Embracing Resilience: Holly Porter's Journey Through Coma, COVID, and Courageous Transformation

Have you ever witnessed the extraordinary power of resilience? Holly Porter, an extraordinary entrepreneur and survivor, joins me, Cassandra Crawley-Mayo, to share her awe-inspiring story of transformation. Having juggled the demands of raising eight children with her entrepreneurial spirit, Holly's life was turned upside down by a severe health scare that left her in a coma for 70 days. Her journey is not just about survival; it's an exploration of how to thrive in the face of life’s most daunting obstacles.

This episode is a profound conversation that delves into living with intention and breaking free from the barriers we often set for ourselves. We unravel Holly's experience with COVID-19, the emotional weight of a near-death experience, and the spiritual awakening that followed. There's something deeply moving about hearing Holly discuss the out-of-body insights that influenced her life and business decisions, including the creation of a nonprofit to support long COVID sufferers. It's a narrative that underscores the undeniable link between presence, communication, and resilience.

To round off our talk, we enter the personal realm of long COVID's challenges and Holly's unyielding journey towards healing and spiritual transformation. The episode is a compelling blend of personal vignettes, strategic insights, and a message of hope and self-acceptance that will resonate with anyone facing their own battles. Holly's story illustrates that even in the depths of adversity, we can find strength, purpose, and gratitude. Join us as we celebrate the resilience that resides in all of us and the incredible potential of the human spirit to overcome and transform.

Chapters

• 0:23 Resilience and Transformation With Holly Porter
• 10:42 Surviving COVID
• 17:24 Overcoming Adversity to Fulfill Purpose
• 24:06 Spiritual Transformation and Healing Journey
• 37:10 Long COVID Symptoms and Resilience
• 40:57 Finding Hope and Gratitude

Transcript

Cassandra: 0:23

Good day everybody. Welcome to my podcast titled Is your Way In your Way, and I'm your host, cassandra Crawley-Mayo, and for those new listeners out there, this podcast is all about individuals who are ready, ready to move out of their way so that they could start living their best life. And when I say get out of your way, these are individuals with self-imposed barriers, perfectionists, self-sabotage, procrastination all of those things that are preventing us from living our best life on our terms. And we talk about topics relative to personal and business development. Many of the segments have been about self-reflection, and I'm certain that this is another one that will enable you to self-reflect.

Cassandra: 1:20

Today, our topic is resilience, and resilience is such an important characteristic that we must have in order to move on with our lives, and I'm certain many of you have been resilient on a lot of things but probably have not even thought about it. And whatever your dream and your passions are, then you need to be resilient in that, so those can manifest as well. So I'm going to bring on an important individual who has just been so resilient. I'd like for you to hear her story, and her name is Holly Porter. Welcome, holly, to Is your Way In your Way podcast. How are you today?

Holly: 1:59

I'm fabulous. Thank you, Cassandra, and thank you for having me oh absolutely.

Cassandra: 2:05

Before we get started, I am going to read your bio so that the listeners will get to know a bit about you before we start delving into more about you. Ok, and I would say that Holly Porter is a dynamic force in business and entrepreneurship. She boasts a remarkable legacy of 11, listen to this successful startups spanning 35 years. She's a speaker, insightful businesswoman. Her philosophy centers on forging relationships, fostering community and cultivating prosperity. Her transformative approach empowers individuals and businesses across diverse industries, guiding them to unlock their values, passions and strength for a purposeful life. A prolific, 13-time number one best-selling author, Holly exemplifies expertise in coaching and consulting and, beyond her professional achievement, she's championed community causes through board membership and philanthropy, underscoring her unwavering belief in the transformative power of collective support. Now, what we didn't read in the bio is just a lot of things that has happened with Holly, and so I wanted to start this out because I'd like for you to tell my listeners your story up until your 70 day hospital stay that led you to where you are today. Tell us about that.

Holly: 3:42

Sure Happy to. I was raised by entrepreneurs, actually, and so I started about 12 years old being an entrepreneur and I don't think it's stopped since. My big dream back when I was young like young, like high school was to get married and have kids and have three jobs. But nothing's changed. I have eight kids, I have 17 grandkids, and I've always had three or four companies at a time.

Holly: 4:18

So my little speel up to that and I did get married pretty young, had three kids in three and a half years and then I married, then I had a fourth about five years later and then I married and had four more bonus kids and that was a hard decision because I can add, and four plus four is eight. He had two girls and two boys, and I had two girls and two boys, and so we had all those kinds of challenges and put a bunch of teenagers in the mix of things and most of my businesses though they really weren't related I worked like, for instance, when my kids were young I had a school and a daycare and then I I had a kid's clothing store, so I grew with them. I had a fundraising company where we worked with all the schools and dance groups and karate groups and raised money, and so that's what a lot of my businesses, I worked them around my kids.

Cassandra: 5:20

Wow, that's incredible. So that entrepreneurship spirit came from your background, your family, so this is something that I will call in your DNA that you've always had. But you also had three businesses at a time. That's incredible. How did you do?

Holly: 5:39

that it's not very easy. The thing is, I can remember when I had a real estate broker and I had a salon and spa for 20 years. That was my long claim to fame A real estate broker. I've been almost 20 years now. Then I had the fundraising companies and then we had a concrete company construction, so we had four at that time and I remember that year being over the County pageants and they used to do this one for the older women, girls, and I added a teen and a baby one to it for the same budget, and I was doing that.

Holly: 6:20

I was Rotary International President, I was AYSO Soccer Regional Commissioner and over the fundraising and I don't know. I look back and think how in the heck did I do all that? Because we dedicated a Veterans Park with a couple of memorials while I was president and there was a lot happening. But the one thing that I would say was regrettable for me in that space was I wasn't really present. Like I was doing all these things and I can multitask very well, I will. People say that to me all the time. How do you do that? I mean, I feel like that is a gift. However, I would be on the soccer field on the phone doing a real estate deal. So I wasn't really there and that's one regret. I do have that. If I would have I was present and not present, Big deal.

Cassandra: 7:17

Yeah, that is a big deal. So obviously you started becoming present and what you've been doing, why? Why is that? Why was that? What caused that pivot for you to be present?

Holly: 7:33

I don't feel like I got present until I got in the hospital and put in a coma and I believe God for me is who I speak to was put me there. I think he put me there to slow me down. I couldn't go anywhere, I you know, and so I think that that's when things shifted was after, because my whole life changed. My daily routine had to change, because my health changed. I was really a healthy person prior to that and now I suffer from long, covid.

Cassandra: 8:08

So now, if I'm correctly saying, you had two near death experiences what were they?

Holly: 8:16

So let me share. First of all, I didn't know this for a long time. I just learned this in the last year. So there's three different things. So I was in a coma. I was in the hospital for 70 days and they put me in a coma most of the time, which was a good thing, because I lost all my senses. They tied my hands to the bed so I couldn't touch anything. The smell and the taste were gone from COVID. I'm was legally blind, so if I didn't have my contacts in, I couldn't see who anyone was. And then the ventilator for some reason took 90% of my hearing so all I would hear is, like the Charlie Brown teacher, remember that.

Holly: 8:56

So it was miserable and so I was grateful. I was in a coma most of the time, but what I learned is there's out of body experiences which. I have many. There are trans, the spiritual transformational experiences, which that was one that I thought was an NDE. Now I know differently, and then I had an NDE as well. So it was interesting that I had in that period of time all of those and those all probably happened I would say the first 30 out of the 70 days.

Cassandra: 9:26

I was in the hospital.

Holly: 9:27

Okay, so for my listeners, nde is near death experience and yeah, a spiritual transformational experience, and then OBE is out of body experience.

Cassandra: 9:40

Exactly, and you've had all of those, all of them, yeah, wow, that's incredible. That's incredible. What makes, what do you think is the reason for all of those experiences that you've had? What do you?

Holly: 9:56

think that's about, and I sometimes say I'm a slow learner because it seems like three is my magical number and I have to experience things like three times before I get the wake up call and say, oh, let's learn this lesson, so we don't have to do this again.

Cassandra: 10:17

And.

Holly: 10:18

I think that was it for me. I had to be put still so that I would listen.

Holly: 10:23

I think that was part of the be present and listen and really, really listen, Because while I was in my coma I was gifted my nonprofit name and it's Adventure Bucket Wish Foundation and with that we serve the long COVID community. The irony around that is that I had a magazine at the time as well which was kind of a separate business under my corporation and it was a lead generator for real estate for me and it was my first year. I had dumped $50,000 of my own money in it, thousand dollars of my own money in it, and that had to close when I got COVID because it was the fourth issue. It came out by bi-monthly and the fourth issue was or, let's see, it came out quarterly and the fourth issue was at the printers when I was in my coma and I remember waking up and 30 days had gone by of time that I didn't have recollection of and I panicked and said where's the magazine?

Holly: 11:28

And you know, I did so many of the roles to that piece of it that it never got printed and I had to shut it down. And the point is with that is, I would not let the word COVID. My writers were not allowed to write that. We were right in the middle of the pandemic, I think fall of 2021, fall of 21,. We started January of 2021. And if even one of their stories came back and they use that word, I made them, even if it was a quote, I made them go back and get the word virus or whatever.

Holly: 12:04

I don't know what that was. Because now here I have a platform, yeah, non-profit, that's all about COVID, because it's about long COVID, right right, yeah.

Cassandra: 12:15

So with that long, covid, have you gotten your senses back?

Holly: 12:20

I don't. I, while I was in the hospital, although I had, so I was on a ventilator. I was incubated two times, I had a track, I had sepsis, a couple other infections I don't know the name because I can't pronounce them, but it was a daily thing. I mean, a lot of people would say my sisters were in the hospital 24, seven with me. One of them could be there at a time and I think they saved my life because they held the nurses and the medical staff accountable a little bit more, and I don't know why I just they they caught on that I needed that extra support there. Yeah, It was a long haul, but that's where I learned a lot of lessons.

Cassandra: 13:04

Yeah, yeah. Were you able to hear? Could you hear people talking?

Holly: 13:11

While I was in my coma. Yeah, interesting you say that because, yes, I believe so. There's a couple incidences, one in particular where I was in an out of body experience, but I was in a different town. That was 100. I found out that, did research, it was 165 years prior and I was there a lot. But one of the time I never went in the future, I always went in the past. One of the times I remember I must have been doing pretty bad because they had me on the ventilator and I remember in this out of body, shaking my finger as they rolled me past the reception desk, saying I rescind my DNR. I rescind my DNR because I don't even know if I had one. To tell you the truth, I remember from COVID, and if you think about a DNR with COVID, Do not resuscitate, right.

Holly: 14:07

Right, do not resuscitate. Right, right, do not resuscitate. But it's a little bit different with COVID, because I I want to, I volunteer basically to go on the ventilator. I didn't want to. I really just got to the point where I couldn't breathe and I knew I was in trouble and I knew that my only option to survive at that time.

Holly: 14:30

There's a recording my sister did with my husband because he had COVID. He was home. I couldn't even see him for three and a half weeks. They wouldn't let him come.

Cassandra: 14:34

So your sister.

Holly: 14:35

That's why they were there. And I listened to a recording a while back that my sister took of the discussion and I cried listening to myself. It was heartbreaking. Nobody wanted to make the decision. We just laid out all the facts and there were a lot of tears and the bottom line was I just said I have to take my chances because I know I can't breathe and I was at the point, you know, my organs would start shutting down and other issues would start happening if I didn't go on the ventilator.

Cassandra: 15:08

Wow. The reason I asked, were you able to speak? Because I mean here is because a lot of people you know that are in comas, they'll say, I wonder, could they hear? You know, they're not quite sure whether they can or not. And I think I had a friend that was passing away and transitioning, and it was something that he wanted me to do beforehand. He wanted me to pray for him and I wouldn't do it because I'm like I don't know how to pray when people are transitioning like that and I'm not even quite sure that they could hear me. And then one of the nurses said, well, that's the last to go. And yeah, and I was like, wow, is that really? So I did pray and he never came back, but I do believe that he heard my prayer and that was just a wish that he wanted. I granted him that wish and I'm glad that I did. I'm glad that I did because I resisted it. .

Holly: 16:11

Well, I didn't share that story. When I went back in time regarding the DNR thing I got distracted, because I do that really easily. But what I was going to say is my sister was in the middle of buying an Airbnb in Las Vegas we live in Utah and I was in a town about oh an hour away from where I lived, that's where I would go back which ended up being my great, great great grandfather's house, by the way but I was. I remember being in this half Airbnb and half the hospital. They were like like I could see the hallway and that was the hospital, but I was in this Airbnb and my sister never told me that. I never knew until I had been out of the hospital for quite a while that she had this Airbnb. Like three months later I found out, and so I believe I heard all those conversations in my coma, because that's why my out of body created that experience Right.

Cassandra: 17:09

Right, wow, that's amazing. So, hmm, now, because the name of this podcast is, resilience, and this is also is your way, in your way podcast. Now, when you were in your comatose state, did you feel that you were being told somrthing? I think I read somewhere that you talked about the gift from the divine entrepreneurial fire. Tell me about that gift.

Holly: 17:44

Well, I heard many things and I experienced many things, but just before I got sick, I was working on a tech company that's new for me, and it was a software we were creating for the retreat space and booking, hosting, education, and I pitched the day I found out I had COVID.

Holly: 18:05

I pitched to a big group, a big group that wanted a partner. So one thing I got told was don't partner with them. Not that it was a bad thing, but it wasn't my highest or best thing to do and it would take me longer. But don't do it. And the second thing I got told specifically was this nonprofit. I got the name. I knew it was for long, covid and that so I I immediately got in. I was pretty sick for a long time, even out of the hospital. Within three months I had both of them incorporated. We ended up getting our 501c3 in 25 days, which is unheard of.

Cassandra: 18:48

That's amazing yeah.

Holly: 18:51

I knew there were so many miracles I can share. I mean, I didn't have insurance my whole life. Two months before I got sick I got insurance and I had a million dollar hospital bill.

Cassandra: 19:04

Oh my gosh, that is amazing, you know. You know, now, when I listen to you, you've had several, I would say, jobs or opportunities, and my listeners, well some listeners that have a desire to have their business, have a business, and they can't even get there because of those self-imposed barriers. And even when you were sick, you came out doing things. I mean, you acted, you took action, because that's the only time things will happen if you take action on it and because then you're I don't want to say prior life, but before all of this happened, you had that entrepreneur spirit anyway. Now, as a result of all that happened, you could have just given up. I've known people that had COVID. They just sit around, they don't really do a lot. I don't know, it's like doomsday, you know. So what do you think calibrated you to continue going?

Holly: 20:25

Is it because of things you heard? Yeah, this is how I look at it. If God was willing to save my life, I mean there were experiences that I met with medical professionals after when I was getting better at appointments and asking them why is there only two of us in the pulmonary rehab program when COVID is so big? And she turned around and looked at me and said because they don't live to need it. And I was so humbled by that because it was like if God's going to save my life and he's going to give me a purpose and he's going to give me something that I've never.

Holly: 20:54

I never felt like I really had a purpose. Why? I mean, yes, children, I had others. You know I had lots of good things to live for, but to lay it out for me, I mean, dang, if I'm not going to do that, I'm not going to waste one day because we don't know how long we have here. And all the diagnoses started coming in within a couple months after being out of the hospital for the long COVID and you know, one of those were life threatening. I mean a two to four year lifespan that they told me. I know I'll prove them wrong because I am. That's right, exactly. It was scary right. You go Google your diagnosis and you're dying, no matter what's on Google.

Cassandra: 21:38

Right, wow, that's something, because you know we have millions of people living today. And if you live to wake up tomorrow and initially you said you weren't present, but I call that a present, I call that a gift and if we don't take advantage of the time and I don't know if advantage is the right term, but I do believe we're all here for a reason we are to fill our purposeful life. But yet many of us are not quite sure, because a lot of us are still trying to figure out well, what's my purpose? And they're different purposes. It doesn't have to be a big purpose, little purpose is just. We all have different purposes. So I is. That is amazing, incredible. And I keep saying that because you didn't, because of your mindset, you were just determined he's given you this gift, and you must continue your journey.

Holly: 22:44

I did have a nurse that came in the second innovation so they took me off for 24 hours and I just couldn't keep my oxygen up. I did have a nurse that came in the second innovation, so they took me off for 24 hours and I just couldn't keep my oxygen up and it was, it was hard. I mean, it was really really hard and I, I was trying, I really was trying, and she came in and she just said, you know, pointed at my head and like this is all in your mind, this is this, this is that your sisters mind, this is this, this is that your sisters told me that you're a speaker and you do tons of personal development. If anybody can get through this, you can. And and it kind of gave me that I mean she was stern, but it gave me that pep talk to go yeah, I can, I can do this and wow.

Cassandra: 23:27

Now I'm curious if this is still your goal to empower individuals and businesses to achieve their full potential, promoting growth and prosperity in their businesses. Is that still your goal to do? Based on all that you've been through, has it changed a little bit?

Holly: 23:48

No, I would say those are up there. I do high level women like it's a mastermind, but it's a retreat mastermind because it goes along with my software and so we do for each quarter we go, and that's really what I'm looking to do. Prosperity to me isn't all about money. I was never motivated by money my whole life and now, because I went through a lot of things the last couple of years, a lot of horrible things.

Holly: 24:21

I think, like many days, I would say in my prayers why did I live? To deal with this hell, so to speak? I was going through worse times than ever in my life and I was like saved to live and it's like man, like those questions, and I know that those experiences were to help me, help more people. The legacy piece I remember laying in the hospital bed, thinking many days I prayed to die. I did because it was horrible and when, especially when I was awake, yeah, just, my prayer was if you're not gonna get me, than get me out of here, this is horrible.

Holly: 25:06

And that was my prayer and you know I'm happy to share that with my spiritual transformation experience then was is that you want me to share? Is that okay? Sure, yeah. My sisters and said read this to me and it was a really spiritual thing for her. She said I normally wouldn't say this in a text. I was praying for Holly and Scott to get better and I had all these basically spirits around her and she's nosy, so she said I asked who's here and one by one, she was given those names and basically was giving me that hope.

Holly: 25:54

Well, me and my little sassiness, I go back in the coma. And that's when I was praying for all these things and I was angry. I was really, really angry because I, like sisters would. Why did she go through that and I didn't? It was that attitude Like how come I'm the one suffering and why would you give her an experience like that and not me?

Holly: 26:20

And so it was at that time my mom had passed away about a year and a half before I got sick. She was not with me a lot, she was on my right side and she came and was there and she said you hear this all the time, but it really, it does happen. It's not your time to go, you need to stay. And she said you need to fight. And when she said that, in front of my bed, all my grandparents that have all passed on, all in white, everybody in white, had passed on. So I had a brother, sister-in-law, my grandbaby died six months before my mom, my grandparents, my favorite aunt and all appeared and they started chanting fight, fight, time. They would say fight. A whole other group of people would appear behind them. So you know, my husband was there, my kids, my friends, and it went back, and my siblings and it went back as far as I could see and every time they would chant that this other group and you know the other group that I didn't recognize all those people.

Holly: 27:27

I mean as far back as I could see, like if you were looking in a mirror to eternity. It was just people everywhere. I know now those were all those people on the prayer rolls and all the places that people had asked for prayers of my, in my behalf, on social media. Those were no praying for me. I knew at that time that was a pivotal moment, that I was going to live, and so from then on, I didn't I didn't pray to die, I just prayed to get better and I knew I had.

Cassandra: 28:00

I had some things to do yeah, absolutely, and even you did have a DNR right. I thought I did yeah, regardless, I didn't want one wow, I thought I did, yeah, regardless, I didn't want one, right? I remember you saying passing, by saying yeah, we, we, right, exactly, we rescinded my DNR. Wow, that's incredible.

Holly: 28:25

Now COVID. So different If you think about it. It's not a normal. It's not like I got in a car wreck and I was brain dead and I was on life support Right.

Cassandra: 28:35

Yeah.

Holly: 28:36

I was. I was there and I remember they had to, like, bring me alphabets. I couldn't even hardly lift my hand. It was a miracle when I could lift my phone. Then it was a miracle when I could lift my iPad, because I was so weak. Um my, I had to point at the letters to say anything and it it would take hours to get even a word out. Sometimes I would get so frustrated because they didn't understand what I was saying. Exactly, yeah, so it was fun.

Holly: 29:03

Because I couldn't talk until I got the trach. When you get the trach, you can talk Not very well, but you can talk.

Cassandra: 29:09

Yeah, wow, that's something in itself, because something's in your throat. So that's kind of weird.

Holly: 29:15

It seemed like it would be difficult to talk and they keep you very drugged, because when you're in a coma I guess if you're in pain I didn't remember that but if you're in pain, not being drugged up so much will bring you out of the coma. Some of the time I was in a paralyzed coma to heal wow, so okay.

Cassandra: 29:40

So now you have the foundation right. Are you doing the real estate, or that's gone, I still stay.

Holly: 29:49

Okay, I mostly just work with buyers and referrals and so I do it when it comes, because it's always you know it's paid my bills. There was a lot of income loss while I was sick. I had the biggest transaction, just about six weeks before I got sick, that I'd ever had. I mean it was like that was another miracle because I had that extra money and I ended up having an insurance policy that was for major, like ICU stay and cancer policy. Those are the only insurances I had and it was a miracle how we found out that they covered that. I ended up getting like twenty seven thousand dollars because I was in there so long yeah, that wasn't towards the hospital. I mean, that was just so many. I got a hyperbaric situation that landed in my lap right when we were closing on our home after we got all of our money stolen out of 12 bank accounts, because we have lots of businesses.

Holly: 30:50

They stole all of our, our money, including our down payment to our house, and I was able to get it back but, it just so many things that were miracles and that hyperbaric saved my lungs, because pulmonary fibrosis was one of my diagnoses yeah to have it in my home. Get in it every single morning. There's just no matter what. There's a silver lining, there's hope. You just have to let all that self-talk get out of your way Like you're you're sure, really we are the ones in our way, right, right.

Cassandra: 31:25

That's right. So, um with your self-talk, do you? Um, do you talk back to yourself? You know, when you have those it's kind of like well, how do you turn that negative self-talk around? What do you do to change that?

Holly: 31:42

You know, in the past I think I just scolded myself, probably probably self-sabotaged myself all the time. Now I have sensory issues and so I'm really cute at night I wear a mask and it has speakers that are flat that go in my ears, and then I have to wear a c-pap. Now, thank you long, covid. And so I have all this stuff on and I'm hyper or I'm claustrophobic. So that's a whole mind thing in itself, because when you can't breathe, the, the c-pap is just forcing air in, it's not oxygen, like right exactly so I.

Holly: 32:21

It psychs you out, and so I think that's an experience in itself right now. But I think the sounds that I listen to. I'll listen to binarial beats uh, you know personal affirmations. I change it up a little bit, but I think that saved me, because I'm listening to it all night. Some of us got to be sinking in.

Holly: 32:40

And yeah finding mean, last night I had the positive. I mean a lot of relapses. My immune system is awful. I didn't say that because I don't want to create that, but it I was so healthy, I was on no drugs, I walked out. Well, I know I have done. I worked really hard to get that.

Cassandra: 33:01

Yeah.

Holly: 33:01

I had to do a lot of things like my self care is my health care. So if you say, what are you doing for yourself, you know really it's like whatever is going to make me healthy, because that matters, and I feel like that's. Another thing I've got to be blessed with is enough strength so that I can accomplish these legacy pieces. And there I know I have to make a lot of money with my retreat software because of the things that happened the last two years. It opened my eyes to things that I need money for to make better. There's grandkids situations, dcfs, I mean attorneys, all kinds of things like that. You know that tug at every heartstring you have. And well, for my husband, I was very heartbreaking. I cried every day for two years and I wasn't a crier before and I'm just getting to the point now looking oh, that had to happen. It's like my grandkids had to sacrifice for what I'm going to be able to save so many more more kids doing with what we have planned. So there's a reason for everything.

Cassandra: 34:08

So now, what's the purpose of the software? Because that was something that you acquired after the coma, right? During the coma, you were led to that.

Holly: 34:31

The gist of it is. I just started working on it. I had a pitch deck ready to pitch this group that I pitched the day I found out I had COVID, I was really sick. I mean, that was resilience. I was really sick.

Cassandra: 34:44

And I was sweating.

Holly: 34:45

You know how you're sweating as fast as you're putting your makeup on, it's dripping off of you and I got up really early and went and I pitched in front of, on a zoom, about nine people and of course, they wanted the idea. The idea came two years before and it was because I was doing a retreat in Ireland and that was the year. It was in 2020.

Cassandra: 35:07

Okay, the 2020.

Holly: 35:08

So obviously we had to cancel and I couldn't find venues. That's what gave me the idea is I was having a real hard time, everybody being VRBO. That's not their business. They, they don't. They think a retreat is a party and if it's a party, they don't want you in their house. Well, right now, that's kind of the place that people have to put things on unless they pay. There's a couple of sites that charge the venues to be on there and then they just send them back to them.

Holly: 35:38

So what we're creating is for everything, inclusive to retreats not just the venues but the retreat leaders that give up those and now we'll bring them to them. Eventually we'll have all events. We'll have any kind of conference, we'll be able to handle stuff like a Tony Robbins conference and we'll have summits on there. And we're still in beta mode. We're looking for the founding members mean. I'm very proud of it. We worked really hard on it.

Cassandra: 36:16

Yeah, it sounds like it, WOW while in the coma, so you know that it was something going to come of it, because it had been given to you.

Holly: 36:28

Yeah, I basically was told don't partner with that group, right, it'll take you longer, but it'll be worth it, and I just have to keep replaying that because it's been, you know, way over two years now and yeah we are live, but yeah, wow what a development to do and the philanthropy piece to that is our non-profit. So eventually I'm struggling, trying to juggle both businesses and the nonprofit. I didn't set up to make money. I want it to be to help serve the people that I am. Yeah the COVID suffers.

Holly: 37:07

And the struggle is with it. Nobody wants to hear about COVID. They're sick of it. Nobody wants to hear about COVID. They're sick of it and they don't realize, and you probably don't realize there are 65 million documented cases of long COVID. That's a lot of people.

Cassandra: 37:22

That is a lot, that is a whole lot 200 symptoms that are linked to long COVID.

Holly: 37:30

And so someone's listening and they're going huh, I have all these issues now that I didn't have. I thought after I got COVID they're just not connecting the dots that they probably do have long COVID. There's cancers, like I've had melanoma cancer twice in the last two years, and so there's I mean just the symptoms. I have eye floaters, my ears, and so there's I mean just the symptoms. I have eye floaters, my ears ring all the time, and that's why I wear the binarial beats with speakers, because I'd rather hear that than your ears. And sometimes it's like a siren going off and that alone can make people crazy. I've read oh yeah, commit suicide just from having tinnitus.

Cassandra: 38:12

Right, right, right, and that's why this is the perfect name for this podcast. You are certainly resilient, you know, and just your stories. It appears that people will want to hear the story, but if they don't want to hear the COVID, you know, it's going to be pretty difficult for you to even share your story, but you are definitely a testament to the long-term COVID and what it can do and your foundation could be of service. That's what it's for. That's what it's for. Yeah, that's exactly what it's for.

Holly: 38:44

One thing that I think people need to also realize is I was extreme, I was the case that didn't walk out of the hospital, and people I have people in fact. I interviewed a guy on my podcast. His wife that's a whole other story Really really bad Even had a baby in the hospital while she was there four months with COVID, but he got COVID, never had any symptoms, but he has long COVID. So there's no rhyme or reason. No, two faces are the same. Have no clue. When I go to the new doctors, you know, they tell me I learned from you. Yeah, well then let me bill you, exactly. That's what they don't know and they think it's kind of like the old fibromyalgia when that kind of became a thing yes there's people oh, that's not a real thing, because there's not a test that can say, yes, you have it.

Holly: 39:37

I mean there's really not a rheumatoid arthritis, which I have too. I mean, there's markers but there's not an actual test. There's not an actual test for lyme's disease. There's so many autoimmune that are coming from people having COVID.

Cassandra: 39:52

Wow.

Holly: 39:53

Crazy.

Cassandra: 39:53

Wow. So, Holly, as we wrap up, what message of hope that you could leave my listeners with? For those individuals who are in their way, there's certain things they want to do. They feel like they have so much against them. They're saying this is my fate. I'm just going to accept it as it is. What words of wisdom or hope would you like to leave my listeners with?

Holly: 40:23

This is probably a new one that I just thought of. The message that came back for me was not just about love. It was love people where they're at.

Holly: 40:36

And so that being said, it takes the judgment out. So think of that as yourself. If you look at yourself, love yourself where you're at, because it is where you are. You have the skills you have. You give yourself hope, give yourself love, right, and it it makes a lot easier to deal with the issues. I mean, trust me, I I just spent all weekend in bed again and it stinks. It's like when you're a level seven, four to seven, pain all day long.

Holly: 41:07

It's challenging, I get it, trust me yeah but I think just that, finding that glimpse of hope and definitely a gratitude journal, that'd be the second thing I would say Okay, okay. Love yourself, love others where they're at.

Cassandra: 41:21

Okay, okay, and the gratitude journal.

Holly: 41:25

Yeah.

Cassandra: 41:26

Wow, wow, like I said, what a testament you are and it was a blessing to have you on this podcast, because I know that you have given many listeners hope and like, wow, if she can do this, I can do this. So therefore, I'm going to love myself and others where they are. So I want to thank you. God bless you. God bless you. I always tell my listeners I never say goodbye, I always say bye for now, and I will say that to you as well, holly. And again, I just want to thank you for your time, your nuggets and those sparkle of diamonds that you've given, and I know there's somebody that you've given hope to, and I thank you for that okay, thank you yes.