Ep.60- Dealing with grief with compassion. A journey of loss and miracles

Gissele:

Hello, and welcome to the Love and Compassion podcast with Gissele. . We believe that loving compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Today, we’ll be talking about dealing with grief. With compassion.

Today’s guest is Dr. Jan Schwartz. Who is the president of forensic fraud research Inc. She is a fellow of the American psychological association. Fellow of the American academy of forensic sciences. And this is a certified Homeland protection professional. With the national Sheriff’s association. Her book last summer with Oscar. He came an international bestseller on amazon.com. Her new book. Authentic intelligence. How do you use your emotional, mental, and spiritual gifts to create the life and world you want is bound to gain the same recognition and accolades. Please join me in welcoming Jan. Hi, Jan.

Jan: Good morning, Gissele. A warm hello to you and to all of your listeners.

Gissele: Thank you. Thank you so much. I just want to start by sharing a little bit about how I sort of ended up finding your story. In particular, I was going through my own journey of my own dog having seizures. And there was a couple of times where my dog, we thought we’re going to lose him. Just because the seizures were really, really bad. And I kind of resigned myself to his, you know, eventual passing. Just because of how bad the seizures had gotten. But then I set the intention for something that would help me not only ease his passing, but actually restore him to the level of wellness that I knew he could get to. But I didn’t know how. And so very interestingly, I didn’t even know how you and I kind of connected, but we started chatting about your book, authentic intelligence. Um, and through conversation, it came out that you had written this other book called last summer with Oscar. And when you look at your credentials, it’s amazing that somebody who is so involved in fraud would end up sort of in this kind of journey that is more spiritual. So wanted to start the podcast by letting the audience know. A little bit about, um, what actually led you to write last summer with Oscar and how did perhaps your perspective shift from focusing on forensic fraud to maybe opening up to there being something else?

Jan: My husband and I returned home from a vacation a holiday. And when we went to pick up the dogs from this wonderful kennel, they said to me, Jan, we’re so sorry, but Oscar didn’t eat. And I was very concerned, wondering why they hadn’t contacted us and these kinds of things.

But rather than focusing on that, I immediately drew my attention to Oscar and his eyes flashed at me with fear when he leaped out [00:03:00] of the kennel and I put them into the car. Needless to say, the next day my husband and I were at the vet and the vet was disturbed by the dramatic weight loss because Oscar was not able to eat.

And my husband is a retired surgeon so he was there examining the x rays and saw that cancer was, had taken over Oscar’s body and came out to tell me with the vet that things Didn’t look good. Well, this was I was devastated. I was just overwhelmed with sorrow and grief. And the immediate thought is.

What can we do to help him? And the vet said, well, he will die because he won’t be able to eat the kind of cancer he has. This is the challenge. They don’t feel like eating and there is great depression with it. So he said there’s chemotherapy, but we [00:04:00] had heard many times from others that had faced a similar diagnosis.

And in this case, it, it the likelihood of it being hemangiosarcoma, which is the worst kind of cancer. One that. A dog can be perfectly healthy one minute and then it just, it’s such a fast spreading cancer, it just becomes a pervasive