Shownotes
What if the heaviest thing you carry was never fully yours to begin with? This episode of Soul Sparks sits with that question directly. Host Shriya talks with international speaker and past-life reader Donna Hartley, a survivor of a plane crash, cancer, and open-heart surgery, about the patterns we may carry from far beyond this lifetime, and the gifts that travel alongside them.
Donna shares her own approach to past-life work, focused less on drama and more on recognizing patterns worth releasing, and walks through concrete steps for naming a pattern, feeling it, forgiving yourself, and moving forward. This conversation offers a gentle, curious way to look at recurring struggles and the quiet gifts that may already be trying to guide you.
About the Guest:
Donna Hartley is an international speaker, author, and past-life reader whose survival story, a plane crash, cancer, and open-heart surgery, has been featured on NBC, ABC, PBS, and in The New York Times. A former Miss Hawaii, she now speaks worldwide and offers past-life readings through her Akashic Records work.
Key Takeaways:
- A recurring negative pattern, whether in relationships, health, or self-doubt, may be worth examining as something to finally release rather than repeat.
- Healing an old pattern involves a few real steps: naming it honestly, feeling it fully, forgiving yourself, and being thankful for what it taught you.
- Old fears can show up subtly in daily life, an unexplained aversion, a specific panic, a pattern that seems to repeat with different people in the same shape.
- A calm daily practice, even five minutes of stillness or time in nature, helps quiet the noise enough to notice these patterns clearly.
- Your gifts are often hiding in what you already love. Paying attention to what genuinely makes you happy is often the clearest signal of where your talents lie.
Connect With the Guest:
Website: https://donnahartley.com
Episode Chapters:
[00:00] Welcome to Soul Sparks — meeting Donna Hartley (approx.)
[03:00] What past-life trauma actually looks like in Donna's work (approx.)
[09:00] Donna's own story of three heart surgeries and a generational pattern (approx.)
[15:00] The real steps for healing an old, recurring pattern (approx.)
[21:00] Where old trauma quietly shows up in an ordinary day (approx.)
[26:00] Reclaiming the gifts that travel alongside the trauma (approx.)
[29:00] Finding your gift by paying attention to what you love (approx.)
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Transcripts
00:00:08 Shreya: welcome to Soul Sparks. I'm your host, Shreya, and this is your few minutes to light something up inside. Today we are exploring the trauma we may bring into this life from others, how to heal it, and the talents that quietly travel with us to short conversations. Big questions. My guest is extraordinary, Donna Hartley. She is an international speaker, author, and past life reader whose story has reached NBC, ABC, PBS and The New York Times. A former Miss Hawaii who has survived a plane crash, cancer and open heart surgery, she now empowers audiences across five continents to fire up their passion and purpose. So welcome, Donna. I'm honored to have you here on my show.
00:00:51 Donna Hartley: Thank you. It's an honor to be here. And when you were talking about trauma and then what I've been through, like heart surgeries. I've been through a plane crash. I've been through cancer. Every one of those traumas. And let me tell you, it was trauma because every one of those was life threatening. It gave me something. It it it switched who I was. It opened my eyes to the possibilities of who I could be. Now, I'm not saying it didn't take a while after the trauma, but I want your listeners to know when they're going through a difficult period, they're asking the wrong questions. They're saying, why? Why is it happening to me? Why is this so bad? Instead of saying, this is happening, I don't have to like it, but I get to learn something about this. My soul gets to expand my compassion, my love, my depth. So that's what comes from trauma.
00:01:52 Shreya: Donna. Uh, when like when you talk about past life trauma, people often picture something dramatic or far fetched, but in your work, it's quieter than that. Uh, so what do people most often get wrong about what this actually is?
00:02:48 Donna Hartley: Well, when when you look at a past life now I'm different than many readers. I only look at a life that has a lesson left over from another life or a pattern. So people think, oh, I have to be killed or I have to be this for it. Be traumatic. Yes, that is traumatic. And I've gone through all of those in my lives, but I've also gone through some lessons that I wasn't killed. For example, say a woman gets married in any culture in the world, but she has a very, very controlling husband and maybe even a controlling mother in law. So she becomes quiet. She doesn't speak up. She bows her head. Her life is gone inside. She's not fulfilling who she could be in this lifetime. All right. So she passes away in that lifetime. People say, oh, she was a good mother. She was a good wife. Yes, she was all that, but she wasn't herself. So in this lifetime, she comes in and guess what? She marries a man that's similar to those patterns. He starts to control her, and she starts to fall in that same old traumatic pattern of being kept down, of not being herself, of being afraid all the time, afraid to say things, afraid he'll leave her. But then somehow she goes to classes or meditation, or she has some girlfriends that encourage her. She reads books and she said, no, I'm not going to tolerate this. I'm not going to keep carrying this trauma from life to life to life. So she speaks up and the husband is shocked. And she said, it has to be a more equal marriage or I'm going to divorce. In many cultures, in many times you couldn't get divorced. But in this lifetime you can. So she might claim her life. It won't be easy. She gets a divorce and she starts to figure out who she really is. So that is traumatic. But again, she has the opportunity. So when something comes up in your life, just say, wow. Hold it. This is I don't like this, but maybe I have this pattern in another life, and now it's back here to make sure that I don't repeat it over and over again. Does that make sense to you? Do you understand?
00:05:20 Speaker 3: Yes. Yes, definitely.
00:05:23 Shreya: I think I think that's a beautiful reframe. Like it's less about proving anything and more about finally explaining something to you, uh, that you always sensed.
00:05:35 Speaker 3: Right.
00:05:35 Donna Hartley: You always sense, for example, I had to understand why I've had three heart surgeries in this life. And, you know, if you met me in person, I'm kind of a health nut. I live in the mountains. I've always exercised my whole life. I'm not heavy. I don't eat a lot of junk food. I've never smoked, you know, all those kind of things. But yet I had three heart surgeries, so I was born with a bad valve. They found it when I was sixteen. Now there's a couple other patterns that can happen. One generational in my family my mother, my father, my stepfather, my grandmother, my aunt, my uncles, the great grandparents, they all died of a heart disease. Okay. Some kind of heart attack. Heart disease. I decided when I was born to stop that generational heart issue. So I took it on. So I was born with a bad valve that had to be replaced. That's why I had so many surgeries. It wasn't that I was doing anything. And I asked my doctor and he said, it's like in your car, you have a part that's faulty and it doesn't work, and they have to replace it. The car didn't do anything, you know, about it. And the the driver didn't. So he said, your heart is just like that. So then now my next generation down for me, they are not having the heart issues. I said in my meditation and my healing, I will take this on, but I want this to be become aware so my next generation doesn't have to keep going through what I'm going through. So now I can see it and my brother doesn't have any heart issues, so I'm getting to stop it. And it was funny. One night in meditation, my grandmother came to me on my mother's side. See, my mother's side had heart issues. My father's side had heart issues. And she thanked me. She died of heart disease. So we also can take that on as an individual to stop those patterns that go on in our family, from generation to generation to generation.
00:07:47 Shreya: That's that's like, thank you for sharing this. And also, you have spent decades helping people trace patterns back further than this life. So underneath the surface fears, the blocks, the things people can't quite explain. What do you find is really going on?
00:08:06 Donna Hartley: Well, when we have a pattern, when we have that negativity, we've brought it in from another lifetime. And the reason it shows up again is because it's our time to get over that negative pattern. So right now I'm going to give you some steps. So if you see something about your life that you don't like, that you are angry that you are not worthy, that you are always start something and fail. That could be a pattern. Okay, some traumatic thing happened you got put down. So we all have different you have an addiction, you know, uh, drinking, gaming, you know, on gaming, on computers all the time. We have addiction patterns. But I want to give you some steps now, and I think this would be good for your listeners. The first thing you have to do when you want to heal a negative trauma in this lifetime is you have to figure out what is that trauma. For example, I nor my life, someone could say, so I just gamble online, I gamble, okay, that's a negative pattern. It's keeping your dark energy, negative energy, lower vibration. So you have to get honest with that. When people get honest, you might cry, you might yell, you might scream. It takes some focus to really get that. Sometimes I had to run, just run and cry and let things out. When I looked at patterns that had been controlling me, the next thing you have to do, and this is so important. You have to feel it. You have to know it, you have to accept it, and then you have to forgive yourself. And we've all screwed up. We've all made mistakes. We all have things we're not proud of. But you have to forgive yourself from either a past life or even just this life. If we're talking about it, then you have to be thankful for the lesson. Now that's a hard one to, for example, say someone is married three times and it was traumatic every time and it ended in a divorce. You have to thank that other person as well as yourself, for allowing your soul to go through that trauma. Because by the third time you say, that's it, Never again. I got it, I got a heel. Oh, I have to love myself first. Instead of trying to get a man or somebody else. A partner, to love me. So that again, takes some time to go in there and really be thankful for that bad lesson. You don't get there right away. It takes some time. But then after that start to meditate and many people say, I can't meditate. Well, just stillness, just mindfulness. Start with five minutes. Just relax, you know? And if you can be outside in nature, wow, that's the best because you are getting rid of all the things that you've been carrying around in your mind, and you're going to that inner center, that inner joy in your body. That's what meditation brings. And then after meditation, you have to, you know, trust your intuition so everyone you, everyone listening has those gut feelings. They go, oh, I should do this, but maybe not. Oh, I should do that. And they're afraid because that's trauma from another lifetime. Well, you have to trust that spirit talking to you. That's your higher source speaking to you from the other side, and you have to trust it. Okay. So are we getting these? Do you have any questions about the ones I mentioned so far?
00:11:44 Speaker 3: Um, I, I.
00:11:47 Shreya: I'm really curious, like about the everyday version of what you said, like not the big mystical moments, but the small ones. Like for someone listening right now, like where might this old trauma quietly show up in their ordinary day life?
00:12:04 Donna Hartley: Okay. How does it, how does it show up? Okay, so, um, it shows up in ways you don't even expect it. For example, I'll tell you a traumatic I was I was killed during World War two. I was Jewish in that life, and I was killed in Poland, so I can't. I was killed about twenty years old. So when I came back, I was living a good life in United States. You know, I had a family, I did sports, but when I took German in high school, I hated the language. It reminded me of a painful period when I was killed in World War Two by, you know, by Germans. So it was so subtle, but I just would panic when I walked into class. I just couldn't do it. And then when I watched a movie on World War two, I ran down the halls and I threw up. So, see, those are little things that we don't think, but they show up that way. For example, someone would say, okay, so it's just a small thing, but I am so afraid to interview for a job interview for a job now. So if that happens, you have to say, oh no. That was in other lives that I didn't think I could do that. But in this life. So go outside, be in the sunshine, do some exercise, junk the junk food because the junk food makes your brain crazy. So get quiet inside yourself. And instead of seeing the negative happen that you don't get the job, see the positive, say I'm organized. I am positive on the interview. I look the person in the eye, I am friendly, I have questions, I offer suggestions. See your changing your path and any individual, any soul can do that. But you might have to run that mock or interview with a friend before you actually go in for the interview. That's how you cancel out the trauma by reprogramming your body, your soul, your energy. That's why, again, outside in nature, sunshine. Exercise, junking the junk food and saying to yourself, I am worthy. I am worthy of this job. I have the, you know, the a good energy. I'm qualified. I know that I can learn a lot. So once you believe it and your soul believes it, then you can move forward and clear that trauma. Now, this is another thing that I say after you. You know, you might not get that job, but say you get the next job you want to thank. Be thankful. Say, I'm thankful that I'm on this earth now. And I got the opportunity to get the job that I wanted. This is a good job for me. See, we forget to be thankful after we learned the lesson. Okay. Will that help you?
00:15:02 Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think.
00:15:03 Shreya: That's really doable. Like you were describing a pause, a moment of noticing like not, uh, some huge ritual. And I love that it feeds into a real normal day. And, uh, let, let's talk about the healing itself and the brighter side of this, because it is not only old wounds we carry you, you say we bring gifts to. So for someone ready to heal what's heavy and reclaim what's bright. So like, what is the way forward? You would point them toward.
00:15:38 Donna Hartley: Okay, that's a great question because along with the trauma, every one of us on this planet comes with a gift. Now, we don't pay attention to sometimes to what those gifts are, but they're around us. Or we say, oh, I have to do this one job because this job will give me money. But I really like gardening and planting, but that's just a hobby. Or I really, you know, I gotta have this job, you know? I don't like it. I don't like my boss, but I love, I love, love that I can, you know, be around children because something like that really has me happy working and being around children. Okay. But you say, oh, that doesn't pay enough money. And I'm saying, no, please listen to your soul. Those are the gifts. When I do past life readings for people, I say, what's your passion? That's what you're supposed to follow. Your passion, your gift that you came in with. I had a young man that just graduated from high school. I met him, he was helping another gardener clean up my yard, and I said, what are you going to do? And he goes, oh, I don't know. I just I have to do something that makes money. And I said, uh, what do you love? What do you love? That's what you should do. And he said, what do you mean? And I said, well, what do you love? And he goes, well, I love animals. And I said, so you're going to go to a community college. Is that right? He goes, yeah. I said, find some classes. Working with animals. There's all these opportunities. You are going to work the rest of your life. Start there doing what you love. That's a gift. See, he probably worked with animals in another lifetime. Or somebody is good at, um, at healing with their hands, okay. They love. And they said, well, I have this job in corporate, but I can't leave. And I said, what about massage? What about Reiki? They go, oh, I love it, I love it. I said, take some classes in that fine tune that skill. See, if we pay attention, every one of us, we will realize that we have likes and we have passion. Those are our gifts. Some people like working in libraries and books all around them, so they should start doing that maybe as a hobby, and then maybe it can become full time. So if you pay close attention now, I very early I had the gift of speaking. I am an international speaker where other people would struggle. So when I went back in my lives, I saw many lives where I was the speaker. So I turned it into a full time career, speaking for companies and organizations because it was my gift. I was a communicator. So that's what I'm saying. It doesn't have to be big and grand. Some people like restoring old furniture. Some people like sailing. I'm saying, ask yourself, take that quiet time. What can I do that I really like that motivates me? That makes me happy. That's the path you should go after because you'll be doing a lot of it. So I've spent that time in meditation. So meditate. And you know what? Ask your friends. When I asked my friends, this was, oh, when I was back in my twenties and they said, oh, we know what you are. And I go, you do, what am I? And they said, you're a catalyst. You get people going and you're a communicator. And that's exactly what I am now. I didn't think that was a gift, but that is my gift. So again, it takes some time. Ask your family what are you good at? And then think about when you really smile, when you're happy, when you're joy. Is it art? Is it being with other people? Is it working with young children? You know, find that. Is it architect? Is it drawing? Find that passion and then you find your gift in this lifetime.
00:19:35 Shreya: That's beautifully said. And if after this, my listeners want to connect with you and want to learn more about you or about your work, then what's the best place to find you?
00:19:46 Donna Hartley: The best way would be to find me on my website. So that is my name, Donna D o n n a H a r t l e y dot com. And, uh, they'll see the plane crash story up there. They'll see the speeches I give. They'll see a section on past lives. I have some brand new videos there. So. And then there's a form. They could fill it out and then email me if they want more information or if they want to book a past live, they'll see the books that I've written. So everything is is on my website. That would be the best way.
00:20:28 Shreya: Yes. And I will make sure to attach all these details and links below in the show notes so that the listeners can find them easily and get in touch with you. And thank you again, Donna. Your life is proof that we can survive almost anything and still choose to shine. I think that's a spark people don't forget. And to all my listeners, take a moment tonight, ask yourself what you have been carrying that may never have been yours and what gifts has been waiting you all along. Let that question light something up. I'm Shreya and this was Soul Spark. So keep glowing and do not forget to hit the follow button. Subscribe and feel free to share your thoughts because your ears deserve premium content. Thank you.
00:21:11 Donna Hartley: And I'm so glad you say so, spark, because that's what we need. We need to spark up our lives, figure out what we want. Because if we die with our spark inside of us. Boy, I think that's the saddest thing about our lives. But we if we ignite our spike spark, there we go, our spark boy, we are on fire.
