The power of love is truly immeasurable. It can touch our emotions, change our mindset, and even allow us to experience spiritual moments. Elizabeth Barry talks about the love of her life almost a year after he passed, explaining how their connection can break even the barriers of heaven. She shares why love must not be separated from its emotional foundations, how love declines because of the absence of the idea of belief, and how love suffers because of becoming addicted to expectations. She also gives a peek at her two new books, both centered on how love moves within the threads of our life.

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The Power Of Love

I wanted to talk with you about my two new books that were launched on August 22nd, 2020, which would have been the 59th birthday of the very love of my life. If you don’t know the story, I’ll tell you now. If you do know the story, put your hands to your heart with me, bow your head, keep praying and keep me in your highest hugs. On January 3rd of 2020, my love and I were snorkeling and a boat came around the corner and ran us over. It was shocking. I saw everything. I heard everything. We came back up. Everything was fine and then it was not. I was run over in the head in the skull. My skull was bleeding open and he passed away in front of my eyes. It was quite possibly the most tragic thing that I’ve ever experienced in my life. I was very lost in so many ways, physically, mentally, emotionally, every single way that I could think of in the realm of lost, there I was.

Brokenness In The World

It is now coming up on a year and looking back, reflecting upon all of it and just having these books in my hand as physical love stories, manifestations of what can come of love, what can come of tragedy when we put our best foot forward. I want to share that story with you. I’m a business coach and a relationship coach, and I’ve been doing a lot of mindfulness and meditation. I now have my yoga certification. There is a lot of brokenness out in the world. There are a lot of broken people. Many of us have a very difficult time communicating with one another.
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Heaven on Eleven: A Memoir For Love

Since my body of work is based on communication, a lot of the breakdowns and love that I see happen simply because we don’t have the tools. We don’t have the words to share with one another. We don’t have the emotional intelligence to understand that when someone else is upset, we don’t make them more upset. We use compassion, empathy and our heart to open up to them, soften the situation, move forward. See, these tools were not taught to us. I teach them in my practice. I speak about them on stages at colleges and universities, as well as yoga studios and corporations. We need so much more love in that area. It’s a foreign word in an office environment. When I come to the table or when I come to the microphone, all ears are open. In fact, bodies are slightly tilted towards my stage. When I coach clients one-on-one, they soften and they turn to vulnerability, which I see is holding weakness and strength in both of our hands. Once in a while, there’s a little bit of a teeter-totter of weight that happens where some days we’re stronger, some days we’re weaker. Some moments we don’t have the right words and then we mess up and what do we do?

Two Books

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The Little Book of Love

It all comes down to love. These two very books that I published on his birthday are called Heaven on Eleven and The Little Book of Love. I’m very proud of them. I’ve published three books since the accident. I have another one written. It’s about 30,000 words. It’s a leadership book for business, but these love books are a true testament to anyone going through a tragedy or a tough time. My words of advice for you that when you’re suffering and you see bad things happen, I’ve met some bad people. People that I thought loved me, people that I thought were supportive, they became Twilight Zones. They became wolves in sheep’s clothing. It taught me to trust my intuition, which I put all of this into my next book because everything that I learn, I have to share with the world. That’s why I was miraculously saved by 94,000-pound, 62-foot double engine speed boat hit in the head. My partner is not here physically, but he is here with me in spirit. I’ve been visited by him. If you’re spiritual and you understand that, or you don’t understand it. You want to acknowledge that for the loving your heart. I appreciate both angles there. Still to date, I am very proud to say that I do speak to him. It’s wonderful miraculous to say the least. The heart opens up when you do things differently, feeling more spirited and childlike. Click To Tweet The irony is that the book is called Heaven on Eleven. We called our apartment that we moved in together, Heaven on Eleven. He went to heaven. It’s a story in this book that has nine sections that talk about a relationship of the self and others. I talked to adults on how to love more kindly, closely, eye contact, touching, more love, more love making, more rituals in the kitchen, like bread making, making coffee for one another, making someone’s side of the bed. Doing things a little bit differently and feeling more spirited and childlike in that process because that’s when our hearts become open. That’s when the adulting doesn’t become so daunting. That’s when we’re less scared of messing up and more free to fail, to fall, to ask for help and to get curious. I dedicate this show going beyond the ego to this very notion of Heaven on Eleven and Little Book of Love and their messages. There’s a strong message in both books that talk about building a solid foundation and a relationship. If you can imagine a triangle, both of the sides of the triangle are equal. They seem like they’re pressing against each other and/or leaning against one another. That’s our choice in a relationship. When we get into a relationship, make a commitment, become dedicated to another person in a relationship, our sides come together and meet at the peak.
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Power Of Love: People use compassion and empathy to open up their hearts, soften the situation, and move forward.

Below that is that long line, which is the foundation. If those sides are not strong enough, and if they are not held up by the pillars beneath them, the pillars meaning compassion, empathy, communication, honesty, truth, willingness to discuss things that are uncomfortable, going through the muck together and being more connected than separated, that’s when things fall apart. We don’t want those invisible pillars to let go beneath the sides of who we are. That’s what keeps the foundation strong in a relationship. I created that design in both of the books. It also talks about the idea to measure time in moments, not by counting a clock. You see, John was seventeen years older than I am. I never thought I was going to meet someone like that before. He was incredible. We came together in a whirlwind. Our story is magical. It includes ducks, sailor’s ball, all these wonderful things. The story is in the book, but measuring time, not counted by a clock because as Freddie Mercury sings, “Time waits for no one.” What I was able to do in my relationship, which was not very easy to do. He had some setbacks from a past relationship and I was watching it all happen. Expectations are the main cause of frustration because they come from an outside source. Click To Tweet As a communication coach, I knew things were wrong. I had to honor that time for him as a man at 58 to come to me when he was ready. I cherished the way that it did come together because I did so with such integrity and dignity. I had so much courage. For the ladies that are reading who have to learn how to speak up for what you want, have to learn how to speak up for your desires and how you want to be touched, how you want to be held and what you want in a relationship. There is something to be said about that. There is something to be said about the courage to dive into that. I was able to successfully do that with my love.

Idea Of Belief

We did create Heaven on Eleven. It all comes from belief systems. There’s a chapter in the beginning of the book about the idea of belief. Going back to that childhood idea of we believed in our little animals that talk to one another. Those that grew up in the ‘80s with me, we had He-Man, She-Ra, Barbies and dolls, and we didn’t have cell phones or any digital devices. Anything digital that we had were the things that you would pull the string and it would make noise. We believed in our toys talking to one another and how fun was that?
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Power Of Love: When you get into a relationship, make a commitment and become dedicated to another person. Both sides come together and meet at the peak.

We become adults and there’s so much less of a belief system. Turning back into our belief systems, turning to a possibility of spirituality can calm the mindset and create humble human beings can open their hearts rather than close up and have that vulnerability. Have that ability to share with one another our deepest, darkest secrets, and then also feel okay with things that are not so great with one another and work through it equally honestly, and openly. That’s when it’s uncomfortable. I can remember so many uncomfortable moments, but we made them more comfortable because we sat quietly together. We breathed. We talked and we held hands. This is not easy work. This came with many years of personal development work for me. Now I coach individuals and groups and people at corporations on this type of work. It’s called emotional intelligence. It’s called personal professional development, but it helps you define how you want to show up in this world. There’s another aspect of that goes into the Little Book of Love. I love this aspect. I’ve been writing about it for years. I finally said, “I’m going to put it in this Little Book of Love here.” It’s the idea of standards versus expectations. It is an idea that I came up with at a bar with a good marketing colleague. The two of us are brainiacs. We started talking about the idea of how so many of us are addicted to expectation, which is relating to and relying on an outside source to make things come true for us. If you have not met the love of your life or experienced true love yet, it will most likely come when you least expect it. Click To Tweet Almost always often we are let down from our expectations because they come from an outside source. When we are let down so many times from expectations, that’s when we will have to learn how to shift in our higher consciousness, in our higher power, in the highest persona of who we wish to be beyond the ego, to vibrating at a higher frequency, which has a higher standards lifestyle. It means that whenever we get let down, we can make a choice to become personally responsible and accountable to raise our standard. We’re not relying on an outside source anymore. We’re relying on the internal self to transition and to make a change. That’s when higher standards become a beautiful way of life rather than leading into expectations so often.

Flowers From Heaven

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Power Of Love: Whenever you are let down, you can choose to become personally responsible and accountable to raise your standard.

That can truly enhance a relationship over the course of several years because we learn to let go of that grasp. We learn to let go of that hideous, controlling, demanding, projecting persona that is in the ego that is born of society, religion, our parents, our family or where we live. We are tired of it. We’re exhausted by it. We want to be our authentic selves, which is what Beyond Ego is all about. There are some beautiful stories about spirituality in this book. It’s miraculous what had happened to me. There were stories about flowers. He sent me flowers from heaven. I ordered this ornament the night before we went away for our vacation. He passed away and we got hit on a vacation. I ordered this ornament before we went away. We had just put away our Christmas ornaments. It was 11:00. We had to go to bed. We had to get up at 2:30 or something for our flight. We were tired and I said, “We put away our Christmas ornaments and I didn’t ever get us our first Christmas ornament.” I went on Etsy.com and I put a photo of us from our first Christmas tree. It said, “Merry Christmas, Elizabeth and John.” Not doing that. How about, “Christmas wishes, Elizabeth and John 2019?” I said, “I’m not going to do the traditional Christmas message or the holiday message.” I simply wrote, “Heaven on Eleven, 2019.” When I returned home from the vacation, about six days later, the ornament came. I knew what it was. I opened the box and there we were shining with our Christmas tree. It said, “Heaven on Eleven.” It’s almost as if it were a prophecy. He was in heaven and our apartment was on the 11th floor. There was that. There are many beautiful things that he’s spoken to and said to me through the ethereal. He’s here with me. He’s in a very high echelon of the dimensional realm, the spiritual realm, and I believe it. It’s beautiful.

Love Yourself First

Anyone who loves the love, anyone who is going through a terrible time in their relationship and is looking for answers beyond a therapist, I offer incredible communication coaching for individuals and couples to think about how they show up to themselves. How do they show up to one another is one of the biggest lessons in Heaven on Eleven is to learn how to love yourself first. People throw around those themes, memes and quotes on Facebook and social media, love yourself first. Most of us don’t even know what that means. We have to do some work, especially in our second half of life, we were not taught this stuff. We’re learning years later with a lot of baggage, with a lot of emotion and tension built up. The last thing we want is regret. The last thing that we want is to waste that rusty anchor behind us on a sandy beach. We want to have that lifted and we want to run on the beach with an open heart and soul to our partner, with our hair blowing in the wind. To those of you who have not yet experienced true love, again, I was 41 when it happened. He was 57. We had no idea. It was a miraculous coming together moment and it happened so very quickly. There were a lot of times where it was not easy, but the not easy parts became so very beautiful for the both of us to learn so much about ourselves and each other. If you have not met the love of your life or experienced true love yet, it is 100% possible when you least expect it. I can vouch for that. I can tell you that. It’s beautiful. When you get it, try not to sabotage it with your habits and rituals. Get some communication coaching, come to me for six months or do the annual mastermind that I host going through all the different areas of personal and professional development. Walk away, lighter, happier, healthier, mindful with positive affirmations and open heart, less anxiety, more calm, spiritual practice, getting rid of any limiting beliefs that you have, increasing your positive and good moods, and just getting out of your own way. Creating this stamina charge with new ideas and letting go of everything from the past, looking in the present moment, because again, we don’t know what our future holds. After my love passed away, I recognize the value just as a simple breath. I’ve been talking about breath work in my body of work for years, but it shined a spotlight on it. The fact that I’m able to write these books, the fact that I was able to give these books to him on his birthday, even in ethereal realm, was such an honor for me. If you’re reading this, please buy a copy for yourself. That comes with two books, the Heaven on Eleven, Little Book of Love. You get rose seeds or sunflower seeds to signify that the little things in life truly matter if you get a rose because rose seeds are so small. If you get sunflower seeds, it’s a reminder to turn your face to the sun, no matter what tragedy you face. When there is no sunshine in your relationship, you can turn your energy towards one another. There is a couple’s workbook for communication and you can also use that for yourself. It’s not meant to be if you have a partner. You can use it for yourself and how you act, how you show up. Many of us are showing up with ego. That’s the point of this show and my body of work. There’s also a love meditation with a filmed video of the ocean. Some thoughts from me to you. Buy a copy for yourself or a friend in need. These books are great for divorce groups. These books are great for couples who have separated, men and women looking to dive into the better parts of themselves, especially from a broken place. There’s a love story of myself and my love, but there’s also love notes to readers throughout each book. There’s poetic mastery, word smithery and lyrical words that are threaded through each and every chapter like most of my books, bringing nature in as a beautiful analogy for all of us to calm down, slow down and to see ourselves in the now. Thank you so much for reading. This is a beautiful way for me to honor my love. Please visit TheKindCommunicator.com, click on Books, order many copies and give them to people in your life for the holidays, for the New Year, for Valentine’s Day and share this message and this show with everyone that you know. What I did from being saved in that relationship and watching my love pass was I turned a tragedy into something beautiful for the world to gift for the world and inspiration, a love story for the world to hear. This story must be shared. I honor you for helping me do that. Thank you.

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