AmiLynne Babs Carroll | Life Expiration Dates, Learning to Listen, & Wholeness in the Storms of Life

“We are each made perfect, whole, and complete.” ~ AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll

Episode Overview:

In this episode of The Remarkable People Podcast, David welcomes AmiLynn Babs Carroll, a woman who has faced an array of challenges, including growing up in a strict household with a Marine father, battling cancer multiple times, and ultimately becoming a quadriplegic due to a stroke. Despite these adversities, AmiLynn found peace, purpose, and spiritual wholeness, and now helps others do the same through her coaching and writing. This episode explores her life story, the emotional and physical toll of unresolved grief, the importance of listening, and the profound impact of understanding one’s divine perfection and wholeness. AmiLynn also discusses practical steps for listeners to apply these lessons in their own lives, ultimately aiming for spiritual growth and a stronger relationship with God.

SHOW NOTES & LINKS: 

• Guest Website: https://amilynnecarroll.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amilynnecarroll
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amilynnecarroll
• AmiLynne’s Book: Conversations of Consequence: Lessons from the Still-Small Voice

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Transcript

AmiLynne Babs Carroll | Life Expiration Dates, Learning to Listen, & Wholeness in the Storms of Life

David Pasqualone: Hello, friend. Welcome to this week's episode of The Remarkable People Podcast, the AmiLynn "Babs" Carroll story. AmiLynn is now a quadriplegic, but we're going to talk about her upbringing in a house of 15 with a Marine father, we're going to talk about how she had cancer, not once, not twice, but three times, which ultimately led to a stroke.

That left her quadriplegic at this point, but she talks about how she found wholeness and peace and purpose, and she's helping others do the same. So we talk about a bunch of things in her life that were not ideal by any stretch of the imagination, but how all that unresolved and undealt with emotional pain.

Probably caused the majority of her physiological problems. So we talk about a whole lot more in the [00:01:00] episode and things are going to blow your mind. So at this time, get your pen, get your paper unless you're driving, and get ready to take notes of how Babs story can help you when you apply it to your life.

And then at the end, she gives us a very special offer for you, the listener, and you can take it. And run with it and thrive, and we hope you can be on the podcast soon telling your remarkable story. So check out this episode with Babs now.

Epic Voice Guy: The Remarkable People Podcast, check it out,

the Remarkable People Podcast. Listen, do Repeat for Life,

the Remarkable People Podcast.

David Pasqualone: Hey Babs, how are you today? 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: I'm [00:02:00] doing great, David. Thank you so much. Great to be here with you and your listeners. 

David Pasqualone: Oh, we are excited to have you. I was just telling our listeners a little bit about you and your story, but right from you, we're going to get to hear your story, what you've learned on the way, actionable steps of not just how you were able to achieve and overcome what you did in life, but we'll get the practical steps for our listeners so they can too.

But we have listeners all over the world. We have a great remarkable community. If you're speaking to them directly right now and you guarantee them, you know, you're getting a lot of good stuff, but I guarantee you're going to get at least this one gold bar that you can take and apply to your life star in today.

What would that be? 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: Ah, what a great question. Of all the ideas that come about during honest conversations, like I know we're going to have, I think the thing that is most pervasive, and the thing that is most foundational for me is [00:03:00] reminding people no matter where they are in their life pattern, where they are in the world, where they are in their own journey, or their own spiritual journey or life journey, the things that happen to us and around us, they form our experiences, but they simply are not our identity.

David Pasqualone: All right, ladies and gentlemen, you heard it right from Babs, and you're going to hear more from her story how she got to this point. We're going to do a quick affiliate commercial, and we will be back with AmiLynn Babs Carroll. 

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Get amazing, amazing products for your home, gifts for your family and friends. And you'll not only sleep better, but you'll sleep better knowing you save money and support an amazing company. So that's it. Let's get back to this fantastic episode

David Pasqualone: welcome back ladies and gentlemen. We are here with Babs. Babs, tell us your story. Where did your life begin? What was your upbringing like? Not because we wanna dwell in the past, but anybody who's wise learns from the past and uses it to move forward. So what was your story?

What is your [00:05:00] story? 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: What is my story? I was going to say, I'm still here. What's this was stuff, um, 

David Pasqualone: I got confused with the past and the present, but what is your story 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: exactly? Well, my story is a one of what I call blessings. A combination of blessings and lessons. And David, I believe that everything that happens in the world happens for both blessing and lesson.

So as I share a little bit about, you know, what has brought me to where I am today, remember that opening thought that what transpires in our life, it forms our experience, but it's not our identity. And I know this from a deep place of experience because when I was younger, I was one of 15 oldest girl, second oldest.

Um, fast forward 33 years, I found out I was adopted. But that's a different conversation for a different day. So there's thir 15 of us, [00:06:00] Southern California. My dad was a Marine Corps drill instructor and he did not leave his work at the office. And as one might imagine with a house full of kids, order was really important.

Um, I also was raised in what I now understand to be a far right conservative church, if not a cult, only not a cult, because it wasn't actually qualified as one where we were taught predestination, we were taught subservience, that as a female, not only with the predestination, was I not going to heaven, but I needed to act like it, but that I would never surpass the equals in the, in the male gender.

I was taught that the most important thing is for you to have the answer. And so I was never taught to listen, but I was taught to be [00:07:00] formulating the response when someone else was speaking to me. I learned how to follow instructions because you do what you do because you're told to do it, and the consequences of not were dire.

And so I did what mo a lot of people in my situation do. I followed the rules. I became a rigid rule follower. I graduated valedictorian in my class, moved on by the time I actually entered college, I was already a junior because of the AP classes in high school. Graduated in three years with a double bachelor's and moved into my master's where I got my master's, my, uh, public affair and my JD at, at the same time.

I'm a semester still away from that law degree and that comes in play down the road shortly after that Graduation though, was my first cancer diagnosis at 22 years old. I [00:08:00] was preparing to run the Leukemia Foundation Marathon in Maui. And so I went in for a physical, um, vegetarian, clearly athletic, and they found a lump, no big deal, we'll schedule.

Actually, she found a lump, decided that she wanted to do a biopsy. So we did the biopsy, but I made it very clear, I don't wanna know the results until after I get back from Hawaii. Hindsight says, I think I knew what the answer was going to be, what the results of those biopsy, that biopsy was going to be. And so when I returned, um, we had a lumpectomy and I started treatment.

Six weeks later, they found another lump in the other breast, and I said, take 'em. They don't define me. Take 'em. Now, mind you, this entire time I'm continuing to be a rule follower. What do I need to do? What do I need to be eating? I was following every instruction [00:09:00] that had been given to me, and yet my health was failing.

And so throughout the course of that life afforded me other opportunities, and at that point I wasn't awake. I was still worried about making sure that the people around me were happy, as opposed to figuring out why I was here and what I needed to be doing with that. I married my first husband, was actually killed by a drunk driver just two months after we were married.

Never really processed that grief, if I'm being honest. I recognize as time went on and the cancer diagnosis is keep kept returning, is that that unresolved grief as a child, the unresolved grief, losing my first husband was all manifesting physically as cancer in my body. Fast forward [00:10:00] a number of years, had a married a second time.

Long story there. Won't go into the details about that. I was literally laying on the floor the first night of yet another round of chemo when my second husband poked his head in the bathroom and said, Hey, AmiLynn, I can't do this. I'm going to leave. Naive rule followers said, well, that's okay. Doctor said, you know, look, I've been through this before.

It'll pass in a couple of hours. Everything will be okay. And he said, no, you don't get it. I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm leaving. And so I laid on that floor and began to ask questions, but was really honestly in that point, just not strong enough to really seek the answers. So I did what so many of us do.

I picked myself up off that bathroom floor and I put my life back together piece by [00:11:00] piece by piece. We divorced. Fast forward a couple of years more. I actually was part of an experimental program at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, and I had moved to Jacksonville for this experimental treatment January of two th thousand seven.

My doctor called me in and he gave me my first expiration date. Six weeks, AmiLynn, you need to go home and get things in order. I had met over the phone my now husband of 17 years, and so called him. He lived in California. I was in Florida, and he said something to me that annoyed me, but caught my attention.

He said, AmiLynn, that's a lie. Like, dude, you don't know me well enough yet to call [00:12:00] me a liar. But what he was doing is he was actually coming at this relationship and this information from a metaphysical perspective. So in February of 2007, I was introduced to questioning. I was introduced to seeking. I was introduced to Discovery of life itself because I did.

Now I got that bad news, and as so many of us would su suspect, I went home and I cried like a baby, because who wouldn't? I've been a rule follower. I've done what I was supposed to, never colored outside the lines, checked off every box of what we're supposed to do to be good contributors to society. And still, yet again, I'm getting smacked between the eyes with [00:13:00] this belief that I'm not, not only am I not worth, but I'm not going to continue to live.

And so I began to question everything because I woke up on that third day and the idea hit me. That's his opinion. I. When you walk into a doctor's office and they give you a prognosis, that's their best understanding of what's happening in your body. Doesn't mean it's the only understanding. And so I began to question, I read every spiritual text I could get my hands on Christian Bible, that the Jewish Torah, the BGA Gita, I read the Vedas, yes.

All 6,000 volumes of the Vedas. I read the Quran both with and without commentary. And what I found was is that no matter where you see from a spiritual or a physical realm, the idea [00:14:00] is that we are each made perfect whole and complete. And if that was true, then David, I had some work to do because I didn't feel perfect.

I felt very far from whole, and I wouldn't know what complete looked like if somebody handed it to me. And so I really began this journey. And look, I knew I had only had six weeks, but I was willing to spend that time earnestly seeking throughout that time, obviously, I, I did the, the physical things you're supposed to do too.

Uh, well, I don't know about supposed to, but what I did, I went cold Turkey off all of my meds. I went on a raw whole food diet and I really began to get down to the basics of what is life and why are we here and what is that purpose? [00:15:00] Six weeks later, I wasn't cured, but I was better. Six months later I wasn't cured, but I was a lot further on along down the road.

Than I had anticipated. I would be given the prognosis that I had given, been given a year down the road. I called my doctor and, and we celebrated how long he wa how wrong he was. Just a year before I really dug into the metaphysical lessons in life, that perfection, that wholeness, that completeness, and what the heck does that even mean?

And really just kind of began to begin living from a place of an honored path of the golden rule. And to question for me, not so that I could have the answer to tell someone else, but so at the end of the day, I would know something more about me. [00:16:00] Fast forward a couple of years, I actually had a handful of really awesome years, cancer free.

My husband and I got married in 2000, uh, eight. He's been on this, you know, the last few chapters of this journey with me. 

David Pasqualone: Hey, before you go on, I hate interrupting, but did you have any children prior to this? 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: I don't have children. 

David Pasqualone: Okay, okay. I just wanna make sure. 'cause sometimes people skip like big pieces and I just, 'cause having children during all this adds a whole other dynamic.

So I just wanna make sure we weren't skipping. So go ahead, keep going. 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: Absolutely. Always wanted to be a mommy, but for obvious reasons, that has just not been my path. And so Tom and I got married in 2007 and I moved from Florida to California. Remember cold Turkey off the meds. Just really taking a holistic spiritual approach to healing my body, which meant healing [00:17:00] my heart.

And so step by step, I began to explore this idea of what is divine perfection? What is divine wholeness? What is divine completeness? Because universally there's this conversation about being perfect whole and complete year. After a couple of years after Tom and I got married, I found out I was adopted, and that I had been adopted at the age of 18 months old, and that the name I had gone by my entire life was not the name on my birth certificate.

So now guess what? I'm thrown into the midst of another identity crisis because I'd been in this place where I was a cancer patient, then I was a cancer survivor, and then I was a cancer sur, um, where it had, you know, uh, metastasize all of these things. And so the weight of the labels became [00:18:00] too much to carry.

And while I still had lots of questions, and of course now even more questions, knowing that I was adopted, what I began to do. Is learn how to listen and not listen for an answer, but just listen. Gradually I began to hear that still small voice, and I'm still asking questions, but then I'm learning to shut up and listen for the answers.

To ask people about their experiences, both spiritual and practical, both metaphysical and physical, but to really have this experience of people and to have this anthology almost of experiences that I could just really sit and meditate with. In 2007, 16, we [00:19:00] moved from California to Colorado, and early 2017, I started having headaches and tremors again.

Brain cancer had returned. So we'd metastasized from breast cancer. Now we're at brain cancer. By the time I got into the doctor, 30% of my brain had tumors or was non-functioning due to cancer. I began to lose the use of my right arm. And so I taught myself how to write with my left hand because I gotta be able to communicate.

I still, I have to prove my worth and proving my worth still was surrounded in this idea of doing. I have to be able to do things. And if we fast forward just a couple more years to October of 2022, I feel like that this was my crucifixion moment. And I say that with [00:20:00] such reverence and respect. I am not Jesus.

I'm not Christ. But that res, that that crucifixion moment when we are stripped of absolutely everything in life. I had a stroke and it left me quadriplegic. So this type triple A personality, who believed if it's going to be, it's up to me, who had overcome so much in life leading up to that, was very independent.

I found myself early on, not even be able, being able to speak clearly, so I couldn't ask for things. But now I'm in a position where I have to ask for everything I could raise my head. That was it. I had to learn to respeak, and so what I got to learn was the opportunity. [00:21:00] My body is the vessel that has carried me this far, but it's not my identity.

The cancer that had brought me to this place were things that had formed my experience, but they were not my identity because during that stroke I had an awakening moment and I finally realized that the fascination with this near death experience conversation is really a fuller life experience. And as I began to move out of that place of the stroke, my body didn't follow suit.

I'm still a quadriplegic today, almost three years later. And I will tell you, David, that because of those moments of clarity, those moments of not giving up even when. I gave in, [00:22:00] I be, each time picked myself back up, and now I understand what perfection is. It's divine perfection. It's not human perfection.

You know, when you're looking at yourself in a mirror and you see this body that just doesn't function, and all of a sudden this little angel message comes and says, well, would you say that Stephen Hawking didn't provide anything of value to the world? You say, yes, I can. Yes, I will. I'm here for a reason.

And you begin to see life through a different lens, a new perspective. And here's the thing, we don't have to have these life changing, you know, tri triumphant moments in order to see these awakenings. But if we can find a way to be more present in the moment now. We can [00:23:00] recognize that the shoulds and the woods and the could'ves, none of them matter.

Because what matters is who we are right here in this moment, how we show up right here in this moment. And at the end of the day, absolutely each and every one of us, without exception, is nothing more and nothing less than divine loves expression. And if we peel away all of the layers of the story, we see that so clearly.

But it requires us to peel the layers away, to get back to that root foundation of who we are, whose we are, and that that is who what we have been since our moment of conception. But we have simply forgotten along the way because of [00:24:00] the life circumstances that show up for each and every one of us. And so today, I'm a spiritual direction coach.

I created a program that helped me heal. I could not be more happier in my life. Does it look anything like what I expected it to look like when I was 5, 15, 25, 35? Heavens no. But I can tell you that the vast emptiness that I felt for all of those years is gone. And I recognized it wasn't a void that needed to be filled.

It was a light in the corner of darkness that simply needed to be raised higher. 

David Pasqualone: Amen. So you have so much to delve into and to discuss. Uh, let's try to go, I'll, I'll do my [00:25:00] best to go chronological. First off, you grew up and you said your dad brought his work home, one of 15 children. So this is automatically, you're learning and getting groomed, that performance makes you stand out, correct?

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: Absolutely, absolutely. And there was, for example, one of the, um, punishment in our household wasn't, um, traditional. If you would, one of the very first things that would happen would be restriction. And please don't mistake that for being grounded. I have friends that were grounded for us restriction was, if you're not going to follow the house rules, we're going to give you a really good idea.

What it's like to not be part of our family. And so while you still had to eat meals and you still had to go to school, no one spoke to you, no one interacted with you. If you asked somebody to pass the salt [00:26:00] at the, at the dinner table, no one passed the salt. And that sustained until father said that it was complete.

So sometimes it was days, sometimes it could be a couple of weeks depending upon where his mood and his heart were. So this idea that you will do what you are told because you are told to, to do it and the consequences are dire. The rigid was a, was a big part of my growing up. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah. And then what religious association did your father have?

Jehovah Witness? Mormon. Some, like you said, it was almost a cult. What, which one was it? 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: Well, it is a Christian, it is a Christian denomination, and I wanna qualify in saying that our common day, um, congregational Christian, is very different than the congregational Christian I grew up in, [00:27:00] again, you speak, when spoken to very literal interpretations of the Bible, I now believe in my experience, and this is my experience, I will never put this on someone else.

For me, the Bible wasn't used as a tool for upbringing. It was used as a weapon to instill fear. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, and that's, see, and the reason why I'm bringing that back up is because predestination, I know a lot of Jehovah witnesses believe that, and a lot of you, even churches and Baptist circles might believe that Calvinists, um, it breaks people.

It it absolutely breaks people because the people who really have a heart. For God. They think, well, I'm rejected. And then everybody I've known has just not done well in life. Um, but once they get out of that and they see that for God so loved the world and for whosoever to call upon the name, the Lord shall be saved, God gives us free will.

And it's not just [00:28:00] you survive and go to eternity with God and you're going to burn in hell. That's not biblical. So I do believe the Bible literally. Um, but predestination is not something I see. And people argue and go back and forth and that's fine. But everybody I know that's got wrapped up in predestination, they lose their passion and love for God and humanity.

Uh, they get all intellectual and not practical. And that's really Well, 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: it's all about culture. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah. And 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: I think that's where so many religions, I won't say go wrong because it's not for me to say what is right or wrong, but where they take a turn is the culture. Begins to instill in the, in their congregation a certain expectation for behavior.

And so it's not the teachings, it's the culture. Because the idea of predestination in and of itself, I absolutely do believe in, because the Bible tells us that we [00:29:00] will be called home to sit at the right hand of our Father. That I it that is predetermined. Predestination is not only a few of us.

Predestination is, is the Bible tells us. All of us will, that God is our judger, not the pastor at the front of the congregation or a parent because they're a deacon or a teacher, because they've been through seminary. But God, God is the one who that relationship should be bound to. Yeah. That what, as I began to work myself out of this stark view of religion, for me, I had to be a bridge builder because I wasn't able to just say, well, that's wrong, so this other thing's going to be right, because I didn't trust, because for so long what had [00:30:00] been instilled was no, not only did it oftentimes not serve me when I was younger, but was clearly not serving me as an adult.

And so this idea of saying, what is the Bible and for me today, what the, what the Bible really is, is God's love letter to mankind. And the human component of that is man trying to work out his or her relationship to God. The evolution of that thought from Old Testament of vengeful God to New Testament where he gave his only begotten son and that we are to love because he first loved us.

That evolution is so much about the evolution of man's relationship and man's understanding of his or her relationship [00:31:00] with God. And the more we dig into that, the more we evolve. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah, I 100% agree that it's all about relationship. And you know, if you say the word church, every single human on the planet.

It has a different image of what the church is, but the real church is the body of Christ. And God talks about it. But on earth we have a bunch of denominations. We have a bunch of institutions, a bunch of cultures. Um, and if you're in a good church, it preaches the Bible. You're going to begin the truth and learning to balance it.

A false balance is abomination to the Lord. But growing up in that false balance, it threw your life off kilter. And I wanted to ask you always trying to, you know, if you are thinking that no matter what I do, I'm not good enough. That messes up your head in the direction of your life. [00:32:00] And then at the same time, you're always trying to work to perform, to, to try to, you know, win your salvation, so to speak.

It. It's just very unhealthy. How much do you think that played into your illness? Because you know, some people go their whole life and they never get anything worse than a cold where you had cancer. Early on in life 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: and repeatedly came 

David Pasqualone: back, then it came back again and you had a stroke. So I personally believe like a lot of, I had a tumor in my head when I was 18.

I was critically ill Again, something else completely unrelated. And then I was critically ill again, like three times in my life the doctor like, make out your will, get your affairs in order. And they never knew what caused my stuff medically, but I know that a lot of the emotional things that I carried, I was just wore out.

So it let dise fester because I wasn't at ease. How much do you think that played in your life, Babs? 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: Oh, I think it's a huge contributor, [00:33:00] if not the sole contributor because I do believe that God gives us this perfect body and perfect doesn't mean that I. It operates the way we want, in the way we want, or even necessarily in the same way that science would tell us that our body operates, but that it's made perfect to carry us through our experience.

And so when I was younger and I'm following the rules to a t, not questioning, and I'm getting sick, and then I'm getting sicker, and these things around me are happening that are essentially stripping away almost the new influences. My first husband, his family was Episcopalian, very different than what I had been raised in.

When we were married, we were, we were married outside in his church's courtyard because of [00:34:00] my fear of walking back inside that church. Yet his belief, what he and what he shared with me, but that I hadn't quite taken as my own, is that the world is God's church. We are all God's children, and that it doesn't require four walls in an address in order to be a spiritual place.

And now I can see that clearly not so much. Then I was just really relieved he didn't get me, make me get married in a church. Yeah. He loved me where I was and that was something very new to me. But this idea that, especially as children, when we aren't given a voice, especially when it's very specific and direct, that we are not meant to have a voice because children are to be seen and not heard.

I. That to question is not inquisitive. It's dishonoring and disrespectful. So you [00:35:00] learn not to ask questions. You learn to do what you do because you're told to. There's a place of that obedience, in my opinion, that begins to create those festering boils inside. And whether it's for me as a child, just rampant allergies, or as I grew older that, you know, matriculated into multiple different cancer diagnoses, metastasized cancer, really bad eyes, like the physical body, just couldn't handle the sorrow, the pain, the sadness, or the silence.

And so that to me is why that disease, that disease. Manifest is to say, look, there's more to this than what you see. And so for me, when I begin to not feel my best self, I see that now as an invitation. [00:36:00] My body is calling me to account for do I need rest? Do I need to be eating differently? Am I taking into my body the things that will sustain it?

And that includes my scriptural work, my spiritual work, my metaphysical work. Am I, am I spending too much time in the entertainment space of movies and television programs that are kind of like, well, that's just the sign of the times. And so that's why that's on tv. And since it's there, I'll watch it versus saying, no, I'm not going to take that into my body, into my experience, into my mind, or my heart.

So I don't need to counteract those ideas, those feelings on a daily basis. So I get to live more at ease versus filled with dis-ease. [00:37:00] 

David Pasqualone: And then you lose your husband or early age. 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll (2): Yeah. 

David Pasqualone: And you said you didn't deal with that, you just kind of brushed it under the rug. Was that your personality or was that the culture of what you were raised in and around?

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: I think it's a combination of the two, because I didn't know what emotions were growing up in my household. If you weren't happy, you were supposed to go to your room and the only reason you were to be in your room was to sleep. So you learned just to kind of stuff it all down. And, you know, in my early twenties, losing my husband, I didn't know what I was feeling.

And because I didn't know what I was feeling and didn't feel like I had a support system to go to, I just tuned it all out. And what, what am I supposed to do? Well, I'm supposed to pick myself up by my bootstraps and overcome. 'cause that's what you do. You don't complain, you don't whine, you. Look, [00:38:00] if this is happening to you, this was a phrase I grew up with.

Good things happen to good people. Bad things happen to bad people. And so there was a, there was a component of feeling like, one, feeling guilty, but two, feeling accountable because this must be my penance for not being a good person. Then having that guilt with his family that, because I am a bad person, he's no longer here 

David Pasqualone: now, did they blame you?

Like he's not right with God, he married you and now God took him home? Or was that something you were internalizing? 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: That was me internalizing. That was me internalizing. 

David Pasqualone: All right. So now, how long was it after your husband passed away that you get your first cancer diagnosis? 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: Oh, um, I actually got my first cancer diagnosis just nine months after [00:39:00] he passed.

David Pasqualone: So a lot of pain not being resolved. A lot of emotion, a lot of just all sorts of things you're feeling, you know, processing, almost floating 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: through life. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah, and to eat up and the bottom, like in the 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: boxes, but no sense of purpose, no sense of direction. Because when you're that age and you've, you agree to get married, like you think that you're going to grow old together, that's the expectation, right.

Yeah. 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll (2): And 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: now not only am I alone and I don't have him to grow old, old with, but it's my fault that he's gone. So you close yourself off, if I am this cursed individual, how dare I br how? How dare I visit that on other people, whether it be friends or relationships or whatever. 

David Pasqualone: And then now you're [00:40:00] a widow at a young age, and then you get cancer.

Your parents, you know, you probably look at your family history and you're like, oh, I got no history of cancer, whatever. Right? And then, or maybe they had cancer too in their family, but did they ever think, well, maybe we should talk to her. She could have something in the family that's important. 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: Well, I.

It's an interesting story because at 21 years old, I get a call, I'm in college, I get a call. My dad has been rushed to the hospital. Um, at this point I thought it was, dad did not know he was my adopted father. And so, um, and this was, uh, before my first husband and I got married. So we flew to see my father in the hospital.

And the, the news was so dire that my first husband actually asked for my hand in marriage at that point, because he knew he [00:41:00] wasn't going to get to and felt very, um, committed that that was the right thing to do. Was to ask for that from diagnosis to death was six weeks for my father. He died of brain cancer.

And so later on in life, when I'm being diagnosed and I'm looking back for family records, keep in mind six months to the day of my father passing away, my mother, who birthed 13 children collapsed at the playground with my two youngest brothers and died instantly of a heart attack. And to this day, no one will convince me differently that she didn't die of a broken heart.

David Pasqualone: Yeah. And that happens. I literally just had a friend who's, um, the father died, oh, maybe I'm messing this up. Either way, one of his parents died and then six days later, the other one died. And it was, yeah. Pretty much from a [00:42:00] broken heart. And that happens so often, which in some ways is a good thing. You know, they've lived full lives, they've trusted crisis, their savior, and now they're together with God.

Um, but it's hard for us on earth. Right? So 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: especially when you leave at that point, nine children under the age of 18 to be cared. Wow. 

David Pasqualone: Now, and so you said there was 15 kids, and now looking back, y yours, two of you were adopted and 13 were birthed. 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: Correct. My older brother and I, my, I have a brother who's three years older than I and myself.

We were adopted. Um, and that's a whole Vietnam suicide, murder, suicide story, which is heartbreaking. Um, and I didn't learn that until I was 35 years old. And it was a space of my adopted father was my biological father's commanding officer. My biological father had gone in to [00:43:00] ask for help. They had returned from three tours in Vietnam and my biological father was really struggling mentally.

And so his commanding officer, who wound up being my adopted father, sent him home that night and said, go home, have a beer, put your feet up, come back in tomorrow and we'll begin handling this. And he went home and he shot my mother. He took the life of her parents and then took his own life, leaving my older brother and I sitting in the living room.

David Pasqualone: Wow. And how old were you at this point? You were babies? 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: 18 months old and he was right at four. 'cause he's about three years older than I am. 

David Pasqualone: Wow. Does he remember any of this or is it blacked out? 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: He remembers bits and pieces. He is now passed as well, and it was just something that he would never speak about.

I could never blame him as much as I had questions, [00:44:00] especially when I found out we were adopted. 'cause he was old enough to remember being adopted. I wasn't. And I mean, they gave us new names, they amended our birth certificates, the whole shebang. So it was as if this guilt, and now that's what I see it as.

I totally understand that the, the man who raised me felt so guilty for not being present and not towing the line, not following procedure. That out of guilt he took on my older brother and I. And so the rigidness came from this place, I believe, of fear that he didn't want to let anyone down again. So you will behave a certain way and your life will look a certain way and things will unfold in a certain way.

Because if I don't [00:45:00] control it, then I'm going to fail again. And I can't imagine what that must have felt like for him. And to this day, I now can see that that rigidness was love. It was the only way he knew how to express it. I don't have to condone how he expressed it, but I cannot deny that he loved me dearly, even without having heard those words ever growing up.

No hugs. No, I love yous. That just wasn't the environment that we grew up in. It wasn't touchy feely. And look, I don't consider, I love you to be touchy feely, but there was none of that for any of us. And I feel like that is the result of him feeling so deeply, having let down my father [00:46:00] in literally his darkest moment and time of need.

David Pasqualone: Yeah. And that's what's unfortunate, you know, any one of us, the one of the most convicting and powerful like quotes I've ever heard is we judge, we judge other people by their actions and we judge ourselves by our intent. And that's super powerful and convicting for me. And you never know what goes on behind closed doors.

Everybody is the way they are for a reason. And that doesn't give us excuses to be jerks. Right, right. And not saying your dad, your stepdad was, but, or your, uh, adopted 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll (2): dad. Stepdad. Yeah, he's 

David Pasqualone: my dad. But what I'm saying is we all are who we are and everybody has their story and we should all be trying to.

Be truly Christlike as Christlike as we can be. Um, 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: yeah, who am I on my worst day and how would I want someone to, to support and love me on my worst day because [00:47:00] we can't imagine what someone else's worst day is or how they internalize that and move forward through that. Yeah. For years I, I hated my father and it wasn't until almost 13 years after he passed and I found out what that part, that missing part of the story was that like I didn't go to his funeral.

Like he knew how I felt about him when he was alive. I'm sure not going to go and make errors to a bunch of people around that have no idea what it's like to live in his house. And if they do shame on them for letting it continue. You know, it was my thought at the time. But now, now when I think of my father, like I'm sad for the, I'm sad for how, how much he must have hurt [00:48:00] that he couldn't show love.

And I think that was a barrier that he built because he didn't feel like he deserved love. And so I'm going to act accordingly. I'm going to be a strong, rigid, coarse man. Don't let him in and they won't see my failure. Because the story, it took me weeks when I first found out. I mean, it took me weeks to find out what the story was because everyone had been sworn to secrecy and many of them have passed on.

My grandparents have passed on. My mom and dad have passed on. I. And so I'm looking for my birth certificate, which is what it was. I needed a passport and submitted a request for a certified copy of my birth certificate for my passport. And I get a letter back saying Nobody by that name was born in the state of California during [00:49:00] that day or that month, let alone that year.

And I was like, yeah, it was right here. I really am. And so it's so important for us to remember that no matter hard, how hard a choice is that we are facing, chances are someone else has had to face a choice even harder and to live with the consequences of whatever choice they made. Good or bad.

David Pasqualone: Yeah. And when you were going through your life, your father didn't know how to deal with things, so you're learning not to deal with things. Uh, you know, you're not dealing with your childhood or the cult, or you're not dealing with the husband dying, you're not dealing with the mastectomy. You said like, I mean, a double breast mastectomy would alone be hard for women to deal with.

And you acted like it's no big deal. I'm just going to adapt and overcome the marine way. Right? Yeah. [00:50:00] So all this stuff is building and building and building. And then you said you, you talked about your husband now, you met him over the phone. Mm-hmm. Um, how did that connection happen? Was it medical? Was it just, you know, online dating actually 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: work?

It was work. So I lived in Jacksonville, Florida at one end of the, of u uh, interstate seven or 10. And he lived in Woodland Hills, literally at the very other end. Uh, US 10 and, um, I had a financial services company that I was trying to keep afloat while, while battling my health challenges. And I had a client that needed a certain thing and we had a joint vendor and they referred me to Tom.

And so on January 2nd, 2007, I literally said out loud, let's see if his social life is as dumpy as mine is. And I [00:51:00] called him and he picked up, 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll (2): okay. 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: And I gotta tell you, my life changed that day. I didn't know it that day. He tells a much more romantic story about our early weeks and months together because he was immediately taken.

He knew things I didn't know just from a, a spiritual perspective, but. It's, it's, it's interesting. So we met, we didn't meet face-to-face until April of that year, and we met in New Orleans at a conference where I had, I had actually started working with him and I was supporting one of his salespeople.

And so there was a conference in New Orleans, so he was going to stop over from LA to New Orleans because he was on his way to Orlando. And we met for the very first time. And it was like, looking back now, [00:52:00] as comfortable, as uncomfortable as it was for me, it's because it was so quickly comfortable. Like it was just the reuniting of a soul in a way that I didn't understand.

Because in 2007, I was at the beginning of a new spiritual journey. It wasn't about this judgmental. Wrathful, God, I was just beginning to peak beyond the veil and see if I could, if I could handle talking about God again in my life. And Tom's a guy who didn't talk about God, but he sure lived it. People ask me, so when do you know you?

When did you know you fell in love? I was like, about six months after we got married. I didn't know what love was. [00:53:00] I had no clue what love was. And to this day, the morning that we got married, I remember looking in the mirror and saying, I don't know what it is that he has, but I want it. There was a sense of peace just about him as a person.

And not an acceptance such that life is what it is to suck it up and take it. But just this knowing. And he introduced me to this idea of divine perfection, divine wholeness, divine completeness. So much so that less than six weeks after we had talked for the first time on the phone and had begun to actually work together a little bit, I'm calling him with this expiration date and he says, that's a lie.

That's not what God created you for. That's a lie.

And it broke through that [00:54:00] mesmerism. I didn't know it at the moment. 'cause like I said, I cried for three days and now I recognize the value and the importance of those three days of simply, I. Letting go of everything that I had been holding on to at that point for 34 years. And I sobbed like I have never sobbed that third morning though, I woke up and I knew,

I knew. I didn't know what I didn't know and that I was going to find out. 

David Pasqualone: And then when everything's going on, now you're knowing God. You have a husband, you're experiencing true love in your personal relationship with God and with your earthly relationship with your husband. So now everything seems to be going well, and you get this [00:55:00] next diagnosis, and then you have a stroke and then you end up quadriplegic.

Um, what's your relationship been from there to today? 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: My relationship with God has changed such that I now understand from experience, not just from the intellectual reading of the idea that I and my father are one.

There is a sense of standing the Christ consciousness, the Holy Ghost, and the presence in every breath, mine, yours, the at and t rep, the gal at the grocery, the driver that honks as they drive past because you're driving too slow. We are each but the expression of one divine God. [00:56:00] And so, and it's, it's that those moments, those.

To me it's, it's truth. Freshly discovered in the now of being truth, being capital T, truth being God who is unchangeable, immutable, omnipresent, omniscient. That there, there is nothing changeable about God. And so when we really dig back to that root essence of who we are and why we're here for me, and I would never project this on someone else, but for me, there's such a clarity that I am here for no other reason than to be the expression of God, the best expression I can be.

And look, some moments, I'm not a very good expression of God, but my desire, each moment is to be the best expression that I can be. Take the example of people. There are [00:57:00] people that will say, you might be the only gospel. That someone reads your life, how you engage with them, how you love them may be the only expression of Christ that they are exposed to.

And I take that to the core of my absolute being. Today. I could have gone home. There are those who believe that God was calling me home on that day. Do I know why I am here? It doesn't matter why I'm here, I am here. And here's the thing, in the dwelling of love, I am whole. It matters not what the human body looks like.

It doesn't matter whether or not I can remember what happened yesterday, or two days ago. The, the growth and [00:58:00] progress from the stroke has been wonderful. It's not complete in some people's estimation, but I can tell you that my spirit has grown, my heart has healed, my soul is reconnected to its source.

And since that day, and so even in the moments that are really hard, I turn to gratitude

that God loved me enough to bring me into this experience. And then as I begin to look back over my life experience, Dave, I realize that the presence of darkness is not the absence of light. The presence of sin, the presence of evil, the presence of [00:59:00] of heavy, dirty, ugly darkness is not an indication that God is absent.

It's an invitation to look beneath the veil, to see the face of God. The Bible calls us. Think about it. When, when, uh, Jesus and the disciples are on, on the water and the storm has swept up, Jesus calls us to look into the storm, to see the face of God. He doesn't say, go beneath deck and hunker down. He says, stand up in the face of evil.

Fa, stand up in the face of disease and claim the one divine God as our source, our spirit, our creator, our father.

In [01:00:00] 2007, David, I set out on this journey to ask questions because I'd never done so before and the pendulum swung to one angle where I questioned everything.

Since my stroke, one of the things that I have come to recognize is, is that if a question begins with who, when, why, where, or what? It's my ego because if I really need an answer to a question, that still small voice is going to be there to direct and guide me, not my ego. My ego carried me. All those years, and I couldn't be more grateful.

I'm not about to vilify it because I am alive today because my ego was strong enough to carry me through those different seasons in my life to give me [01:01:00] what I needed, the strength, the courage, the boldness to sustain. But now, well, it's quite a bit of work to tell your ego to go sit down and shut up, quite honestly, because it's a habit.

You know, it's muscle memory. Ego thinks that. Ego thinks it is our identity. And with each passing day, I strive to remind my ego how important it has been, how grateful I am for its work, but that the one ego, capital E, is God the father. When I feel like I need to be heard, guess what? That's my ego. When I feel like I deserve an answer, guess what?

That's my ego. [01:02:00] I am here at the will and the request and the bestows of divine God.

David Pasqualone: Amen. And let's talk about this. You've gone through a lot. It sounds like you're doing fantastic. 'cause you know, like you said, there's ups and downs physically, there's ups and downs financially, but that relationship with God and your peace and your joy and your love is what matters. And we start off the show, and you talked about learning to listen, teach us how to learn to listen.

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: Absolutely. Learning to listen when you grow up in a society, especially here in the United States, I, I won't speak for other cultures, but here you're taught to listen only for your next counterpart. What's your [01:03:00] agenda? So when we are in relationship, and that's where listening comes into play, listening comes into relationship, whether it's our relationship to God, relationship to our spouse, relationship to our children, our coworkers, our boss, the stranger on the, the road that needs us to put a blinker on when we're going to change.

Everything that we do is about relationship. And when we learn that we are not in control, but rather we are asked to be in command of what is happening around us. We can't help but learn to listen because we need the input when we learn to love. Love is listening. Listening is love. Listening is is being present.

Listening is listening is about loving and knowing that [01:04:00] someone sitting next to you is having a hard day, and all they need is a smile. Learning to listen is about when your children come in and they are, you know, we call 'em tantrums, we call, well, they're just tired, but helping them find the words to express what they're feeling.

As opposed to shutting them down is listening to that child's heart and teaching them how to communicate so that as they grow older, guess what? They are going to be good listeners. When we learn to listen and how do we do that? Well, the first thing we have to do is shut our mouth. The second thing is, is to recognize that in listening, we are not listening to fix, to repair, to [01:05:00] resolve.

That's not our job. That's God's job. Our job is to be present and to be present requires a listening, a being where we do quiet our chitter chatter.

We quiet the thoughts in our head, and I don't know about you. These people are like, oh, you meditate and you get to a place of calm and stillness. Look, I've been meditating for 15 years yet, and I still haven't found that place of quiet, calm, and stillness. But we learn how to, we learn how to reside and navigate that space from a place of love.

And love doesn't say I have to be the only one. It says I get to be one. Love doesn't have to have the [01:06:00] answer because love knows that nothing's broken. You know, David, when people come to me at the depths of despair and you hear these words either audibly or or in the language that they speak, this sense of feeling broken.

Needing to be fixed. There's nothing broken about any of us. How we see ourselves could use some improvement. How we see those around us could use some improvement, and that improvement is going to come from strengthening our relationship to God. Because as we strengthen that relationship to God, we begin to see ourselves more clearly.

So those practical steps are learning that I don't always have to be contributing to the conversation in order to be of value to the [01:07:00] conversation and entering a conversation without the need to, to know, to fix, to resolve. And part of those steps include learning how to reflect back. Someone has said, and I gotta tell you, when you first start that practice of reflecting back, it doesn't matter how clumsy it is, because when someone in your experience feels heard, it doesn't matter how clumsy it was, that got you to that moment of feeling heard.

Because so many of us don't feel heard in our society

and it's practicing. It's not, it's not coming at it from a place of perfection, but of progress, [01:08:00] man. Oh, I had the opportunity to listen to my husband earlier today and I was busy doing this, this, this, and this. It's not good enough to say, well, I'm just going to brush that off and I'll do better the next time.

Call yourself to account. Go to your spouse. Hey, you were trying to share something with me earlier today, and I just wasn't listening. Would you mind sharing it with me again? Holding ourselves to account is not just the mental recognition it takes the building of the bridge, it takes the action, it takes praying with our feet because guess what?

The gift we give to our spouse, our coworker, our children, when we go back to them and tell them, gosh, I'm really sorry you were trying to share this or you said that, and I just wasn't listening, could you [01:09:00] tell me again, reminds them of their value and worth and that what they have to 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll (2): share is important

and it shifts relationships. It shifts relationships. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah, it's something I know I need to practice and I'm sure most people need to practice this and everybody needs to practice it at different times because the more the gray, the love, the grayer, the pain and when things get uh, intense emotions flare up and it gets harder to communicate.

'cause you get so fixed on the feelings, you lose sight of the facts and the order. So that's great. You said all that. So Babs, let's talk about this. Where are you today and where are you heading next? So if our listeners want to connect, can continue the conversation, look at some of your resources, what's the [01:10:00] best place for 'em to contact you?

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: Easiest thing to do is check out my website. It's my name spelled out, AmiLynn carroll.com. I'm sure it'll be in the show notes. 

David Pasqualone: Yep. We, we will put in the show notes 'cause you have a different spelling of your name. We wanna make sure we get it right. 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: Absolutely. I appreciate that. And I gotta tell you, I do have a couple of free offerings.

I do a two day life charter incubator and that life charter incubator, it starts with that first stage, right? Where I am, God is that second stage there is, but one power, one spirit, one life. I am. And so as we begin to walk through that two day incubator, we do do a, a quick one-on-one, 15 minutes. Wanna make sure you're the right person.

'cause we wanna create a safe space. And everything I do today is to create a safe container so that I can genuinely and authentically be the light for others that I needed in my darkest hour and couldn't find it. [01:11:00] And so whether it's the website or social media, um, I'm really active on Instagram. You can find me on LinkedIn and Facebook, and of course it's all the spelling of my name, AmiLynn Carroll.

Um, if you like to read, uh, last June I actually wrote my first book and it's entitled Conversations of Consequence, lessons from The Still Small Voice, and it marries the metaphysical with the practical because look, the biblical, the spiritual does us no good, my friends, if we can't bring it down into our day-to-day life.

And I'd read so many amazing books and stories about people who had overcome remarkable people. And at the end of the book, I felt very elated for them. But I was left with the question, how do I. How do I take [01:12:00] what they learned and apply that to my life? So when I sat down in that, those final stages of writing conversations of consequence, every page is written with the idea of helping the the reader answer the question, how do I take these principles and employ them in my own experience in meaning and and practical ways?

David Pasqualone: Yeah. And that's our listeners know, six years, 300 plus episodes. Listen to repeat for life. Listen to what Amy's saying, do the good, you know, to each day. Repeat it each day. Get those positive habits so you can have a great life in this world, but more importantly, an attorney to come. So I'm tracking right with you, AmiLynn.

Now when people hear knowledge. You know, it's useless unless they apply it and they can check out your website, they can contact you. [01:13:00] But before we wrap up this episode, is there anything we miss between your birth and today? Or is there any other final thoughts you wanna share with our community? 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: Look, we can't miss anything.

What comes up comes up for a reason and there's someone, each component of our sharing today is likely to have touched someone and that's why it came out today. And so anything that didn't come up today wasn't meant to, is kind of the way I look at it. But what I would say to you, your listeners, to our brothers and sisters out there, genuinely just trying to do the best that they can, is that you were made perfect, whole and complete.

And that while our experiences, the things that happen to and around and for us, look. They build our story, but we are not our story. They're not our identity. We don't have to pick up those labels [01:14:00] and carry them forward. And here's the thing I'm learning is, is that when we stop picking that stuff up, guess what?

We don't have to learn how to put it down because it's God's job to mold us and create us and breathe life to into and through us for those around us. It's not our job to do it for others. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah, and that's a lesson that I'm still working on. I know a lot of our listeners are too, like Amy said. We're not there to fix things.

We're not there to, um, always give advice. We just need to learn to listen. And when asked, give Godly advice or when it's appropriate, give Godly advice. But it's hard sometimes just to listen when you have a heart to help. Right? So take key to what Amy said, and keep working on that. Listening and loving people to Christ.

So Amy, thank you [01:15:00] for being here today. It's been a true honor. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. 

AmiLynne “Babs” Carroll: Thank you for, for having me and for letting me share this time with you and your listeners. 

David Pasqualone: Absolutely. And ladies and gentlemen, we love you. Check out AmiLynn's website, contact Babs, and if you need anything, if I can help you or she can help you, I'm sure we both will do our best for you.

And if not, we'll see you in the next episode. Ciao. 

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