Follow your gut.
That’s what Evanston resident Jenniffer Weigel said she learned to do when she quit her six-figure job with CBS to embark on a spiritual journey to reconnect with her late father and find her own path in life.
The Emmy Award-winning Chicago broadcaster discussed her new book, “Stay Tuned: Conversations with Dad from the Other Side,” Tuesday at the Evanston Public Library. About 40 people attended the event, where Weigel told stories about her quest to have one final conversation with her dad, Chicago sportscaster Tim Weigel. Her father died in 2001, a year after he was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
The book, which came out in October 2007, is a memoir about how Weigel went to the “other side” by consulting spiritual gurus to contact her father. By thinking about the afterlife, Weigel dealt with her father’s death and her decision to change careers.
“I just want people to open their minds to the possibility that close ones are closer than we think they are,” Weigel said. “There’s no doubt there are frauds, but there are also people who are not wired the same way.”
The author recounted a story from when her book first came out. She was lost, driving to a book signing, worrying no one would be there. As she questioned her decision to leave her job, she pulled over to talk to her friend on the phone, who told her, “You have to trust you’re everywhere you’re supposed to be at every moment.”
As Weigel hung up the phone, she realized she had pulled over in front of the bookstore she had been trying to find. To her surprise, more than 20 people came, including one woman whose father had recently been gunned down in the driveway.
After talking with the woman, Weigel said she lost some of her anxiety about leaving her lucrative journalism job, believing her gut instinct that she was where she was meant to be in life. Weigel had become a reporter to please her dad, and she has since decided she can influence people’s lives through storytelling outside the profession of journalism, she said.
Weigel believes coincidences are signs of communication from deceased loved ones. Her father convinced her from the afterlife to move back to Evanston from Chicago, she said.
She was lying in bed one night and asked her father to give her a sign if she should move back. The next day, she had an e-mail from her friend, an Evanston realtor, with an Evanston listing.
Weigel called her friend, who told her she didn’t send the e-mail.
“There are so many of these somethings,” Weigel said. “You have to think it can’t be an accident.”
The crux of the book, Weigel said, is when she questioned if her father is proud of her, she said. After she , she was cleaning up her house and a handwritten note fell to the floor.
Her father had written the letter to her when she was 14. He apologized for not being a hands-on dad, saying he regretted that his job as a journalist took away from time he could be spending with his family. Wiping tears from her eyes, Weigel read the note to the audience, which is also included in the book’s afterword.
“All I can do is make the most of the time we have together,” Weigel read from the note. “I made a new resolution of telling everyone I love every time I think of it, and you’re at the top of the list.”
Kristin Hannah drove from Lake Geneva, Wis., with three of her best friends to hear Weigel speak. She said she has a personal connection with the author, whom she recently met at one of Weigel’s talks in Woodstock, Ill. Hannah’s mother knew Weigel’s father, and they both died within one month of each other from the same type of tumor.
“I read her book in one week and loved it,” Hannah said. “She speaks to each person in a different way, like she is speaking directly to you. I don’t know if we’re connected sisters or best friends from the past, but I knew we were going to become friends.”
