A personal note on love, loss and how to live your life to the fullest
Losing my husband and finding myself
AS WE ALL WRAP UP AND SAY GOODBYE TO 2021 I WANTED TO SEND OUT A VERY PERSONAL NOTE ON HOW THIS YEAR HAS TRANSFORMED ME THROUGH LOVE AND LOSS AND HOW I HAVE LEARNED TO LIVE EACH DAY WITH GRATITUDE.
Just typing this blog post is making my heart beat faster…This is probably one of the hardest things I will ever have to write but I wouldn’t be of service to this incredible community we have built over the last 10 years if I didn’t share how I overcame the most traumatic event of my life and came out on the other side a better, more empathic, and more grateful person than I have ever been.
On January 23rd, 2021 in the middle of a Saturday when I was at Magic Mix Andy called me and said ‘Honey I have a pain in my heart and I called an ambulance’.
I know my husband and he is not one to easily call for help. I dropped everything and ran home. Andy being a PhD neurosurgeon and having developed the first FDA approved Covid-19 saliva spit test was recovering at home after a spinal fusion neck surgery. Without going into too much of the horrid details of that day, I made it home before the paramedics got there and was able to hold his hand and tell him I love him before he passed away of a massive heart attack.
It has almost been one year and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t miss him or talk to him. I spent the first four months after Andy’s passing out of my body, out of touch with reality, trying to piece together what was now to become my new normal. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, I cried and felt like there was a big gaping hole in my soul. I took prescription medications for the first time in my life (hello Xanax) and felt grief in every ounce of my body.
However, I also was overcome with extreme gratitude, gratitude for all my family, friends, this community, and everyone I have encountered since then. There was just this abundance of love and kindness from near and far that assured me I did not have to go through this alone. It truly was and still is mind-blowing to me how much ‘togetherness’ can mean to our human hearts. I started journaling again (something I had done when I was a teenager, then again when I became a health coach but as always when life gets too busy, we leave that to the next day). Journaling has been nothing short of therapeutic for me. Being able to put your thoughts on paper just lightens your emotional load. I regularly called my therapist who assured me that what I was experiencing was in fact grief at its finest (and not me going crazy, which is what I started to believe), I got myself a homeopath because prescription meds were not how I wanted to heal my aching heart.
To put it gently, I was doing the work but I also for the first time ever met all my emotions with compassion. If I wanted to cry, I cried, if I wanted to sleep late, I slept (and let me tell you if you didn’t know it, sleep deprivation plays a real toll on your emotional health), I drank too much wine, I listened to Van Morrison on loud on repeat (sorry neighbors), and I spent time with the people that made me feel most like myself again. It was a judgement free zone in every sense of the word and trust me no one was going to tell me, ‘the widow’, what I could or couldn’t do. It was liberating because for those that know me, I have always been a people pleaser. I just didn’t give a shit – not that I was harming anyone else during this process apart from probably myself, but I just was allowed to be, be sad, be angry, be whatever emotion that would present itself that day and I ebbed and flowed with all of them and all of me.
It was the most transformative time of my life. I started asking myself, who am I? What do I want? What do I want out of this life? How do I want to feel? Who do I want to spend my time with and surround myself with?
Then suddenly I started to notice this innate shift in my routine and my soul, I wanted to move my body because that made me feel good, I wanted to drink juices because they made me feel alert and energetic, and I started reading and listening to podcasts on life and death and gratitude. I started saying yes to things that lit me up and no to things that dragged me down. I found my voice and adulted real fast (even though I am 38). It’s interesting that up until that point death was something so farfetched in my world, this was the first time ever I was confronted with it, up close and it couldn’t have been more personal. We will all die one day and with that in mind I recalibrated my brain to make the most of every day we are here on this earth, living this human experience.
I practice gratitude every morning and night, I surround myself with people that uplift me and that I hopefully uplift as well, I surrendered, I let go and I simplified my life. All of the books I have read and all of the influential people I have listened to all seem to have these characteristics in common; practice mindfulness and compassion towards yourself. Your thoughts are just words unless you give them meaning. We have the ability to change our behavior EVERY SINGLE DAY, gratitude, forgiveness and affirmations can reshape your entire outlook on life (Louise Hay, thank you!). It just takes one – one meeting, one person, one relationship, one phone call, one event – to change your life forever (Ed Mylett, fucking love you). Movement is medicine (Dino Malvone @thesaltdrop – you don’t know it but you have been my secret therapist…your classes have made me feel whole again). We always come back to the heart; it helps us expand, heal, love (my spirit guru Danielle Laporte and her utterly transformative voice that makes me melt every time I hear her speak).
Remembering all of the magical times and being grateful for the memories we made - Andy and I at our engagement party in 2017 ❤️
To put it into perspective, all we have is the present, right here and right now, how do we want to feel? How do we want those around us to feel? How do we want to show up in the world? Not just living day to day but feeling alive.
I know now that time is our most valuable asset and that even with all the work, I had done to try to feel whole in the past, nothing prepares you for the loss of a loved one. Grief stopped me in my tracks, but it also made me see the world with a whole new set of eyes; more patience, more empathy, more joy, a lot more honesty – because why the fuck not? (Nobody can read your mind and how many years have I not spent misinterpreting things?), more gratitude for the small things in life, more laughter, dancing, singing, togetherness and more compassion towards all of my emotions whether happy or sad – they all are part of me, and I hold space for all of them. Sometimes it takes letting go of our old habits and beliefs (saying yes to all and being ‘the good one’) to move forward and become who you always were meant to be just as the universe intended it.
Be kind to yourself and all your emotions, hold the door, smile at a stranger, and remember that you are safe, you are whole, you are loved, you are exactly where you need to be in your journey. You are unique and you are alive. Losing my husband was the hardest thing I have ever had to endure but I know that he is on the other side smiling at me, knowing that no matter what we will always have the memories.
