DNP Ep. 9: The Journey of the Reiki Nurse

Sandra Pagenta: [00:00:00] Hi, Jennifer. Thanks for coming onto the doctor nurse podcast. So happy to have you on 

Jennifer Tolo: today. Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited for this. So 

Sandra Pagenta: let’s dive in. What is your current role and your job title? What do you do for a living? 

Jennifer Tolo: That’s such a tough question for me now because I’ve, I wear so many hats, but I, current job title is I am a whole health educator and patient advocate.

And I am a speaker and I am going to start teaching at a nursing school. So I’ll be an adjunct professor at Endicott college of nursing. 

Sandra Pagenta: And as I was reading through you are also a registered nurse, but not currently practicing as a 

Jennifer Tolo: registered nurse. Right. I see. Occasionally I will sub as a school nurse, but I like to keep my nursing background current just because it’s a really useful thing to have.

And I still use nursing in what I do, 

Sandra Pagenta: so are you a school nurse at one of your children’s schools or just a school that you’ve always worked? 

Jennifer Tolo: I have been. A substitute for a couple of different school systems, one, my, my kids’ [00:01:00] school, but they don’t love it when I’m in the school.

So I, another school system that I will sub that, but I’ve gotten a little busy. I do a lot of speaking engagements now. And I’ve been working on a couple of different projects, so I haven’t really had a lot of time to be doing that, especially with COVID. I really don’t want to be in the school nursing arena right now, but I do, I keep my nursing.

Licensed current, because I think it really is a handy, useful thing. And , even with COVID, I thought, do they need my help? Do I, should I come into the, because my background is ICU nursing. So I see you in trauma. So I think it’s, it’s something I will probably always keep up my RN license.

Sandra Pagenta: And then I see here, you’re also a Reiki master certified personal trainer, as well as a certified integrative nutrition coach. And you also have an education in mindfulness based stress reduction. And so you’ve been trained in guided imagery, yoga sound healing and meditation which you’re just such cool disciplines to kind of have your hand in tell me a little bit about your journey [00:02:00] throughout all these different Certifications, if you could take us back to when you were graduating nursing school and kind of how you’ve developed these other abilities through your 

Jennifer Tolo: practice.

Absolutely. So I went to nursing school at the university of Virginia and way back when I’m going to date myself, but I remember working. In the neuro ICU back then. And in fact, my last day, working there as a, nursing assistant while I was waiting to finish up nursing school, Superman came in. So Christopher Reeves was brought into the, to the hospital.

I remember just thinking, oh my God, this is Superman. He had fallen off a horse and I just watching everything happened so fast, watching the quick decisions, watching just the efficiency of the nurses. I was drawn to critical care right off the bat. 

Sandra Pagenta: Oh, so you were a nurse when he was brought or a nursing student.

I was 

Jennifer Tolo: a nursing student when he was brought in. Yes. Yes. That’s incredible. . And then when I graduated from nursing school, I, at that point. Was, [00:03:00] it was, there was a nursing shortage, so it was hard to find a job. I had been told. There’s no way you’re going to get hired in critical care right off the bat because you’re fresh out of nursing school.

Usually need some experience, but I wound up somehow finding a job at New York Presbyterian hospital in New York city in the cardiothoracic ICU. It was actually a step-down unit, but you you were trained as a, as a critical care ICU nurse. And I started working there, loved the I feel like it really, I thrived in chaos.

Like I was able to just dial it in when, there was a problem, I was able to really focus and I was really able to dive in and. And troubleshoot. And I love that. I feel like it, it brought out like my intelligence as a nurse. But I also was working. I always say it’s working in cardiac ICU is like working with a pack of barracudas because the nurses are tough.

They’re cutthroat they’re territorial and. Coming in as a new nurse, I sort of was the kind of person that wanted to dive in and learn that way. And there, some of the nurses [00:04:00] were the kind that wanted to that thought that I was cocky. And who does she think she is? I think that they were a little resentful that I was a new nurse in that setting, but when stuff hit the fan, they would literally push me out of the way and try to take over. . I’ve always been intuitive. I’ve always had this sense of like, I can see deep into things and I’d call it a medical intuition. I’ve always had this. Ability to, to see and sense something deeper going on. And so I established myself as a nurse that could be trusted as a nurse to, to check in with.

And when things would, would happen, they would say, Jen, what do you think? And they listened to me and it was interesting because I met my husband on this floor. My husband’s a orthopedic surgeon, but he was in residency then. And I happened to meet him . And it was, it was really affirming. To me working in that environment, being able to troubleshoot, being heard, I was very autonomous, but it was such a stressful environment because the nurse, it was sort of a toxic the way the nurses, they treated each other, it was really uncomfortable.

[00:05:00] So I wound up transferring and working in the surgical ICU, which I liked. And then I. I went from there. I got my master’s degree at NYU and I was actually on track to get my NPH and my master’s in nursing administration. And it’s funny because if you had asked me right out of college where the nursing school, what I was going to do, I would’ve said a nurse practitioner, but I realized that I saw things that I didn’t like happening, that I felt like I could change.

By becoming an administrator. Ha little did I know? So anyway, I worked in surgical ICU for a while. Got my nursing or got my master’s, but I wound up getting pregnant and my husband was getting his fellowship match and I wound up not completing my NPH and just finishing with my master’s in administration.

And I worked as a nursing supervisor for critical care at New York Presbyterian hospital for awhile while I was getting my master’s degree . And then we left and I remember going to too, my husband did his fellowship at the Mayo [00:06:00] clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

And at that point I had one. Child had a baby. He was not even a year old and I wanted to keep my foot in nursing. So I worked every other weekend when my husband was off, I would work in their transplant ICU. And it was really interesting because at Rochester, Minnesota, everything was tasked out because it’s a very small town and they have to employ.

People in the town and not everybody has college degrees, not everybody even finished this high school. So they had a lot of technical positions. So I remember showing up and coming from a place where I was very autonomous. I did my own cardiac output’s. I adjusted my own ventilators, like all this stuff then going to.

The Mayo clinic, where they had technicians to do all that stuff. I thought, well, what do I do? What is my role here? I worked in the transplant. I see you there. And they said, oh, you’re just going to assess but it was a really weird, hands-off experience for me.

I didn’t like it. And then we wound up moving to Massachusetts for my husband’s job. [00:07:00] And I worked as a nursing supervisor, had my second son. And this is when everything changed for me because my second son, when he was born, he had a massive neonatal stroke. And oh my gosh. As a nurse, I remember just being like, okay, I just want to hold my baby.

What’s going on? Why aren’t they bringing my baby to me scheduled C-section an hour goes by, they haven’t brought my baby to me. And I was like, what is going on? Now? I’m drugged up on Demerol and all sorts of stuff. So I say I’m in a demo. I’ll flog. But I remember just being like, what is going on? They won’t let me hold my baby.

I just want to hold my baby. And I couldn’t wrap my head around. The severity of what was happening. So he stopped breathing and he was seizing, but it looked like fencing where one arm and one leg would go straight and the other one would drop.

I had him in a community hospital. They wound up having to send him to children’s hospital in Boston, which was about 30 miles away. So my husband went with him and I, because I had the C-section had to stay at the local hospital. And I remember waking up to all the babies crying

my milk’s [00:08:00] coming in. I’m like, what is going on? I just want to hold my baby and I couldn’t get past this. . But I remember my dear friend who became a very amazing mentor to me. Her husband was a orthopedic also resident with my husband. And she said, Jen, You just gotta breathe, honey, you just gotta breathe.

And so I sat there and I took some really slow, deep breaths and it was like, this fog just lifted. This clarity came over me and I was like, I need to get out of here. I need to be with my baby. He’s going to show me what he needs. I just need to connect to my baby. And it was almost like God, the universe blocked my logical left brain where my nursing brain couldn’t think about what exactly was happening because what my son really needed is my right intuitive, connected, emotional, loving, nurturing brain to connect with him and to really not get bogged down in all of the details and the logic.

Because there was no explanation for a lot of it. And when I got, I signed myself out of the [00:09:00] hospital, the doctors let me go. And I remember showing up to children’s hospital and my husband was laboring over neonatal neurology books. And I was like, babe, we need to be the parents here. Like we have to trust our intuition, but like, we just need to connect to this baby.

He’s going to let us know what he needs and. I remember there were so many cooks in the kitchen, , there’s so many different specialists working with him that they weren’t communicating. And I remember sitting, literally sitting the doctors down now I’m all a five foot two, but I, I feel like I’m this like giant, like six foot, whatever.

I’ve got a big mouth. And I was like, guys, we need to start talking and communicating because you’ve got them totally drugged up to stop the seizures. But we also want him eating. We want him all this stuff. I was like, can you guys communicate? And so it was really like, I feel like it was this experience that awakened the magic inside of me and the magic of the messages inside of me, the messages that were downloaded from source that were in my soul, like connecting my soul to my son’s soul.

And. He is 18 [00:10:00] years old now graduating from high school. Now he’s had major challenges learning disabilities, basically he’s missing huge parts of his right frontal lobe. My friend, Bonnie, the same one who told me to breathe is like, you need to learn Reiki. He needs to, you’re going to have to help him stay grounded and connect.

I learned mindfulness for him and for myself, I learned meditation for myself and for him I dove into nutrition, but fast-forward. Down the line. At this point I, a couple years later, I had was pregnant with my fourth son and the same day that I found out I was having a fourth boy.

My third son was diagnosed with leukemia. I’m sorry for the long story. No, it’s part of my path. Share it. So. And again, my nursing brain, my logical brain. I mean, my son had a distended belly. He’d complain of his belly hurting. He just was lacking in energy and high, little, particular ice, a little bruising around him.

And I thought what’s going on here? Like what what’s happening? I remember taking him to the doctor. She palpated his [00:11:00] liver. She’s like, oh Jen, I’m really sorry. His liver’s enlarged. Now again, my mother’s brain would not connect to my nursing brain. I was like, what do you, okay, so what do we need? , we need a sonogram of his belly.

Like what’s, what are we going to do? Nobody would actually say the L word. And then finally were they get us into the ICU there, we’re waiting again, transport to children’s hospital. And at this point I have two kids in tow, my husband’s operating and I was like, okay, what do I do?

So literally my critical care nursing brain fires. And it’s like, okay I’m gonna call my friend. To take the kids right now, meet me at the hospital. And then I’m going to call my babysitter. My trusted babysitter is going to stay with my kids until my mom can get there.

So I had it all planned out in the meantime . Finally, I got them to tell me he’s got leukemia. And I was like, kicking myself. Like, why did I not know that like, these are all the right side? Like why did I not go there? And then I, again, Got the message. Jen, you’ve got everything you need to handle this.

And we got to the hospital, I remember them handing me a binder [00:12:00] that was like, I kid you not about eight inches thick. Like this is the next two years of your life. Wow. I already knew about nutrition. I already was trained in Reiki. I was already knew how to tap into the magic inside and the messages inside.

So I did Reiki on him every single day. I used guided imagery when he was septic to help clear the infection from his body. I helped use guided imagery when he was third spacing to visualize his blood vessels like straws soaking up interstitial fluid. And I did that for literally 24 hours.

And I trained the nurses who had gone and gotten us a certain, , like a continuing education. They’d gotten a Reiki. Certification, but they didn’t know what to do with it. So I was like, here, come to the bedside. Let me show you how you’re going to use this to help my son clear the negative effects of the chemotherapy.

He never had mouth sores. He never had nausea and vomiting. He never had the horrible side effects of the chemo and he was high risk. All, and [00:13:00] so again, I had already tuned into that. Right. I knew what to do. I remember talking to the doctors about like nutrition and going to see the nutritionist.

And they were like, just get calories and just get calories in them. And I would see families with like McDonald’s and dairy queen waiting for their kids after they’d been NPO for procedures. And I just like, no, this is not it. Like they need, I knew enough about nutrition. I know that he needed. , good nutrition to help his cells regenerate and heal.

So that’s when I got another certification in nutrition because I needed that knowledge and I’m happy to report he’s 15 and healthy. Cancer-free but it’s been a journey. And through that whole process, through my kids’ challenges, I was really awakened. To my gifts, I was really mean I communicate with the angels and I, there was a time where I thought my son died.

He had this thing called press syndrome so press syndrome is posterior reversible cephalopathy syndrome.

It’s it’s got headache, seizures, mental , alter state visual [00:14:00] loss character. So basically it was the 

implication 

Sandra Pagenta: from the chemo. 

Jennifer Tolo: It was a complication from the chemo and he had some gentamycin toxicity but basically. I’d be talking to him and he’d go, mommy, mommy, mommy. He would stare off into space.

Couldn’t see me. And it was like my son had left the building, , like his physical body was there, but there was no connection. And we had to, he was home for like just a couple of days. And then we had to whisk him back to the hospital. And I remember calling my friend, Bonnie, who she was a Reiki master.

She actually. Developed clinical pathways at Maryland shock trauma, university of Maryland. She trains doctors and nurses in yoga and Reiki to bring integrative medicine to the bedside. It’s pretty powerful. But at this point, so she trained me in this stuff. She hadn’t quite done this yet, but she knew Reiki, yoga.

She had no medical background. But she’s married to a surgeon. And she’s the one who was literally my lifeline and all this. And I called her, I said, this is what’s going on. She said, Jen, call all the angels, make sure that the angels are with [00:15:00] every person that touches your son. I said, I’ve already done that already done.

 And we get to the hospital and she, and our other friend, Michael, who’s an intuitive calls me. And he said, Jenny, I’m really sorry, but I can’t see the baby. And I was like, what are you talking about? He’s like, I can’t see the baby. There are so many angels around him. I’m sorry. I said, why do you keep saying, you’re sorry.

And he said, because usually when I see this many angels, they’ve come to take him. And I said, no, I know. I know that they are not here to take him. They’re here because I’ve asked them to be with him. And my husband, the surgeon, this is when I really knew like, okay, this is where we were. So soul connected.

He turned to me and he said, Jen, I want you to go on the corner. And I want you to write because when stuff is very personal, sometimes I don’t get the messages. I don’t hear the messages, but when I write the message comes very. Clearly through me like a journal. So I sat in the corner and I wrote, and I asked, are you here to take him?

Are you here? Because I’ve asked you to be here. And they said, we are here because you’ve asked us to be here. His soul has chosen to stay.

So. That was when, like everything just really [00:16:00] aligned 

Sandra Pagenta: Jen that’s that’s that’s nuts. It made me think about that book by the neurosurgeon proof of heaven. Oh my gosh. That is an incredible book. But like what you were describing to me, like took me back to that book. I have a neurosurgeon’s journey into the afterlife and coming back and he was like, I’m a neurosurgeon. Like I’ve been trained medically. And yet there is something. Outside of what we’re doing, I’m kind of getting goosebumps.

It’s kind of crazy. But , what you’re describing is 

Jennifer Tolo: awesome. Well, we talked about this just briefly, right before we got on to record it’s to me, this awakened experience really helped me integrate my right brain and my left brain. So that like logical left brain where so many medical practitioners, we want the data, we want the proof We sort of go by the numbers, let’s say, or go by the presentation and go by where sometimes we forget to tap into our gut and our inner knowing and that, that connection to our mind, body [00:17:00] and spirit, that connection to source if you will, because when we slow down and we connect and we allow ourselves to really trust that, that’s where we are our most powerful healer.

That’s when we are , are truly aligned. And this experience with my kids really integrated those two sides of me, where I, I, it allowed me to advocate for my kids. It allowed me to question, , because what, we know our bodies better than anybody else as a mother. I know my children what they need better than anybody else.

But so often we. We, I say, we give away our power. We hand over the reins to other people who aren’t as connected. And I’ll tell you now, when I go see a doctor, I look for the doctors that are going to listen to me. They’re gonna then are going to let me be the guide that are going to just take my direction that are gonna help me co-create and co navigate my own health.

 And when I work with people now I don’t want to fix anybody, but I want to awaken people to their own inner [00:18:00] knowing and help them fix themselves and help them tune into the messages of their mind, their body and spirit, because that’s where our power lies. 

Sandra Pagenta: . And you do that by your business, correct?

Where the owner of the butterfly, family wellness. . And they can find you online, but it’s really neat. Describe what you do in your current and your 

Jennifer Tolo: current practice. . Well, I’m sort of in this transformation right now with my current practice, I used to see people one-on-one and when they come to see me, I would use.

Any, and all of my gifts , my intuition tuning into them, I would use muscle testing and nutritional response testing. I do energy work Reiki where I can connect to sort of where the root causes But I found, and I do a lot of stress management, but I was finding that there were a lot of people coming to me, wanting me to fix them still.

And I wasn’t getting as much joy out of that because I would maybe make suggestions or, or help them connect to sort of the stressors in their life and give them techniques and tools to manage the stress. But people weren’t doing their own work. And then they would call me in [00:19:00] crisis when they would start to spin and want me to fix them.

And I was like, hello. I’m a mother of four boys. I got my own stuff going on that I’m trying to manage. I can’t fix you. I can only give you the tools. As I say to my kids, I can lead you to water. But I can’t make you drink and only you can drink the water only. You can do these things to help yourself.

My practice is I still do that. I still work with people, but now I work with people one-on-one in a capacity of, I call it the integrative life reset coaching, where we really get to the root cause of things. And it’s like peeling off a layer, but everybody’s got to do their own work and then guide them.

I might. Work with supplements but I am very anti extreme. I am really focused on helping people tune into the body, and making small changes. One little. One moment at a time, one choice at a time and tuning into what’s right for them.

And then I do a lot of speaking. I love to do speaking engagements. My passion is really stress management and teaching people, realistic things in the moment that they can do to reset their [00:20:00] nervous system and reclaim. Their power over their health and wellbeing. And I do podcasts, a lot of talking.

I do have some group coaching. I have a group coaching program called the inside out healing program. I do work one-on-one, but I do a lot of group and online, remote stuff. I can tap into somebody’s energy, over the phone and online. I don’t need somebody physically with me to do that.

Sandra Pagenta: That’s really cool. So tell me about in your career and over time. I mean, we’ve heard some of the incredible challenges that you’ve overcome just, and it’s setting off your career in, in a certain pathway and trajectory. But tell us about one of the times that you’ve just really noticed was a truly successful story in your clinical practice.

Jennifer Tolo: So I’m thinking of this one person in particular has been coming to me for awhile and she. Was a career woman chose not to have children. She came to me with massive, massive stress symptoms. For example, she hadn’t had a bowel movement and she had, we should have maybe one a week and that was normal [00:21:00] for her.

She was very stressed, like her, all the different signs, she was having anxiety, depression. Her GI tract was completely out of whack. And I really helped her learn just little stress management tools and techniques, ways that she could. What I like to say, pause with purpose during her Workday to just reset and really worked with her on setting some boundaries at work.

I worked with her on. Noticing when she started to go into a stress spin. And so we’ve been working together off and on for several years and I’m happy to report that. She literally will say to me, like I found my voice, flowing regularly. I never thought when you told me that I, you would have me pooping every day.

I didn’t believe it. And she has really set boundaries where she went from working about 80 hours a week to working about 40 to 50 hours a week and really setting those boundaries. And lately we’ve been doing some work because she’s. Perimenopausal and she’s been having a lot of hot flashes 

and some of the underlying things that we’ve [00:22:00] worked on was healing her choice, not to have children and going to the root cause of that, which was from childhood and really working on. Working through and moving through some of that. And then we discovered that she had had a miscarriage later on and didn’t plan on having kids.

And she for awhile buried all that, but we were able to bring that stuff up and I’m happy to report. She has not, she, her hot flashes have stopped. She is just, she said she feels better than she’s ever felt. So that’s my success story. And it only happens because. She’s open to it. And she, I sort of established that trust with her.

And as I say to everybody, we might, I might open some closets. We might dig deep into something, but I’m never going to leave you alone. And in the beginning, when I started working with her, she wasn’t ready to go there. So, , we worked on the stress management techniques and then she stopped coming to me for about a year.

And then all of a sudden came back to me and was like, okay, I’m ready. I’m ready to get, get to dig deep again. , and for me, I need, like, if you’re gonna work with me, you gotta [00:23:00] be ready to dig a little bit deeper. Cause that’s where I could really help transform things for you. But when you just want to stay on the surface, you’re not going to be able to really get deep into that healing.

Sandra Pagenta: What you’re describing is that brain health I believe the mind is so strong and it can really begin to affect your body, the stress, the trauma, all these things have to be on earth in order to. To really pluck the weeds out of your soul.

Jennifer Tolo: And with Reiki, we talk about chakras and I know we’ve talked about acupuncture, acupuncture talks about meridians. They’re all energy systems, energy being cheap energy is life force, energy moves through us. And what we don’t always understand is when we don’t deal with things. And when we suppress things, when we suppress our emotions, there’s a great book by Candice Perth.

And when I did my through the national Institute for whole health, where I got my certification for whole health educator that’s a big book that they talk about and it’s, she scientifically shows. How, when we suppress emotions, it [00:24:00] impacts our neuro-transmitters and it blocks our body systems.

And so that’s a big part of what acupuncture and Reiki and things like that do is it helps to move energy in the body and it helps to release some of the blocks that we don’t even realize we’ve created because of our. Compartmentalizing things because of our not wanting to deal with things, because we are a society that has become so disconnected from our bodies, from our minds, from our spirits, we are a society that has become so distracted where we want.

And this is, this is one of the things with COVID is it’s really forced us to sit in our stuff. And it’s become, I can’t tell you many people it’s very uncomfortable and people don’t want to feel those feelings or look at the things that are not working in their life. They’d rather distract themselves from it.

. 

Sandra Pagenta: Busier. You are the busier. You are the less, you can hear your soul crying out for nourishment, right? Like, 

Jennifer Tolo: and the less you can connect to what the messages are.[00:25:00] I mean, every obstacle, I can honestly say that the challenges that I have faced Every obstacle was a lesson, was an opportunity for me to learn and grow.

I never sat there and said, why is this happening to me? Why me? I would literally say, okay, what’s the message. What am I supposed to learn? The things that I had to learn was how to ask for help, how to open to my gifts, how to integrate the left and the right brain, how to trust myself and my own knowing.

 Without all these experiences, I wouldn’t have 

Sandra Pagenta: known that. And all, all these things answer my last question, which is about what do you do when you’re starting off your career as a new nurse and. All those things you just described about knowing yourself, getting quiet and listening to what is your gifting?

Because one of the things that I keep hearing throughout, the stories that I get when I speak with nurses is that there’s a calling that’s been put on their lives and they feel like they are meant to go do something. And until you can quiet your heart in your mind, or at least, at least for [00:26:00] me, your mind, so you can hear your heart speaking.

I feel like. What you’re describing through the mindfulness techniques and. Other stress-relieving techniques that you shared with me today on today’s podcast. Like these are how you do figure out what your calling is and nursing. You quiet yourself. It’s the quiet voice that says you’re meant for this.

As you described, , your Reiki 

Jennifer Tolo: therapy and you figure out what lights you up. What excites you? What can I say? Right. Because a hundred percent, I mean, I say this had it not been for my kids. I’d be in nursing administration with a pit in my stomach every day, walking away from my job, miserable like that didn’t excite me, but now, so do we have time for one quick little story?

Absolutely. If I’m going to, this is like my big tip to anybody in healthcare. . And it came from this experience. I had a really dear friend of ours, somebody who, when my son was sick, my son who had cancer was sick. He and his family, I didn’t even know them came out, offered themselves because he had had [00:27:00] lymphoma.

And so he said, I know what it’s like, if there’s anything I could do just great man. His name was Mike and. Fast forward several years, he had gone to see my husband for some orthopedic stuff that wasn’t getting better. Needless to say, they found that he had lung cancer that had Mets to his soft tissue, bones and brain.

And at the time that they finally discovered it, it was pretty far gone and nobody knew, but my husband told me about it. And Mike. Came up to me and said, Jen, I know that I’ve sort of rolled my eyes at the Reiki, but I think I’m going to need this. Can you, can you come and do Reiki on me? I was like, no problem.

Now he had three small kids, so my youngest is 12 at the time. His, youngest was the same age as mine, which was five years old, four years old. And I was like, oh my God, I gotta, I gotta heal him. I’ve got to make him better. So when I went over for Reiki, I literally put my hands on him and was asking to heal him.

I, my intention was to heal him and I went home and I was so drained and exhausted. I it’s like I gave every bit of my own [00:28:00] life force energy to this man. And then I called my friend, Bonnie, the one who trained me and Reiki. I was like, I don’t know what the heck happened, but I need to fix this guy. I need to heal him.

And she said, Jen, you tried to heal him. Didn’t you? I said, yes. She said, you got to take one step away and you have to connect to what is his soul want? What is you are not the person healing. You are just the channel. So you have to open to whatever it is that he needs and his soul needs.

So the next time I went in a couple of days later, I went to go work with Mike and I, I would say I’m Claire audience. So I hear things. I do get pictures and stuff, but normally I don’t see people. And I literally go to do work on Mike and all of a sudden they see this person standing next to him and he said, I’m Chuck, I’m his friend.

I died, several years ago. But I’m here to help you because you have to help him die. His soul is done and he’s ready to pass, but that’s what he needs your help with. And I thought, okay. So literally my work with Mike was whatever it was that his soul required and he called me and I would be there.

He called me to [00:29:00] come, went to the hospital. I’ll never forget this. It was July 4th weekend. I was supposed to go away with my family. And his wife called me and said, Mike’s asking for you again to the hospital. And I said, I just looked at him. I’m going to get emotional. And then I go, it’s time buddy. And he said, it’s time, huh?

Cause I saw Chuck again behind his bed and I said, , it’s time to bring the boys in. So his wife was like, oh, okay. So wife didn’t really buy into much of this. In fact to this day, she’s kind of weird with me. Just strange with me, but it’s okay because I did what I needed to do with Mike.

And so a couple of days later, or he passed and I got to tell you that is probably the most powerful moment. And it was the message in that experience was we do not do the healing. We are the channels and the vessels, and we have to connect to people’s souls and do what they need because we can’t put our own desires and needs on others and our own judgments and our own on other people.

We have to just show up, however that person needs us to show up as a healer. 

Sandra Pagenta: Wow. That is incredibly powerful, Jen. . [00:30:00] Oh, my 

Jennifer Tolo: goodness.

I just feel like that’s really by myself to breathe. When I train people in Reiki. This is the story that I give them, because honestly, think about how much stress we as healers have when we can’t fix somebody. I look at that with my husband. I look at that. It is not our job to fix people. It is our job to show up, to guide, to be there and to let whatever source wants to bring through us, come through us.

But that person has their own soul contract, their own destiny that we can’t interfere with. . 

Sandra Pagenta: , that’s really good. And Bonnie would be probably one of your biggest 

Jennifer Tolo: mentors. You would say biggest mentor. , she really is. She’s one of my best friends, but she’s the one that tells me to stop and slow down and she’s awesome. But , she’s the one who sort of helped me with my awakening, and really I attribute when she tried to train me in Reiki before I had kids, I was like, , that sounds great. Wasn’t open to it.

But as soon as my kids needed me to open to other things, there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do. And she was right there to guide me. 

Sandra Pagenta: We all need a friend, like Bonnie tells us [00:31:00] to calm down and when we’re freaking out. Great. So this was an incredible journey. Thank you for sharing your story.

The last part of my interview is a rapid fire question. Just fun. Boom, boom, boom. You didn’t have any time to prep for these, these questions. We’re going to get started if you’re ready. 

Jennifer Tolo: Go. All right. 

Sandra Pagenta: Tell me what you got on your 

Jennifer Tolo: netflix. Sweet Magnolia. I just finished that season and with my boys, I’m watching Peaky blinders. 

Sandra Pagenta: Okay. And what was your favorite subject in school? 

Jennifer Tolo: English and French.

Oh, 

Sandra Pagenta: French very fast. And what would be a hidden talent? Something that nobody knows you can do you could eat 50 marshmallows or something funny or weird. 

Jennifer Tolo: See my hidden talent 

Sandra Pagenta: I throw a mean 

Jennifer Tolo: spiral. That’s what I was looking for.

Sandra Pagenta: Jen, you had been a joy. Do you want to give a shameless plug 

Jennifer Tolo: for your website? I would love to give a shameless plug. So my website is butterfly family wellness.com. I’m also about to launch Jennifer Wren tolo.com. If people want to connect with me, Jen, at butterfly family [00:32:00] wellness.com.

I have a warrior woman reset. Free ebook that I give to people. That’s just my top 10 tips on how to tame the chaos of your life. 

Sandra Pagenta: That’s a really cool, , guys. Check her out. Thanks for, thanks for tuning in today on the doctor nurse podcast. And we’ll catch you guys later. .