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Close your eyes and imagine. What if the things in life that cause us the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, are challenges, challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried. But what if, like a seed. We've been planted, and having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now open your eyes.
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Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is grief to growth, and I am your host.
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Brian Smith, hi there, and welcome to grief, to growth, where we journey together, to navigate life's challenges, to understand who we are and explore where we're headed. I'm your host, Brian Smith, and whether this is your first time joining us or you're a longtime listener, I am so glad you're here. Today's guest is Mary D'Agostino. She's a remarkable individual whose work spans the realms of intuition, spirituality and healing. She's a professional intuitive, a psychic medium, a spiritual counselor and astrologer, an author, an artist and a ceremonialist. She's a founder of heart of Gaia, creative healing arts, a sacred space dedicated to intuitive healing, spiritual growth and navigating life's challenges through transformative practice. So in today's episode, we're going to dive deeply into Mary's personal journey of love and of loss, including the profound grief of losing her son, Brandon. Mary will share the extraordinary, extraordinary spiritual experiences that unfolded during her journey, vision, synchronicities and even a shared death experience with her son. We'll explore after how she uses these experience to help others connect with their own inner healing and spiritual growth. Mary is also the author of 111 days of divine intervention, a mother's healing journey into the forest, a maidens journey, and she's a contributor to the good, to the last drop, embracing your life's third chapter book through her writing and her foundation, Brandon's angels, she provides guidance, comfort and care for those navigating the often overwhelming terrain of grief.
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So some of the questions we'll explore today include, how do spiritually transformative experiences show up in our daily lives? What does it mean to meet ourselves through grief and loss? What are the messages from the other side that she's received from her son Brandon?
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So I invite you to stick around for what promises to be an enlightening and deeply moving conversation, and don't forget afterwards to continue the conversation in our community at grief to growth.com/community, so with that, I want to welcome Mary D'Agostino, thank
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You're not your life is going to go in a different direction than you thought, mom, even though you know it kind of was going in Well having children and raising children direction. But Brandon came in as a surprise, and continued to really be a light and a wonderful, joyful kid, high energy, and he he was the one who would his dad was kind of strict and, and all the other kids would be like, you know, get in line and Yes, sir. And, and Brandon would be like, yeah.
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It's, you know, it's one of those things that people say, Oh, it's the worst thing anyone could ever go through. Yet, because of my son's life and his soul and his life, exuberance of life, I'm always brought back to that and how much he loved life and lived fully. He lived fully while he was here and and, of course, that doesn't really it doesn't help the grief, you know, but it does shift my Oh, it always shifts my perspective.
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And but he did, and he and he passed, he died in a way, in a way of how he lived. He, you know, I had a profound experience with a few days before his passing, and, oh, and being born intuitive and really having the opportunities in my lifetime to cultivate that, those, those not, not easy or not, you know, I had to, I had to burst through a lot of barriers towards, you know, of structures I was raised in to become more intuitive, more of myself, but that helped me be very connected with Brandon and his life, and all my children too, and and be very connected through his passing, and ensured that, you know, his soul was living on, and that I could take that experience too. So I had that experience through his passing, his actual physical transition of these amazing synchronicities and and connections that helped me navigate the the grief and the devastation of the loss but his.
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Wow, sounds like quite a kid.
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Yes, I found that, you know, in my my own experience with. Brandon, and then I've had the honor and experience of helping others who have children in spirit through, you know, through my work. But yeah, you know. And I think that I feel with Brandon, I wrote this too. I wrote, you know, he was an answer to my prayer at the time, actually, as I said, and, and, and so I truly believe and feel he had a mission and knew what it was. And maybe that is what it is with our children who who pass early, it's there.
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It's very
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true. It's very true. We just don't, we don't know how long that time is. And yeah, I think there, I totally agree with you. I don't think that we know, or they know on a conscious level, but there is a level. There's something in the background. And as I think back about my daughter, I can certain clues that we got about the way that she thought about death, the way she thought about pain, the way she thought about experiences, like a lot of people would think would be negative, like she said, I remember when she was young, I like to break my leg. And we were said, Shayna, why would you want to break your leg? Because I want to know what it's like to walk on crutches. And sure enough, it wasn't that much longer later, she tore ACL and had to have surgery, and she was walking on crutches. But she embraced stuff like that. You know, she embraced, she had a lot of medical procedures, and she went into him like, with with curiosity. So I think there's a lot of that with these kids that are just kind of like just taking it all in, just really absorbing life. Wow,
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It's like, okay, well, here's the depth. As I say this in my I feel this truth from the depth of my being. Love is so connected with grief and and pain and is connected with love.
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Yeah, you know.
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And so I was raised in a religion of Catholicism. And so we were taught certain things, right? Of, okay, this is who God is. This is what, and angels were part of it. But though, when I I don't even remember learning about angels, I just knew they were with me all the time, and I could call on them, and they were very real. And then the trees and the and the, you know, the fields by where we lived. And I could go there, and I could feel connected. And so I, I know now that was my intuition, my senses, my full embodied senses. But I didn't tell anybody about that, you know, and and I also knew in my religion, which I feel was my first kind of spiritually, I don't know, transformative, but I remember being in Catholic school in the we were learning about God, and God was this really scary, mean man who lived in the sky, and he had kind of long, gray hair, like me. Now, right? You know that God, and it was Thou shalt not, and it was like those overhead projectors where, you know, I don't know.
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go ahead, I could never square that circle. I could never figure out how God was so angry. And I don't know why he was so angry, but Jesus was so loving. So I love Jesus, but I, you know, God was like, Yeah, I don't, I don't need that. I know that was a very scary thing to me too, yeah,
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I was a very good rule follower.
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bit. Yeah. So, so Brandon when he was about 14, so 10 years before he transitioned, he started to dabble in drugs and do the, you know, do some things that were kind of, you know, as I said, he pushed the limit. Let me try this, let me see what it might be. And then they would come home and tell me, like, Hey, Mom, I tried this drug and and I had the craziest experience. And then I would have to appreciate that, he told me. But then, you know, discipline, reprimand, whatever I you know. But anyway, so, so he pushed my limit quite a bit, and he he, he got in some trouble and and so I, I just really brought, I just called in the big guns, meaning the angels, the archangels, the and he, he knew about all that, and he had, he, he loved connecting with his angels and spirit guides and helpers, and and, and so there was one point at one, well, there was a couple of times that I had this dream, and this was probably a year or two.
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Know everything was ultimately going to be okay, sure. And I know that's that is. That's the depth of how, what I know, it's like everything you know, all in all. Of course, it's not when you're in the pain of it or the you know, but it ultimately, I believe this, and I've lived it, and Brandon proves it, and I know you share so much of this, that ultimately the universe has our backs. And when we have to experience these difficult, challenging things, there are also all, all these pieces that come together to help us, yeah,
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yeah. I definitely believe that's been, that's been my experience. It's, it's totally opposite of what I believed before, but it's, it's what I I've come to understand.
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Yeah, it took me a while to understand, to be able to name it, you know? And when I heard shared death a while after I went, well, that feels accurate, but what that was because I was very connected with him, you know, and open and and my intuition was intuition, and using all of our senses is, I feel it's like a muscle. You build it, you know, you you practice, you build it, just like our connection, our meditation, or other tools. So I had built it enough, apparently.
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What does it mean? It meant, for me, it meant, pay attention.
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And I did. And in that meditation again, as I was a little alluded to it earlier, I was being pushed through this, this portal. It was called the 111, meditation with Archangels.
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So. So they left, and I did, you know, I went to to do my Friday evening, sleeping and relaxing and but before I went to sleep, I looked at my phone that night, and I looked at, I saw a picture of my son, Brandon, at his previous birthday when he a few months earlier. And it was just this beautiful picture with him, with all his cake and all these lights, and he was smiling. And I felt the deepest peace when I looked at that picture, and then I went to bed, and it was I didn't find out. I can tell that part, but that when I had that vision, it was the exact time he was transitioning. He was 70 miles away in the city, and he had taken a car he worked for a car dealership. He had his dream job, lived in a new apartment in Parker by the way, yeah, and he was test driving a brand new Maserati, and it was a dark, small sports car. It wasn't black, it was blue. Oh, and by the way, his car that he drove all the time was a black BMW that always needed fixing. And so I thought, when I had that previous vision, that it was that car he would get into. So anyway, he had taken that evening, Friday the 13th, at around 730 he took the car out, and he was driving it down a road that they always would the kid that the his colleagues would take the cars out. Was dark road, and there was a curve. And he actually, we know this. I know this because at that exact time he was filming himself live on social media, and so there is a snippet of him. He filmed his speedometer going from zero to 111, 111, and then nothing. So it's about a 14 second video that he was filming at the same time I was having that the vision of the Goddess.
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And that is what I was doing that evening. So we were sharing the experience. And the reason I do know that so it wasn't just to wrap that up. Nobody could find him until the next morning, that because it was so dark, the car was upside down and it was completely demolished. And he well when we went to look for hit, or when we found out, you know, Brandon's missing that morning. By the way, his girlfriend called me many, many times throughout the night. I got none of those. No, I got none of the messages they none of them came through. She Well, she texted me, where's Brandon?
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It's our time to go, and it's just a matter of how you know, just you know. So if it hadn't been that way, it would have been another way. Is what my belief is.
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That is like, don't worry. We've been doing this for eons. You know, we'll, we'll be back or, or you, you know what a great life you had, and now you're going to, you know, have your, your next adventure in the in between world, and you're going to come back and, and in the meantime, though, you know, we are left with our I do want to say I know without a doubt there was nothing I could have done to stop it. Stop it and even. And that leads me to a month later, I was out walking, and I walk all the time to for it's, it's a spiritual practice, really. And I every time I go to that question, how could I have stopped this and what? What if or I would feel that truth of, no, it's bigger than that. You know, it's there's so what do I need to help me understand that, that you know, and I also would wondered, I even though I knew, because I had a lot of divine interventions with this too, that he did not suffer. That's another thing that us parents who lose children are like, did they suffer and what did they feel? You know, because we're so, I mean, we're there. We're supposed to take care of them and protect them from everything, and so of course, we're going to not want that and but every time I'd felt that, I would, you know, he apparently died instantly, that's what the report said. So I was glad to know that. But then, you know, then there were some other things that I was like, Wait, if he did, but, you know, anyway, so fast forward, about a month later, I'm out walking, and I'm I'm just doing my best, you know, to keep my body but moving and and be out in nature. And I could feel his presence, and I hear him talking like is a conversation in my mind a lot, and I know that is something that I will tell people over and over again, that you can have conversations and believe that when you hear what they're saying, what you think they're saying, it's most likely what they're saying, And it might be in your own voice or it might be in theirs. It doesn't matter, but to trust that. And so I'm out walking, and I say, I hear him say, Hey, Mom, you want to know what happened when I died?
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And all the love I ever felt, and all the love I ever gave, I felt this warm glow, and then it's, well, it's where I've been returning to over and over he got, he said, I remove myself from it, and I visit places, and then I return to the love. But I really can't ever leave it. It was all a part of the plan to light up this love again in our family to make that the love the strongest. It's more like remembrance. We forgot, but you didn't forget, Mom, you never forgot. Love. You fed me. Love, Mom. So much. Love,
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yeah, that's that's awesome. And I want to say to people who are listening that, and I'm glad that, I'm glad that you read that because I've seen so my parents, their minds go to the worst place. But I remember listening to Dr Mary Neal at the helping parents heal conference.
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And even before, I heard for years ago, and she drowned, and a lot of people said drowning would be the worst way to go.
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And she, even though she loved the water, she always said that would be the worst way to go.
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But when she describes her drowning, she says it was very peaceful. She said that was that was a great way to go. And I've heard other people that have been killed in various ways, ways that we would think would be horrific. And these people seem to leave their bodies before we were before we see them in pain, and even people who seem to be suffering, that are unconscious in the hospital, that are moaning and groaning, will report after they've passed that they weren't in there when that was happening. It was just their bodies going that through that reaction. So if you I take comfort in what your experience was, but I would say for anybody else, if you're imagining that your loved ones suffered. I don't believe that's the case.
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It's my soul. You know, it's my it's everything. It's my grief.
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Because the thing was, if I could have, if we could have gotten there sooner, if somebody saw it, it, he could have been saved, but he couldn't have right? No way. There's no way.
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He would, he was, I knew what he said too, because he would come in the house, or my house, and be like, I'm home, and I would hug him and and he would give me good hugs. And then he go see what was in the refrigerator that he could eat. So he spoke those words like, you fed me.
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And they're not all just young men, but the lot of them are young, like teens to maybe 30 year olds that I feel like they're in a club. And it's kind of like because Brandon was like that in life. He had lots and lots of friends, and everybody was invited, and he always so I connect with them, and they bring their moms and dads to me, and I'm like, Okay, I'm glad to help. Yeah, yeah,
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yeah. So, so you mentioned a couple of the services you offer to people.
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What else do you do? And how do people how do people reach you?
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And that's how I read them and help people I do journaling, you know, different things with journaling and what else do I do? All of it is just woven into helping people connect and know who they are. Yeah. Remember, like Brandon said, you remembered love, but we forgot.
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So I, that's what I do. And I do, I still do Reiki, and I teach, I teach Reiki the all the levels. And I because, again, I want everyone to take little steps, big steps, in awakening their higher self, their wisdom, their inner knowing, and remember how powerful we are as beings of love, beings of that came here to help transform this planet. And goddess knows we need it right now. So I do that.
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Yeah. So if you could, if you could get one message to people that are listening today, what's, what's the most important thing to take away from our conversation?
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Compassion is so important for self first, yeah, so that we can, because it's hard, it's rough, it's like there's lots and lots of changes happening.
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I love that. Thank you for sharing that. You know, it's really important. I think, you know, again, we were taught.
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I was taught when I was a kid, you know, to love others before you love yourself. You know, we were taught. There was an acronym that we were taught in Sunday school, Jesus, others and you. So you love Jesus first, then others and then yourself.
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But what I've learned lately is that when Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself, that implies loving yourself first you have to love yourself before you can love your neighbor as yourself. And that's, I think, what's missing for a lot of people, because as we, as you said, As Brandon said, we have to remember who we are, and if we remember who we are, remember why we're here. That's, that's the that's the key to getting through this with as little pain as possible.
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Sure. Okay, so I have a website and all my varied wonderful things that I do, and it's my name, so it's m, A, R, Y, D, A, G, O, S, T, I N, o.com, and my book, my latest book about Brandon and all the proceeds, I'm I have a foundation to help anyone who needs a bit of care package, if they're going through grief, if you know of anyone, send them to me. And it's the book is 111 days of divine intervention, a mother's healing journey. Yeah,
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it's awesome, and thanks for sharing that with us today. So Mary, it was good to sit down with you and have this conversation. Thanks for being here. Enjoy the rest of your day.
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Thank you. You too, Brian, thank you so much for having me. Thank you, everyone. Bye.
