Setting Intentions for Clarity and Connection

Julie Hilsen (00:10)
Dear God, angels, goddess, creator, divine force, thank you for bringing Rhonda and I together today. I ask that we bring forth a message of clarity, of quality, and inspiration for the highest good. May the intensity of our signal be strong enough to reach the ears that need to hear, but gentle enough to reach the hearts that need to soften.

I honor everyone’s contribution, everyone’s attention, and especially Rhonda’s path as she’s gone through her life of exploration. I wish to highlight her highs and her wisdom. And I honor this container we’re creating. And I ask my team, my guides to aid us in bringing forth a message for the highest good.

And I ask that this clarity of message be pure from our loving hearts and for it to be an inspiration as we build on this light grid that exists around the earth. May we feel this when we feel our changes, may we realize this connection, our helping of the earth, us helping ourselves helps the whole earth heal.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (01:05)
you

Julie Hilsen (01:25)
And may we be connected to that, whether consciously or unconsciously, to live to our highest potential. And may this episode help add to that divinity of humankind as we search and discover and remember. And so it is. Thank you. Thank you.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (01:44)
Thank you.

I like that. I really do.

Julie Hilsen (01:46)
Thank you.

Well, hello, dear friends, and welcome to another episode of Life of Love. And I’m so excited to bring forth this message today. And, you know, it’s a weekly podcast. We’re on YouTube, and we really appreciate your ears and your attention and this community that we’ve built up. And I’m just really excited to invite Rhonda Parker Taylor to Life of Love. She’s in total alignment. And it’s, it’s

fun thing we were talking pre-interview, she’s going to stretch today and link her two worlds together. And so I’m so excited to weave this and offer this for everyone. It’s a delight. She’s an author, a bestselling author. She’s written a drama suspense novel, which is really exciting. And then she’s also working on a self-help book. She’s been in the academic field. She has her MBA.

She’s gone down so many paths of learning and wisdom and I’m just really excited to pick your brain today, Rhonda. Thanks for being on Life of Love.

Introducing Rhonda Parker-Taylor: A Journey of Exploration

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (02:49)
Thank you, thank you, and thank you for setting such a beautiful pace. And I was like, as I was sitting in your, I’m gonna say your palace, because it really made me realize as we were talking before about kind of stretching and talking about emotional intelligence and how we’re gonna bridge it into how it’s also a form of love and life.

Julie Hilsen (03:00)
Hmm.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (03:17)
it made me realize that love and understanding is something that I too need to stretch. So already I realized that, okay, I always say I wish life would start with kindness and end with compassion. But now I feel like not only does it need to start with kindness and end with compassion, that in that bridging of the beginning and to the end, that we have to include

the life and the love of everything that not only that we know and understand of love, but that we accept that our present, future and past is bridged in that kindness to compassion through love. I mean, it just came to me like a light that emotional intelligence

where we often hear it as a buzzword now is kind of that bridge because we’re looking at our intrapersonal we’re looking at our interpersonal, we’re looking at our stress management in that, and we’re looking at our general mood. And if you’re able to regulate all that and control and learn from what comes up from within and

exteriorly from without, then we are doing a path of love and showing compassion and kindness still. So I love that you started out like that and it’s the key to challenging us to growth I think. What do you think?

Julie Hilsen (04:46)
Hmm.

Mm.

You know, I totally agree. And to me, what I hear you saying is, it’s like the softening of the heart where you’re being completely authentic with yourself saying, this is where I am no filters. And so you can respond instead of react because I think when you react, you react, a reaction may be out of self defense, out of lack, out of weakness.

uncertainty, insecurity. And when you open your heart and you really look at what your heart is saying, you can respond with something out of love versus something out of fear because the two can’t coexist.

Emotional Intelligence: The Bridge Between Love and Life

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (05:34)
I wish there was a buzzer we could push right there because that is so true. The first step of emotional intelligence, especially with using the love model for it, is self-awareness. So when you’re self-aware of who you are, your experiences, and your upbringing, and your thoughts, and your culture, and all the things that build you to be who you are,

Julie Hilsen (05:49)
Mmm.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (06:02)
You can actually tell when that fear uncertainty those things are arising in us and we can start, wait a minute, stop, pause, take a look, listen, so that we don’t have that negative reaction to something that could be very important for us to hear or maybe a risk we should take or an innovative thinking that we might wanna think of.

Julie Hilsen (06:26)
Yeah.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (06:30)
or something we’ve never thought about before. When I was a child, they told me I was allergic to peanuts. Never eat a peanut in your life. Don’t do it, you’re gonna die. This is what’s gonna happen to you. And so I never ate a peanut, till one day I ate peanut better. I had no reaction.

But, and I liked the taste and my husband’s, maybe you’re just not allergic to that peanut butter or that peanut. Maybe it’s a walnut or something different. So we tested and we worked and doctor says you have no allergy to peanuts. Now I’m trying to eat peanuts because they’re good for me. They’re good for my soul. But guess what? I put one in my mouth, I start sweating.

I have all these biases and these fears locked up and I don’t even like, I like the taste of peanut, but the texture of a peanut in my mouth about makes me have convulsions. Because all those biases are built up inside me. I have a learned experience that tells me don’t love peanuts.

So now I’m trying to retrain myself, which is exactly what you’re talking about doing. You’re talking about becoming self-aware that you can, with confidence, cultivate a presence of love.

And we can do that as a culture, as an individual, as a family, but we have to believe in that ability and that creativity to even overcome the convulsions that tells you that the world is an evil place, that everybody has to be mean, that everybody has to have a transactional relationship. You have to give me something if I’m going to give you some.

Julie Hilsen (08:02)
Mm.

Hmm.

Yeah, that’s one way to be, but I like how you’re illuminating that there’s a choice. whew! And you know, I don’t blame anybody for feeling like a reactive situation is the only thing available, because I think that that’s sort of how we start out. We do something and we watch our parents and see how they react. Is it okay or not?

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (08:54)
Right.

Julie Hilsen (08:54)
Or maybe

we do something we get yelled at. Maybe an empath would do that and watch someone’s reaction. Or maybe somebody who’s not an empath might just do it and see if they get yelled at, they say, that probably wasn’t a good idea. Or if they get spanked, they’ll be like, gosh, maybe I won’t do that again. And you are verbally told, don’t do this. Don’t eat peanuts. It’s a great metaphor. There’s a shell around the peanuts. There’s, peanut becomes peanut butter. I mean, it’s just like one of those things. It’s great with chocolate.

But so then we that’s how we this world is set up as a relativity. It’s it’s experiment and relativity where there’s good and bad, there’s high and low, there’s up and down, there’s there’s fair and cheating. It’s like everything set up as a dichotomy until you realize that the dichotomy isn’t serving your soul and you can break free from that.

and that judgment of saying yes or no. Maybe it’s yes today and maybe it’s no tomorrow. It’s probably okay to change your mind, but we’ve been programmed to say black or white, yes or no, male or female, whatever dichotomy you wanna get to, sweet or sour. mean, you’re gonna watch a comedy or action film. It’s all over the place.

valid because we’re in relativity. However, like you said, the creativity of maybe there’s another way. Maybe I don’t have to say yes or no. And to play in that is where you can, I think that’s where the emotional intelligence gets really gooey, because it does come down to stop blaming other people, find out what’s going inside you.

The Dichotomy of Life: Breaking Free from Relativity

And when you’re used to living in relativity, you want to blame everybody. You want to say, but the weather was crappy or I didn’t get a good night’s sleep or he said this or she looked at me this way, but it’s you.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (10:51)
but in emotional intelligence, it’s up to everybody in the room to acknowledge that there’s other points of views. We often want cookie cutters of ourselves. When you’re at the holiday season and you’re making your cookies and you want them in different forms, stars, trees, know, Santa, whatever it may be, we want them to be the same.

Julie Hilsen (10:58)
Okay, the whole room.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (11:18)
And then the one that’s odd seems different. So when we try to do these cookie cutters of each other and what cookie cutters around us, what we do is we make things unauthentic to who people are and what brings golden streets and paths for us to follow because you can learn so much from each other.

Julie Hilsen (11:31)
Mmm.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (11:42)
And through their authentic self and their emotional intelligence, we can make better decisions. We can have more loving relationships. It’s kind of like having the new, the old, intergenerational values because you can transform your life through it. And you can transform how you view the world by seeing how somebody else views it and what their experiences are.

Julie Hilsen (12:10)
I love that and I appreciate the perspective, because I always thought of emotional intelligence just as the individual, but you brought in, it’s the whole group. So that’s fun, because then you can play in that a little bit. You can say, well, I’m not sure what that means to me. What does it mean to you? How does that hit you?

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (12:21)
Mm-hmm.

Julie Hilsen (12:35)
that might help you see or feel what’s going on with you and the group dynamic. Oof, that’s really neat. The intergenerational, interdisciplinary. Nice.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (12:45)
It’s a value, yeah. It’s a value.

Think about it. Now not everybody’s educated on what emotional intelligence is. So you have left brain function, which is your IQ. Then you have your right brain function, which is your EQ. And so the IQ is all your math, logic, et cetera. And then you have your creative side and your…

social intelligence, which is your people skills, and that’s where EQ lies. There’s 21 different characteristics and without boring people with a list, it’s basically in four categories. Your interpersonal with the A, which is your self-actualization, your ability to self deconstruct and realize where your opinions, values, et cetera goes.

you’ve got your interpersonal skill, which is your social skills. Do you have empathy? Do you have the ability to work within and listen to others? You have those two working together all the time. So you get an EQ score, like an IQ score on the individual level. But when you get everybody in a group, what is their emotional intelligence? As a group, if we taught people, you got your intrapersonal,

You’ve got your interpersonal, you’ve got your stress management. You throw people in a room and tell me that, you know, they talk about in groups, the storming, norming, you know, performing phases, you get in there and everybody’s storming for power and norming is when you finally start working together better. But and then performing is when you start performing. Well, that’s in every group. But if you’re

capable and you have a high emotional intelligence in the group that stress management, the ability to have the impulse control, the storming is going to be shorter because you’re already listening, empathizing and deconstructing my own biases of something to listen to somebody else’s opinions and how something can be done, whether it be loving in a relationship.

Or is it, you know, a leadership role where you have to think of processes and how you’re going to be a better leader. And then so you have the impulse control to stop, listen and pause right already built in. If everybody started working on their emotional intelligence. Why I like the model is it tells me I don’t have to breathe the brightest bulb in the bunch. I can still work through the social aspects of things.

and be successful in my relationships and in my leadership and my groups and my loved ones, my family structure. And then the last one is your general mood.

Julie Hilsen (15:47)
Hmm.

Understanding Emotional Intelligence: Individual and Group Dynamics

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (15:48)
of the whole intelligence model. Is your general mood positive? Negative? Are you open for experience?

You know, are you, do you have joy in the model that you’re presenting? And so when you put all of those together, you have a mode for not only individual development, because you can work on the 21 characteristics that we’ve broken down into the four categories, and you can work on your group, your family, your love, your life, and how you approach things.

Julie Hilsen (15:58)
Mm-hmm.

So do you think the mood is the overriding, is that the foundation? What do you think the foundation of emotional IQ is, is what I’m trying to get at.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (16:34)
would

say the foundation is probably the intrapersonal. You have to be willing. You have to be willing to deconstruct yourself and your opinions and pause. Because it doesn’t matter if someone else is doing it. If you’re not, you’re going to be the bully in the room. You’re going to go for your way. You know, it doesn’t matter what somebody else is experiencing. You want it your way, your way the highway. And so if you can’t

Julie Hilsen (16:39)
know yourself.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (17:04)
really realize where in life you want to stand and that is that self awareness of your values and how you want people to feel when they leave after that you know that interaction with you do you want them to leave feeling like you’re a loving kind compassionate person that understands how whatever

the decision is, whether it’s in a parent relationship and you’re having to help guide a young one or whether it’s in your leadership role and whether you’re going to develop your subordinates, where is the path? Where is the true path? And it has to start with you doing your work. Now you can suggest other people do their work, but if everybody has a

Julie Hilsen (17:38)
Thank

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (17:59)
a broader knowledge of emotional intelligence and where it is, you have less of the power struggle because it becomes more of a we and this is the decision we made or the processes we create by understanding that we’ve included the least amongst us. Even if it’s not the path you take. Because you can’t always take the

the path that considers the least of mystice. You know, you really have to consider, you know, that the crossroads to joy also requires everybody’s got to eat, everybody’s got to, you know, all these things that are concrete in life, but you can at least let their voice be heard.

Julie Hilsen (18:49)
I love that. It’s an ideal, right? So it’s making

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (18:53)
Right.

Julie Hilsen (18:56)
making concepts like this valid so that people can see how it transforms the workplace, but then also applying these concepts to your family and how you don’t have to always play the same role. And that’s spring.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (19:12)
Exactly. You don’t always have

to be the scapegoat. You don’t always have to be the winner. You don’t always have to be the middle. You have the choice to shine and be the light that you’re supposed to be in the group. Whatever your role is or whatever role you like to play, it’s almost like we’re all actors in our own lives.

Julie Hilsen (19:16)
Mmm.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (19:39)
And what ends up happening is we’re healing together and we have one story, but we have to turn our pain into our purpose. We have to turn our education into our purpose. We have to look at our journey of resilience into our purpose. And we come comfortable in the connections once we understand who we are and accept

Julie Hilsen (19:50)
Mm-hmm.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (20:07)
others for who they are. We can’t all be the same. My sister is very different than I am. She’s a powerful executive for our family’s company and she’s very different from me. She’s a Taurus, I’m a Libra, I’m the balancer, she’s the bull. But when you learn to accept

Julie Hilsen (20:27)
you

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (20:30)
each other for who they are and not try to change you have to be like me for us to be in a loving life relationship. Once you quit all the power struggles and the going through a story of you’re successful I’m not successful I’m successful you’re not successful whatever the dichotomy that you put

Like you said, the black and the white, then yes and the no, then you can express emotional connection.

which is why it’s so powerful when you do your meditation before you start. Because when you do that, you’re building a supportive network because you’ve accepted everybody for what they’re going to bring, the value that they have. When you walk in a room and you’ve devalued someone already, or someone’s devalued you already, there is no

Julie Hilsen (21:10)
Mm-hmm.

Valuing Differences: The Power of Acceptance and Connection

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (21:33)
connection that’s going to be made no matter what you want to do.

And that is a reality test right there. Are you valuing the people that you disagree with? Are you devaluing?

Julie Hilsen (21:50)
Mmm.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (21:51)
just

because you don’t agree with them. That is a negative emotional intelligence when you’re devaluing you because there’s always something that somebody can teach you from their own experiences, no matter whether they’re the most intelligent person in the world or maybe, you know, they’re not or maybe they are and you just don’t know it. I’ll never forget, if you’ve ever watched

AGT America’s Got Talent this last episode that just ended a few months ago there was a heavyset guy Richard Goodman from Indiana of course that always caught my attention and he gets up there and he’s a little bit awkward and they have him introduce himself and he was a janitor for a middle school

Julie Hilsen (22:30)
DNA.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (22:39)
And everybody was like, well, good luck, you know, at first, and you know, and as soon as he opened his mouth, America loved him.

As soon as he did, he was the most talented singer that had been on in years and everybody voted for him and he ended up winning the million dollars. But many people devalued him based on the fact that he’d been a janitor for 25 years. He had all that talent in him.

Julie Hilsen (23:09)
Mm-hmm.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (23:11)
And we, he got discounted. But now he’s performing in Vegas, got the million dollars, bought the new house, got married, you know, all of these things that we, sometimes we need to embrace the light that’s in somebody else that’s different than our own light. You know, that light, like as soon as you meet somebody, look for the light and find out that

Julie Hilsen (23:28)
Hmm.

Yes.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (23:37)
To navigate life’s crossroads requires us to see the good in people, even when there’s bad.

Julie Hilsen (23:46)
Hmm. Yes, even they could be judged for that. It’s, it’s a really fun place to be when you can look at every encounter as a chance that can never be reproduced. And you can I talk about timelines all the time. It’s like, okay, so you have this encounter, and you have

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (23:49)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

The Power of Free Will and Love

Julie Hilsen (24:12)
as many choices as you can think of to respond, not respond, how you respond, how you don’t respond energetically, verbally, you it’s all up to you. We’re drunk on free will. So you can create whatever reality you want at any time depending on where you want to be. And I think that’s why it comes back to love because

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (24:28)
Right.

Julie Hilsen (24:40)
to get the highest expression, you come from love. And it doesn’t have to be like a romantic love. It doesn’t have to be like, no, I’m not talking about that. saying coming from the highest part of yourself, which is your love and seeing how that plays off. that’s what I always start out with. Let’s come from the highest good. And no matter what happens, I tried for the highest good. I’m not gonna judge it. It’s just gonna be what it is.

If it didn’t serve me to my highest good, then I just didn’t show up the way I could have, or I needed to learn something to get there. So, mmm.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (25:15)
Exactly. know what,

you were sitting there talking, it kind of came to me, and maybe it’s the angels, that said, in love, love is the heart of your own personal growth.

Julie Hilsen (25:28)
Mmm. That’s gooey.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (25:31)
Because think about it, if you come with love and you’re already walking with your family or into a group or even with yourself, how many times are we so hard on ourselves that we say, I don’t believe that you can do this or I don’t believe that you can transform

Julie Hilsen (25:43)
So hard on ourselves, yep.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (25:53)
form that to do the handle the challenges or whatever it might be that you’re going through I don’t believe that you can get over this and so I must fall into depression.

You know, if we show ourselves love, if we show others love, if we put grace in the picture, it is the center of our growth as an individual, as a community, as a family, as a nation, world, et cetera.

Julie Hilsen (26:24)
Mm hmm. Because I can guarantee whatever side of the aisle you’re on politically, the other side feels exactly like you do. It’s just they’re looking at it through the other side. It’s so funny. We had this guy, my husband, I had this conversation and we’re like, Yeah, it’s so funny. Like, you could take everything that you think, and just flip it around. And that’s exactly the strength that the other side feels. So what purpose is there to judge it? It’s just

do our best and play it out. We have ups and downs, we have ins and outs, and that’s just part of this whole thing. And the only thing you can control is your state when you come down to it. And I honor everybody. There’s so many people going through financial problems, emotional. There’s lots of family members exiting. I mean, it’s just, there’s a lot coming at us. So that’s why I honor this conversation so much because…

I know that if someone hears this and they need the message, they’re gonna get it. It’s gonna hit them in a way, and I’m sending out compassion and love to everyone who’s struggling. Because it’s real. It’s definitely real.

Personal Growth Through Love

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (27:31)
It’s

what made you decide to become an author? What brought you to that?

Julie Hilsen (27:36)
Well, I was hurting. I was hurting as a person because I lived in the reflection of everyone else’s approval and I was miserable.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (27:39)
Mm-hmm.

And you know, it makes sense that you would start a podcast on living in love because when you do try to live somebody else’s expectations of you, that’s not loving for you.

Julie Hilsen (27:59)
Woof,

it’s a recipe in psychosis for me. So many deep nights, dark nights of the soul, many, I was a serial signer up for any kind of symposium online where I could learn about spirituality or, you I devoured self-help books for 10 years straight. And I filtered everything through my consciousness and

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (28:03)
Hahaha!

Julie Hilsen (28:23)
And then I just sat down and I asked the angels I said, if I’m supposed to write this book, help me. And then my biggest thing was not knowing how to ask for help. I always wanted to be so independent. I could always do something better myself. So why don’t I just do it myself?

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (28:34)
And this one. At mine, I was afraid

to ask people for help because they just might not understand or believe in me like I thought needed to be. So I think you’re right.

Julie Hilsen (28:46)
Ugh.

Hmm.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (28:52)
if you were using that, it’s probably was very journal-like when you were writing because it helped you filter through the whole aspect of those feelings. And I think that anybody out of it that’s maybe struggling with something, I am a big proponent of writing or talking, even if it’s, know, in a…

Julie Hilsen (29:07)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (29:19)
And if you don’t write much and you’re just not comfortable with it, maybe do it on your phone and videotape or talk to yourself about why you feel the way you do and start doing that development from at least, you know, a variety of perspectives. So you, like for instance, in my self-help book, I explored the 13 dimensions of life as I thought were important. And that was

going through the physical wellness because I was getting older and it was declining, physical health was declining and I had to, how am I gonna get this back under control? Intellectual, how am I gonna grow? we’ve kind of talked about the fact that growth comes from love. You’ve gotta love yourself. So all those self-help books is a form watching this podcast if you’re in pain.

is a form of self-love and promoting a love that and kindness through the world. So you’re doing both and then you’ve got your emotional that we’ve talked about. And so if you’re journaling, you’re dealing with those emotions. And imagine if you also added your personal integrity in it and already knew the values. Imagine if you were a kid

Julie Hilsen (30:18)
Hmm.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (30:43)
And before you had gotten to this age that you had to write a book about, you know, the pain and struggles and growth that you had to go through, if you’d already known your own value.

Julie Hilsen (30:45)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Right. Well, it’s so funny because that’s part I have. It’s a chart. It’s your dream life and you figure out your values and you write each value in your star. Because that’s your centering force, right? It’s like, whatever your values are, you live authentically to that and you know what to fight for and you know what to let go. Because

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (31:05)
That’s fine.

Yeah, well that makes sense

because you have a priority list. mean, then you know a way.

Julie Hilsen (31:19)
Yes, but yeah,

we don’t teach this to our kids that, you you have, you don’t grow up and say, you you learn your ABCs, you learn your, your mathematic, you know, your times tables, but you don’t sit there and say, well, these are the things that are most important to me to be happy. Maybe they do in guidance class now, maybe I missed it. But yeah, when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, so.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (31:44)
No, reading

and math and I didn’t like to do either so I was heading to the nurse’s office a lot.

Julie Hilsen (31:52)
You’re like, what’s going on in here? This looks like fun.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (31:56)
And

then I learned that if I got a fever, I could be sent home. But I have liked and I asked for many a times more like art, know, things that would have expanded who I was. And there was clearly a craving for that. And I think a lot of people have that missing in their lives today.

Julie Hilsen (32:19)
Hmm.

Art and Creativity as Healing

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (32:19)
You know,

I think that’s part of the reason, you know, we have the violence that we have. You know, I’ve been both the center of an attack before when I was in my teenage years, and then I’ve also had a young adult son that was shot and killed at work. And in finding the connections, you also have to find love.

of healing for whatever the choices and whatever happens. And I had to realize that here again, healing was a big part of my journey. So for me, wrote, people say, why did you do fiction first? And it was because I could explore things through different personalities. And I did, you’re from the medical community, so you’ll understand this right away. Every character I did a soap note on.

So I went through and said, okay, this is their life story medically. This is their life story emotionally, mentally, even from they dressed inappropriately for the weather, you know, some things that, you know, people don’t even think about. But what that did is it allowed me to bridge some of my loss in life and see it from other points of view by putting all these people and characters in a role.

and put them in their room where they’re trying to solve a crime and see who did it, like a clue-based thing, and I was able to connect between loss and purpose.

Julie Hilsen (33:53)
Mm-hmm.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (33:58)
And everything we do in life has a winner, loser, loss purpose, and it’s how our mindset takes us through to empower our life with it that makes a difference. So that’s what my goal is in Crossroads is to allow people to go through the journey when they may not be ready for a self-help book.

Julie Hilsen (33:58)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (34:23)
they can explore it through the characters and realize that there is strength in sharing their own stories too.

Julie Hilsen (34:33)
Well, my heart, my heart’s with you and that dealing with the loss of your son. That’s hard. But yeah, art, creativity, that’s how we process this stuff. I mean, and you’ll hear it over and over again, I feel like there’s a load lifted. I feel like I have more space. I feel like I can stand up taller. Wrinkles will leave your face when you finally let go of this.

stuff that can burden, can just keep weighing down on you.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (35:05)
weight drops off of you, swelling drops off of you, you know, when you take care of self, all of a sudden, you know, berries taste good to you again, and not, you know, Oreos, because your body craves the goodness, the light, the, you know, the inflammation starts falling off of you. So,

Julie Hilsen (35:07)
way.

Mm.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (35:31)
You know, you have to find that true path and purpose for yourself, but at the same time, you have to find the connection to self and then the connection to everybody else and find ways of connecting that’s different. That’s something that my husband and I have been trying to do a little bit more of because we’ve gotten into this little routine. You know, we had our day and then he would sit in his chair, I’d sit in my chair.

And now we’re trying to sit in different places in the house, look at different things differently, you know, and when you do the connecting, the love with intentionality, then you end up growing and in life, it’s work, you have to put in the work.

Julie Hilsen (36:11)
Hmm.

Facing Challenges and Finding Connection

Yeah. And that’s the hardest thing about it because you feel so depleted when you’re in this place of feeling alone. You feel fat, you feel brain fog, you feel defeated, you feel left out, whatever these feelings are, you don’t feel like you have enough energy to go there. And that’s the dichotomy of it is that

The only way to get over it is to go through it and to face the fear and face what you’re actually doing to yourself and being honest about how you’re sabotaging. Because you didn’t end up in that place by chance. mean, there’s things that happen to you that you wouldn’t pick. I’m not saying you put this on yourself. But there’s always something you can do. There’s always a lifeline. There’s always something that the universe wants to show you.

you’re not picking yourself up to see it.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (37:19)
Right. It’s

like there’s a light that leads the way to your journey. You’re willing to see it. You’re exactly right. Even the darkest of my moments in life. You have life hit moments. You have your choice moments. have things that’s out of your control moments. And then you have glory moments. But in those moments, you have the ability

Julie Hilsen (37:23)
Hmm.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (37:43)
to move yourself through to the next thing. Now you could make it as simple as the little jingles that we hear in the cartoons at Christmas time, know, like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, one of the famous ones is, one foot in front of the other. But it’s very simple to say, but it’s so hard to do when you’re in the moment. But I can guarantee anybody out there that’s going through, find some kind of spiritual connection.

Julie Hilsen (37:59)
Mm-hmm.

hard.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (38:12)
For me, know, when my son was killed, I would pull, I’d be driving and then I’d be in a meltdown moment that could have sent me straight to the bed into depression, but maybe I was driving and I couldn’t. So I’d be looking around like this, looking for health facility, mental health facility, looking for a church, looking for somebody to talk to. And what I would do is I would pull into the first community center.

Julie Hilsen (38:33)
Yeah.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (38:39)
pull in to go talk to anybody, didn’t matter if it was religious, what denomination, what it was, all I knew is I was in pain. And I’d go in there and I’d say, I’m in pain. And they’d say, come join our service or go do this or let’s go do that. And that emotional ability was the key to getting me through the moment. That connection started there. They were laying hands on me. They had me on mats. They had me breathing. They had me talking.

Julie Hilsen (38:39)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (39:07)
They may have made me make an appointment. But the thing is, even knowing that I had an appointment and had someone to talk to relieved that one situation that I was going to at that moment. And that’s the biggest part. How do you do it and find your true path? And it could be a thousand ways you go.

Julie Hilsen (39:30)
Mm hmm. Yeah, and I honor your courage and thank you for sharing that vulnerable part. I know that’s gonna help somebody else lift their head up and just say help. you know, it’s a, they call it a mitzvah, you know, the Jewish faith calls it a mitzvah. It’s a mitzvah when you help, when you let someone else help you too. I mean, because that’s a blessing to their life. If they can show up for you in their light, it’s all, we’re all one.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (39:46)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-mm.

Julie Hilsen (39:58)
It’s just, you know, sometimes you’re taking and sometimes you’re giving and sometimes you’re surrendering and just saying, Show me what I need. Because sometimes you think you need to get, but you really need to give. So just ask, show me what I need to see, you know?

The Journey of Asking for Help

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (39:58)
right.

And sometimes all you

have to do is say thank you for a terrible day. You know, sometimes you don’t have to find somebody else because like, just like you started it with the mindful prayer, you know, you can pull your own heritage and your own strength of angels. There was a point during that time I said about all the places I would go, one place that I would go to.

Julie Hilsen (40:16)
Mmm.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (40:36)
is Crown Hill in Indianapolis, which is a cemetery. And people are gonna say, why would you go there? No, it wasn’t because anybody was buried there that I knew, but it was the tallest point in Marion County where you could oversee everything. And I knew that my mom’s family that was historically from Indiana, I knew there were a few out there somewhere. I’d never been there, but I would just sit there and meditate and cry.

tell and ask, say, please come help me give me the strength to make it to another day or to make this other decision or whatever it might be. And I found that and light all were there if I just ask for it. If I just ask

Julie Hilsen (41:18)
Mm-hmm. And you’re worthy.

You’re worthy and you’re divine. You deserve to ask. That’s the message.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (41:25)
Is that

and guiding you through the life’s toughest spot sometimes? You know, there’s a study that I think it was Lily, pharmaceutical did, and they were trying to find out if there was such a thing as being reincarnated. So they went and they were studying the brain and what they found was something that they didn’t expect. know, I don’t know if they’ve ever finished the whole study, but they found

Julie Hilsen (41:29)
Hmm.

Exploring Ancestral Connections and Healing

Mm-hmm

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (41:54)
that just like the rest of our body, our brain is DNA. And they hypothesized that some of the deja vu that you remember is not really that you did it, but maybe one of your ancestors did it. One of their experiences. So you’re actually pulling from an experience that your ancestors had. And that’s been, yeah, yes.

Julie Hilsen (42:08)
you

So yeah, the epigenetics is what they’re, yeah. It’s

so cool. And also, like it can be good or bad. Like some of it’s not your shit. Some of it’s your ancestor’s shit.

sister, we’re on our time and I promise to keep you on your schedule because you have a busy day. But I loved your website. Would you please shout that out to that? Because I checked it out before we met and it’s just it has your blog on there. It has all your resources, your books and everything that you’re doing. So it’s a great hub for anyone who wants to to go deeper into this.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (42:38)
Mm-hmm.

sure it’s Rhonda Parker Taylor dot com Rhonda’s with an H so it’s our H-O-N-D-A so if you don’t put the H in there I don’t I have no idea maybe I need to do it one time to see where you end up Rhonda Parker Taylor dot com and it has all my social medias on there it has like I said it has my bio bio my email everything in there if you want to get you to shout out and talk about this podcast make sure

Julie Hilsen (42:59)
Ha ha ha!

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (43:14)
that you give Julie a big hand. She’s there for you. She’s been doing this a long time for you. Get your resources, share, like, and hey, it’s been a pleasure. I can’t believe that the time is already over.

Julie Hilsen (43:26)
I know, thank you so much dear sister. This has been amazing. And yet please subscribe on YouTube, share my episodes. This all makes a difference. So you’re all adding to the light, the grid of light. So I honor your contribution. I appreciate everyone’s years. This has been so much fun. Thank you Rhonda.

Rhonda Parker-Taylor (43:43)
Thank you. Have a great day everybody and stay in the light.