#22 A True but Unbelievable Odyssey

FIND YOUR VOICE, CHANGE YOUR LIFE PODCAST

Podcast Host: Dr. Doreen Downing

Free Guide to Fearless Speaking: Doreen7steps.com

Episode #22 “Janine Bolon”

” A TRUE BUT UNBELIEVABLE ODYSSEY “

Dr. Doreen Downing [0:39]

Hi, this is Dr. Doreen Downing. I’m with the FIND YOUR VOICE, CHANGE YOUR LIFE podcast. I invite people and ask them to share their stories. I interview them about a time when they didn’t have a voice, where they held themselves back or society made up such a situation for them that they couldn’t step up and speak out.

Today I get to interview Janine Bolon, thank you for coming. Janine and I have been dancing around each other for a while. I’m so glad to introduce you and share your fascinating story. First of all, I want to read a little bit about Janine. Janine Bolon is a scientist, author, podcaster, Shaman, bell dancer and first chakra healer. She was initiated into the thunder clan after being struck by lightning at the age of eight. After spending more than 20 years working with an enlightened Hindu guru, and the Native American grandmothers and grandfathers, she received her spiritual dispensation and now provides shamanistic and spiritual healing for relationships and life path transformations. Let’s start with sharing your story about not having a voice.

Janine Bolon [2:29]

I was in a family where my father was a military man, he was in the US Navy. My mother was a nurse. And when you live on military bases, most of your life, you learn very quickly that you speak with eloquence, clarity, and directive because you don’t tell stories, there isn’t much time. There’s always that perception of keeping it short. So, I didn’t learn how to be a good storyteller until much later in my life. I always sat back and watched because we were frequently moving around about every three years. Some of the statistics that they have on military children are that by the time they reach 18, they have lost and grieved over the loss of more people than most people will lose in a lifetime. So that’s one of those things that we learned very quickly was how to adapt and persevere no matter the environment. They call us military BRATs and that’s a term of endearment. It is not you’re a bad child. It’s just a way that the military would say these are military dependents that are moving along with the troops. They gave us a dandelion, which is our flower and we were taught about bloom where you are planted. I always laughed when I saw that because I was hearing that in the late 60s, early 70s from the military because I was military dependent.

Dr. Doreen Downing [4:09]

I’ve heard there’s been research on dandelion children and orchid children. Two different types can be seen as categories of children who can thrive in any environment like a dandelion, able to be planted and grow and bloom like dandelion and orchid children are much more sensitive, influenced by the environment and need a lot more care. Children naturally sometimes come in those two categories. Are they somebody who happens to be a little more introverted or are they somebody who’s got a lot of dandelion spirits in them? You became a dandelion and able to adapt easily to any kind of environment, tell us about that.

Janine Bolon [5:35]

The words I heard frequently was Janine, ‘make it March’, they didn’t want the details, they didn’t know how I was feeling, they didn’t want self-expression. It was giving me the data, we’re moving forward. It was the military. So, they were used to frequently fight or flight mentality. And there was frequently mindsets and remembrances that we were a soft target because there were families, we were considered as a soft target. I have the experience of being seven years old and being on a military base, and we were in a specific country. I could see the chain-link fence around the base from my bedroom window. 1000 people were marching against the Navy base there because we represented the United States at the time, 1971. I can remember the chanting of ‘Yankee go home. I can remember hiding underneath my mattress because my mother runs into the bedroom, puts my sister and me on the floor and throws a mattress over us and says, we’ll be safe here. We could hear him yelling and screaming and throwing Molotov cocktails and hearing the men working, the men and women of the military working to help protect this soft target. When you have that kind of upbringing and I remember thinking as a young person, I remember saying to myself, what have I ever done to hurt them? But those are the things that when your dad says to you ‘make it March’ or your mother says we don’t have time for stories. You had experiences to back up why that was the case at that time.

Dr. Doreen Downing [7:33]

What a clear illustration of not having a voice and not being heard. What happened next?

Janine Bolon [7:49]

We move back to the United States when my father retired from the military. I was in high school and that was the biggest culture shock I ever had in my life was coming back to American soil. We came back to southern Missouri. I was meeting people that had never left the county at 70 years of age and they were quite happy. So, it was quite mind-altering, to be in a very small High School and be the odd man out. I learned to be very quiet and when I got to college, I still learned to be quiet because it was another shock to my system. After all, I was also the first generation in my family to go to college. I frequently found myself in places where my family could not assist me because they had no frame of reference for what I was going through and what I had to do. Of course, this is before Wi-Fi and the internet. So, you had to go across campus, anytime you needed information, you were always moving from one building to another. So, after that, I got married and I had a career but I didn’t find my voice. I felt like I had a voice but I lost it through my 30-year marriage. It dissolved in 2015. I had to get divorced from the 30-year relationship. I still love the man dearly. He’s still a friend to my children and me. However, the only way that I was going to be able to truly move into my full potential was through that divorce because I realized that I had an awakening in 2010, which goes back to the introduction of where I’d been struck by lightning and I had been working with an enlightened Hindu guru. I’ve been meditating for 20 years, I was starting to have spiritual experiences, where God was saying to me, ‘you have got to get out of this box’. The message wasn’t that crystal clear. The messages were coming foggy, they were in meditation, I still had to feel with my heart chakra, what is being said. It was evident that the universe and God were ripping apart all of the dogma and all of the rules I had placed upon me. And each one of those locks was breaking open. So, it was a lot like what john described some revelation about the seals being broken. When I read revelations, I don’t see it as the end of the world, I see it as the end of the world that you’ve put yourself into and your self-expression coming out of that. So, I had a free voice but I don’t feel I got my true voice until 2015.

Dr. Doreen Downing [10:57]

The world that you were born into had a certain kind of stricture. Was there a structure for you in marriage?

Janine Bolon [11:35]

I was more than happy to get married because the man that I married was very much in alignment with where I was headed with my life. We were both scientists, we were both very much into our careers. Remember, the old term dinks, double income, no kids, used to talk about young people of that era for the 1990s. I was really happy. Honestly, by the time people would complain about turning 30, and the loss of youth, I was just getting started, I finally had my act together within after 10 years of marriage, I got the flu that wouldn’t go away and then I was pregnant. This was a shock because I was a corporate woman throughout my life and I was a scientist, I was working in a male-dominated field, be pregnant and keep the job because they didn’t have maternity leave back then. The pharmaceutical industry did not look kindly on having a pregnant woman working with radiation and viruses in the laboratory. So basically, I had left the job. I had spent the last 15 years in a home because I wanted to be a specific kind of mom. So, I have a total of four children. I embraced motherhood because I didn’t think I was going to get that life back. After all, the train had left the building. I became that stay-at-home mom, I was making my bread and making playdough homemade, I was having the time of my life because I was reliving the childhood that I never had. So, it was wonderful for me. And then I decided, with the help of my husband, I’m going to homeschool the kids because that was something that I had noticed was traumatic for me in high school, or throughout my schooling was hopping with the different schools and always feeling like I was dumb or behind other kids. I thought if we homeschooled that would help give consistency to my children. So, you can talk to them when they’re in their 30s and see if we were successful but that was something that helped me. So that relationship was very much highly structured, very scientific and analytical. The pattern did repeat and the pattern was good to me. I was happy being a mom but then in 2010, that’s when I woke up because I had been meditating. I’ve been doing exercises and self-development. It took five years before I realized I had to leave the relationship of 30 years. It took me five years to figure that out because, when you talk about the voice of God, sometimes you get crystal clear clarity and sometimes they’re easing you one tablespoon at a time. They’re feeding you into who you are, as opposed to the person you think you are.

I’ve written three books, it’s called ‘SEEKING THE DIVINE’, then ‘FINDING THE DIVINE’ and then the third book is ‘EXPRESSING THE DIVINE’. It’s my story of that entire journey. In the second book, I talk about the precise moment, when I did have the divine come to me and say, ‘You are now enlightened, and you’ve been given the keys to the kingdom. All of those trappings from the dogma that had been raised with, then also the release of that dogma. I felt like I was 20 years younger. So, people who met me when I was in my 20s and meet me now that I’m over 55 and they’re like, ‘you are younger than you were when you were 20’.

Dr. Doreen Downing [15:59]

Thank you for sharing that moment. You’ve got three books about that journey and the process of learning to express the divine because the divine is our true voice. I was thinking about you in motherhood, that’s a voice of a mother speaking to her children, playing with them, helping raise them, having visions for them and guiding them. How you have been expressing your voice?

Janine Bolon [17:21]

For me, it has been the written word to find my voice. This is a joke now, but it wasn’t when I was married. The reason I became an author was that it was the only time, I could complete a total thought and not be interrupted. One of the reasons that it took me so long to figure out where I was and where I needed to be was because I could never complete a thought without being interrupted by either my partner or one of the young children. You can be in one of those homes like I was in like where your father would bust on you and use fear. I did not want to have a house of fear but I lived in a house of fear. One of the things that I would like to share with people is that I wanted to have a house where people felt they could express themselves. One of the interesting things is that the children would take the cue from the father. If the father’s always interrupting other people, then it’s very difficult as a person to control yourself. So, I would just sit and listen a lot and it was that situation that drove me to write. This was huge because, throughout my life, I have learned English three different ways depending upon what country we were in, whether it was a British based society, a Canadian based society or an American based society. So, you will hear me mispronounce words and because I’m taking them from a different culture. The joke I like to share is that because I was always taught that I was a horrible writer, I didn’t think anybody wanted to read what I had to write. It wasn’t until I became a college professor and my students had loved my stories. So, it was my students from that university that helped me gain my voice and I did that through the written word. The more I wrote, the more I realized I had a lot to share. But up to that point, I was happy being who I thought was me. It wasn’t until the students and the awakening I had and I realized I needed to start writing.

Dr. Doreen Downing [20:10]

What are you doing and what do you have to offer to society?

Janine Bolon [20:49]

I’ve had experiences that some people are in total disbelief at what I’ve done. So, because of those very hopeful individuals who were in disbelief, I thought, I’m just going to start recording things? So, I just write books and I have a process that I use. I teach it now to other people, ‘how to write a book a year because that’s all I can do with four children that I’m trying to ride herd on and run a business. My goal is to write a book a year till the day I die until I can no longer hold the mouse. I have a system that I use because I was raised by a military family, I have the gift of being able to take extremely complicated things and simplifying them down into a five-step system. I frequently will write books on ‘how to take something very complex and simplify it down into five steps, because I want to help make people’s lives a little bit easier, they’re being inspired to do something for themselves and their communities. So, if there’s a way that I can simplify something in your life so that you can move on to do what is your divine dispensation and do it easily with a system.

Dr. Doreen Downing [22:25]

What would be the five-step system for the listeners to draw their strategies?

Janine Bolon [22:49]

I’m a college professor throughout my life. So, there’s always homework. The thing is no matter what episode of Doreen Downing you’re listening to when you get inspired by any of her guests, do not just walk away and stop the recording and move on with your day. If you were truly inspired, take that as a soul signal that you are to do something with that inspiration, don’t walk away from that life-altering moment that mindset shift that you get from one of her guests. Sit down immediately or if you’re driving in the car, tell someone to remind you, I’ve done that a lot. Take a moment and come up with an action plan. So, let’s say you’re listening to my story today. And you decide that you’ve been told over and over that you should write a book. I want you to sit down and figure out a plan to create writing space and writing time to start telling your story. Because if you’re getting hit over and over that you really should write a book about that, somebody needs to read that story to be inspired, you need to do that. I’m using writing as a reason because it’s one of the easiest to implement, I learned to have my voice through writing and you’re not interrupted. And then come up with a date that if you are not done with your book, then you reach out to any one of the multitudes of authors that help coach you into finishing your book. And make sure that you get that book done. I cannot emphasize that enough. So, this is the piece of homework I wanted to give everybody.

Dr. Doreen Downing [25:14]

How can people find you?

Janine Bolon [25:27]

If you want to be a part of my world and want to be a part of what I do, the best place to go is the8gates.com or just go to LinkedIn and look up Janine Bolon and offered to become connected with me. I have four podcast shows, 10 books that I’ve written and five websites that I maintain because of the amount of work that I’m supposed to do before I die. So let me know where I can best serve you.

Dr. Doreen Downing [26:15]

You are committed to following your destiny. Thank you for being here.

Janine Bolon [26:36]

Thank you for inviting me. Keep listening to Dr. Downing, she knows what she’s talking about. She has great guests and doesn’t walk away without an action plan when you get inspired, just make that promise to yourself.