Episode Twenty-Three: The Interview - Terresa Newport

In this longer episode, we hear that Terresa works with the dying. Hear how she and her fellow chaplains have become "God Stalkers" due to the miracles that happen during death. And also how one three-year-old boy changed everything for her.

Transcript

I was chaplain in an ICU.

There was a young woman that needed to be,

You know,

It was time for her to be removed from life support.

So her family had to drive a couple of hours or a few hours to get there to,

You know,

To say their goodbyes.

And when they got there,

They had brought her three-year-old little boy.

I stayed out in the waiting area with this little boy while the adults went in and said their goodbyes to this young woman.

And so I'm sitting on the floor,

Cross-legged with this little boy,

And we're talking about airplanes and bubbles and farts and all the things that little boys talk about.

And all of a sudden,

He just looks up in the corner of the room and he's like,

Hi,

Mom.

And later I learned that that precise moment was the moment that they had removed life support just seconds before.

My name's Theresa,

And I am a product of being adopted.

I am a product of a household of chaos and trauma.

I am a product of many,

Many answered prayers.

I am a person who knows that I am heard by my divine and I feel carried.

I'm a mom,

I'm a chaplain,

I'm a torchbearer.

I would like to say that I really spend a lot of time thinking about,

You know,

When I get to the most open,

When I get to the most overwhelmed places in my life and I think about what can I do,

What can I do,

What can I do,

And really the only thing that I really can do is try my best to be light when I don't feel that there is any,

That's what I know I can do.

So I wanna say that who I am,

If I had to like narrow it down into a nutshell,

I would like to say that I'm a torchbearer.

So I work at a children's hospital and underneath that umbrella,

I work in the adolescent behavioral health arena,

And it's a separate campus from the hospital.

So I am out on a campus that has seven buildings ranging from intensive inpatient,

Which is a lockdown facility,

Kids attempt suicide or homicide.

They go to the ED,

They are quarantined,

And then they come out to us.

I am the chaplain on this campus and I lead groups in inpatient and I'm involved in the other classrooms with,

You know,

In the school and yeah,

That's what I do.

My dad was a product of World War II.

So he had some very,

Very deep wounds,

Existential wounds.

He was an addict and my mom,

You know,

She was very much a Christian person.

She attended the LDS church occasionally to get out of gathering eggs on Sunday as a child.

So,

And that kind of stuck with her.

So,

You know,

And that was kind of a place for her,

I think to find some solace when things with my dad weren't,

You know,

Were particularly hard.

So I did go to church with her on occasion,

But I also had the freedom to say,

No,

This isn't my jam.

My mom taught me to pray when I was just a teeny tiny little girl.

And I've always been kind of a sponge,

Like people that I look up to,

People that mentor me,

People that I admire,

I hang on every word they say and I wanna,

You know,

I wanna check out what they're telling me.

I'm just by nature,

I'm a very curious person.

So I learned how to pray and I would pray all the time and felt heard.

So I've always been drawn to seek divine,

Seek the divine.

Where is the divine?

At this point in my life,

Realized that it's wherever I am.

I was really aiming to go to college and become corporate America girl and get off the farm and really succeed in life and make it big.

And,

But I was also kind of partying like a rock star.

So I could have easily gone down the wrong path,

You know?

So,

And I was practicing,

You know,

Safe sex.

I was on two different forms of birth control because I had this plan.

Then all of a sudden,

You know,

I'm pregnant and I'm a junior in high school and got this plan and I'm preparing to take my college entrance exams and things like that.

And boy,

Did it just change my trajectory,

Like set me on a bigger path.

Not only was my plan all about me achieving my goals and being independent,

But it was about this little person,

This little person that turned out to be my usher,

The person that brought me into a more full life,

A more rich life,

You know?

My son has taught me so much.

It's hard to believe that he's my kid because he's just really,

He's so much more mature than I am.

He's much more emotionally mature than I am.

He looks at me,

You know,

Like when I'm going off on a tangent,

Which I do,

I'm really good at those.

And I'm really good at overreacting and flipping out.

He learned a while ago to just put his hands on my face or my shoulders and he'll be like,

"'Mom,

What do you need right now?

'" And it just makes me giggle because he,

It's like he's there to be my spirit guide,

My soul guide to say,

It's time to slow down and breathe.

Another time,

I love telling this story.

I was chaplain in an ICU here in Salt Lake City and there was a young woman that needed to be,

It was time for her to be removed from life support.

And she had been flown in.

So her family had to drive a couple of hours or a few hours to get there to say their goodbyes.

And when they got there,

They had brought her three-year-old little boy with them.

And he,

Little babies are not,

Little kids are not allowed in the ICU.

I stayed out in the waiting area with this little boy while the adults went in and said their goodbyes to this young woman.

And so I'm sitting on the floor,

Cross-legged with this little boy.

And we're talking about airplanes and bubbles and farts and all the things that little boys talk about.

And all of a sudden he just looks up in the corner of the room and he's like,

Hi mom,

And later I learned that that precise moment was the moment that they had removed life support just seconds before.

I have experienced that on more than one occasion.

And that is what keeps me doing what I do.

It's what comforts me.

It's what,

In the midst of the darkest of darkness,

Moments like that shine so bright.

My mother would tell me stories about,

When I was like two,

I could identify people that were getting ready to leave,

Getting ready to pass,

And I would just go over and grab their hand and hold their hand,

Even if it were in a store or complete strangers.

And they have pictures of me sitting with my grandpa,

My paternal grandfather.

When he was dying,

I was two years old and I just sat with him and held his hand until he passed.

It's a thing,

It's part of my wiring.

It sounds like a birthright.

Yeah,

It is a birthright and it's a gift.

I'm not afraid of that transition.

It's such a sacred role as well,

Right?

Because when expectant mothers,

They hire midwives to usher the new life in and you're at the other end of that,

Right?

You're ushering them into another state of being,

If that makes any sense.

Oh,

Absolutely.

And it needs to be just as sacred and just as beautiful and just as endearing as birth is.

And so I would really like to,

This'll be one of my missions in life is to entertain the conversation and to hold space for that conversation,

To bring people to a place where they can see death as a beautiful transition.

I've just missed the heartbeat.

After life support has been removed and the patient has been declared deceased and the family will circle around the bed and they'll sing a song and all of a sudden the monitor,

The heart monitor,

Will start beeping to the rhythm of the song that they're singing.

I mean,

All of this must just completely,

Oh my God,

All of this must just blow your mind.

It does blow my mind.

And you know what?

One favorite little term that I have for myself and for anybody who wants to take it on is we've become God stalkers,

You know?

What does that mean?

That means we're stalking the next glimpse of the divine in death or in a patient that is passing or I'm hungry for the next glimpse of the person as they're transitioning.

Okay,

Please,

I don't blame you because I would be right there with you.

Right?

I mean,

It's completely an affirmation that there is so much beyond our reality that dying is the next adventure.

Yeah,

Yeah.

I really,

I know it might be a cheesy saying.

I don't know if it is or not,

But we're not humans having a spiritual experience.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

That makes complete sense to me,

Complete sense to me.

But this is what we look like right now.

This is our machine.

I wish it was a skinnier machine.

["The The Way We Are"] I mean,

It's interesting listening to you talk about this because it's like we all need to try to remember what or where we were before we were born.

Yeah.

And why have we forgotten that,

You know?

Yeah,

Why was that taken from us?

Or what happened to take that from us?

Generational trauma is a very powerful thing and I think that has something to do with why we don't remember where we came from before because we carry the pain of our ancestors and that will be a nice thing to rid ourselves of.

I sometimes think of unraveling generational traumas having to unravel our DNA.

Yeah,

Our helix just let's all unravel,

Yeah.

I also like to think of our DNA as being made up of stories.

So it may be those base pairs,

ACTG,

But truly within each of those base pairs are stories.

The stories that we've carried for our generations.

I'm gonna explain that with science,

You know,

Because trauma does change our chemical makeup.

So I think it could easily be explained through science.

So that makes me excited.

I'm like,

Okay,

So what kind of story am I gonna tell with my life?

Like,

What does my story look like?

Even though I don't have children,

The trauma ends with me effectively.

It's like maybe my story that I'm creating might change someone else's story.

Uh-huh.

You know,

And so it's kind of nice to think of all of us as these really amazing beings that walk around and create blessings for other people so that their stories and their trauma can change.

Yeah,

I would like that.

I would like to think that we are doing that right here now.

That we are changing.

We are putting an end to that generational trauma.

And you know what,

Just with the work that you do,

You know,

Being with people when they pass away,

When they die,

A lot of people in our society view that as the ultimate trauma.

It's like something that's being taken away from them.

It's like a crime.

It's like an assault.

And instead,

What you're saying is,

None of that,

None of those stories of being victimized by death are true.

None of it's true.

None of them.

When I was teaching my group yesterday,

I heard a child say,

Or an adolescent say,

I mean,

If I die,

And I just thought,

What do you mean if?

You know,

It's coming,

Honey,

And it's gonna happen.

And we get to choose.

We get to choose,

You know,

Maybe not how it happens or when it happens,

But we can choose right now.

How are we going to approach that?

How is that going to inform the life that we're living now?

Not if death comes,

But when death comes,

How are we going to receive that?

How are we gonna teach our people to receive it?

Because a person that dies is going somewhere else.

It's the people that are left behind that are the ones that are going to suffer.

So it really feels to me like an obligation,

A loving obligation to prepare them to be able to say,

Okay,

This is what's coming.

This is what's going to happen.

And have that inform their days to be more loving,

More kind,

More self-compassionate,

Cut themselves some slack in not having all the answers.

It would be such a gift to all of us if we thought of death as the ultimate benediction instead of this assault upon us because truly we're transitioning to something that is beyond our capacity to understand it,

That is so insanely beautiful and inclusive that we can't even understand it.

And then the story I'm gonna tell you is I used to work for an elderly couple for a very long time in Portland,

Almost 15 years.

And so Sam and June.

At the end,

Sam died when he was 98.

And that last year,

I mean,

I was their gal Friday.

I would do everything.

I'd go grocery shopping,

I'd make the beds.

I did everything for them.

But mostly it was because I loved being around them.

Like we loved each other after 15 years.

One of my jobs became to have lunch with Sam two or three times a week,

While so June could get out of the house.

So I would sit and we'd have these incredible conversations.

And Sam was just such a pragmatist and such a brilliant,

Kind soul and so sweet.

And we had a lot of conversations about death that those last few months,

Because I think he could feel it approaching.

I remember I'm like eating my Cobb salad and he's like,

What do you think death is?

And I'm like,

What?

What?

And so I'm like,

I don't know.

What do you think death is?

And he says,

I think it's the next great adventure.

Few months goes by,

She calls me on a Monday to do the grocery shopping.

Like I opened the door with my hands full of bags of groceries and I walk in and as I do,

Every time I come over,

Sam is always sitting on the couch,

Listening to Fox News with his arms folded.

And I said,

Hi,

Sam.

And he didn't respond.

And he was yellow.

I mean,

I could tell that he passed away.

And so June,

I could see June at the same time and she was in the next room with her back to me working on the computer,

Because that's how the layout of the house was.

And so I thought,

Okay,

What I do in the next few moments is going to define this moment for her forever.

So I put the groceries down and I walked up to June and I said,

June,

Sam's not responding to me.

And I said,

I think we should go over and see if he's okay.

And they'd been married for 60 years.

So we walked over together and she held her hand in front of his mouth and he had died.

So she called the paramedics.

And as we're sitting there waiting for the paramedics to arrive to certify death,

She's sitting right next to him.

And she said,

You know,

He said it would be like this.

And I said,

What do you mean?

She said,

Well,

Last Friday,

He said,

I don't want you to be worried because when I die,

Kirsten's going to be here with you.

And she was like,

Okay,

Whatever.

And then Monday morning he woke up and he said,

Who's coming today?

Because sometimes their grandkids would come over.

And she said,

Kirsten's coming today.

And he said,

Oh,

Good.

And so he knew.

Yep,

He knew.

And he sat on the couch and he literally chose to leave.

That was my first inkling that death can be a choice.

That reminds me of a story.

Just a few weeks ago,

A little boy who was very sick and his parents had chosen to remove him from life support and they did so.

And then they placed this little boy in mom's lap.

Maybe he'd take one breath every hour or every minute,

Like maybe one breath per minute,

Just this.

And that went on for an hour.

And it was heartbreaking for this family.

And I said to them,

Is there somebody out in the waiting area?

Does he have any siblings?

Are there people that are here,

But that are not in the room and they couldn't come into the room because of the virus.

So we wheeled him downstairs and outside and it was cold.

Right,

It's cold here in Utah right now.

And his aunt and his little sister were there and they jumped up on the bed and hugged him.

And he wasn't conscious.

He just would do this breath once per minute.

And he did that while he was out there and kind of fluttered his eyes a little bit.

And then we took him inside and on the way back to the room,

He went.

So very much so,

I think people are,

They get to,

I mean,

I don't know,

This isn't something really we can know or put our finger on,

But yeah,

It's another one of those experiences where the dying are taking care of the living.

And I think that's a really important thing.

Well,

It's such a profound event and to be able to be present and to witness it,

I think is a huge gift.

It is a huge gift to be with someone at that moment.

Yes,

It is a huge gift.

I joke about not everybody choosing as their career path,

Running toward the fire because that's exactly what I'm doing.

And I love it.

I wouldn't do anything different.

And you were called from the start.

You really did have a choice.

As a child,

You knew that that is where your place is to be with people in that moment or as they're approaching it.

And you had no fear,

You had no qualms,

You had no issues with it.

And there you are.

I mean,

You are a profound example of someone living into their sacred calling.

Thank you for saying that.

Again,

My plan was to go be corporate America girl and make a ton of money and live in the big city.

And I got a taste of that.

I was a technical writer for years and years when I was saying no to God.

I was an independent contractor and could choose my jobs that I would go into or I could fill a poll into.

And they were all crisis and trauma.

And finally the last one was really sitting with people that were about to lose their homes.

This was during the financial crisis and the foreclosure crisis.

And I got to the place where I was hired by a company that I had gone in and helped them build their business plan and their seek funding and protocol,

Things like that.

But then they hired me and I was really behind this,

Their mission and got to visit with homeowners that literally had guns to their heads or their spouse had already completed suicide.

And in that moment of sitting with those homeowners,

I was like,

What is this?

What is this space?

I wanna sit in this space all the time.

I wanna be in this darkness with this person all the time.

And so really that's when the door just swung wide open.

And from that moment on,

I kept crossing paths with chaplains.

Never even met a chaplain.

Didn't even know what a chaplain was.

But all of a sudden I started crossing paths.

Even had one lady that I work with on occasion.

I mean,

She was just an associate.

So you had to become a chaplain.

Like what,

What,

How,

Where,

Where do I go?

What do I do?

And that was it.

So I just got goosebumps and here's why.

Because you just said you were sitting with these people in darkness and I thought,

Oh my God,

She's the torchbearer.

You were the one bringing the light for them.

Yeah,

Yeah.

And that is a sacred duty.

It is a sacred duty.

And keeps me going.

Even in the craziest,

The nuttiest,

The darkest of darkness.

Some of the stories that I hear these kids tell,

It's just,

Ah,

Gut wrenching and dark.

Dark and if I can hold the light for them until they can do it themselves,

That's where I wanna be.

That's what I wanna do.

And that's what I wanna do.

Or the longer interviews.

We're grateful you're here.

I need to thank Teresa Newport for sharing all of her stories today,

As well as the creators of the music used.

Brian Holt's music,

Joel Lopez,

Music L.

Files,

Luis Mayorga,

And Oscar H.

Caballero.

For complete attribution,

Please see the Bite-Sized Blessings website at bite-sized-blessings.

Com.

On the website,

You can find links to other episodes,

Music,

Books,

And change makers who are making this world a better place.

Thank you for listening,

And here's my one request.

Be like Teresa,

Become a torchbearer,

And then spread your light in the world.

Yo,

What's going on?

You you