Trials, Disappointments and Challenges: Jan Eckles

HEALING THE GRIEVING HEART
Trials, Disappointments and Challenges
Host: Dr. Gloria Horsley
With guest: Jan Eckles
October 13, 2005

G: Welcome to Healing the Grieving Heart. We know you are hurt and discouraged and at times are feeling angry and misunderstood. We know the reason that it happens means a lot and for some of you you’ve moved on to other concerns and other issues. How can you go on living with profound loss? Our goal on this show is to respect and honor all of your thoughts and positions while encouraging you to love, support and give leeway to yourself as well as others in pain. Only you, the bereaved can know your own heart. Attitudes and opinions change through love, forgiveness and time. Be patient with yourself and your fellow mourners. My guests and I have lived with loss and disappointment and we’re here each week to tell you that we’ve made it and so can you. Please join us on this show by calling our toll free number 1-866-369-3742 with questions or comments regarding the losses in your life. I love to get your emails, so please keep them coming to gchorsley@aol.com, and tell your friends about the show and the fact that it’s archived on www.Health.VoiceAmerica.com and www.compassionatefriends.org. I’m pleased to announce today that we’ve just completed our first set of ten edited CDs from the show. If you’re like me, it’s nice to have a CD that you can pop into your CD player while you’re running errands. These CDs can be purchased by going to www.compassionatefriends.org website or by calling The Compassionate Friends’ toll free number at 1-866-964-4000. Please email me and let me know how you like them. Today our topic is Trials, Disappointments and Challenges, and my guest today is Jan Eckles, motivational speaker and author of Trials of Today, Treasures for Tomorrow. Jan will take us on a journey through the fires that forged her—blindness, marital infidelity and the murder of her son, Joe. Adversity has not driven her into depression but rather it’s caused her to reach for excellence in every aspect of her life. Her heart’s desire is to share her story with those who suffer. Jan, welcome to Healing the Grieving Heart.
J: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be with you, Gloria. Thank you.
G: It’s just wonderful to have you on the show today. I really enjoyed reading your book and I was very interested to find out you actually grew up in La Paz, Bolivia, and lived there, what, until about twelve?
J: Correct. My parents, brother and I immigrated at that time back in ’64, a long time ago.
G: Well your father was quite an innovator, I must say. He kind of did everything, just made up his mind that he was going to bring you to the United States, right?
J: He was determined, that’s right. He had a lot of tenacity and had a drive to have a better life for the family and he took all the steps to make it happen and here we are.
G: Of course, you had to leave your grandma.
J: Yes, we had to leave grandma.
G: And other family members so that’s always tough. So you kind of had an early loss in that way because you knew you really wouldn’t be back. It wasn’t like we’ll be back next week.
J: That’s right. All of us suffer different losses in different aspects in our life and, of course, I had the loss of my home that I knew going to a strange land, not knowing the language. That certainly was a tough adjustment, but it happened. I did adjust and learned the language, and here we are enjoying all the wonderful opportunities in the United States.
G: And so life went along for you and then you found out that you have retinitis pigmentosa which is where the pigment in the eye grows over the lens.
J: Basically. Actually, the retina has cones and rods and they begin to malfunction and deteriorate to such an extent that it just impairs the vision. In other words, what you’re looking at doesn’t get transmitted to the brain and their pigments value as well, they change colors so it’s the whole working of the retina that’s pretty much hampered and causes blindness in many cases as it did with me. Some people don’t. They still maintain their sight.
G: But you did not go blind until after college, is that right?
J: Correct. I was around thirty or so.
G: That was a gradual thing?
J: It was. It took maybe, I want to say two years perhaps by the time I began to notice the signs of losing peripheral vision. All my life I had night blindness. That’s one of the initial symptoms and then later on began to close in the peripheral. Day vision begins to be affected and in a matter of two years, I imagine I had lost it completely.
G: Well, I wanted to discuss that a little with you because I think it must give some insight into how you have dealt with your son, Joe, being murdered in 2002, because a lot of people – it’s only been three years – would not be doing as well as you are. And also the fact that you were able to write a book. When did you start your book?
J: Actually, I started writing the book probably my whole life. It was always in my heart but I began to key in the information I want to say maybe about four years ago prior to when it came out. I began to write just a little bit at a time. I thought I’d begin at the beginning when we first moved here and continued on and divide it into chapters and pretty soon it was what looked like a book.
G: Now did you start it before Joe was murdered?
J: Oh, yes.
G: Oh, because I was wondering, my goodness, 2002 and she could start a book, but you were already working on it.
J: In fact, I was almost done with the book. The manuscript was almost finished. I was just going through and reading it a little bit for the last time to see if the chapters flowed and that’s when we lost our Joe and I thought, “Oh, I just can’t write anything. This is just too painful. There’s no way. I don’t want anything to do with writing any books at all.” And what happened is that I realized, you know, I’m not the only one suffering this loss. I’m not the only one who’s hurting. There’s got to be other people who also are going through this same episode. And because my husband and I were able to find peace, I would say relatively soon, and I’ll show you the reason why in a few moments, but when I found that we were surviving it, as I guess is the word you could use, I thought, “No, I need to finish this book.” I decided to include the chapters about losing Joe. What we went through. The steps. The pain. The stages of the different aspects of losing a child so that I could give the same hope that I had found and the same peace that I had found.
G: Right. Now tell our audience a little bit about Joe and how he died.
J: Joe actually began in an altercation on the road. To this day, we’re not really sure what happened. Joe was nineteen. It happened very close to home. During the trial to try the man who killed him, Joe had a friend with him who gave one version of what happened. The man who killed our son had a passenger who had her own version and to this day we’re not really quite sure how it happened, who did what first, but what happened, there was an altercation in the road. They both pulled into a 7-11. They both got out of the car. And my son didn’t know the man was armed. He had a knife and stabbed my Joe 23 times.
G: Oh, my goodness. Is he in prison then?
J: No. He was acquitted for self-defense. And you know, Gloria, that was probably one of the most difficult stages that we had to go through because no one could believe it. No one could believe that such a horrible crime could find acquittal that the person who committed it.
G: Let’s continue to talk about this after we come back from break. Today our topic is Trials and Disappointment and Challenges. My guest today is Jan Eckles, motivational speaker and author of Trials of Today, Treasures for Tomorrow. Jan is taking us on a journey through the fires that forged her – blindness, marital infidelity and the murder of her son, Joe. But as you’ll find, adversity has not driven her to depression but has rather caused her to reach for excellence. We have CDs that will be out of this show probably in a couple of months so you’ll be able to purchase them. If you want to join our show today, please call 866-369-3742 and you can email me about this show or upcoming shows at gchorsley@aol.com.
Welcome back to Healing the Grieving Heart. I’m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley, and my guest today is Jan Eckles, motivational speaker and author of Trials of Today, Treasures for Tomorrow. Jan is sharing with us the fires that forged her – blindness, marital infidelity and the murder of her son, Joe. If you want to join us, our toll free number is 866-369-3742 and CDs for the shows from Healing the Grieving Heart can be purchased through www.compassionatefriends.org. Jan, when we went to break, you were talking about the man who murdered your son was acquitted and they said it was self-defense. I wanted to talk to you about forgiveness. Did that come in for you? That you had to find forgiveness in your heart for him? How did you feel about seeing him? How do you feel about him now? How does your family feel about him? Your husband, your kids, what have you done with that?
J: Those are really good questions, Gloria. Obviously, the hardest thing for me to do is to have thoughts of the man who took my son’s life. But I have to be honest with you, before we lost Joe, my faith is I’m a Christian, and based on my faith, of course, we learned about forgiveness, and that’s an easy term to talk about and it’s easy to say, “yes, I’ll forgive.” But when it comes to such a dramatic and painful and indescribable thing against you to take your son’s life, I really had to come to terms and say, “Okay, do I believe in something enough to be able to take action and to put it into practice and to really forgive?” And, of course, my husband and I both said that in order for us to live our faith, we have to take into action what we believe. One time my husband said to me, “We don’t know what God will do with this man and maybe he’ll come and repent and he’ll be forgiven, so our job is to also forgive him because him being forgiven could perhaps someday be in heaven with our son holding hands and praising the Lord together and who are we not to forgive him?” The other choice we had was to just hang on to that bitterness, that anger, that resentment and that sense of revenge against him, but that probably would have put us in a prison.
G: In your own prison, right?
J: Yes, our own prison.
G: And some people even go after the person.
J: Absolutely. And, of course, my oldest son had a little tough time with that. I think he still struggles with the pain of losing his little brother, but it was important for us to set an example for them. Now, we’ve not told the man that we’ve forgiven him. We’ve never had any contact. And I often thought, what would happen if he were to walk in one day or if I would run into him? What would we say? And I think we would say that we’ve forgiven him but I’ve got to believe that he also is walking around carrying that burden with him. So the forgiveness was a must for us, Gloria.
G: And how long did it take you? What was your initial response? I’ve interviewed several people on the show whose children have been murdered and they come to forgiveness but I have to say it’s been a lot longer than it has for you. One of the gentlemen, Dr. Richard Dew, who, by the way, his show is on our CDs that Compassionate Friends is selling, he talks about what you’re talking about but it took him a ways down the road, but he has to go to court every eighteen months and make sure that man stays in jail.
J: That was another issue. I’m glad you brought that up because what can happen, too, is had he been sentenced to prison, we could have been hanging on to that. Was it long enough? Was it severe enough? Is he still here? What will happen when he gets out? I think it would have continued for us.
G: There isn’t a lot of satisfaction as people tell me even when they get people censured or get them fired or get people put in jail. There’s still not a lot of satisfaction in that.
J: No. I don’t think we would have walked out of that courtroom thinking, “Oh, I’m so glad he got life imprisonment.” You know that? That wouldn’t have brought our Joe back. It wouldn’t have changed our pain. That’s what we initially thought. We were here to see justice be done. You know, finally, our son. It was a year after he was murdered that the trial took place but instead what we believed is that, you know, God has the worst revenge and the just revenge so leave room for what he’s going to do. It’s really up to Him. We look to the loss of man to do justice for us but in essence God said, “I will take revenge.” “Revenge is mine,” says the Lord. So there is a lot of freedom that comes with forgiveness. So we had a lot of healing to do and we didn’t need the unforgiveness to bind us like a chain, and I’m so delighted and blessed to have my husband agree with me.
G: Right. Yes. Do you think that your blindness and what you have gone through with that, it was a gradual thing and I know in your book you talk about struggling with that and why is this happening and I think that’s when you came to God was through your blindness, isn’t that correct?
J: That is correct, definitely. I think I would say I’ve suffered two major losses in my life, of course, losing my sight and losing my Joe. Two, however, were handled completely different. When I lost my son, Gloria, I didn’t know the Lord. I knew about God. I knew about Jesus, but you know, I didn’t know him personally to the point where I would think, “Oh, this is what God is going to do for me. This is what I need to hear. This is what I need to live by.” I was pretty much into rituals and just going to church just to go to church. So when I lost my sight, I needed to hang onto something that was solid. Something that would allow me to take those steps to live a life in darkness, physical darkness, because my boys were little at the time. They were three, five, and seven so I needed to have some type of strength to be able to go on and at that time, my husband wasn’t ready to face the emotional trauma that his wife would be going blind. So there were a lot of issues going on and when that happened, you only have one source as far as I’m concerned, one source to get that strength from. And that’s when I got close to the Lord and I began to read his word and to come to know him and gain the strength and peace that I never knew before even when I could see. A lot of people say to me, “Jan, don’t you ever wish you could see again?” and I say, you know, if I was to be able to see again and be the person that I was, in other words, focused on the things of the world, what kind of car we drove, what kind of house we have, or the designer clothes my boys would wear. The things that are really not important. I was empty. There was always a void in my life. There was something that I needed. I was always looking for something else so then when I found the Lord after I lost my sight, my life became complete.
G: So that really helped you. Well, I just thought of something when you were talking. I was thinking, oh, yeah, now this huge loss has helped Jan to come into a little more forgiveness is what I’m thinking. But then I’m thinking also your husband. He had to deal with the fact that his wife was losing her sight.
J: It was very, very difficult for him. What was he to do? The emotional reaction that he had was pretty much to say, “I don’t think I can handle this.” And he found someone to confide in and that hurt me just terribly. He did confess, and I want to say, I understood, but I wasn’t in a state emotionally to be able to understand and that just devastated me even more, so you can imagine your husband telling you he’s got someone else and you’re losing your sight.
G: But one thing I was amazed about because I’ve been a family therapist for 22 years is that you guys held your marriage together. It was an amazing thing to me.
J: I think the statistics are when someone loses their sight, the divorce rate is like 70% and when you lose a child, I think the divorce rate is also quite high.
G: You know we’ve been discussing that on the show. It’s really not. No, that’s been a myth and a rumor that people have been told for years and it’s not true.
J: Well, it wasn’t true in my case.
G: Mine either. We’ve been married for 45 years and we actually did a show with Wayne Loder on the fact that the divorce rate is really not that high.
J: Good. That’s good to know.
G: How did you guys hold it together? It was amazing. It was from your love from the beginning or your kids, you had three kids then. It’s just kind of amazing to me. I mean, talk about forgiveness. There is a forgiveness in that whole thing that is amazing.
J: There is and the forgiveness that I had to put in practice is one that had to be genuine. It had to be heartfelt because it’s so tempting to say, “but remember,” you know, bring it up. Since it happened, Gloria, it was never brought up again, and that’s why when I wrote the book and the manuscript was handed to him, that was the first time that he had heard me mention that again and I was wondering how he would take it. Of course, it was a very painful episode in our marriage, and I wasn’t sure how he would feel about it being told to the world, but he agreed because he said, “There could be other men in other marriages going through what we went through and what I have done, and I think it’s important that we share that and the fact that we have overcome that.”
G: That’s very sweet. It’s wonderful and I think you’re both absolutely right and you’re fabulous. Did your marriage get shaky at all after Joe’s death or were you feeling strong because I know a lot of people tell us that they grieve differently than their spouses.
J: Yes, we do. Definitely, we do, and I think it drew us closer together. What we decided is this. We’re going to have sobbing moments. When he has a sobbing moment, I’m holding him. When I have mine, he holds me. And we understand and we respect that and we want to, of course, set an example for our boys. Joe went before us but this doesn’t mean that Joe went and we’re going to stay here on this earth forever. We’re also going to go to “death” but we’re going to see him again.
G: You know one of the things that I get from you a lot from the book and everything is you live in reality. You live with what is.
J: You have to.
G: There are many, many people out there that are not living in reality right now and maybe they’re not ready to yet. But there’s a peace in reality.
J: Yes and what’s really important, you’ve just mentioned a very important point that I’ve seen through other people, other couples who are so struggling, and that is all of us have such a different time line as far as recovery. I was talking to a group Monday night and the woman had lost her child 28 years ago and when she asked me when I lost Joe, she couldn’t believe it. She said, “It’s been so recent.” And, yes, it has, and even at Joe’s funeral, I remember giving while we were in our church, sharing with them that Joe has gone but you know God is the one who was saying the number of his days. I didn’t have control over that. Someone much bigger than I did. And our job is to really make sure that we end up in heaven and follow the steps to do that because my Joe had, when he was 17, in our faith, in the Christian faith, he accepted Christ as his savior as the Bible indicates to do so, so when he died, I had that incredible peace knowing where my Joe was because he had taken those steps.
G: And for you, that works. For some of our audience, it may not work, but there may be people out there who hear this and it will work, and the main thing we want to say here today is whatever you’re doing and how you’re doing it – forgiveness, surrender, those kinds of things whether it’s to a Christian God, or a Muslim God, a Jewish God, whoever you’re doing that to, I think it’s an important thing. What a wonderful thing you’re telling us here. We need to come up on break now, and I’m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley. Please stay tuned to hear more from my guest, Jan Eckles, Joe’s mom, and author of Trials of Today, Treasures for Tomorrow. CDs can be purchased for our show from www.compassionatefriends.org website or by calling our toll-free number, 866-964-4000. Please feel free to join our show today by calling 866-369-3742. I’m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley. Please stay tuned.
Welcome back to Healing the Grieving Heart. I’m your host Dr. Gloria Horsley with my guest today Jan Eckles, motivational speaker and author of Trials of Today, Treasures for Tomorrow. Jan’s faced a tremendous amount of adversity including blindness, marital infidelity, and the murder of her son, Joe. She is giving us a lot of inspirational thoughts and ideas today and I’m glad that you’re tuned in and I hope that you’ll tell your friends to tune into the show. If you want to get a CD of our first ten shows, you can get it by going on The Compassionate Friends website and if you’d like to take part in our show today, our toll free number is 1-866-369-3742, and you can email me at gchorsley@aol.com about this show and upcoming shows. Well, Jan, I’ve got an email here and I wanted to read it to you. I was over in England last week and I was talking to a woman about the fact that you were going to be on the show and she shot me off an email. Her name is Mary and she’s from London, England, and she said:
Jan, My daughter had Hodgkin’s disease and I hung in with God. It was a terrible five years but ten years later my son was killed and I can’t get it out of my head that God’s punishing me. Didn’t you question your faith after your son was killed?
J: Actually, the questioning was for me, Gloria, how is my faith going to be now in the face of this unthinkable tragedy? Am I really going to go in God or feel guilty or say God couldn’t possibly exist after this happened to me because you have to remember up to this point, I was following the Lord. I was very active in church. I did all the things I should and then for this to happen, I just thought this isn’t fair.
G: Yeah, I think that’s what she is telling us, too, Mary, that she hung in with God for the five years her daughter had Hodgkin’s.
J: Sure and she already suffered one loss, a terrible loss, and she’s taking another one. So my resolution was that what wouldn’t be fair is for my Joe never to have been in my life. Possibly what would have been fair for me not to have ever known the love of a son. What would have been terribly unfair is for me not to have known God in his goodness. He took my Joe when he took him. Doesn’t matter the reason how. He took him when his days were over on this earth. He could have been 90. He was 19. That wasn’t my choice. The most important thing is that I love him. I have his memories, and I’m going to see him again. So for me to be able to question God and his doing, he says in the Bible, “Trust in me and lean not on your own understanding.” I’ve never found him to say, “Try to figure it out. Try to understand why. Try to figure me out.” He just says, “Trust in me.” So what I did is I made a conscious effort, Gloria, to say, “Okay, look, I’m going to trust you. Not in my feelings. Not in my emotions. I’m going to just not even worry about it. I’m going to trust you that when I wake up in the middle of the night and cannot believe that my Joe’s gone, I will trust you to take that pain from me because that’s what you promised.” And when you trust somebody, you kind of let it go. You take it from your heart and you give it to someone else, and that is what I did. So in order for me to answer the question, “Did I question my faith?,” I did not. I hung on to it even tighter and I drew closer to God and just thanked him for the awesome, awesome privilege of having my Joe.
G: What I gleaned from her email is that somehow she thinks she’s being punished. What is your thought on that? The idea that we would be punished by having someone die?
J: Someone asked me about my next book and I said, “Yeah, I would like to call this book, Lord, I’m not Job, I’m Jan” after losing my sight and losing Joe and all the things that came about. And the thing is, I don’t think that a series of adversity is an indication of punishment. I think the worst punishment for me to have is to say, “You know what, from now on Jan, you cannot have a relationship with God. You cannot have a relationship with Jesus.” That would be the ultimate punishment. But for me to still be able to hang on his promises and say, “It doesn’t have to be up to me. I don’t have to have all the answers. I don’t have to have the comfort on my own. I have Him to give me comfort. How could I think of being punished when I have that awesome gift that I was taking upon myself to open up and use to be able to get to all these different stages in my life?
G: And you certainly have had some stages with your blindness. Well, the surrender. I work with people who have been blind since birth and I find that they are very accepting because that’s who they are, but I found that working with people who were blind later on in life, some of them were quite bitter because they had had sight before and I think that maybe has a bit to do with having not had too much adversity in your life when you have a huge event. I think there’s a surrender that I hear from you. You have surrendered that Jan is in control of her world.
J: Oh, yes. And there’s a lot of freedom to that. And that doesn’t mean we’re irresponsible and thinking, “Okay, I’m not going to worry about anything. I’m just going to sit around the house and not worry.” That’s not what it means. I’m very diligent in trying to do and reach out to people and help them because that’s what I feel my heart is in because there are other people who also have gone through the same thing I have.
G: I love when you say that word, I want to say it again. There’s freedom in surrender. Believe it or not, there is absolute freedom out there in forgiveness, in surrender, in accepting what is. There’s a great deal of freedom.
J: Yes. And I think we can create our own prisons of anger, bitterness, resentment, and it’s a sad place to be. It’s a dark place to be. But God told me, personally through his word, that the truth will set you free.
G: Right. Absolutely. Know the truth and the truth will set you free. You know there’s a man named Lew Cox who works with a lot of people who have been involved with having their children murdered. He’s an advocate who goes to court with them. He’s going to be on my show in a few weeks. Because he’s had a daughter murdered, he says this: “Having a child murdered or having a child killed is like having another plate at the table all the time. It’s an unwanted visitor who’s been there. Do you leave the plate at the table or do you feed it?”
J: Exactly. What are you going to do with that?
G: Yes. It’s going to be there. That unwanted visitor is in your life. What do you do with it?
J: That’s right. That’s right. You know, when you lose a child, there are different aspects or different facets of it. When you lose a child in a car accident, you think, “Oh, you know if only, if only.” And when your child is killed in such a violent manner, you also have another aspect of the trial of the person who committed this.
G: And having the delay in between can just be horrendous.
J: Yeah. It is. It really is because you have to relive it all over again. So in a sense, I think it was a blessing for us that yes, he was found innocent according to man’s law, according to the justice of the land, but you don’t know how God is going to judge him. He may just forgive him. But for us, He really gave a good – I don’t want to say the word “good” – but a workable end to it so that we can begin our healing and begin to move forward without thinking, “Okay, is he still in jail?” Not that it was good that he was found innocent or it was good that he was not punished by it, but for us, for our healing purposes, for me it allowed me to move through and forgive and just live with the memories of our Joe, with the positive memories. It so makes me smile and warm my heart.
G: Which is one of the things I want to talk to you about is the sense of humor.
J: Oh, yes, that’s so important, and you know the one who taught me the sense of humor was my Joe himself. He had incredible wit and I just know what he would be saying now, “Come on now, Mom, you know where I’m at. Why are you crying?” It is sometimes the gift of laughter. We can’t forget the gift of laughter. I’ve heard a lady say to me once, she said, “Don’t be afraid of the peace that you feel even though you lost a child.” Because sometimes you feel guilty, it’s like, oh, I can’t have a good time anymore. I can’t possibly enjoy life again because you know what, I’m a mother who lost a child. That is so damaging. No. Joe loves to laugh and Joe’s laughing in heaven right now.
G: I like that. Don’t be afraid to enjoy the peace that you feel at times because at some times you will, and you do feel guilty when you start out the first loss. We’ve talked about that before on the show. How the first time you hear yourself laugh, it’s like oh, my gosh, am I forgetting? Is this okay?
J: And then moments when you see a family with all their children, you think, “Oh, I only have two now. I used to have three.” Goodness, I thank the Lord I still have two. Thank you that I still have a husband who loves me. I still have family. I still have friends I can reach out to and I can help. So it depends, I guess, on what you focus on.
G: The other thing I’m hearing – people that you can help. It’s so wonderful that you go around and I would tell people to get your book, it’s amazing, Trials of Today, Treasures for Tomorrow. You’ve got lovely pictures in there but you also talk so candidly about your blindness and how you get around at the airport, and I guess I should ask you the number one question, “how do you get your makeup on?”
J: Oh, that is so funny. We had done a TV show in Miami a couple of months back, and the producer came up to me and said, “Could I ask you a question? Could I send some cameras to your home and just follow you in doing all the work, you know, the work I do out of my home, and including putting your makeup on?” I thought, “Oh, now that’s a strange question.” I said, “Okay, no problem.” So when the cameraman came, I said, “Okay, I’ll make a deal with you. You can show me before I put on my makeup but only side shots. Don’t you show me front wards.” See how vanity plays a part. So there he was with the cameras while I was putting on my makeup, and I do it on my desk while I have my headset on listening to something because obviously I don’t need a mirror. So the show came out pretty well. There I am cooking and putting on my makeup, and it’s really simpler than you think. I just take the eyeliner and find my eyelashes and one line and there I go.
G: Well, you’re really lovely and hopefully people will get the book and see you and that darling family you’ve got. They’re really a beautiful family.
J: And I want to mention, too, if you don’t mind, that the proceeds from the sale of the book goes to a scholarship that we established in Joe’s memory.
G: Oh, that’s wonderful. And I love to hear those things about what you’ve done for him in his memory. When we come back from break, let’s talk a little bit about what you’ve done for him and about your – is it a scholarship you’ve done?
J: Yes. A scholarship.
G: And also I want to ask you. This is going to be our final break and when we come back I’d like to know if there’s anything that we’ve missed that you want to talk about. So it’s time for our final break and stay tuned for more comments and advice from our guest and to hear about next week’s very special topic and guest. My guest today is Jan Eckles, author of Trials of Today, Treasures for Tomorrow. Please stay tuned. I’m Dr. Gloria Horsley.
Welcome back to Healing the Grieving Heart. I’m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley, and my guest today is Jan Eckles, motivational speaker and author of Trials of Today, Treasures for Tomorrow. Jan is taking us today on a journey through the fires that forged her including blindness, marital infidelity and the murder of her son, Joe. The CDs for this show can be purchased by going to www.compassionatefriends.org website or by calling the toll-free number, 866-964-4000. You can also email me at gchorsley@aol.com. And I shouldn’t say this show because it’s the first ten shows and in the next series, we’ll be having this show on. But you can also go to the archives of The Compassionate Friends and VoiceAmerica at any time to hear this or any other shows. Well, Jan, before break I asked you if you felt we missed any important points but before we talk about that, we have a caller and it’s Brenda from Ohio. Brenda, are you there?
B: Yes. I am.
G: Welcome to the show and thanks for calling in.
B: Thank you.
G: Did you have a question for Jan or I?
B: Actually, I just want to make a comment. I’m Brenda Nicks and Jan and I have met kind of through email because we’re both authors but I have read her book and have found it to be inspiring and fortunately, I have not had to suffer through the tragedy of losing a child and I can’t even imagine the kind of pain that must bear, but just was so interested in Jan’s topic and the way she was so candid and positive in presenting it that I actually used the book as a gift to help somebody else through their grief journey.
J: Oh, Brenda. That is so nice. I find that that happens quite a bit where people tell me, “My friend is going through a hard time. Your book will help him.” And you can’t imagine what a blessing that is to me, Brenda. Thank you. It really, really is.
B: Well, you’re talking about the makeup issue. That was always my curiosity, too.
G: Jan said in her book that that was the most asked question so I had to ask her the most asked.
J: Of course, unless I go to speak to some schools or little children, they say, “How do you eat ice cream?” That is so, so precious. I thank you so much for your support, Brenda. What a delight it is that you called in.
B: Well, I’m listening. I wanted to hear this interview and I’m listening and I so appreciate hearing your voice and hearing what you have to share and the way you answer questions. I do recommend your book and I just hope that as authors we can meet some day.
J: Absolutely, we will. You know that is a true, true compliment because Brenda – we’re not just talking to an author, she is an extremely accomplished author. She has written books as an expert on parenting.
G: What’s your last name, Brenda, what’s your book?
B: Oh, it’s Brenda Nicks and my book is Parenting Power in the Early Years so it’s to help those parents in those first five years face the challenges of raising children, but I would just like to suggest with death that affects the family to remember there’s kids who are left behind. Those kids who are the survivors and often they feel a sense of survival guilt.
G: Well, check our website and look at the shows we’ve had on. We’ve had quite a few siblings on so if you have anybody that needs some help with sibling, have them check into our archive sites on The Compassionate Friends because I’ve interviewed quite a few siblings. That’s my daughter’s expertise. She teaches at Columbia on sibling loss. So we’re working on it, I know, she calls them the forgotten mourners.
B: Yeah, that’s a good way to put it.
G: Well listen Brenda, thanks so much for calling in and we appreciate it and take care and good luck with your book.
J: Thank you, Brenda.
G: So Jan I wanted to talk a little bit before the show ends about what you’re doing, about your scholarship and your motivational speaking. I think maybe you do some interpreting, too? Is that right?
J: I do. As a profession, I am a court certified speech interpreter. What I do basically is I’m a Spanish court interpreter and I work out of my home. I’m able to interpret court proceedings so I’m very familiar with courts. That is what I do as a “job.” But my passion and what I absolutely love to do is to speak and give inspirational talks and messages to different groups, different corporations. Many times I visit them because what they do is they impart a lot of knowledge, technique, information; and I say knowledge can fill your mind but inspiration will put it into action so they bring me in to give a talk to let them know that yes, you can do it, and you can overcome difficulties, and you can move forward no matter what you face. I also write. I’m writing articles for magazines which is another honor that I have because when the articles appear in magazines, of course, it reaches a lot more people in greater numbers and a few of them have been accepted in national magazines. I write for local ones as well.
G: And tell us about your website. You have an award-winning website.
J: Oh, my website. Oh my goodness. I was so thrilled.
G: And tell us how to get it.
J: Okay, my website, the name is www.janeckles.com. And you can get my book there, too. You can order it from there or you can email me. There’s my email on the website, janeckles.com, and recently I was just thrilled to learn that Writer’s Digest Magazine, which is the largest writer’s magazine in the nation, had chosen the top ten websites for writers and they chose mine as number 7, so I was just thrilled and I thought, “Not bad for a blind woman, right?
G: Well, not bad for anybody. You are fabulous. You are a fabulous inspiration and I just want to say before we close the show, I just really admire your husband, too. In reading the book, you two are just an amazing couple. I just think you’re an inspiration to everyone and what you’ve been through and the way you’ve handled it. Blessings to your two boys, too. Jason and Jeff, right?
J: Jason and Jeff, my three Js.
G: And tell them to listen to some of the sibling things on. They might be interested in hearing some of the show about siblings and other siblings and how they’ve dealt with it because they certainly have their own issues. So it’s time anyway for us to close our show today, and I wanted to thank Jan Eckles who is my very, very special guest, motivational speaker and author of Trials of Today, Treasures for Tomorrow, and Joe’s mom.
J: You can also get it at amazon.com.
G: Oh, amazon.com, too, great, okay. And do get that book. It’s a wonderful book and Jan is very candid. And please stay tuned again next week when my guest will be Iris and Joe Lawley who will join us from Coventry, England. The Lawleys will discuss the death of their son Keith in 1968 and their meeting with Simon Stephens, assistant chaplain at the Coventry & Warwickshire Hospital in Coventry, England. From this fortuitous meeting began The Compassionate Friends, the largest non profit self-help bereavement organization in the world. This show is archived on www.Health.VoiceAmerica.com as well as www.compassionatefriends.com website. You can get CDs of this show by going to The Compassionate Friends website and you can also email me at gchorsley@aol.com regarding the CDs. This show is on Thursday at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time, 12:00 Eastern Time, and for more of Healing the Grieving Heart, a show of hope and renewal and support, remember, that others have been there before you and made it and so can you. And you need not walk alone. And thank you for listening to the show. And the internet is a wonderful place because again, these shows are all archived and you can hear more of Jan Eckles any time of day or night anywhere in the world. Thanks for tuning in. I’m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley.