155 Prospect Ave, West Orange, NJ 07052, USA 
973-744-3456
There are different kinds of healing, and much has been discussed and proven about healing through chiropractic treatment. Dr. Liz Hoefer can attest to the kind of healing that she experienced with upper cervical chiropractic treatment. More than that, Dr. Hoefer stumbled upon a different kind of healing brought by an unexpected circumstance in her life. She realizes how wonderfully life goes on when you open yourself up to healing, and that’s what she would like to share with everyone.
Listen To The Episode Here
Divine Appointments with Dr. Liz Hoefer
We have one of my favorite people in the entire world, Dr. Liz Hoefer. She is upper cervical Blair chiropractor out of Rancho Santa Margarita, California. This woman has taught me every single thing I know about upper cervical chiropractic. She taught me everything. I’m so incredibly grateful to have her in my life. She still helps me on a weekly basis. Dr. Hoefer, how are you doing?
I’m so happy to be back on your show.
Dr. Hoefer, you have had one of the wildest rides one could go through. You found out something in your life that changed the entire course of your life. Everything that you thought was one way in your life completely got reversed and flipped around. It’s made you reevaluate everything in your life for the better. Would you say so?
There aren’t words to describe the magnitude of what I’ve been through since May of last year. We should give a little background.
Let’s start from the beginning because it wouldn’t make sense otherwise.
On the first episode that I did with you, it was my story of healing through the Blair upper cervical work. It saved my life and it’s why I’m so passionate about being a Blair upper cervical chiropractor and training students and sending them off and watching them do what they do. What led me to even needing a Blair upper cervical correction as we know in the field that we practice in chiropractic is that there are traumas and they can come from thoughts. They can come from toxins like medication, thoughts, and physical trauma. My upbringing that we’ve talked on our first episode was the physical trauma and the emotional abuse that I suffered throughout my life.
EM 91 | Healing
_Healing: Most times, all we ever want is to be acknowledged that we are loved and wanted.
My story is still my story. It’s just that it’s a lot more involved and it’s a lot deeper and there are a lot more layers to it. It’s interesting how life goes when you are opening yourself up to healing. When you open yourself up to being present, the most amazing things occur. If you would’ve told me on May 5th, that the next day this thing happened in my life, I would have laughed at you. I grew up in this tumultuous situation and I needed to have massive healing physically, emotionally, and mentally. I got my Blair upper cervical correction and I was well on my way to a physical healing and emotional healing in that regard.
What did you need healing for the people that didn’t listen to the first episode?
I was suicidal for thirteen years. Every single day from age 14 to 27, I had this thought in my brain that I didn’t want to live anymore. When I was age 13 to about 22, I attempted suicide three different times. My daughter Lauren was what kept me here. I knew that I didn’t want to have her grow up in a situation that was without her mother because my mother had left me. She abandoned me and my little brother on Christmas eve when we were babies. I wasn’t even three and he was fifteen months old. There were abandonment issues and there was trauma physically and emotionally. We had so much chaos with my dad, Larry, who raised me but then had different wives. We called six different women mother before I was twelve. There was a lot of chaos growing up.
When I got into chiropractic school, I just knew that I had to do something better for me and Lauren. I set out to have this amazing career and it wasn’t until I was 27 that I got my life changing Blair correction. I knew at that moment that the rest of my life was mapped out. I’m going to be doing this forever. I’m going to be screaming this from the rooftops. Here I am several years later, I am out in practice. I’m serving on three different boards. I’m serving in a high political situation in the state of California and I’m serving on the Blair Chiropractic Society Board. I’m serving in my local government here in Orange County and involved in leadership and mentoring students and educating interns.
I’m having a great life. I’m married to my husband. We have two amazing kids together. Life couldn’t be better. What had happened was in 2015, the State of California started fighting against this potential law, SB277. In California, the law passed. They took away our right to be able to send our children to school with a philosophical or a religious exemption. I had to get a medical exemption for my children and my children have never been vaccinated. They don’t have vaccine damage as my first daughter does. In the State of California, they gave this provision for the family history. Because my mother left and because I had such tumultuous relationship with Larry’s family, I didn’t have all of my medical information and I didn’t have ready access to it. I was convinced based on my health and my health history and things that I’ve experienced that I had this gene mutation called the MTHFR gene. That is one of the considerations they use to determine if you are a qualifier for a medical exemption because you don’t process fully. You don’t chelate metals, you don’t handle toxic load very well.
Could it be extra dangerous for a person that has that mutation?
I wanted to find out if I had it to protect my children from having to get a vaccination. I went on Ancestry.com and I ordered myself a DNA test to get my genetic code. It was the cheapest test out there. The reason why I went with Ancestry.com was that 23andMe used to be the go-to test but they are sold out and they stopped running the MTHFR panel. You can get your raw data, but if your raw data doesn’t include the thing I was looking for, it was a waste of time and money. Ancestry hasn’t done that yet. I ordered an ancestry test. It happened to be cheaper. They were running a special. I did the kit on my birthday. I was 38 years old and I sent my little spit off and I called it a day. About a month later, I got my results back and my husband texted me. I was at the office and he was like, “I just saw the email pop up. Your results came in.” I was like, “Open it up.” He was like, “It says that you’re half Irish.” I was like, “That’s super weird because everybody in my family is German.” If anybody seen me, they know that I’m very fair and I’ve got freckles. I’ve got Irish tendencies, but I was 50%. I guess my mom never shared with me her genealogy, so it must be from her.
I called my grandma Marge and I said, “Who’s Irish?” She was like, “I don’t know.” I just dropped it. I didn’t even think anything of it because she didn’t know, and I wasn’t interested in that. I was interested in getting my raw data, which I got. I did find out that I have the MTHFR gene and essentially qualified my kids among other family history issues that are legitimate bonafide reasons why my kids were able to qualify for a medical exemption. I was stoked. I was over the moon because now my kids are safe. They can get an education. I don’t have to be their instructor because, at some points in my day, them getting vaccinated would be safer than me being their teacher. Education to my own children wasn’t my calling. It’s not my gifting. I love them and I want them to get a good education and it wasn’t going to come from me and it freaked me out. I didn’t want to have to move out in the State of California because I love it here and I have a practice and all that fun stuff.
About a few weeks later, this is like mid-April, I start getting these emails from random people. I don’t know if you’ve ever gotten those email chains from the prince so and so of Nigeria and telling you that you’ve got $38 billion that they want to deposit into your account. I was like, “Is this a scam?” I don’t have time to small talk with my sixth cousin who lives in Massachusetts. The way that it works is that if you don’t set your thing to private and you agree whenever you do this thing, you have no ability to tell who and who can’t contact you. It automatically connects you to who you’re related to DNA-wise.
EM 91 | Healing
Healing: To feel that you have compassion to the person whom you’ve had trouble in the past with is instantly healing.
Whoever sent the test in, if they sent the test in as well, they can contact you?
Yeah, through the Ancestry site. Because I had the Ancestry site linked up to my email, I would get these random little emails from people that would say, “It looks like we’re fourth cousins.” I was like, “I don’t have time to deal with fourth cousins who live in Virginia. I don’t care.” They kept being persistent and I was like, “How do I undo this where they can’t get ahold of me?” They weren’t rude and it wasn’t that they were being too pushy. They were like, “Do you know this family? My family is this and that.” I was like, “No, I’ve never heard of them. Honestly, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I don’t have time for this. I’m going to deactivate my account. Then I got this email from this woman who said, “Are you sure that you’re not related to or do you know anybody in the Cullen, Kelly, Peacock family?” I was like, “I’ve never heard of any of those people.” She was like, “I’m second cousins to these people and I was born in Rock Island, Illinois.” I’m like, “That’s interesting. I was born in Rock Island, Illinois.” She was like, “That’s weird that you would know.” I go, “Honestly, I don’t know what to tell you.”
I got an email on May 5th, 2018 that says, “We are closely related. I’ll explain soon.” I wrote back, “Let me know.” If I’m not interested, I’m like, “Whatever.” I’m not going to be a jerk. I’m not going to be like, “Stop talking to me.” I was like, “Let me know. That’s interesting.” I wasn’t going to pursue it. I had no idea. I didn’t ever even log into the Ancestry.com website. I only got the email notifications through my cell phone. My husband was the one who logged in and said, “It says you’re 50% Irish.” I’m at a girl scout camp with my middle daughter Makayla. We’re doing our little thing out in Orange County. We’re camping and having a good time. On May 6th at 8:30 AM, I get an email and it pops up on my phone. It says, “My dear Liz, I want you to know that I’ve been searching for you your entire life and I’ve always loved you.” I was like, “What is this?” I read down and it said, “Love and peace, Brandon L. Kelly.” I got goosebumps all over my body. I was like, “Number one, nobody calls me Liz unless they know me. Number two, what does he mean he’s been looking for me his whole life?” What does that mean? I wrote him back through my cell phone and I wrote, “Is this a joke?”
Within a minute, I got a response and it said, “I can understand how confused you must be. Your mother is Kimberly from Albuquerque, New Mexico.” All the sudden I gasped audibly, and I had goosebumps all over my whole body and I immediately felt nauseous. I don’t even think my husband could tell you my mother’s name because she’s never been in my life. Let alone where she’s from. I was composing myself and I viewed the email again. At the bottom of this little correspondence on Ancestry when you have people talking to you, it will say, “View match.” What that means is you can click on it and it will give you the predicted relationship that your DNA matches you with. I clicked on “View match” and it immediately pops up into another screen and it says, “Predicted relationship, parent-child.” In that instant, every single thing about my life that I knew was deeply shattered, turned upside down, obliterated. I was thrown on top of my head. It’s interesting because in an instant, in 2007, my Blair upper cervical correction put my head on straight but emotionally I was shattered. As soon as I saw that, I was very confused because that can’t be. Larry is my dad and his mom is my grandma and all the people I grew up with.
Everybody that raised you is not your biological family.
The only person I’m related to is my brother who’s my half-brother. My dad and his third wife and those three children, I am not biologically related to any of them at all. As soon as I came to grips with the reality of what I read, I saw his name again. I put his name into Facebook and as soon as I did that and I saw his face, I was like, “That is my father.” I looked just like him. I started scrolling through all of his friends and I found a bunch of people that I assumed were relatives, sisters, cousins, aunts. It turns out he’s the youngest of ten. I’m one of the 31st cousins and I now know who my tribe is. I now know who I look like and who I am biologically related to.
EM 91 | Healing
Healing: It’s so remarkable what healing can do and what traumatic grief can open up and then allow to come to pass.
The kicker is they were fifteen minutes away from me my entire life. I grew up in Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa and then they were across the river in Rock Island and East Moline, Illinois. My biological father was fifteen minutes away from me my entire life and I didn’t even know that he was. When I had to call Larry, the man who I had a tumultuous relationship most of my life with, I at that point had been estranged for him for five years. I hadn’t talked to him in five years because of all the different problems that we had. It took me about a week to make the call because I wanted to wrap my head around what it is that I learned. Is this a real thing? There’s no denying DNA. I had to come to terms with, “How is this going to impact me? How is this going to impact my husband, my children, my life personally, and then how am I going to share this with Larry and his family?” They’re my family. That’s what I knew. I started thinking, “Maybe they all knew. Maybe that’s why they were mean. That’s why they tolerated me.” That’s how I felt. I was tolerated. Maybe they knew and that’s why they did their best, but they didn’t want to tell me because it was so heartbreaking.
As it turns out, admittedly Larry didn’t know. I called him. In fact, I didn’t even have his phone number. That’s how disconnected we were. I had to get ahold of him through Facebook Messenger and hoped that he answered the request to have a conversation. He did and we had a conversation. We talked through the camera. It was very difficult to spit it out but I spit it out and I said, “I took a DNA test.” He goes, “Let me guess. I’m not your dad.” I go, “That is correct.” He stopped and turned his head and he started sobbing. That is the second time in my life I’ve ever seen my dad cry. The first time was the night my mother left on Christmas eve in 1982. These two very distant events were connected by the same person and very traumatic for us. He was so upset.
He started getting mad and he was saying things about her and I said, “Are you kidding me? This is the shock of a lifetime.” He said, “I don’t care what DNA says, you’re still my daughter. I raised you. I brought you home from the hospital.” I cried and I said, “It’s all I’ve ever wanted from you. It’s for you to acknowledge that you had love for me and that you wanted me.” Yes, we’ve had our issues and we had our disconnects. There was stuff that happened that it wasn’t awesome, but at the moment that I could see his grief and I could see his shock, it was instantly healing. It wasn’t because I want him to feel bad. It was because I had compassion for him as a human being. I needed to see it and I needed to feel it and I did. It was instantly healing.
Me and him, despite all of the trauma that we’ve experienced together, we’re close as if nothing bad ever happened. The way the family goes, things happen. You go through hard stuff, but then you love each other, and you have a relationship and that’s how it’s supposed to go. We had a hard, rough, disconnected time but this particular traumatic event bonded us in such a way that now we’re good. We can call each other and laugh and joke. He can sit with me and hold me when I’m sad and cry. He can answer tough questions that he was never able to be emotionally available for in the past. It’s so remarkable what healing can do and what traumatic grief can open up and then allow to come to pass.
Why do you think that is? Why couldn’t he answer those questions before?
I don’t think that either one of us could even fathom the capacity of the inhumanity of what was done to us because as it turns out, my mother knew the whole time and she did it on purpose. She knew that I wasn’t Larry’s daughter. She was pregnant when she met Larry and then told Larry he was the father. He didn’t think to not believe her because when you’re sleeping with somebody and they get pregnant, you just assume that it’s yours. He didn’t do the math. I was able to have a conversation with my mother a few months ago and it was surprisingly cathartic. I had every intention of getting the phone and yelling, screaming, being angry and telling her, “What have you done? My entire life is totally screwed over.” When I got on the phone, I had nothing but unconditional love and forgiveness.
It was the most bizarre thing but that’s how God works. He works through us and he gives us the ability to do hard things. After I found out that information, I don’t think I slept for five days. I sobbed and I cried, and I thought of different circumstances in my life. The first time I went to a high school dance, when I graduated from high school, when I had a fight with my friend down the street and how I would run to Larry and how he would be there. I realized that it wasn’t supposed to be him. It was supposed to be Brandon. I’m 38 years old and I have to reconcile the entire situation. It was almost like I was unwillingly adopted. My mother played a trick on everybody, but then she just took off.
Did she say why she did that? How old is she?
She was sixteen when she got pregnant with me. She was seventeen when she had me. If I can go back to myself at sixteen and seventeen, I wouldn’t have made a rational decision either. I have compassion for her as a seventeen-year-old girl trying to be married and whatever. She said, “I never could figure out how to untell the biggest lie I ever told.” I quote, “I can’t tell you what to do, but the truth is always the right answer.” I told her I forgive her, and I told her that she doesn’t have to go to her grave with this. I told her that I don’t expect to have a relationship with her, but she doesn’t have to live with this guilt and the shame that she’s been living in for all of these years. I had talked to her when I was 27, I had talked to her when I was 25 and I’d seen her. I’d met her in person when I was seventeen.
EM 91 | Healing
Healing: Unconditional love and forgiveness are the most bizarre things, but that’s how God works.
Is that the first time you saw her since that Christmas night when she left? What was that like? Was it disappointing?
It was weird. It was disappointing, but it was exciting because it was my mother and I had never seen her. Here I am junior in high school, I wanted to impress her. I wanted her to be in my life. I was just a little girl. I was the same age that she was when she had me.
Was she open arms or was she standoff?
She was very distant and now I understand why because she’s created a life where we don’t exist. Everybody that’s in her life doesn’t even know that she has children. That’s the story.
She’s didn’t have any more children after that?
She had me and my brother and then she was out, and she never had any other.
Did she ever got married again?
She got married to a guy, then she got divorced. He died. She spent twenty years with a man but never married. She still lives in Idaho.
Did she ever want to reach out and tell you?
I don’t know. She was broken. She was done. She couldn’t undo it and she didn’t know how to fix it, so she was just absent. If you’re holding that secret to come back in and tell the truth after so many years, I don’t know how I would be but I know the way it happened. It wasn’t the way I would have wanted it to happen, but at the same time, it happened like it was supposed to happen.
Was she shocked that you knew?
Yes, she was very shocked. I called her up and I said, “Is this Kim?” She said, “Yes.” I said, “This is your daughter, Elizabeth and I have some questions.” We had a 30-minute conversation. She confessed to everything. She said she was sorry and then she hung up abruptly and I had never talked to her again. I was not sleeping that first five days and then trying to understand that there’s this man, Brandon, who has known about me because he knew that she was pregnant. He knew that she was pregnant and she made it very clear that she got married to Larry. He was going to be the father. Brandon was out of the picture and Brandon didn’t have the capacity at eighteen years old to come in and find me and rescue me. He never knew my last name. He never knew what happened. He didn’t know that I was only across the river. He just knew that Kim had me. He didn’t know where she was. He didn’t know that she had left.
When the ancestry test connected us, he knew that he had to get ahold of me and that’s when he wrote the email. He didn’t know if he was walking into a family that ever existed. He didn’t know if he was walking into the worst possible situation. He didn’t know that I was never with my mother since I was two years old. He didn’t know that Larry didn’t know. He had no idea. He went in blind but he knew that he had to** tell the truth. He knew that this was his opportunity that he had been praying about for many years. The reason why I wanted to talk to you about grief and healing is because that circumstance was the most mind-blowing thing that I could even comprehend happening to a human being. All of the things that I’ve gone through emotionally, physically, and mentally, it was something else. What I used to do was I stayed busy. You know me. I had to schedule time in just to have dinner.
You took weeks off and you did all right. You had to.
I took weeks off. I went back to the Midwest and I spent time with my biological father. He came here a couple of different times. We just had our first Christmas together. He and his wife came out. They’d been married almost 30 years and they were never able to have kids together. I’m his only daughter and he has three granddaughters from me. It was an instant family, but it’s not easy. She left me on Christmas. Christmas has always been a little rough emotionally even though I’ve tried to change that and focus on what is the meaning of Christmas. I’m doing it to replace that bad memory for my children. They don’t deserve to suffer because I did. This Christmas they flew out and we had our first Christmas together. We did a family photo together. My friend Chella who took the picture, she titled the entire shoot Reunited.
EM 91 | Healing
Healing: The truth is always the right answer.
That’s what this episode should be called Reunited because the truth is, in God’s perfect timing, I was allowed to be reconnected with my true identity. That is that I am half Irish and that Brandon Kelly is my father. Larry Zellmer is my dad. Even though we’ve had our struggles, we’re completely reconciled. Because I was able to sit in the grief and be in a hard place and just sob and cry and be able to be there, I had my husband and my kids and some close friends. They sit there with me. They didn’t say anything. They didn’t try to fix anything. They would just sit there and let me cry.
My friend, Galina Denzel, she is a somatic experience worker. The somatic experience work that she has done with me these several months has been transformative in my ability to let the grief go through like it’s supposed to. It’s not a linear process. It is not the same at the same time. There are two books that I wanted to mention that were helpful for me. One of them I read before I even knew about Brandon and it’s called The Body Keeps the Score. It’s an incredible book and it’s about how trauma and emotional problems are manifested in your body. People that come in with headaches or chronic migraines or back pain, it could be an emotional issue.
As a chiropractor, we try to get to the root of it and we often do find that there is a traumatic event, whether it’s physical thoughts or toxins. The author of that book is Bessel van der Kolk. He is the doctor out of Boston that did this pioneering research on PTSD. I read that book and it set the stage for me to be able to take this information in and apply it in a way that was meaningful. About a few months before I learned about Brandon, I was introduced to this book by Galina. The title is called It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We are and How to End the Cycle. The author is Mark Wolynn. I had started reading it and it was great.
When I found out about Brandon, what I realized is that we needed to do this book together because both of us had experienced this traumatic event and we were connected genetically. It’s interesting how the things that I struggle with are the things that he’s struggled with, his parents struggled with, and their parents struggled. Another thing that’s interesting about my genetics and my DNA is that it turns out, my family was one of the founding fathers of the Fenian uprising in Ireland. You know how fired up I get about people that are trying to oppress. I’m a very social justice driven individual and I’m all about taking care of the lesser people and wanting to fight for people that are an underdog. My family started the uprising that kept the British tyranny from overtaking Ireland. They went a little criminal and then they became the IRA. It’s so interesting that the way that I am and the things that I’m passionate about are passed down from generation. We’ve got this cool history. A lot of the Chicago politicians, the Daley Plaza, and all those folks, we call them shirttail cousins because I’m related to them through my great grandfather, Patrick Colin.
You were lucky enough to have this unbelievable event happen in your life where you did so much healing. Do you think it’s possible for someone to heal that doesn’t get that type of closure, and if so, how would they go about healing?
Yes, because I was well on my way to having a great recovery without the truth, without knowing the underlying trauma. I had this tenacity within me, just who I am as a person to continually improve as a person. That’s why from age 27 until age 38, I was excelling in my career and having a different story with my marriage. I’m having a different circumstance with my own children because I wanted to do something different. I have always had the desire personally to improve. If people don’t have that desire, I don’t know that there’s an answer even if they knew the truth and they could get better. I’ve always had that desire to want to keep improving even if I had never found out about Brandon. The truth is, it was a miracle that I was ever even having the ability. When you look at things and you’re like, “If that hadn’t had to happen and this hadn’t had to happen.” If this stupid law hadn’t passed, I would’ve never even thought about it.
It’s all connected whether you see it or not. You can’t shake it.
As much as I dislike the man that introduced this bill into the state legislator, I almost have to say thank you because if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have been discovering the most incredible thing that’s ever been discovered in my life. I wouldn’t have had the blessing of knowing that I’ve had a father out there for several years who has been dying to meet me, who’s been praying about me, who’s been trying to find me. He was so close to finding me so many years ago and then it got squashed with stupid opinions and different things. The truth is it was a perfect time for him to find me now because I’m able to receive it. I’m able to process it in a healthy way. I’m able to have space, the time, and the available resources that I can take weeks off and do what I need to do to get this healing done.
How much easier and amazing is it that he’s such an amazing person? His family seems such an amazing person. That’s your DNA. Those are amazing people that you came from. That must be very comforting.
It is and it answered a lot of questions. The truth is I never looked like anybody that I grew up around. I always chalked it up to, “I must just look like my mom and her sister.” I could see resemblances in pictures, but I didn’t have them in front of me. I’m not even kidding you, Dr. Pecca. He came to the airport, he flew to Orange County to meet me before Father’s Day. The very first thing that I did was I took him to the office to get his head on straight. I had to get him adjusted. That’s my thing. I had known him for a whole hour and a half and I’m sitting there doing an intake with him. I realized we have the same lisp. When we get tired or when get goofy, this little lisp happens. I have the same lisp and we have the same shaped eyes and we have the same mannerisms. I was like, “DNA is a thing and nature is a thing.” It’s nature versus nurture. You’re going to be who you are around your environment, but nature plays a role.
EM 91 | Healing
Healing: If people do not have the desire to personally improve, they will never find an answer.
You can’t rule one out without others. It’s not all environmental and it’s not all genetics. It all ties in together.
It is very clear that I am a Kelly beyond words. I’m getting to meet some of the cousins that I have. A couple of them live out here in California. In fact, I just had the opportunity to spend time with my cousin Lydia. We were joking and reminiscing about how the fact that we’ve never known each other but we felt that we’ve known each other our whole lives. She’s like, “You’re such a Kelly.” I’m like, “I know.”
Dr. Hoefer, what are some things you think that people can get started with that want to heal and get the grief out of their life? What are some steps they can take to help move that forward? Getting your head on straight. Blair upper cervical is one that can heal some emotional past traumas. What are other things that you have done that helped you, that can also lead people in the right direction?
I would suggest finding a good trauma worker. Somebody that’s trained in somatic psychology, whether it’s an SE practitioner or somebody that understands PTSD and they can do EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It’s a trick and a tool that psychologists can learn. It helps to allow traumas that are in your brain to become less of a physiological response. It allows it to be more like a picture. A lot of times I would send people that have been in car accidents to people to do EMDR because it helps to reprocess that traumatic event into a thing. They see it as an event but it doesn’t have a physiological reaction.
People still suffer from anxiety when they’re driving and they don’t know why. EMDR and somatic experience and understanding the work of people like Peter Levine, Dr. Van der Kolk and that book, about DNA. It’s as simple as googling and saying, “How can I get help with my grief?” I am blessed to have people like Galina in my life who give me these resources. I’m blessed to have this education to understand the effects of trauma on my nervous system. I was already well on my way to having a physical understanding of that, but the emotional component of it was completely laid out there. Having a phenomenal support system even if it’s one person that can sit there with you and not try to fix stuff, but just be there and hold space for you. Of course, in my life, prayer and having a spiritual connection has been absolutely huge because I don’t believe in coincidences.
I believe in divine appointments and I believe that all things work together. Every circumstance that I found myself in has been because God has willed it and it’s my time to experience it. I received it with gratitude. Your attitude is an important thing. If everything you receive or accept in your life and you’re nasty and pessimistic about it, you’re not going to have a lot of opportunities to heal. When you receive things with gratitude, even when it’s difficult and hard and you can see that silver lining, you’re going to be able to process it more effectively. Is it easy? 100% not. Is it necessary? Absolutely, and I used to never cry. I don’t think there’s been one day since May 5th that I haven’t shed a tear over time. My husband went from Stonewall Jackson over here to almost too emotional and it’s not bad though. He’s like, “I’m happy to see that you can cry.” I held it in for so long because I was so afraid to be vulnerable and I was so afraid to have that intimacy with people. When you’re traumatized, you don’t want to let people in.
It’s such an amazing full circle and I’m sure you’re still going. Does it ever stop? No, we just get better at dealing with it.
That’s exactly why I was able to receive this gift of this truth into my life because I had been on the path and I had already been learning how to be less busy. If I had been given that information with the schedule that I kept in 2016, I would have had a nervous breakdown.
Imagine you got that information when you were a senior in high school. It would have been way different circumstances.
I wouldn’t have been able to receive it. I would’ve ultimately succeeded in my desire to kill myself at that point. Sitting here right now, I have more confidence in who I am and what I’m supposed to be doing and the people I’m called for than ever before and it’s because I’ve allowed myself to sit in the pain. Even one of my patients, I hadn’t seen her since before Christmas and she knew that I was going to have my first Christmas with Brandon and his wife and she said, “How did it go? I think it was great.” I started crying and she was able to share that with me. That’s why I have such a special place in my heart for my patients because I’m a real person. I’m a human being who lives in human experiences. I don’t always have it altogether, but she was genuinely concerned and interested about how my first Christmas went. I told her that it was messy, but it was real. It was great. It was a great first Christmas at 38 years old.
Did you get knocked out on alignment at all with all the stress?
I haven’t gone out of alignment. I have made even better health choices. I’m starting to take care of the food that I’m eating. I’m doing a good clean low carb, moderate protein, high good fat diet. I’m starting to move on purpose, not just at work but go out and exercise. I’m enjoying taking care of my body because I realized I had many years stolen from my dad. I don’t want to have any more year stolen from my life, whether it’s being with my relationship with him or my relationship with my children. I was starting to get into a little bit of a pity party before with justifying, “I can have that cupcake. I don’t care if I don’t get up and walk that extra lap.” I was starting to be a little bit justifying because I work hard. Now I’m like, “I need to be healthy. My temple needs to be clean so that I can continue to do what I need to do and what I’ve been called to do.” You can’t do that if you’re inhibited through your physical body.
Dr. Hoefer, what is one piece of advice that you have taken with you over the years that you would want to share and give the audience? It could be anything.
What has gotten me through up until now is the unwavering belief that there is more to come and that the best is yet to come. I would say hold onto the hope. Whatever circumstance you find yourself in, whether you’re at the top of the mountain, screaming from the rooftops, “Hallelujah,” or you’re in the deepest, darkest pit that you’ve ever found yourself in. There is something more on the other side of what you’re experiencing right now and it’s [going to be a glorious thing to experience. Don’t give up and don’t think that you’ve reached the pinnacle because we’ve never reached it and there’s always something better.
After you come to the show, people ask me questions about how they can get in contact you. Would you mind sharing your email address if anybody has questions or anything?
You can get ahold of me at HoeferDC@Gmail.com and I also have a podcast, it’s called Is Your Head On Straight?. I do interviews with different fun people all the time and I would love to be able to connect with you through my platform on my podcast. You can write me through there and it’s Info@WellConnectedChiro.com. You can find me at any place that the podcasts are played. I also am a chiropractor at Precision Chiropractic in Rancho Santa Margarita.
Dr. Hoefer, thank you so much for coming on. I’m sure I will have you on again in the near future and I will talk to you soon.
Thanks for joining, guys.
Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!
Join Expect Miracles community today:
