42 min

Sarah Bullen — Love and Above A ,journey into shamanism, coma and joy.

With Sarah Bullen — Love and Above A ,journey into shamanism, coma and joy.

In short

Sarah Bullen, a journalist, publisher and ghostwriter, tells the story behind Love and Above: her husband Llewellyn's stage four brain tumour and his parallel shamanic training, her own four-week coma at 36, the spirit journey she remembers from it, and the three words — "have more fun" — that pushed her to dismantle a conventional life and rebuild it on a Greek island.

Why did Sarah Bullen write this book when she writes other people's books for a living?

She resisted it for a decade, calling it the book she didn't want to write because it was too close, too personal and too revealing. She is a literary agent and professional ghostwriter who has written 14 books. During lockdown she pitched other authors to a publisher, who told her they wanted her story instead.

What happened when her husband was diagnosed with a brain tumour?

He was diagnosed at around 38 with a fast-growing stage four brain tumour and died at 41. Doctors told him to go home and make the most of his time with his family. He chose brain surgery and chemotherapy, while simultaneously pursuing a healing path with sangomas Colin and Neil Campbell.

How did she feel about the shamanic path her husband took?

Angry, resentful and vengeful for the first two-thirds of the book. She was earning the money and raising the children while he disappeared into the bush in Botswana for months. As a journalist she researched the rituals determined to disprove them, yet part of her heart kept saying it felt more real.

How did Sarah end up in a coma herself?

She caught a cold during a magazine production deadline, asked for her laptop to be couriered home, and within 24 hours was in ICU on life support. Her lungs had filled with fluid and could not absorb oxygen; she was in hypoxia with organs shutting down. Pneumonia was one suggested cause.

What does she remember experiencing during four weeks in a coma?

She describes distinct phases: first a medically induced "world of nightmares", then leaving her body and floating around the hospital with no recognition of the body on the bed, then travelling to houses overseas, then other realms — including a ceremony with beings of light where she said goodbye to her husband — and finally bliss out in the universe.

What brought her back from the coma?

A voice or feeling saying "get home now". That same night, family and friends across the world — Buddhist, Baptist, Jewish, Muslim, agnostic, new age — had held a prayer circle, and hundreds of people prayed for her. She knew nothing of it, but the next morning she medically began to turn the corner.

What was the message she came back with?

"Have more fun." A being she calls the forest man helped her get back into her body, kissed her forehead and gave her those three words. She found them rude and strange at first, because life had not been fun. Over time she recognised them as being at the heart of being human.

What did she actually change about her life afterwards?

She pulled both children out of school, left her house and her life, and moved to a small Greek island, joining a meditation community. This followed a dinner party where she watched herself in the same old conversations about traffic and coffee and realised she was no longer that person.

What happened after the Greek island?

Four years after her husband died of cancer, Sarah found a lump in her breast while standing on the Greek island in a bikini and was diagnosed with cancer herself. She went through chemotherapy five or six years ago. Fear at times threatened to drown her — not fear of dying, but of leaving her children orphaned.

In their words

Taken from the recording, word for word.

this was the book I didn't want to write, I couldn't write. It was too close, too personal, too revealing, too crazy what happened

— Sarah Bullen

I had found some wild rapture under ancient skies and on ancient lands

— Sarah Bullen

have more fun those three words caught in my throat i wanted to spit them out they were strange to me rude even fun what was that this was not fun life was not fun how simply dare he tell me that

— Sarah Bullen

it's not about dying because that nearly happened it's not about losing the person i love the most because that's really happened

— Sarah Bullen

you don't have to have cancer or be in a coma or have a near-death experience um to go yes to the good and no to the fear

— Sarah Bullen

Key takeaways

  1. Traditional and ritual approaches to illness ask how to work with a disease and what its role is, rather than only how to get rid of it.
  2. Recovery from a long coma is nothing like the movies: it is a repeated, terrifying cycle of surfacing into consciousness and falling back under.
  3. After nearly dying, Sarah felt acceptance, gratitude, grace and joy rather than the grief and trauma everyone around her expected.
  4. Once the worst fears — dying, losing the person you love most — have already happened, the remaining fear can be examined and set down.
  5. Nobody needs a coma, a near-death experience or cancer to start choosing joy over fear; it can be built as a deliberate habit.
  6. Rebuilding a life may require ignoring conventional advice — the psychologists, the medication, the waiting it out — and writing a different story instead.

Show notes

Journalist Sarah Bullen and her filmmaker husband Llewelyn seemed
like a golden couple, with wildly successful careers. Then Llewellyn
realises that what he'd thought were entranced moments were in fact
symptoms of a brain tumour. He pursues a shamanic path to fight the
cancer and the couple are catapulted into a strange, magical world of
ritual and ceremony. Alongside hospitals, surgery and treatments
comes another wilder journey of spiritual searching. Then Sarah too
falls ill. While in a four-week coma, Sarah travels through near-death
and into other realms and worlds.
She comes back with a message and a spark to follow which
becomes a roadmap to allow her to write a new life story. From Hout
Bay to the Mediterranean and back, Sarah's story is sad, funny and
magical, filled with laughter and tears. From African rituals to a Greek
island of sex and celebration, Love and Above is filled with wild
rapture and infinite possibility

Frequently asked questions

How long was she unable to speak after the coma?

Six months, because of her tracheotomy and holes in her throat. She also had to learn to breathe and to move her hands again, as the muscles atrophy during a long coma, and she was desperately thin with her hair fallen out.

How ill was she at the worst point?

She was given a ten per cent chance of recovery. Her organs were already shutting down and she had been in the coma for weeks on life support at Constantiaberg while her husband lay in palliative care ten kilometres away.

What was happening at their home during her husband's illness?

While he went through MRIs, chemotherapy and radiation, they built ndumba prayer huts and medicine huts in their suburban backyard, with drumming and chanting. One scene in the book involves her husband, his teacher and the children skinning a genet.

What is Sarah doing now?

Book tours and retreats — Greece, Italy, the USA, Kenya, and a writers' retreat in the Botswana bush — alongside her work as a literary agent representing writers and running writing mentorships. She says the book has found particular traction with international audiences.

Where can the book be found?

Most good bookstores and online, with Loot noted as having a good price. Sarah's own site, sarahbullen.com, carries photographs, backstory and behind-the-scenes material.

Transcript

The full conversation, 7,272 words.

and once more what's involved a special guest as always and I love chatting to interesting people people who can bring insights and learnings and people who can add value. My special guest today is Sarah Bullen and she's just recently released a book called The Love and Above A Journey into Shamanism, Coma and Joy. Hello Sarah. Morning David. Okay so let's dive into this but the last time I spoke to you was in 2020 when you and Kate had released a book called Write Your Book in 100 Days and I was left with the impression of Sarah as an incredibly dynamic strong focus woman that just knew exactly what she wanted and was carving a very successful career for herself and suddenly this book landed on my desk and I was like wait what? So let's dive in right from the beginning Sarah. This book A Journey into Shamanism, Coma and Joy. How did that come about? Why did it come about? Well this book was 10 years in the making so this book covers a journey I went through that started in 2009 and really probably only ended last year and the book will cover, as readers will start to realize, quite a mad unique adventure. The adventure began with my husband being diagnosed with a brain tumor and at the time he was studying to be a sun-gormer already. So he's already involved in work that involved seen and unseen worlds and the diagnosis of tumor was quite a medical shock to him on a medical level but a very exciting moment in the world of working with spirit and ancestor. So that's where the book begins David. It begins in this really crazy place where we're young and happening and living our best lives. I'm a journalist, I'm a magazine publisher, I'm already a published author back then. I had two books and already on the shelves and at the same time my husband is starting to move into a world of healing in a very different way and that's the beginning of the book and of course as we're going to discuss over the course of this time that the story starts to snowball into very unexpected places and the book was, you know, you absolutely write. I am a literary agent, I am a professional ghost writer, so I write books full on behalf of celebrities and business thought leaders. I've written 14 books and this was the book I didn't want to write, I couldn't write. It was too close, too personal, too revealing, too crazy what happened but in the middle of lockdown I met with a publisher pitching some fabulous authors to them and they said to me Sarah no we want your story and that is how this book came onto the shelves this year in 2022 and seems to be spiraling out and captivating people with its absolutely mad cap journey.

And it is, it is a mad cap journey and you know some of the things, and to me what struck me is your preconceptions that a person can have about somebody else because as I said after the first interview there was one Sarah that I got to know and going through this book there's a totally different Sarah and I cannot imagine, you know, in retrospect going through this and having the courage to write the book number one and say okay this is me you know what's in all this is me and this is what happened and what happened with my husband and his journey and then the other things that happened to you it was like every time you know I thought okay all right light at the end of the tunnel and it seemed that the light was an oncoming train so let's get into that a little bit a little bit more Sarah so when this diagnosis happened it was it must have been a massive shock I mean tumor is nothing to mess around with so what did you guys do from there?

It came very unexpectedly he was 34 years old, 36 years old, sorry I'm having to stretch back now sorry he was I think 38 years old when he got the diagnosis 41 when he died so it was always a some zero game so the diagnosis at the time was it was a fast-growing stage four brain tumor and the doctors pretty much said you know go home have a good time spend time with your children and your wife and you know make the most of it he absolutely opted for the medical route so there was a brain surgery and then a course of chemo but on the side already a parallel healing journey had begun in which he was seeing illness in a very different way he was already working with a very well-known sangoma Colin Campbell and Colin passed him on to his brother Neil and Neil Campbell works very specifically with what they call twassa which is working with people who have a calling from the ancestors to work with spirit in a different way so my husband started that journey and there were so there we you know there he was going through all these treatments and MRIs and medical wards and chemo and radiation on his brain and at the same time in our backyard we were building dumba prayer huts that we were having medicine huts brought in there was a drumming and chanting there's an absolutely hilarious scene in the book in which you know my husband and his teacher and the children are skinning a genet so there was a lot of stuff that we weren't exposed to we were suburban you know i was i was living what i still call in those days a normal life i was living a normal life i had the picket fence i had the labrador i had two lovely children i had a good job and life seemed to just be you know one trajectory but the book is starting to show people that these things we hold out this journey we think we're on life will show us a different way so it can happen in an expected or unexpected but that was one existence and all of that was about to be taken away from me and so as the readers progress they're going to start to see that this world that dealt with disease in this different way it didn't say how do we get rid of this what do we do with this it says rather the ritualistic and more traditional cultures go how do i work with this what is its role in my life and how do i navigate this illness and we started going down that path and as the book progresses i am getting more and more and i was getting more and more pulled into this world it was inevitable because suddenly i was being shown just a different way of living a different way of thinking a different way of working with life and it was something that i think my soul had been very thirsty for i hadn't seen these things before i had you know gone to university studied being professional built a business and i hadn't yet seen that there were so many other paths i hadn't explored them i was walking the path my parents had showed me and and another path started to open up for us as a family and me as a human that suddenly felt quite wildly exciting and and that path started to become deeper and deeper and richer and richer as the book progresses but also initially i mean it scared you a little bit i mean there was there was a time that uh you spoke to your your husband and you said you know this is this is getting a bit hectic you know i mean it sort of seems to be taking you away from from myself and from our children and yet he was adamant wasn't he that that was a path that he had to take that was right so so really in the first sort of third two thirds of the book i'm like i'm i'm angry i am resentful i am finding this really interesting but i'm having to earn the money i'm having to raise the children he's disappearing up into the bush for months on end in Botswana um working in vendor with uh various things shooting documentaries as it goes and i was getting more and more angry upset vengeful um those kind of scary early days of cancer had somewhat evaporated and what i was left with was okay well this is all going to be fine and i want my life to go back to normal i want you know a regular family and that just wasn't happening and i was fighting it on so many levels um i was trying to trade water keep the family in the money have a job manage a business run a man who was quite sick and doing crazy things um and so this was also playing out on a very human level and being a journalist at the time i was also doing a huge amount of research into all these things and i was i was very determined to prove that they were not factually or scientifically sound you know these prayers we were doing these rituals up in the bush these steaming in medicine these chancellors drumming my my rational brain was going why is this working um but at the same time it didn't matter because there i was in these places and in these spaces and some part of my heart was feeling this is more real this feels right so these crazy things were happening and i can read a little bit of um one of the times we were up in botswana um out of the book um the night is electric and the drum straight call stretches out into the air under the african stars there are heated conversations in the heart african bush over lunch we talk about a growing flood of westerners to coming to find answers for life in traditional cultures meal campbell believes the soul is searching for all the ways that are more in tune with the earth another guest that night in the wide open land is henry fletcher from london he too feels that disconnect and has been called to the bush to discover a deeper relationship with the earth earlier that night we crawled together into a traditional african steaming hut up in the under open skies before we entered the hut we danced in a circle under the full moon in the middle of the bush to the sounds and the screams and calls of our own voices and then we sat in the hut around a fire and we chanted and sang as the drums beat faster and the songs got louder herbs were put on the fire herbs herbs for joy and beauty and luck and when the songs ended it could have been hours or it could have been even days later it was timeless and then we crawled out of the baking steaming hut henry fletcher looked at me his face brought to the grin this is totally wild he said i felt it wild wild without drugs or clubs without a thumping bass or a cracking hangover i had found some wild rapture under ancient skies and on ancient lands and um i think that sort of sums up a little bit of what we were starting or i was starting to connect with at that time um and i just finished this chapter and i've jumped ahead saying the weekend was over all too soon and i caught the british airways flight back to cape town as we lifted off and left the star planes of the semi-desert of Botswana i found myself seated by a sales manager of a magazine i was working on he was flying home from a work meeting how's llewellyn he said with a concerned look in his eye i hear he's on borrowed time and i'm so sorry how are you and the kids it was as if a coat dose of cold water had been thrown in my face it was so unexpected and foreign i'd left that world so far behind other than six monthly mri scans that was not a reality in my life oh no i said you have it so wrong he's amazing oh he said fantastic news my brother-in-law had the same tumour and he only made it six months i can't believe llewellyn's doing so well he asked where i'd been i was worried i had a crazy look in my eye when i told him about the medicine journey and the ceremony isn't that stuff a bit scary he asked i thought of the bugs and the flies i thought of last night singing in a tiny hut that would felt as if it was soaring in a charmed sky i thought of henry fletcher heading back to south kensington yep i grinned it is totally wild and it's amazing because as you as you journey with you through this book you know initially that that whole lot of of the drums and the the chanting and everything scared you you were you were scared of it and you know you were going at some sense that you're going with chemo is working why do we have to do the fufu and the wubu it's it's an amazing book and it's well written but i mean you know you've you've you've really put it together in such a way that you get you get stuck you get hooked in and sucked in and you you can't stop when we come back though we're going to be chatting a little bit more with my special guest sarah bullen her book which i highly recommend is called love and above a journey into shamanism coma and joy we'll be back in just a bit and we're back what's involved it is i'm joined by sarah bullen we're talking about her book love and above a journey into shamanism coma and joy now as as we as we move on uh through the story um your your your husband does start to go down and to me it was quite quite heart-wrenching and sad as to to what you you know coming to go through that but there again there was there was this this sense of of spirit and and and and this this ancient uh way of doing things that was involved talk to me a little bit about that so yeah so the one thing that you know it's interesting because many people say this is so heartbreaking but on another level it's so light and i think that that was very deliberate because just the title love and above already speaks of a journey that connects with something other than grief sadness or disease um and that was not yet happening at that point in the book because of course it's a journey um and what happened then and and really the cancer journey is very tightly described a lot of it in his own words and two diary extracts that he had written himself i move the reader really quickly through these places um and it ends up four years later through his battle with cancer where the tumor comes back and we really are in what is called the end game i say you know it's back there's there's no really real way he's going to beat it and then then what happened is so unexpected and so extraordinary and it happened to me i've been doubling in this world with him and i've been attending all the events and i've been developing a deep spiritual practice of my own but at the same time i was a working mother my children were very needy i had been a big job i was the group editor of 10 magazines i was high powered i was kicking butt and i got a cold because we are bedding down in a magazine it was the middle of a production deadline and i started to feel rather bad stay uh went to work that day the next uh message for office i said i'm i'm just not good please courier my laptop home so i can keep working um and within 24 hours i was in hospital i was in icu and i was on life support in a coma with what is termed a lung blackout and it's very similar david to i think what's happening in covid in which i had no breathing ability my lungs had literally filled with fluid and had no ability to absorb oxygen so i was in apoxia my organs were already shutting down and i was put into this coma to ventilate me to try and drain my lungs and try and find out what was going on in the body um pneumonia was uh suggested a whole lot of things um of course i knew none of that all i knew was i'd left the house that morning i'd left my husband sleeping in a bedroom up at the top where he was already and really the last few weeks of his life and i didn't know that that was going to be the last time i was to see him conscious or alive um and this crazy situation was playing out where my husband was in a bed dipping in and out of a coma from brain tumor in palliative care and 10 kilometers down the road in substantial hospital i was a fit healthy 36 year old woman and i was in a coma suddenly fighting for my life and a huge part of the book is really um what happened to me in that coma because that coma and what happens to the soul when the body is out of commission and where i went to and what happened in what i'm going to call the spirit world that i entered um and you know many years later i look back and i see so clearly that it was what i suppose shaman's call an underworld journey it was a soul journey it was a spirit journey um but then at the time i didn't know that all i knew was i was a soul and a being fighting for my life um and i was traveling into realms and worlds that i didn't understand yeah as i'm sitting here listening to you i'm actually picturing this because i mean you know you were you half-powered job go gator you were you were juggling all of these balls you were keeping them up in the air and suddenly all control um got taken away from you and you know that feeling of i can't do this now this this this can't be happening now and kind of the universe said well guess what my girl it is happening now um that in itself must have been uh hectic but just as as we go through this book i mean in this this coma stage as you mentioned it you know um the journey to the underworld some people call it a hero's journey whatever the case may be um there was there was learnings i mean you were then as you say you were the soul and just give me some i don't want to give it all away but give me some of the stuff that happened to you during that time right so because i was in a coma for so long so it was close to four weeks that i was in a coma a lot happened um fortunately when i came out of the coma and when i and we'll talk about that later when i started to be able to walk and talk and write and i started to i remembered everything and wrote it's down um and i describe and i've spoken on many near-death experience podcasts and shows over years since this happened that i just i talk about the comas having many phases and the initial phase david was i was in a medically induced coma i called it the world of nightmares so i was in this weird twilight zone of of crazy dreams and nightmarish scenarios and that lasted for some time but after a while i moved away from that and i'm just going to describe it as leaving my body and in a very real way i was actually literally floating around the hospital i was occasionally looking at this body on the bed i had absolutely no connection to it i didn't know it was me um and then over time i started to move away and i very specifically left the hospital and i started to travel in a floating form i'm going to put this um around earth so i'm still in earth so i was i was traveling overseas i went into houses i visited not people i know so i had a ready detached from anything that had to do with that person sarah that mother that wife that sister there was i was no longer that i was just a being i had no name i had no place i had no destination i'm not going to say it was a comfortable place to be it was a slightly strange place to be but as time progressed and as i suppose as the weeks progressed and the books will start linking the reader because obviously in the real world there were medical records and i start to bring those in what was actually happening to the body at the time i moved further and further away and i moved start what into what i'm going to call different worlds um other realms and the one of the most profound ones i moved into was a place in which my husband was there and the two of us were taken by angelic beings and i'm going to use words angelic cannot necessarily the christian saints but beings of light and we were put through a ceremony in which i said goodbye to him

and so that is quite detailed in in the book um and readers can read all about it but then i moved away i was moving further and further each time and i was moving away and away in a way and then i was out in the universe and just in bliss and floating a beam of light and with no name no place no no no destination but just blissful um not knowing that this body down on the bed was really really battling i was actually organs were shutting down i was at that point given 10 chance of recovery um because i'd been in a coma for so long um and then something happened i've i've captured a lot of the different stages of coma and the only thing that i remember and this is a very careful alternate endless expense of a universe very far away was okay sarah yes i'm gonna stop you there and i want to get into this when we come back because this to me uh was one of those things that seemed tools right through my body uh we are chatting to sarah bullen author of love and above a journey into shamanism coma and joy back in just a bit with sarah this is what's involved so good to have you along with us and we're back what's involved my special guest sarah bullen now just before the break we we were talking about sarah's uh out of body experience near death experience you could call it if you want to um and she said she was floating away and the reason i stopped is because i want to get into this so you were there floating sarah what happened moving further and further away just no attachment to anything or any any ideas of anything and something a thought came to me it was a call a voice a feeling and and the the sentence was get home now in the real world that very night what had happened was my family friends across the world had held a prayer circle so i had a sister who was a buddhist i had another sister who was new agey my brother in new zealand is a baptist i had an entire jewish side of my family i have muslim friends it did not matter i have agnostic friends at the same time around the world through churches through temples that put these calls out and hundreds and hundreds of people held prayers for me and i did not know that of course but what i did know was suddenly i was called out of the darkness and i knew i had to get home um and very specifically in the book you're going to start to read that that was the very next morning medically i started to turn the corner like fast in the world i was in which was um still the world the spirit i start to fight my way back to life and um that actually probably took probably a week um i don't know if you've seen a movie i'm sure we all have of somebody coming out of a coma it's nothing like that coming out of a coma is a terrifying experience in which you you you fight for consciousness and then you go back under into unconsciousness again and so it is a very nightmarish space of waking and falling back under um and at that point and and i'm i'm sure david you and all the listeners i think at this point she is hey so hey she was um and on a level i am and you know i'm open to to energies and spirituality and i'm i'm open-hearted and open-minded but things that happened you know that just defied all explanation um and one of the most special things and really that this is a pivotal point in the book and where the message comes from and the life i started to lead was a spirit card came to help me get back in my body because i was fighting my way back to that body on the bed in constancheburg medicinec in rcu on life support um and i didn't quite know how to get back and so this being came and really helped me and and really provided the interface and calmed me down and settled me um and i'll read i'll read from the little section of the book called stage eight of the coma waking up um and then he left me i said i was still fighting moving in and out of consciousness but the forest man left me and before he did he bent down and he kissed my forehead he struck my hair what do i need to do i asked him he smiled looked into my eyes and said have more fun i lay for a long time staring at him have more fun those three words caught in my throat i wanted to spit them out they were strange to me rude even fun what was that this was not fun life was not fun how simply dare he tell me that and that was the last time i saw him in that in between world he's come back to me later and in many years since but then he simply disappeared and so i woke up and you know you know dab it was really funny because funny maybe is the wrong word when i came out of my coma so i did wake up um when i came out of my coma um you know there was a there was a doctor called even alexander and he wrote a book called proof of life i think maybe that was a movie with russell crow i can't remember but he had been in a brain surgeon had been in a coma for three days and he wrote this book and about you know he met god and he did all those things angelic beings and and so when i read that book i thought like was i cheated out of you know and yet this incredible experience but what i realized over time and as i started to integrate what i had learned and the messages i'd been given and that i hadn't been cheated that these things that i'd been given that that message was really at the heart of life it was really the heart of what it means to be in this human body where we just we invested in struggle and pain and fear and a door was beginning to open to me after that messaging and maybe a little bit later after the funerals and all those things where that would fun started to expand in my heart and become something much bigger that i was chasing and looking for yeah the amazing bit for me though series is the way that you write this and right at the beginning you said you know um waking up from a coma is not anything like it is in the movies and i'd always thought you know you're in a coma you know nothing and the next second you're awake and everything's hunky dory again um but the way you describe it i mean it's just wrong um it is it is a journey and uh it is a trial now we're going to go to a quick break and then i think when we come back sarah we're going to wrap it up because i must be honest i could sit and talk to you like this for hours because it is so captivating and so fascinating but uh we'll move into wrapping it up when we come back this is what's involved my special guest is sarah bullen you've got to read this book it's called love and above a journey into shamanism coma and joy it will be back in just a bit this is what's involved and we're back with my guest sarah bullen okay sarah let's jump a little bit um ahead in in the book and you've you've gone through this process you've you've woken up you've you've starting to deal with the trauma there's the loss of your husband where to from there

husband had died i was fighting to recover physically i had to learn to breathe again i had to learn to move my hands again all your muscles atrophy in a long coma i couldn't speak for six months because of my tracheotomy and holes in my throat and i was sitting in this place in which everything i had been had left all those ideas i had of who i was in the world my my beliefs my importance my career my future none of that was real anymore um and i was having to i think sit in that place which i call you know that the empty place the waiting room of life in which i was just in a nothingness and i was sitting going well who am i and what happens next and it was a very strange thing and i write very specifically in the book about people coming and there's so much grief and trauma and sadness this young man had died i'd almost died people were absolutely shocked and i couldn't feel any of that i was feeling something else i wasn't feeling grief i wasn't feeling trauma i was feeling and i say in the book the words were acceptance delight gratitude grace ecstasy joy and just the unique privilege of being shown what it is not to live and then being given the gift of living again and i think i sat there and i looked at my life and i thought well what do i do with all of this and at the same time i was very much still caught in what had gripped me for most of the book which is fear fear worry anxiety stress um those human emotions that we live in so much of the time and the one night after all that had happened i sat there and i went what is this fear i'm feeling what is it it's not it's not about dying because that nearly happened it's not about losing the person i love the most because that's really happened and i really and i just really set a fear and that really became a meditation and that messaging about have more fun started to really play my mind um and i realized that that was not the way i had played my life so far i've not played and dabbled with those emotions with gratitude with bliss with joy i got stuck in convention i've got stuck in a path that had just swept me along and i decided i wanted to change that there's a specific moment i was you know my children were traumatized highly traumatized they were back at school but just not coping pen my son was having panic attacks and there was a moment in which i went to a dinner party with all my friends same people because a year later i just really started talking again and you know eating properly i was desperately thin all my hair fallen out i looked like a complete crazy person and i sat all the same conversations bottle of wine talking about the traffic talking about vida cafe and you know cold water swimming and i rose above myself and i looked down and i thought that is not you anymore that person who lived that life no and then came the third part of the book which is the journey of well how do you change that how do i go from this this mother this conventional that how do i create a new story for myself um and i did that by doing some fairly radical things because nobody at this point of the book is going to think i'm going to do anything ordinary i'm not going to take the advice i'm not going to listen to the psychologists i'm not going to play safe i'm not going to keep my children at school i'm not going to stay on the meds i'm not going to wait it out i'm not going to say this too shall pass i decided to disregard all of that and i pulled both of my children out of school and i left my house and left my life and i moved to a tiny greek island the island as i say of tantra of love of joy of osho i joined a meditation community and i started to create a new life for myself and write a whole new story that i was starting to live into and that's where the book starts to move to in the last third you know i kind of i want to go into it because um it's it's amazing i mean just thinking and again this is where all my preconceptions got blown out of the water which i think is important um but you know you talk about in one of the one of the chapters um you talk about sapho sex in sanyasins sanyasins sorry um and i'm like what on earth is this woman doing you know and then it moves along um and you know you you start to to really live and the children you've you've taken them out of school but then something again happens doesn't it that are you talking about the very afterward of the book the very afterward of the book before we wrap it up and say so the book very much ends on the greek island and and that really is the end of the journey and what i mentioned in the afterward of the book was that my journey with fear was not actually over yet because four years after my husband had died of cancer i was diagnosed with cancer myself in the middle of this existence i was creating for myself in the middle of these vowels i'd taken to say yes to life yes to joy yes to adventure um yes to bliss yes to the good things and i suddenly got a cancer diagnosis i found a lump in my brace standing on a greek island in a bikini in the middle of summer and that word i had to run away from i put so far away from anything i wanted had come back to me and at this time i was in my own lap and the reason this is just at the very end of the book is it was also some time ago and it really is just i think all that work i've done in conquering fear this this was an even bigger test can i get through my own cancer and keep some some some connection to something bigger and wiser and i will say to you that i have had moments in my cancer journey which you know was quite some also some time ago in which the fear has threatened to drown me and yet i found a way through and did find a way through in which i could just reconnect to that stuff i could really use all the principles i used and and find the light and you know i can say that i went through my chemo five six years ago and i went through my journey with just openness and and and connection and there was fear at times but not fear of dying not fear of dying but fear of leaving my children it's orphan so sarah we come to this part um of your journey and let i say part and i say it's like a rest stop and at this stage i generally say to my guests okay what's next but you've fitted so much living into these years of your life and your journey um i kind of almost feel bad to go what's next but let's go with that what is next for sarah well you know david this book has really captured imagination and um what's really exciting for me you know is this is also what i do my work is working with people's stories and representing books um i'm very privileged that mine has touched so many people and also capture the imagination of international audiences we use nyangas whatever we call them so we're very familiar with this kind of stuff but internationally i think this is touch the nerve it's very exciting and the this the fear we've lived in for a long time and the way we viewed illness and medicalization so i'm being pulled on some book tours i'm going to be in greece i'm going to be in italy i'm going to be running a retreat in greece while i'm there my island i've always been at i'm going to the usa i'm going to kenya um so very exciting things are happening i'm actually running a beautiful retreat with writers up in the bot swan and bush later in this year as well so it seems just this beautiful open exciting future is happening um you know and also being that cancer survivor myself um it's just so fantastic and i and i just grab at anything anything that says yes to my soul um and it's not just people have had the big stuff um david you know that they have to start practicing this you don't have to have cancer or be in a coma or have a near-death experience um to go yes to the good and no to the fear and and start choosing deliberately that and making habits so my habits are to chase adventure to say yes to joy and delight and good things um and that's where i'm going to be of course i'm a literary agent i represent writers and authors i run writing mentorships i work with people on their stories so their future looks the next few years they're quite great and i think that is fantastic and i think you deserve every bit of joy that you can suck out of this life um sarah the book itself um where is that available most good bookstores online most good bookstores online eludes dot sarah today has a great price on it but it's it's pretty much all over so please grab it yeah and you can connect with me and if you have questions if you want to look at some of the photos and the behind the scenes of the whole thing at um sarahbullen.com um and there's so much more there backstory wonderful stuff and you know what i think is amazing about the timing of this book uh just before we do say goodbye to sarah is that i've been saying over the last couple of years now it's almost as though there is this wave of consciousness that is is sweeping uh the planet people are becoming more conscious they're becoming more spiritual and and you know a book like this just kind of reaffirms all of that that there is there is more and life can be best lived with love and with joy um and yeah i mean that's the takeaway that i got personally from this book is is you know it's it's not as bad as you think it is and there is great potential great possibility all you've got to do is live a little more and love a lot more absolutely and and i and one of you know i just want to end with at some point saying you know this is life you know this and i say it's wild and expensive and it's terrible and it's beautiful but this is it it's not getting over it's living it it's being in it um and that's the practice wonderful stuff if you'd like to connect with sarah remember sarahbullen.com sarah is s-a-r-a-h and bullen b-u-l-l-e-n sarahbullen.com sarah thank you so much for taking the time out and having a chat and also a huge thank you for writing this book and sharing these experiences i think it's going to touch lives all over the world thanks david here we go and it wraps it up my guest there was sarah bullen what a book what a journey uh do yourself a favor go out and get it okay it's love and above a journey into shamanism coma and joy wraps it up for this edition of what's involved to each and every one of you take care look after to yourselves and thank you for listening.

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