It Takes More Than Carrot Juice... Healing Beyond The Physical | Ellyn McLeod | 218

What if healing isn’t only about what we put into our bodies, but also what we’re carrying within us?

In this powerful conversation, Amanda sits down with integrative health coach, educator, holistic nutritionist, and author Ellyn Hilliard McLeod to explore a journey that has shaped the way she views health, mindset, forgiveness, and love. After being diagnosed with Crohn’s disease at 28, Ellyn began questioning the path she had been given and searching for a different approach, leading her into the world of whole-food nutrition and, eventually, a career helping others navigate their own healing journeys.

But as Ellyn began working with people facing cancer and other life threatening illnesses, she came to believe that nutrition was only one piece of a much bigger picture. From the role of forgiveness and emotional healing to the 12 principles of attitudinal healing, Ellyn shares the experiences that inspired her new book, It Takes More Than Carrot Juice. Together, Amanda and Ellyn explore what it means to listen to life’s nudges, let go of fear, reconnect with love, and recognize that sometimes the most profound transformation begins within.

💡 In this episode, listeners will discover:

🥕 How a Crohn’s disease diagnosis at 28 led Ellyn to completely rethink the way she approached food and health
✨ The chance encounter in a bookstore that connected Ellyn with a nutritionist and changed the direction of her life
🥬 Why Ellyn learned that an “organic” label doesn’t necessarily mean a food is whole or minimally processed
❤️ How working with people facing cancer led Ellyn to explore the connection between mindset, forgiveness, emotional well-being, and healing
🧠 The 12 principles of attitudinal healing and why Ellyn believes becoming a “love finder” instead of a “fault finder” can transform the way we experience life
🙏 Why forgiveness became one of the most powerful themes Ellyn witnessed while supporting clients through serious illness
📖 The moving client stories that inspired It Takes More Than Carrot Juice and Ellyn’s desire to preserve the legacies of the people she worked with
🌿 How synchronicity, spirituality, and learning to listen to what Ellyn describes as the “divine call” have guided major decisions throughout her life
✍️ The unexpected message that pushed Ellyn to return to a book manuscript she had set aside and why she ultimately escaped to the Costa Rican rainforest to finish it
💭 Why Ellyn believes learning to love ourselves may change not only the way we see ourselves, but the way we show up for everyone around us

⏰ Timeline Summary:

05:00: Ellyn reflects on the spiritual experience she had as a child and the questions about love, life, and healing that stayed with her.
09:00: Being diagnosed with Crohn’s disease at 28 and the chance bookstore encounter with a nutritionist that completely changed the direction of Ellyn’s health journey.
16:00: How losing loved ones to cancer inspired Ellyn to study holistic nutrition and eventually begin working with people facing serious illness.
25:00: Why Ellyn came to believe healing involves more than nutrition and how working with cancer patients introduced her to the power of forgiveness and attitudinal healing.
31:00: The 12 principles of attitudinal healing, from letting go of fear and judgment to becoming a “love finder rather than a fault finder.”
39:00: The story behind It Takes More Than Carrot Juice, the clients who inspired the book, and the unexpected message that pushed Ellyn to finally finish it.
46:00: Ellyn reflects on love, peace, legacy, and why she believes learning to love ourselves can transform the way we show up in the world. 

To Connect with Amanda:

Schedule a 1:1 Virtual Breathwork Session HERE

📸 Instagram: @thebreathinggoddess

Follow & Support the Podcast:

📱Instagram: @MandersMindset
👥 Join the Manders Mindset Facebook Community HERE!

To Connect with Ellyn:

🌐 Website: www.sedonasolution.com 

📚 Ellyn Book: It Takes More Than Carrot Juice

🌱 Ellyn's Attitudinal Healing Support Group: Sundays at 5:00 PM in Sedona, with a Zoom option available through her website

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Ellen

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Manders Mindset Podcast. Here you'll find both monologue and interviews of entrepreneurs, coaches, healers, and a variety of other people. Where your host, Amanda Russo, will discuss her own mindset and perspective, and her guest mindset and perspective on the world around us. Manders and her guests will help explain to you how shifting your mindset will shift your life.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Welcome to Manders Mindset, where we explore the power of shifting your mindset to shift your life. I'm your host, Amanda Russo, and I am here today with Ellen Hilliard McLeod. And she is an integrative health coach, educator, and holistic nutritionist with decades of experience helping individuals uncover the nutritional, emotional, and spiritual roots of illness. She began her health journey with a Crohn's disease diagnosis that inspired her to find a holistic and spiritual solution rather than a pharmaceutical remedy. Thank you so much for joining me, Ellen. Thank you, Amanda. It's so great to be here. I enjoyed

Identity At The Core

SPEAKER_01 1:20

meeting you as well. So I'd love to know who Ellen is at the core when you strip everything else away.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Gosh, if we really do that, Amanda, then you you and I know we are one. You are me and I am you, and that we are love. I mean, really, other than that being our spiritual journey, and I think my purpose in life is to pull love from source and spread it around to as many people as I can. And those are the clients that I attract are people who are looking to remove those barriers to love's presence and find that they are already healed. So I I certainly went on that journey myself, and I know that that is definitely true for me. So I hope to inspire others to do the same.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

That's beautiful. Would you say that you've always embodied that? No, I don't think so.

SPEAKER_02 2:19

You know, I grew up in a fairly, you know, nuclear family, typical American family. And I grew up at the time when all of the food delivery services came to your door, right? The Wonderbred Man, the donuts, the the ice cream man, the milkman, and everything, all of these standard American foods were all delivered to your door. And, you know, we all bought into the whole commercialism of the planet, I think. And I was definitely part of that. I think that my big awakening, I had a kind of a spiritual experience when I was 12. I went to a summer camp, a Christian summer camp, and I felt this unbelievable power of love during a choir experience where we were all singing songs. And from that moment on, I wanted to know what that was. It felt so amazing and so real to me that I spent the rest of my life looking for what that was, and then happened upon the journey of healing because I had a lot of loss in my life, a lot of people who passed over the threshold. And so I had a lot of questions about whether this was the reality or whether they were heading off to the reality.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

I'd love if you could take me down memory lane a little bit. Tell me about childhood, upbringing, however deep you

Crohn’s Diagnosis And A New Path

SPEAKER_01 3:40

want to take that.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

I had a pretty connected family. I mean, they were definitely about togetherness, I would say, but my family all ended up being diagnosed with cancer. Even before that happened, six years before that journey began, I began to experience my own challenges with doubts. And when I was 28 years old, I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. And I had all kinds of intestinal and digestive issues that I couldn't quite, you know, pin anything on. I certainly didn't realize it was diet. I thought I had this really healthy diet because I was buying organic salsa and organic tortillas and organic cheese and you know, everything that just had an organic label on it. But the gastroenterologist told me that the only way to resolve this was through pharmaceuticals and then eventually surgery, and they'd have to remove parts of my colon. And I thought, whoa, at 28, I don't think I'm gonna go down that road. And I happened to very luckily run into a nutritionist at a bookstore. I went immediately to go see if I could find a book on the issue. And this woman was putting her business cards up on the bulletin board there, and it said nutrition. She was a nutritionist and she specialized in digestive health. I went, whoa, I think I was supposed to meet you. So she ended up being a very powerful teacher in my life. And not only did she help clean my colon, and we did a whole series of colon hydrotherapy together. If your clients don't know what that is, it's flushing your colon with uh a machine that that helps to um remove all the debris that has been accumulating there for years. But she was she taught me how to eat and she came over to my house and she opened my refrigerator and she said, Oh, honey, you gotta change your diet. You're eating processed foods. I said, What do you mean? What do you mean I'm eating processed foods? Everything in here is organic. She says, babe, and just because it's organic doesn't mean it's fresh. And she really taught me that things in cans and bottles and jars were a real problem, and that I was probably having a reaction because my food wasn't as close to the way Mother Nature intended it to be. So she helped me change my diet. She got me introduced to farmers markets and community-supported agriculture and co-ops, and she re-educated my food preparation to make things as close to vegetable-based and as close to raw as you could get, with just a smattering of cooked foods and a smattering of animal proteins. So I ended up just changing my whole health profile. And the the doctor saw me a year later and said, What have you done? You seeing another doctor? And I said, No, I've seen a nutritionist. He's called I've never seen anything like it. I guess it's spontaneous remission. So he just chalked it up to it. Just was a fluke. Just a fluke. Couldn't be that you changed your food, you know. Yeah, so anyway, six years later, my dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer and ended up losing his life three years later because he did so much chemotherapy and finally a clinical trial and died of a stroke. And then my brother followed, and my sister and mother also got breast cancer, but yeah, lost my dad and my brother. Oh, chemo. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that.

SPEAKER_02 7:19

Well, it was actually a real inspiration for me. It made me realize that there were other options available and that my the path I'd gone down six years earlier really was probably the solution. But the family was very set in the way they ate and the way they listened to the the experts, right? So the experts can't be wrong. They're so nice, as my brother used to say. They're so nice at the hospital. They'd never lead me down a path that wasn't successful. They're just there's smiles on their faces and they take good care of me. And yeah, that was that was one of the experiences that taught me that there had to be another option. But even with nutrition, I ended up discovering that there are other paths that are more healing, and we can talk about those about mindset and changing your attitude and kind of looking at the depth of your spiritual life and how work can transform your health. That's true.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Now, I am curious, did you have any other serious illnesses prior to this at 28?

SPEAKER_02 8:24

You know, just typical childhood illnesses. You know, back in the 60s and 70s, you know, you have everybody got chicken pox and measles and all of those things. And it was all just expected. You didn't have vaccines for all of those. So I wasn't vaccinated very heavily. Back then, you were really only given smallpox vaccines. I don't even know if there was anything else other than that. Now it's what, 81 different vaccines, although Robert Kennedy Jr. has stopped that and he's no longer recommending that series of 81 vaccines. But back then, vaccinations were considered a modern miracle. But I was lucky I wasn't vaccinated in an extensive way. And so my health wasn't that I had good genetics, I guess you would say. But it was really the deterioration of the gut and the the constant bombardment of refined foods, I think that put me in the situation that I was in.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Now, I'm curious, and I don't know if you remember, but approximately how long after you were with the doctor did you go looking for a book and you met the woman putting the business cards down there? The same day.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

Same day. We yeah, I went right from that doctor's office over to the bookstore to find out there's gotta be a way to do this without drugs in the world. So I found I think she got me in like within two weeks to see her. I drove quite a distance to go see her. She ended up being like 40 minutes away. But I I figured this was divine intervention. So I listened to the call and I made the trip once a week to go over and see her for gosh, six months. Wow. Yeah. You know that when you start to tune in to the vibration around you that is really the positive vibration instead of the ego, things like that will happen and you can start paying attention. You can listen to the tiny tap on the door. But cancer is one of those things that by the time it gets there, that's a loud pounding on the door. So, yeah, luckily it was just a Franz disease diagnosis, and it wasn't a colon cancer diagnosis, so it was reversible. Within the year, I was completely healed. Wow. Yeah, completely healed. Yeah, never had a problem since. But I eat completely differently. I I am very religious about my food. So I I eat, I shop at the farmer's market to get my food. I get all of my water from the water store and get structured water with minerals. I rarely eat processed food outside the house. You know, I I process my own food. Like I just made some chili, right? So that's processed food. I cooked it. I put the all the stuff in it, the beans and the corn and the zucchini from my garden and the tomatoes from my garden and the jalapenos from my garden. So it's not as you know, right off the out of the garden, but it's all homemade. So I I try to eat as close to that as I can.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

Now I'm curious, you made a comment about something with the bottles, the cans of food that she had said.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

Yeah, she said yeah, yeah, and you got your foods in bottles, cans, and jars. Yeah. So sh and she she saw it. It was everything was in plastic, right? Or glass. So yeah, if it and I I guess the way I look at it, when I did my original studies to get my certification

Whole Foods Versus Processed Eating

SPEAKER_02 12:28

in nutrition and my PhD in in holistic nutrition, one of the things my mentor and teacher taught me, and he's in an incredible person, and Bauman, he owns the college in Katati that I went to called Bauman College. And he really woke me up to the way that man originally ate. And he directed me towards Weston Price, who was a dentist, and he talked about how this man saw in his patients the deterioration of their teeth and how it was directly reflecting the deterioration of their health. And so he visited 11 different countries that hadn't been touched by Western foods. And he found out that though they all ate very differently, the Eskimos were eating whale blubber, the Tahitians were fishing and eating taro plants, and the people from Switzerland were making cheese from goats. They all had one thing in common, and that was that they did not eat processed flowers or sugars. That was it, every one of them, and none of those civilizations had cancer, diabetes, or heart disease. So that was a big wake-up call for me. And they have a cookbook out. It's called Nourishing Traditions, and gives you all these wonderful ways to prepare your whole foods. And whole food is just as close to the way Mother Nature intended as possible, if you can, right off of your right off of the vines in your yard. That's been the case of my tomatoes.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

That's fascinating, but it makes a lot of sense, you know, about how other countries do stuff differently, you know? Like I've had friends who I've never been to Italy myself, but I've had friends who've gone to Italy and they're eating even all these carbs, the pasta, and they don't gain any weight, and they come back to because it's it's different. It's you know I was in in nine, see 2019.

SPEAKER_02 14:31

I went to Tuscany to an amazing place. It's called Organic Tuscany. You can find it online, and they're an organic cooking kitchen, and they teach you, then you stay for a week in this villa, Tuscany, and they teach you how to make all this pure food from foods that have not been adulterated with chemicals or processing or any preservatives or anything. And their wines are the same way, they don't they don't put preservatives and sulfites in their wines there. So yeah, exactly exactly right.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

Yeah, exactly right. Now, Ellen, I'd I'd love to transition back a tad. I know you got your degree in nutrition. I'm I'm curious how schooling was for you and when you decided you were gonna pursue that.

SPEAKER_02 15:22

I found Waldorf education through an equally interesting synchronistic series of events. It was actually due to the a friend who was dying of cancer, and I uh went down this path with her looking at this form of education. And so I'd been teaching, I'd been

Teaching To Cancer Nutrition Work

SPEAKER_02 15:38

in the system teaching waldorf education, which is a holistic type of education. It was developed by Rudolf Steiner, uh a philosopher from Germany in the 1920s. So I had been teaching, but when my dad got cancer, I felt a very strong pull to look more into this. And the nutritionist he was working with at the end was incredibly inspiring. And she was working with a a series of nutritionists from Boulder, Colorado, which is why I ended up moving out to Boulder, Colorado. And I ended up getting my certification with Bauman, and I'm printing off my business cards. I go to a printer and I have this logo design, and on the card it says, on there, nutritionist specializes in cancer nutrition. It says right on the card. So I go to pick up my cards, and the young man at the counter says, Oh, you're Ellen. My boss would like to talk to you. What is this about? So he ushers me into this back office, and here's this elderly man, and and he says, Oh ma'am, please sit down. He says, I I saw your card and I wanted you to know that I have colon cancer, and I'm really interested in what you have to say because I've been going through chemotherapy and it doesn't seem to be doing much for me. And so I I wondered, could you tell me a little more about what would a holistic nutritional option be? And so I gave him a whole menu plan and I I told him all about organics and whole foods and farmers markets and things. And then he said, you know what? I'd like to invite you to my support group. So it'd been several weeks. I hadn't heard from him. You know, he had my card. I knew he had my number. And then about three weeks later, I get a call, phone call from him, and he's inviting me to come and teach at his support group at Kaiser Permanente, a medical facility in the Sacramento area in California. So I show up with my little bag of tricks, I've got a little slideshow. So I come in there, I've got all my little books, I've got some examples of good foods, everything. And there's 90 people in there. 90 people at that in that support group. So I end up doing this 12-week course with these people at Kaiser Permanente. It was an American Cancer Society group, but none of the registered dietitians from the hospital wanted to do it because it would be after hours and they had to volunteer for free. They didn't get paid. So I thought, I'm just starting out. I'm happy to do this for free. And I ended up building my entire practice from those 90 people. I mean, not all 90 people ended up coming to me, but the big group of people that did end up referring me, and yeah, and so on. That's how I ended up doing these holistic support groups.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

I love that ripple effect. That's amazing. And you did that for 12 weeks.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

Yeah, it was 12 weeks long. You know, it was only one night a week, but it was 12, 12 sessions and two hours of with these people, and you can't believe the questions people have. What I love about cancer patients, they're not like weight loss patients. Weight loss clients come to you and they say, Honey, I just want to fit in that dress this week, and I'm going to a wedding and I want to fit in this dress. So, but cancer patients they come and they say, God, I have so much to do, and I was just given three months to live, and I have so much to do. I I not only do I want to lengthen this time that I'm here on the planet, but I want to feel better. I feel terrible and I want to feel better. So, can you help me? So it's a completely different mindset. You know, you've got the weight loss is just the quick fix, babe. Give me the quick fix because I gotta fit in this gown. But when people come to you with cancer, they're facing transition and they know that boy, did I do everything on the planet here I was supposed to do? I think I got some other things I want to do. Can you help me do that? So it's a it's a fabulous group of people. They are awake. No, have you woked? What's up? Have you woked with weight loss clients? Oh yeah. In the in the very initial beginning of my practice, I worked with weight loss clients. I got out there and you know, walk track with them. You know, I would, you know, call them up at home and say, okay, what'd you eat today? You know. And yeah, as soon as the as soon as the fancy event is over, they're they want nothing to do with you. So it's yeah, it's they're better in a program, I think, like, you know, Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig or Noom or something, where they've got accountability with a large group of people that make it your responsibility. I'm not saying that cancer isn't your responsibility. Uh as someone who got themselves in a situation in which they're being faced with a life-threatening illness, you do have to take responsibility for yourself. That is what the call is. It's wake up, baby, because you got a a journey here, and only you can solve it. Only you can solve this uh this mystery. So yeah, it's just a different kind of mystery than weight loss. Now everybody's taking GLP, right? Now people are just taking the quick fix weight loss drug. That's all you're trying to achieve. GLP is probably your solution.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Now you didn't have weight loss clients that were looking for a lifestyle change at all.

SPEAKER_02 21:33

If they're coming to you because they want to look good in a bathing suit in June, that's a little different than when your husband says he's leaving you because you're 45 pounds overweight. You have a much more important mission if you're trying to keep your family together and if you think that's really the issue. I usually it's not the issue, the husband isn't leaving just because of the weight. The husband's usually leaving because there's other things that are wrong with the marriage. And so what I find with most of my clients is that when they walk into your office, no matter whether it's weight loss or cancer, they walk in thinking that they want a menu plan and they walk out realizing that they gotta change their attitude. Really? So mindset is a big thing. Yeah, we work with something called adit. Healing. And it's a 12-principle healing practice that helps you understand who you really are and what you really are and how you project yourself out to the world. It comes from a book written by Jerry Jimpolski.

Why Mindset Changes Health

SPEAKER_02 22:39

And Love is Letting Go of Fear, is his book. And it guides you through the journey of taking a look at who you are inside this shell, inside this costume that you wear. And that this is just a temporary costume. But you're more than that, and you're here for eternity, and your body's here for 80 or 90 years, maybe. So if you really want to find out who you are and who you are eternally, then you gotta find out that you're love. That's who you really are. And a lot of people have obstacles in that path. There's a lot of abuse, or misunderstanding, or you'll breakups, and you'll a lot of situations have put people in a very defensive mode and an attack mode. And so you have to help them remove those obstacles so they no longer feel they have to project on others or other things and take complete responsibility for loving themselves first.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

Wow. Now, how did you discover added attitude no healing?

SPEAKER_02 23:52

Well, basically, because you when you start working with cancer patients, you lose a lot of your clients. They transition, right? I mean, a lot of people who come to you are stage four patients, they've tried chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, and you're a last-ditch effort. So when they get to your office, they do have a timeline. Their doctor's already told them there's nothing more we can do for you. So you're working with people nutritionally so they can feel better and to help extend their life, but you're also working with them because they realize that they have a lot left that they want to do. They have a bucket list that's a lot longer than their timeline. And so when you're working with people like that, you start to see that the the really miraculous healings are the people that forgive. And when you have an intestable carcinoma patient who tells you that her life is just fine, there's nothing wrong with my life. You know, I even think I eat pretty well. And you know, well, another tumor's grown, I've got to have another surgery. And then you find out that she is estranged from her gay son because her religious beliefs told her that you can tolerate homosexuality. And so she's miserable, she's in pain, she's emotionally distraught and terrified that she's gonna die alone and she's not gonna be with her son. And so you help her repair that relationship. And so, we with this one particular woman, I write about her in my book, It Takes More Than Carrot Juice. We she, her husband and I convinced her to invite the son over for Easter with his partner, and it was a miraculous transformation, and she cried and told him how much she missed him and loved him and apologized and asked for forgiveness, and she completely forgave him. She left her church, she went to find a much more tolerant spiritual community, and she completely healed. The tumors went away, and she lived a very long and healthy life after that. Oh my god. So when you see that kind of thing, you have to ask yourself, wait a second, what am I missing? It might take more than carrot juice, and that's where the the title of my book came from. It takes more than carrot juice. Oh my god, Ellen. It killed her tumors. It healed her tumors. Wow. Yeah, there's lots of stories like that. I have 20 stories in my book. Half of them don't survive physically, but they have major transformational, attitudinal mindset changes. But half of them have miraculous healings, both physical, emotional, and spiritual. And it's and I feel that even those that didn't survive physically because they already were so poisoned by some of the things they'd done in their life, you know, their cigarettes, their alcohol, their chemo, their you know, prescription medication, they learned a lot about who they really were. They forgave themselves for a lot of guilt they felt. They forgave family members or you know, workers that were in their business that they hadn't resolved conflict issues with and learned a lot so that by the time they did pass, they were ready to go. They realized who they really were.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

I had never heard of attitudinal healing before you you mentioned it or voted on the forum, but it makes so much sense.

SPEAKER_02 27:35

Here's the twelve here's the twelve principles. The essence of who you are is love. That's number one. You have to recognize that. Two, health is inner peace. So healing is letting go of fear so you can become peaceful with your life. Three is giving and receiving are the same. You end up becoming a generous person and not always expecting something back. Four is we can let go of the past and of the future and live in the moment right now.

The 12 Principles Of Healing

SPEAKER_02 28:03

You can't ever worry about the past, it's over, and you can't worry about the future. Studies have shown that almost 90% of all the things people worry about in the future never happen. Number five is now is the only time there is, and each moment is for living. So start living and stop wasting your life on things that are trivial. Number six is we learn how to love ourselves and others by forgiving instead of judging. And seven is we become love finders rather than fault finders. We stop criticizing, we start judging, we stop looking around and comparing ourselves to other people. Number eight is we choose and direct ourselves to be peaceful regardless of what's happening outside. So let's say you have you lose some money in the stock market, you just learn not to react. Number nine is we are students and teachers to each other. If you teach these principles, you'll learn these principles. And number 10 is we focus on the whole of life rather than the fragments. Look at the big picture, stop worrying about the tiny little things, the little things you argue over, which are usually stupid, right? Number 11 is since love is eternal, death need not be viewed as fearful. There is no death, it doesn't really exist. You're an eternal being. And number 12, we can always perceive others as either giving a call for help or extending a call, extending love. So you're either extending love, which you you know what that feels like when people are wonderful to you, but if they're being grumpy or critical or abusive, it's just a call for love. So how can you turn your attitude around so that you see it from that perspective and learn how to have a boundary, but at the same time recognize that they're not really trying to attack you, they're just looking for love.

SPEAKER_01 30:00

Wow, I love those. Wow, Ellen. And have you always been using these each week, like a different one each week for your your support groups?

SPEAKER_02 30:12

Yes, and I got involved with attitudinal healing by going to some workshops with Jerry Japulsky when he was alive. He's passed away, but when he was alive, so back in 1996, I think was the first time I went to a support group with he and his wife Diane in Chiburon, California. And then a gentleman started an attitudinal healing center in Sacramento, and so I ended up going there and then started one in my own office in Sacramento back in 1997. And so I that's what we've done. We've worked with these principals, and then people share their stories of forgiveness, and they're really positive. So the gentleman that had invited me to the cancer support group in the hospital, when he came to our support group, he said, Oh my god, the difference is like night and day. When we're sitting around in a circle in the hospital, we're all complaining about our symptoms and what the chemotherapy has done to our hair. But here we come and we listen to these amazing stories of forgiveness and love. And it's just really empowering for people. So they actually leave feeling really upbeat and positive and happy. Wow. I bet that's so, so powerful, Ellen. Yeah, stories of healing, stories of love. That's what we end up focusing on. So, yeah, and you can imagine how empowering it is for me, you know, to be able to hear these people and how they're transforming and and they're stopping blaming, they're stopping feeling sorry for themselves. Cancer patients can feel really sorry for themselves, but then when they hear somebody else's story, they start to see, wow, I can turn this around too. So you're gonna have to get my book, Amanda. So when when did you write the book? How long ago was that? When I moved to Sedona from Boulder, I went to a write your book in one weekend. There's a three-day seminar from a man named Tom Bird. And I came in with a little notepad that I had written out, just handwritten notes on these patients, these 20 people, that I'd gone to Mexico with a girlfriend. I said, Gotta book in me. We gotta brainstorm this. And so I had these little notes, it was just a little

Support Groups And Writing The Book

SPEAKER_02 32:28

notepad like this. He taught me how to put all the essence of the stories on post-it notes and put them up on a wall and start putting them into categories. And it just really inspired me. So I got on my laptop and I started typing them all out, and I had it all finished about eight years ago, and then I started teaching. I started teaching at a Waldorf school here and kind of put it on my back burner. And then, okay, here's another synchronous story. So I go to this workshop, cues again. I go to this workshop. This is the one where they do a lot of breath work, they do a lot of sound healings, and they really look at you know, taking you back to your childhood, they do inner child work, and they had a medium come in at the end. They say, Hey, does anybody want to stay? We've got this medium coming over. Would you like to would you like to join? So he walks in and he turns right around and he looks at me. I mean, I'm the first person he gazes on, and he says, Oh my gosh, your parents are standing right behind you. Your mother is right there on your left shoulder, and your father is right there on your right shoulder, and they're saying, You've got a book. You've got a book that's been sitting in but in, you know, in your computer for 10 years, and you gotta write it. I came out of there just completely blown away. I went and got my laptop, opened it up, found that book, and I got it on Airbnb, and because I knew I couldn't write it, I'm too busy here in Sedona. So I booked out six weeks in Costa Rica in a rainforest at a yurt, way up in the middle of nowhere. And I took my laptop with me, and there was internet reception, and I ended up finishing the book, finished it, edited it, sent it to friends to edit, worked on the cover, all that. And when I came home in January, it was all ready for formatting, and I sent it off and self-published. It's a self-published book, and it just came out three weeks ago. Oh my gosh. I have a lot of these things happen to me. When I hear it, I know when it's a divine call. And so it might sound like there's a lot of these really miraculous things that happen, but it's just because I'm tuned in. And you can all be tuned in. That's why I tell my clients at the support group, learn to tune in at Time Voice.

SPEAKER_01 34:54

No, I'm curious. Uh, before you got these messages, like long, long time ago, maybe even when you were a teenager, did you always think you'd write a book about something?

SPEAKER_02 35:05

No, no, no. But and you know, the reason I did it is because when I moved from Boulder II, Sedona, I had these banker boxes of client files that I was moving, and they're, you know, I must have had seven or eight of them. And I thought, what am I gonna do with them? I can't fit everything in that new hall. I've got to cull this out. And so I started going through them, and there were these amazing stories, people who've written these little handwritten notes about forgiveness that were in their files, or a little crayon drawing from their daughter who said, Mommy, please heal. You know, these little wonderful little mementos. And I thought, I cannot let these people not have their legacy. They've got this legacy, and I've got to tell their stories because some of them had passed. So I kept all the files and whittled it down to like a box and a half, and I just felt really compelled that I had to tell these stories. So 20 of them are in this in this book.

SPEAKER_01 36:07

Wow, that makes a lot of sense about telling their legacy. That makes a lot of sense. I think that's beautiful that you did that though.

SPEAKER_02 36:16

Yeah, they have a message for all of us. Learn to love, figure out who you are. You're not your Ferrari, you're not in your bank account, you're not your body. You're just pure essence of love, and that can change not only you, but it can change multitudes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

How did you discover that well more than the physical body?

SPEAKER_02 36:43

When we moved to Sedona, my partner, Danny and I, my partner was very much into holistic healing too. He was an acupuncturist, chiropractor, astrologer, Vedic astrologer. And he passed away four and a half years ago. And I felt like he was right there in the room. I couldn't physically see him, but I

Grief And Seeing Death Differently

SPEAKER_02 37:08

he had a heart attack, so it was very sudden, but he was definitely there. So I really, and this is when I started looking into mediums, to be honest with you. So I called a medium and I said, gosh, I think I had a conversation with him, and he wasn't in the body. I just was looking in the mirror and I'm having this conversation with him. And she said, Yeah, he was there, he was there. He's doing great, he's okay, don't worry. He loves you. Okay, this is all supposed to happen. There's nothing you could do to prevent it, and you have a different chapter in your life, and that's kind of what's happened. I've learned a lot from what we perceive as death, but is really just a new rebirth. That's all it is.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

Yeah, no, that's true. It is just a new rebirth. Okay. Now, I'm curious, Ellen, and I'm sure a lot of these based on your story, but what would you say is the biggest aha moment you've had in your life?

SPEAKER_02 38:09

I would say for me, the biggest aha was recognizing through the deaths of, you know, it's I've I've been around a lot of deaths, not just by family and my brother and father and my partner, but through the the people that I worked with, that there is this divine essence that runs through all of us, that we are all one, we are all teachers to each other, but we're all brothers and sisters to each other, and we are so connected. And that any type of attack I make on my brother or sister, and that could be someone I don't even know, someone maybe I'm a it's a news story on TV, and I'm getting mad at whoever has perpetrated this terrible thing on the news, recognizing that that's me. So I think it's really been over the course of these years working with people that are transitioning into a new dimension, it hasn't been one big aha. It's just been a series of things that have led me to recognize our true essence. That makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_01 39:25

I get that about the about the divineness, you know, and when you you look at it as a rebirth, it's a different process, a different feeling.

SPEAKER_02 39:36

We have death doulas here in Sedona that do miraculous work with helping people birth into the next plane. And it really is a divine calling, and there's several people that do it. This one friend of mine, she teaches at the school that I teach at, she teaches music, and she sits with people at the end of their life and sings the most beautiful songs to them to help them transition and follow the light across the threshold. It's really amazing. But there's several people that do this. I have another friend that has a property in which they can bring their loved ones once they've passed, and they can find a tree and put their ashes around this tree, this living symbol of who they really are, you know, that they continue to live instead of a big heavy stone. You know, it's this living tree to remind us that this soul lives on. That's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 40:38

Now, Ellen, I'm I'm curious, and you kind of hinted at it, but how did you come up with the title? It takes more than carrot juice.

SPEAKER_02 40:47

I was kind of mulling over the different things that I wanted to talk about. That there's much more to the therapies that you use. There's much more to healing than doing the chemo. There's much more to healing than doing the diet plan. There's much more to healing than using the acupuncturist. So I went to a workshop with Jack Canfield, the author of Chicken Soup for the Soul. And I told him, he read my book, and he said, Boy, you know, this is great, but I think your title should be In Pakes Boy Ben Carrot Juice. I think that'd be a great title. So he actually picked it. I have to give him credit. Is that he actually picked it up?

SPEAKER_01 41:23

Oh my god, he picked it. Yeah. So that was that's now what you were leaning towards?

SPEAKER_02 41:30

I wasn't sure. There were other things were coming up that I just, you know, I had kind of the idea, but I hadn't burst the real things. And then he was the one that came up with this, the cover, which is the V bag full of carrot juice. And on it says, I don't know if you saw it, but missing ingredients, physical, emotional, and spiritual, and they're all checked off. The missing ingredients. That's yeah. So he he picked that cover too. We had a a cover designer give us three options. One was of a glass of carrot juice that was tipping over, one was really busy, a lot of people in a hospital and a lot of busyness, and then this one. And Jack said, Oh, this is a one.

SPEAKER_01 42:18

That's awesome. Yeah, and and now you you you mentioned post-it notes helped you in the process of writing it.

SPEAKER_02 42:27

Yeah, and I've actually recommended to two friends who are writing their book too to do this process. And what Tom Byrd does is he has you take all of these stories, like I took all the stories out of my little notebook here, and he has you pull out what are the kind of page turning parts of the story. So he's looking

How To Write A Book

SPEAKER_02 42:48

for when you get to the end of a chapter, what's going to make someone want to continue to read? So we just wrote all of those things on these post-it notes, and then you stick them all up on a board, and you start to rearrange where the stories go. Like, oh, these are forgiveness stories. We should put this all in one chapter. Oh, these are stories about mindset. We should change the whole chapter on mindset, and we should put that over it in these this chapter. Oh, this is one about identifying too much with your cancer. We should put these stories there. So he helps you categorize things and then rearrange them and put them in kind of a template, and that's when you start writing. Then you sit down and you start typing it all into a framework. And I would compare it to a scaffold that you put it in by the end of the weekend. You don't haven't really written the whole book, but you've put it all into a scaffold, and you now know what the outline looks like, and you've got the essence of your stories, and then you flush it out and you add more descriptiveness. That's how you write it.

SPEAKER_01 43:58

That's how you use the post-it notes. I like that suggestion. I've never heard that in terms of writing a book or the process of it's his thing.

SPEAKER_02 44:08

You can find him online, Tom Byrd, but he still teaches people to pull the as he used to say, pull the book out of them.

SPEAKER_01 44:16

Have a book out of them. I'm always asking the authors I speak to for their. Like tips and tricks on that. I haven't written a book yet myself, but it's it's on a list of things I'm I'm gonna do.

SPEAKER_02 44:29

Well, and it I will highly recommend going away and and doing it without distraction because that really helped me focus. You are completely captured, a captured author. And if you have a a thought about something you want to put in your chapter, you can run over there and do it because you're just by yourself with a rainforest with the two cans and the and the monkeys and the howler monkeys.

SPEAKER_01 44:58

That makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense, even if it's not like an international trip, but like heading away. Find a cabin up in the hills somewhere, right? Yeah. You're in Massachusetts, there's a lot of places that you could go. No, that's true. A little more seclusion, so you're not out there doing all the other things.

SPEAKER_02 45:19

Yeah, but give it some time because really creative things come from when you've been isolated for a couple of weeks. And the my book completely changed by being there for an extended period of time. And I think it's because then you you hear the divine presence around you, you kind of hear the angels calling you, and you feel like, oh wow, yeah, I've gotta, I've gotta put it that way. So yeah. Give your time yourself time with the angels.

SPEAKER_01 45:56

I agree with that. I spent over a month in Bali, and I towards the end of it, I was definitely creative juices. Well, different, you know, because like I was going to yoga classes and I was going to Tantra, but like I didn't have much of a schedule, quote unquote, you know. So my mind was thinking differently.

SPEAKER_02 46:17

So you've been there before, just repeat the experience. Yeah. You could do it anywhere. That is but it's harder to do at home when your friends know where you are and you've got a schedule, and you think you have to go to the grocery store and buy something. I didn't have a grocery store where I was. There was a little lady across the street from where I my little path that had a fruit stand. So she had everything to make salsa. She had tomatoes and she had cilantro and jalapenos, and she had all this fruit bananas, papayas, you know, pineapple, all kinds of things like that. And so that's what I ate, which probably helped with the process too, because I was definitely very cleansed nutritionally. That makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_01 47:11

Well, thank you so much, Alan. I really enjoyed this.

SPEAKER_02 47:16

Well, thanks, Amanda. I think you're destined to be one. So I I yeah, I can't wait to read your book. Think about all the podcasts you've done and all the people that you've interviewed. Right there, there's a book. That is true. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:33

That is true.

SPEAKER_02 47:34

Yeah. So but it's been very enjoyable. I've really gotten a lot out of this conversation. Me as well, Ellen.

SPEAKER_01 47:40

No, Jay Shetty. What's his background? So I'm a big fan, but he's a formal monk. He's got a podcast, he's an author, and he ends his podcast on purpose with two different segments, and I've borrowed those segments, and I end Mandu's mindset with them. Oh, okay, great. But they're not my questions, so I give some credit. Okay. First segment is the many sides

Rapid Fire Questions And Legacy

SPEAKER_01 48:08

to us, and there's five questions, and they need to be answered in one word each. Okay. What is one word someone who was meeting you for the first time would use to describe you as?

SPEAKER_02 48:23

Energetic.

SPEAKER_01 48:26

What is one word someone who knows you well would use to describe you as? Loving. What is one word you'd use to describe yourself? Transformational. What is one word that if someone didn't like you or agree with your mindset would use to describe you as intense. What is one word you're trying to embody right now? Peace. Second segment is the final five, and these can be answered in a sentence. What is the best advice you've heard or received?

SPEAKER_02 49:11

That I have blocks to my own presence of love was probably the best advice because then I wanted to remove them.

SPEAKER_01 49:21

What is the worst advice you've heard or received?

SPEAKER_02 49:25

Probably stock market investment advice.

SPEAKER_01 49:30

What is something that you used to value that you no longer value?

SPEAKER_02 49:36

Material things in general. I would say I no longer value the pretty clothes, the facials, the the high-heeled shoes.

SPEAKER_01 49:48

If you could describe what you would want your legacy to be, as if someone was reading it, what would you want it to say?

SPEAKER_02 49:58

I would want it to say that Ellen Hilliard McLeod helped people learn how to heal through love.

SPEAKER_01 50:06

That's beautiful. If you could create one law in the world that everyone had to follow, what would it be? And I want to know why.

SPEAKER_02 50:17

Boy, if I could create a law, learn to love yourself because you cannot love others unless you know how to love yourselves. Love is already present, and so you need to recognize and wake up that you are it. So I would say if you could somehow pass a law that helps people love themselves, the world would be healed.

SPEAKER_01 50:45

I agree. The world would be. Well, thank you so much, Alan. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 50:52

Yeah, if people are interested in my support group, I do bring my laptop with me and they can follow it on Zoom. It's it's an actual in-person group. We hold it at the United Methodist Church in Sedona on Sundays. It's at 5 p.m. on Sundays, and they can send a message to my website. There's a place where you can fill in your email address, and I can get you on the Zoom.

How To Connect And Closing

SPEAKER_02 51:19

Sonasolution.com. It's singular Sedona Solution.com, and they can find everything on my site. We'll get you on there.

SPEAKER_01 51:27

And I will put that, I will link that in the show notes for you guys to click it directly. Ellen, are you active on social media if anybody wants to connect?

SPEAKER_02 51:37

I have a Facebook page, I have a Sedona Solution page, I also have a YouTube channel, and I have an Instagram.

SPEAKER_01 51:44

Okay, awesome. I will link those as well. Thank you so much, Ellen. And no pressure, but I'd just like to give it back to the guests. Anything else you want to share with the listeners before we close out?

SPEAKER_02 51:58

But if this has some sort of impact with you and you know someone who is struggling with cancer or any life-threatening illness, I would really encourage you to let them know that there is hope. There is hope. There's many of us around that are working with people to help them see the love that they are, and that really is the ultimate healing. So I would say, you know, please send them my way. There's lots of people here in Sedona that I connect with. There's some healers here that are really quite transformational. So you've got to come visit Amanda. You've got to come visit us.

SPEAKER_01 52:30

Well, thank you so much again, Ellen. I truly appreciate it. Thank you. I really enjoyed our time. And thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of Mando's Mindset. In case no one told you today, I'm proud of you. I'm voting for you. And you got this. As always, if you enjoyed the show, I would really appreciate it if you would leave me a five-star rating, leave a review, and share with anyone you think would benefit from that. And don't forget, you are only one nine-step shift away from shifting your life. Thanks guys, until next time.