Sheila Keene-Lund StereofINAL +!

This is a podcast called Open Forum in the Villages Florida that features interviews with community leaders and residents. The host asks for support from listeners to keep the podcast going and suggests making a small donation or rating the podcast. The host then interviews Sheila Keen, who shares her experiences growing up in the Caribbean and her near-death experiences in Puerto Rico. She talks about moving to different islands and eventually meeting her future husband. Sheila also discusses her interest in meditation and her decision to move to Iowa with her children after experiencing an abusive marriage. She starts her own business and explores spirituality through research and studying different religions. Sheila eventually feels compelled to write a book and receives a sign that leads her to the title, "Heaven is Not the Last Stop." She spends the next 10 years researching the Urantia book. Welcome to the Open Forum in the Villages Florida podcast. In this show we talk to leaders in the community, leaders of clubs and interesting folks who live here in the villages to get perspectives of what is happening here in the Villages Florida. We hope to add a new episode most Fridays at 9 a.m. We are a listener-supported podcast. There will be shout outs for supporters and episodes. As a supporter you will get a direct email link to Mike. In season 5 we are making significant improvements and changes on an ongoing basis. Now you can help me afford to keep making this podcast by becoming a supporter. First a quick note about the podcast. It's available because I absolutely love doing it despite the fact that it cost me probably more time than I can actually afford. Now I can't buy back my time but there is one thing that you can do that would be really helpful and that is help me to afford making this podcast. You can do that by going to the website openforuminthevillages.com and clicking on the supporter box and making a small donation of three to ten dollars a month and you can cancel at any time. Really a small donation of three dollars will still make a difference and I'd really appreciate it. If you can't afford to do that I completely understand. It's economically tough times for a lot of people but there is something that you can do for free that can really help. If you want to you can rate the podcast. You can give it five stars or maybe even give it a review on whatever podcast application you're using. That will make a huge difference because we will be discovered by more people. If you're able to do that we would massively appreciate it and it would help keep this podcast going in 2024. If you have a book that you would like to turn into an audiobook let us know via email to mikeatrothvoice.com. Hope you enjoy today's show. This is Mike Roth on Open Forum in the Villages Florida. I'm here today with Sheila Keen. Sheila thanks for joining me. Thank you for having me. Sheila you were featured in the Daily Sun a few weeks ago and it said that you grew up in the Caribbean. Could you share with us some of your experiences that you you had growing up in the Caribbean and which islands you lived on? Yes I was born actually in Spain but my father was an English engineer, telecommunications engineer and he met my mother in Puerto Rico. My mother was from Puerto Rico and there is where my two sister, eldest sisters were born and when all of us were living in Spain we moved to Cuba and from Cuba we stayed there until the revolution and then we moved to Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico we stayed about six years. During the time in Puerto Rico we had a lot of family time, lots of beaches, lots of fun. I had two near-death experiences in Puerto Rico and they were to shape the rest of my life and my direction. I had many questions about those experiences and I soon found out that I would have to find the answers to my questions myself because having been brought up in a very strict Catholic family I was told to ignore the experiences or they weren't important or I had to have faith and that was the same answer that the nuns in our school would give me. So I knew from that moment that I would have to find the answers that I wanted through my own effort. We left Puerto Rico when I was 13 and we moved to the island of Santa Lucia. So we did a lot of traveling to the Caribbean islands, a lot of beaches, a lot of boat ridings, a lot of skiing, a lot of fun. Mm-hmm. Can you share with our audience what the near-death experiences were? When I was seven years old I was in the beach with some friends of my father and two of them were holding my hands when I went to the beach. We were swimming and apparently there was a wave coming and they let my hands and when I was when I saw that all of a sudden the wave wasn't me and what was interesting is I saw myself rolling in the water just watching my little body rolling and I was very calm and I looked at the little body rolling and I wasn't scared at all and that just went on for a little bit until I was awakened when they were trying to resuscitate me on the beach. That was the first one. The second one was when I was 12 years old and I was at the dentist and they were giving me something to go to sleep and I guess I must have reacted to it and all of a sudden I felt my body coming out from my head I guess. I just felt myself lifting out of my body and I was all of a sudden in a little train and the little train was going towards a tunnel and it was too small. The tunnel was too small and I kept thinking I'm not going to fit in that tunnel but then all of a sudden I heard my grandpa who was dead at the time and he just told me she that turn back is not your time. So I just woke up again in the dentist's office and it was then that it intrigued me what those experiences were and had I died and what had happened and all those questions but my school teachers and my mom didn't seem to have any answers or had any interest. What island did that happen on? That happened in Puerto Rico. From Puerto Rico we went to St. Lucia. Now St. Lucia was a very undeveloped island. It was gorgeous. They had no escalators, no elevators. They only had a very small TV station, a little radio station and everybody knew everybody and the beaches were gorgeous and in St. Lucia my father was the manager of the telephone company there and we went to school in a convent. That was a very interesting experience. School in a convent. Yeah and it was very interesting. So your father was in telecommunications. Yes my father was in telecommunications in St. Lucia and at 15 in the island of St. Lucia I met my future husband. My husband. How old were you when that happened? I was 15 and I met him. We got married when I was 18 and we had three children, three boys. Now our life, my life, my married life was a very privileged life. We had a lot of businesses to run and it was a beautiful life in many ways. During that time I also learned how to meditate and I learned to meditate simply because I was curious but it turned out that those years of meditation really helped me in many ways. One, my husband was abusive and so it helped me deal with everything that comes with having to deal with an abusive husband and secondly it helped keep my desire for spiritual growth alive. So I did a lot of research trying to find answers to the same questions I had from when I was a little girl and that continued for about 10 years and then one day when I was running one of our businesses I found myself at the house. The kids were being raised by their grandmother because we were so busy and I remember thinking I need to do something different. I had found out that there was a school in Iowa that taught meditation to the children as part of their curriculum and I had found that meditation had helped me so much inwardly that I wanted the same thing for the kids. Okay. And so I decided that that despite our good life in many ways in St. Lucia and a very comfortable life in St. Lucia that I wanted to take the kids to experience something more and so with not my husband's permission, he didn't want us to go, but with $5,000 and three kids in tow, I moved to Fairfield, Iowa. Oh, it sounds like he didn't move with you. No, I left him behind. Two months later we got divorced. Okay, it sounds like that was probably a good thing for you. In Fairfield, Iowa, it was a very, within a year I had started my own business. What business was that? I did policies and procedure manuals for nursing homes. Okay. And I analyzed the procedures and then documented them and customized them. In Iowa also after a few years of being there, I came across a book that also really helped me a lot and that was a book called the Urantia book. The name of the book again. The Urantia book. And for those of you who haven't heard, it's supposed to be an epical event from God that clarifies and expands upon current belief systems. And when I read that at first, I was really excited, but then I put it away for six years and I continued my research. During the time that I was in Iowa, I also became a deaconess of the liberal Catholic Church. And whilst I was studying there, whilst I was practicing there, I was also teaching classes on Buddhism, on how to take care of people who are dying. Whilst I was there, I began to have thoughts of writing a book. And everybody wanted me to write about life after death, but I kept thinking, what am I supposed to write that hasn't been written? So at the time when I kept having that recurrent thought, I began to have an inner talk with my inner spirit. And I asked, and I said, you know, if I'm supposed to write a book, I need the name and I need a sign. And I said, and I want that sign to be that one of my kids talked to me about life after death, because that's what I thought I was going to write about. So but, and I forgot about that. About two weeks later, one of my youngest sons come into the house to watch a movie with me. And then halfway through the movie, somebody's dying in the movie. And he says, Mom, do you believe in life after death? So I knew I had gotten the sign, but I still didn't have the name. And the name came about two weeks later when I was in the office. And I was I picked up a book and and I said, I wonder what the name of my book is going to be. And he said, heaven is not the last stop. On my right ear, I heard heaven is, and then I, I said, what was that? Again, heaven is not the last stop. So I knew I had to write a book. I had been given the sign, but I had no idea what I was going to write about. And I had never written before. So for the next 10 years, I researched the Urantia book, because it came back to me with about 10 years. Could you give the name of the book again slowly for our listeners? The Urantia book. U-rantia book? Urantia book. U-R-A-N-T-I. Never heard of it. The Urantia book. It's a big 2000 page book. And once I did my research, I had lots of questions. And one of the questions I said to my inner, my inner self, I guess I said, is, is there what happens after death connected with this particular information that is in this book? And about six months later, I came across the Urantia book again after not having seen it for six years. And so I knew I had to write it and I knew I had to do it. So my heaven is not the last stop is basically a summarized version of the Urantia book, which I hope will help readers expand and expand their own beliefs and then see what they experience, experience as a result. Now, how my husband. This was Barth. This is Barth. Yes. How my husband got involved with writing heaven is not the last stop. When I was in Iowa, I kept trying to write it, but nothing was coming. So and I moved to Florida because my mother had passed away and I wanted to be with my father. So I thought I would go there. And whilst I was there, I was playing tennis and I wanted to dance with some, I wanted to do ballroom dancing and somebody gave me Barth's name and I called him. And how he got involved is once we met and I told him that I was trying to write this book, he says, oh, I'll help you. And I said, you don't know anything about the book, but he was the most fantastic, the most fantastic person in doing that job in editing the book. So Barth passed away from Alzheimer's disease. How did his death motivate you towards writing a book about empowering caregivers for Alzheimer's patients? Barth and I were married for 20 years. He got diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2018. And actually at 2017, he got diagnosed with Alzheimer's and nobody can tell you, I think they had to take care of somebody with Alzheimer's and it's an experience nobody can prepare you for. It doesn't matter how much you read. It doesn't matter how many good intention people tell you about it. The experience in itself is unique to you on how you're going to deal with it. So whenever Barth kept taking a step worse, you really feel it emotionally, but you pick yourself up and you deal with it, but you don't really realize the stress that is in your body. So one day I was talking to my doctor and he said, you know, Sheila, if you don't take care of yourself, you're going to die before him. And that shocked me. And I looked it up and the statistics were that 63% of caregivers will die before the person they're taking care of. Wow. And that's from the stress. And that's from the stress. And when you consider that in the United States, there's 11 million caregivers. That's a lot of people who are giving care to people with Alzheimer's who are not in a memory care unit or home. Yes, yes, yes. There's a lot of people. There's a lot of caregivers now. So what I decided at that point, I thought, you know, I've spent so much time working on self-development techniques, on spiritual growth, so I need to apply those principles to my caregiving so that I can survive the caregiving experience. And that's what I did. So I started, first of all, I got rid of all the negativity around me and I got, I did not entertain anybody who would, however nice they wanted to be, were giving me advice that wasn't asked for. And the other thing that I did is I picked up mountain biking and I started doing mountain biking to release stress. And I wrote a book about it, about mountain biking. And then I thought, I started joining support groups. Did you have any help caring for your husband Bart? When I, for the first, for the first five years from 2017, when he got diagnosed to 2023, I took care of him. And I took care of him alone. I did have some help that would come for four hours during the day. But I was able to get my boss to give me the time so that I could work remotely. And so I took care of him and I only took a part-time job because I wanted to be able to, all the needs that he had. And that was very hard because one of the things with that caregiver's experience is a lot of isolation because they're protecting the person they're taking care of. After a while, a person who has Alzheimer's tends to be alineated from everybody else because very few people feel comfortable talking to somebody who has dementia. And so you get very protective of the person. As the caregiver. Excuse me? You get very protective as the caregiver. Yeah, and you get very protective. And as a result, you end up just seeing the four walls in your house most of the time. And so it is very stressful. So, so I decided then to join support group, online support group. But what I found was that most of the people in the support group were focusing on how bad everything was. They were focusing on the pain, on how much out of their way they were forced to be, on the all the different things that they had to do to take care of somebody. And I thought, if we focus, you can't stop what's going on. The circumstances are there. But you can do something about your mindset. You can do something about how do I view that experience that I'm having. So the experience that you had with your husband in your book, Empowering Caregiver's Guide to Dementia, what sets that book apart from other books? There's many books about dementia. And there are many books also about how to deal with burnout. But what sets my book apart is that it focuses on the mindset, on how to develop the mindset so that you can not just survive caring for somebody, but thrive. How can you be able to see beyond your life of caregiving in a way that's positive, that's rewarding, that you're able to see the experience that you just went through as one more of life's experiences that is rewarding, and that it is beautiful, and it has helped you grow in ways that you wouldn't have grown otherwise. So that is the focus of my book. Is that book available on Amazon? Yes, it's available on Amazon. Is it available also as an audio book? That's what I'm working on now. Good, good. This is Mike Roth with Dr. Craig Curtis for today's Alzheimer's Tip. Let's talk about omega-3 and omega-6. How should people get that from their diet? Well, primarily, you should get that through beans and nuts and legumes and fish. You can take a supplement of omega-3, omega-6s. However, don't overdo the supplementation of omega-3 specifically. There was a large study published by the American College of Cardiology a few years back that seemed to show that people that took too much omega-3 might have an increased risk of a heart arrhythmia. So my recommendation is if you buy omega-3 supplements, take it as written. With over 20 years of experience studying brain health, Dr. Curtis's goal is to educate the Village's community on how to live a longer, healthier life. To learn more, visit his website, craigcurtismd.com or call 352-500-5252 to attend a free seminar. I think many people, me included, would rather listen to a book when I'm exercising or driving as opposed to sitting down and reading a book. Yes. Yes. And that's why I'm working on it. Good, good. Are you planning to write any additional book? I'm working right now on an addendum for my book, Empower Caregivers Guide to Dementia. Sounds like a second edition. It's like a second edition and it's going to be called What I Wish I Knew About End of Life Care. So that part is going to be focusing. I found out that the last two weeks of my husband, in fact, the last two months of my husband, were so intense. And not only dealing with him dying, but also with the bureaucracies and the regulations and things that maybe we can't do anything about. Was he in hospice care the last two months? Yes, he was in hospice care for actually three or four months. He was in hospice care. But there are things, even about hospice care, that one doesn't know that it's important to know. Give our listeners an example. Well, an example would be I was appalled when I asked for an airbed for my husband, because they had suggested that, not suggested, they had put him on bed, constant bed rest. And I told them that he was getting red spots in the back and that he needed to have an airbed. They told me, oh, no, no, we can't give you an airbed until he has a sore. And I thought, how ridiculous is that? You have to wait until you have a sore to be able to get an airbed. So I ended up getting myself one for him. But things like that are important to know because it's a very expensive, caring for somebody with dementia is expensive. And if you put him in a home, it's expensive. And so it's important to know certain things that nobody talks to you when you enter either home or when you're caring for somebody. And it's important to know them. So I figured I would bring those out, everything that I experienced. And hopefully people will be able to, even if nothing can be done about these things, they will be able to be more informed when they they're in that situation. So when your husband was originally diagnosed with Alzheimer's, did they give you a book to read? Nobody gave me a book, nobody gave me a book to read. They, they just told me that my best resource was my doctor. Okay. So, so now for people who are facing that same dilemma that you had, they have a book that they can read that will give them some extremely valuable information. That is what I'm hoping. I'm hoping that, that we, that we can reduce that statistic by having people be able to develop a mindset that's positive and that, that they find that they're, that they have grown. So that's what I'm hoping my book will do is that it will reduce the statistics of 63% and we'll be able to, to help them get through that experience in a way that they will see that it's rewarding. That's real good. That's real good. It's, you sound like you are a book reader yourself. I like to read books. You like to read books. I like to read books and what I can learn from them. So I've asked you to pick up a book, Show Up For Yourself by Janet Philbin, and she was on the show last week, and that's a book about how to heal yourself, a very good book, and she did a great interview that you and my, my other listeners will be able to listen to. This is all about healing yourself from trauma, which may go all the way back to when you were a child and you certainly had a couple of traumas before you were 18 years of age, which would definitely be in there. Yes. Yes. The dealing with, you have to be willing to make the changes. You have to be able to recognize where you're at and you have to be willing to make the changes. It's all about inner work. The one thing that is beautiful and very rare was that my husband never forgot me. He never forgot my name. He never forgot me. In fact, five days before he died, when he was lying down, he hadn't opened his eyes or anything. Five days before he died, all of a sudden he told me, Sheila, I'm dying. And I told him, I asked him why? And he said, I feel something is taking over my body and when it gets to my throat, I'll die. And then I told him, I said, Bart, I'll miss you so much and I love you. And he says, he looked at me, touched me and said, I love you so much. Thank you for everything. For a man who has seventh stage dementia, who haven't spoken, he never forgot. That's a very touching story. Very touching story. This new book, or the addendum to the first book. It's an addendum. I think it's an important story to be told because to me, those, even though the whole year with Bart, the whole of 2023, which was the year that we had to end up putting him in a home was so difficult, the last two months were horrendous and it was dealing with, you know, facility regulations and state regulations and this and that. And it was like, I don't know, things I believe, I personally believe that some things need to change. Yeah. And where, where was that? Was that here in Florida or? It was here in Florida. And it sounds like you were spending most of your time with him, even though he was in the facility. Oh yes. I spent 12 hours a day. Towards the end, I spent 12 hours, 12 hours with him. And sometimes I would spend the night because you definitely, it doesn't matter whether you put somebody in a home, you have to watch after them because nobody's going to take care of your loved ones you would take care of. Do you have any idea when this addendum to the book is going to be added? I'm hoping it'll be published by, I would say April. I should be finished. April of 24. Yes. April 24 should be finished. Yes. I, I started writing it already and I'm researching some things and I will have it out then. And hopefully by that time we'll be working on the audibles. So there'll be, you'll be working on the, so it'll be audible, an audible book. Yes. That's very good. They're even better if you can put them in your own voice, but there are plenty of voiceover artists that'll do it or even AIs. And when we do it with an AI and it's a single voice book, it's very inexpensive to do, you know, at this point in time, I'd say, you know, $400 to do an average size book, kind of like the one you're holding. Oh, interesting. I will definitely. An AI voice or a, an actor or an actress reading a book does very well until the book has tables in it, like Excel chart tables and chart, those become next to impossible to do well, you know, if you want your, your listeners to understand. Okay. And do you, do you recommend that the writer reads the book? No. No. Okay. The writer is definitely emotionally involved in the book. Okay. Some writers can't let go of the book. Okay. And other writers wake up and they realize that they have a great piece of material and they want to share it. And the easy, if it's a single voice book, easiest way to share it is to use an AI on it. Okay. And you can turn that out relatively rapidly. If you have a book with seven or eight different voices in it, it gets expensive. I want to, I want to definitely do the book because I am very passionate about, about the care, care for not only the person that has the Alzheimer's, but definitely the caregivers. So I want to do that as soon as I can. And I want to make it available to people, both, both book to people as much as I can and share with them those techniques that will help people. And you know what the secret is of getting the book out there? Excuse me? The secret of getting the book into the people's hands that you needed to get into. What's the secret? The secret of getting it into the hands, speaking about it, speaking about it, doing presentation. Doing presentations, getting yourself on some national TV shows or national shows or other podcasts like this. But I think the, the real marketing effort will be to go after the physicians who do the diagnosis. Yes. Okay. The neurologists, so that your material can be put in front of the families of the Alzheimer's patients. That's a good idea. You know, interesting enough, I had somebody leave a review saying that, that the book should be in every doctor's office. Well, not the book. And that's, that's a big problem. And that's a big problem. The thing is, there's a lot of information about how to care for the person, but everybody's so different and circumstances are so different. And ultimately. Well, the cases are different too. Yeah. And ultimately it's, it's the caregiver's mindset that will, will determine the experience for that caregiver and how, what you'll take out of it and, and it, and how it communicates to the person that you're taking care of. Good. So Sheila, do you have any last remarks that you want to give to our audience or ideas? Well, just love the person that you're with as much as you can, be as vulnerable as you can with whoever that you love, because you never know how long it's going to last and always remain positive and let go of negativity and always channel your energy towards something that is fruitful and long lasting. Good. And do you have a website? Yes, it's been developed. I have one already, mainly geared towards my philosophy, spiritual books, but it's called SheilaKeenLund.com. It's W-W. Sheila Keen. Sheila Keen Lund. L-U-N-D is the last. L-U-N-D at the end. SheilaKeenLund.com. Good. And if one of our listeners has trouble figuring that out, they can go to the transcript of the show. Okay. Thanks a lot for being on the show today, Sheila. Thank you for having me here. Good. Remember, our next episode will be released next Friday at 9am. Should you want to become a major supporter of the show or have questions, please contact us at mikeatrothvoice.com. This is a shout out for supporters Tweek Coleman, Ed Williams, and major supporter Dr. Craig Curtis at K2 in the Villages. We will be hearing more from Dr. Curtis with short Alzheimer's tips each week. If you know someone who should be on the show, contact us at mikeatrothvoice.com. We thank everyone for listening to the show. The content of the show is copyrighted by Roth Voice 2024. All rights reserved.