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My Story

Why I am on this coaching and motivational journey?

Experiencing the profound loss that I have experienced; people were always looking to me for an explanation.  Then I started to actually think about my responses. Ninety percent of the time I spent making people understand and feel “better” about my loss and subsequently their loss.  As a writer, I kept notes that came into my head.  Over and over again friends and family encouraged me to “write it down”  I received many texts and emails from friends and acquaintances telling me that my words are inspirational.  That set me on this journey.  This is not a three year journey from the death of my son and husband.  I lost my mother at 18 – an impressionable age and had to pivot, adjust and try to make the most out of life. Loving my husband so deeply, the arrival of an extraordinary mother in law that I eventually loved like a mother, and embracing a large, complex family filled a void and helped make my life rich and rewarding. But you have to “want it” you have to look for the answers, not wait for them to approach you.

The theory of moving "forward," but not "moving on"

That theory is about taking that loved one with you on your journey.  They had a huge influence on you and you can and deserve to maintain that love and friendship.

Erasure is never the object.  You can continue to love the person that you lost, they should not disappear from your values, your ideas or your heart.  A widow(er) can take their spouse with them in the next relationship.  The respect for that husband or wife or child should be there.

Keeping memories alive helps healing. The person who has lost has been deeply influenced by a variety of people, and those influences need to remain.  They make for a healthier you.  Sadness can turn into warming memories.  I believe it was President Biden who said the day you think about your lost one and smile instead of cry is landmark. (paraphrase) That pretty much sums it up.

Why should people subscribe to my recommendations?

They shouldn’t.  Unless you read my writing or listen to my speaking and it resonates with you, you shouldn’t listen to a word I say. But if you do listen, and you hear me talk about the depth of loneliness, the horrible pain, the empty heart and then the mindset to move forward and rediscover, reinvent and enjoy life to the fullest-then you should listen.

I understand your pain.  It never goes away.  However, hopefully, the distance between those feelings of pain will get further apart. Move forward with the person you lost, don’t “move on.”

What I hope to accomplish

To let anyone who has suffered loss – loss of a spouse, a child, a parent, a sibling know that with loss- life doesn’t have to end, and it does not need to DEFINE them. A friend explained there are nuisances and problems in life. Helping people gain perspective and be able to categorize hurt and loneliness and happiness and love is paramount to me. Everyone deserves happiness.  However, happiness is not to be found-but to be made.  That path can be so empowering and exciting.  The next chapter.  After someone very dear to me read my essay on choices and widowhood (as a happily married woman,) she said she was jealous.  That was my favorite response to my writing.  Although she would not choose widowhood, she envied my choices, my chance to have a re-do, to grow and reinvent and experience.

How my life has changed in the last three years

I’ve probably grown more in the last 3 years than in the last 10. I’ve definitely gotten a new prospective on life.  I try to not judge, to grasp everyday as a gift (although sometimes that is impossible — Days that are just dark or painful).  I try to knock down that wall I’ve built to shelter myself from pain (or love), because walls are never healthy.  I have explored what makes me happy and pursued those ventures.  I’ve worked and worked on me-on being happy alone with me.  On being content with me, and trying not to make that happiness dependent.  I do need people, however I needed to discover that I liked and could be happy alone with myself.  I have also worked on self-reliance.

For my future, I want to grow, I want to live, I want to experience, I want to give back and I want to love.