Episode 1312: Interview with Carole J. Sluski about Her journey through Grief

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining us on episode 1,312 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:08] Carole Sluski: I'm Carol Sluski. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by you, your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your. Having the ability to find a path to healing after this grief is your key.

[00:00:38] And one way to be inspired to do this is to listen to this The Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my new friend Scott.

[00:00:59] Because I got, as I started to live and I realized, um, that I needed to, to help myself, and that came through, I, I truly believed that the Holy Spirit, uh, came to me and, and put those thoughts into me, those feeling. Now you have to, you have to start working on yourself. You have to get out there and start working again.

[00:00:59] Scott Maderer: [00:01:00] Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true caller. In the inspired Stewardship podcast, you will learn to invest in. Invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:30] In this podcast episode I interview Carol Sluski. Carol shares with you her journey through loss and grief. Carol also shares what she learned that can help you process your own emotions, and I also ask Carol to share with you how you can finally learn to. One reason I like to bring you great interviews like the one you're gonna hear today is because of the power in learning from others.

[00:01:56] Another great way to learn from others is through reading books. [00:02:00] But if you're like most people today, you find it hard to find the time to sit down and read, and that's why today's podcast is brought to you by Audible. Go to inspired stewardship.com/audible to sign up and you can get a 30 day free trial.

[00:02:16] There's over 180,000 titles to choose from, and instead of reading, you can listen your way to learn from some of the greatest minds out there. That's inspired stewardship.com/audible to get your free trial and listen to great books the same way you're listening to this podcast. Carol Slosky is a mother of two daughters and a grandmother of two granddaughters, but she is also a victim of the worst loss a person could have.

[00:02:44] She is a parent who lost her child and experienced mental and physical pain and grief through devotion and faith. She reached out to God for help to survive. She currently resides in Florida with her husband, Dr. Dennis Lusk, and after 30 years, [00:03:00] Carol had a calling to share her journey of learning how to live out life with peace and wellbeing.

[00:03:05] Her story will make you cry, laugh, connect, understand, learn, sympathize, appreciate, and finally believe in hope Over the curse of years, she gathered her expertise, knowledge, and talent, and put it to use for a recovery and to the benefit of others. She. Professionally. Carol is an accomplished entrepreneur in business and in the creative arts.

[00:03:26] Welcome to the show, Carol.

[00:03:28] Carole Sluski: Thank you very much, and especially for inviting me to be your guest.

[00:03:32] Scott Maderer: Absolutely. I'm looking forward to it today and you've got a good message to share with the listeners. We talked a little bit in the intro about your life and your history and what brought you to this point.

[00:03:48] But can you unpack a little bit more for folks about your journey and what brought you to the point of writing the book 30 and putting it out there into the

[00:03:58] Carole Sluski: world? [00:04:00] Yeah. First of all, the Title 30 is very special to me because in, if you read the book, there's a lot of things that happened with the number 30.

[00:04:12] And I'll share the one that probably was the biggest is that when I had to pick up my daughter's burial place in the Masum I selected one that I liked because it was over the alt. And when we got into the office and I signed the papers, to my surprise, it was Crip number 30. So that was really, that's only one of many thirties in the book.

[00:04:37] So that that's why I named it. And all I could tell you is the, it's been 30 years right now it's actually 31, but when I started writing the book, it was 30. That I had into my daughter's death, that she was no longer here on earth. She was deceased. So I [00:05:00] spent 30 years of healing, accepting of grieving until I learned that I could get better.

[00:05:11] I could live again. I could become happy, actually happy. And that was a long road, a very long road for. During those 30 years when you stop and you think back on your long life for what, what happened in the last year for one year. And then when I got to the end of the 30th in the, into the 30th year that so much happened, so very much happened.

[00:05:39] The reason I wrote the book did not come into my head with a thought like, The first 20 years of her death I wouldn't have even thought I could ever write a book about what I was going through because I was going through a lot of heartache and a [00:06:00] lot of medical, a lot of medical issues. A lot of things happened to me medically.

[00:06:06] And I literally, my body literally broke down and it had to have come from grief because, The day that my daughter died, which was March the 19th, 1992, I was healthy. I was 30, I was 47 years old. I was getting married in two weeks to my second husband. I was divorced for a number of years and I met Jenny and we fell in love and we were getting married.

[00:06:37] And my daughter died two weeks before. So that was that was traumatic, but that wasn't really what made me sad filled with grief when she died. I wasn't worried about the wedding. I was worried about my [00:07:00] life without my daughter. That was the thing that I just had so much. Trying to grasp in the very beginning, but getting back to why I wrote the book is that probably the last 10 years between 20 and 30, I was realizing I was living a much better life than I had before that even though I was having medical problems.

[00:07:27] Oh my goodness. I was able to feel so good about so many new things that God put into my life and what was probably the most beneficial to me in what I'm trying to pass on. I'm here to pass on that. There is hope, but you have to have so much patience with yourself and you have to work so, so hard on.

[00:07:54] But you have to know the things you need to do to get better. So that's [00:08:00] when it really hit me and I said, you know what, Carol? You are experienced. I'm professionally a businesswoman, so I know what experienced is. It's when you know a lot about your product, when you know a lot about the what you're selling.

[00:08:18] And I was in sales and I. That I have a S story to pass on to people, moms and dads. And even if it's not your child, it's your sister or your brother or your husband or your wife, but you're severely in grief that what I had was the years behind me and the experiences and put in the book, I am not a doctor, I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm not a sociologist.

[00:08:48] I am not a psychologist. I'm not a nurse,

[00:08:57] I'm just a mother who lost a [00:09:00] child, went into severe depression, grieved her heart out to the point where she got cardiomyopathy, a heart disease, and my doctor, he couldn't find out why I got the disease. And I said, could it be. I had a broken heart. I read about the broken heart syndrome and he said very possible because you're non-ischemic, that means that they didn't know why I got the heart disease and I almost died with that.

[00:09:35] I almost died twice. And this is in the period of time that it's actually many years later that I. I got it probably around 23 or 24 years after Paula died. I got the cardiomyopathy. So with all that happening to me, I had a story to tell [00:10:00] because here I was alive. I wasn't dead, didn't die from it.

[00:10:06] Statistically, I found out I heard from a radio. On a local station that I listened to for many years, I'm not gonna mention his name, but he did a survey and his report was that within the first 10 years many mo moms, mothers die from the loss of a child, also reported, and he investigated on that, the severity and the amount of divorce.

[00:10:39] Between a mother and a father of a child that is deceased and that's the natural, has to be natural parents. I'm talking about the mom and dad and I haven't, I really wrote a little bit about that, that I figured out why, because I [00:11:00] was married, just, I got married two weeks after Paula died and.

[00:11:09] He actually turned out to be my bandaid. That's how I labeled my husband. He was so good to me and so caring, and he was part of my recovery and I believe that God put him into my life. He was introduced to me through my family who lived, my sister lived across the street from him, and he was at the time single of course.

[00:11:34] We met and that was it, but he was not Paula's father. What does that have to do with my recovery? I believe if he had been Paula's father, he may not have been able to give me what I needed, the support he gave me. Hope Danny [00:12:00] was my hope. It was because he did things for me to try to make me happy, and in turn, I knew I had to not go around looking like I was just crying or screaming alone.

[00:12:16] I used to go out in my car and take a drive around the block and scream. It's an example. I used to go to the cemetery by myself. Lay down in the front seat of the. And break down and cry because I couldn't cry all the time at home. Because it affected the other people, affected my other daughter and it, if

[00:12:38] Scott Maderer: it affected

[00:12:39] Carole Sluski: Danny.

[00:12:40] So I really looked to other people like I was doing good. And that's another thing about other people, the other people that I'll refer to will be your sibling. Your parents. Of course. I was [00:13:00] 47, so my mom, she was up in her years. My mother, I think is at least 26, 27 years older than me.

[00:13:08] So I had to deal with my mother. My mother, I couldn't even talk to her because my daughter's, her grandchild's death upset her. So I couldn't talk to her because she. Was so vulnerable and delicate herself. So the other people include your friends and of course your friends. They, you think they know you and you think you know them.

[00:13:43] But the bottom line is this, and I conferred this with other moms that have lost a child. They totally agree with. You do not have a clue about what the pain is of losing your child unless you lost [00:14:00] a child. Period. That's, there's no ifs, maybes, or whats, because the pain is so great that I don't even like to remember it.

[00:14:13] So what happened to me is all of that grief. That I had inside of me, broke me down one

[00:14:27] Scott Maderer: little bone,

[00:14:29] Carole Sluski: one little cell in my body after another,

[00:14:39] and like I said before, I'm still alive. I'm here. Basically, I'm pretty healthy according to what my doctors tell me. My last medical report I do have a defibrillator for my heart, and that is my little angel keeps helping me out. [00:15:00] My neurosurgeon, he wants to operate on my lumbar and replace the metal in there and straighten my back because, oh, by the.

[00:15:09] My one hip is higher than the other. I do have a curved spine from all of this. I'm putting that last surgery on hold because I think I might have to have something done to my cervical right now because I'm in a lot of pain on the left side and have had MRIs and the x-rays and what happened was there, one of my.

[00:15:36] The two disks I forget which number they are, but there was a spacer in there and that got loose. I must have twisted my neck or something. It was probably writing my book because I was moving my head from one side to the screen. So I probably did some damage after surgery. I still typed, I was still working on the book.

[00:15:58] So [00:16:00] all that being said, I'm. And I want you to know if you are listening to me and you lost a child, you buried your daughter, you buried your son, and you feel so helpless and you are wondering if this hurt and pain will never, will ever go away. I'm gonna tell you your sorrow and your. Will never go away, and it won't be for me either, but I've accepted that.

[00:16:44] But what has happened, and this is the big one, because I believed in God, I went to him.[00:17:00]

[00:17:00] Right when I found out she died

[00:17:07] and I asked him to help me

[00:17:20] because I had nowhere to go. And my thought of my dad came into me while I was in the hospital sitting, watching my daughter on the ventilator with tubes all over her body with some artificially pumping air oxygen into her body. She was dead. My daughter was dead. Her eyes were dilated. Oh my.

[00:17:55] She had no soul and I felt that I didn't feel her soul.

[00:17:59] Scott Maderer: Carol [00:18:00] you mentioned going to God at that moment when you began to learn this and I'm sure throughout the whole process of grieving over the. 30 years you were in that dialogue with God. Can you talk a little bit about your faith journey and how a lot of times when people are dealing with grief, we go through a lot of other emotions too, especially when it comes to God.

[00:18:22] How did your relationship evolve and change as you went through all of that?

[00:18:27] Carole Sluski: Okay my, it wasn't just my relationship, it was me, my personality, my, my thoughts, my belief. My belief changed before Paula. I'm a Catholic. I went to church. I went to communion. I said the rosary as every good devout Catholic should.

[00:18:49] After Paula died,

[00:18:54] I started to cr crave [00:19:00] learning more about my religion. I wanted to I didn't know the Bible. I never studied the Bible. I went to Catholic school, but I never studied the Bible. And I remember that was a big thing with me, that I wanted to know more about Jesus. I wanted to know more about, basically that was the New Testament, but I didn't even know anything at all about the old Testa.

[00:19:26] The Old Testament came into my life later. I'm in that right now, but I will talk about, God was something more to me than he ever had been before. Because I never, I needed him several times before that, but I never had anything this serious happen to. And this is why I had nowhere else to go. It was to God.

[00:19:59] And I [00:20:00] prayed and I asked him to carry me just like that poem to Jesus. Carried you on the beach, walking down the beach. I remembered that poem and I asked him to carry. To pick me up, and that was in the very, very beginning. That was before we even had her at the wake. This is at the hospital, this is in the room, this is in the I C U room.

[00:20:24] When I'm sitting there with her, I felt that all of a sudden this entity, this divine entity that I was craving for was someone that was the only thing in the whole wide world that could help me, even though I had a wonderful to be husband. That was sitting there holding my hand. It was I needed to pray I needed, and that's exactly what I did do, and that continued on after she was [00:21:00] buried.

[00:21:02] Through that first whole year, I studied some of the Bible. But I mainly listened to chance I couldn't listen to regular movie regular songs I couldn't listen to that had to be connected to God, to Jesus, and that was the beautiful part about it. I discovered these beautiful chants that, that the monks sing and the brothers saying, and that's, that took over my musical life in my family, in my.

[00:21:39] The chance in the car, if I wasn't screaming and crying, I would turn the radio on and that kept me from screaming and crying. And I would listen to, I'm Catholic, but I would listen to did, I didn't care if they were Baptist or Protestant or if if they were [00:22:00] evangelists. I listened to stations that carried the spiritual Christian word.

[00:22:07] Oh Jesus. And that helped me. I was in sales, so I was in my car driving a lot. And that's that was what I listened to

[00:22:17] Scott Maderer: when one of the things you mentioned earlier is feeling like there was really no one you could go talk to. And it sounds like that's part of you turn to God as the person you could talk to.

[00:22:31] When if you're talking to somebody who's earlier in the process, who's going through some of this grief, maybe they're just a few years out from losing someone significant do you think is turning to other people also? I'm not saying instead of, or does it replace God is finding other people that they can talk to an important part.

[00:22:52] It sounds like you bottled a lot of it up.

[00:22:54] Carole Sluski: I went to one hospital group that they had that [00:23:00] was for deceased. It could be anyone that was deceased, child or mom and dad, whatever, husband, wife. There was 10 of us. I remember 10 cuz I counted and it was around, they had tables and round circle and I was the last one to talk my.

[00:23:16] Thought that came out of my mouth was I sat here for, I don't know, now we're listening to everybody. No one talked about God. God was never brought up. Not once. Jesus was never brought up, which is part of the Trinity. Not once. So I said I'm gonna talk about God. And I did. I talked about how I needed him, et cetera, et cetera, all the way through the meeting.

[00:23:43] And when I was.

[00:23:48] You could hear a pin drop if you dropped a pin and I left and I never went back. Now, 30 years later, that was in the first year that I did that 30 years later. [00:24:00] You know what, I never would've done what I did leave. Never go back. I would've gone back. I would've gone back and hopefully I would hope for those same people to be there because I wanted to listen to them a little bit more because they were sharing.

[00:24:23] And I didn't realize that first time that they were sharing. So I was all into me Sure. About what I was gonna talk. And I would've gone back because I would've wanted to hear more what they had to say and maybe talk about God a little bit more to them because that did help me. That's always helped me talking about God.

[00:24:52] And about Blessed Virgin Mary. I say the rosary, so that's a real big part of my healing, but, [00:25:00] I would tell the audience, anyone that if you need help, and I needed help I was in depression. I was on antidepressants. I needed I should have gone to a counselor. But what I didn't know, and I know now if I did this all over again and I selected a c.

[00:25:26] That counselor would have to be Christian. Period. But

[00:25:30] period. But they Christian based counselors. Yeah. Yeah. I, Hey, not Catholic. In fact, I really like the evangelists that I listened to on the radio. I thought they were great because they talked the Bible and Oh, another thing too, I listened to a lot of movies that they had on tv Now.

[00:25:50] Everything is so different than it was 30 years ago. We didn't have the movies like they have now, but we still did have Christian movies and I [00:26:00] watched those, so all that. Yes, I did. But the counselor, that's something that I should have done. I should have done that.

[00:26:08] Scott Maderer: You would recommend that to somebody else?

[00:26:10] Carole Sluski: I would recommend I ab Oh,

[00:26:11] Scott Maderer: absolutely. Learning the lesson of not done it, and I would do it. Yeah.

[00:26:15] Carole Sluski: Why would you go to a doctor and put yourself taking pills and you won't go to a counselor to maybe, Help your

[00:26:23] Scott Maderer: head. And again I think, and to your point of the physical ailments that you were dealing with people forget that we're body, mind, and soul and all three, those things are connected to each other.

[00:26:37] If there's something wrong with our body, it affects our spirit and it affects our mind. If there's something wrong with our mind, it affects our spirit. It affects our body. If there's something wrong with our spirit, it affects our mind. It affects our bo Yeah they're all interconnected.

[00:26:50] And I think a lot of times we try to treat, so like you were dealing with the grief and the emotional side the best you could, but it then [00:27:00] affected your body because you know that, that spilled over into your body as well. That's what you meant when you said you, you were dealing with a broken heart, literally.

[00:27:10] That's right. As well. It literally showed up as your heart's not working.

[00:27:15] Carole Sluski: No, I was just gonna make a comment that, you know, everything that you said I'm relating to because it's exactly true. But what the big thing is you don't realize that you are starting to get sick.

[00:27:27] Oh, of course. Yeah. Physically, that's the whole thing. When you find out it's big. They just don't tell you you need to calm down or you need to go to therapy. It's already done. I had Ms. Multiple sclerosis, you know how they proved it. I had a spinal tap.

[00:27:46] So there was

[00:27:47] Scott Maderer: no you

[00:27:48] Carole Sluski: could cure this. Oh no. It was done. Yeah. But it, that's again, And [00:28:00] it's not that you can magically cure one thing with the other. We, a lot of times people try to make it out, out almost to be like magical. And it's not magical. It's the way we're designed.

[00:28:12] Scott Maderer: It's the way we're built is we are built to be integral whole beings. And when any part of us is damaged, it has to affect the rest of us. It's like driving your car and your tire goes. It affects the rest of the car. It's going to affect the rest of the car. Your trip is not as smooth anymore.

[00:28:34] It's the same sort of thing. It's all it's not magic, it's just we're designed to be whole beings. And in your case with losing a child know, that is a part of your being that was damaged because. Mother to child, father to child is a relationship that is, it's part of us.

[00:28:53] I have a son and I shared with you my, my wife and I lost a baby before [00:29:00] birth. And that still affects us. And I My, my son's gonna move away and just him just moving out of the house is a big deal to me. And that's not as permanent, obviously.

[00:29:12] Or some loss. And yet it affects you too because your children and your, those people are part of you in a very real way. They're part of your being. Absolutely. What brought you to the point of kind of finally turning, realizing that maybe it, you could heal some of this and you could make some changes?

[00:29:36] Carole Sluski: I was really very devoted the first years to God. And what I'm saying devoted is that I would think nothing or jumping in the car and taking the drive to church and sitting there by myself and praying. Whether it was with your traditional prayer or just talking to God, I found Mary was a virgin Mary.

[00:29:59] I found [00:30:00] her at my daughter's funeral. When I say I found her, I realized that Mary, she was very similar to me. She's human and she lost a child. But the big difference between Mary and me is that she lost a child that was, Dying. Like my daughter died in the hospital with two loving nurses. As I read the report that were trying to talk to her and tell her she was gonna be okay, Jesus died at the cross.

[00:30:28] And she saw that she witnessed it. So her grief was different than mine because she had an additional burden on her. Was viewing the. Of what he went through. How do I relate to that today? What do you think happens to a mom? Somebody kills their baby, their son or the daughter shoots them.

[00:30:58] They're driving the car and somebody just [00:31:00] shoots them or they get into a car accident and they die. But the big thing, or a mom that loses a daughter that's been raped and murdered, that is bigger. Been my loss cause they've got that added

[00:31:22] grief. I don't the added agony, the, I've listened to mothers and trust me, it's wow you just wanna pour hope on them, but you don't even know where to start. That's probably why. Maybe you. A therapist that can understand, but they'll never know the grief unless it happened to them.

[00:31:50] That's the only difference. But

[00:31:52] They know the steps of healing and it's something that they, that you have to get [00:32:00] into. On a permanent, regular basis in order to keep your sanity and to help yourself

[00:32:09] Scott Maderer: heal. So for you though, as you were journeying through this, what, what made you begin to realize that you were able to heal from it?

[00:32:18] Not get over it. Because I always hate people that use that phrase cuz that's, yeah, you never get over it. It's always part of you. But at least begin to heal.

[00:32:27] Carole Sluski: Because I got, as I started to live and I realized, That I needed to help myself. And that came through. I truly believe that the Holy Spirit came to me and put those thoughts into me, those feelings that now you have to start working on yourself.

[00:32:45] You have to get out there and start working again. You've gotta start making your sales calls. Hey you've got a wonderful house. Make 'em a nice dinner. Maybe throw a party at the house. I had to start changing myself. I had. [00:33:00] Stop staying in the bed looking at the ceiling. When I woke up and I had to literally wake up at seven, jump out of the bed, jump into the shower, and then make my coffee, get into the habit of that.

[00:33:14] I learned from all of this that you can survive and you can get healthy, and you can grow and heal if you produce for yourself healthy. Because your life with your child was a habit. Sure. A family unit is a habit. One person's pulled out of that unit. The whole dynamics of the family changes. And you have to create a new beginning.

[00:33:43] Scott Maderer: So it was realizing that you needed to create a new. New set of relationships, a new re relationship, both with God as well as with yourself and then with others as well. Yeah.

[00:33:57] I've got a few questions that I like to ask all of my guests, [00:34:00] but before I ask those, is there anything else about the book or your journey that you feel is really important to share with the listener about

[00:34:10] Carole Sluski: the journey?

[00:34:11] Scott Maderer: About your journey

[00:34:12] or

[00:34:12] Carole Sluski: the book? Yeah, about my journey. When I first started writing the book I didn't even know where to begin.

[00:34:18] It was, I had to realize, first of all that the book was not about my divorce from Paula's father, which a lot of people questioned and asked as I shared some of my trans trans. With to see if I was on the right road. They wanted to know a little bit more about Jim and me. That was not on my journey of healing.

[00:34:44] I only wanted to write about the steps that I went through. As I remembered them. And to always stress that it was by the grace of God that I learned how to. [00:35:00] And you have to take your own self, like I said before, into your own hands and make yourself do things that aren't gonna make you happy.

[00:35:12] You have to figure out what makes you happy. I like to paint. I'm an artist. I was just doing that part-time, but I started painting again. And I tell, Moms that talk to me sometimes about what to do. I said, you like to cook? Yeah, but I haven't cooked in. I said, make a fa a favorite salad. Do something for your family.

[00:35:37] Where do you go? Another big thing is to your family, your immediate family. If you're fortunate you have other children, boy, grab onto them and really treasure your little intimate.

[00:35:57] Scott Maderer: Absolutely. So [00:36:00] my my brand is inspired stewardship, and I talk a lot about stewardship on the show, but I've discovered over the years that's one of those words that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So when you hear the word stewardship, what does that word mean to you?

[00:36:14] And what does that understanding, what impact does it have on your life?

[00:36:18] Carole Sluski: I never really thought about that word stewardship until I saw you as the podcaster with it, to be honest. So I don't know that much about different meanings of stewardship, but to me, I would have to say stewardship means it has to do with United uniting with others.

[00:36:45] Love all the good things that you would feel with others. Sharing, caring, giving it's just kinda like you, you need people to [00:37:00] help you out. Stewardship. I don't, maybe you could tell me in your words what, why you named it steward. Steward,

[00:37:07] Scott Maderer: yeah. Stewardship means recognizing that you don't have ownership, but that you are responsible for manage managing the things that you've been given for God and for others.

[00:37:20] So it's the things that I'm blessed with, time, talent, treasures, whatever they are, they're not mine. They could be taken from me at any moment. But I am in charge of managing them and using them in a way that is able to build the kingdom and able to help others and know, still take care of myself and my family.

[00:37:41] But it's really about doing what's right for the bigger picture. And then that can be applied a million different ways, but that's the textbook definition, that's what the textbook definition is. So when you hear about like environmental stewardship, it means taking care of the environment and [00:38:00] stewarding it for others, not abusing it for ourselves.

[00:38:03] Carole Sluski: And that's what I did with myself. Stewardship I did what I had to do to help myself survive. To pick up the good habits, do the good things, that made me feel better. But to fill in that empty space that Paula took with her when she died.

[00:38:21] Scott Maderer: Let me ask you another question, and thi this one, it's my favorite question, but this may be a tough question.

[00:38:28] I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask you, but. Take some, take a breath and take some time on answering this. Imagine for a minute that I invented this magic machine where I could take you from the chair where you are today and transport you into the future, maybe 200 years into the future. But through the power of this machine, you were able to look back and see your whole life and see all of the connections, all of the ripples, everything that you've left behind in the world.

[00:38:56] What do you hope you've left behind in the.

[00:38:59] Carole Sluski: What did [00:39:00] I leave behind

[00:39:01] Scott Maderer: in the world? What do you hope, what do you hope you've left behind in the world?

[00:39:03] Carole Sluski: I could relate that to what Paula left behind in the world. I'll start that with my daughter. And this, these feelings that I have right now aren't something that happened years ago. It recently happened within the last, maybe two, two to three, four. I don't know, maybe when I got cardiomyopathy it, it happened cause I came supposed to death that I realized that Paula was here on a mission from God

[00:39:41] and she helped me be a better person because I became a better Christian after she.

[00:39:56] What I wanna do and why I wrote the [00:40:00] book is very simple, because I hopefully from my heart can pass on hope because I do feel so sorry for these people. I went through it and I don't wanna go back there. So if I could make one person

[00:40:29] reach out to God for help,

[00:40:34] I'm gonna really be happy. That's about all I there's nothing really big about it, it's just. I've already talked to women moms that lost their children, and I get so into it, but they tell me I've helped 'em. Mm-hmm. My, my other daughter's girlfriend lost it to her son. I wanted to indirectly mentoring her and helped me [00:41:00] as I did it to her.

[00:41:01] So hopefully I'm closing the door also with my age. I'm 70. So I'm getting up there. I'm not really in the healthiest condition, but I still I still wanna live and I want to, I still want to do and be led and accept it. If this is what I'm supposed to do is to talk about healing, then so be it.

[00:41:37] Scott Maderer: So Carol what's coming next for you? What's on the roadmap for the rest of the year?

[00:41:42] Carole Sluski: What's coming next for me is this, I do not know. I do not know. I'm just taking one day. Doing what I have to do. I'm booking podcast. I gotta slow down a little bit cuz I'm getting too much on me and [00:42:00] I want to put balance in my life right now because I know I need to get some activity.

[00:42:08] In the retirement stage that I'm in and I'm in Florida so I can't play bachi ball or anything cause my back would never, can't golf anymore. I could play cards and stuff like that and get together with other women and she'd chat and I, my husband's still alive. We're having a wonderful time.

[00:42:30] We'd go out for dinner. I, what, where I'm going from here is right now I'm just, I'm taking one day at a time and thanking God that I have what I have and what I the amount of happiness I have in my family. If you're a grandmother, that's wonderful and just a lot to be thankful for.

[00:42:57] So I hope I can [00:43:00] continue. To pass on what I know and to give hope to people and to do that, I know I have to balance my life. You can find out more about Carol on her website. It's at carol slunky.com. That's C A R O L E S L U S K i.com. And of course I'll have links to that over in the show notes as well. Carol, is there anything else you'd like to share with the listener?

[00:43:28] I really would appreciate if you do go on the website.

[00:43:32] I'm gonna, I'm a guest and podcast. And I'm, and I'll never be a podcaster. It's too much work for me. This is enough work, me and a guest, but you could view my other podcast. And I really, truly wanna thank Scott for the opportunity of being on his show. And he will this show will be up on mine too.

[00:43:57] I've got, I have a fairly [00:44:00] good, wonderful follow. And some of them started as artists with me, but, and so many of them know that I lost the daughter, so they'll be viewing Scott's work too with me on this interview. It's a new website and you could subscribe to it and listen to the future things that I.

[00:44:23] Other than that, I just wanna assure you, I'm going to enjoy myself in my elderly years and I'm go never gonna stop loving and believing in God. And I hope the same thing for you. My wish for you. Yes. To believe. Don't give up. Don't give. Get help. Love your family. Love your friends. Hear from your heart.

[00:44:59] Do [00:45:00] sharing. God gave us scripts. Scott said it. I've been saying it all along. It's in my book. I use my gifts. I paint I do jewelry designing any kind of creative work. I like to do flower design. So you find. Your gifts if you don't already know, and then start doing 'em. Take that as an assignment.

[00:45:43] Scott Maderer: Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard. And find a way to live your calling. If you [00:46:00] enjoyed this episode please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes.

[00:46:09] Rate all one word, iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review, and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your. Until next time, invest your time, your talent, and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.