today's sensors directorate in the Air Force Research Laboratory.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: So I was basically shown an empty lab space and told to go build a coherent laser radar system.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: And that was really exciting because that's where I got to see hey, you know all these physics equations I learned in school.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: They really do work, you know, just to see it practically applied.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: And so I went from there.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: I went down then to after four years there, I moved down to Patrick Air Force Base Today it's Patrick Space Force Base in Florida and I so I was at the Air Force Technical Application Center.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: And that's when I first started working on developing novel types of sensors to detect nuclear, biological chemical effluent.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fascinating work.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: How was the environment throughout your time in the Air Force?
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: As a woman, as a minority woman, how did that?
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Was it a similar kind of cultural issues that you had in the academy?
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Did that continue to carry through through your time in the Air Force?
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: It carried through in some assignments, but not all.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: So my very first assignment was awesome.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, we were just all engineers and scientists and that's all that seemed to matter.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: But then at in Patrick, in fact that was probably one of my more challenging assignments, you know.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: In fact I had other fellow co-workers that told me that you know, the reason why I got treated like that was because I'm a woman.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: That you know he wouldn't have been treated like that.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: You know, just, it was a very hostile work environment.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: You know, I actually encountered my boss doing some things that really weren't ethical at the time, and so I actually confronted him about it and he kind of dismissed it.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: So at that point in time I was kind of almost prepared to step down and resign from my position because I could not operate, you know, just with an open conscience, and so I actually had to, you know, go speak to other people within my chain of command and I was actually surprised that I actually, you know, got support at that point in time.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: But prior to that it was very challenging, you know.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: Challenging, you know, on all fronts, and I can go into it if you want, but you know I don't want to really necessarily dwell in or delve in a lot of you know things that are, you know, negative, but if it can help someone, I'll be happy to share.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's fine, Just if so.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Was it just like categorize some of the things?
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Was it sexual harassment?
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Was it gender harassment?
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Was it like what in those kind of big categories?
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: What did you experience?
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: There was sexual harassment, there was also gender harassment.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: You know, I worked in the lab down there again, and this is just a quick example, and so we're trying to align the lasers you know that are on optical table.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: And you know, one of my co-workers.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: He basically just kind of picked me up physically, moved me over, told me I was in his way, oh, wow, yeah, and I didn't know how to interpret that, but that's where it was witnessed by another coworker who kind of said hey, you know that's not cool what he did.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: And so, yeah, it was.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: There was actual I don't know, gaslighting, if you will, and you know that wasn't even a term that we used back then.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: But yeah, they made all kinds of jokes about me.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: My predecessor was a blonde, so there were, you know, all the blonde jokes.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: You know that they were trying to stick on to me, right, mm?
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: Hmm, that they were trying to stick on to me.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: So now, during your career, did you command?
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: Were you ever in command positions?
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Yes, when I was stationed in Turkey at Izmir Air Station, I was the deputy commander there, and then I also later on when I came back stateside there, and then I also later on when I came back stateside, I was the.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: It was a command position when I was at the joint program manager for biological defense.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, and what were your experiences then as a commander?
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: It was incredible.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: That was probably one of my best assignments.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: I really believe wholeheartedly in a mission and the people that I had working for me were incredible.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: And it was a joint assignment, so I was working under an Army general and he was just an outstanding leader.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: But that's also the assignment where I got diagnosed with ovarian cancer and so it was kind of a, you know, kind of a bittersweet experience for me to both experience, you know, probably one of my best assignments, and then to, you know, receive that diagnosis.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, and I want to get to that in just a minute, but let me go back to like to Patrick assignment, where it was so difficult.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: What carried you through?
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: How did you, how were you able to cope and work, continue to work while that was going on?
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: cope and continue to work while that was going on.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: This is what's really interesting.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: So it got so bad there I literally would be in the restroom crying.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: And so during one of these times I was crying and I just prayed.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: I cried out to God.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: I said, god, can you please either give me the strength and ability to cope with you know my situation here or help me to move out of this?
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: And I prayed this on a Friday afternoon and when I went into work on Monday, I was just really amazed because my boss called me in and says hey, deanna, we're doing a reorganization and you're going to be working for these people now.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: And you know, there was no word of any reorganization to me prior to that.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: So I just you know, I don't have any doubt in just you know God hearing my prayer and answering it.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: And so when I saw that that's what helped me to keep going on, I saw God at work in my life, in the smallest, tiniest you know of details.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: And when I saw God in the details that gave me, you know, just the ability to trust in what was going on in my life and that, even though I may not understand it all, it's all not.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: It's not in vain.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: You know there's a purpose for everything.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's, that's really incredible and I appreciate that Cause I think you know one of the things we do with Moral Injury Support Network is we highlight the, you know, challenges that women go through in the military the abuse, the harassment and all that kind of stuff.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: But we don't want to stop there, right, we want to find out for women that have been able to work through it, go through it, how did they cope, how did they work through it?
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: And so, for you, faith was a major part of being able to see God's work, handiwork, in your life and having that moment of because I'm sure there are probably moments right where you wondered where is God?
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: You know, why am I going through this?
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: And then you have these kind of things there.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: That's a reminder, you know, not just a gentle reminder, but like a really powerful reminder.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Okay, he's working in my situation.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: It's just his timing or it's his.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: You know he's got to do his thing and I have to trust in that.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: And I would say that that assignment for me at Patrick was probably the darkest time in my life.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: I actually didn't want to live anymore.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's how bad the depression I had was.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: It felt like a black cloud, followed me everywhere and and, and so you know I share that, because I just feel like you know, sometimes, you know, your situation can feel hopeless.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: But I've learned that if, if I can just hang on long enough, I'll see God do something, you know, versus trying to, you know, just do things in my own power, which often work, because you know I don't have, I'm not omniscient, I don't, you know, I don't know everything to the situation.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: And so I have seen that just in my time here, when I was stationed at Patrick, it was just seeing God move.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: It showed me that the reality, that often what we experience, that we feel our emotional challenges, there's a spiritual component to it, to really see things break through where we can get on the other side.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: You know we have to address that spiritual piece.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: It's not just purely, you know, a biochemical imbalance or you know, just negative emotions.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with you a hundred percent, I mean, I think if, yeah, 100%, I mean, I think what God is trying to do for us is draw us closer to Him, to increase our trust in Him, our faith, all this kind of stuff.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: And so I think that happens through our difficulties, especially those that we feel powerless to do anything about.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: And it can't be just, it's not always just what other people do to us.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: It could be like maybe, you know, it could be about money, it could be about financial situations that we get into, or it could be physical health and we'll get to that in a second.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: But there's a purpose to it beyond just these bad things are happening and what he wants us to do is recognize where we can't go in our own power and to look to Him even more than what we had been doing before.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Right, like, I think we can get to a place where we're pretty complacent.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Hey, I'm going to church and reading my Bible, I feel pretty good, and we're like, oh, I'm good, I'm good with God, or whatever right, and you can get kind of complacent.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: And then you experience these things and you realize, oh, I need a lot more help.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: So, and that certainly doesn't let people off the hook that are guilty of doing these things to you or to someone else.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, they still are guilty, they're still wrong for what they're doing.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: We still need to try to correct those things.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: But I'm saying in the midst of it, what you're talking about is like how do we respond spiritually?
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Is it, you know, losing our belief in God?
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: Is that being angry at God, or is that like, okay, you know, reaching in even more towards him or or seeking him more?
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: It sounds like that was your answer.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: I really believe we have to go a level deeper, and often when we're in these sorts of situations, it's not pleasant, but it's there to really stretch us.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: But it's there to really stretch us.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: You know, and you know, I know full well, I would not be the person that I am today if I hadn't experienced some of these things, and would I ever want to go through them?
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: No, I, you know, definitely not be my choice, but but it does shape who we are and we may not see it, you know, we may not see it immediately, until many years later.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: So so you've been through.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: The academy was rough.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: You had.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: This assignment was really hard.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Probably some other things too that were difficult.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Now you come to this place, deputy commander right, you said you were.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: No, you were actually a commander at that point when you had the cancer diagnosis, and so you had gone through all these difficult things.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Now you encounter a major major health challenge and you know, as you talked about, your faith in God had carried you through these many things.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Now, this is probably, you know, this got to be right on the top of the list as tough challenges, right.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: And so tell me a little bit about that whole experience being diagnosed, that whole how that happened, how you felt, how you worked through it, that kind of thing.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Well, when I got diagnosed, when I got told that you know I have ovarian cancer, that felt like something that was just thrown at me from way left field.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: I was, you know, very health conscious.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: That's how I was raised.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: You know, I was a nationally certified fitness instructor for eight years, so I paid attention, you know, to what I put on my body exercising all of that.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: But the fact that I got diagnosed with this, I just felt like huh somewhere, I must have missed it.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Just felt like huh somewhere, I must have missed it.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: But so, initially, my initial reaction was I was afraid, I was, I was terrified because I felt like goodness, you know, this, being diagnosed with cancer, you know, the C word means that not only am I going to die, I'm going to die this.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: You know horrific pain, you know pain filled death, full of suffering, that's what I equated it to.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: And so every night, I mean, I couldn't sleep, I was, you know, probably for the next two weeks I was just crying every night, because, you know, I was just kind of in reactionary mode, you know, night, because you know I was just kind of in reactionary mode, you know.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: And so after a while, I realized, you know, and this is where I think some of the military training comes in.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: It's like, okay, you need to, you know, confront your fear, and then you have to come up with a game plan, you know.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: And so because I was a scientist, it was natural to me, I just started researching.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: I'm like, ok, what is this cancer?
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Because it doesn't run in my family, I don't have the genetics for it, you know, on my own.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: And whether it's exposures that I might have had in the military, maybe the ability, my ability to handle stress, and then just certain environmental exposures that I had.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: And so once I started digging deep into that, that's how I was able to just kind of formulate in my mind how I wanted to hopefully try to recover, because here I was in a hospital and I had probably it was probably like a 20 out of 10 pain.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, it was the most horrific pain I felt.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: It caused my whole body to convulse, involuntarily.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, they put me immediately on a morphine IV, and I was shocked because what I thought would at least, you know, hopefully would take the edge of the pain off.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: It did absolutely nothing for me.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: In fact, what it did was it made me nauseous.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: So then, you know, they gave me anti-nausea medication and then, you know, it was just a vicious cycle, you know, because then it caused constipation.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: They gave me stool softeners.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: It caused diarrhea and they said, oh, you have C diff, which is an infection.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: And when I saw that I said, you know, I didn't come into the hospital with all these other issues.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: And so I just said, you know what, why don't you just stop administering all this medication to me, because I think it's making me worse.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: In fact, take this IV out.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: And I had to sign waivers because I started thinking about how my mother's father was a Chinese medicine herbalist and so I grew up experiencing, you know just, being able to heal from different maladies without any side effects.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: And so, anyway, that was kind of my first, you know just my first hospital experience, when they, you know, told me what was going on and I experienced some of the you know just the effects of the pharmaceutical medicines and what really made a strong impression on me to look at natural and holistic ways of healing.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: So at the point where you kind of tell this to them and you decide how, how many weeks did you think or had they?
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: How many weeks did you have left?
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: In other words, cause they had given you a short amount of time to live, right after the diagnosis?
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: Well, no, that was, that was early on in the diagnosis.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: That was my you know.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: Just you know when I first got sick.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: Okay, and then it would be like another.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: It was two years after that.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: That's when I ended up in hospice.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: And that's when they told me I had four weeks left to live.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, got it.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: So you got the original diagnosis and then, two years later, you've got a month to live and you're in hospice.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you're still here.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: You're still with us and you're here to tell your story.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: So what happened?
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: What changed?
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: Well, I learned that, you know, when you're facing any sort of challenge, like a life-threatening illness especially, you have to approach it from more than one perspective.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: And so my initial approach was, you know, as a scientist, I was like, you know, I'm just going to change my diet.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: And I saw amazing results.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: Within three months of changing my diet, the tumor actually started to shrink and my elevated tumor markers dropped back to normal.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: But at a certain point I plateaued, and so then I then realized oh, you know, maybe I need to explore the emotional area, you know, just to resolve emotional conflicts that I had growing up.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: And so I started working with a therapist and that was really, really amazing.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, it was incredibly helpful, because not only did she help me to just kind of confront my own mortality, but she kind of helped me to come to the realization that I had to, you know, talk to my parents about things that happened, you know, during my, you know, just growing up there.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: And when I did that, I actually felt an amazing burden that was lifted off my shoulders that I did not even know I was carrying, burden that was lifted off my shoulders that I did not even know I was carrying.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: And so a lot of what changed was my mindset just realizing that I had to be open to all the different ways of healing and not just, you know, be set on my own.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: You know what I wanted to do.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, that's an amazing story.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: So, all these experiences with the Air Force, your faith carrying you through now this tremendous health challenge, realizing there's you know, we're sort of multiple layers that we have to look at physical, emotional, spiritual those are all components, right.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: We need to address um in our lives.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: That has led you to now.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: Um, tell us about some of your work.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Uh, tell us about the work that you do now with people.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: So as a holistic health practitioner, I really really do focus on the holistic aspects of a person both you know all the physical, the emotional, the spiritual because just from my own experience I realized that all of those feed into what we see manifesting physically.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: And so some of the things I do to help people include, you know, someone needs help with their diet.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: I can help work with them on, you know, eliminating foods that aren't helpful for them, adding in good foods that would help shift things in a more positive direction for them.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: And I also help people to identify trapped emotions that are there on a subconscious basis, that people may not even be aware that's there, and when these can be released, that frees up a lot of the energies that were tied up in these emotional conflicts, so that the body has more available energy to heal.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: And then, spiritually, I actually work with people to help to identify.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: Are there, you know, because God has set up certain spiritual laws, will go down through the third and fourth generation, and so these things you know that are, you know, generationally our ancestors may have experienced, you know they might have gone through some traumas.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: If those aren't resolved, it can actually be passed to us through our DNA, and so I work with people to help identify what those are and um, and then we use different prayers to um to really seek um release and freedom.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, so, uh, are you, are you coming at it from a Christian perspective?
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: So do clients need to be Christians, or can they be um of any religion or no religion?
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: Tell me about that.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: I have helped people from all backgrounds you know of all backgrounds whether they believe or they don't believe in God.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: I have to say, though, that I do find that the people who that, the people who have sort of a faith in an inner power, whether that's God I really feel like if they believe that there's a stronger place of wisdom and strength that they can draw from that, they're going to be in a better place than someone who has absolutely no belief.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: You know, if they don't believe there's a God that exists and they just believe only in themselves, I feel like there's a handicap there.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: But I am willing to work with anyone who's you know open um just to at least uh, at least you know just um having a willingness to, to see what's really there.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: Often, I think people, you know people have different um, you know backgrounds, um upbringings and um, and so I I feel like it's important to look at that because that often shapes how someone might even view God, because of their earthly father was abusive, for example, then, you know, set up some challenges be easier in some ways to work with people that aren't, um, maybe that have, um, some religious background, maybe some growing up, childhood they're but they're questioning, they're open, they're, they're.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: They're sort of like you know, um, not sure, but they feel like something there, whatever, like those kind of people can be the most open to receive new insights.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Sometimes you get people that are, you know, heavily religious and they can be closed off just because the teaching might be so strong and at some point it might very well be okay, but your current religious beliefs can't carry you past this.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: So it doesn't mean your religion's wrong, but we need to be open to maybe seeing how we can expand your religious knowledge or deepen your religious knowledge, whatever.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: It is right to help you get past where you're at right now, because you've reached a place and that happened for me, you know, over the course of several years, different times where it's like what I encountered, my current religious belief and understanding couldn't get me beyond that Right.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: So it wasn't about getting rid of my religion.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: It was like looking at it and saying, okay, what I've learned so far is not enough.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Now how can I go deeper into my beliefs or my God or whatever, and so it seems like it's more about the person being open than necessarily what your religion is or whatever, but just being open to explore new encounters with God, I guess.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: I feel like the openness is really truly key because it can happen on both sides.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, you can have someone who's a scientist and where the science becomes a religion.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: You know a religion, and so I feel like it's important to really see where do we have beliefs that are maybe even dogmatic?
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: We might have been taught a certain thing but, like what you were saying, you come to a point where you realize, hey, this is not working, and so either I was taught incorrectly or somehow, the way I'm even interpreting what's in a Bible, maybe I'm not interpreting it correctly, because I think often, you know people read it, it was written in a different you know time, historically, and so you know we may not fully understand the context behind the words and you can't just blindly apply, you know, just blindly apply, you know, just isolated scriptures to your life.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Right, that's right.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: You've also written a couple of books, right.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: Yes, I was a coauthor of the success university for women in leadership, and so I do share my story of of healing in there and where I share some of the leadership principles that I actually applied.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: And so in my own life I've just seen that perhaps some of what I was exposed to in the military might've contributed to my getting cancer, but at the same time you know some of what I learned as a scientist, as a leader.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: I feel like that also helped me to navigate, you know just the journey towards recovery.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, so, as we think about the folks out there that are listening, what are some, what would be one or two things that you really want them to think about or want them to know if they're dealing with a major life challenge or a serious health issue?
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: health issue.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: Well, the first thing that I would want them to know is, first, to never lose hope, no matter how bad the situation is.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: As long as we're on this side of the veil, things can change, and just from a quantum physics perspective, there's always just an infinite number of you know paths that can actually take place.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: But we have to have that openness in order to explore that, to allow that to actually manifest.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: And then the next thing I would say also is to dig deeper.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: You know, really, when you're faced with a condition, an illness, a challenge, whatever it is, it's often multiple factors that have contributed to the situation that you find yourself in.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: So it's not just one silver bullet that's going to, you know, get you out of the situation or help you to recover.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: You have to have the patience and really just the openness and the curiosity really to see, well, what are all the different drivers that got me here.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: And so, just having that willingness to dig deeper, because there's always something more, and to not get discouraged.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: And then the last thing is just it kind of ties off of that is that our healing comes in layers, of that is that our healing comes in layers, it's not just like a one and done thing.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: You know it's like depending on just you know where you are.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: You know just mentally, emotionally, spiritually, you know, and where you are physically.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: That kind of determines what you're able to actually deal with.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: You know, some things can be so traumatic that have occurred in your life and if you were to try to tackle it all at once, you know you might end up getting extremely ill or, just you know, just falling apart.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: And so I believe it's really important to approach things just kind of you know you have a long term kind of perspective where it's like okay, maybe at this certain point I can deal with this little piece of it, you know, and then it might take a period of time, but you'll know.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: I think that part of the journey is to just cultivate a deeper level of awareness of what's not only going on externally around you, what you can see, but what's going on inside of you, you know, just to be connected emotionally, spiritually, because that will help you to navigate.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: Okay, is this a good time for me to deal with this?
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: Otherwise, you know, I think people can be discouraged if they try to bite off more than they can handle, and it really kind of you know, you know, knocks them down and then they don't want to touch it again.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: You know, then yeah, yeah, I think that's really an important point that few people really talk about.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: And that's, you know, doing one thing at a time, and I've made the mistake myself.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: I've seen other people do it.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: They want to get their life right, so they attack every you know, every bad habit they have, every.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: You know I'm going to lose weight, quit smoking, stop.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: You know like seven things.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: They're all going to do it once or whatever.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: And it's you know, and they might be excited at first and they're really eager, but it doesn't take long before it just becomes overwhelming.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: Where you're biting your fingernails so much, trying to survive the next day, you just give in and then you quit on everything at once, right, and you just go off the deep end.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: And I think so that's a key point, to just say, okay, what can I tackle now?
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: Taking that long-term view and realizing that you know you're human, even if you have a strong faith and you're seeking God's help and doing all these things still, you know the Bible talks about how patient and long-suffering God is and stuff, and how you know you can.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: He looks at at us in a in a long, suffering, patient way.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: It's not, um, a you know taskmaster who's demanding or or or really brutal father says you need to get rid of all this in your life and get perfect right now and stuff that's insane, right.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: So really, looking at, what can I?
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: It's sort of like setting reasonable goals, right Goals that you.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, here's a thing I know I can tackle.
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: Let me just do that and let the other stuff go for right now.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: I could do that later.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: That's just.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: I appreciate that perspective.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: You don't hear a lot of people say that, but I think in my own life, my own experience has been, has been that that's an important point.
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: It really is because you want to kind of set yourself up for success and, and so I always tell my clients you know, just just take little baby steps, little incremental steps, because, um, when you see success, um, just on a smaller scale, it will, you know, just um provide more incentive for you to continue on, um, yeah.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, awesome, um, well, I think that's everything I wanted to cover with you, deanna.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: Oh, I do want to make sure that you tell people how they can get in touch with you if they want to have some sessions with you, as well as your books on Amazon, right, but how do they get in touch with you?
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: How do they reach out to you if they want to find out more?
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: They can just go to my website.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: It's deanna1.com, d-e-a-n-n-a-w-o-ncom, and just at the bottom of the homepage they can just schedule a free, complimentary discovery call with me and then we can just see if it's a good fit, you know, to work together.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: Right, um, also, I want to let the listeners know that Deanna is one of our partners, um, so we have her information on our partner page.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: You can go to MISNSorg and then scroll down towards the bottom of the screen.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: There'll be some icons our partners.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: You click on those icons.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: That'll take you to our partner page and you scroll down a little bit.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: It'll have Deanna Wan on there, her coaching and how to get in touch with her a button.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: All that is on our partnership page and we appreciate your partnership, deanna.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: We appreciate the opportunity to have you on our podcast and I hope that people really get in touch with you as well as get the book on Amazon, and it's been great having you as a guest.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: Thank you very much.
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: Oh, thank you so much, Daniel.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: I appreciate you inviting me to be here.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, all right, folks, until next time, have a great.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: It's a Friday for me right now, so I hope you have a great weekend, but wherever you're at, I hope you have a great day, rest of your week and so on.