Come Walk With Me: An Unexpected Path to Spiritual Connection

In this episode of Restless to Renewed, Janice welcomes Barbara Jill Eatherly, author of Come Walk With Me, to share her deeply personal experiences with The Walk Process, a journey she describes as walking between the seen and unseen.

Jill shares how these extraordinary experiences can open the door to connection, understanding, and the healing of ancestral grief through  stories that reach across generations. Through her own experiences, she invites us to consider what might be discovered when we become willing to listen, explore, and walk beyond what we already know.

It’s a conversation about connection, healing, and the possibility that some journeys may take us places we never expected to go.

Thank you for listening.

Be sure to visit the Restless to Renewed website for more information at https://www.facebook.com/RestlesstoRenewed.

Transcript

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Janice 0:05

Welcome to Restless to Renewed: Women Redefining Midlife and Beyond. Here we share stories and conversations that encourage women to recognize that their lives are still unfolding and that new possibilities may be waiting. I'm your host Janice Neely, and today my guest is Barbara Jill Eatherly, an educator, speaker, and author of the book Come Walk With Me. In her book, Jill shares deeply personal experiences that led her to what she calls the walk process. Before we begin, I want to read a piece taken from JIllś website "those who have undergone the walk describe it as a pathway to peace and unconditional love as they come face to face with past relationships and conflicts once thought irreparable." Jill, thank you for being here.

Jill 1:01

Well, thank you, Janice. I always enjoy talking to you.

1:05

Jill, where does the story of the walk process begin for you?

Jill 1:11

Well, it began when my uncle, who had kind of stepped in and became my surrogate father after my dad died when I was 19, and he started getting, mini seizures when he was, like, 76. And he'd always been this real healthy, robust guy, and helped everybody and when he started getting sick and losing his faculties, he just really got angry, which was not like him, because he was the epitome of the helpful guy and he helped everybody. If I had to define Christian, I would use his name, 'cause he just was that kind of man. And he helped his mother, he helped my mother. He just stepped in when people needed him. So when he started getting sick, for him to kind of be angry or frustrated because he couldn't do the things he'd always done, that just wasn't him. And I loved this man dearly. And at the time, I'd been really meditating a lot and I loved, uh, studying near-death experiences and shared death experiences. I read a lot of books, but my meditation practice was real strong. So I went home the afternoon that I had been to see him when he was first getting ill, and I just sat down in my meditation chair- And I started praying just, you know, to guide me to help him and to see him in the light and j- I don't even know why I said it now. But part of my practice was to light a candle, say a prayer of protection, and just come into a space of peace before I started anything. So I started telling him how much I loved him in my heart, I just dropped into my heart, and how much he had helped me through my lifetime. And for some reason I said, "Would you like to go see what it's like on the other side so you won't be so scared or so upset about it?" I said, it's your choice, but we can go check it out." And he, to my surprise in my meditation, says, "Yeah," kind of hesitantly, but it immediately we're in this dome of light with all our ancestors kind of in the gallery, and we're in the center facing them. And at that time he talks to his mom and his dad and it really kind of reassured him that there was life on the other side, that he wasn't just gonna end. And boom, he said, "I'm ready to go back now." So boom, we're back in my chair in my medit- I'm back in my chair in my meditation room, and uh, crying, just crying 'cause it was such a beautiful experience. I had never experienced anything like that before. And the, the thing that's real hard to talk about is there aren't any words to describe what the other side's like. It's just ethereal. I mean, how do you put words to that? So I wrote down the experience and came out of the meditation and went about my day. So that was my first experience with the walk process. So I had no idea what it was going to become, but it, it took off from there.

Janice 4:39

Okay. So that's how it began

Jill 4:43

mm-hmm.

Janice 4:43

And you kind of already described what happened during the process But would you share an experience that helped you understand what was happening during the walks? And I'm assuming that different things maybe happened in different walks, or were they all the same?

Jill 5:04

Well, the process is the same, because I went into the meditation, I did an intention of what I wanted to do in the meditation, and when I was walking with my uncle, I said, "I, I want to convey my love and appreciation and gratitude for his role in my life." And I want him to find peace, if possible, with his process that he's going through right now, which ended up being the dying process. So setting an intention was really important for me, what my intention was, and I learned real quick that I had to get permission. If I didn't ask permission, nothing happened. I just came out of my meditation, and I was just in my room going, "Well, that didn't go." So the main thing that I guess is the easiest to convey is there was a telepathic communication between my uncle and his parents, and there was also Otelia present in the meditation or in the vision. She was the oldest sister of the six children of my grandparents who had died when she was, like, three and a half years old. So here's this little three and a half year old standing between my grandparents, and they have this beautiful telepathic communication between each other. The first one was between my uncle and his mother about how much she loved him and appreciated all that he had done for her, and just a gratitude, and he said, "Well, I've never felt like I had done enough." And so he wanted forgiveness from her, and she conveyed, "You couldn't have done more." It... So there was that discussion about what he felt like he lacked in being a good son and her reassuring him that he was the best that he could have been. So it was a, an exchange, and I guess over the next six months, I probably took a walk with him about every month, and one of the walks was with his father, and his father scared me. He was a funeral director, and he was one of the deacons in the church, and everything was just in a row, and very short sometimes. So he apologized to my uncle for never being as open as he wished he had been when they were growing up, and what, how he wished he hadn't been so strict and had been more loving. And of course, my uncle reassured him that he did it exactly the way he needed to do it. One of the things they shared, my uncle played football for the University of Kentucky, and my grandfather, like I say, was a funeral director, so he was real good at taking charge of crowds. Mm-hmm. So they won over Tennessee at Kentucky, and the boys had to get on the bus and get out of this crowd before the Tennessee crowd got ahold of the football players. So my grandfather, to get the bus out of the crowded parking lot, gets out in the middle of the traffic and starts directing traffic and getting the bus going. Well, he was worried that he had embarrassed my uncle. And so in their discussion, and they got real tickled at it because my uncle said, "Are you kidding? I was the highlight of the bus ride home." Said, "Everybody was saying, 'Who was that crazy old man out there directing traffic?'" And of course, he had to admit it was his dad, and they said, "Well, good for him. Thank goodness he was on our side." So it was just one of those beautiful exchanges of one thought one thing and the other thought another, and how they really came to joy in remembering that.

Janice 9:13

When you are talking about this, are these stories that you had been told and you're reliving them during the walk? Or are these stories that you know, I'm calling them stories, the communications, Are they communications that were new to you?

Jill 9:31

Mostly they were new to me. This one I have heard a vague story about him directing traffic. But I had never heard the story of my uncle sharing it on the bus as to what the football players and what their response had been to it. So even if I've heard little bits of it, it's always expanded. You know, it goes a whole lot deeper and both sides share their point of view or their experience of it, which I thought was where the healing took place. Because so often we don't understand what the other person's really feeling because we don't take the time to discuss it. You know, we just go about and have our opinions and go on with life and hold some kind of regret or remorse or wish we had. How many times do we get out of a conversation saying, "I wish I'd done this," or, "I wish I'd have done that"? But in the walk, they find the balance. They find the, the common ground.

10:29

Okay, so you mentioned ancestral healing. How has that affected you?

Jill 10:37

Well, there's a lot of stories here, but as I said, Otelia, which was the daughter who died real early, always felt a real strong connection to her. And even at one point, my grandmother had this picture on her dresser, and it was of this little girl about my age. And, and I said, "I don't have a dress like that." And it really felt like it was a picture of me. So in the book, I explore the possibilities of my being Otelia, and one of the reasons I came back in this lifetime was to heal the grief throughout the siblings that had been created when I left at such an early age. Because my grandmother was pregnant with my mother when Otelia passed away. So my mother's chapter is on born grieving, because of course, her mother didn't even have time to grieve because she had another baby on the way, and, you know, everything was just piled on top of her. So that was a huge aha for me. Mm-hmm. The five siblings that re- were born after this, each one of them had a grief pattern that they were living through, and I came in to try to heal that. And that's what was taking place in the walks, was the healing of those griefs and whatever else came up through that. And, the book is about writing all that down. Every time I had a vision or a session or a walk, I wrote it down, boohooing or not. I was usually boohooing.

Janice 12:18

So, all these experiences led you to write the book, Come Walk With Me.

Jill 12:23

Right.

Janice 12:24

And to share your experiences. So what is your background that, helped you or initiated this idea.

Jill 12:33

Well, early on I was a little different. When I was three or four, I felt like I had already been here before and, um, my experience with my grandmother and my grandfather came up real clear when I was writing the book My grandfather was a, a funeral director, and he had the, business in their house. And a lot of times if they had a large family that they were hosting, uh, my mother would go over and take us to help out. So I was always around death and dying and mourning and that kind of stuff, so it wasn't unusual for me. I remember my brother and I even sneaking into the embalming room, wondering what in the world was happening in there. So it was something that was just a part of our lives. So I didn't have the fear of death I think that a lot of people do. And when I was seven years old, my father found out he had a terminal illness. And so that was a part of my life for the next twelve years, because he passed when I was nineteen. So the story of what took place in my life while he was going through the process that he was going through was um, I guess the word is denial. I always felt like I was a fixer. Of anybody I loved, I, I had this desire to fix it. I had to make it better. If I loved them enough, I could make it better. And so that was real frustrating to me and it caused me a lot of trauma in my life. And also I went into denial. If I can't fix it, then it's not happening. And all of that is my early years in coming to grips with what was going on. But my main purpose with the book was to heal the grief that was created when Otelia passed at such an early age.

Janice 14:38

So you wrote the book to heal your family or to help others heal themselves and their families or all of the above? Or when you originally set out to write it, what was your goal? Well, now because I wrote down after every walk with my family, uh, the five siblings, I took a lot of walks with each one of them and I wrote it down, and it, they each have a chapter in the book. When I pulled the book together, it was like, "I gotta share this because this can help so many people."

Jill 15:15

One friend, um, Alma was losing her mother. She was in a nursing home, and she had, bone cancer, so she was in a lot of pain. And so I was sharing with Alma what I had done with my ancestors, so she started taking walks with her mother, 'because she was medicated quite a bit and they knew she was almost ready to leave her body. But they couldn't get her to talk to them about what she wanted as far as her, funeral or anything. She just didn't wanna talk about it. Just didn't wanna talk about it. So Alma kept doing the walks with her and having some really good experience with her during the walks. And one day when she was sitting with her in the nursing home, she woke up, sat up in bed and told her exactly what she wanted with her service. You know, laid it out, what songs she wanted sung, what Bible verses where she wanted to be buried and where she wanted it to be held, and then she went back to sleep. But she felt like because she had been taking walks with her and talking to her about that, that that's what gave her the strength to share.

Janice 16:25

When you say she was taking walks with her, she was sitting in the room with her, where sometimes you're not with the person, correct? This particular time she was, but yeah, she used to do it from her home. I, I never was in the room with my uncle or any of my aunts and uncles when I did walks.,

Jill 16:42

Which I don't think there's any place that's far away when you really connect to the heart. So she did a lot of walks with her. Before this particular one, she was in the room.

Janice 16:51

Okay. All right. So that's, it's not necessary, which I'm assuming it wasn't because you were talking about connecting with your ancestors, so they're obviously not physically in the room with you.

Jill 17:04

Right. But when this friend was sitting with her mother, I guess I'm wondering if she was verbalizing it out loud or if she was taking the walk as you instructed through meditation and felt like, you know, she was connecting with her mother that way. She was connecting through the heart, through meditation. Okay. Yeah. Her mother wasn't in a place where she could hear at that time. She was really frail. That's what surprised her when she sat up and told her exactly what she wanted, then she went back to sleep.

Janice 17:39

That's amazing.

Jill 17:40

Yeah.

Janice 17:41

Well, you're an educator. Do you mind telling us a little bit about your background and your, I think your desire to learn and be open to new things?

Jill 17:53

Well, yeah. My degrees are in health and physical education and recreation, and I taught physical education for a long time, and then I went to work for the state. But I was always thinking outside of my vocation. You know, I did mediation. I did a whole lot of reading on spiritual teachings, the different religions and the different thought processes. So I've always been a seeker and, uh, that's when I learned about the near-death experience from a, eben Alexander was one. There's been several. There was one lady, and I can't remember the author right now, but she wrote Testimony of Light, and she was on the other side, and she was sharing with her friend here what it was like to be on the other side, and this just really rang a lot of bells for me. I never could get it that we had to get it all right in this lifetime. That how could the God of all that is just give me one chance to get it right? Because I was really messing up a lot. So that was another thing that it just, it helped me expand my belief systems about what really is

Janice 19:13

Well, we met at a spiritual friends, gathering, and I think primarily, I'm not sure, but it's primarily a Christian group.

Jill 19:25

Uh-huh.

Janice 19:26

And do you see conflict between the walk and the Christian faith, or, does it align more with another religious, experience or faith?

Jill 19:42

Okay. I grew up in the Church of Christ, and My mother was very spiritual. My father was very much a humanitarian. And, um, I just learned to look at everything with a broad sense of belief, not in a box. I think when I tried to put it in a box, something proved it wrong, so I was catapulted into another thought process. So I don't think it's in conflict. I think the individual has to have their own belief system, and if it's not working for them, then it may not be what they need to do. But it has brought a lot of peace to a lot of people just in having, you can even call it imaginary conversations. You don't even have to call it a walk, you know? But taking the time to connect with a loved one, and they don't even need to be sick. I did a lot of work with my ex-husband, which catapulted me into doing a lot of this work, in forgiveness during walks. And so it can be used for many purposes.

Janice 20:49

Well, so many people talk about when they are having a stressful situation, sometimes it's a good thing to just write it down and start writing a letter to that person that's stressing you or to yourself or whatever, and just to express it that way. So perhaps the walk is a different way of expressing that also.

Jill 21:09

An important part of the walk, after you come back from the meditation, is writing it down because that's what I did after every walk. I wrote it down, everything that I can remember, and a lot of times more comes through in the writing of it than I actually remembered from my experience. So the writing of it is what ended up being the book because I had all the notes from every walk I ever took. Never intended for it to be a book, but here it is.

Janice 21:44

Right, so Have you ever taken a walk and, did not find peace during the walk, maybe felt more stressed, or has it always been a situation where you came out of the walk feeling better about the person or persons that you were connecting with?

Jill 22:06

I have not had a negative experience with it. I think it depends on your belief system. I always do a prayer The light of God surrounds me, the love of God enfolds me, the power of God protects me, the presence of God watches over me. Wherever I am, God is and all is well. I never do a walk without saying that prayer. And I believe where the light is, the dark can't come in. But that's my belief. I think it depends on the individual who is attempting to take the walk and connect and it also depends on their relationship. You know, what kind of relationship did they have prior to when they're trying to take the walk? Has there been any forgiveness before? I, think a lot of that depends on it. Personally, I haven't had anybody come back to me and say, "Oh, it was horrible. I don't know how you could do that kind of thing." Never had that. I'm not saying it hadn't happened, but I have not had that experience with it or had anybody share that experience with me. I still think it goes back to belief systems.

Janice 23:18

Okay. So you do have a sense of peace and a sense of, um, connection. Are there any other words you would use to describe A walk? Any other feelings?

Jill 23:31

It's just I feel such reverence, just a reverence and an appreciation, and gratitude that I was gifted this process to share with people I really love. And some I've taken walk with, I was angry with, and during the walks it was lifted, so I found my peace. So finding peace and gratitude for every relationship has been a big part of it for me

Janice 24:01

Jill What do you hope readers and those walking beside someone they love will take away from your story? You know, it can be a few words it can be, feelings

Jill 24:15

people have to make it their own. I mean, I give this step by step, and I always encourage people to make it their own. You know, however they need to get in that place of peace to connect has to be theirs. But the one thing I hope and most people get is that feeling of relief, unconditional love, and total and complete forgiveness. Like, there is no more animosity or I wish I'd have done this, or I wish they'd done that. It just brings it all into total alignment that all is just perfect just the way it is. So that's been my experience, and a lot of people that have shared it with me have found their peace with it as well. I wanna share one other thing that's in the book that was profound for me, because there was this lady that called me 'because she had been grieving for over five years. She had two grown sons who had died alone and not been found for over a week, and there was no drugs, no violence, nothing that they could discover in why they had left. But it was within a year of each other that she lost them both in the same way. One in the cabin in the woods and another in his own apartment, and nobody checked on him for a week. She was- What happened? She was totally distraught and could find no answers. So I talked to her about the walk, and she hadn't meditated in a long time, but I said, "If you can just do it for two minutes, just get your mind still and talk to him and just ask him, tell him how much you love him, how much you miss him, or whatever you wanna say, and ask him to give you some answers." She didn't get any in the walk, but when she wrote him a letter, she got exactly what he wanted her to know, which, "I was tired. I didn't wanna stay. I chose to leave, and I'm okay. I'm around you. I love you, and I'm with you always." The second son who died was a little bit more distant when she tried to write to him. Uh-huh. But eventually she did it two or three times. It doesn't happen immediately. You have to have patience, and you have to have a commitment. So within two weeks, she got a response from him, which really gave her peace about it. So that was huge for me. That was such a, um, validation that this could really help a lot of people

Janice 27:05

Do you think that there are people that are gonna be naysayers

Jill 27:09

Of course

Janice 27:09

and, you know, say, "Well, this is in your imagination."

Jill 27:13

Maybe. It's your imagination. I have no idea, because there's so much greater than I am in my mind of understanding that's beyond anything human that I don't know, maybe that is. And I'm sure there are naysayers. Yeah. But I think the people it will help will find it, and it will be what they need. So that's why I wrote it.

Janice 27:43

Well, the opportunity to find peace would be so important to so many people or, that it would be such a good word to them to say, "This might happen, we were talking just a minute or two earlier, if you write it down or if you connect like as you were saying, heart to heart through meditation. Whatever you're doing, if it's bringing you peace and taking away some of the grief that we all have when we lose someone- or if we've never resolved some issues with someone, then, I think it sounds wonderful to be able to do that.

Jill 28:23

And I think the words you just used, to resolve some issues that we've never been able to find peace with, is one of the biggest benefits. And as I said before, you can't rush it. It's not gonna happen when you think it's gonna happen. You can't have an agenda, but you do have to have a clear intention of what it is you're ex- you're wanting to accomplish.

Janice 28:46

Okay Jill Is there anything else you want to tell us about before we talk about your workshops and so forth?

Jill 28:52

I can talk about it all day, because it's such a big part of my life. In fact, I'll segue into the workshop. There's a group of people at my church that have read the book, and they're trying to do some of the, processes on their own, and they wanna get together and just talk about it. So we're gonna have a gathering on Saturday just to "This is what I've tried, and this is how it's worked for me." And, then I'm gonna take them through a walk and then see what their questions are after that. So that's pretty much the way the workshops are taking place. And if I have a client who wants to talk to me personally, I love hearing their story and just seeing what we can do together that help them find their peace and resolution

Janice 29:44

Very interesting! And I just wanna thank you for trusting us with your story, and for helping us better understand it. I, still have some confusion over it, but at the same time, I haven't really placed myself in a situation where I'm doing the work that you talk about But I just wanna say to people that Come Walk With Me offers you a meaningful reminder that we don't have to walk through life's most difficult and sacred moments alone.

Jill 30:14

Amen.

30:15

And if it's taking a walk with you, or in a group, or personally, then- The, the feeling of aloneness, I think, if that's a word, Yeah

Janice 30:27

the being alone could be l- lessened or maybe even go away. Maybe you just don't feel alone again after the walk. Not sure. Like I said, I haven't, experienced it. But I intend to try sometime.

Jill 30:44

We'll have to do that one day.

Janice 30:46

Yeah.

Jill 30:46

But one of the things you hit on, like that you have to do the work.

Janice 30:50

Mm-hmm.

Jill 30:50

You can't just expect it to happen, and that was something that was real important for me when I first started. I had to set the time aside to connect with who it was I wanted to walk with. I had to set my space. I had to set, you know, my meditation room. I had to do the process. I had step by step to get in that frame of mind and heart in order to make the connection. So you have to do the work. It doesn't just happen.

31:23

I have

Janice 31:23

Heard you say that before, and I think that's why I said it, but I'd have to carve out time and-

Jill 31:28

Yeah

31:28

I haven't done that yet.

Jill 31:31

You will when you want to.

31:32

Exactly.

Jill 31:33

And that's another thing, you know? It, it'll be right when you wanna do it. And, one of the things I have found is when people are in their deepest grief is when they really get a, a lot out of it.

31:46

I'm sure.

Jill 31:47

I'd like to close with my uncle when he passed. This was one of the most amazing experiences, 'cause he deteriorated over six months, and he had just gone into the nursing home where his wife was no longer able to take care of him, and they really didn't want that to happen. But he was pretty much unable to do anything for himself. So I woke up about 4:00 in the morning, I didn't know that he had gone in the day before, and I went to my chair in my meditation room, and I did a walk with him. And I just, um, found myself in his nursing home room, and he is standing next to me out of his body, and we're looking down at his body in the bed with his wife and his two kids next to him in the bed. 'Because they, I think they had told him that it was gonna be pretty soon. I said, "Well, would you wanna go check it out one more time?" He said, "Yeah, let's go check it out." And I said, "You know you get to come back." And he, "Yes." So we are, in the, um, dome. I just call it a dome of light 'cause I don't know what else to call it. And as I mentioned before, Otelia was always there standing between her parents. And this particular walk she runs out, 'because there'd never been any contact whatsoever, just telepathic communication. She runs out, he picks her up, puts her on his shoulders, and he's immediately like 35 years old. He has gone back to youth. Anyway, they were just so elated. And he looks at me, and he's just radiant, and he said, "It's time for me to stay." So I'm back in my meditation chair and 30 minutes later his daughter called me and he had passed. Was that real? I don't know, but that was my experience with his passing.

Janice 33:52

Well, I know there's gonna be people that say that these are things we shouldn't try to do, But at the same time, I think that with science even, we're finding out more and more doctors and so forth are coming forward to say that- Where in the past they didn't believe in life after death that now they're beginning to believe that. And one of the things that my priest said to me, and I think I've said this so many times to people, that we walk in faith and we believe, but there's so much we don't know.

Jill 34:32

That's my point exactly.

Janice 34:33

And when you were talking about boxing yourself in, I certainly don't wanna do anything that is negative or that would, and hinder my, Christian walk. And yet I believe what he said when he said there's so much we don't know,

Jill 34:51

yeah. Well, today, there is so much information available about infinite possibilities and the beyond and you know, there's just so much. And so many people have come back, written books, and shared their experience of a near death that it's broadening our belief systems. We're having to look beyond this little box that we live in called Earth, you know, And that's another reason I felt like I had to share the book, because from my experience, that's kinda scary when you think our reality isn't all there is. You know, we want this little reality and we feel safe in it. As it expands, it's kinda scary to a lot of people, so, that was one reason I wanted to write the book or release the stories, is to help people find that peace.

Janice 35:47

Right. And science tells us that energy has to go somewhere.

Jill 35:52

Uh-huh.

Janice 35:53

And when we think about passing on, there's still energy that's going somewhere. We may not have words for it. I have tried to think about it a lot as far as my own personal faith and when we've heard so many people talk about the light as God and are we part of that energy and is that our soul We were created like God in God's image. Mm-hmm. And when we talk about image, I'm not talking about necessarily physical image maybe. Right. For me, there is no place that God is not.

Jill 36:32

I have a lot of sayings and that's one of my favorites. But I mean, in everything, all things.

Janice 36:39

Well, that's biblical, too, as when, God said, "I Am" Mm-hmm.

Jill 36:44

I Am that I Am.

36:45

Right.

Jill 36:45

Yes, ma'am. Well, this is delightful. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share my story, 'because it's very, very heartwarming for me to share it.

Janice 36:57

Jill I want To remind everybody that you are available for workshops and individual walks. If you wanna share how people can reach you, get in contact with you.

Jill 37:09

The easiest way is through the web page, which is thewalkprocess.com. There's contact on how to get the book if you wanna buy the book. There's connections there. There's an explanation about me, and there's an explanation about how to get in touch with me and the, workshops or just talk to me. The first time you call me, we just chat. There is no fee, and I'm very open to that. But you have to connect with me through, email first, or my phone will go crazy.

Janice 37:43

Right. Okay. Well, so we've gone through the walk process. I think I have a better understanding of it. I hope others, who are interested will take some time to visit your website, and I'll remind them again. It's thewalkprocess.com. The author is Barbara Jill Eatherly. And also, if you want to learn more about Restless to Renewed, you can listen to previous podcasts by, visiting our website at restlessatorenewed.com. We also offer additional encouragement and resources, and I just want to thank Jill for visiting with us today, and I wanna thank the audience for joining us. And until next time, remember, your life is still unfolding, and renewal may be closer than you think.