Is There Life After Loss? What It Means to Carry the Ones You’ve Lost in Your Heart

I saw 12 other people doing incredible work for their hearts and that. And, and midway through that weekend, I was asking my dad for a job with grief recovery. And I, I returned back from that weekend, putting in my two weeks at this other seven year, long, seven year long career path that I was on, that I, that I could have done really well at. But, but that weekend was so powerful.

I knew that my calling was to continue my dad's legacy, continue this work, continue the grief recovery method, and move forward bringing this to more people. I am so lucky that in that training, I met Arturo Albin. It's also a little known fact because this work is confidential that Arturo ended up being paired with Ashley, my wife. And she was Ashley's trusted partner.

And I know how fondly Ashley speaks of Arturo to this day because what a kind, gentle, good listening person Arturo was. You know, and that allowed her to do really amazing work there. I also met his incredible partner. I moved.

Thank you. Absolutely. Absolutely. And don't worry, I'll, I'll, I'll let you talk here in a second, Arturo.

But I just again, it was such a pivotal, pivotal, pivotal moment of my life to have you and your partner at the time, Alejandra, who's just such an incredible human being. I'm sure we're going to talk about her here in this conversation. But again, I just had these wonderful people in that first training. And little did I know at the time, but Arturo had already been to a certification, and it was so impactful for him.

He was on track to bring this method to Mexico. You know, and he, I'm going to let him speak on that here in a second. But, but again, it all started way back there for me. And Arturo was a key part of that in that first weekend.

And then we started training together because he was on track to kind of bring this to Mexico. And I was on track to kind of eventually take over the grief recovery institute. So we started training again in various other cities, San Diego, had a great experience there with Arturo. But, but he was right there on the ground floor with my kind of progression in this.

And I'm so glad that he was. And he still is. He is our current director of the grief recovery method in Mexico. He is home-based as Mexico City.

So anyway, without any further ado, Arturo, thank you so much for being here. It's an honor to have you on the podcast, my friend. I'm, I feel honored. Part of my, the excitement, excitement, I have been here that it's also that it's a way to honor two very dear friends that when I started journey, you dad and Russell.

That was my first, when I first met someone that could make sense of grief bring it from this nebulos thing that I didn't know much about to something that made sense. Grief is normal natural. What we do with grief out of not knowing what to do is not natural. And that's that can be devastating.

So when I, when I, when I was in my first training with Russell, I wanted to change. I was happy as an, I'm an industrial engineer by profession. But it was making so much sense that I wanted to do something to help others. I decided this was to be what I wanted to do professionally for the rest of my life.

And after three years of being an engineer technical, I switched to, to, to the most human activity that, that you get to engage, which is pain, emotional pain is, it's at the core of the person. And when someone is vulnerable at its most vulnerable, to have the tools, to be able to share the tools so that the day he, she can regain life and start a new relationship with life with him herself. I decided I wanted to do this for the rest of my life. I make a joke when I'm introducing the method.

I used to be an industrial engineer. Now I, I, I am an emotional engineer because this is a method which if you follow, it gets you to a result. And the result is life in a, in a more painful way. Again, what pain, what grief, robs, robs us, this kind of work gives it back.

And when I, when I speak out helping people in pain, I have been the first one to, to be helped by what that I learned with Drossel, with John, with you, called, and actually in, in, in, in the desert, in, in, in Palm Springs, then the next time I saw you was in San Diego. And after San Diego, we went to Sherman Oaks to the institute. And that was my fourth training. I wasn't sure, but I was not, I was surprised that I was not the trainee, but the, John, Russell and you, set us Alejandra, who was my wife.

She died nine years ago. And, and me, you were training us by training you in the, in the method. So I felt like I was going to teach theology to the Pope. And, midways through the sessions, I realized that the aim was not like a professional exam to see if you guys approved of what we were doing.

You were helping me approve me so that I knew that I could do it. I, I'm so grateful. I'm so honored to, to have been trained by, by you three guys. And, uh, I was certified by Russell in 2009.

June 1st, I remember the date because it's my oldest daughter, birthday. And, uh, in February 2011, is when, when, when we were at, at the desert. So, so, John used to say that he didn't know he was going to be so thankful that his intuition led him to go over there, dead of, of his son. And, uh, be able to, to, to help so many people.

And it was so rewarding for, rewarding for him. I, I can still hear him in my, in my mind, because this change in career has been so rewarding for me. I wouldn't have it otherwise. I'm, I'm the luckiest person that I was able to switch and to start on this path.

Yeah. Well, and thank you for, for bringing that up, Arturo, because I, you know, we, we take calls very often. Um, just, you know, exploration calls on looking at certification. And I think a lot of people like yourself, like me, either find the method and the, the method is so overwhelming and you fall in love with the method that you then want to pursue it.

And then other people sometimes are before even the method, they know they need to change professionally or, or kind of what their life's calling will be. And we're kind of in the running because they find us and they, uh, you know, and then we have that conversation on the call, you know, about what that may look like, switching gears and doing this or doing this part time or full time or, you know, what, so I think it's, it's a good thing to talk about because it's very common for us to be on calls with people where for whatever reason they are feeling called to make a shift in their life and, and look at doing a different type of work, right? And I love, I, I've, I've never heard you put it that way. Um, you know, you went from a, uh, an, uh, engineer, uh, what was an industrial, industrial engineer?

Industrial engineer. Um, in, uh, yeah. Two, two, an emotional engineer, right? An industrial engineer to an emotional engineer.

I, I love that. That is a very, very, very large leap, right? Because we were talking about obviously engineering quite a bit of the intellectual and then you come in a grief recovery and we say, Hey, Hey, you know, that whole intellectual part of you that has earned you money that has got you accolades, that got you paths on the back, put that on hold right now because it's not serving you in this emotional realm, right? And, and we're asking you go deep down here into the emotional work and, and put on holding intellectual.

So bravo to you for be able to pull that off because I have seen other engineers have trouble doing that, you know, because this is more familiar. Um, but again, we have people from all different professions and walks of life that, again, either add this into their work or full on just move over to this. So, it is possible. It, and it is a very kind of, uh, regular thing that happens for us when we're on calls as people who are, who are looking for a new calling.

So I love to hear how rewarding it was for you. Um, your case is unique in that, you know, you were traveling from Mexico City back and forth for training with Russell and my dad and, and with me and, and that and your goal was to bring it deeper into, uh, Mexico, right? And you have. And so would you tell us a little bit about that experience?

How was it taking this method that was, you know, relatively known in the United States, at least a book attached to this method, uh, for, for quite a long time? Uh, and then, you know, talking to people who have probably never heard of this, right? And we're, and you're, and thank you, by the way, for all the translation work you have done over the, the years on, on the books and the formats, you know, thank you, thank you, thank you for that because you really, for anyone listening who's a specialist, especially those that, uh, are Spanish speakers that help people with this method in Spanish. Um, our, uh, just has done a tremendous amount of work to make that easier for, for Spanish speakers to access this work.

So thank you from, from all of us on, on all those efforts and your whole team there, uh, you know, throughout the years. Thank, thank you and them. So can you tell us a little bit about how, how it was bringing this service to grief, uh, to Mexico, the grief recovery method to Mexico? Sure.

Uh, it was a series of events that, that, that, uh, uh, when I look back, how did I get to grief recovery? And, uh, I separated and divorced from my first wife in 2001. And in 2002, I got a job based in, in, in, in, uh, Oxnard in California. And, uh, had I not been separated, I would have stayed in Mexico with my family, but, uh, my daughter's living with my ex-wife, I was free to do it.

And it was the way in which I could, keep providing from my family, even if, from, from afar. And, uh, in California, I, uh, in, in, in church, we were invited to the bereavement group. And my intuition said, you have to accept that. And I did.

And we, we just, we used to go in pairs to the people that, that were having the dead relative services in the parish. And I started to realize, I, like more of my volunteer job at this stage in my life than my full-time job. And, uh, Monsanto, but the company I was working for, and they told me, we, we're going to bring the system we are working on, to San Luis to our headquarters. And if you stay to, to the end, with the system we are working on, we are going to give you a very generous, magnification.

So, so I did, uh, at first I was, I was, afraid looking for another job in Monsanto, but then I realized, hey, this is my opportunity to go back to Mexico and move into this new area of, uh, helping people with grief. So I decided to not get another job, come back to Mexico and see what I could do. I started studying phanatology. Uh, we don't have the legal, the legal framework to do hospice work in Mexico.

So that was one of the possibilities I was thinking on. Uh, I had seen grief recovery, the, the page. But, uh, I'm skeptical. They promised that if I trained for four days, I was, I would be able to help anyone with, uh, any pain, emotional pain they had.

And I didn't believe it. Yep. So I came back to Mexico and a friend recommended the grief recovery. She wanted to get certified, but she'd been speaking English.

So she asked me, why don't you get certified and help me with my project here in Mexico. So for being an unbeliever instead of driving 50 miles from where I lived, I had to fly all the way from Mexico City. And, uh, as I told you, when I trained with Russell, it don't on me. This is it.

This is what I was looking for. How quickly, how quickly did you know that? So, so, so the book, the, uh, Reef Recovery Manual was translated. I didn't like the translation very much.

So I asked if, if, if I could translate it and, uh, you guys were so naive that you let me do it. So now I love the translation. Uh, I have, Grace was, Grace Mark is was working with me at the time and she helped a lot. Uh, so did Alejandra.

And, and I think we got a very nice translation. Then we I continued with, with, uh, when children grieve another book that is already translated. And, I really finished now. I'm in the final check.

And, uh, the next book that, uh, is going to come out, called you have a big role is, grieve recovery when a pet dies. And, uh, I finished the translation of that as well. It's almost ready. So I think in, in six months, we might be having that book also.

So, beautiful translating, translating for, I tried not, not to be just for Mexico. When I started, uh, the idea was Mexico and the US was the first area. They, they Spanish people speaking people in Mexico and the US. But as we advanced, uh, Russell and, and, and John started to give me more, more room to work and they ended up saying, a, anything that it's in Spanish, we can rely on you.

So, so, I tried to make the, the, the language as new, neutral as possible, uh, which is impossible because, yeah, every country, even different states have different words. So, trying to make, uh, translation that, that, that, that, that's more universal has been a challenge which has been somewhat achieved. There, there, obviously there are people that film my language, my Spanish language, the day can understand. It's kind of foreign for, for the usual, the way you should speak.

Which is, when you're dealing with, with grief, language is very important. So, so that's one of the things that I wish it could be, it could be done more universal, but this is what we have been able to do, and I'm very proud of it. Now, was the, were the people in Mexico going to accept the proof recovery? I was pretty sure that, yes, okay.

But, uh, there are some differences, not so much in Mexico, I think, because being part of the North American continent, we are three countries in the North American country, Canada, the US, and Mexico. We are very influenced by the US in, in our way. Have I found differences? Yes, for example, in, when, when you are teaching a certification, when you are working with, with, with, uh, rivers, we offer a lot of herbs.

Those come easy to me. I have trained some people that are working in Spain, and, uh, it's too touchy for them. They don't like the hugs. So, they have to find a way to be in contact, hard to heart, without this wonderful tool that is the touch, the hug.

Does it work? Yes, it works so well that we can do it even online. The, the, the, the hearts don't have to be together. They have to be at the same pace, but they don't have to be together so that the healing process occurs.

So, their challenges, there will continue to be challenges. My hope is in the US, the agriculture method is better known. It's, it's, it's, it's going on. In the Spanish speaking communities, we have a lot less.

So, when I leave this world, I want to start an avalanche that keeps rolling after I'm not there anymore. And I'm in a hurry because I don't have that much time. This year I will be 70, so I don't know. Maybe more?

Probably less, but the, but in 10 years by the time I'm 80, I don't think I will be able to, to continue. I might. By then, I want to, the green food covering method to be my legacy for the Spanish speaking community in this world. That's my aim.

I love it. I love it. So, you have been, you've been running the institute there now for how many years? From 2011.

So, it's 14? Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah. It will be 15 this year.

That's 15 because it was February. Okay, okay. So, 15. And you, basically, you, you work, and again, you, like we do in the US, you have certification trainings and you do them online.

Are you doing in person as well this year? Are you just doing online or were you at with that? We are doing some in some in person. Okay.

There have been two international conference that that I was able to go to. One was in 2016, the other in 2020, 2018. And the, on the second, I don't know if you remember, Adriana Curcio, Mexican lady that went to the conference. Yeah.

She is my partner now. Today, she started a new training with six, six people in Monterey, in person. Yes, yesterday. So, while we're speaking, yeah, the grief recovery is going on.

I love that. I'm so proud of the work I don't, and I'm so thankful that you have supported me and let me do these life-changing work. Yeah, no, that's great. We just got done with the training last weekend.

Right. And so, again, it's just this constant this constant thing where heart-centered people that want to help other people find us and they do, sometimes they need to do more of their own work before they're ready to go, sometimes they come and they're ready to help others. Again, there's both personal work we need to do to be effective at this. And then there's things we need to learn at how to, how to carry this message and be efficient and helpful for others.

So, I love that. I love that. Right now, you guys are training people to take this out there. And the website is metato-grefrecovery.com.

Is that right? That's right. Okay. So, we'll for sure link that in the description and the show notes below this, this video if you're watching on YouTube, if you're listening on Podbean or any other app, we'll make sure to get that link there for them.

Moving from that, in our pre-interview, you talked about something that really just was very inspirational to me about just big picture, what the method has allowed you to do in life. You know, 70 years old, you are a wise man, and you have had a lot of experience out there in the world. And so, what is the big takeaway for grief recovery for you Arturo? I don't cease to be amazed by how powerful this method is to recover from any type of grief.

And I'm convinced that there's nothing that a human cannot recover from. But another thing that has been key in my life in this years, I have been able to work with this. Knowing that I have the tools to recover from anything has gifted me with the possibility to embrace life to the fullest, even if I am afraid of being hurt again. There are two main losses, I have several, of course, but the two main losses that shaped me are my two marriages that I have lost.

The first one was divorce. To a wonderful woman, we stopped loving each other, our marriage died, but not always, but with this work, my admiration for her returned. I'm very proud to have been his husband. I love the relationship she has with my two daughters.

The three of them are richer because of that relationship, and I'm so happy and proud of that. But for me, it was when I was divorcing, I didn't know what to do with the pain. I felt like I lived with the mental. It's my black age.

Everything was black. I didn't feel any joy. I was breathing and eating and walking, but I was dead, dead inside. And I had no hope.

I was lucky. Without knowing what I was doing, I used some of the tools of three reflexories, and after a couple of years, I had solved most of my issues with my first wife. Now that I have the tools, I see what I did, but I didn't buy intuition. I got married again.

She got involved also. I pulled her and we were partners in graphic covering, and she died in 2016. At the beginning of the year, that was my second harvest loss. I'm lucky.

Life has been good to me, and now I'm in another relationship. I have been seven years with my new partner. Knowing that I have the tools, I don't want to, but I know that where I washete, the eye, or we'll separate, I can recover. That knowledge allows me to jump into the new relationship.

Even if it can end, well, even the best of the relationships to end with pain. One of the partners dies or separation, but I feel having these tools allows me to embrace life fully. Give it my all, and enjoy the benefits of a plenty of full life. I start to understand Spanish, but I'm better in English.

It's this year. Me too. No, that's so important for us to remind everyone listening, which is number one, one of the things I heard there is one of the most devastating losses you had was a divorce. So many people are grieving things other than just death of someone.

If you go to other places that, quote, unquote, specialize in grief, they won't even let you in the door unless you're heartbroken over the death of someone. We got to change that in society. You're closing off too many people. You're shutting the door.

You're not letting the people in that should be helped, which is grief is about 40 different life events that you can have that produce feelings of unfinished emotional pain. Yes, of course, death is the massive one, and we help people every day with someone who has died. Just because we're talking about these other losses is not minimizing that loss or dishonoring that or anything like that. But again, time after time, we have guests on this podcast like you are, that said, I lived the life of darkness.

I could feel no joy. I could feel no happiness coming off of my divorce. That is absolutely 100% a massive grief event. So I am so grateful that my dad and Russell and all these great people that came before us, Nancy Martin, like all these people I could think of, Lois Hall, like all these amazing pop pioneers of this work, they all understood a broken heart is a broken heart.

And there are different circumstances that can bring that up. But you can help people with all of those different things through the lens of grief, looking at it through unresolved grief and looking at it through helping them get emotionally complete with what is unfinished. And the other thing that you mentioned there, which I love and I just want people to hear again, is when we have unresolved grief and we don't know how to recover from that, we do not open our heart very often and we're not willing to explore or open our arms to a new relationship. I can't tell you how many people who are living life single, not because they want to, but because they feel like they don't have another choice, because the breakup of the relationship before that, again, either through a divorce or a death, is so painful and so unfinished still to this day, that that unresolved grief is robbing them of the opportunity to open their heart once again.

And so like what Arturo what you said I just love, which is when you have tools, when you have a roadmap, when you have a compass on how to deal with your heartbreak, it's not like that negates or shuts the door to future heartbreak. We know more heartbreak is in the store for you and for me, right? That's just how life plays out. But the beauty of these tools are that I know and you know that we will be okay, no matter what loss and hurt and pain is ahead of us because we have tools to help us heal from those things, right?

And that is such a gift and that allows you and me to live life to the fullest and approach new things and experience new things and have new relationships because we know we're going to be okay even though we know grief is down the road. So thank you for telling us about that too. I love that. Thank you.

Yeah. I mentioned that the graphic recovery for Petlos book is coming on in Spanish. I think it's very important. A lot of people have pets and don't seem to grieve so much when they lose them and that's okay.

But there are a part of the population that their heart really gets involved with the pet and one of the things that pains me is see how important grief is minimized and that's a field that can be minimized very much. How can I go and share my pain for losing a cat, a dog, a trantula and a wana. When someone lost their wife, their husband, when loss that I share with with a young, he lost your brother, his son, I think four or five days after he was born, I don't remember how much. I lost his son in the gestational when my wife was pregnant.

I used to minimize that pain. I thought that's nothing. You know the kid who when it happened to me very naively surprised me how deep the pain was. So deep that I forgot about him.

After two weeks of intense pain, I just forgot about him for 20 years. Then I realized I have not talked with my son and I was able to bring him back to my life. For some people the pet is that it's a big pain, hurt, grief, grief and they don't know how to do with it and they don't feel they can come to a group and recover. How dare they?

If it's only an animal, they had no sign when it loves, it loves. We don't have three metaphorical hearts and I have this small heart for the things that they are material and you can recover the material things a little bit bigger for animals because they are alive and one for people. It's ridiculous. We only have one heart and we need to be able to recover from whatever pain we have.

So I'm very excited about the pet book. The grief recovery for the pet book and I got to know you even better in that book because I love the way you open your heart and and share not only your losses for the pets but your life as well. I have been able to know John and Russell from the previous book, previous books but that brought me the little guy in chapter 13 in the manual who broke a window to a pet owner that has lost several pets and when someone dies, when my mom died, she jumped from her from her house where she used to live into my heart and she left a big hole in my heart. That's one of the holes that I carry with me all the time with Joey and Ben Proud, my ex-wife Alejandra, my mom, my dad, my son, they moved into my heart.

I talk with them all the time. It's not a surgery, it's not that they are alive. My love for them is alive and I'm so proud to carry them, to be able to bring them and enjoy but I have such a meaningful relationship with them. I don't have pets in my pantheon but I know you do and I'm sure you carry them as well.

I do. And again, just what you just said, do you let me ask you this? Do you think you would have the tools and skills to have these people live in your heart to have a relationship, to have that love be alive and active if you didn't have grief recovery? Or would you not be okay?

Yeah. No, this is a gift from gift recovery. You can let go of the knife transmersing you, the pain of the knife transmersing you, and keep the love alive. And keep some natural pain.

Of course I've missed them. That's normal, that's passing, that's what the problem. Yeah, that's not the overwhelming debilitating stuff that so many of us feel when we are unresolved with our grief, unfinished with that relationship that ended. I called them sweet tears.

There are some tears that can't drain you of life. And sometimes when my eyes get red remembering them, it's sweet tears. It's with a big smile, with my heart smiling with them. And this is a gift if recovery has given me.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I want to thank you. We're kind of, we're kind of at that time. But again, Arturo, on behalf of my father of Russell and all those that came before me, I want to thank you.

You have been such an incredible steward of this work. I know you will in the future. I want to just thank you on behalf of all the people you train that are out there helping people that I've never got to meet. Thank you.

And I look forward to the next conversation whenever that is with you. Can I add just a little bit more? Of course. Yes.

I love the work. Ashley and you are doing. Griffith Covery is how it was designed. But the changes you have made to be able to reach more people, the fact that we can do it online in a safe way, join Russell and me.

We are from the previous century. Most of my life I was in the previous century. Having you, having Ashley, having Laura Jack, pushing and forcing and allowing us to reach people that we wouldn't reach, I so admire you. I'm so thankful and it's a whole other dimension that you have brought.

Thank you. Oh, thank you. That means a lot. I appreciate that, Arturo.

I love you very much, sir. Yeah. And so for anyone that's listening, you know, again, there's a couple of options in terms of if you are in Mexico or South America or Spain, if you are a Spanish speaker and would prefer to do this work in Spanish, you got to get a hold of Arturo, right? Metato grief recovery, metato grief recovery, dot com.

We'll put we'll put a link in there. That's Arturo site. That is the the exact same time tested certification training we offer in the US. It is just done in Spanish.

And you will have all the materials in Spanish. And so if you are interested in getting trained in Spanish and becoming a specialist, please, please get a hold of Arturo. And again, Arturo, we're going to have to do this again sometime soon. Okay, and we'll talk about other things, but but I appreciate your time and I appreciate you being a part of this movement.

And thank you again for opening up to our audience about your life and again, professionally what you've done with this as well. Okay. Thank you. I love you.

Give me a few cuts to Ashley and the whole team. I will do that for sure. And you do the same to your team as well and send my love to everybody there as well. Okay, bud.

Thanks. Okay. Thank you. And for everybody listening, please like and subscribe.

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And again, until next time, thank you for listening to the Feel Free Again podcast. Take care.