Transformation Through the Scars to Stars Community | Deb Weilnau

Hi, everyone, it's Deana with the Realized Foundation. And I'm here with Deb Weilnau, and Deb has written in all of our books. And she's attended all of our events since we started in March of 2021. And I'm so excited that she's joining us and this next book as well. So Deb, tell us about yourself, and then you can talk about your chapter.

Well, my name is Deb Weilnau. And I am, as Dina said, an author and all three books, however, I'm also a suicide survivor, and a suicide advocate, thanks to scars to stars. In my I am also very interested in academia. And I can't think enough and

That's okay. Tell us about your chapter.

Oh, my gosh. So my chapter in this book is, is entitled, blessings within a moment. And over the course of my life, and while I've been involved in scars to stars, I've actually grown and matured a lot over the last What is it two, three years. Two plus two plus, it seems like a lot longer. From the very first moment that I met Dina, we had a lot in common, as far as you know, both had suicidal ideations and have similar backgrounds. So from that very first moment, we kind of connected. And Deena could probably mentioned how I was during the very first summit, which was one of the best moments of my life, yet the scariest moments of my life, I had never shared my story with anybody outside of, you know, a few friends. And that summit allowed me to not only meet other folks who had similar backgrounds and in various backgrounds, I guess, you know, not just suicide, but also to give me a comfortable place to share my story. And by the end of that three day event, I decided to you know, I can speak at one of these. So the very next summit, Dina actually asked me to speak, and people were very receptive to my story. And so that, that's kind of how it started. And then when the very first book came out, it was a yes, I do want to, I do want to write about what was happening. And by doing so, I started to grow, and to learn that my shame or the things that I thought was very shameful in my life, were actually one were actually good attributes to my life. Which segues into this chapter here, which is kind of a culmination from, you know, being a suicide survivor to being a suicide, somebody who has was a victim of suicide, to this one here, where I talk about how all the events in my life have led up to where I am now, which is a suicide advocate. And as we look back through our lives, we find moments that we realize that are just blessings. And if I look at my life from 2018, to now I can see all the little segments, and all the little things have happened from losing jobs, to having opportunities to teach as an adjunct professor, to getting involved in many different things, whether it's academics, or even a part of now being on the board of scars, the stars, that have actually made me the person I am. When you can take a moment like losing a job. And a year later, two years later, you can see why it happened. You take a look at life a little bit differently. And I take a look at all of the opportunities that I've had over the course of my life to learn the lessons that you know, my higher power or the universe, whatever you call it, everybody's different. How they have blessed me even from losing a job. In this chapter I talk about I've had a relationship that was abusive. And you know, you never think that you're ever and you're never in your wildest dreams going to have to live with a narcissist or somebody who's going to be verbally abusive to you don't think you're going to put up with that. And you know, I found myself doing it for six years. And then I saw that losing a job got me out of that situation where academia saved me. And I've had certain people in my life life as far as professors, who've helped me to see that, even in my darkest moments that you just don't give up, you just keep pushing forward. So that's kind of what the chapter is about, although of blessings that have happened to make me who I am, and how it all comes together with the pieces of the puzzle that is my life.

Yes, my life, I'm very happy that you're on the board now. And it's, there's actually three board members now that we're all at that very first event, and have been through everything. And it's, it's pretty awesome to see your transformation, and also see what we have built to help other people know they're not alone. That's the whole purpose is to promote suicide prevention, and mental health, and how do we how do we reach people and support them in a peer to peer environment? And Dev is like the living, breathing specimen, model specimen of our whole mission. Because I remember, I remember I was in a group with the lady who introduced us, and she called me or she, maybe she sent me a Facebook message, I don't remember. But she reached out to me. And she said, would you have a call with my friend, Deb, or something like that. And I was like, Sure. And so I called you and we were on the phone for about an hour. And it was right before the first event I ever did. And I was like, so nervous about it. And, um, and for those of you who don't know, I've done events, like my whole career, but I had never done virtual events. And I was in a group for a year and 2020. Learning about virtual event. So that was my first summit in March 21, that we did, and we had 15 speakers. And, you know, it was it was pretty cool. And we now we do events a little different. But I think it was a great idea. And those summits were what gave us the idea to make these books, and tell people stories, because they were so touching as speakers on a virtual event in a Zoom Room with people. And so we're like, how can we reach more people with this? And so we started putting them into books, which is been really fabulous, I think. And we've gotten royalties from many countries. I think the furthest away is either Australia or Japan, I'm not sure which, but like, you know, we've we've reached a lot of people. And now we're at a point where we really need to focus on you know, what, can we do better? And how can we raise more money so we can help more people? And that's what our board meeting was about last week? I think it was it was interesting to get to have new voices there. And, and like, how can we, what can we do this better? And what ideas do we have? And so if anybody since I'm on this subject, if anybody's willing to support what we're doing, you can go to realize foundation.org And you can you can donate $1 to a million dollars, whatever you would like. And it goes through our donations platform with Q give and you'll get a receipt. It's tax deductible. If you want to sponsor an Arthur, it's $350. If you you know we we do corporate sponsorships for our save a life challenge event, which is 1500. So I just wanted to throw that out there since we're talking about the board and fundraising. But Deb, I want you to also talk a little bit about your writing process, because now that you've done this several times, what has changed for you from the first book to now?

You know, what a transformation you know, and I take a look at the person that introduced us, you know, in this chapter, you're gonna find out that she has introduced me to so many people who have changed my life, it just astronomical ways. The very first chapter that I wrote, was just after losing one of my tenants to suicide. And being a suicide survivor myself, I found it very, very difficult to come to terms with oh my gosh, how I'm feeling now I'm seeing the other side of it. So I started. So I see the transformation of going from a Okay, this is where I was, too. Okay, the next one, so a little lighter than the first one. And now I'm into something that is extremely positive. And taking the moments that were shame and actually flipping them around to show that, you know, no matter where you are, how dark and how much darkness you're in, the light at the end of the tunnel is just around the corner. So finding your life's purpose. And by walking through each chapter and sharing my story, what I've actually been able to do is find my life's purpose as being a suicide advocate. I have Hi, I have lots of goals and dreams that I never thought I would reach. And, you know, I think by writing and speaking, and, you know, just being a part of other people's lives in a way that I never imagined, has allowed me to find my life's purpose. So when you write in a book like this, and you share your story, there's at least one other person out there in the world that's needs to hear what you've gone through. You might think it's shameful, but it's not. We're not alone. None of us are alone unless we choose to be. So sharing your story, and what an amazing group of people, you know, the authors in every single book have become friends, almost like a small family. We support each other. Dina, has you do an amazing job pulling this together? You know, between you and Demi? Who is our editor? You know, what an easy process if you want to share your story, and you want to be a part of something a little bit bigger than yourself and help other people around you, by all means, you know, reach out to the realize foundation and into Hey, you know, I'm interested in, in writing my story to help to help others, or even sponsor somebody.

Yeah, I will also say like there is we now have a submission form on our website. So people can go there. If you go to realize foundation.org, and you go to the Scars to Stars page, there is a place right below the header that says, are you ready to tell your story. And there's a video with some of our Arthur's talking about their experience, which Deb is in that video, too. And then there's, there's a form that you can fill out, and it'll ask you some questions for your information and kind of a brief sentence or two about what your story is about. And then you can submit that and it comes to us and we will reach out and schedule a call with you. We start our next one. Well, we start the projects in in February, late February, that comes out in May for Mental Health Awareness Month. And then we start one in June, which comes out in September for Suicide Prevention Month. So that's what what that process is, it's about 12 weeks, we have an hour call every week. And we give you the deadlines way up front. So you have it. And we have a member hub where you can log in, you can watch the recordings of the videos we do and the calls we do. And it have all your resources and everything in one place. Or we didn't have that last year. But now it's I think it's much easier for people to navigate and get the information they need. And so we just do our calls on Zoom. And then we have a book launch event, it's 90 minutes. And if you it's on the 22nd of the month, whether it's May or September. And the reason for that is the first one we put out was on February 2, February 22nd of 2022. So it was all twos. And so we just keep it going with the day of the month for launches. But yeah, it's been such an amazing journey. And it's it's fun to meet new orders that come in and don't know our process. And it's also fun to have people like Deb who've written in multiple books that are just really involved. And, you know, community is amazing. We have a private Facebook group. I want to I want to just talk about our process for a minute because I wrote in two anthology books like in 2018 and 19 and never met the other authors never had a call. I didn't have anybody to edit my stuff. Like none of that happened. I just said okay, pay $600 and write your chapter and send it to us and we're going to publish it and we'll tell you what day is coming out like that. Was it. And so when I, when we started this process, I was like, we have to make this better. Like, we have to make this and in a way that it is that we're building our community, we're having more conversations about mental health and suicide prevention. And we're using our personal stories to make people know they're not alone. And that's pretty much our mission. So there has to be interaction, there has to be support. So this is what we came up with we, we do this 12 week thing, where we spend time together during the process, and we get to know each other. And then we have this cool event where we can invite all our friends and promote the book for ourselves. And then we were also starting a podcast. And we have, like I said, we have a private Facebook group, anybody can join, it's called scars to stars live. So I'm saying I don't usually talk about all this on these interviews, but I feel like it's appropriate with you, dad, because you've been part of building what we have done. And it's a lot, you know, you gave me feedback all along the way, which really helped me know, like, Does this resonate with people or not, you know, and so it's, it's been a really fantastic journey. And there's only a few of us that have been there since the first day. And since you are one of them, I thought that it was appropriate to explain a little more about how this all works.

And you know, the cool thing is, is you don't, you don't really have to know what your topic is going to be about, right, you can have an idea. And all the way up until you submit your first draft, you can pretty much change it right? As long as it falls within a certain amount of certain criteria. But it's the cool thing is, is every book that comes out, we meet new authors, and we welcome into our to our little family. And we all talk amongst ourselves, you know, I mean, that's like, we just keep growing and growing as a community. And it's cool, because you get to see how each other grows and how they've developed their own, whether, you know, nonprofit, or coaching or whatever they're doing right to help other people. So it's just a neat thing to see how, you know, this here, we we pay it forward with our stories, but that then we all go on to pay it forward in other ways, which is it's it's a blessing in itself, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's what you were saying about blessing in the moment is, it reminds me of the the process I went through of losing my business in 2020. And trying to process my mental health journey, and trying to figure out what to do, because we had, we had set this foundation up as something very different to do with my former business around mental health. And when that all fell apart, I lost my whole business and everything, bankruptcy, all of it. And it's like, okay, well, now, I still want to do this. And I still want to focus on suicide prevention. But how do we do that? Because we don't know. I didn't know what it will take. And I'm like, I don't have a degree in psychology, who's going to listen to me? Like how what, how are we going to move this forward and of way that we can help people. And it was all that group I was in around virtual events that helped me figure out let's do a summit and start there and see who wants to speak on it and see how that's gonna work. But what came up all of what came out of all of that, for me, was my own tagline, like, Deb has blessing in the moment. Mine is thankful for the scars. And that is what started all of this in my mind, you know, for it to even be a thing. And so I think it's what dad says, going back to finding your purpose. You know what I was doing before. I was good at it. I enjoyed it. I thought it was my purpose until I found what I'm doing now. And I'm like, that was my zone of excellence. This is my zone of genius because it is something I enjoy. And I feel driven to do. And we're helping other people. So it's the impact that is so important to me.

But it's but it's cool because when you look at the chain of events that led you to here, you know at the time when you're in it right when You know, when you're in that moment, that's so painful and just you don't you don't think you're gonna come out of that hole that you're in. And then, you know, you look back a few years later, and you can see exactly why it happened. You know, it's like, and, you know, I had a job that I lost, you know, and I knew that it wasn't the right fit. But you know, when you're, when you're nervous about it, because you have to pay your bills and things. When you lose that job. You're like, oh, no, what am I going to do, but it's like, it's the best thing that ever happened. So every job I've lost every, every relationship that's ended, every every person that I meet. It's supposed to be a part of my life. And just like scars, the stars, which is a huge part of my life, and one of the best things I ever I've ever done. And I'm gonna be here for the long haul.

Well, thank you, Deb. I'm glad you're gonna be here for the long haul. Maybe you can take over for me one day. No, I'm just joking. But I'm glad to have you on the board. And I think we were we have built something very special. And I'm excited to see what the next months and years bring. And who else will join our community? So but thank you for having this conversation with me today. And is there anything else you want to say before we we end the recording?

You know, I want to say a big thank you. Because if I would not have met you. And I wouldn't have put myself out there, I would not have appreciated the journey that I'm on, I wouldn't have found my voice in a way that's going to allow me to reach my life's purpose of which she'll be speaking about suicide prevention. So thank you very much, Tina. And what an amazing what an amazing, nonprofit. I'm proud to be a part of it.

Well, thank you, Deb. And it wouldn't, it probably wouldn't be the way it is without you. Because when you showed up at the beginning, it was like, oh, there's somebody here, I don't know. And it pushed me to do things. The way I thought would be best for helping people instead of it being a bunch of people I knew and it was more of a friend zone, you know. So thank you for for doing that and pushing me to do better.

And I was a tough nut to crack. I'll tell you