TRUE PERSERVERANCE With Christa Rose

Hello. It's Howard Brown. It's the Shining Brightly

Show. Oh, my God, I have one of my most favorite people to me

today, Christa Rose, welcome. Welcome. I'm so honored that

you're having me on and thank you so much to your listeners

and your viewers for spending their precious time watching me,

hearing my stories, and, you know, collaborating with you.

Well, I have to tell you our dear friend Sunette gave you the

nickname rose bud. And it's so applicable. You are just a

blossoming rosebud, and all that you do, you have your rose i

love the nickname. She calls me her miracle man. I got a special

shirt today for our show. Answer sucks. So for those that will

see that pictures are listening, I'm wearing a Cancer sucks t

shirt today, and we'll find out why about that in a little bit.

Let me tell you about Crista, who's actually just across the

water. I'm in the, you know, outside of Detroit, Michigan,

and she's in Canada, in Ontario. We are really close, but it's

absolutely amazing. So let me tell you about Crista. Crista is

the author of Amazon number one best selling book. Skip the

pain. Experience the pleasure. Cut the crap that's holding you

back so you can live the life you love. Just let that sink in.

She teaches others that the way they think, talk and act,

creates their reality by using her profound experiences from

surviving a head on collision, holding her husband as he took

his last breath.

Wow, continues battling from chronic, chronic illnesses, and

she's an international speaker, a TV co host with us on the

soul. Soul diamond author journey, healthcare advocate and

fishing this. And she's also holistic her message and move

from living a life in pain to the life that you love. And so

Crista, welcome. I just the bio is just inspiring there. But

tell us how you shine brightly each day.

Oh, my goodness. What an amazing question. And I

think everybody should ask that themselves every morning. So one

of the things I do, generally, I've started this random act of

kindness. So I've taken my books and randomly put them in

different spots, and I literally write in if you find this book,

there's no coincidence. It's meant to be. This is a book for

you. You're going to find a message and hopefully change

your life. And I leave it all over the place, and I have

received some emails back saying you're probably not even going

to get this, probably one of your team. And I'm thinking, No,

it's really me and and they share, you know, how they how it

inspired them or change your life. But you know that's that's

maybe on a bigger picture every single day. And I use

yesterday's example, I find even little ways to spread kindness.

So for instance, yesterday, some I was getting a coffee, and

someone, you could tell she she screwed up the order about like,

five times with someone else, and the other person was getting

so mad at her, and my heart just was going to her. And I just

said, so I I pulled out, we're in Canada. We have looneys for

$1 don't even get into that. So I pulled out Looney as a tip.

And I said, you know, here you go. It looks like you kind of

had a rough day. And thank you so much for making my coffee

perfect. And she says, Oh my goodness, you have no idea I've

been on my feet. And she continued on with her story. And

I listened, I held space for her. So yeah, that's one of the

ways I try to shine brightly every day.

And you and I are identical because I look in the

mirror, okay? Because most people look in the mirror, they

don't look like what they see. And I say my daily mantra, which

is to I am grateful, okay, I am blessed and I am lucky. And who

can I lift up today? And we do that by choosing kindness is the

first thing that we do, and so that's why we're so aligned.

It's beautiful. Now I want to dig in, because the show, you

know, we don't have a lot of time. It's a short show. It's a

tease. So everyone can get to know you and just tell me, you

know, you've been through a lot. So, you know, tell me about your

resiliency. I mean, you've been through a lot, so start, start

there with a quick background and what you've overcome.

Yeah. So, you know, when I was younger, I

overheard my mom say, yeah, she was a mistake, you know, big

oops. Now, having said that, my brother was only two months old,

and she got pregnant for me, so I wasn't quite planned, but

being a child, what did I hear? I was a mistake. That's not what

she meant. She, you know, was saying it casually to a bunch of

woman, and now she says I was a pleasant surprise, but again,

back then, all I heard was, I was a mistake, and if you're a

mistake, what do you have to do? You have to fix yourself. You

have to fix others. So it became this perfectionism. I I'm not

going I don't get into my childhood a lot. My parents were

divorced. Very, very unstable and abusive. But what I did do

was I persevered, and I wanted to have a life that I didn't

have, so I fast tracked through school. I became a nutritionist.

I met the love of my life, named Robert, and things we had a son.

I moved up as a director in the the hospital, and it was shortly

after my my career, I was driving home, and that's when it

was the first day of spring, and who would have thought we had a

massive snowstorm. I mean, what we're supposed to have flowers.

And as I was driving home, my car started sliding. And, you

know, I saw these bright lights coming towards me. And, yeah, it

was a full size pickup truck. And not only did it smack into

my car, and, you know, cause all these injuries it, it brought

back all this pain and all these memories from my childhood and

you know, things that I've stepped down, you know, I had

best friend who passed away, and they never really went through

all that stuff. I had, all the survivors guilt. So that led me

down a path of spiraling down and addiction. And I'm saying

this right now because that was one of my secrets, because I

want to look like someone who has it all together, if I'm a

mistake, who has an addiction. But guess what? The face of

addiction can look like anything. So at first my

addiction was like validation, and then it was my pain pills,

because I wanted to not feel and as I continued on doing that, it

says right on the bottle, alcohol may intensify the

effects of of this medication. I thought, great. So I opened a

bottle of wine, and what I say is not good to keep things

bottled up, not a good joke. But that didn't end up well. I

completely spiraled down, and I, you know, did end up in a

recovery home. I'm so grateful for that, because in that

recovery home, I knew I learned the tools of how to basically

live life on life's terms, regardless of what you go

through. And I needed those tools because one year, one

month and one day, as you said in my bio, my husband passed

away. We he had leukemia, and we only knew for two weeks I

thought he had mono, so when he went through that, we had a four

and a half year old son, and I would have totally lost

everything. My son would have lost two parents, but I had

those tools from spiraling down, and I truly believe it was meant

to be that I got in that car accident and that I did spiral

down, so I had the tools to be that, that mother that I so

wanted to be see. I didn't sign up to be a widow. I signed up to

be a wife, but I had to learn acceptance. So that was a really

big thing,

that's resilience, that's resilience, and what I

call that, and you know, we've read each other's books inside

and out that walk in darkness, okay, you learn from it. Okay.

Now, some people take a longer walk in darkness, and you did,

and I have, and you've got to get out of there. And I have to

tell you, I It's so commendable, that resilience, that hope, that

you've been able to pull yourself back up, but you don't

do that alone. You do that with the light of others. And that,

that's really how it works. Now, I want to get into the book,

because I love this. I keep this at my bedside. Everyone can see

it, if you're watching on the video.

Oh, we've got both our books up there, but I want you to you the

acronyms that you use, okay? And I'm going to talk about the one

that that's funny, that we always use, though, but cut the

crap that's holding you back so you can live the life that you

love. And I've got Mr. Poop here with me for those watching on

video, squeezy poop. Okay, we're going to cut the crap. Tell them

what the acronym means.

So when I say that crap I use, clarity resolves all

possibilities. And it's so true, break that down, really think

about it. And when you have that clarity in your life, you're not

focusing on the pain. And really, what I do and what my

book is about is not focusing on the pain those tragedies I went

through. I'm battling a chronic illness right now, it's a

visible illness. I've gone through quite a few, but I don't

let that stop me. So what I do is I learn to shift my mindset

from pain to a place of passion and purpose. And it wasn't easy.

So I make my book really easy, funny to read, full of acronyms

and lots of humor. I had to get my mother's approval, like, for

instance, what's the key spot is gratitude? Of course, I'm going

to throw that up right right away. It's with a little bit

bigger writing. And you know what? I really just hope to

inspire people from my story. I Become very vulnerable, and when

you get to that conclusion, you will not only start living a

life you love, you will start living a life you like. Because

you know how many people are walking around right now who

really don't like their life, it is surprising. They look on

Facebook and social media and they think, Oh, my goodness,

what's wrong with me? And they put on this mask, and that's

what I hope to expose by being vulnerable, by saying, Look at

this. Is what someone who's a survivor looks like. This is

what someone who's an addict looks like. This is someone who

lives with invisible illnesses, chronic pain, disability.

Sometimes I use a cane, and I'm used to be really self conscious

about that, and my walker, and now if I have to do it, I have

to do it. So yeah, that's, that's kind of the Cole's nose

version.

You have, you have turned your purpose, your pain,

into purpose, and your people don't know you don't really

don't know someone until you walk in their shoes a little

bit. And you know these individual invisible

disabilities, there's people walking around out there you

just don't know. And most people, what we worry about is

isolation. Okay, if you do it in isolation, you know that's where

darkness and addiction and other things can happen, the bad

stuff. But I always tell people that if you don't have a support

group or a group of trusted caregivers, we'll help build one

for you. That's what I do. As you do, we can help find you the

right help and get you pointed in the right direction, but

you've got to help try to lift yourself up so then you can go

lift up others. And it all starts with our first word

kindness, yes, by buying someone a random cup of coffee, you

don't know how you change their day. And again, it's a

beautiful, beautiful thing. So there's one other word called

Wait. What's that acronym mean wait?

So I love the word Wait, because before we

impossibly do that, stop and wait. And I use it W, A, I T,

for, what am I thinking? So what are we thinking? Are we thinking

all these negative thoughts? Are we beating ourselves up? Are we

thinking about everything that happened yesterday, all these

negative things, and we lose hope? And my second one is, why

am I talking? If you think about it, what's one thing everybody

loves to do? Gossip and complain. Oh, my goodness, my

back hurts. Someone stole my alien child, someone's, you

know, my mother's bugging me in all this stuff, and we complain,

and then we gossip about someone else, and you never know how

deadly that gossip could be. So why am I talking and, most

importantly, what? Why am I talking to myself? Am I beating

myself up, saying I'm not good enough. Oh, my goodness, I left

dishes in the sink, and people are going to think I'm a slob.

That is not it. So stop before you speak, even to yourself. And

last one is what actions I'm taking. Are you spreading

kindness? Are you stopping to take a moment and acknowledge

other people, listen to them, share your stories, and look at

the actions you're taking every day. And is it enhancing the

world, or are you, you know, bringing fear, kindness or fear,

love or fear?

It's so beautiful. And I'll add two others. One

that we learned from Diane garger and our author journey

show, which we're going to talk about next is that also bring a

little joy in yourself and others each day, also what I

call find your happy place. Now, mine's the basketball court. I'm

out of time out right now for a little bit, but find a place

that you love. It could be cooking, it could be meditation,

it could be hiking, it could be travel, it could be the beach,

it could be water, it could be anything, nature, art. Just do

that and schedule it in, and go there to your stress free zone.

And it's so repairing and healthy. And it could be, you

know, meditation and mantras and music. So all that I want to get

into. We both be, over the last year, have become TV hosts, and

we are on a program called the soul author. I'm sorry. Soul

diamond, author journey, and it's every Wednesday we record

live to about 100 over 100,000 people on e3 60 TV and Sunette

van Bretta, our fairy godmother, our dancing queen butterfly.

Basically we all got introduced through her. And then our life

energy, Laura ballet also joins us, and we basically bring

authors in. What does that show mean to you? And how much fun

Are we having doing?

Oh my goodness, we are having so much fun. First of

all, I got to make meet amazing people globally, not just you

guys, but globally around the world. And not only do we hear

all these amazing books and stories. We get to see the

person, the author, behind the words, behind the pages, and it

really has opened my eyes to, first of all, the different kind

of books, the meanings behind the books. And we get to dance

on TV. And one thing I really want to stress is For anybody

who's an author, you know, we really want to open it up,

because we want you to shine. We make sure the focus is on you.

And you can say you've been on a TV show, you get featured in a

magazine. You also are on a YouTube station and channel that

is shared. So there's so many benefits. And again, you will

walk away. I guarantee not one person has said anything

different, but you will walk away saying, this has been

amazing the time of my life, and so inspired and so full of

happiness.

I couldn't say it any better, because the art of

storytelling is really important, but how your message

is received out there. Because we all read the books

individually. We ask them questions, but we actually find

out who they are, what they were thinking, what their process

was. And we've done stuff from a franchise manual to a murder

mystery to people's, you know, you know, pain into into a real

life transformation. And we're going to keep doing it. And it's

very it's one of my favorite parts of the week, is to do the

the soul diamond author journey with you now. Also, the other

thing is, is that authorship is important. We've both written

our own books, but we've also participated in collaborative

books. And so here's another one I'm holding up, called the soul

diamond author journey. And you participated with 20 other

women, and you told a faction of your story. You wrote a chapter,

okay? And that's how you got involved and expand your word.

And we've also been in another one coming called the art

collection, another group art centered people. Okay, telling

the story. This one's the art of connection, of 365, days of

abundance, they had gratitude and transformation. And in one

page, I'm doing shining brightly with abundance. You keep in with

your brand, and you share people, and every day you get a

read, a little bit of inspiration. I think it's a

beautiful way we invite others to come join us.

It's amazing. I am so happy, and I got to meet

Robert W Jones on his show. And you know, he's authentic, and

that's what this book is about, authentic people sharing

authentic stories.

It is. And we shout out to Robert W Jones, the

W Natalie McQueen, our publishing friend, also in the

book. And and Buddy Thornton the human AI editor extraordinaire,

and just incredible people, right? We've just been blessed

with such a surrounding, and I feel so welcome, supported,

engaged, and had that whole crew, and it's about 1500

authors Now out of all the volumes of the books that'll be

out in January, I also did another one called 52 secrets of

goal setting and participating in these collaborative

anthologies is very interesting work, because you're writing a

page or a chapter and you're not writing the whole book. And I

don't know about you, but writing a whole book took me

three and a half years, and I dictated it on Zoom, and it's

not it doesn't happen overnight to publish that way, so it takes

time, and I am working on book two. Are you working on book

two?

I actually just got offered a book deal

yesterday, so it's funny, you should ask that. But I just

wanted to say one more thing about the art of connection that

blew me away. It's going to be entered in the Library of

Congress. I mean, right, who would have thought? And it's

going to be featured on a jumbotron in New York. So, I

mean, the amount of bonuses that your story can impact other

people when they buy this book will be extraordinary, yeah. So,

I mean, it's absolutely incredible.

So, and we met in New York, okay? And we, you're,

you're on the Jumbotron, it was really, I have to tell you,

between Sunette and Natalie, we couldn't stop hugging. I mean,

it was just incredible energy, because I only spent 45 minutes

in Times Square with you guys take a train back to New Jersey.

But it was such a highlight. It was incredible. Now, I want to

switch the topic, and because the last part of my book chapter

is is basically called sharing the hope and you and I, hope is

the fuel that gets us through almost every day. What does hope

mean to you?

You know hope has changed my life, because I

finally realized I can't be that perfectionism. So it stands for

heck over pleasing everyone, and then it leads down to hold on

pain end.

Wow. You have so many acronyms a book, and you

explain them and apply them, and it's actually, it makes the book

very a page turner. And I just love it. So it's really, really

incredible. And so it's, just wow. So what are you working on

now? Your book deal? Great. What else you got going on?

Yeah. So not only am I now collaborating with

another author, there's only gonna be 10 of us, we're all

gonna going to be writing a chapter I am collaborating with

a lot of different organizations. One called Epic,

and it stands for empowering people with invisible, chronic

conditions. And it's not just physical conditions, it can be

emotional conditions, grief, grief of loss of identity,

mental. There's just so many things, and they offer so much

support. I do speaking for them, and all the proceeds from my

book, I'm giving to them right now to help support them and

just an amazing organization, and I look forward to

collaborating with just more and more people to spread more

inspiration, more passion and more joy around the globe.

Yeah, that sounds incredible. With your

permission, I want to get the link and include that in the

show notes. That in the show notes, and when we push this out

over social media to expose the organization and let people

learn more about that, I think it's truly incredible. Well,

this is a short show, so I'm going to put on sunglasses. I'm

going to ask you to put on your sunglasses. Hold up your rose.

This is the shining brightly spotlight. This is the time

where you and I are sharing our light with the world. I want you

to tell people how best to get a hold of you. Okay, there'll be

lots of links to social and your book and things like that, but

the best way to get a hold of you, and then I'd love to leave

our audience with some inspiration, absolutely.

So really, the best way to get a hold of me is

through my website, Christarose.com and is spelled

as my mother says, don't hold me to it. Christ with it A. Christ

with an A, C, H, R, I, S T, A, Rose, R, O, S E.com, and my you

can also email me at message christa@gmail.com and one of my

inspirations is Be kind, spread joy, spread inspiration, be

vulnerable and show up for people.

Wow, wow, wow, wow.

I'm inspired by that. So it's incredible. You are incredible.

So this has been an amazing show, and it's just it's packed

with so much knowledge, wisdom and goodness that people can

really apply to their lives. And I encourage people to reach out

to us. And you know what, if we can't help you, we can connect

you. We are connectors. We know our networks are huge, and we

can connect you with the right people. So we, I put that as an

open offer to anyone for that as well. And so anyone going

through their struggles, but anyone going through good things

too, go help others. Right? Go help others. So this is the

shining brightly show. You can reach me at shining brightly.com

and at the website, you'll learn all about the podcast you want

to hire me to speak and make your event shine, or your

fundraiser or be on a panel? Please contact me. Also my

advocacy and the book are there, but the advocacy is most

important. So I do a lot of work in the cancer field about

telling people to get screened and not get cancer, okay, and if

you do get diagnosed, how to actually get through that

journey, and then also survivorship, which both of you

and I are living every single day. Survivorship is hard, okay,

but you can do it, and you can get up, and you should get up,

and we'll help you get up, and that's really important. And I

work with entrepreneurs at Babson College, and I do

interfaith advocacy, because in this time of you know

uncertainty, knowing the other that's why we're here. And so I

love that type of work as well. And so just remember, if you

know, you choose, okay, kindness and giving and healing and joy

and not to hate. Okay, we become a force multiplier for good and

positive change, right? So let me give a little shout out.

Thanks to some of my folks that make me look good, aka sponsors,

front edge publishing, my book publisher. Read the spirit

magazine, where I blog at least monthly, amplify you. That is my

podcast, finishing house. They make me look great every week,

as we build up and reach people. Also, there's a group actually

called Speak, inspire and prosper, that just came on

board. And then also the going through a chemo moment here for

a second, oh, we have to give a shout out to diamond moments

magazine, which I get to feature a podcast in every month. This

magazine is incredible. It's so rich, full of life affirming

transformation and and stories of hope. So you know, it's free,

it's online, it's digital, it's clickable, absolutely

incredible. So shout out to Sunday and to send out for the

diamond moments magazine as well. Just remember, if you

choose to shine brightly, just a little bit each day for

yourself, and then lift up others, the world, your

neighborhood, your community, your family, will all be in a

better place. Crista, Rose rosebud, thank you. You are

beautiful, and this is incredible.

Thank you so much. Applause.