Have you ever wondered how the heartbreak of grief can become a catalyst for profound healing and personal transformation? In this poignant episode, I sit down with Andrea Wilson Woods, a remarkable woman who turned her devastating loss into a powerful force for change.
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Show Notes | TranscriptAt my lowest points, I could just go hug this 200 pound dog. And he was always there for me. There’s something very healing about animals because dogs give you that unconditional love.” – Andrea Wilson Woods
Andrea shares the heart-wrenching story of raising her younger sister, Adrienne, only to lose her to liver cancer at the tender age of 15. Andrea talks about how she turned her grief into a mission, becoming a patient advocate and founding the nonprofit Blue Faery. We delve into the deep emotional battles she faced, including the challenge and pain of writing a memoir that included her sister’s journal entries.
Discover how Andrea:
- Embraced an unexpected role as both sister and parent at a young age
- Navigated the intense emotional terrain of caregiving during Adrienne’s 147-day cancer battle
- Found purpose in pain by founding the Blue Faery nonprofit organization
- Explored unconventional healing modalities to process her grief decades later
Key insights include:
- The power of unconditional love in the face of unimaginable loss
- Why grief doesn’t have an expiration date – and why that’s okay
- How changing your environment can unlock emotional breakthroughs
- The importance of finding healing methods that resonate with you, even if they’re unconventional
Resources:
Join the Soulful Women’s Network
Connect with Andrea Wilson Woods:
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TRANSCRIPT
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Namaste. What if the deepest pain of your life became your greatest source of healing? Join us today to learn how one woman’s 147 day journey through loss revolutionized her approach to grief and could transform yours, too. But before I bring her on, I want to welcome those of you who may be new to live love, engage. I am Gloria Grace, and I help feed female entrepreneurs, attract clients who align with your values, and become your biggest cheerleaders. And joining us today is a woman that I have known for a couple of years. I was actually fortunate enough to be on her podcast a few years ago. Her name is Andrea Wilson woods, and she is a keynote speaker, a writer who loves to tell stories, and a patient advocate who founded the nonprofit Blue Faery, the Adrienne Wilson Liver Cancer association. And her bestselling and award winning book, Better Off Bald: A Life in 147 Days, is a medical memoir about raising and losing her sister to liver cancer. So without further ado, I’m going to bring her up onto the stage and welcome you, Andrea, to live love, engage.
Andrea Wilson Woods
Thank you so much, Gloria. Now, Grace, I’ve been looking forward to this because like you said, we know each other.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
I know. Yes. It’s always nice to be able to have a chat with someone that you’ve chatted before with. I don’t think my English was very good there, but whatever. I feel like my preposition was in the wrong place, but whatever. Anyway, yeah, so we do have something in common in that the fact that we have both lost a sister to cancer. But the similarities in our stories really am there. So I would appreciate if you could share with our audience a little bit today a little bit about your sister and your journey and how has kind of led you to where you are today and the work you’re doing.
Andrea Wilson Woods
Yes. So we do have that in common. And the major difference is I ended up raising my sister. So my sister and I have the same mother but different fathers. Her father actually died before she was born, so she never knew him, unfortunately. And there was a 14 year age gap between us. And when my sister was eight years old, she came to visit me in Los Angeles for what was supposed to be a two week Christmas vacation. And the day after Christmas, our mother called and said she didn’t want to be a mother anymore. And I did not put this together at the time. It took me years to actually make this connection, but that was three days before my mother’s 50th birthday. And so I don’t know if it was a combination of a midlife crisis, but she also was a drug addict, and she had lost her nursing license for shooting up morphine at work. And so I had watched her life just fall apart than previous year, and I had even been sending my mom money. And so when she said that the day after Christmas, I just told her, I said, well, if I take her now, I’m not giving her back, because. Because I saw the destruction and of my sister’s childhood. And so I ended up taking physical custody that December of 1994. And then eventually I went to court and won full legal custody of my sister.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Wow. Yeah. And like I said, we do have other things in common, too, because I had, there was a 14-year difference between me and my brother. Well, I was the baby of the family. It sounds like your sister was as well. So, yeah, it’s interesting how things like that happen. So, yeah, so what happened? I mean, how did it wind up that she was diagnosed with cancer and what happened there?
Andrea Wilson Woods
Yeah. So I raised Adrienne all through my twenties, and she did have a very difficult time in middle school. She had a very serious bout of depression. And I. I sort of accidentally, when cleaning her room, found out how suicidal she really was, and so got her into therapy right away. And we were very fortunate that we just got the best therapist for my sister on the planet. So shout out to Denise, whose name I changed in the book, but I could say her name now. And we were so fortunate. And so we really thought we got through that. And she started high school. She was really just embracing who she was, and she stopped trying to fit in and be like others. And she had a great boyfriend, a lot of friends, honor students. And so here she is. She’s about to finish her freshman year of high school at Burbank High in southern California. And I came home from work, and I was actually a teacher. And usually when I walked in the door, she would be at the kitchen table doing her homework, because that was a rule in our house. She had to do her homework first.
But instead, on that day, on May 16, 2001, I walked in, and she was on the living room floor curled up in a fetal position, saying she couldn’t breathe. Now, mind you, the day before, she was fine. And so we went to her pediatrician. He didn’t like what he saw. He sent us to the local hospital to get a CAT scan. So we go through the emergency room, and it was actually an ER doctor who told us that Adrienne had tumors in her liver and lungs. And that hospital in Burbank, it’s for adults. It’s not for pediatric patients. So that night, she was transferred to children’s hospital Los Angeles. And that was one of many, many rides in an ambulance. And that was day one of her 147 day cancer journey. I think one of the few blessings we had was that because she was so young, they moved very fast because they could not believe what they were seeing on that CAT scan. She had a biopsy within two days that confirmed that she had stage four hepatocellular carcinoma, which is the most common type of primary liver cancer, also known as HCC, and that had metastasized to her lungs. And it was just shocking that she was doing her first round of chemotherapy a week later.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah, it’s crazy how those things can come up so fast and, you know, similar with my sister, no symptoms, and then all of a sudden pain. And from the size of it, when it was finally diagnosed, I mean, it was not a small tumor. And so it had been growing for a long time, but it’s weird how those things happen. In looking at the website that you started, the nonprofit, I saw that she was keeping a journal, which, again, it’s similar. My sister did that as well. She started to documentous her experience through that. Can you talk a little bit about that? Was that something she decided to do on her own, or did somebody else encourage her?
Andrea Wilson Woods
She was always a writer. She started keeping paper journals when she was ten years old. You know, it’s kind of funny, and I still have them, you know, and there’s those, like, little paper journals that locked, but not really. So she always loved to write, and she was a voracious reader as well. And she started keeping a journal online before she was diagnosed, and I was not allowed to read it, but other people were. Had spies that read it to make sure, because I was still worried about the depression. But so she. Yeah, so she started journal online before she was diagnosed and decided to continue writing in it throughout. And so she wrote in that journal up until about three weeks before she died, was the last entry in that journal. So she. Yeah, she was an amazing writer.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Now, did you include any of that in your book then that you wrote, or?
Andrea Wilson Woods
Yes. So I did not read her journal in its entirety until about a year and a half after she died. And I kept a medical diary when she was diagnosed. And when I decided that the structure of my book would be like a journal, I decided to include excerpts from her journal beginning on day three. And so the chapters open with an excerpt from Adrienne’s journal. So you really get to see her point of view as a patient and my point of view as her parent and caregiver. And you also see this great divide, this great moment where I thought she was getting better after her fourth round of chemo, because it had gone so well. Like, everything had been perfect. We had no problems whatsoever. It was shocking. It was amazing. And she, deep down, she knew, and she wrote at the same time. She knew she was getting worse. She knew she was dying, and she protected me from that. And for that, I’m very, very grateful. And because I could not have handled that if I just couldn’t have. And so that’s why I wrote the book the way I did. And, in fact, in March of this year, we published Adrienne’s journal, along with her artwork and poetry. And that book is titled “I’d Rather be Dead than Deaf – a Young Woman’s Journey with Liver Cancer.” And all the proceeds of that book actually go to the nonprofit, Blue Faery.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Oh, I love that. Number one, I’m going to have to go buy this book and read it, because I’ve started and stopped doing something similar for my sister about probably three times now in the.
Andrea Wilson Woods
I remember talking about it. Right?
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah. And I can’t seem to get myself to quite finish it. So I’m curious. I want to talk to you a little bit about your personal, then journey, your experience, and then as a caregiver, and then grieving and how you were able to then even put together a book. Start wherever you want on that. Well, let’s see. How about we start with the book first? Why don’t we start with the book first, and we’ll work our way back, maybe.
Andrea Wilson Woods
Okay. I like that. Well, I always knew I wanted to write a book about me and my sister, and I started writing, like, little thoughts down and things like that because we had such a special relationship. I mean, she was my child, and she was my sister, and I always told her, one day, when you grow up, I hope I’m your best friend or good friend. And so we just had this incredible bond, and I loved her and still love her unconditionally. And I’ve had. I’ve never felt that way about anybody. And I feel like parents should love their children unconditionally, but that was not what I received from my parents, and I don’t think most people received that from their parents. And. And she knew. She knew how much I loved her. And, in fact, her last words were, I love you, sissy. And so about a year and a half after she died, I realized that I was going to be writing a very different story, and there were lots of starts and stops. I mean, I did a lot of research up front. One of the things I did, and I highly recommend if you write nonfiction, is I knew I wasn’t ready to write the book, but I wanted to make sure people’s memories refresh. So, within a year of my sister’s death, I asked anyone who was involved in that journey if they would let me interview them. And I did that. I interviewed almost everyone. And so that’s why I know other people’s perspectives and even other conversations, because people allowed me to interview them for the book. But it was four or five years after she died when I started writing the very first draft, and it took two years to write that first draft.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
I can imagine that. So let’s dive in a little bit more, though, because I know in just even my book that I wrote wasn’t a about my sister, but I included some of her stories in it. And I know that at one point, I felt like she was actually helping me write it because I suddenly had an urge to, like, look back at what she was writing about while she was going through her journey, and I was like, wow, okay. Yeah, I can relate. So, how was that experience for you? You know, I mean, really, you know, why cathartic? Was it painful? How?
Andrea Wilson Woods
It was not cathartic. I swear, whenever people say, right, exact cathartic, I’m like, what do you write? Like, wait, what is it that you write? Because it’s not cathartic to be. For me, I wrote the first draft in her bedroom where she died, and so I very much felt her with me. But for me, it wasn’t cathartic because it was like having this horrible wound. Like, imagine this deep, deep cut, and every time it would start to heal, I’m ripping off the band aid again. Because the way I wrote that first draft was even before I really was good at meditating, I would put myself back there in the moment. So now I had my medical diary. I had her journals. I had this incredible outline, and so I could go right back to that moment. And doing that was incredibly painful. I mean, once I got that first draft out after all, the rewrites weren’t nearly as hard. You know, they were time consuming, but they weren’t as emotionally difficult as that first draft was.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah, well, let’s look. You mentioned meditation. I’m gonna go there, so. Cause I know that’s something that helped me, so. And we did say when I was promoting this episode that I wanted to get into healing. So is that something that you relied on, you know, to help you through?
Andrea Wilson Woods
I mean, no, I didn’t for a long time. I really didn’t. I really struggled throughout my thirties. The first year after Adrienne died, I faked my way through it. I really did. I felt this ridiculous obligation to make sure other people knew I was okay and I was not okay at all. And when that year anniversary happened to, I really fell apart. And it was really tough. I mean, I had this very close group of friends that were there for my sister’s cancer journey that they are in my book. All their names have been changed, but they are in my book. They were very close to my sister. They weren’t friends necessarily with each other, but they were friends with me and my partner at the time, who was the only father figure my sister ever had. And after I fell apart, most of them didn’t know what to do or how to handle it. And I ended up losing all of those friends. So that’s a whole other level of loss and grief that I plan to write about in a future book that I’m kind of a third of the way through the first draft. But that was really hard. It’s like I bared my soul and showed you where I really was, and most of them walked away without ever telling me why. And so that was really, really tough. I don’t think I answered your question at all.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
No. Well, so how did you handle that then? So how have you been able to, you know, what have you been doing to help yourself heal?
Andrea Wilson Woods
Initially, a lot of distraction. I mean, a lot of distraction. I worked like a freaking maniac, um, around the clock. Um, then I also got the dog that I had always wanted. So I’d always wanted an English mastiff. And because of where I lived, an apartment or house that wouldn’t allow it. And, um, and I got my English mastiff about a year and a half after my sister died. And he was like the dog of my lifetime. He lived ten and a half years. And, you know, at my lowest points, you know, I could just go hug this 180 pound. Actually, that was his skinny weight. His big weight was 200 pound dog. And. And he was always there for me. I think there’s something very healing about animals because dogs, especially cats, not so much, but dogs give you that unconditional love. The other thing I did was I started blue faery. I mean, it was never my life’s dream to start a nonprofit, but I wanted to channel my grief. I approached the largest liver disease organization in the US and offered to volunteer for them. And they wanted nothing at that time to do with liver cancer. They still actually don’t do very much in liver cancer. And I did a lot of research and there wasn’t a single organization in the US doing anything in this disease. And I knew from my experience with my sister that the trajectory was just going to keep going up. I had no doubt in my mind, and I was, unfortunately, right about that. So liver cancer is one of the few cancers that is steadily on the rise in the US and around the world. And so I started blue faery. And that was, in a way, a distraction, too, but it gave me a purpose. It gave me something to kind of put under my feet again and to move forward. It was definitely not always easy, but that helped a lot, too. And then eventually I got into yoga. I was, you know, my sister was so ahead of her time. This kid was doing yoga in 2000, before yoga was cool. Like, she signed up for yoga classes in the summer and asked me to take her and pick her up. And I’m like, you’re doing yoga? Like, what? And I didn’t really get into yoga until 2010, so she was really into all that. So her, actually, her. Her tombstone reads, young spirit, old soul. And that describes her perfectly.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah, I love that. I like asking my questions, asking my guests this question, because especially we come from it with different categories and different topics. So what’s a commonly held belief about grief that you passionately disagree with?
Andrea Wilson Woods
Oh, ooh, gosh. And I did my homework on your podcast, and I don’t remember this kind of question.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
I don’t do it every week, so.
Andrea Wilson Woods
Okay. Darn. Let’s see. I think that it’ll go away. That’ll go away, that you’ll get over it. And all the sort of inane, stupid things people say to you who have never experienced that level of grief. And, you know, and not to dismiss someone who’s lost a husband or, you know, or me or spouse, but there’s a big difference between losing your spouse, who lived a very long life, and losing your child, who died at 15. There’s just a huge difference in that. Kind of. In that level of loss. And, yeah, the people who say, just get over it. And then one of my friends that I met after my sister died, and we’re still friends today, her sister died of cancer. And I think she put it so well. She said, it’s kind of like your arm gets cut off and, you know, your arm should be there and you missed your arm, but you move through life knowing the arm’s gone, you know, but you never forget. And that you once had an arm, and. And I thought that was so spot on. And so grief isn’t always 100% fully present, but it’s always there, you know? And it’s okay. Like, it’s okay to. It’s okay to grieve the loss. I think one of the challenges I had early on was, like I said, that first year, I didn’t grieve the loss. That first year, I just went through the motions and did everything to make everyone happy, showed up at every event. I mean, I went to a Halloween party three weeks after my sister died. That’s ridiculous. But again, I was trying to make other people happy. And so if I can give anyone any advice, it’s kind of to lean into the grief, because I wish I had sooner.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah. And, you know, and it just occurs to me is that it’s really almost. You lost an arm and a leg because you lost your sister and became your adopted daughter. Yeah. And I know when my brother died how hard it was for my mom. So in watching her that, yeah, it’s the same thing. It’s like you never get over it. You just learn to live with it.
Andrea Wilson Woods
Yeah. And it’s unnatural. It’s really. Parents are not supposed to outlive their children, right?
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah, that’s the theory, but it doesn’t always work out that way. So what has been your maybe the biggest aha or maybe the best outcome that is come from starting the nonprofit?
Andrea Wilson Woods
The biggest. I don’t know if it’s aha, but I never knew how resourceful I really was. I had an inkling that, I mean, I’m persistent resourceful, but we kept that nonprofit going when we had no money, and we started it from nothing. We started, literally with $500 that paid the federal filing fee. Become a nonprofit. Like, that’s what we started with. And for ten years, we sort of sputtered along and, you know, kept going, but really had a tough time growing. And, I mean, I didn’t even become an full time employee until just a few years ago, and the nonprofits over 20 years old. So I think maybe that is the biggest aha is that I could just keep going. You know, I just. Every time I thought about giving up, and I did, many times, I would get a call from a patient or a family member or an email, and somebody just needed someone to talk to and support. And I have a very funny story. This woman called me in 2008, Blue Faery was only five years old again, but we were so small. I mean, patients found us, but we were still very small. And she called me and she was very assertive, which I loved. And she said, are you going to be around in ten years? I mean, for real, are you going to be round? And I said yes. I didn’t even hesitate. I didn’t know how, but I just said yes. And she’s like, good, because I’m putting Blue faery in my will and she’s a liver cancer survivor. And I just had the opportunity at the time of this recording. Two months ago, I got to meet her at a conference that happened to be in Honolulu and she’s in Hawaii, she’s in Maui. And before this, I never had the opportunity and it didn’t make any sense, but she wanted to attend the conference and I needed to go. And I finally got to meet this woman in person after all these years and we both laugh about the story now and. Yeah, and so I think that it’s, it was such an honor to meet her.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
That’s awesome, you know, and that just actually occurs to me is that we didn’t really talk about what is the purpose of your foundation, so, or the nonprofit? What is it? Who are you helping? What are you doing for folks?
Andrea Wilson Woods
Yeah, so Blue Faery’s mission is to prevent, treat and cure primary liver cancer, specifically hepatocellular carcinoma. So HCC through research, education and advocacy. And we, I mean, we put patients and families first in everything we do and we want to give them hope and information and also a voice. One of the biggest challenges with liver cancer is that it’s not a cancer that most people survive. And so we don’t have those survivors to be advocates for the disease. It often comes down to the family members, but we want to give patients that opportunity for voice. And so we have a lot of different programs. We have a research award we give out every year on my sister’s birthday. And then we also do a lot of education.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Well, one thing we haven’t talked about is where the name came from.
Andrea Wilson Woods
I really wish I could take credit for the name, but I can’t. So I knew I wanted my sister’s name in it, so in memory of her, Adrienne Wilson. And I knew I wanted liver cancer in the name, so people knew what we did, but I felt like from a marketing and branding perspective, something was sort of missing. And so I sent out an email to that small group of people, those ten people, and I said exactly what I just said, something’s missing from a marketing perspective. I don’t know what it is. Help me. And every person came back with some version of blue Fairy because blue was my sister’s favorite color. So much so that when I finally allowed her to dye her hair at the age of 14, she died at blue. And then, like, purple and red and then back to blue. And she loved fairies. And the summer she was sick, fighting cancer, she bought these beautiful blue monarch butterfly wings that she would wear, and then she got a blue wig to maintain her look, she said. And we were calling her our blue fairy, and it was kind of one of those things where it kind of was, like, right in front of my face, and I just couldn’t see it. And we spell fairy with an e instead of an I because that was the spelling she preferred.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
I love it. I love it. Oh, yes. I love the story, and I love everything that you’ve been able to do. Is there anything else that I should have asked you about that we haven’t touched on yet that you think would be important for our listeners and viewers to know about?
Andrea Wilson Woods
Well, you talk so much in your podcast about healing, and I would say that to people that there are multiple ways to heal. And the 20th anniversary of my sister’s death in 2021, October of 2021 hit me just as hard as her death did. I mean, it just. I was devastated, and I was really struggling. I had already done a lot of therapy, especially when I was writing the first draft of my book, and I’d already, you know, died. I already done sort of the traditional route of therapy and antidepressants and things like that. And I really wanted to find other healing modalities. And it’s kind of funny because I put it out there, and it just showed up. The universe gave it to me. And this email was in my inbox about this conference online, and I recognized one of the speakers, but I didn’t know he was in this space. Like, I recognized him, you know, as a book publisher. I’m like, what is he doing talking about, you know, these healing modalities, like, what happened? And so I was super intrigued, and I watched it, and I think I even watched it live, which is pretty unusual for me. And I was like, huh, okay, I think this is something I need to do. So starting in 2022, I started different healing modalities, and I preface this all with a guide, all with someone. So I have done about six sessions of MDMA, which is actually in phase three clinical trials right now for PTSD and depression. I’ve done ketamine, I think, four times now. Ketamine is more accessible because it is completely legal MDMA. You have to find a guide to do it unless you’re in that clinical trial. I’ve done ayahuasca twice. I’ll never do it again. I don’t recommend starting with ayahuasca, but I’m grateful that I did it. And I’ve done psilocybin once, which I did not like at all. And I’m really glad I never did in college. Like, I was like, magic mushrooms? I don’t think so. Not my thing. But I really explore this stuff, and it was so out of character for me because my mother’s an addict and I was very scared to try any of these kinds of other healing modalities. But if you’re doing it with a guide, again, this is not something I did in my bedroom alone and under the supervision of a doctor or medical professionals. It can be incredibly healing. And it was exactly what I needed. It really was.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Well, I appreciate you sharing that. And that, I think, is the big takeaway here, is that you have to, I think, number one, you’ve got to figure out what’s going to work best for you, and that may require you trying a few different things.
Andrea Wilson Woods
Yes.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Because sometimes things will work for a little while, but then maybe something else will come up and then it doesn’t work anymore. And so then you need to find something else. I mean, like, I’ve done about, I don’t know, four or five different types of meditation, because I’ll. I’ll sail along for a while, and then it’s like, this isn’t really doing it for me anymore. I need to figure out something else. And so, yeah, I think that’s. I’m glad that you tried some different things, but, yes, definitely make sure that you’re working with a medical professional because, yeah, that’s. You’re. You’re fooling around with the. With how your brain functions.
Andrea Wilson Woods
And so, yes, need to have someone there. I think the other thing I did was I left Los Angeles. I really had wanted to leave Los Angeles for several years, but I was still married at the time. And I was like, I need to change. I came home one day and I realized if I had had a gun in my glove box, I would have shot the person in traffic. And so I was like, okay, it’s time. It’s time. And I sat down with my then husband and said, you know, I need to change my environment. It’s like the single biggest thing I can do for my mental health right now. And it’s funny because people got really hung up on me moving to Birmingham, Alabama, even though I’m from the southeast. But what I always say is, like, it wasn’t about moving to Birmingham. It was about leaving Los Angeles. You know, it truly, not to sound cheesy, it wasn’t about the destination. It was about the journey. You know, someone told me, or several people told me that, you know, you’re doing better on your healing journey and your grief when after crying, you feel better. That never happened for me until I drove across the country and I moved from Los Angeles to Birmingham. And something happened from, and I did it over four days because of my cat. But something happened between, in east Texas. I don’t know what had happened, but something happened. And I cried harder than I’ve ever cried in my life, continuously for hours. Like, and I was, I remember pulling over in multiple gas stations and just taking, like, 50 napkins, like, and looking like a hot mess. And it was the first time that after crying, I felt better. And by the time I pulled into Shreveport, I was like, oh, my God. I don’t know how that dam burst open in East Texas. Maybe because there’s nothing to look at. I don’t know. No offense to Texans, but it was just, it was exactly what I needed. But it took that long for it to happen.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah. Well, I think. And again, so this is, you know, I’m, I’m not a psychologist. I’m not a, I’m just going from intuition. I think there was still something about that environment that you were still, like you said, you didn’t allow yourself to grieve that first year. I think you were still part of, you was still holding on to it because it was. You were in that environment. You were still in that environment. That’s where she, you raised her, you loved her, you lost her. And part of you, soon as you could free yourself from that, that space, that energy was what allowed you to release. So. Yeah, that’s amazing. I’m so glad you were able to do that.
Andrea Wilson Woods
Yeah, me too. And I still go back to LA every year because she is buried there and I visit her grave every year. But, yeah, five days max. I’m like, I’m out. I’m done. LA. I’m done. Like, you know, I mean, one time I was visiting and I went 3 miles in 90 minutes and I’m like, yep. No, no, this is not my life anymore. Can’t do it. So your environment’s really important. I think that’s, you know, you’re external where you actually live, but also, of course, your home and internal.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yes, definitely. This has been wonderful. I so enjoyed reconnecting with you today and having you share your story with my audience. So if someone wants to learn more about Blue Faery, what’s the best place for them to do that?
Andrea Wilson Woods
Just go to bluefaery.org b-l-u-e-f-a-e-r-y dot org and you can find us there and contact me as well.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being with us today. It’s a pleasure to see you again. And yeah, just I look forward to seeing that next book, too, because that might be, might have to have you back on the show to talk about that because that journey, and not a pleasant one when you lose friends.
Andrea Wilson Woods
Thank you so much for having me.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Well, thank you. And I do want to thank all of you for watching today and for if you’re watching on social media or on YouTube, and thank you for listening as well. And if you have been enjoying the show and would like to continue to show your support and share your support. Yeah, well, yeah, I can tell a friend about it as well. We have been nominated for a women and podcasting award in the mindset category and voting. We still have a couple weeks left as we’re recording this in September. The voting goes through now and October 1, 2024. So I will have the information in the show notes. But just to let you know, you can go to women in podcasting net forward slash awards and you’ll be able to look for live love, engage in mindset category and vote first. And I would greatly appreciate that. And that’s going to do it for this edition. So until next time, I encourage you to go out and live fully, love deeply and engage authentically.
