Even though pain is part of life, it is still one aspect that no one is really fully equipped to deal with when the time comes. But just because we feel its weight on us doesn’t mean we can let it crush us down. Today’s guest is someone who has been helping people transform pain into living a purpose-driven life. Juliet Clark is with Liz Jamieson-Dunne, a creative spiritual consultant and transformational mentor. Liz lets us in on the wisdom from her book, Finding Hidden Courage, inspiring us to heal from the pain and find the strength to move into life again. Full of stories from people about their journey through pain, her book provides us with the courage to face life after all the pain. Join Liz and Juliet in this episode as they show us more of the light after our darkest times.

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Summoning Hidden Courage In Your Darkest Times With Liz Jamieson-Dunne

I’m super excited about our guest. She has a powerful book that we are going to talk about, and talk a little bit about what she does as well. Before we get started, I want to remind you to go over to www.BreakthroughAuthorMagazine.com. Grab your free subscription. If you want to know more about publishing content, speaking, media, about anything that applies to publishing. You can find out tips and tricks over there. We have got a great panel of experts and contributors that put together articles every month for you.

I’m excited to talk a little bit more about the Content Creation Crash Course that’s coming up. If you are someone who’s been thinking about a book or maybe you have started writing and you are a little bit stuck, this is a workshop for you. We are taking the combination. It’s 2 hours a day, over 3 days, with 3 great experts. Kris Johnson on day one is going to talk about book development, and you will have an outline when you leave the workshop, so a good beginning to your book.

Day two is me, and I’m going to talk about the four pillars of market research that you have to do. I’m going to give you a hint here. If you are an expert author, this also is going to dramatically help your business as well because it’s that market research that we think we have done in order to tender an audience. A lot of times, we leave things out that are crucial and it’s going to dig in to, “Where do I find these people?” That’s always what I hear is, “I think I know who my people are, but I don’t know where they are.” We are going to dive into that.

Day three is Sara Burke. She’s an international content expert. You may have heard her speak on our show. You are going to leave her day of the workshop with some social media posts and how to put that content calendar together in a way that’s meaningful and engaging. If you want to find out more about this event, it is from June 15th, 16th and 17th of 2022. For three days, $797, and you can go over and register at www.ContentCreationCrashCourse.net. We look forward to seeing you there. We only are taking fifteen people for this event because we are going to spend time in breakout rooms with you formulating what we need on it.

Our guest is Liz Jamieson-Dunne. She’s a creative spiritual consultant and a transformational mentor for living a purpose-driven life. Everyone is unique in the way one experiences life’s challenges. Hurts accumulate in layers and patterns. Each layer may need a completely different modality to heal. A creative spiritual consultant works with multiple modalities to help transform pain into a living purpose-driven life that is loving and fulfilling.

Liz’s life took a dramatic turn after the death of two husbands and a niece that was more of a daughter and many miscarriages, loss and grief that led her to her personal journey of healing. Through these life-changing sorrows, she found a way to reenter life more profoundly and meaningfully. She found solace and new sense of purpose through a spiritual path of service.

She has published her first book, Finding Hidden Courage, dedicated to helping others overcome adversity by finding that courage that resides in each and every one of us. As a creative spiritual consultant, she works with others to help transform their life challenges into living a more loving and joyful life.

She is also a Licensed Spiritual Practitioner with Centers for Spiritual Living, a Neuro-Linguistics Master Practitioner, Huna Energy Guide, and an Art Expression Facilitator. She serves on three boards and volunteers with several charitable organizations. She’s a formerly successful market executive with many years of experience with Fortune 200 companies in building business and products domestically and internationally within the consumer packaged goods and direct response marketing arenas. She dedicated herself to helping others transform pain by finding meaningful purpose in their lives and living that more purposeful life.

I’m so excited to talk to her because as someone who lost all of their original family, mom, dad, and sister, and went through a divorce within a time span of about nine years. I can tell you that what she does is so meaningful. We each have our own journey, and that’s the realm she works in. We will have Liz here coming on.

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I have Liz Jamieson-Dunne, and we are going to talk about this new book. It’s called Finding Hidden Courage. Tell us a little bit about why you wrote this book because this was not only healing for you, but healing for all the people in it that you featured.

It’s interesting because I didn’t start out to write a book. I started off creating a website that talked to people’s stories that I hope to gather about loss, grief, and what I call dark nights of the soul. I had gone through so much death and loss that I was perplexed about why all of this darkness was at my doorstep. I didn’t feel that I called it in.

I lost two husbands, a niece that was a daughter to me, and many animal souls and a lot of friends. It was more than the ordinary loss, I would say certainly. The final catalyst was my niece, my daughter, Susan. When she passed, I thought, “Something has to be done to heal myself because I was so despondent and down that I started to look at life in a different way.

That led to the whole building of my platform. I called it a community of souls of people that wanted to get themselves out of that despair and move into life again. I videotaped people that I knew that had gone through hardship, and I wanted to interview them to tell their stories. I always learned more from people’s stories than from books or workshops.

I was connected with the human journey in what that meant. I did it. I hired a videographer and I did it my home. I had eleven other people besides my own story. I asked them three things, “What happened to you? How did you deal with it at the time? How is your life different as a result of going through this?” The stories, I started crying. They move me to such a level that I was blown away.

Part of what I have learned along my spiritual journey of helping to heal myself was something called Art Expression. I was working and taking a course at UC San Marcos in California from a woman that was teaching Art Expression. As part of the curriculum, we worked with hospice people, and it was using art as a modality to go into the unconscious and tap into those stored memories for healing. The people that I have taped, I took them through a similar process. The book then became a result of these beautiful interviews, and I had their artwork. I thought the most natural extension of that would be to create a book. It’s a long-winded answer to your question.

You and I had a discussed it. You have someone who lost a spouse to cancer in your book. You lost a lot of people along the way. There was another woman who lost a relationship. You have a lot of other stories as well, but in terms of that, people don’t think about the losses they have in life as necessarily that they are grieving those things. It’s not like, “Someone died in my life.” Talk about that a little bit because you and I had a whole discussion on all these things that people have lost over the last couple of years.

Coming out of COVID, we start there. We are in a low-level of depression overall reentering the world, in my opinion, because the next COVID is coming out. Everyone is like, “Do we go back to that?” That’s one level of how I regain my freedom and feel safe in this world. In some of the other stories or the other people that I talked to, one woman was living in Saudi Arabia. She’s American. Her husband was from that area. They got married here and she went over there and had a child, and she had a whole career. She was held as a prisoner in her own house, and it changed completely. She changed 180 degrees from where she was when they married. She escaped with her child when her daughter became eighteen, and that was another story.

There’s another story of cancer. A gentleman being labeled as, “You’ve got stage four. You’d better get your things in order.” He said, “What?” How he’s completely healed now and totally free of cancer. Another one who lost everything through bankruptcy and divorce, and her daughter had suicide all within a year’s time.

These are all kinds of stories from breaking up, divorce, and starting a new life after, “How do I do that?” Especially for a woman who is 50-plus, “How do I reenter life now as a solo person?” It ranges. Our sense of loss is a huge area and very different in many ways. The story or the healing is the same. It’s no matter what the event is, it’s how we deal with it to clear it so that we can live a life of freedom and wholeness because that’s what it’s all about.

Then not getting stuck in it. There’s so much in our society. Many people lost jobs because of COVID. Even between states right now, there’s a lack of compassion. People in Utah are like, “What are these Californians whining about? We have been open for two years,” but you guys have had a little bit different paradigm of the disease there. I think you are still masking or you may have taken off your masks. We have been masked-free for quite a while. Even from area to area, the amount of loss varies a little bit and all of that.

It’s not about death. It’s not about the disease because that happens too in some ways to all of us in our lives, hopefully not as traumatic, or separation, or even sometimes changing careers. It is, “How do I do that? How do I go from an unhappy place to something that fulfills me?” If it’s a job change, especially later in life, that can be very terrifying.

FINDING HIDDEN COURAGE: Stories of Healing & Strength

Finding Hidden Courage is something that I had to find first within myself because it was like, “Woe is me. Why is this happening to me and then why not?” It’s called life. I always have a feeling that life deals with both ups and downs, and it is just called life. The fabric of life has many textures. For me, it was learning how to deal with those things that happened. It didn’t take me down and destroy my spirit because that is the essence of who we all are. To live in this beautiful world as fully and as present as we can. To me, that’s what my journey, and the journey that I hope I can help others with is all about how you access that courage inside of you when you don’t think you have it because we all do.

A lot of it is the courage to let go of something because I know with my own, that’s what I have experienced is I have to be able to let go of this. It’s hard but the more and more I let go, the more abundance I get to. It’s like, “Whatever is going to happen is going to happen here, and I can’t control it. I have to move on and make something good out of it.”

You said something very powerful, “Control and surrender,” and those are two key components that work to hold us back. Control is an illusion because truly we have very little control in our lives. We have free will, but to see and discern the difference of what we can control and what we don’t get control of is a powerful thing. Then being able to say, “I trust myself. Therefore I surrender to that knowledge, call it the spirituality that resides in all of us.” Whatever your belief system is, it’s something bigger than you are. That to me is the surrender part of letting go. Once I have done the footwork, then my job is done for that moment, and that is where the surrender comes in.

The thing with surrender is once you do it and you see results, it becomes an addiction with it. This is what I used to experience is I would say, “Whatever, I’m done.” Then I would go on and a month or so later, that thing that I wanted to happen would happen because I let others do whatever they were going to do and they come back.

That was with my divorce. They come back and say, “We should try it your way. We did it our way. It didn’t work.” Instead of saying, “You have to do it my way and my way makes sense.” Once he started to see those results or whatever is going to happen around it, things weren’t as bad as you thought they were. They always turned out better. That was my lesson about surrender, but it’s hard.

It is hard, especially for strong people. It’s hard for everyone, no matter what your personality type is. You are bang on as far as once you do it and you feel it and sense it. You can see the result of that letting go, that’s where the freedom comes in. Also believe in yourself where you say, “I can navigate my life with the help of something else or somebody else, an energy that I call spirit.” To me, that’s the foundation of why we are here. All I have to do is to go out in nature and see that there’s something out there that’s much more powerful than I am. If I’m doing my own footwork, then I can release this knowing that I’m doing my part in this. Once my part is done, I have to let it go.

Nature is powerful in that sense. I have done some of my best thinking when I’m out in the middle of nowhere, like me and the moose.

I have animals. I always have had dogs, cats or both. Sometimes they are great teachers for being in the moment, not in the past. They don’t worry about the dog at the end of the block and they have bigger bones than they do. They don’t worry about the future. They are right in the moment. To me, that’s mindfulness and that’s where the highest level of appreciating life and also engaging with yourself and nature. Walk out the door, listen to the birds or hear the wind. That centers and grounds me in a beautiful unique way with animals.

I remember the day on the trail that I ran into a moose. We have bears and all sorts of stuff. You look at those things online like, “What happens when I encounter that?” I have always wondered. I had been wondering maybe a half-hour before like, “What happened if I read into a mountain lion or a moose? Would I remember what to do? Would I get big when I’m supposed to get in front of a tree?” I got in front of the tree and the moose was looking at me. I think the moose was more scared of me than I was of it. When you see this huge animal in front of you, you’re like, “He could kill me in a second.” That’s one of those things too. You get so much clarity when you are out there about what life looks like, “There’s a moose in front of me. Maybe my problems aren’t that big.”

I remember when I went to Africa, it was such a beautiful trip, and when we were in a small open Jeep, and there are only four of us. About 10 feet away, this huge male lion was there. I thought, “We are going to be dead in a couple of seconds.” I realized that if you stay in the Jeep, they see it as a unit. I made eye contact with this magnificent animal. Like you with the moose, there was a connection.

You may not have felt it at the time because you thought, “Am I going to be eaten or be stomped? What’s going to happen?” There was a connection because we are connected to everything around us, animals and nature. We are not separate beings. That’s what we are feeling now, hopefully, more than ever, especially with what’s going on in Europe that we need to band together, that we need more consensus and love as opposed to tanks and guns. That’s another sidebar conversation.

There’s evil everywhere. It’s hard with all that evil to stay connected and see the best in people too.

Hidden Courage: To see and discern the difference between what we can control and don’t get control of is a really powerful thing.

We, particularly as women, because I believe that we are the light-bearers. We are the nurturers. Biologically, our DNA is so set up for that, that we are the consensus builders. We are the people that need to band together, to come together to say, “Let’s heal.” First of all, you have to heal yourself before you can heal anybody else. That’s something that before we start marching, and I have done a lot of marching in my life for different things, I want to make sure that I heal myself.

I remember there was a story about Sister Teresa when they asked her to march for the war in Vietnam against it, and she said, “No. I won’t march against it, but I will march for peace.” That illustrates exactly what I’m speaking of. Women in our world now more than ever are becoming stronger in bringing love as well as strength. Two strengths reside in love, not in fear. That’s where I’m very interested in working, not only with myself, but with others to bring that strength, and that’s from finding our courage, isn’t it? We are talking about the same thing.

It is. From that standpoint, it’s working with people and healing. A lot of people don’t realize that healers get healing for themselves from working with others on that healing. I remember a foot zoner hired me, and I worked with a lot of healers. I mentioned it on the kitchen table and one of my kids was like, “Why do you need so much healing? What’s wrong with you?” I had to explain, “I’m helping them,” but the reality is that I seem to get the right healers at the right time working with me too where I get something very valuable out of it as well. You have to always remember that when you are coming from a place of love like that. There are gifts that are going to come from those other people that you are helping as well.

Any healer or anyone that is devoted therapeutically or even spiritually to helping people has to realize that they are a vehicle. It is not the ego that is doing it, but rather you are aligned internally to know that, “I have got these parts of myself. I have got my ego that you want and you need.” Within a certain dimension, you don’t want it to lead the way because that’s not being authentic, and you want your heart to come through and you have a thing called the soul.

An alignment of all of these three compartments within us is what creates wholeness. That’s when I’m aligned to say, “I can tell him my ego is leading the way almost right away.” I do, and it’s so interesting that as you start practicing it more and having a consciousness, you start working on being more integrated. I’m a vehicle. I am not the person that heals anybody, but hopefully, I’m a channel to help people through what I have learned, and that’s what it’s all about.

Where can we find your book?

My website is www.FindingHiddenCourage.com. It is on Amazon both the hard copy, soft copy, and the Kindle. I would recommend it because it’s compiled with artwork as well as the people’s stories. Kindle doesn’t do as great of a job as a soft or hardcover. It is also on other eTailers. I can’t remember some others but it’s on my website.

I hope that you take a look at it. I hope that you want to look at the book and hear other stories. Eleven courageous souls besides my own story and how they depicted their journey through their art expression, which was another part of their deep healing. A tribute to them for stepping up and sharing their stories because they are very personal and very deep. Thank you for asking about the book.

We made it easy when she published, you can get to it on Amazon by going to www.FindingHiddenCourage.com.

I looked it up by myself. It’s Finding Hidden Courage. You don’t even need the ‘book,’ but yes, it’s easy to find. Thank you, Juliet, for supporting this platform and the story because we need to get this out. It’s not about me. It’s about helping to raise that vibration and that light for all of us.

I want to mention a couple of other things here. You are donating part of the proceeds to a foundation. We will talk a little bit about that.

Susan was the catalyst and the primary motivator for doing this book and even the platform. She was a physician, an internist at Johns Hopkins. She succumbed to cancer years ago after a valiant fight of endometrial cancer. She has created a foundation for survivors of below-the-belt cancers. I am so happy. Any proceeds from the book, as well as from courses, a percentage of that will go to her foundation. It is something that I truly believe in and support because these women have gone through so much. This is another way for us to support our fellow ladies and friends no matter where they are. Please consider that as part of your decision.

Hidden Courage: Any healer or anyone devoted therapeutically or spiritually to helping people has to realize that they’re a vehicle.

On to the next steps for you. You have done these art courses in hospice and in a lot of different places. Are you going to be expanding that more to the general public in the future?

Yes. What I do offer on my website are one-to-one consultations. That’s a good part if someone has a need for more in-depth work, that’s one way of working with me. I will be putting some other courses on the website, which I haven’t. I’m in the process of working on now, as well as the Art Expression, to be able to do that online because not everyone lives in San Diego, which is where I live. There will be several different types of programs available, but right now, consultations with me and that’s something that is available.

If we want to get ahold of you to get on a waiting list or do something with that, where do we go?

My website, FindingHiddenCourage.com, is the best way to contact me. We can have a discovery call to find out if this is something that we work well together or I can help you with.

Thank you, Liz. We appreciate having you here. You, guys, go over and grab that book. It is beautiful. It’s full of color and it has all the artwork in it. It’s amazing.

Thank you, Juliet, and thank you all. Have a lovely day.

Important Links

• www.BreakthroughAuthorMagazine.com
• Content Creation Crash Course
• Kris Johnson
• Sara Burke
• Finding Hidden Courage – Amazon
• FindingHiddenCourage.com

About Liz Jamieson-Dunne

Everyone is unique in the way one experiences life’s challenges. Hurts accumulate in layers and patterns, and each layer may need a different modality to heal. A Creative Spiritual Consultant works with multiple modalities to help transform pain into living a purpose-driven life that is loving and fulfilling.

Liz’s life took a dramatic turn after the death of two husbands, a niece that was more of a daughter, and many miscarriages, loss, and grief that led her to a personal journey of healing. Through these life-changing sorrows, she found a way to re-enter life more profoundly, meaningfully. She found solace and a new sense of living through a spiritual path of service.

She is publishing her first book, Finding Hidden Courage, dedicated to helping others overcome adversity by finding that courage that resides in each of us. As a Creative Spiritual Consultant, she works with others to help transform their life challenges into living a more loving and joyful life.

Liz is also a licensed Spiritual Practitioner with Centers for Spiritual Living, a Neuro-Linguistics Master Practitioner, Huna Energy Guide, and an Art Expression Facilitator. She serves on three boards and volunteers with several charitable organizations.

Formerly a successful Marketing Executive with over 35 years with Fortune 200 companies in building business and products domestically and internationally within the Consumer-Packaged Goods and Direct Response Marketing arenas. Liz dedicates herself to helping others transform pain by finding meaningful purpose in their lives and living a more loving and fulfilling life.