Pat Sheveland interviews Jill Stephenson about her journey of loss. In 2009, Jill Stephenson’s son, U.S. Army Ranger Cpl. Benjamin Stephen Kopp, was killed in action in Afghanistan.

Jill has since turned her tragedy into purpose.

Connect with Jill and her organization here: https://www.iamjillstephenson.com/ HealingFamilyGrief.com

Get my free grief ebook, "How Do I Survive?" 7 Steps to Living After Child Loss here: https://www.healingfamilygrief.com/order-free-book

Learn more about Pat Sheveland: https://www.healingfamilygrief.com/about-me

Schedule a coaching session: https://www.healingfamilygrief.com/book-an-appointment

#howtohelpsomeonewithgrief #griefcoach

Shownotes:

[00:00:13.660] - Pat Sheveland, Host

Well, hi there. Hi, everybody. I am so excited because I have one of my closest friends. She's like a sister to me. Gill Stevenson here. And we're going to talk about her journey, her journey of grief, her journey of hope, her journey of faith. We're just going to have a really cool conversation. And so I'm really excited to have Gill here. Hi, Gill.

[00:00:37.820] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

Good morning, Pat. How are you?

[00:00:39.900] - Pat Sheveland, Host

I'm good. I'm good. So you ready for this?

[00:00:42.740] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

I'm ready. Let's go.

[00:00:44.450] - Pat Sheveland, Host

All right. Well, let's just start with, I'd like you to just start. You've told your story on big stages and small stages and throughout the US. I'd like you to just tell us your story. From the time that you're a child to who you are today, encapsulating your story. And then we can go into a little bit more about Ben's story.

[00:01:16.230] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

Okay. My story. I am number two child out of four that my parents had. I have two sisters and a younger brother. So I'm really the middle child. But we grew up very basic middle class family. Mom stayed at home, dad worked two jobs, lived in the suburbs. Not a lot of exciting things that happened. I would just say I lived a very normal childhood. One of the special things that I got to experience, or I should say more than one of them, but a special part of my childhood is that my grandparents had a cabin in Northern Minnesota. They had a lake home and we got to spend a lot of time up there. And that had a huge influence on who I am still today because of how I wanted to spend my free time, how I want to spend my summers. And it put a travel bug in me. It ignited this nomadic spirit in me that over the last six years has really come to life. But I can look back and know that that's where it began was with my grandparents' cabin. I also have a very large family. Both my parents come from families of six, so I have a lot of aunts and uncles and more cousins than I can count.

[00:02:46.780]

More cousins than I can count. So we had family gatherings growing up, birthday parties, holidays. There was always a lot of people around. And so I got used to being around people and sharing space and experiences, including at the cabin. When I was a little girl, we just laid kids wherever there was a free space. You didn't need to have nine bedrooms. You just needed to have nine pillows and blankets.

[00:03:12.960]

So that was part of my upbringing. My parents got divorced when I was 12, fourth grade, I believe it was, or fifth grade. And then just two years later, my youngest brother was hit by a car and killed. His name is JT. He was 11 years old and the youngest, like I said, and the only boy. And he was killed in July and I had turned 15 in May. So just two months almost to the day before that. So when I look back on it, I say I was 15, but I really was barely 15, just barely 15. So I was very young. And that event really shaped my future in so many ways. It shaped how I saw myself, how I saw the world, how I saw other people, and how I interacted with people, including myself. And to this day, we are 40 years out, 39 years out. The effect of losing him still influences how I relate with people today. Four and a half years later, I became a mama myself. So very young. I had Ben at age 20, and I had him as a single mom. I wasn't married, but I brought my brother's memory and love with me on that mama journey from the very beginning.

[00:04:54.000] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

And knowing that life can change so quickly and you can lose somebody so quickly without warning made me a better mama. It made me want to be the best mama that I could be to Ben. My Benjamin, you know that when he was a baby, he's Benjamin. It made me love him more. It made me want to spend more time with him. It made me cherish the time with him more. It made me value my time with him more. Did I have my struggles? Of course, I was a young single mom. It wasn't easy. But my brother's life and death definitely encouraged me to be a better mom. And I transferred the love that I couldn't give to my brother to my son. So I continued to raise Ben as a single mom. I had a marriage in the middle, is what I say, from when Ben was 6 to 13. That was That was fine. I will say that was fine. He had a positive influence on Ben, but I was still Ben's greatest influence and Ben's more of his mentor. In the years leading up to that, and even in those years, Ben and I spent a lot of time at the cabin together because there wasn't a male role model in Ben's life.

[00:06:26.390] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

My grandfather became that person to Ben from when he was very little. Ben loved the cabin just as much as I did. We had a lake that had no public access, so it was very private. Very private. So there wasn't a lot of traffic on there, and we just got to enjoy the fishing and the boating. We had a canoe up there and a row boat. So it wasn't these great amenities. We were manually rolling ourselves across the lake and back and taking the canoe out and learning how to fish, which Ben learned from my great grandfather, and how to clean fish. Ben learned at age five. My grandfather gave Ben a filet knife and taught him how to clean fish. And as the mama, that's not something that I would have done. I was willing to teach him how, even though I didn't really know how to do it myself, but I wasn't going to question my grandfather in his wisdom. And he said, if he cuts himself, he'll learn how to hold the knife better. It was a teachable moment. And what that did is it helped build little Benjamin's confidence in his abilities to follow direction and to learn from his great grandfather, who he admired so greatly.

[00:07:50.280] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

And so Ben would excitedly catch a fish and then run it back and clean it. And he'd catch a fish and clean the fish, catch and clean. And it became this routine for him. And he would collect a bucket full of these chopped up fish filets that just looked terrible. They were just pan fish, just sunnies and crappies. But he would probably bring them up to the cabin to my grandma for the family to eat for dinner, and she would cook them. She also had a freezer full of filets that grandpa had cleaned over the years. So Ben's filets got mixed in with grandpa's. But that little boy felt so proud that he was feeding the family.

[00:08:31.610] - Pat Sheveland, Host

That's so beautiful.

[00:08:32.720] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

Yeah, which helped build his character, and that would follow him for years to come. When Ben turned 13, my grandfather, just a couple of months later, succumbed to cancer. And it was the first death that Ben had experienced. And it absolutely wrecked him. He was so sad that he told me he did not want to talk about it. He said, I can't talk about it. And I let it be at that. I knew how much he was hurting. I knew how much he admired my grandfather because I admired my grandfather so much and I loved him dearly. So I knew what Ben's pain was. And also him being 13, it was easy to not make him talk because 13-year-old boys really just grumble and mumble anyway. It was easy enough. Ben stayed silent for five months. Five months later is when 911 happened. I don't know if it changed the trajectory of Ben's life, but I think it did. Who am I to say the direction that he was going? But from that day forward, there was no question what Ben would do for the rest of his life. And he made a declaration on that day because of what we witnessed watching the television and seeing it in school when he did, that he was going to become an army ranger, find Osama bin Lan and make him pay.

[00:10:23.450] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

Are you there?

[00:10:24.450] - Pat Sheveland, Host

Yeah.

[00:10:25.460] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

Okay. I just had a screen pop up. I'm sorry. Something came up in front. I was like, oh, did it shut down on me? So Ben made a declaration at that wise age of 13 that he was going to become an army ranger, find Osama bin Lan and make him pay. And so his sadness turned to anger and he wanted revenge. And the revenge was, for the most part, because to him, the terrorist attacks on innocent people in the United States was a mockery of his great grandfather's service to our country. And he was like, That's not going down that way with me. No one's going to get away with that. That's where that came from. And he never looked back on it. That became his true north. That became his true north. So I watched him grow from that point. And we had just moved that school year. So he was in a new school and had made new friends and was doing better in school than he ever had done before, which was a good thing because the years leading up to that were not always easy with. And so to have 911 happen in that one of those first couple of years and to watch him go forth, like he said he was going to, it was something really special for me as a mom, knowing that he had made a statement about something he was going to do in his life and he never turned away from it.

[00:12:05.260]

He never looked back on it. Never looked back on it. So it not only changed his life, but it changed my life as well because I knew what he was going to do. I knew what he was going to do. Ben remained my one and only and ended up getting a divorce right before Ben went to high school. So it was just him and I again going forward.

[00:12:32.620] - Pat Sheveland, Host

Wow. So this kiddo, I mean, had a vision in his early teens. And like you said, his true north, his North Star, everything that he was absolutely driven, which is not common. Young teenage boys, they're not that driven or just know exactly what they want to do. So that's amazing.

[00:12:58.910] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

Wow. Yeah, it really is. I often tell people when I speak publicly, I say I'm a little bit older than 13 times three, and then some are four. I still am not sure what I want to be. And Ben just never, ever doubted it. And anybody who knew him from the time of that declaration forward never doubted it either.

[00:13:25.660] - Pat Sheveland, Host

It's unwavering. Unwavering. Okay, so let's talk a little bit. So that got you to be in your this beautiful mama that is a single mom, one and only child. You're teaching him the ropes, going up to the lake, letting him just be all boy and doing whatever he needs to do, allowing your grandfather, his great grandfather, to truly be a mentor to this kiddo. And it had some influence, but you really were the stable influencer of Benjamin throughout his life because you were always there, the constant in his life. So now let's move into this next chapter of what happened.

[00:14:23.990] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

So the next chapter of what happened is that Ben made good on that promise. He never looked away from that drive and that tenacity that he had to become an army ranger. And he signed up for the delayed entry program, his senior year of high school in the fall, which means that he committed to joining the military right after graduation. Ben had a January birthday, and he turned 18 in January of his senior year. So he told me that if I didn't sign the papers for him in the fall, he would sign them himself in January. And that wasn't an issue for me because I knew from when he was so young that he was going to do that. And I supported him in that. I never questioned whether or not I would support him in that. I never thought, oh, to pull the card of he's my only child, he's my only son. I could have maybe said, I don't want you to go because there's risk of me losing you being my only child. That never crossed my mind because I knew the drive and where it came from that intention for him grew from when he was 13 years old.

[00:15:44.200]

And now he was 18 saying, yeah, I'm ready to pull the trigger on this. And so he did. One month after he graduated from high school, he left for Fort Benning to join the army and then go through that infantry training. Only seven months later, he became an army ranger. He fast tracked his way, worked really hard, got through all of the programs that are required in the training to become an army ranger. And he was then assigned to the third Ranger Battalion in Columbus, Georgia. Wow. Yeah, it was very impressive. It was very impressive. It's like, okay, yeah. He wasn't joking when he made that promise to the world that he would go out and save us all or attempt to. So in three years of service, which is what Ben ended up doing, he had three deployments. Army Rangers for every year of service, they deploy one time. It's different than the big army or the other branches where they may go once every few years or they deploy for a year at a time. The Rangers go for a few months at a time and it ends up being within a year.

[00:16:59.940] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

So by the spring of 2009, Ben was on his way to his third deployment, which was to Afghanistan. He had gone to Iraq twice before that, but he knew that going to Afghanistan was going to be different than what he had experienced in Iraq in the previous deployments. And how it was going to be different is that they were going into more heavy combat. They were going after a person who they've been trying to get for a long time, we'll just say that. And it was in an area that hadn't been visited for quite a while. So they were prepared that the natives would be defending their territory quite heavily, and they would be up against some heavy, heavy combat. So he was a little nervous about that. And he expressed that those nerves, and it was actually fears about going. And he was never specific about what he was thinking specifically, just said he knew it was going to be bad. And he shared that with me and just maybe two or three of his very close girlfriends and then with my mom. And when he told my mom that, she offered to take him to Canada.

[00:18:30.580] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

And oftentimes people laugh at that reaction and say, it does sound funny, but it wasn't funny because she meant it. And she meant it because her and Ben were very close. Her and Ben were very close. And she had lost her only son. She had lost my brother years before that. And she was now facing an opportunity to save her grandson. And so she made that offer. Ben, of course, refused. It meant something to him that she was willing to do that. But there's no way on God's green Earth that he would have ever taken her up on that. He would never turn his back on his country or his brothers in arms. So off he went to Afghanistan just after Mother's Day in 2009. About halfway through the deployment, I got a call from him. It was on July first. That was the first time that I had spoke to him then. He had sent me a couple of emails, but back in 2009, we didn't get phone calls. We didn't have FaceTime. We weren't allowed to do that. And he sounded pretty far away. Things were as ugly and as bad as he had predicted or it had been predicted to him that they would be.

[00:19:54.980] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

He sounded far away, not distance wise, but emotional wise. There was a lot going on in his head that he couldn't share with me. And he just said that it was just like they thought. It was very hot there. They didn't have showers. They were using just bottles of water obviously to drink and then to shower themselves off as well. And that would be the last time that I spoke to him. And we ended the conversation talking about what he planned to do in the future. He had one year left in his contract and wasn't intending to renew that contract in the army. And only God knows if he would have done that had he come home. But he wanted to go to college. He wanted to move to Florida. He didn't want to come back to Minnesota. So we talked about some of those things that he was dreaming of doing once he got home. And then we ended the conversation like we did any other conversation by saying, I love you. And then nine days later, I got a phone call from his company commander telling me that Ben had been shot by a sniper in a firefight and that he had undergone surgery to repair his leg or to remove the bullet, and that he was currently in recovery at that moment.

[00:21:19.940] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

And he then asked me if I had any questions. And the first thing that came to mind when he said that he'd been shot in the leg is I just envisioned his leg being blown off. That was the wounds that we were accustomed to seeing back then that men and women came back for more missing limbs. And he said, no, his leg is fine. His leg is fine. He just hasn't woke up yet. Well, the conversation continued from there to let me know what his progress was as far as recovering. And he didn't recover. He ended up having a cardiac arrest during the recovery time. They were able to revive him, but he was without oxygen for a long enough period of time that it deprived his brain of the oxygen needed to survive. And he was declared or determined to be brain dead five days after he was shot when he arrived at Walter Reed. He did spend a few days at the hospital in Afghanistan, then to Walter Reed in Washington, DC. And then once he got there, the doctors reassessed his condition and determined that he was brain dead. That brain death enabled him to become an organ donor.

[00:22:41.660] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

And when the doctors told my mom and I, my mom was there with me at the hospital that they believed he was brain dead, that they asked me immediately if I would consider donating his organs. And I didn't hesitate. I said, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, I will. And the reason that I didn't hesitate is because when my brother died in 1982, the doctors there asked my family if we would donate my brother's organs. And my parents asked my sisters and I if we were agreeable to that. And we all were. And so my brother donated his kidneys and his eyes. And in 1982, that was the very beginning of when organs were harvested to help other people to save lives. And the organ donation world considers my family pioneers in that aspect because it was the very beginning. In fact, in the state of Minnesota, they didn't start keeping records on that until 1986. Wow. Yeah. I've tried to find the records of my brother's donations and even was able to connect with the doctor who was there and were not successful in finding them. So I imagine they're way deep in the anals of the hospital of long, long ago, and who knows what happened to them.

[00:24:05.540] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

But anyway, that was my brother's influence coming back to affect my life with Ben again and making that final decision for him to save lives or encouraging it, I should say. Because Ben was 21, the decision wasn't mine. It was up to Ben. But we had to see if we could locate paperwork where he may have made those wishes known. And we were able to find that paperwork. The Rangers, prior to deployments, fill out a living will or something they call a blue book. And it asks all kinds of questions about what to do in the event of their death, what their final wishes would be, including their funeral, where they want to be laid to rest, what flowers with their pallbearers, music, etc. And one of the questions that was asked is, in the event of your death, do you wish to be an organ donor? And Ben wrote yes. The question that followed that asked, which ones? And Ben wrote, any that are needed.

[00:25:05.380] - Pat Sheveland, Host

Wow. Yeah.

[00:25:06.530] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

And so when he was removed from life support, all of his organs, bones, skin, and tissue were donated. He directly saved the lives of four people and enhanced the lives of 55 more with that bone, skin, and tissue. And that does not include the six lives of his brothers in arms that he saved on the battlefield. So he directly saved the lives of 10 people when he died with his brothers in arms and with those major organs.

[00:25:38.730] - Pat Sheveland, Host

Wow. I hear this story. I've heard this story. How long have we known each other? I don't even know how.

[00:25:45.180] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

Many years. Coming up on six years.

[00:25:47.440] - Pat Sheveland, Host

Six Years. Six Years. And I have sat, for people who are listening, I have sat and listened to Gill speak it when she's been up on stages in front of lots of groups, one on one. We've talked a lot about this. I've read about Ben's story. Do you want to talk a little bit about that, that a book was written?

[00:26:07.890] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

Yeah.

[00:26:08.310] - Pat Sheveland, Host

There actually are a couple of different books because one book wrote about what happened in Afghanistan by one of the people that he saved his life. But then a book was written specifically about Ben. So why don't we tell a little bit about that book?

[00:26:24.500] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

Yeah, we can. The book that Pat is referring to is called Heart of a Ranger. And it's about the donation of his heart. By a very miraculous circumstance, Ben's heart was directly donated to an acquaintance of my cousin who was waiting for a heart. And I had created a Caring Bridge website for Ben, letting people know what was going on to keep people informed along the way. And shortly after I posted the message that Ben was determined to be brain dead and would be donating his organs, messages started coming in, of course, from a lot of different people. And the next day, I was to meet with a woman at the... She was a casualty officer in Washington, DC. And she was coming to talk to me about casualty things. But she was late for the meeting. And so I had about an hour of time to kill until she got there. And I spent that time reading those messages. And one of the messages was from my cousin who offered condolences and then stated that because of Ben being an organ donor, friends like her friend Judy, people like her friend, Judy, would get a second chance at life because she was waiting for a heart.

[00:27:47.820] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

Now, I didn't tell anybody that I had the ability to select a donor if they were on the donation list. And that is something that the doctors did tell my mom and dad and I that if we knew someone on the list, we could make a direct donation, but we didn't. So nobody knew that. And when I saw that message, to me, it was like holding three 7s on a slot machine. It was like, oh, my gosh, I just hit the jackpot. And so I ran to find my dad and said, dad, Maria, know somebody who needs a heart? And long story short, we got her people in touch with my people. And later that day found out that she was, in fact, a match. Wow. Learning that news to me is when I discovered the feeling of what a miracle is. And the miracle to me occurred in getting that news because I was walking down a sidewalk on my way to dinner. And when Maria called me and told me they were a match, I couldn't move. I was frozen in my tracks. But at the same time, I was so elated because Ben was going to live on in somebody and especially by giving his heart.

[00:29:01.880] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

That was really the special part of the story. So at that moment, while I couldn't walk, my feet felt real heavy. My whole body felt very light. And I thought if I could have just lifted my arms up and I would have flown away. So I believe that a miracle is an ocean of sorrow or sadness or grief and an ocean of joy or happiness, elation at the same time that you're just walking right one foot in each ocean and feeling that. So fast forward, several years later, there was a local news anchor in the Twin Cities who was reading his hometown newspaper online. And that hometown is Winnicka, Illinois. He was reading the story about Judy, Ben's heart recipient, and I meeting. And he had no idea that the story had taken place. Bill Lund, who's the author, had come to Minnesota right before Ben's story hit the news. And because he had survived, Ben wasn't killed in action. He died of his wounds eight days after being shot. But somehow the story just missed him because he was new to the Twin Cities. So he was learning about it for the first time a couple of years later and was just taken aback by it.

[00:30:29.190]

So he reached out to me right away, introduced himself to me and said, I'm from the same town as the heart recipient. I'd love to do a news story. Are you okay with that? Absolutely. So we got together, built it a news story, ended up being nominated for the News Equivalent of the Emmys. And we became friends from that time forward. And he did a couple of other stories about Ben and was really influenced, very strongly influenced by Ben's story. Three years later, his oldest son graduated from the Infantry, the very place that Ben did it, Fort Benning, Georgia, which also is the place that my grandfather went to Infantry school. Bill was very affected by that experience of watching his son graduate from basic training. And he just felt Ben's energy all around him. And turned to his wife at the time and just said, I need to write a book about Ben, and I'm going to reach out to Gill. So he reached out to me, told me the experience that he had with his son's graduation and asked if I would be supportive of him writing a book and told me what his ideas were and how he wanted to write it.

[00:31:45.620] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

And I said, absolutely. I had a great feeling about Bill. Like I said, he had become a friend, so he wasn't a stranger reaching out to me in that regard. And three years after that, Heart of a Ranger was released. And that will be four years ago now. So Bill spent three years writing the book and doing just tons of research. And in my opinion, knocked it out of the park. He did a wonderful job writing the book. And a lot of people have read the book and love the story, love reading story about Ben's growing up years. And it wraps in my great grandfather's service to our country, Ben's childhood years, spending with my great-grandfather, the Shenanigans he pulled as a teenager. I left all those details out. You can find them in the book. But based in all of that is Ben's drive to become an army ranger. That was born in him at a very young age, at age 13, but probably sooner because of the influence of my grandfather. But sealed that deal 911. And just his drive and tenacity to go forward with what he claimed he was going to and never looked away from that and subsequently sacrificed his life for that dream.

[00:33:10.860] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

But it's something that he was willing to do. And Bill does a great job of getting all those details and really getting into the emotion of what that was, how poignant that was in Ben's story.

[00:33:23.920] - Pat Sheveland, Host

And I'll put all of that information in the show notes if people want to buy the book, but we'll give them the link on where to buy the book and that type of thing, because it is a beautiful story. And being that for people who are watching that I do a lot of work with grieving parents, Gill and I met really at a spiritual retreat, and she told her story. And it wasn't like we connected immediately at that retreat, but it was like we something connected. And I felt this very closeness with Ben and Gill, and we have this... It's like a sister relationship that we've had for these past, like going on five years. And lots of interesting things have occurred. So talk to me a little bit and tell everybody, what is energy? Tell me about what Benergy is and how that shows up for you and has shown up for you. Maybe some examples over the past almost 12 years.

[00:34:29.180] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

Benergy is Ben's energy. It's a combination of those two things. And I think it was born from learning about Judy needing Ben's heart. The circumstance that presented themselves for me to learn that somebody was in need of a heart and not knowing that or knowing that we could designate a recipient and putting those two things together and just letting it go and saying, Okay, God, it's up to you. It's up to you if this is going to happen or not. And the fact that it did and how that made me feel, it was definitely an energy associated with that. But it was born of the statement or the term Ben & G came from young gal that Ben grew up with from middle school on up who was very close to him. And she had moved out to DC shortly before Ben died. And I spent time with her when I would go there. That's where Ben chose to be laid to rest. So he's at Arlington. And I had received Ben's truck back as part of his belongings. And this was December, the same year that Ben died. And Aaron asked me what it was like to drive his truck.

[00:35:48.280] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

And I said it had been difficult for me to be comfortable behind the wheel for a while because it was like driving him around. It because Ben wasn't married, he didn't have a girlfriend the time that he died. And so this was his persona. And this was what he loved, the material thing that he loved more than anything else in the world. And I said, I was afraid that something would happen while I was driving it, or I didn't want to have anything happen. But when I was driving it, I said, I just felt this presence while I was there. And it was like this protective presence that was with me. And it was very surreal. And I said, it was almost like I was driving slow motion every time I did because there was just this something around me. And I said it was like this energy that was just with me in the truck. And she looks at me and she said, do you mean energy? I was like, Oh, my gosh, yes, it was this energy. And it stuck. It stuck from that point on. And Benergy has become anything that influences you in a positive way.

[00:37:00.360] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

A sign that you see that you go, oh, okay, yeah, I know that was you. That's my sign to say, yeah, you're going in the right direction or don't go in that direction. Or if you're feeling sad or bad, here I am. I'm right here. And my sign from Ben has been a moth. From day one, when I came home from his funeral in Minnesota, there was this little pure white moth in my house. And that was Ben or me. That was him showing up. And I knew that it was him. And in the last almost 12 years, I've had thousands of experiences with moth. They've landed on my head. They've smacked into my face. They followed me around. They've showed up in places that you wouldn't believe a moth could get into, not just closed off places, but seasonal. What is that moth doing in this theater in Chicago in the middle of January? Where did that come from? Crazy things like that. I see just even like a sun dog on the anniversary of his death or his birthday, the halo, the rainbow circle around the sun. It doesn't happen very often. But on those special days, I'll see that or something in the shape of a heart, a song that comes on.

[00:38:23.530] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

Just the other day, I brought my dog to get his nails trimmed at the pet store. And I walk in the door, the grooming station is right around the corner when you come in, and all of a sudden this little moth was flying around and I put my hand out and it just landed on my hand. I can do that. That happens to me often when I show people, just put your finger out and a mop will climb on it. No one's ever done that before. No one has seen that before when I show them. And so those are the energy signs that he's with me and around me always.

[00:39:03.400] - Pat Sheveland, Host

And energy expands beyond mama because there are so many of us that you could write volumes of books on the energy, the Bener G, the Bener G Energy, the Ben Energy. Because we've all those of us who have connected with him, and I did not know Ben, Benjamin in the physical life.

[00:39:30.590] - Pat Sheveland, Host

But I. Know him so well in the spiritual life. It's just like I always said to Gill, he's like this nephew, like I'm the fun aunt. So yeah, but we all have these episodes of energy. But I've been with you. You and I traveled to Florida, and we had some amazing that you just can't make this stuff up moments that there was total protection, total guidance. And we just knew, and we had Ben on the visor with us the whole time.

[00:40:07.450] - Pat Sheveland, Host

So when we think about that, and I'm thinking about so many of my clients, Gill, who have a lot of their one and only. There's something different about when it's a one and only. Some of the lost dreams, all of that. You are going into your 12th year?

[00:40:31.930] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

Yeah.

[00:40:33.860] - Pat Sheveland, Host

What would you say is the one thing or two things that really helped you to survive in the beginning and kept you going year after year and finding some purpose out of this great tragedy of your one and only child 12 years ago?

[00:41:05.490] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

Yeah. That's an easy question for me. And the two things that come to mind, faith and tribe or faith and community. And my faith has got me through from the very, very beginning. I was never angry about Ben's death because I knew where he was. I knew where he went. I knew where he was going. I was experienced in a grief journey because of my brother. So I already had built this spiritual relationship, if you will, with somebody very close to me. Again, like I said, I was barely a 15 year old girl when my brother died. And when Ben transitioned, it was 27 years, almost to the date. And I tell people that I could have still cried the day before Ben was shot about my brother because the sorrow, the sadness, the loss doesn't ever go away. But what that taught me is that I could survive, that I was capable of surviving, and I saw that in myself and I saw that in my mother. So having faith in knowing that I would survive and knowing where he was, that he was in heaven and that he would wait for me and that he would no longer experience pain, sadness, anything negative, that he was now in eternal love.

[00:42:38.920] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

So that faith has taken me a long, long way. The tribe really equally as important to me. I had people reach out to me from the very beginning who had also experienced losses. Losses of army ranger families coming to reach out and say, My son served at this point in time, and we're grieving family as well. We want to reach out to you. Having people surround me, even locally in Minnesota, other Gold Star families came to Ben's funeral and reached out to me, invited me to events and whatnot. I got thrust into that family, that tribe, that community from the onset. And that has saved me all along because I've never felt alone in my journey. I've never felt alone in my journey. And I still am very close with some of those people that reached out to me almost 12 years ago. And we all are blown away by how fast time goes and that we've come so far in our journeys. But what we are to each other is family because we share that common bond of survival, of not just loss, but survival. And that survival is what contributes to my purpose is being that picture of survival for people that are new to the journey.

[00:44:10.530]

I feel a human obligation to reach back to people that come into my path that are brand new and show them that they can survive and to just take their hand and say, let me walk with you because I've been wearing these shoes a long time and you get used to it. You don't ever get over it. You don't like the shoes. They're not the shoes that you would have ever picked for yourself. But when you wear them for so long, you get used to them. And I see that the purpose also comes in honoring the life, honoring their love, honoring their memories. And if one doesn't do that, then your survival is not going to be as imminent. It's just not because you have to honor that love because it continues the love that you're giving to them spiritually. I'm not able to give Ben physical love. He's not physically here with me, but I'm able to give it physically to other people because of his spirit. And I'm able to give it to other people spiritually in honor of his physical absence. And that is so, so important. And I talked to this is a shared journey with so many, but I just talked to a mom last night whose son died by suicide 14 years ago.

[00:45:38.910] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

But we talked about how many lives that her son has saved because she has become a support for those who struggle like her son did. And they don't end up committing suicide because of what she has shared with them. And that's her son reaching through and being a team with her. But that's seeing the light in it and having purpose for her. And her purpose is to be there for other people who are struggling in honor of her son so that they don't take their own lives. So she's saving lives has become her purpose.

[00:46:18.910] - Pat Sheveland, Host

That's so beautiful. And you and I have had many conversations because we know that the umbilical cord always stays attached. The umbilical cord, that tethering. And so then it is the tethering of your beautiful child who is in heaven and in the light constantly to be able to flow that light to you as the person who really is their voice and the physical beingness to get that message out. So it's almost like you need to have that ethereal body along with the density of our physical. And that's where that beautiful tethering is so important that umbilical and to know that that never gets destroyed. That never, the spiritual part of it never gets destroyed whatsoever. And you and I have had lots of conversations about this. And you wrote in my book, how do I survive steps to living after child loss? We know that there's no linear steps. We know that it could be 5, 10, 15 years later where all of a sudden certain things erupt. We know that because as you said, grief never goes away. But to survive is to have that faith and to have that tribe, having the people surround you. And if there was one thing that you could share with a newly grieving parent whose beautiful child has transitioned from this Earth, what would be your one thing that you would say to them to help them just hang on to that tether.

[00:48:19.380] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

Embrace the tribe. Embrace the tribe to allow other people who have walked where you're now walking help you. Let them be there for you because they are going to be your saving grace. Yeah.

[00:48:37.800] - Pat Sheveland, Host

Don't push them. And a lot of times it's easy to push them away. It is. I'm angry. How come you got kids. I've seen that even with clients pushing people away. And it's like, allow people in. I've had clients that said our world gets so small because people don't know how to say the me or what to say or what to do. And our world has just got smaller and smaller. And so I love that that's the one thing is allow yourself to be surrounded with your tribe. And it may not be your family. In fact, I encourage people to not use your family members because they're grieving just as desperately as you are. And you need to have your tribe that's going to lift you up and be there for you because it's all about you in this healing process.

[00:49:33.040] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

Amen. And that having walked this journey for most of my adult life since I was 15, it was very difficult for me back then because nobody understood. Nobody understood. I had four living grandparents and a great grandmother when my 11 year old brother was killed. And that makes no sense. And it's still to this day, makes no sense. It's so out of order. But I know that out of order is just the way of the world. That's the way it is. But I was all alone in that until I was able to filter my love to my own son and connect with people as I aged that had a loss at growing up. And now that helps me to connect with people also because it's not just the loss of my son that I could talk about. I'm like, no, I've been walking this great journey for 38 years, almost 40 years. A long, long time. And I've had subsequent losses since then, too. I've lost a nephew and another brother since then. So I know what that's all about. And just so important for people to understand that you might not just feel like going anywhere because you feel too heavy.

[00:50:55.640]

You don't want to face people because your mood isn't well. And that's okay. It's okay to not be okay. And to hear that from someone who's walked in your shoes means a lot.

[00:51:10.710] - Pat Sheveland, Host

Absolutely. So, Gill, we're nearing the end, but just please tell us, what is it that you give the world now? What is your gift that energy flows into you all the time? And you now have a purpose, like you said, it's reaching out to other people. But talk a little bit about what do you do formally? How do you get out there and how can people reach you if they would like to connect with you and maybe have you come and talk? Formally, what I.

[00:51:47.640] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

Do is public speaking, or I might call it motivational speaking. And what is my message? My basic message is I think it's twofold. It's hope and it's survival. To be hopeful is okay, that you can have hope and basking that hope because it will lead you to survival. And that's something that I can be the face of survival. I've survived great loss, including a house fire where I lost everything. Lightning strike, totally unforeseen, survival val. That survival is imminent no matter what you face. That adversity visits us in many different ways. It's not just about the loss of a loved one. It can be about a tragic thing like a fire, something like that. It can be divorce. It can be illness, it can be an accident, it can be financial loss, any number of things. Adversity has many, many faces. And I don't speak about just my experiences, but how the losses can pertain to so many different avenues in our lives. I have spoke across the country. As Pat mentioned earlier, I've spoke to very small groups. I've spoke to very large groups. I've spoke a lot to the military community, to educational communities as high schools, middle schools, colleges.

[00:53:19.090] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

I've spoke to church groups. I've spoke to professional and corporate groups, hospital groups, because Ben's story is all about the medical issues that come up with brain death and organ donation and the light that comes from that. I think another message that I bring is being able to find the light in the dark, to focus on the light. And that is what is going to keep you reaching for that survival and keep you holding on to hope. Because in any story, no matter how tragic it is, a light comes, a light absolutely comes. And that's what I want to teach people. That's what I that's what I strive to teach people. That's the message that I want people to take away from my speech. I don't stand on stage and cry. I don't stand up there and have to compose myself. I want to stand up there and be the face of survival. I want to stand up and be the face of hope because that's how I honor my brother and my son and my brothers, my grandfathers. That's how I honor their memories. That's how I honor their love and their life is by not giving up by keep putting those feet one in front of the other and surviving.

[00:54:36.310] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

And I.

[00:54:37.260] - Pat Sheveland, Host

Have this quote here. A while, maybe a month ago, I was listening to a very, very old interview that Oprah had with Maryanne Williamson. And I was listening and it was talking about the tragedy of when someone dies. And how do you explain it? Because the one question that comes in is, why did this happen? Why did this happen? And Maryanne said something that I thought was so powerful that I actually wrote it on a little sticky note. And it's like, she said, I don't know if the question is really so much, why did this happen? But the real question is, what do I do with it now that it did? That's exactly what Gill is sharing with all of us is we make choices. We can choose to allow this to crush us forever. And the adversities, the deep tragedies in our lives, it could crush us and just, unfortunately, leave a life that doesn't allow a legacy. Or you can say, okay, this happened, I am going to go out there and I am going to have a purpose of helping other people. I'm going to be a light for someone else. Because we know that energy begets energy.

[00:56:00.070] - Pat Sheveland, Host

Light begets light. So as you are a light for someone else, Gill, their light in turn turns up and lights and shines upon you. And so it's just this synergy and this beautiful infinity of growing this light amongst all of us. And it's just a beautiful thing. So real quick, how can people get a hold of you? What's the best way for them to get a hold of you if they want to connect with you? They can connect connect.

[00:56:29.260] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

To me through my website, which is IamJillStephenson. Com. So it's IAMJill LSTEPHENSON. Com. IamJillStephenson.Com. And I will put that in.

[00:56:45.690] - Pat Sheveland, Host

The show notes so it'll be here so that people can have that link also. Yes. And the.

[00:56:51.180] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

Book can also be ordered from my website.

[00:56:53.410] - Pat Sheveland, Host

Perfect.

[00:56:54.260]

So it makes it easy then. Easy peasy. We'll just get you to the website and make sure that that's all in the show notes for everybody. And thank you so much. Thank you so much for being here. We've talked about this for a long time and doing an interview and it was like, Wow, what happened? Time does go by very fast. And so it's so timely here. Gill and I were just talking earlier this week and it's like, Wow, we just really need to get this interview. I have several clients that are moms, one and only. I have other clients that are still struggling a few years after the death of their beloved child, especially children. But this is all grief. We have tragedies that happen in many different forms, as Gill had said. And so this is what she brings to the table is to bring that light, to bring that hope, to know that you can continue to survive and actually thrive over time. And that we're always surrounded by this beautiful energy of our loved ones.

[00:58:04.190] - Jill Stephenson, Guest

Yes, we are.

[00:58:05.290] - Pat Sheveland, Host

So thank you so much, my darling. This has been a wonderful interview. And thank you, everybody, for listening. We appreciate it. Thanks, guys.

Contact us:

Cami Thelander: www.bearfootyogi.com

The Confident Grief Coach School: www.healingfamilygrief.com