Speaker 1: 0:07

Welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion, the podcast designed to inspire your greatness and thrive through life. Get ready to conquer your fears. Here's your host psychotherapist, coach and empowerment expert, Beverly Glazer.

Beverley Glazer: 0:30

Have you looked back at your life and asked yourself how did I survive that? Well, welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion, the podcast for women over 50 who are ready to stop settling and live life on their own terms. Each week, you'll hear raw conversations, inspiring stories and get practical tools to help you reignite your own fire. I'm Beverly Glazer, a transformational coach and therapist for women ready to reclaim their voice and break free from what's holding them back, and you can find more about me on reinventimpossiblecom. Anne Jonas is a transformational guide, an intuitive healer, a spiritual teacher known as the love messenger. In this episode, she reveals her journey from trauma to complete transformation, and today she helps others rise from the mud and connect to their divine essence a reminder of who you really are. So keep listening and welcome.

Ann Jonas: 1:43

Thank you so much for that beautiful introduction and I love how you hold space for people to find their own light from within.

Beverley Glazer: 1:52

Thank you. What was it like for you set me up for my life as in a spiritual experience.

Ann Jonas: 2:10

Essentially, my parents were divorced when I was 11. My father had multiple suicide attempts all my life, starting at two and a half when he checked himself into a motel, into a motel, into a mental facility. He did check himself into a motel when I was 16, on my 16th birthday, to let me know he was a failure as a father and he was going to take his life. So that didn't happen. But then, 25 years later, when I was 36, he showed up at my childhood home in Carpinteria and he shot and killed my mom.

Beverley Glazer: 2:51

Whoa. Okay, there's no other words. There's no words at all. Yeah, and how were you able to survive during such a difficult time? I mean, this is trauma. Now you have both parents difficult time.

Ann Jonas: 3:05

I mean this is trauma. Now you have both parents. You know that is. It's. It's its own interesting parallel story because it's related to God whatever you want to call God, but the self journey, love essence source.

Ann Jonas: 3:18

I was raised Jewish, so there was that experience of God and, as I said, this was a spiritual experience and I remember a moment in the processing of all the stuff that happens when somebody dies and you got to navigate stuff, and I felt like I looked up and I was like, okay, this is a spiritual experience, like this is a moment, like I'll remember this, I mean for various reasons, but this moment right now and it was a restaurant with yellow walls I mean I really do remember it and I honor that. It was the combination of what resilience is. Resilience is. We're actually born with it. As babies, we keep getting up. It's what happens along the lines where there's different expectations about what getting up means right and how we follow that. So for me, it was about getting up and it was about recognizing that this, that everything, speaking into what I already knew, which was everything is serving.

Beverley Glazer: 4:34

I love that because you are a professional server and you were a server from 18 years old to 32. 18 years old to 32. And most people when they start serving they'll can start at 18, but they generally quit.

Ann Jonas: 4:57

Now, 32,. What did serving do for you? For me and it's interesting when I think about like when I was 13, I was babysitting and I had a little vinyl black like two by two address book Like I work with spreadsheets now, but this was like I'm 13. So I was. I've always been in a place to be organized and hold space, and my desire is to help and support others. Everything I've ever done has been in that vein, and so that's how I saw my 15 year career in fine dining and food service was holding space for people to have a dining experience, and that's what it was.

Beverley Glazer: 5:41

And so the restaurant business was more than just a restaurant business and just serving food for you.

Ann Jonas: 5:48

Oh, it was family. Oh my gosh. I still have friends from all the restaurants I've worked at and it's if you've ever done this work, been in the service industry. There are layers to it, right, and there's all in and there's touch in, and these are restaurants that I worked at that were all in like career people Like these are what I chose, and they were all about expanding. And every restaurant I ever worked at I was either created, fixed, facilitated the training program or was one of the trainers. I was all about helping people be the best version of themselves from out the gate. My mother was an elementary school teacher. I never wanted to be a teacher. I always said I'm never going to be a teacher and, as I see it now, everything I've ever done has been. There's been a facet that I have expressed through as a teacher.

Beverley Glazer: 6:51

Why did you leave?

Ann Jonas: 6:53

So I was working in a restaurant, living life, going to college, taking my time, got a degree in communicative disorders which was a lead-in to speech pathology. Along the way I felt more aligned with holistic health and started really I was exploring spirituality from the Wicca goddess perspective. Nature-based pagan Things started expanding for me through my twenties and then I found finished my degree and decided to go to massage school. So still waiting tables and now going to massage school and now starting a massage business, basically house calls. I just take my table and go to people's houses whenever, whatever. Well, part of my journey in college actually was to write a paper that you know, composition paper, that whatever you want to write on, and this is like Dewey Decimal, like the catalog days. So that's your audience, right? We're all in the same boat. So here we are. I'm looking for to write a paper on witches, witchcraft, and basically found out that many of the witches were midwives, which opened my eyes to this whole other way where babies come onto the planet through this kind of container, which then led me to I was taking at a pregnant client. I was taking a massage class for working with pregnant women, found out about doula work, started doing doula work. A couple of years later, when someone came along and said, hey, do you want to be at my birth? A couple of years later, when someone came along and said, hey, do you want to be at my birth? And essentially felt contracted with both my clients and this and this restaurant, and decided that my I say this my business plan but it really was my birth plan was that I desired like five to seven massage clients a week and one to three births a month, and I had $5,000 in the bank and I was like God, you led me here, like take me out, you know. And so that was it.

Ann Jonas: 9:03

The Lotus Touch, my first business and being a solopreneur, was birthed and you got married. Yes, along the way. So after my mother died it's interesting Somebody asked me at the funeral if I ever excuse me, how I was doing, and I was like, well, you know, it's an interesting experience, right? And I said, well, I felt like both my parents were dead, and so I was like in this way, I feel like that's the order of things. You know, parents die first, so it's not like it's my partner the person I share my bed with. So I just jumped ahead to the story. But here's the point I wasn't with anybody, and three years later I met Erica and we were married. We had a daughter, and over that journey from a month before our wedding, she was diagnosed with melanoma and so we had a four-year journey there and then she left the planet when our daughter was two. So that's the other piece of this resilient stand up again thing situation.

Beverley Glazer: 10:08

Oh yeah, how did you move forward with that resilience?

Ann Jonas: 10:12

It's a matter of recognizing that I am here to live this life. This is a piece that maybe some of you recognize navigate. Some of you never heard of this before like this, might be so outside the box, but I believe we choose everything. We choose our parents. I believe we choose everything. We choose our parents, we choose our children, we choose our partners, we choose our colleagues. We choose every facet of our life as an expression of our divine desire to be. We're a light being that gets smushed into a body. That's another way of saying we're a spiritual being having a human experience. So my resilience again comes from and I didn't know this consciously it comes from my connection with self, higher self, higher power, and God to point me in a direction, to offer grace and compassion.

Beverley Glazer: 11:21

So, for you, spirituality was what helped you move forward.

Ann Jonas: 11:28

Absolutely that path, that anchor, that anchor, that relationship.

Beverley Glazer: 11:33

Yeah, what would you tell someone who feels it's too late for them? They're afraid to go back in the past, they're afraid to move forward. They're stuck in all that trauma, if you will, because here you, your father shot your mother. This is traumatic and you can hold this forever. So what would you tell someone like that, who's really stuck?

Ann Jonas: 12:03

There's layers to this, in essence. First, starting with gratitude. It really is. It's about gratitude. It's recognizing that everything is serving. It really has to start there. I'm not saying in the moment, I'm not saying, oh, you have a trauma, and then like, well, everything is serving. I'm not saying that, I'm saying in this post-stuckness, this post-event. So there's this equation in E plus R equals O, the events or experiences in our life plus the reactions or the responses, create the outcome the event's gone. I mean, even if it was yesterday or this morning, it's gone. Everything that we're sitting in is how we responded to it, and so that's the reflection, then, is remembering that we choose everything, we choose what we're looking at, we choose how we feel, and that it also brings us to the four agreements. That's an important part of not making assumptions, not taking things personally, remembering to speak from your heart and do your best. I didn't make those up. That's, don Miguel. The four agreements, yes, the Toltec wisdom, but these are the things we have all of this at our fingertips, accessible within us?

Beverley Glazer: 13:28

Yes, what have? What? Can you tell others from what you have learned through your journey? From what you have learned through your journey?

Ann Jonas: 13:35

Remember that the mud is serving, the muck is serving, and that often what we do in our life and maybe this will feel resonant is that we have these stories right. We have these experiences. It's kind of like the movie Inside Out with the balls, the balls of memories. I don't know if anybody's seen that one. I love Inside Out. I love Pixar. Soul is another beautiful movie. I'm a big fan of those two animated classics, in my opinion. Here's my point we have these life experiences and they create a box. Now, what that box looks like really depends on how we deal with that box. Like if we just throw the box in a room and make a mountain of empty boxes, it's not very stable. And I'm so sorry I'm saying this and it's something's totally coming through.

Ann Jonas: 14:31

I've been using speaking to this idea and totally forgot that I have a whole story where I literally did that. I threw and made a mountain of boxes in my garage and right after Erica passed away and I was like, what do I do? Like what do I do? I'm a single mom with a two-year-old in a house that's full of stuff and you know, the trust was in my name. But where do we live? How do I? How do I manage? Right, how do I pay the bills?

Ann Jonas: 14:59

I'm working, you know, here as a doula and a massage therapist and I'm standing in my garage looking at this mountain of empty boxes and I I see this marquee in my vision and Jonas, author, life coach, inspirational speaker. Now I laughed because I thought, well, that's great, and you know, that was 12 years ago, and so it's funny how I was looking for guidance in the now moment and everything's in the now moment, right, so everything is here now. So this idea back to the mud and the boxes is when we take the time, the grace, the compassion, the trust and the vulnerability to take a look inside, see what those boxes offered us, have gratitude and then find the completion that comes from the acknowledgement, and then you fill it and now it's not an empty box, it's a brick, and it becomes a layer of the foundation or the path, your lotus path, your life.

Beverley Glazer: 16:14

There you go. It's wonderful, yes, Thank you. Thank you, Anne. Anne Jonas is a transformational guide, an intuitive healer and a spiritual teacher. Known as the love messenger, she supports others to reconnect with their divine essence, offering guidance rooted in decades of service, intuition and transformation. Through workshops, energy work or one-on-one sessions, Anne helps others remember their beings of love, light and deep resilience.

Beverley Glazer: 16:54

Here are a few takeaways from this episode. You can heal from trauma, no matter how long it's been. Your past does not define you. Facing it will set you free, and reinvention isn't about becoming someone new. It's dealing with who you free. And reinvention isn't about becoming someone new. It's dealing with who you are.

Beverley Glazer: 17:14

If you've been relating to this episode, here are a few actions you could do right now. Write down one thing that you're proud of surviving, and light a candle in your own honor to recognize how far you've come For similar episodes on overcoming trauma after 50, check out episodes 126 and 133 of Aging with Purpose and Passion. And if you love podcasts for older women, check out Older Women and Friends with award-winning host Jane Leder. Jane and guests take a deep dive into the joys and challenges of being an older woman. Older Women and Friends is a podcast that sets the record straight, dispels the myths and explores the many contributions and wisdom that older women have earned and are eager to share. That link is going to be in the show notes. And so, Anne, where can people find you? What are your links?

Ann Jonas: 18:16

There's a one-stop shop with me and it's thelotuspathlove yes, L-O-V-E at the end there and that's where you'll find everything from one-to-one work along the Enlightenment Pathway or the Sacred Connection webinar or any of the other guidance portal energy perspective guidance that I offer. There are many ways to connect with me in many facets and terrific all over the place.

Beverley Glazer: 18:44

I look forward to and the love messenger connecting with you terrific, and those links and everything that Anne has said is going to be in the show notes. It's right there and it's also on my site too. That's reoffendimpossiblecom. And so, my friends, what's next for you? Are you just going through the motions or are you living a life that you truly love? Get my free guide to go from stuck to unstoppable, and that's also in the show notes below. You can connect with me, beverly Glazer, on all social media platforms and in my positive group of women on Facebook. That's Women Over 50 Rock, and thank you for listening. Have you enjoyed this conversation? Please subscribe and help us spread the word by dropping a review and sending it to a friend. And remember you have only one life, so live it with purpose and passion.

Speaker 1: 19:53

Thank you for joining us. You can connect with Bev on her website, reinventimpossible. com and, while you're there, join our newsletter Subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Until next time, keep aging with purpose and passion and celebrate life.