Awakin Calls has a really rich repository of bios -- particularly with the five questions that each of the guest fill up.  The first one is about a turning point in their life, and here's a beautiful response we just received our July guest -- Frank Ostaseski, co-founder of the Zen Hospice Project:
 

When my son Gabe was about to be born, I wanted to understand how to bring his soul into the world. So I signed up for a workshop with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. I'd sit quietly in the back of the room and learn by watching the way she worked with people who were facing death or grieving tragic losses. Sometimes the anguish in the room was so overwhelming that I would meditate in order to stay calm. One rainy night shaken by the suffering I witnessed, I collapsed to my knees in a mud puddle and started to weep. Elisabeth came along and picked me up. She said, "You have to open yourself up and let the pain move through you. It's not yours to hold." Without this lesson, I don't think I could have stayed present, in a healthy way, with the suffering I would witness in the decades to come.