Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - Tammy Peterson on tragic illness, finding God, gratitude, and unselfish service

Episode Date: February 25, 2021

YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6w-XwEz3pxkPatreon for conversations on Theories of Everything, Consciousness, Free Will, and God: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungalHelp support conversations like this via PayPal: https://bit.ly/2EOR0M4Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurtiTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/better-left-unsaid-with-curt-jaimungal/id1521758802Pandora: https://pdora.co/33b9lfPSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4eGoogle Podcasts: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/Id3k7k7mfzahfx2fjqmw3vufb44iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/better-left-unsaid-with-curt-jaimungal/id1521758802 Beyond Order (unaffiliated links):https://www.amazon.ca/Beyond-Order-More-Rules-Life/dp/0735278334 Canadahttps://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Order-More-Rules-Life/dp/0593084640 USA Better Left Unsaid (trailer): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQIzgoFBCnYBetter Left Unsaid (link to buy late-March): http://betterleftunsaidfilm.com/  Edited by: Antonio Pastore 00:00:00 Introduction00:02:39 Tammy's routine (morning and evening)00:07:13 Type of meditation, yoga, and prayer Tammy performs00:09:14 What was Tammy looking for growing up?00:11:44 Does one need to be in tune with their body?00:14:51 A recent squabble with Jordan, and how she used it for self-insight00:24:28 Settling disputes in a relationship with internally directed blame00:26:00 Finding God in illness00:27:27 Religion vs. Spirituality00:28:16 Overview of Tammy's illness and recovery (visualization techniques)00:47:25 How a fan of Jordan helped save Tammy's life00:55:52 Finding meaning in living for others, rather than torment that you're only living for others00:59:44 Is illness a blessing? A test? A curse?01:01:51 Extracting the inner hurt / coping mechanism from a sense of over-confidence01:04:36 On On gratitude (and what's on Tammy's list?)01:06:18 The pandemic and introverts01:08:25 Would Tammy have found God without her illness?01:10:10 The difference between those that turn to God vs. away: humility01:11:01 Tammy on Catholicism and the rosary01:11:38 You have to be driven by value that comes from beyond yourself01:13:10 Serving others is necessary to have a full spiritual experience01:13:38 Mary and advice for women01:15:41 What does it mean that God is only in the present moment?01:17:05 On being "reborn"01:18:37 The problems you deal with are often generations old01:20:52 How can you love yourself, if you want to change? How can you have compassion for yourself?01:25:30 What else has changed besides God, in Tammy's outlook?01:26:24 What if your negative harmful thoughts are the truth?01:27:37 Truth vs. Love in a relationship (do you side with the world or your partner?)01:29:07 How did Tammy know the importance of Truth at a young age, with Jordan?01:30:13 Audience: What were the best practices Tammy's parents did? (User: Salt Lemon)01:30:45 Audience: What advice do you have for parents with an extremely ill child? (User: Feels like Fire)01:30:59 Story of Jordan proposing to Tammy several times (User: Irish Lobster)01:32:11 Audience: Favorite books? (User: Veg Mech)01:34:21 How does Tammy handle the hit pieces toward Jordan? 

Many of you may be new to this channel and for those who are unacquainted, my name is Kurt Jaimungal. I'm a filmmaker making a documentary called Better Left Unsaid, which is all about when does the left go too far. The link to the trailer to that is in the description. Now this channel started as unedited interviews for that documentary, but then expanded to include my primary interests of mathematical physics, consciousness, free will, theories of everything, and God. It's because of this latter topic that I was fortunate enough to speak to Tammy Peterson, whose story you're likely familiar with, but regardless, if you're not, we go through it anyway.

The short of it is that she was terminally ill and then made a miraculous recovery. I don't use that term lightly, it's just that I don't know what other word to use. Improbable would be the closest, but that doesn't seem to convey the sheer unlikeliness. Thank you to her husband, who graciously allowed the filming of this to take place in his office, even though he was busily preparing for the launch of his next book, Beyond Order, which is coming out in just a few days and is available at virtually all book retailers. We touch on several topics, including the difference between truth and love, finding God in suffering, living for what's outside you, external values versus inner motivations, and how to

discover personal blame within conflicts in a relationship. Tammy Peterson is a benign woman who, to paraphrase Larry David, should have a job talking people down from ledges because of how calming her voice is and how Irenic her message is. I hope you enjoy it even a fraction as much as I did. It's good to see you. Thank you It's very bright in this office. This is the first time I've sat in here Yeah, it's different to see someone else's face in that seat. Yes, I imagine that's for sure Well, I don't sit here very often not now that he's home do you have any questions for me before we start i read about you some

you know whatever was online and i watched your interview with eric weinstein and uh professor raveki oh right right right yeah i was more of a whippersnapper back then. How long ago were those? Those were almost a year ago. So Verveke was a year and a half. Have you ever met Verveke? Yeah, I know him. Oh, great, great, great.

Yeah, I like him. He's a cool guy. Yes, he's a very cool guy. And Eric, I just met virtually. Yeah, I've met him too. Yeah, nice. So virtually, but yeah. Yeah, I've met him too. Yeah, nice. So I know them both. I listened to Eric Weinstein play the fiddle on stage before one of Jordan's lectures.

Oh, yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a man of many talents. He is. Tammy, why don't you tell me a little bit about what your average day looks like? What time do you wake up generally? Do you have a routine? Do you meditate? Do you eat a certain type of meal? Do you do yoga? So on and so on. I have quite a structured morning. My afternoons aren't as

structured. My evenings are pretty structured because I share them with my husband and he's very structured in his evening. So my morning starts out, I get up at a random time between seven and eight in the morning. And I just wake up when I wake up before my alarm. If I don't wake up before my alarm, I know I'm tired. So I just let myself sleep. let myself sleep. But as soon as I wake up, I pray. Just immediately, I pray. And I ask for God's will as soon as I wake up. I try, if I have any ruminating thoughts or anything on my mind that is an obsessive thought of any sort, I just say that I will be done until it goes away. And then I get up.

I get up and I shower, and then I take my rosary to the front porch, and it's really bright out there because it faces south, and it's a porch that's all closed in with stained glass. So it's a really pretty place to sit. And the all closed in with stained glass. So it's a really pretty place to sit. And the sun comes in there really nice. It's east and south. So you get the morning sun and the afternoon sun, which is very important to me.

It's always been important to me. I grew up on the prairie where there was lots of sunshine. And I was very interested in when I come home from school at noon, I'd always lay in the sun. I was quite a cat. I just loved to be in the sun. And I felt the sun was important to me. It was healing some way. It was calming some way.

It was good. And so I still feel that way. In fact, when we bought this house, it was quite a dark house. Hadn't been renovated since 1935. So the wallpaper was hanging and ribbons off the walls when we walked in and it was vacant. The family that had lived there moved in in 1925 and his parents had died and he'd stayed there and become senile and the neighbors put him in a home and the house was sold and we bought it. Some of the neighbors who lived around were just renting their houses because they didn't want to live beside him because of the strange behavior that

he had later in his life kind of spooked people. So we moved into this house that had spooked people quite a bit. And so that that was interesting. And I shied away from it. But I was convinced to move in. And so we renovated it. And I worked as the contractor and put it but I was convinced to move in and so we renovated it and I worked as the contractor and put it like dug it down to the basement and went back to the brick and rebuilt the whole thing in six months and we moved in so this house has been transformed a number of times and and we're still here we eventually put a long house on the third floor so now it's our house like who's going to buy a house with a long house on the third floor. So now it's our house. Like who's going to buy a house

with a long house on the third floor? So it's our house whether we live here or not. So I go out to the front porch, which is a glorious place to be. And I pray the rosary every day. It only takes about 15 minutes. So it's not a ridiculous undertaking to give yourself 15 minutes in the morning to focus your thoughts on God.

And, you know, every rosary day, every day of the rosary, there's a different story that goes from, you know, conception to crucifixion. And then there are five, you know, there's 10 beads. So there's five stories that make up each day. And with each story, there's a moral, I guess. And so you can do whatever you want with the rosary. But I pray on the morals. So I pray on faith or I pray on hope or I pray on obedience or I pray on prudence. You know, I pray on those things.

So I go through and and sometimes and I usually give a prayer for my dad he's 90 years old so I give a prayer for my dad he asks me to will you pray for me Tam I say yeah I'll pray for you dad and uh I pray for my husband and I pray for the world in and its challenges and so then I do that. And then I meditate. I have a group that meditates for 15 minutes in the morning. And so that's really good. And what kind of meditation? Mindful meditation. Just so I sit and I breathe. And I focus on what I want to focus on. what I want to focus on. It depends what I'm concentrating on. Sometimes I have a problem and I'll spend some of the time on that problem. Otherwise, I'll just breathe and let God in as much as I can. What you mean is you'll clear your mind to just focus on that

one problem in a calmer state while breathing? Yes? Well, I've done yoga since I was 13 years old. That's when I began. I had an aunt who introduced me to Hatha yoga when I was visiting in the summer for a couple of weeks. And she gave me a book and I took it home and started doing yoga every day. And so I've done yoga most days since I was 13 years old. And that was very helpful because, you know, during your high school years, they're very chaotic, at least mine were.

And I'd come home at night and do yoga and it would bring me back to myself. And I could reflect on where I was in my life. And often it wasn't, you know, a very structured place. I was in my life. And often it wasn't a very structured place. I was a teenager. So I was out with all the other kids doing wild things. And I'd come home and think, well, I'm in kind of a wild place. That's not easy to go to sleep that way.

A wild place mentally? Yeah, because I think when you go out and you carouse with other people, you're definitely going to be in a wild place mentally yeah because i think when you go out and you carouse with other people you're definitely going to be in a wild place mentally too you know an unstructured place uh an unknown place really because in when you're a teenager it's uh difficult to run your own show so you're looking for you might be looking for excitement you might be looking for excitement, you might be looking for belonging, you know, there's lots of things that teenagers are looking for. And so they get pulled this way and that way by whoever they're with. Was there something that you were looking for? You, you mentioned teenagers in general look for? Yeah, I think there was something I was looking for. I was looking for belonging, for sure.

I was trying to understand my motivations. You know, because, you know, kids, they do things like go to a party and get drunk. And then you come home and you think, why did I do that? What drove me to do that? Like, why did I go there? Or why did I talk to that person? Or why did I go home with that person? Why did I get a ride home with him? He was drunk. Although my dad taught me to sit beside the driver

and make sure I got home. That was his advice. That's Albertan advice. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Were you always someone who focused on the body? focused on the body? Yes. Yes, definitely. And my dad was a sportsman. So he was a curler, a hockey player, a baseball player, a golfer. He did all of the North American sports, and he did them well. He won lots of things. And then he umpired baseball when I was a kid and so it sports was always there and I like to be outside I really like to be outside when I was a little kid I used to dig up worms and spend a lot of time in the garden with with the dirt and everything that grew outside so I really like to get my hands in the dirt I like to pick up rocks and find out what was underneath them. And I even had a wagon and I used to, I used to pick up earthworms and put them in Kleenexes and tuck them into bed and pull them around in my wagon. Yeah. So from the time I was a little kid,

I was outside playing in the mud puddles, you know, just constantly outside skipping. I was just outside always. My son's first words were outside. So he's a little bit like me, wanting to be outside. That's where God is for me, is outside. And so if I go for a walk, I can have a meditation with God. So I used to have a dog. And when I walked the dog, we would go and, you know, meditate and walk around. And we as in the dog or me and the dog. Yeah, me and the dog would meditate with me. He was he was, you know, he was in line with me. He was a little more snappy than me he'd snap at people i didn't yeah my daughter said i'm very open so i i ramble when i talk oh no no please do please keep going i i like it it takes me to

places i didn't think it would go as for you with the body see for me i am i like puzzles i like abstractions i like what takes cognitive effort but i'm so out of tune with my own body so much so that if the doctor asks me where do i feel a pain i have a diffuse notion it's somewhere here i don't know if it's inside i don't know if it's i have to sit and pay close attention for many other people they can say well it's precisely at the upper part of my kneecap on the outside for me that might that might take me a minute. So what is that? First of all, is that a negative? You mentioned personal. That is where God is for me outside. So then that made me think, well, God is, it's objective, but at the same time, God is personal. So then does that mean that

that's okay if you have your own individual proclivities, Kurtz, and downsides? Because, well, that's just you. Or should I balance myself in some way and now pay more attention to my body? Well, I would say you're a mathematician and physicist. So that's what you studied in university. I studied kinesiology. physicist so that's what you studied in in university I studied kinesiology you know right so I studied the body I uh I'm an artist I paint portraits and I sketch life drawing um I do yoga I trained as a massage therapist I am I'm very much about the body but and so I know about it so if I go to to the doctor, I know, you know, I can explain, but I've studied that I studied that intensely. My whole life I've studied it. So if someone asked me a question about anything to do with the solar system, I wouldn't be able to say anything except for rudimentary knowledge so I think your understanding of it is normal sounds normal to me

that you'd be focused otherwise and I would be focused in and and it's possibly something about being a woman as well because uh we have so many changes that go on in our bodies so young that it brings us back to our body. You know, at 13, all of a sudden we're paying attention to our bodies. Even if we hadn't paid attention at all until we were 13 at 13, bang,

you're paying attention to your body and you have to, otherwise you make a mess. So you, you have to pay attention and also your emotions go you know all over the place and so then you're paying attention to what's going on there so I think at least for myself I accepted that as a challenge and and you talked about puzzles I like puzzles but I think of life as a puzzle and And I think of putting pieces in place while I get better understanding of myself physically, emotionally, and spiritually. That's my puzzle

that I have worked on. If you might give me a specific example of a situation that you viewed as a puzzle and then how you thought about solving it. Okay. Well, I did that today. I had a piece of a puzzle that got, you know, that I understand better. So I have an art table downstairs and I am taking art classes on Zoom and I'm really having a good time. Life drawing on Zoom, landscape drawing on Zoom, all kinds of... I have some post-cancer wellness spring offers, different programs for people who are in the middle of treatment or who have survived treatment or they're caregivers. They can take courses through Wellspring

and some of them are art therapy courses. So I take those. So all that stuff is really good for me and I sit downstairs and do what I want. But now I can't remember your question. You have to ask it again. Oh, where's the puzzle? Oh, the puzzle.

Okay. So I was in a class, a life drawing class on Sunday morning. And my husband came down and said goodbye. And I snapped at him. I wasn't, I wasn't, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't kind. He'd interrupt, he had, yesterday, he, I was concentrating on something. He interrupted and I wasn't kind in my response. And so later we talked about it.

And I thought, you know know I think I understand because if I look back over the last 20 years of having children getting married having children having them grow up I left my art largely behind for a number of years and I could never understand why so I meditated on it this morning and I thought back to my mother and her father who both had troubled childhoods and were probably and then I thought about their childhoods and I thought well there would have been fear there would have been lack of love and uh my mother was physically she was you know some people you walk in a room and the room is cold so they're giving off something that you know is

cold it's not a warm feeling a welcoming generous feeling and uh my mom used to have that happen and so i would be jumping through hoops trying to get attention from her and to get proper love in my direction when I was a kid and it really wouldn't change her it was what I wanted wasn't necessarily what she needed or wanted or knew about so it was just something I was doing on my end and so I have a tendency. But I had a good time with her if she would color with me. So doodle art, I don't know if you know doodle art, but doodle art, they sometimes have great mythic doodle arts that you can color. And my mom used to color them with me. And you know, I used to garden with her. But that was work and duty, you know, and she used to sew me doll clothes when I

was a kid but she was doing the sewing and I was doing the watching but when we colored we colored together so that was a shared activity and last night I was babysitting my granddaughter she's three and she was getting sleepy and we went down to my art table and got out a coloring book and and so she likes to use my art pencils and so we were coloring Pocahontas and and her uh hummingbird and raccoon that are in that story and I was quite enjoying it and she would color a bit and then she'd say grandma color here and I'd color there and then what color should that be let's give her pink hair red hair blue hair you know we were just purple legs we were having a great time and so I thought about all that when I was meditating. And I thought, well, when I'm doing art, it gives me a warmth, which was some of the

only warmth I had with my mom, not that it was that drastic. But you know, my mom loved me. I know she did. It's just that there were certain times where I could feel it more than other times. And art was one place I really felt it. And that might be why, although I have an aptitude for art, that's also where there's love and warmth. And so I really like to do it. And I left it for 20 years and didn't do it I until the art

therapy until yeah until I until I had this brush with death and renovated my house and gave myself a good space to set myself up and made it a priority. And so I made, I made the act, I changed the action first. And then when the underlying trouble that had been stopping me, I guess maybe then it was safe enough for it to come up And it came up and I barked at my husband, which showed me that I had spent 20 years not doing what I wanted to do and

blamed him for it. In that moment, or you realized that. Oh, I've known that before, but it never really came up so that it was very much in the moment for both of us to be paying attention to it and to and i wasn't i wasn't uh confident enough or organized enough to answer his question in a

way that could calm him and make him believe that i am addressing it and that everything will be okay you were suggesting that. Well, actually, first, if you don't mind, I don't I would like to know the nature, the nature of your bark. Because for me, when I'm working, I have a tendency to do something similar where I bark, but it's not. But sometimes it's more caustic than other times. Like most of the time, it's, it's babe, I'm working, I'm working. But sometimes it's like sometimes I can say it more harshly or I can say something else. I don't swear. Right.

But I understand that it can be, I understand it hurts her at times. Yeah. I just said, I said, you can go. Okay. And do you mind, what did he do before that? And then what did you say? Like, where were you in the kitchen? Oh, no.

He came downstairs to where my art table is. that and then what did you say like where were you in the kitchen and oh no i was i was he came downstairs to where my art table is into the basement that's where i have it and i have i cut a nice big hole in the wall so there's light coming in the stairs from the upstairs are they're not solid so the light from outside comes in that way and i have a back basement door with a big window in it so there's light there's natural light right there in the basement and I have really good overhead lights so I can really light this art table that I have so that's where my computer is and that's where I do all my art projects and whatever else I might be doing so I was down there. My computer was in front of me. It was obvious that I was in a class. I was drawing. And he came down and asked, he said he needs some groceries. And I thought that's not important right now to me because I'm in the class. So I said I'm in the class. me because I'm in the class so I said I'm in the class and uh he continued and I said that that was you know that was enough that he could go and then I called him and I said you know just send me a

text just right you can go as in you can go get the groceries no you can just go he's on his way you can leave like the king says you know I, you know how Queen Elizabeth, she hits that little bell and then whoever's talking to her has to get up and leave. Yeah, that kind of thing. Yeah. So, you know, there's a lot of that would be pride, I think, or a sense of entitlement for sure so so those those that kind of understanding so if I get that if I get a clue that I'm acting in that way then I can address it then I can say okay where did that come from look back in my whatever comes up for me when I'm meditating and think okay well maybe maybe I need this and I haven't been getting it and instead of admitting that I was blaming someone else for something I didn't do or I was also whatever else I was doing I was trying to control my environment of things I couldn't control and can't control but I was also, whatever else I was doing, I was trying to control my environment of things I couldn't control and can't control, but I was trying to, to get if, you know, when people do

that, it gives them some self gratification, because they've gone off and, and tried to make everything better for other people, but have denied themselves something that they need, like that, that's a, that's a recipe for disaster, you know, that's what that is. And so I think in the past, in my way of thinking that I was thinking before, wasn't well formulated, it was a, an old plan that hadn't been updated. And so it wasn't a plan that was going to work for me now or for my husband. I've heard that you have this practice where you retreat separately and find the source of the problem being yourself when you have a fight, a conflict with your partner. I can imagine that it can be one-sided at times, at least in the beginning,

where you aren't able to come up with an idea as to how the problem was you and then you get together the person says yeah the problem is me so and something you're like yeah the problem actually this time was you so uh no no not usually like usually well if there's a fight if so there's an argument and you go off to your own place then you think if there's anything in your life that you've done that may have brought this argument up. So it's not necessarily about actually the argument, because sometimes the argument has nothing to do with why, like often, the argument has nothing to do with actually what's wrong. Maybe you're late on something and you bark at your wife when she comes in. It has nothing to do with you being angry at your wife or that she intruded it was that you you have a project that you're late on and so you

have to look you have to separate and find out if there was a cause to this argument that you hadn't seen before that may have come up right then and shown you that there was something to pay attention to. It's something, you know, an argument is something to pay attention to, because you might learn something. And those are gifts. Because the next time you won't have that same argument, it won't come up anymore. If you can figure it out did you pray each morning before your illness no no i didn't but my grandmothers were both religious and if i had a religious question i could ask them um so there was it wasn't like there was no God for me before. And I've been to church, and my mother died in 2007.

I pray to her daily, I would say. So my praying has changed since I was ill. It's become more dogmatic. And, yeah, it's become more dogmatic and uh yeah it's become more dogmatic and also i have a relationship with a personal god now that i that has that has grown in nature so i'd say i've always been spiritual i'm more spiritual now i take it more seriously now i understand it better now. I think that it's not an option. I don't think it's an option for people to live a life, a fulfilling life. Meaning that people cannot live a fulfilling life if they don't have God in their life? Yeah, I think so. know a spiritual relationship with uh higher power is necessary what's the difference between religion and spirituality well religion is dogma you know so the church and and uh all

the readings the bible all of that that's dogma spirituality is a feeling that god is there with you and that if you give him space he'll tell you what's right and wrong that's spirituality and so you could and they overlap they can't overlap but for some people they don't uh there's an intellectual understanding of god that's not a spiritual that's not a personal understanding of God. And I think you need a personal understanding of God to really move yourself forward in your understanding of yourself in the world. Do you mind taking people through a timeline of your illness as well as the course of your recovery? No, I don't mind. I'm getting used to it. It's been two years. So I'm getting used to it. I had no indication that I was ill. I'd gone on a walking tour with my sister to Croatia.

We walked for 10 days and it was wonderful. I flew home and two weeks later, I got a fever, a fever and kind of a gastrointestinal flu of some sort. And the fever went away, but the digestive gastrointestinal trouble stayed. And so I eventually went to the doctor and he told me maybe I had a parasite. I thought, Oh, yeah, that's I should have thought of that. So he gave me a test. And no, I didn't have a parasite. Oh, okay. So then he thought, well, then let's do a, an ultrasound of your abdomen, have you do a colonoscopy, you know, all this stuff. We'll just look. And I had an ultrasound and I could

see the screen and I saw a shadow on my kidney. And so eventually I had a bacterial problem that I fixed before I had surgery. But they told me I had a renal cell carcinoma, which is a very common cancer and people often have it and it doesn't kill you because it grows one millimeter a year. Yeah. Really, really, really slow. And so then he, they said, don't worry about it. You can, I was traveling with my husband on a book tour. So he's, they said, whenever you have time, you can come in the hospital and have that surgery. I flew back during our book tour and had a biopsy

and I flew back for blood. I had to fly back a couple of times in preparation for surgery. And then March of 2019, I went into the hospital and I had a partial nephrectomy of my left kidney and I left the hospital. And for six weeks, my family members gathered around me and I got better. And by six weeks, I was walking to the waterfront and back to the annex. I was walking to the waterfront and back to the annex. I was healthy. And I went to my post-op appointment with my husband.

And the doctor was nervous and loath to talk to us. And when he talked to us, he told me that I had a year to live, that they were wrong. talked to us, he told me that I had a year to live that they were wrong. And that I had something called a Bellini tumor, which is very rare, in fact, so rare that no, that they have no data on how to treat it because people die too quickly. And by then it was in one of my lymph nodes, a lymph node adjacent to my kidney. And they said we have to you have to have surgery as soon as possible and this was around march 2019 this was april end of april so then june or may 9th i had another surgery but before i went into surgery the night before I went into surgery, I meditated. My husband and I were really nervous, super nervous. It's no wonder because surgery was their only treatment.

They said radiation and chemo. They had no idea that there was no good result except for if they got it in time. So my only chance was this surgery. And so I had done a very interesting meditation when I was studying to be a massage therapist years ago when I was in my 20s, where I had a cyst on one of my ovaries and they thought it was cancer. It wasn't, but I was working with this cool artist, massage therapist guy. And he said that he was going to take me on a journey and I could go see what I could find out about this.

So we did a meditation where I breathed in white light. meditation where I breathed in white light. I breathed in white light and it ended up to be like a string of light that wrapped around my ovary that was spinning around. It was light, it was spinning around the ovary. And I was asking what was wrong. And if part of me was afraid, if there was trouble there, that it was okay, it could talk to me. And so I was really trying to communicate. And about two hours after this, I had a pain out the side of my ribcage, quite a real noticeable pain out the side of my ribcage. And then we stopped and I went in for my surgery. And what they told me was the size of a softball was the size of like a ping pong ball.

So whatever it was, and what it was, was a dermoid cyst, which has hair and skin and teeth in it. So teeth, teeth, and skin and hair. It's kind of like maybe a twin, or that was that was never formed. And it grew when I got pregnant. So it seemed like the hormone change in my body when I was pregnant made it grow. But I think it was there already. So it was something that was waiting to develop. But they're quite rare. Anyway, I had that out.

I was fine. had that out, I was fine. But it was an interesting experience, because I really felt like I had touched something inside myself that was troublesome. And I had calmed it down some in this meditation, it seemed that way. So the night before my surgery, I thought, let's do that that again so I got Jordan to sit at my feet and move his hands like this up the insides of my feet which in reflexology is your spine your birth canal and so it was very touching it yeah very rhythmically up one set up my feet and then down my feet and I said this is going to be about a two hour get comfortable because this is about a two hour meditation and so then I settled in to bring in the white light and I decided what I would do because I'd had a lot of letters come

from all the people that we'd met when we traveled all over the world. And I had a lot of, a lot of prayers and a lot of letters come to me when I was first diagnosed with cancer. And so I lined up all those people in my mind on a beach, I lined them up on a beach and I had them pray and I breathed in all their prayers. pray and I breathed in all their prayers. I breathed in all the prayers and I took them down to my kidney. Yeah. And I first I thought with a white light, and then I thought, well, this is cancer, let's use a gold light, because this is got to be powerful. So I breathed in gold light. And did you exhale any black muck? or were you just breathing in? I didn't breathe out any black muck, but after two hours of having a conversation with this little blackness that I found in my kidney, it seemed like a part of me was looking the other way and it turned away from me. It was like my cells had turned away.

and had turned away from me. It was like my cells had turned away. And I thought they had turned away and decided to work against me rather than with me. That's how it felt to me. And I realized somewhere in the meditation that cancer is much too much for one person, that it's something that I had to give back to the universe. And then a black kind of soot came out, spun out of me and went up to into the

universe, where it could be better dealt with, because it was too much for me. And then we went to bed and got up in the morning and we were calm. We were calm, we went to the hospital, and I told the surgeon what had happened the night before in my meditation. He said he took that intention into the surgery and the surgery went really well. Everything they took out, nothing was adhered to anything else. They didn't have to do any extra cutting. They just pulled out the rest of the kidney and all the lymph from my left side. And so I was left with my remaining kidney and all the lymph on the right side. Because your abdomen is just full of lymph nodes. And they don't, there's, they go, I don't know,

but they go along the blood vessels. The blood vessels are attached to the heart. The lymph isn't attached to any pump at all. The lymph is moved by your movement, right? And so the lymph is really the, you know, that's the sweeping mechanism of the body to clean out all the toxins. And so I lost that on my left side. But that went really well. And I was getting better for a little while.

But then my feet started to swell. And then my lower legs started to swell. And so we called the hospital and talked to the nurses on the unit that I had stayed on, that I'd had my surgery on. And they said, well, you know, you've had a very major surgery. It's no wonder that you might have some swelling. And we were like, oh, okay. Seems extreme, but okay.

And so then I went to my six week appointment and my off my post. You were looking like you were pregnant on one side or was it a bulb or what? No, it was my feet, especially my left foot were swollen up. My lower legs were swollen up. My thighs were swollen up. On one side or both? I was filling up with fluid, right? I was filling up with fluid. There was a leak in my abdomen. There was a leak in the lymph nodes. I see. So all of my fluids from my body were leaking into my abdominal cavity and then accumulating in my body. It would be as if there's a hole in one of the pipes in your body, and the pipes are where the lymphs. Yeah, except for the lymph is like a spider web.

That's how small it is. Very, very, very, very impossible thing to work with. And they had tried to close off every, I mean, they had to take it all out. So they had to close off every little spider mean, they had to take it all out. So they had to close off every little spider web and they missed one. There's a surprise. Okay. Yeah.

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h e n s o n s h a v i n g.com slash everything and use the code everything. And you know, the lymph they've they've done a lot of work with hearts and the lymph around the heart. They've done a lot of work with hearts and the lymph around the heart. And they get leaks sometimes. And they really know how to fix it. But a leak in the abdomen is something that is because they weren't doing radical surgeries. You know, you used to hear, oh, someone's got cancer. Oh, it's in their lymph. Oh, they're going to die.

Right? That's what you'd hear. When I was young, that's what you would hear. Now they can take out the lymph which is radical they didn't do that and to and to have that go well you know I don't know what the chances are for it to go well anyway it didn't go well for me and I was in the hospital twice the first time was when they was when I went in and my limbs were all full of fluid. And they drained off my abdomen.

They put a shunt into my abdomen and they drained off, I can't remember, something like seven liters of fluid. What would be the prognosis of this? Death as well? Well, they didn't know what it was till they drained it off. One of the oncologists told me he thought I had cancer of the liver or cancer of the peritoneum, the abdominal cavity, which didn't sound good. Yeah, that's not pleasant to hear. If you didn't do a test and he's speculating, well, it could be cancer of the liver. I know. I've had that.

I've had that happen often. I'm kind of getting used to doctors doing that. I think you do. Well, if you've had my history of health problems, then you get used to doctors randomly suggesting things that they don't have any reason to suggest. Anyway, when they, when they took off all this fluid, it was milky colored, which is the proper color for fluid from the lymph. Because the lymph picks up fat. And the white color of milk is is fat. So it looked like milk. There was no blood in it. There was no, so it wasn't cancerous. It was fluid from my lymph system, but a lot of fluid. So it was really pouring out of me. People who are with me probably know how much was flowing out of me, but it was, it's hard for me to remember. It was just, I had a, I had a medication or were you just so out of it because you didn't have... I think I was on medication.

I was on morphine for quite a bit of the time. And they may have put me on morphine when they put the bag in to keep me comfortable. Because it wasn't comfortable. Okay. So then it would have been, it was kind of foggy for me to know how much I was losing a day. But a nurse used to come to my house once they sent me home. She would come at noon and drain off a liter of fluid a day. And I was still very uncomfortable.

I still was, you know, before I started draining, I looked like I was seven months pregnant. Now, now it was still kind of a pregnant look, but wasn't as extreme, but I wasn't giving my lymph the rest it needed to heal because there was so much fluid there were doctors that speculated that if i didn't have any fluid in my abdomen if i drained off all the fluid that it would dry and then it would possibly heal because that does happen sometimes as an aside where's this fluid coming from because in a regular person when i say regular i mean someone that doesn't have this issue yeah they there's some there's some uniform in their distribution of fluid. Now, yours is pooling, and then it's leaving. So is it getting replaced? So then that means it was taken from

some other part of your body to be placed in your abdomen. I was eating and I was getting thinner and thinner. I took a picture of myself in one day. And I thought, Hmm, I had no body fat left at all. My, my scapulas were sticking off my back. My breasts had lost all the all of the everything was gone. My bum was gone. My breasts were gone. My cheeks were gone. They were sunken, like I was down to 90 pounds. So I'd lost 30 pounds probably. And I was getting desperate. And I was also, not only was I on, it turned out not only was I on morphine, but because all my bodily fluids were running out of me, I was becoming malnourished. And so my thought processes were getting confused. But I was at home with everybody trying to help me, but it was really hard to know what to do. Because the doctors didn't know what to do. Here was this this woman,

she had a hole in her lymph in her abdomen, and we can't and they couldn't find it. They looked I had so many scans of different so at this point they're simply draining you and you can't continue like this for much longer um or did they tell you yeah i recall you saying i don't think i could they said you can live like this and you thought hey that's fine i can live like this. Well, I could when I got a T when I went in for the five weeks, which was right before I finally got better. They changed. I didn't eat anymore at this point. Now they put a PICC line near my heart. And they fed me TPN, which is a nutrition that you feed people who can't use their digestive system anymore. And you can live like that. People do live like that for 25 years. They live like that.

So a lot of people, what they do is they get nutrition at night when they're sleeping and in the day they don't eat anything. They get all their nutrition right straight to their heart. And so what happened if you were to eat? Well, what happened, what they thought with me was if they didn't go through the lymph system, that maybe it would get better. But it didn't. And so for five weeks, we were trying to heal it in ways that wouldn't be cutting me open again. And we weren't able to find anything that worked. So by the time I had

been in the hospital for five weeks, I was awake again, because now I was getting nutrition. That's when I started to pray. Right? That's when you started, I thought you said that you started with Queenie, Queenie came to give you some that That's when Queenie, when I was in the hospital for the last time, this five weeks, see my, my electrolytes went out of balance and I went into emergency because my potassium was out of whack. And then you're going to have a heart attack. And that was going to be the end of me. I had lost so many body fluids that my electrolytes were going out of whack. And that's when you have a heart attack and die. So I was was nearly dead but not quite when i got into the hospital and then they pumped me full of fluids until i was my electrolytes balanced and then they gave me a tpn diet until i had enough

nutrients for my brain to turn back on and when that happened i'd been in the hospital for three or four days that's when queenie came in the hospital for three or four days. That's when Queenie came to the hospital. And she showed up. Oh yeah, and who is Queenie to you? So she came up, she came up to visit. Queenie stopped by our house a couple of years ago, maybe even three or four years ago. She was a fan of my husband's and she wanted some, and she wanted some she she's a she's a catholic she um lives uh on u of t campus she is like a dorm don for catholic girls at u of t but she also does other things she's very interested in family she's very interested in schooling and family and things that have gone I think she contacted us when our prime minister

and our prime minister our premier was Kathleen Wynne I think that's when she first came to our house because she was concerned about the curriculum and the things that were happening in schools. And she was, I don't know, she was just this friendly little Asian woman. And she came to the hospital and she brought me a rosary and she said, do you want to pray? I said, sure.

Why not? Let's pray. So I grabbed my, I had my bag and my pole and we'd go down in the Toronto general. There's a, an atrium with it's four stories high and it's full of plants and sunshine, a little bit like being outside. So I could go down there. You must love that. I love that. That was like life, you know, to me, that was good. So I'd go down there and I would sit with her for two hours and cry and pray. Okay, so what gave you this idea to do this on a regular basis? Did you already know that talk therapy was curative in a psychological or physical sense no no she just she just showed up and asked me if i wanted to do it and i just said yes

so i think she knew because you know there's a there's a in in catholic, there are organized prayer sessions that people can set up. Or you can belong to a part of the church that's all about prayer. So I belong to a part of the church that's all about prayer. And it's about just everyday people praying for life. That's what they do is they pray. And so that's what I do is I pray. And. So you went down with her to the Toronto general atrium and every day you

talked for $2. I mean, sorry. If you didn't talk enough for $2 for two, for two hours, you didn't $2. I mean, sorry, every day you talked not for $2 for two, for two hours. She didn't charge anything. She just came, gave me, gave me a rosary and we prayed. And then I would go back upstairs and play cards with my family and visit with them. And I just stayed there for five weeks praying. And then just before I went to Pennsylvania to a doctor who was hopefully going to heal this hole I had in my abdomen, she asked if I wanted a priest to come over and bless me. And I said, sure. And so a priest that works with Father Ericic father eric he works at u of t he came over to our apartment and he blessed me and he gave me the uh a novena for the ill which are nine days of prayer

for someone who's deathly ill and told me to meditate on gratitude. And off I went to University of Pennsylvania with plenty of my family along with me. And they were supposed to be the best in the world, and I'm sure they are. They did an mri guided um they poked little needles in me with dye and poppy seed oil and they said now and then the poppy seed oil will irritate will irritate the system and and if there's a um a somewhere, it will be irritated enough that the body will put down whatever kind of tissue is necessary to scar it up and close it. And so they looked for the leak, couldn't find it. So sorry, the poppy seed oil is for imaging purposes?

The poppy seed oil is to carry the dye. I see. And then on the MRI, they can see plumes come out if there's a leak. Ah, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, cool, cool, cool. Very cool. Very cool. Very cool.

So they tried to look for it. They couldn't find it? They couldn't find it. They couldn't find it. So the poppy seed oil worked instantly. No, it didn't work instantly. No, they couldn't find it. I was still leaking. I was leaking. It was Thursday. By Saturday, it had kind of slowed down the leaking, but we'd had the leaking slow down already once before,

and then found out it was just a mechanical failure of the of the bag apparatus that i had hooked to me so right so then so yeah it was false positive so no no so this time when it slowed down we were going so is this better or is this just because things aren't properly cared for here? Like, what's going on? What's going on? And they had told me that the only way to tell if the lymph had healed would be to eat some fat. So at that point, I was eating food again, but no fat.

No fat diet like I had done before. Because they're worried that would irritate the lymph? Yeah, because the lymph works with fat. So if you don't put any fat down, the lymph isn't working. And you want to limit what the lymph is doing if you have a leak. Uh-huh, uh-huh. But you also mentioned that the lymph serves as a garbage collector in your body. So no matter what, it would be working, but at a much lesser rate?

Yeah, right. Okay. Much lesser rate. Yeah, right. Okay, much lesser rate. Okay. So on Saturday, I thought, well, I might as well eat some fat and see if this worked or not. Because on Monday, they're going to open me up and do some more major surgery to see what they can find. So I might as well find out if it worked before that. And so I had, I don't know, I think I had eggs, not just the white, but the yolk. And as far as I could tell, there was no milky looking fluid in my bag, it still looked like urine. It was just yellow. milky looking fluid in my bag. It still looked like urine. It was just yellow. And so the next morning I was at breakfast and an intern and a nurse came and they said, well,

you know, I think you better eat some fat because we have to find out if you still, if the leak is still like what's going on there. And so I said, well, I already ate some fat last night. They said, oh, okay, well, like show me what's in the bag. And I pulled it up and it was clear. And they said, this is, you know, this isn't what we expected. We're very surprised. Your leak seems to have closed up and you're better. You can go home. So then they followed me for about

a month, told me just to walk, not do anything else, not lift anything or anything. And they called me often. And then after a month, they said, well, you're discharged, you're better. So I prayed the novena for five days, and then I was better. Why weren't you allowed to lift? What were they worried would happen? Oh, I think just any, they didn't want to rupture if there was a new. I see. It's like a new stitch.

You mentioned before that when you were terminally ill, you felt like, well, I've lived a good life. So it's not that bad if I die. It's okay in many respects. But then you looked at the suffering of your family and thought, okay, this matters. At least it matters to them. when I was thinking, there's plenty of people and I count myself as a part of this group where I used to be, where I used to be depressed. And in fact, I was suicidal. And it's not, it's harrowing to think that, to know that the main reason you're staying around is to lessen the suffering of others rather than your own internal locus of a desire to live. But you mentioned it in a positive light. So can you expound? Sure. So I did think when I was diagnosed that I had lived for, my aunts died, my aunts and uncles died young. And so I thought, oh, I guess I'm one of them, that then I'm going to die young like them. And I can do that. I'd always been a very independent person, making my own decisions and getting on with life. And this was just another decision that I was making. That's how it felt to me, that this was another decision that I was making, that I was tough and I could do it. So that was my plan.

And then I went home from the hospital and I went to tell my children. And when I told them the prognosis, they looked so hurt that something inside me completely changed. And I realized, oh, no, I'm not looking at this properly. This isn't a this isn't my decision. Because I always wondered about people who had gone through many cancer treatments, you know, many times going through chemotherapy and radiation, and the things that people go through to stay alive why would they do that you know I've always kind of wondered why they would do that and I had thought no I'm not doing that if I'm going to die then I'm going to die and that's that but then I went home and I told my kids and I

thought they look so hurt and my husband too but it was really looking at my kids they look so hurt. And my husband too, but it was really looking at my kids. They look so hurt that it's not my decision. So I'm going to do whatever I can to stay alive. I realized that being alive, the focus is about service. It's about what you can do for others and that's the christian story that's an unselfish concern for the welfare of people who aren't you yes you know that's that's christ's story it's his suffering and his sacrifice.

It's his sacrifice that we live by and aspire to. And so I decided that I would be grateful for every day I had, that I would be grateful for any answers that came my way, but I would also be grateful for the life I've had. And so I decided that that was the only way I could go forward and be able to accept it can you tell me the month and the year that you were first diagnosed and that you made that change from when i was not caring too much you mean for for the uh when did you make the when did you make the change to realizing that this is i'm looking at this incorrectly in your words. Okay. So I had got the prognosis on, I think, April 26th. So it was right around then. That's when I changed my mind. Do you see this as a gift from God?

as a gift from God, or do you like, for example, some people like your husband suggests that we have to go through hell before some elevation. So do you see it as a gift or do you see it as, as a, as the opposite, like a, like it's from Satan or it's a test maybe. And if it's a gift, you said, yes. How is it a gift? It's a gift, but it's also a test you know because it's you know um i i think that i i kind of think that we're given challenges in our life to you know to better ourselves and to be better people we're given challenges this was a challenge i was given and i didn't quite look at it in a way that was going to be...

I gave up at first before I realized that it was a challenge, that I had a way to address it. I had a way to address this challenge that I wasn't aware of when I first heard the news. I think I was probably in shock, but still, I don't think I was aware that I had to change my attitude and that that would be the way forward, that it would be much less painful if I was to take it on as a challenge and also accept it for however it went. Much less painful for who? For me. And probably for everybody else. Yeah, I imagine for everyone else, for sure. What I'm wondering is... And for me for me yeah because you said look i'm tough

i can die right now because in some ways i can face that door and jump off that cliff courageously face it head on yeah now what i'm wondering is you also said seemingly unrelated that you had this fight with your husband some small small bicker. Yeah. And, and you retreated. This was in the Kintore college video that you retreated for whatever reason. I don't remember what it was, but let's imagine at the time you thought, well, I'm retreating because I'm tough. But then you realized through some self-analysis, I'm retreating because I'm hurt from my childhood. I'm just making this up this last part. Okay. So then did you realize, did you come to some realization about when you said to yourself, well, I'm tough, so I can face

death, that that wasn't actually courage, it was masking some other hurt, and that the proper path was to face it head on in terms of living? Yeah, I think so. I think that my idea of being independent and tough was something that I've learned to do as a coping mechanism, as a coping mechanism for, for fear, for for insufficiency, you know, to gather all my strength and have self-will take me through things, I realized that that's, well, I was up against something bigger than that.

So self-will wasn't going to do it. I needed, human aid wasn't going to do it. Human aid wasn't going to do it. I needed spiritual aid. What was it masking exactly? It was masking what? Hurt? Was it masking?

Oh, I don't know because I think it's something I learned from the time I was young to be independent and to be courageous in the face of, in the face of a challenge, you know, and, and that can, you know, that can take you a long ways. It really can. But when you're faced with your own mortality, it isn't enough. And so then I realized it's not enough. And in fact, it's sufficient in my day-to-day life as well. And I didn't know that before, just how true that was. I didn't know it, but now I understand it better. This practice of gratitude, you carry it with you. So that is a daily habit or? Yeah. Yeah. That's the, that's the goal. What sorts of, I don't know if you did it today. Like you just sit with you so that it's a daily habit or yeah yeah that's the that's the goal what sorts

of i don't know if you did it today like you just sit and you think what am i grateful for but if you did or if you did it recently what sorts of items go on that list so i have a gratitude list that sometimes i share with others on whatsapp there's a gratitude list whatsapp group and you belong to quite a few groups yeah i belong to lots of groups well that's interesting because you were independent the group is the opposite of that and then you've you've come to realize a salutary nature in the group as well as obviously you knew it before so what's health giving about the independence that's super interesting oh and i and when i was dying or thought i was dying i talked to god and I said God if you let me live I'll share

and so that's why I'm here uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh I recall saying that I would have said no otherwise well first of all thank you so much oh you're very welcome thank you for inviting me yeah I have I recall you saying that you spoke to some Koreans over zoom. At least that was in the Kintore video. You said, I spoke to them. They made a joke like it was over Zoom. I didn't go. Or maybe it was Afghanistan. Maybe they were Turkish.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. I think. Has it just been somewhat informal? I just was invited to speak. That time it was just 10 minutes that I was invited to speak for. And at Kintore, I'm going to speak there over Zoom again on the 27th.

They're having a conference and I'm going to speak with them. I think Jordan's going to tweet out the invitation. And I'm going to speak out about loss and resilience again. How's the pandemic affected you? Well, I'm not exactly an extrovert, you know, I'm kind of in the middle. I like, I, I, I like people, but I can also do without them. So I think it's actually been, it's been okay for me. And I'm, I'm quite fortunate. My son lives at the end of the street and we're in a bubble and he had a baby

and so I've been able to know that baby I recall you saying that I'm just so fortunate I think so in terms of everybody else who's suffering I feel very fortunate and I really like Zoom

I really like it it's very handy I don't have to drive anywhere. And I can be in a meeting every hour of the day. If I want, I can learn whatever I want. It's great. To me, this is almost my I know, like, this is not great for people to hear. But this is almost my ideal situation, because I'm one an introvert, but number two, I'm a germaphobe. So I like when people lice all their hands and don't shake hands. Oh, that's funny. You should say that. I don't know if you heard me say this, but my daughter was ill when she was young and she used to go to school and catch things and then she'd end up with pneumonia. So it wasn't just a little thing. And I used to be so

frustrated on an airplane when people would cough and sneeze and and then she would get off the airplane and she'd be sick because she just caught everything and so in a way I've been frustrated with this in schools on airplanes and now you I think it's a strange turn of events yes it's who would have thought one year, even one year ago, it was February. Yeah. One year ago we saw it coming, but no, well, at least I didn't think it would upend our lives for an entire year. And that this would be how it would be with going to the stores at a certain hour, one entrance, not seeing people putting on a mask when you leave. an hour, one entrance, not seeing people, putting on a mask when you leave. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty strange.

Did you think you would find God without your illness? Thinking back now in retrospect. No, not the same way. No, no. I wasn't going to find him in a profound way until I had suffered more. You know, different people have to suffer different amounts before they turn to God. And I really had to dig deep before I turned to God. I found, you know, I found I was faced with terminal diagnosis before I turned to God. What's the difference between those people who feel the suffering, and then blame God or turn away from God because of their suffering, rather than turn to because I'm not sure, but I did have a, I told you that my grandmothers were religious. And so I had that from the time I was a child. And I studied yoga. And so that is also, so I had my spirituality was always,

I was always curious about it. If you're not curious about it, if you're completely in your head and you're an intellectual and you're doing okay, then it's quite a turnaround to have, you know, you have to humble yourself to become spiritual. It's a humbling experience. There's nothing more humbling than becoming religious, becoming spiritual. Grow God, shrink Tammy. It's all about changing so that I'm down here paying attention. I'm not up here telling God what to do. I'm down here. That's pretty hard. So I think people who have a hard time humbling themselves to their higher power are going to have more trouble because it's too hard. Some things are just too hard to be

alone. So it'll make you angry and it'll make you blame. So I see the difference between the people that turn toward rather than turn away seems to be that they want to be in control that they find it difficult to suggest that someone else should be in charge or that they need help yeah yeah i think so would you call yourself a catholic or you don't give yourself a label at all? No, I wouldn't call myself a Catholic, but I definitely pray the rosary. Okay. You also mentioned that, hey, when you were younger, you went to different religious institutions. They weren't for you.

And you thought perhaps religion, the dogmatic side, wasn't for you. Then I was thinking, well, that's a common feeling for quite a few people. They maybe try one church, two or three, and then they say, this is not for me. I don't like these people or I don't like what's being said. And then they lose this communal aspect of religion. And you could be an independent Christian like Kierkegaard, but it's helpful to have a community around you. So what would you suggest to those people who think that religion is not for them because they've tried it a couple times, but haven't found the right one? And they think there is no right one. The right one is me.

Maybe if, first of all, it might be just me, like I'm an atheist, or it might be just me and my personal relationship to God, and that's all. The problem is with that is you can have a personal relationship with God, or you can have a personal relationship with a higher power of your choosing if you're an atheist. It doesn't matter. It's just that it's not you. It's your community, or it's nature, or something is inspiring you. But service is a lot of, service is really what is necessary to receive the benefits of your relationship with your higher power. So you have to give it away without being thanked. So it isn't a,

it isn't something you're doing for money. It isn't something that you're doing for accolades. It's, you're doing it because you're, you want to fill yourself with God. you want to fill yourself with God. And so the service is what's necessary. And when you say service, this has nothing to do with a group of people. It has nothing to do with an institution. Well, it has nothing to do with an institution, but it has to do with people.

Service to other people, to others others to serve others yeah helping to serve others is what is necessary to um have a spiritual experience a full spiritual experience you found a role model in mary i recall you saying now okay maybe it wasn't a role well i didn't but either way but i understand mary better than i did either way what i mean is for women is mary more saleable than jesus like if you're yeah i think to women right now and you want them to turn toward god or turn, turn toward the good or turn toward something that's higher than them. What advice do you have? Well, meditation is a good place to start and trying to talk to God,

you know, and that's, that's pretty gentle. So I would think that meditation and trying to talk, to speak, to listen to God, to listen to God would be a good way to start. And sharing what you learn with others would be a good, also a good way to start because then you'd be at least um giving other people information and you'd be getting information from others too about what their experiences are to make it more real and not diluted because that's the problem is we're not solitary creatures and and if we live alone then we go crazy and so we we have to be involved with other people and if the only way that you can be involved

with other people is to serve them then that that's good you know so you can have relationships with people just serve them whenever you see a possibility. You don't have to be serving them all the time, but you can be finding service when it comes, when you see it. And if you're living in the present, which was where God is, is only in the present, right? He's only between words.

He's in the breath. I understand it at some level. I understand it somewhat at an intellectual level and somewhat at a, let's say, intuitive level. And sometimes I feel it, but I have a difficult time. First of all, intellectually understanding it too. So I understand it, but I don't. And then I feel it, but I don't. What does it mean that God is only in the present moment? Isn't that something? only in the present Tammy

thank you so much for doing this act like you're just talking to me what does it mean that God is in the present moment in order to access God you have to be patient and wait and you have to be listening God, you have to be patient and wait and you have to be listening. That's the only, it's so subtle.

It's so subtle that if you're talking, you're not listening. If you're attending to other things, you're not listening. You really have to be still and you have to wait. It can take a long time too. I've had troubles. I've had things I'm trying to cope with for weeks before I get an answer. And in that time, all you're doing is waiting for a sign. I know what reborn means now, I think. What does it mean? I think it means when they say someone is reborn, it always sounded like, what? Reborn? What the heck is that? I think what it is, is that you have found your place. God's here, and you're here. Or God's beside you, he's just a little bit bigger. God's, you know, he's just a little bit bigger than you,

he's inside you, but he's more than you are. And you're reborn. But you're reborn with God, you're reborn, but you're reborn with God before, you know, before it was you self-will and then afterwards it's God's will. You're reborn with God. That's reborn. That's pretty, it's not, it's not hokey pokey or anything. It's pretty. Yeah. You know, I understand that. Does everyone need to be reborn or do some people because of their upbringing, they already see themselves as minuscule compared to God? So they don't need this rebirth? Yeah, I think maybe with a very careful spiritual upbringing and luck, you can have that.

But still, you know, the challenges of life will be there. And for it to be an individual relationship with God, you're given these problems that might be generations old to deal with. Meaning, like, for example oh well things that may have happened to your grandparents are things that are still happening to you until you uh recognize them in your life and then maybe you can heal them what would be an example of that abuse oh yeah abuse yeah, abuse. Yeah. Right. Abuse would be one thing. So if somebody and then, you know, your, your grandfather, and then and then your one of your parents, and then your parents behavior, and that's interesting, you you have the same behavior, and then you get married, and you show the same behavior with your spouse, and then your children learn it from you. And it just goes on and on until someone recognizes, hey, you know what, this behavior, this is troublesome, this behavior, I wonder where it came from, and why it's there, and to accept it, to accept it as necessary, to bring you to this understanding with your higher power. Okay, that last part, that's interesting. Accept it as necessary. Can you

please expand on that? So if, so I'm, so say I'm recognizing some way that I'm dealing with my relationships that isn't working and I'm recognizing that it's not working. And then I'm recognizing, I'm accepting that this is the way it's been and that I've been dealing with things for years this way. And that that's the best I could do. Because that's all I knew. So whatever happened in the past, I can say was there to bring me where I am today. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here.

Right? Interesting, interesting. And then that's- You wouldn't be here. Right? Interesting, interesting. And then that you wouldn't be in this moment, you wouldn't be in this moment without all of that, no matter what it was, which is a very tough thing to come to terms with sometimes, because whatever was in the past can be really something that you are not able to contend with. But if you see it as necessary to bring you here, and here, you are wanting to humble yourself to God, you wouldn't have got here without that. This, to me, needs as a condition, an extreme amount of, well, maybe you would disagree, but I would say self-love because you would have to say that I don't regret where I am.

Where I am is okay. But then how does one balance that as well as wanting to change one's moral condition or material condition in some manner because it's it seems paradoxical if i say i accept it that's what i have a hard time with is if i say i accept it to me that's like lying on on a pool on your back and saying that's great where i am i love everything the way it is rather than wanting to change it for the better. Now, not saying I want to change it for the better. It could be through God. But even through that, I'm changing it, which means I don't like the way that it currently

is. Now, you may disagree about that last part, like that you don't like the way it currently is. Yeah. So great. Tammy, please help me through this. How does one balance self-love with wanting to improve or change in some manner? Okay. Well, there has to be, there has to be a self-love.

There has to be self, but there has to be love for the little boy that you were and all the mistakes that you made. There has, there has to be love for that little boy in order for you and in order for you to be in the present and have the generosity that you need to let god in because it's a generous um invitation you know and and you're not going to make a generous invitation if you're not in a way feeling like you are, the more you can accept who you are and who you were and the things that happened to you, the more generous you feel, the more you can let God in because it's not, it's not an on or off switch you know you get a little God and then something else happens you get a little bit more and some days it's a little bit less and

it depends on how accepting you are how aware you are how accepting you are and then what action follows? Because the action will be different than it was if you were guarded. And if you were empty, the action you go, how you move forward is going to be different than if you're feeling acceptance, aware of the discontent, aware of the discontent and accepting the discontent. And then what action follows for reconciliation is going to be different than if you weren't accepting. And so a way to move forward into a better place is the is the awareness and the acceptance but the acceptance is the hard part because it takes looking back in the past and and coming to peace with who you've always been and who, and everybody around you and all the interactions that you've had and everything and being grateful that that has brought to where you are today. That's,

that's hard. You're giving me a different perspective. I was recently speaking to someone named Bernardo Castrop. He's a philosopher. And he said to me, as we were talking, he said, Kurt, don't take yourself too seriously. And then for me, I'm thinking that I don't take myself seriously enough. I see being ascetic and austere as something I should be, and even necessary for moving toward a higher purpose. But then I also see that right now, as I'm speaking to you, maybe that's, or plenty of that is me, a distaste for what I currently am and a dislike for my former self. And that's not easy. It's not easy to accept. It's not easy to confront. No, it's a process, a long process,

confront. No, it's a process, a long process, but a constant process. What else besides God and besides the fragility of life has changed in your outlook since your my well because I made a deal with God that I would share with other people if they asked me to. My community is growing more than it ever has. Your community meaning? People I know. A community, okay.

You mean like your social circle? Yeah, people I'm in conversation with is growing for me personally more than it ever has before. Tammy, what troubles me is I want to be oriented by the truth. Follow the truth wherever it takes me and love. And so when I say love, I mean that truth is not enough because there's too much truth and you don't know what to choose from. So then guide yourself with love and truth. Okay. But then what troubles me is how do I know that those ideas that occur to me, those spiraling ideas,

aren't a part of the truth and that I'm supposed to follow them. See, that's what makes me write them down and share them with people and find out. Right. to follow them see that's what makes me well write them down and share them with people and find out right because and don't share and i wouldn't share them so much online i'd share them in real life because you know the the online presence is kind of paranoid or can be paranoid and and can can and grow conspiracy theories and stuff, the online voice is too remote. So I think sharing your ideas with people that you know is the best way to keep your head straight. How do you choose between truth and love in a relationship? So for example, what if your partner hypothetically committed a crime,

like what if I murdered someone, or whatever it may be, and or my wife murdered someone? So do I have an obligation to the truth that is to turn her in or to love that is to not lie in contradiction with my partner, but instead, with her? Or are those somehow the same truth and love? So what would, how do you know when to stand with your partner and when to not? Well, you're not responsible for what your partner does. They're responsible for what they do and what they say. So you're not responsible that you can still love them. so you're not responsible that you can still love them and people are pretty confused so they're often not telling the truth when even when they think they are so truth is a hard one it's you know it's something you can aspire to that's for sure and

so is love um because people can love for manipulative reasons as well. So love isn't always true either. But if you can say that your love is true and your truth is true, then I would say that I would stay with love and let the world take care of the truth. How did you know when you were young, Jordan Peterson said that you said, let's get married, but only if we tell each other the truth. Okay, how did you know that truth was imperative

when you were so young? Because many people, they didn't value truth until they had this philosophical framework given to them by your husband. And I don't know how without strong adherence to religion, how someone can come to a similar understanding at such a young age of the vital nature of truth. How did you? When he asked me to marry him, he said, if we have to tell the truth, if we don't tell the truth, we can't have a relationship. So that was the beginning of me walking around with a Bible in my pocket and looking to see if

I was telling the truth. That's how I dealt with it. I just put one of those little pocket Bibles in my inside of my coat pocket and everything I did, I analyzed to see if this was a, if this, whatever I was doing was okay. I mean, thank you so much. I know you got to go. There are some audience questions. I can read them and maybe you can give a quick answer. And if you have to go, then just let's do a few. Let's do salt. Lemon said, what are some of the best things your dad did, or let's say your parents, when you were younger in terms of parenting?

In terms of parenting. Well, anyway, he taught me sports. He took me along to sports, to games. We played a lot of games. And that was great. Okay. This comes from feels like fire. What advice would you give to parents who have a child with a condition like Michaela's let's make it more general with just a extremely ill child.

I put them on a meat diet. How did you, okay. Irish lobster, which is hilarious. I don't know if that's, there's a connection there. How did she know Jordan was quote unquote the one? How did he ask her to marry him? What is she passionate about? I know she does massage therapy, but I would love to know more about her internal world.

Well, hopefully we gave you a glimpse of her internal world so far. But as for the other questions, that is how did you know Jordan was the one? How did he ask you to marry her? What are you passionate about? I've known Jordan for a very long time. He asked me to marry him a few times, once through a letter, another at a party.

As in getting down on the knees publicly? Maybe. Is he serious? That's what I was thinking. At a party? Publicly? Not publicly. My thinking at a party publicly not publicly my privately at a party uh but through the letter i i thought i'm not sure that this is i can't i don't know if i can take this seriously it was just so he asked me a few times but i never did say no until i said yes

i see i see i see and then what are you passionate about what am I passionate about art I'm passionate about art and my grandkids okay Veg Mech wants to know some of your favorite books hmm

I just read a really good short story called how to how to Cut a Knife. I think that's it. Let me see. It was great. It was from Laos, and it was How to Pronounce Knife. That's it, How to Pronounce Knife.

That was good. That was short stories. You could read them all separately, but the power of the narrative grew with each story to the end. I thought it was really good. So that was a good story. In terms of my favorite books, you know, The Master and Marguerite is a great book. I think that's on George's list.

great book. And I think that's on George's list. You know, I read, I read a lot of inspirational stuff. Like self development? Yeah, yeah. or religious self-development and you but i imagine you would do that now you didn't do that before i i've always i've always read i wouldn't call it self-help but more like and i wouldn't call it philosophy but you know I've always been trying to figure things out and make things better you do whatever whatever comes there's something about your voice that's kind loving tender gentle it comes through thank you that's Jordan said that you are a tough cookie but I don't see that I'm sure are a tough cookie, but I don't see that.

I'm sure you could be. I'm sure. I don't see it. I mean, I don't mean that in a bad way. Like I don't sense any malice or any overconfidence on your part. Well, I think bravery, bravery is, you don't have to be bigger than an ant to be brave. Best Ebrot says, I would be interested in what she makes of how J.B.P.

So Jordan, Peter, you know, is being portrayed in hit pieces. It must be so frustrating being the person who knows him best and how caring he is. I don't know. I think it goes with the territory that you get hit pieces. And I think that it just it it's news it's just quick bait news where these

stuff you know off your shoulder now in the beginning did it bother you no in the very beginning in the very beginning you know in the first weeks where there were in the first days where there were journalists standing on the sidewalk in the foyer in the first weeks where there were in the first days where there were journalists standing on the sidewalk in the foyer in the kitchen and talking with them in the living room that that was pretty overwhelming and then they started coming for interviews and there were like I don't know three or four interviews a week it was a lot and they were in my house and I found the you know they're hungry for information and so it was difficult to put my foot down and then in live events I was told I could kind of put my foot down I'd gone with to one of Jordan's lectures when he was starting to get quite a number of people coming to his.

Biblical lectures or. No, this was in Ottawa. One was at the public library and one was at the National Museum in Ottawa. OK, so you went there in person. There were lots of people there. And his brother was there with me. And he said that he works with politicians. And that when this talk is over

and everybody gathers around and wants to ask questions, that he had a method for dispersing people. So I tried his method for dispersing people and nobody moved. Do you mind saying the method? Nobody moved. Oh, just walk walk up put my hand on his shoulder and say five minutes you got five minutes nobody nobody cared luckily the luckily the library was closing so they just left but that's when i decided i had nothing to do with that that

i wasn't that wasn't you weren't able to put not me. That was not people. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Did it, did you feel like you lost him to the crowd or did you, sorry, what I mean is I imagine that the amount of quality time you spend would have been reduced. It very much was. And that's why I traveled with him largely was because I thought if he went, I had lost contact with him so much that I thought I'd better travel with him to keep any contact with him at all. And it was good that I did because after that, I got so sick that that was the end of our relationship for a long time. Okay, now this is the last one because you got to go and I keep saying got to go. Jordan's gonna kick me out of his office. That's fine. That's fine. So Revulet,

this person named Revulet, and then also someone named Echo, echoed this question. Same question. Mrs. Peterson, your husband said that in a recent interview, you told him you'd get better on your wedding anniversary and that ended up happening. Do you think it was a lucky guess? Or if not, what do you credit for having been able to predict this? I don't know.

What do you think? It was pretty strange. It happened on the day to the day? Yeah. I said, I told him probably in when I was really sick in June that I would be better August 19th. And that's the day I was better. That's the day that they said, you're better, you can leave. So I don't know. I don't know what that was. Tammy, thank you so much.

Thank you. It's an honor. I wanted to meet you in person and give you I think I told you a choice cut of meat. Do you still follow your husband and daughter's diet? Not my husband's diet husband and daughter's diet? Not my husband's diet. My daughter's diet. Now I eat lamb. I can't eat beef anymore.

Nope. No vegetables. No vitamins. Just meat. A little bit of chicken wings. Oh, there he is. Okay. You got to get going.

I got to go. All right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. You're welcome. a little bit of chicken wings oh there he is okay you gotta get going i gotta go all right okay thank you thank you so much i appreciate you're welcome bye bye have have a great rest of your day