5 Questions With: Ellen Whitehurst

Posted October 6, 2008, 1:25 pm in Alternative


In our continuing series 5 Questions With, Growing Bolder asks some of the most interesting and unique people in the world about what drives them – then we share their answers with you! It's all about building a community of people who are living life without fear and inspiring others.

Ellen Whitehurst, a guest on The Growing Bolder Radio Show, is a writer who helps others find happiness through holistic medicine, feng shui and more. But her path to success and financial freedom was a long and winding one, that started on Wall Street. To read archived articles from our 5 Questions With series, click here.


Whitehurst was a trader on Wall Street when both of her parents developed terminal illnesses.  They were only in their 50s, and Whitehurst found herself driven to help them. What she found has since become her passion, and she loves to share her tips, whether it's to increase your bank account or find your perfect mate.

Whitehurst discussed her career, and shared insight about her own life, with Growing Bolder.

Q:  You have a great attitude, and seem to really enjoy life.  What has contributed to your personality?  The way you were raised?  Life events?  Just the way you were born?

A:  I do enjoy life even though I know at times I don’t live it fully enough!  I see the beauty in almost everything but, believe me, that wasn’t always the case.  Although I do believe that I was born optimistic, I have had a fair share of drama in my life. My parents were both ill a great deal of my childhood, but, with my dad especially, their illnesses never seemed to derail their intentions to live the best lives they could.  They both died before my son was born and that is a great sadness for me but I am happy that I had the time with them that I did, since they did help shape my enthusiasm for a life well lived.  So I guess you could say that the nature I was born with AND the somewhat strange childhood I was exposed to both contribute to my positive outlook.  But, and this might sound a little kooky, it really was the passing of both parents, it was that life event, that has had the most impact and influence on my outlook and intentions.  Their deaths not only impacted me from the “life’s too short” aspect, but, more importantly, their legacy to me was that we have to make the most of our time here and the best way to do that is to try to make this planet sweeter for everyone else we share it with.  When my son was born, I was shown the tremendous responsibility that being a parent comes with and then absolutely understood how important, almost urgent it is to embrace the value inherent in every minute of life.  I really do appreciate how precious every healthy day is, how life altering every smile to and for someone else can be.  It’s in the quiet moments, the ones that aren’t full of the never-ending ‘To Do’ list that I can sit and see how fortunate I am to be alive, to have a healthy and happy child and to love what I do day in and day out!  I mean, really, what’s not to enjoy there?  Even in the bad times, or should I say, especially in the bad times, taking the time to think about those blessings and so many more literally can sometimes bring me to my knees.  But, then, I get up again, brush myself off and live to fight another day.  And, hopefully I will remember that day to keep a smile in my heart and, well, for most of the time at least, on my face as well.  Nature versus nurture versus learning from everything around us that goes on every moment of the day; I’d say my attitude is a cocktail of all of these above.  Shaken, not stirred.

Q:  Who are your heroes?

A:  This one was really tough because the list is overflowing.  I mean, all the usual suspects immediately jump to mind from Jesus to Gandhi, Mary Magdalene (the original suffragette) to Mother Teresa.  Saint Theresa of Liseux is someone whose life I’ve always had a preternatural curiosity about and even took her name as one of my own middle ones when I was a young girl myself.  She was a French peasant girl who spent her life in service to others without ever, and I mean EVER, saying a negative syllable about anything.  She lived the last years of her short existence in tremendous amounts of pain; nobody ever knew it since she never complained but did, in fact, spend her time on the planet helping those who did, complain that is.  Just a truly remarkable human being who had a hotline to her Higher Power and someone I truly consider a true icon.  Closer to home, my sister, Susan, is a personal hero.  She’s managed to successfully triumph over personal demons and disasters and still continues to learn new things all the time.  Of course, I love that when she learns something special and new that has value, worth and love attached because, and this is her generous nature, she takes her time to make sure that the rest of her loved ones will benefit as well.  My cousin Andrea is a hero.  She has been there for me for as long as I can remember.  And, if that same memory serves me correctly, she offers that same sort of access and availability and invaluable shoulder to lean on to everyone she knows.  My editor at Redbook magazine, Stacy Morrison is a hero to me.  She took a magazine that was mired in yesteryear and has turned it around to reflect not only that which is au currant but that which is current and socially imperative to address and change; domestic violence, breast cancer, women’s rights, you name it, she attacks it and strives to positively tame it in the name of women everywhere.  All of my professional partners all with their positively life changing platforms, from Kate Rolston and Maureen Connolly and their team at RealSavvyMom trying to better the lives of mothers everywhere to Joanie Winberg helping families through divorce to every one of my radio connections like Bob and Sheri of their same named show and Lori St. James at ‘It’s A New Day’; they and all the others I have the privilege to work with as I ply my own trade, they are all my heroes as they strive in their own ways to make this planet a better place to be.  You, Katy, and Jill and your team at Growing Bolder, you are my heroes for going to the front lines everyday and finding something new and relevant to expose your audience to so that their lives might be healthier and happier and a much more blessed place to be.  So, I guess I would say that anyone who does, at anytime, spend a moment in making this place we call Earth an easier space to walk around in for all the rest of us, well, those people, the ones who brighten any life even a teensy bit, they are my giant heroes.

Q:  What challenges have you faced in life?  How did you overcome them and what’s your advice for people facing the same challenges?


A:  Wow, this one’s a hard one to answer as well since my first instinct is to just go the generic, homogenous route and just say that I’ve had plenty ‘o challenges down through the decades and, in the end, it all comes down to overcoming them through the same three things; faith, hope and charity.  But, I suspect you’d really like to hear specific situations that caused me to question my very self; those ‘dark nights of the soul’ as it were so that I can get detailed about what others can do to make their own dark nights a little lighter?  Those Universal and challenging times that each of us has to face down at some point when the old ubiquitous ‘faith, hope and charity’, albeit great advice, just doesn’t seem to cut the mustard?   So, okay, let’s begin with something I mentioned in one of your other inquiries; the ongoing illnesses and deaths of both of my parents.  My mother struggled in some form or fashion with breast cancer since I was in second grade in elementary school.  I could go on about watching her go through chemotherapy and radiation in the days when those treatments bordered on experimental.  I won’t even begin to approach the subject of how her scars (both internal and out) and consequent attempts at breast reconstruction eroded and ate away at her sense of esteem and self-confidence.  She eventually succumbed to the disease with grace but not without trying her best to save face on every conceivable front.  Her death took decades, so, it didn’t take any of us by surprise.  Still, we were, each of my siblings and myself, overcome with grief.  Then, only a year later, my father passed from complications of his diabetes, a disease he had valiantly fought since he was a child.  An amputated leg, blindness in his right eye, several heart attacks and strokes later he finally gave way and went into that “good night.”  But not before he gave that fight his everything and all.  I don’t really what my brothers and sister did to get through that first year after they died, but, I do know that I was sucking down a bottle of a therapeutic flower essence called ‘Rescue Remedy’ that helped to quell the nausea and the grief almost every week.  I also used a special essential oil called ‘Marjoram’ to help beat the blues.  It sounds cliché but some sort of daily exercise (even if just a ten minute walk outdoors) and time, of course, really did help get me past the worst of it, as did using Feng Shui techniques that allow anyone to address these circumstances with proactive intent.  Far too many of them to go into here, so, I’ll just stick with the stuff that really did help get me through early on during that patch.  After I finally began to heal from those circumstances, I experienced about six years of infertility and equally as many miscarriages before conceiving and carrying my son to term and a healthy delivery.  All during those years, I never wavered in my belief that someday I would be a mom.  I worked arduously on building ‘Treasure Maps’ (cutting and collecting pictures of ideal intentions and pasting them on a poster board) in order to help me keep my focus on the goal and my eyes on the prize, as it were.  My infertility also promoted me to investigate the world of holistic medicine, which I had been introduced to while my parents where dying, much more thoroughly.  It was learning about the worlds of healing that belonged to other cultures and traditions that forced my focus on the fact of how really powerful human beings are how many millions of blessings surround us constantly.  I finally found that there are ways to find health and happiness and prosperity all around us every minute of the day if we but know where to look.  But, in my case and to heal my fertility imbalance,  I started to get regular acupuncture treatments and also found that osteopathy can heal many different physical maladies and bring a body back to balance and wholeness.  Now, if we fast forward many years until this decade, just in the last few years my twenty-something year old marriage ended.   I found myself having to reinvent myself, support my son and build from the bottom up.  All while I was now in my forties.  I decided to take all of those “hobbies” that I had been studying for the last twenty years, the traditions, the cultures, the philosophies and modalities all aimed at health and happiness and turn them into a brand.  I was going to indeed “follow my bliss” and see if I could make it pay the bills.  There isn’t a flower essence or essential oil or even body therapy that I can attribute my success to, although each of those agendas have played very important parts in the building of the brand.  Rather it has been persistence and a unwavering belief in myself and my efforts that has ruled the day.  Even when almost everyone told me to throw in the towel, I would, instead just take an Epsom salt bath and then wrap it around me as I rushed to write down the thoughts that came to me during that soak.  No, it’s persistence that has paid the bills around here and to anyone still reading this who is trying to do something that others think they can’t I say…”YES!  YOU CAN!  KEEP GOING!  I BELIEVE IN YOU!  KEEP BELIEVING IN YOURSELF!”  See, it’s that kind of faith, that kind of hope and giving back when I can, that kind of charity, that will always carry us through, any one and each of us.  And speaking of taking a bath, I’ll get off my soapbox now.  The bubbles bursting were stinging my eyes anyway.

Q:  If you had a $1M to spend, what would you do with it?

A:  I don’t know.  Honestly, I don’t know.  Oh, I would love to be able to say that I would donate it to charity, but sometimes charity has to begin at home, you know?  Prior to my marriage falling apart I lived what some might call a life of luxury.  And, recently, I’ve been financially challenged in almost every way you can conceive.  I would love to own my own house again, so, I’d probably invest money towards that agenda while also pumping some into my business so I could expand it.  I really do believe that what I do makes a difference in people’s lives.  I wish I could afford to reach more people with all this information that I absolutely know can help anyone help themselves through good times and bad.  I have been around the money block enough times for enough years to know that you never really own anything anyway; it’s all on loan while you walk the planet.  But, that said, I really do look toward the day when the thought of a Ivy League college tuition for my son doesn’t throw me into a Wall Street style panic.  So, upon reflection, probably the first thing I would do is put away for his education and, then, if there were anything left (have you seen tuitions these days?), I would invest in me, in my brand and in my efforts to get critical information to the masses.

Q:  What are your goals for the next 10 years?  The next 20 years?

A:  Ten years from now I want to wake up and know that my son is safe, healthy and really happy.  I want to be the Martha Stewart of the metaphysical world with a recognizable name brand and a certain amount of celebrity.  I want to have a successful partnership with QVC and also to represent a joint venture deal with a major retailer.  I want to be able to offer my services to whoever needs them without concerns.  I want my company to hit revenue in the seven figures and my investors to see that their support, on every level, paid off.  In ten years time I would hope to have written at least two more books, as well as also releasing a cadre of sideline products all aimed (successfully so!) at bringing health, happiness and prosperity to whoever wants it!  I want to be one of the voices attached to the emerging consciousness on this planet and a guide to all who wonder exactly what that is and how they can use their own thoughts and actions to make their lives more brilliant and beautiful.  And I want that voice to be regularly heard on both radio and tv that makes a difference!  That’s why in ten years I’ll still be doing Growing Bolder radio and television!  Twenty years from now I will be spending quality time with my son and his family, sitting back and watching others run and grow my business while I love my life, each and every valuable and God given day.  Which is a really round about way to say that in twenty years I’ll be happy to be growing older and enjoying every second.

Want to learn more about Ellen Whitehurst? Click here to listen to her interview with The Growing Bolder Radio Show, and here for her Web site. And to read archived articles from our 5 Questions With series, click here.




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