Today, Oprah is bringing us the lessons that we can rise…we can make it through anything…because others have….so we can too.  This is an amazing reminder that no matter how hard your day has been…your life has been…you can make it through it and move forward.  There is strength and power in our lives that we are not even aware that we have.  Just see these notes…and know that you can do it.  Here are my notes…

• We are to learn from  an each others pain and grow ourselves up out of the pain.
• What can I take away from this?  With the person opening themselves up and sharing that pain with us, listen and ask what you can learn from it.
• Case Study: Christine McFadden Rising Again – In 2004, Christine McFadden tells the story of her ex-husband killing her four children as she took her morning walk.  She says, “My whole life is gone,” and shares her pain and how she goes on.  Trying to carry on…it’s still a struggle.  “I have to rebuild and create a life somehow and in doing so, I have to keep my children with me…I don’t know how to make that happen,” Christine says.  (Christine’s Story from GMA)
• Oprah Lesson – The fact that she’s able to here means that I can stand with whatever comes my way…because there is nothing worse than this.  If she can stand here and continue to move forward, whatever I’m going through, I can get through it.
• “We acquire the strength we have overcome.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Support Systems – Friends and family stayed with her 24 hours a day for a long time.  Starting a foundation in their name has helped her.  Their lives meant more than the day of their death.
• You don’t have to be able to take big giant steps.  Just hold on to whatever you can that allows you to take little tiny steps forward. Find whatever meaning you can and hold on.
• Oprah on Christine McFadden: She is a living hero.  This is what heroism looks like.
• “It is worth remembering that the time of greatest gain in terms of wisdom and inner strength is often that of greatest difficulty.” – Dalai Lama
• Case Study: Shelly Porter – All three of her sons were murdered by her ex-husband.  Now, 7 years later she has remarried and has 2 children but still, there is not a day that goes by that she doesn’t think of her sons.  During the Oprah Show in 2004 when Christine McFadden was sharing her story, Shelly Porter came on the show to share her journey.  “Everyone makes a choice of what you do everyday.  When things like this happen, your choices are very real.”  Her strength to go on is something she says she does for her 3 boys.
• When someone you love dies, you have angels you know.
• When you are going through the heart and the heat of the pain, words are just words.
• Sometimes being able to rise up from tragedy, it means you have to create a new normal for yourself.  It’s necessary to create a new normal – a new way of being in the world.  Take one step, then another, then another…just keep going.
• Case Study: Lives Saved by Christine Sharing her Story – Oprah tells Christine McFadden, “From the ashes of your children will arise something very powerful for the rest of the world.”  By Christine sharing her story,  there are countless people who saw what she went through and realized that they could go on.  “I get up because she can get up.”  Christine inspired people who were giving up on life that they can make it through anything, because she was able to.
• Lesson:  It can be done.  For every person who makes it…when you see somebody who can rise, you see that rising is possible.  She can do it. Others have done it.  As long as you are willing to keep taking a breath, you can too.
• Case Study:  Christine Today. Four years after the deaths of her children, Christine remarried. Even though she thought she couldn’t have children, in 2007 she gave birth to twin girls.  Christine shares how hard it was to move forward – holidays, soccer fields, the cereal aisle.  “Everyone has a calling in life…and her’s is to be a mother,” Oprah says.  Move forward and create another life for yourself.
• All of us…no matter what we are going through.  There is a way through, there is a way up and out of it.
• “The only way to get through the waves of pain are to walk right through the fire and heat of the pain.” Camile Crosby
• Case Study: Oprah Producer, Brian P. on doing the show on Christine – Brian shares that Christine’s story had a profound impact on him.  For 6 years since the show, he still carries a picture that Christine gave him of her children in his wallet “to remind me to not sweat the small stuff.  If Christine could survive this, then I can get through anything and so can anyone.”  *Beautifully said, Brian!
• Case Study: 9/11 – How our country rose us from the ashes of that.  All that died are angels for us all.
• All death is to remind us life.  All death is to help us to see, to feel, to know that nothing is promised and that every single day should be lived  the conscious space of kicking it up a notch, making yourself better, growing yourself into who you were meant to be and becoming who you are.  Reminder – LIVE this moment and know that until the last breath has been take from you that you have the opportunity…