Griever’s Round Table

Emily
00:02:31
Hello loves.

Emily
00:02:32
It's just me, Emily.

Emily
00:02:35
Welcome to my brand new podcast where we explore how to discover your soul's purpose, embody your essence, and to live a life in alignment with your truth.

Emily
00:02:46
Today I am joined by not just one, but three amazing guests who I have personally met in the community of grief and loss.

Emily
00:02:56
And they are going to talk about kind of their own personal experience with surviving tragedy and how if they feel like it, actually guided them more into their true authentic self.

Emily
00:03:08
So first off, we have Angela Griffith, who is a remarried widow, mother of three little babies or kind of big kids now too.

Emily
00:03:18
She's a yoga and meditation teacher, a sound healer, a dancer, and a homemaker from Northern California who draws her deepest healing and inspiration through living slowly in devotion to source, in deep reverence for and reconnection with the natural world.

Emily
00:03:35
I brought Angela on today's episode because I have learned so much from her in terms of spiritual wisdom and even just her guiding us through a deep breath to begin this podcast podcast episode today.

Emily
00:03:53
She is just a well of knowledge in terms of spirituality and has also survived two different types of losses.

Emily
00:04:01
Welcome, Angela.

Angela
00:04:03
Thank you.

Angela
00:04:04
Honored to be here.

Angela
00:04:05
Thank you, Emily.

Emily
00:04:06
Thank you.

Emily
00:04:07
We also have Hope Edelman, who is an author, speaker, a certified life coach, and founder and CEO of MotherlessDaughters.com she has written eight nonfiction books, including the bestsellers Motherless Daughters and Motherless Mothers and her most recent book, the Finding youg Way along the Long Arc of Loss.

Emily
00:04:28
Her books have been published in 17 countries and 11 languages and have sold more than 1 million copies.

Emily
00:04:36
Hope also speaks at venues and conferences all over the world.

Emily
00:04:40
She's appeared on TV including Today, Good Morning America, and Good Morning Australia.

Emily
00:04:47
As the founder and CEO of Motherless Daughters, she creates and leads online support groups, in person retreats, webinars, and Mother's Day programs that reach thousands of women each year.

Emily
00:04:59
I met Hope after reading her book the After Grief and it supported me so much on my grief journey and I invited her on today's episode because she too has experienced different types of losses.

Emily
00:05:12
And I'm so interested, Hope, to see, to hear how these losses have really influenced your life and helped you remember the truth of who you are.

Emily
00:05:20
So welcome to the show, Hope.

Hope
00:05:22
Thanks so much, Emily.

Hope
00:05:23
It's so nice to be here.

Hope
00:05:24
I really appreciate it and really looking forward to the conversation.

Emily
00:05:29
Thank you.

Emily
00:05:30
And then we have Brandon Janis, who is another widower, fellow widower and father of three.

Emily
00:05:37
He's a serial entrepreneur and the author of Just Do.

Emily
00:05:40
He is currently the co founder of Blue Hat Publishing.

Emily
00:05:43
And when he's not working on books or hanging with the kids, you'll find him golfing with his dad, traveling with anyone that's up for a trip, and searching the world for the best taco spots.

Emily
00:05:54
Brandon and I connected through our shared loss.

Emily
00:05:57
We have very similar stories.

Emily
00:05:58
Losing our.

Emily
00:05:59
The love of our life to cancer.

Emily
00:06:01
And we've just connected offline about the realities of being a widow and a solo parent to two to three kids for you, two for me.

Emily
00:06:11
So welcome to the show, Brandon.

Brandon
00:06:13
Yeah, thank you for having me.

Brandon
00:06:15
I feel out of my league.

Brandon
00:06:16
The credentials of everybody else are like all these great credentials and then there's Brandon.

Brandon
00:06:21
But it's.

Brandon
00:06:21
It's great to be here.

Brandon
00:06:22
Thanks for having me.

Emily
00:06:24
Love it, Brandon.

Emily
00:06:25
If anyone wants to go check out Brandon's amazing social media feed too, I'd say their credentials are right there.

Emily
00:06:31
Your story is so beautiful and you've touched so many lives with.

Emily
00:06:35
With your story of loss.

Emily
00:06:36
So thank you for being here.

Emily
00:06:38
Thank you.

Emily
00:06:38
All right, you guys, well, let's dive in.

Emily
00:06:42
The first question I want to ask you is what masks do you think you wear?

Emily
00:06:48
And then when you take them off, what do you look like?

Emily
00:06:52
What do other people actually see?

Emily
00:06:54
So I'd love it if hope.

Emily
00:06:55
If you would want to kick us off with this.

Hope
00:06:59
I was just thinking, wouldn't it be nice to have time to think about this while the others are talking?

Hope
00:07:04
You're going to get me right off the cuff.

Hope
00:07:07
What masks do I wear?

Hope
00:07:09
You know, I've been doing this work for so long, 30 years since my first book came out, that I think I have a public Persona like we all do, and that's only amplified by social media.

Hope
00:07:24
But mine began before that point and then a really private Persona.

Hope
00:07:30
So I guess, you know, my public Persona is my mask, which is being out there as the expert, and I'm seen that way as, you know, an authority on a topic.

Hope
00:07:44
And I'm aware that 30 years of research and experience and working in the early parent loss field, which is what I really do, I work with historical loss, which is still a really untapped niche in the bereavement field.

Hope
00:07:59
Adults who experienced a big loss when they were children, adolescents, or young adults, and how that shows up later in life in really predictable ways at extremely predictable times.

Hope
00:08:12
And a lot of therapists don't know about that.

Hope
00:08:15
So that is my public Persona.

Hope
00:08:20
And I can flip the switch and do a podcast and do an interview, and I go out in the world and I'm seen a certain way.

Hope
00:08:29
And for, you know, commercial purposes, I wear that mask gratefully and I wear it joyfully.

Hope
00:08:41
And then I come home and I take it off.

Hope
00:08:43
And I'm just a regular person who is as insecure as anybody else on the street, who has moments of great joy and moments of deep sadness and loneliness like everybody.

Hope
00:08:58
And I spend half a day in my pajamas in front of a computer or my yoga clothes and.

Hope
00:09:07
And I'm.

Hope
00:09:07
I guess I'm as normal or ordinary as anyone else and scared, you know, about the things that people are scared about these days in the world right now.

Hope
00:09:20
And I guess I, you know, so I balance, I bounce back and forth between the public and the private and social media in.

Hope
00:09:29
My private life is really difficult for me lately because of the degree of self promotion and the superficial context.

Hope
00:09:39
And my work is so much about, you know, seeing each other's essential selves and creating intentional spaces and designing experiences so that people can take off their masks in community.

Hope
00:09:54
But then in order to bring them into that place, I have to really tap into the public Persona.

Hope
00:10:00
So I think that's something I'm still trying to navigate and figure out.

Hope
00:10:05
So if any of you understand that, because I see heads nodding on the screen and if you've got any, you know, insights, I'm all ears today and willing to share whatever I can as well.

Emily
00:10:17
I love that.

Emily
00:10:18
I love that.

Emily
00:10:20
Yeah.

Emily
00:10:21
And I think that the more that we.

Emily
00:10:24
For me, what that's looked like is like recognizing that our purpose and who we are on the outside in that mask is a natural extension of who we are behind the mask as well.

Emily
00:10:34
But it's so hard to actually trust yourself and believe that.

Emily
00:10:38
So I love that hope.

Emily
00:10:39
Thank you for that reflection.

Emily
00:10:40
Who wants to share next?

Emily
00:10:41
What mask do you wear, Brandon?

Emily
00:10:44
Let's try you.

Emily
00:10:46
What do people see when they take it off?

Brandon
00:10:48
Yeah, man, Hope, that was so good.

Brandon
00:10:50
Thank you for sharing that.

Brandon
00:10:52
I can relate and in some way shapes and forms of what you're talking about.

Brandon
00:10:56
Obviously not.

Brandon
00:10:56
I was not on Good Morning America this morning or any mornings.

Brandon
00:10:59
I've never been invited, but so my personality's not quite that known.

Brandon
00:11:05
But for me, I think the mask is the mask of having it all together.

Brandon
00:11:11
The mask of perfectionism, the mask of, look at him go.

Brandon
00:11:16
Look at him go.

Brandon
00:11:17
Look, he does it.

Brandon
00:11:18
A single dad lost his person.

Brandon
00:11:20
He's killing it.

Brandon
00:11:22
When, man, I take it off and it's a struggle.

Brandon
00:11:26
It's.

Brandon
00:11:26
It's a grind.

Brandon
00:11:27
It is real.

Brandon
00:11:29
But you know what?

Brandon
00:11:30
I Love.

Brandon
00:11:31
I love Mask Off Brandon so much more than Mask On Brandon.

Brandon
00:11:34
I love the.

Brandon
00:11:35
I love the vulnerability that comes with it.

Brandon
00:11:38
I love the grace that comes with it.

Brandon
00:11:40
I love the fact that I can admit that I suck.

Brandon
00:11:43
I love them, you know, at times.

Brandon
00:11:44
I love that, you know, I, I can ask for forgiveness for my children and my people when I'm not the best friend or the best person or the best human or the best coworker, whatever it may be.

Brandon
00:11:56
But, man, so many people, I'm sure look at all of us like, man, they.

Brandon
00:12:00
They've got it.

Brandon
00:12:01
They got this platform, they got it together, they're.

Brandon
00:12:04
They write beautifully, whatever it may be, whatever you're.

Brandon
00:12:07
They dance beautifully.

Brandon
00:12:08
If you're in the case of Angela, that's not me, whoever it may be, doing that thing.

Brandon
00:12:13
But, man, I love Mask Off Brandon because those are the ones that.

Brandon
00:12:18
And I think my people are the ones that know Mask Off Brandon.

Brandon
00:12:21
And the ones that I really care about know the mask Golf Brandon.

Brandon
00:12:24
And that's.

Brandon
00:12:26
I miss having to put a mask on.

Brandon
00:12:29
I don't love putting a mask on, I guess, is what I'm saying.

Brandon
00:12:31
I wish I could just be me.

Brandon
00:12:33
But sometimes, to your point, Hope, like, you have to.

Brandon
00:12:36
You have to be this person.

Brandon
00:12:37
You have to be this character almost.

Brandon
00:12:40
Not that it's fake, because I do also think it helps and it encourages and it opens up doors for people and it helps people heal.

Brandon
00:12:48
But I just, man, I am a human that struggles so much with so many things and I try to share that openly on social media because, man, anyone that's not going through a hard right now or just went through a hard, is probably heading into a hard, whether they want to admit it or not.

Brandon
00:13:09
And I just want to be able to mask off and say, hey, I'm here.

Brandon
00:13:12
I'm your friend.

Brandon
00:13:13
I'm going to hold space with you and I'm going to cry with you.

Brandon
00:13:17
I'm going to hurt with you and all the things that come with that.

Brandon
00:13:19
So Mask on perfection.

Brandon
00:13:22
Got it all together.

Brandon
00:13:23
Mask off much more often is, man, just.

Brandon
00:13:27
I struggle.

Brandon
00:13:28
It's hard.

Brandon
00:13:28
Every day is tough.

Brandon
00:13:29
But, man, there's so much good too.

Brandon
00:13:31
And I like, I like sharing both.

Brandon
00:13:34
I like talking about both.

Hope
00:13:36
I so relate to that.

Hope
00:13:38
Brandon.

Hope
00:13:38
I'm just, just thinking that, you know, the Mask on Hope is the one that inspires people to say, you're so strong.

Hope
00:13:45
You got this, like, you're an inspiration.

Hope
00:13:48
And the Mask Off Hope is the one who, you know, has, like, everyone deep moments of feeling not strong at all and feeling weak and scared and just thinking I'm just going to do the next right thing to get to the next moment like everybody else.

Hope
00:14:05
So, yeah, thank you for sharing that and being so honest.

Hope
00:14:09
You know, with the mask off is the vulnerable self, right?

Brandon
00:14:12
Yeah.

Hope
00:14:12
The mask on is the one who has to sort of like, soldier up.

Angela
00:14:16
Yeah.

Hope
00:14:16
And go out in the world.

Angela
00:14:18
I'm so uninterested these days in the mask on.

Angela
00:14:21
It's like I just want to see the mask off.

Angela
00:14:23
And I feel like social media has this capacity to, like, pedestalize people even in the grief space, you know, and it's like, especially in the grief space, like, oh, this person's got it figured out.

Angela
00:14:37
And it's like, we're all human.

Angela
00:14:39
We're all.

Angela
00:14:39
We're all just figuring this thing out.

Angela
00:14:41
And when people bring their.

Angela
00:14:43
Take their masks off, which I think, you know, both of you do, well, that's what people connect with more.

Angela
00:14:49
You know, that's.

Angela
00:14:50
That's the medicine.

Angela
00:14:51
Like, that's the beauty.

Angela
00:14:53
We don't need the mask on.

Angela
00:14:55
We can't relate to the mask on.

Angela
00:14:57
That's not what's going to help people heal.

Angela
00:15:00
It's when we say, hey, guys, I'm just figuring this out too.

Angela
00:15:04
I don't know.

Angela
00:15:05
I don't know what's next.

Angela
00:15:05
But this has worked.

Angela
00:15:07
This is helping me.

Angela
00:15:09
So I really appreciate you sharing that, Brandon.

Angela
00:15:12
I think we all struggle with that balance of when am I on and when am I off and when we can just kind of try to eliminate that as much as possible and just show up as authentically as possible, as hard as that can be to do.

Angela
00:15:29
That's where the real healing takes place.

Angela
00:15:33
Because, I don't know, I find it, especially these days, so much easier to relate to somebody who's just like, hey, here I am.

Angela
00:15:41
You know, like, this is it.

Angela
00:15:45
And sometimes it's spot on and it feels really in flow, and I feel like I've got it.

Angela
00:15:51
And other times it's.

Angela
00:15:53
It's all crumbling.

Angela
00:15:54
Isn't that just what this human journey is?

Angela
00:15:58
Isn't that it?

Angela
00:15:59
Grief really highlights that for all of us.

Angela
00:16:02
I think we're all just messy, chaotic humans trying to figure this whole thing out, you know, I guess I'll go next.

Angela
00:16:13
Yes.

Emily
00:16:14
Angela, what's your mask?

Angela
00:16:15
You know, we all wear masks, as we've all said.

Angela
00:16:19
And I've always been this, like, fairy soul, you know, this like, super artistic, creative, sensitive, deeply feeling, mystical soul.

Angela
00:16:30
And like, that's not very popular in our world.

Angela
00:16:34
Not a lot of people like that human.

Angela
00:16:37
That's not what's celebrated in our world.

Angela
00:16:40
What's celebrated is the person who's doing and constantly creating and coming out with the next program and doing this and, you know, achieving, achieving, achieving.

Angela
00:16:50
And that's beautiful, right?

Angela
00:16:52
There's nothing wrong with that.

Angela
00:16:53
That's absolutely fabulous.

Angela
00:16:54
But I am a.

Angela
00:16:57
I was more designed to wander through the forest and look at the flowers and take things slowly and create and just be in this quiet place of contemplation.

Angela
00:17:13
And growing up, I learned that that was not acceptable.

Angela
00:17:16
That was not what was celebrated.

Angela
00:17:18
I was definitely never first picked for dodgeball and pe.

Angela
00:17:22
You know, that was not.

Angela
00:17:23
People didn't like that, so I had to learn how to cover that up.

Angela
00:17:27
And that was just survival, right?

Angela
00:17:29
Like, we're all just trying to survive.

Angela
00:17:30
We're all just trying to be accepted and fit into the herd and do what's right, especially at a young age.

Angela
00:17:36
And grief really, like, propelled me further into that other realm of, like, you're different.

Angela
00:17:44
You know, your peers don't understand you.

Angela
00:17:47
They haven't gone through something like this.

Angela
00:17:49
So it just really isolated me even further and took me deeper into that realm of other.

Angela
00:17:55
Made me feel like an alien, as I'm sure it did for most of us when we were going through that.

Angela
00:18:02
And in that space of isolation, I had to really learn to befriend the deeper parts of myself, you know, and to come to terms with this is who I am.

Angela
00:18:14
And, like, not everyone's gonna vibe with it.

Angela
00:18:18
Not everyone's gonna understand my grief experience.

Angela
00:18:20
Not everyone's gonna understand me as a human, and that's okay.

Angela
00:18:24
And that has been a very, like, painful, arduous, long process of unlearning and unraveling.

Angela
00:18:31
But the deeper I go, the more peace and acceptance I find within myself.

Angela
00:18:36
And it's still a process.

Angela
00:18:39
Like, we're still working on it, you know, as always.

Angela
00:18:42
But I do find that grief has this capacity to, like, pull us into ourselves in a way.

Angela
00:18:49
Like, pull us into this cocoon of, like, hearing some kind of sound.

Angela
00:18:55
Is that maybe something.

Hope
00:18:58
That was me.

Hope
00:18:58
That was me exhaling, like, I hear you, girl.

Angela
00:19:04
I'm like, is that somebody cooking in the background?

Emily
00:19:06
I don't know.

Hope
00:19:07
I was like, no.

Emily
00:19:09
I was like, my dog's snoring really loud over here, too.

Hope
00:19:12
So, yeah, that was my.

Angela
00:19:14
That's that cocoon that feels like a tomb, right?

Angela
00:19:17
When we're in.

Angela
00:19:18
It is actually the womb of where we're being reborn into really not I wouldn't say the new version of ourselves, but really, like, our true ourselves.

Angela
00:19:26
And grief is like this horrible thing we go through, but also this great permission slip, ultimately, when you can, like, zoom out and look at it, of, like, I'm becoming who I am, whether people understand it or not.

Angela
00:19:41
So I probably wear less masks now than I did growing up.

Angela
00:19:46
But, yeah, the human tendency to, like, dim our light or to fit in or put on a certain role in certain situations, I think will always be there to a certain extent.

Angela
00:19:58
But now I have more of the capacity to check myself and go, like, girl, that's not you.

Angela
00:20:04
Like, it's okay to just show up in your moment, in this moment, as yourself.

Angela
00:20:09
And those who vibe with your message are your people, who.

Angela
00:20:13
The people who are ready for it, will receive it, and those who don't, won't.

Angela
00:20:16
And that's okay.

Angela
00:20:17
And it's.

Angela
00:20:18
There's nothing wrong or right about any of it, if that makes sense, you know?

Emily
00:20:22
Yeah.

Emily
00:20:23
I think what's coming up for me after hearing all of your reflections is just like, we learn to wear a mask as a means to fit in, to feel safe, to feel worthy.

Emily
00:20:33
And then as we kind of grow up, as we evolve, whether it's through loss or another type of major life event, it starts to kind of dissolve, and we feel a little bit more comfortable in our own skin.

Emily
00:20:46
And so that really does bring me into our next question, which is, how do each of your respective losses.

Emily
00:20:53
How do.

Emily
00:20:53
How do you feel like they have changed you?

Emily
00:20:55
If you could kind of imagine the person who you were before, and then after what.

Emily
00:21:02
What were, like, the major shifts that you've seen.

Emily
00:21:05
And I know you guys have a couple different types of.

Emily
00:21:07
Some of, like, Hope and Angela.

Emily
00:21:09
I know you guys have different losses and divorces of loss.

Emily
00:21:12
I want to talk about here, too.

Emily
00:21:13
So whoever feels called to first go for it, I'll go.

Hope
00:21:18
Because we can just maybe stay in the same order, if that's helpful.

Hope
00:21:23
You know, my first big loss came at 17, and when my mother died of cancer.

Hope
00:21:30
And it was a predictable loss.

Hope
00:21:34
She was deteriorating for over a year and a half, but sudden for the three children in the family because we didn't know how sick she was or that she was going to die.

Hope
00:21:44
So it was a confusing time that I've realized through EMDR as an adult, completely reset my nervous system.

Hope
00:21:54
So who would I be if my mother hadn't died?

Hope
00:21:57
I can't tell you.

Hope
00:21:58
I think I was on a path of development because my brain was still developing My nervous system was developing.

Hope
00:22:05
Everything about me was emerging at that time.

Hope
00:22:10
And I feel like it derailed me off that path.

Hope
00:22:14
And not entirely the way that I talk about it with my clients at retreats and in one on one coaching and support groups is this feeling of having suddenly a two track life where I was moving along in a certain direction until the age of 17.

Hope
00:22:36
I was about to become a senior in high school.

Hope
00:22:38
She died in the summer.

Hope
00:22:40
And then a big piece of me derailed.

Hope
00:22:45
And then I was suddenly on two tracks.

Hope
00:22:47
And on one track I was moving along with my peer group.

Hope
00:22:50
I was graduating from high school, I was going to college, I was getting a job.

Hope
00:22:54
Eventually I got married, I had two daughters.

Hope
00:22:57
And I was doing all of that really in lockstep with many of my friends.

Hope
00:23:03
And then this other part of me was developing in the context of this dramatic loss and a family that didn't talk about grief.

Hope
00:23:14
And it was.

Hope
00:23:15
There was no grief support at that time in my community in the 1980s.

Hope
00:23:20
And so that piece of me developed coping strategies and mechanisms to get through the trauma and the adjustments and carried those along with the rest of me.

Hope
00:23:34
And this piece of me often felt out of sync with the other part and really isolated and lonely, which is something that survivors of early parent loss and often early sibling loss often feel.

Hope
00:23:49
And it wasn't until my 20s, when I started working on my first book and I met all these other women who were also living this way and understood this second track, that I felt like I found my people and they sort of came closer together.

Hope
00:24:05
You know, they weren't as far apart anymore.

Hope
00:24:07
So I can't tell you who I would have been if I hadn't experienced that big loss.

Hope
00:24:14
I lost my dad also when I was in my 40s.

Hope
00:24:17
It was a very different experience to go through it as an adult.

Hope
00:24:21
And I do feel very much like I didn't think it changed the course of my adult life as much, but it opened me up in a way because it was such a different loss than my mom.

Hope
00:24:34
His children were with him.

Hope
00:24:36
We were communicating.

Hope
00:24:37
I feel like it broke me open in a really beautiful way to be able to walk him to the end of his life and say goodbye and resolve open issues.

Hope
00:24:48
So that I think made me a more feeling person and a more compassionate person.

Hope
00:24:55
And I could really understand the beauty that came with sorrow.

Hope
00:25:02
In a way.

Hope
00:25:04
I think a lot about Stephen Colbert in his interview with Anderson Cooper, that moment where he says that he had to learn to love the thing he most wishes had not happened.

Hope
00:25:14
I think about that about three times a day ever since watching that interview and how that is to me, such a valuable and worthy goal.

Hope
00:25:24
And sometimes I think I'm closer to it than others.

Hope
00:25:26
But then my next big loss occurred five years ago when I went through a very unexpected separation that led to a divorce.

Hope
00:25:36
And my life is so different now than it was five years ago.

Hope
00:25:42
It'll be five years in February.

Hope
00:25:44
I went through a divorce and the pandemic and empty nesting all in a six month period.

Hope
00:25:50
And that brought me to my knees and ultimately allowed me to rise in, to become, I think, the person that I really was meant to be and didn't let myself be.

Hope
00:26:06
I'm not going to say couldn't be.

Hope
00:26:08
And I can talk about that more for you, Emily.

Hope
00:26:10
I don't want to take up all the time here, but I think that was a very transformational experience that I can articulate in a way that I can't articulate my very early loss because it was happening at such a formative time.

Hope
00:26:25
It feels like it changed everything, but I don't know where it would have led me otherwise.

Emily
00:26:31
Yeah, that's so.

Emily
00:26:32
I mean, that makes total sense because as a 17 year old, your sense of self and identity is still very much forming.

Emily
00:26:39
And so it's just.

Emily
00:26:41
Yeah, I mean, that event absolutely sent you on an entirely different trajectory.

Angela
00:26:45
It does.

Hope
00:26:45
Learning how to cope with the pain and the existential crisis and the awe and the wonder of the death of someone who is so essential to your survival at such an early age exposes you to a worldview that you wouldn't normally be exposed to at such a young age.

Hope
00:27:10
And that gets folded right into your developing personality.

Hope
00:27:14
It becomes really feels like it becomes part of who you are.

Hope
00:27:17
And if it's a traumatic, then that gets folded into your personality too and has to be very carefully and safely undone later.

Hope
00:27:28
I think to get back to the person that you were before.

Emily
00:27:31
Girl, we need to talk about like my daughter and we're gonna set up a whole nother call.

Emily
00:27:36
I'm here for it because I feel that.

Emily
00:27:39
Go feel that for her.

Emily
00:27:41
Yeah, I can feel the emotion there.

Emily
00:27:44
Yeah, me too.

Emily
00:27:46
Witnessing you and all of the losses you've walked yourself through.

Emily
00:27:50
And yes, I want to dive into more of the identity piece with the divorce in a moment, but I'd love to hear Brandon, how has yours.

Brandon
00:27:59
First of all, Hope and Angela need their own podcast with you because there's too many things we need to talk about in here.

Brandon
00:28:05
Like tell for all three of Us to get.

Brandon
00:28:07
You know, get this in, because it's just so good.

Brandon
00:28:09
And I could sit back and listen to all of this.

Brandon
00:28:11
So, yeah, mine was.

Brandon
00:28:13
Mine was a little bit different.

Brandon
00:28:15
But, you know, all of us.

Brandon
00:28:16
All of us have different stories.

Brandon
00:28:17
And my wife got diagnosed with cancer when we had been married just under about eight years.

Brandon
00:28:25
And so we had three children at the time.

Brandon
00:28:28
They were five.

Brandon
00:28:29
They were four, seven, four, six, and eight.

Brandon
00:28:34
And so we had three little ones that had to watch their mom die.

Brandon
00:28:38
That's something that you don't think about when you're standing at the altar because you plan on spending the rest of your life with that person.

Brandon
00:28:45
And then, you know, not to get into the story, but she got better for a minute, but then it got worse pretty quickly.

Brandon
00:28:51
And it got to the point where we knew medically there was nothing that could save Rach.

Brandon
00:28:57
But Rach was the most selfless human on the planet.

Brandon
00:29:00
And so she did every.

Brandon
00:29:02
She spent every moment of her.

Brandon
00:29:05
Of her life that she had left making sure we were okay, making sure that people in our lives to help do the things that daddy's not good at, like hair appointments.

Brandon
00:29:14
My girls probably would have never gotten a haircut.

Brandon
00:29:16
I didn't know that.

Brandon
00:29:16
I thought it was supposed to be long.

Brandon
00:29:18
It just kept growing.

Brandon
00:29:19
But turns out you need to maintain that stuff, but it's something I didn't do.

Brandon
00:29:22
So Rachel had set up hair appointments after she died.

Brandon
00:29:26
She had doctor appointments.

Brandon
00:29:27
She had dentist appointments.

Brandon
00:29:28
She had all these things set into place so I wouldn't have to think about them.

Brandon
00:29:32
She brought people into our lives to.

Brandon
00:29:34
To hold space in different seasons and different things, to make sure that the girls would be prepared for this and Malcolm would be prepared for just things that only a mom can do.

Brandon
00:29:47
And so it should have been a lot harder than it was, that transition.

Brandon
00:29:52
But Rachel was so selfless in the fact that she allowed me to almost look like I had it together because of her.

Brandon
00:30:01
It had nothing to do with me, but she just did everything she could to make it.

Brandon
00:30:04
The transition.

Brandon
00:30:05
Not as hard as it should have been, but like you hope, Covid came.

Brandon
00:30:11
Covid came 13 days after Rachel died, which none of us, well, we sure didn't see coming.

Brandon
00:30:17
Rachel didn't even know it existed, but there's so many blessings in that, too.

Brandon
00:30:23
You know, I hate to say Covid was a blessing to anyone, because I know how hard it was for everyone but one, the fact that Rachel passed away before hospital shutdown.

Brandon
00:30:34
You know, so we got to be there.

Brandon
00:30:35
We got to spend.

Brandon
00:30:37
I spent 39 nights, Rachel's last 39 nights in the hospital with her.

Brandon
00:30:40
The kids came every day, got to be with their mommy.

Brandon
00:30:42
People came from all over the world to say goodbye to Rachel, but it was a happy thing.

Brandon
00:30:47
Rachel was loving on them.

Brandon
00:30:48
Rachel was encouraging.

Brandon
00:30:49
Rachel was witnessing to him.

Brandon
00:30:51
Rachel was ministering to him.

Brandon
00:30:52
It was such an incredible scene that I got to witness, and I don't know how I would have taken, no, you can't go see her.

Brandon
00:31:01
No, no one's allowed to go see her.

Brandon
00:31:03
Which I know a lot of our community has had to walk through during that year or two of COVID shutting things down.

Brandon
00:31:10
So that.

Brandon
00:31:11
And then number two, you know, 13 days after Rachel died, school shut down.

Brandon
00:31:15
And so all of us were lost.

Brandon
00:31:18
Not just Brandon, who just lost his wife.

Brandon
00:31:20
We were all like, how do I do this?

Brandon
00:31:22
How do I walk through this thing?

Brandon
00:31:24
Like, you know?

Brandon
00:31:25
And so y'all were all as lost as me.

Brandon
00:31:28
I just had this big loss that I was dealing with, too, right?

Brandon
00:31:30
And so, man, me and my kids got to figure it out together.

Brandon
00:31:35
We got to walk it together.

Brandon
00:31:36
I got to learn how to do the day to day, you know, that was the one thing I remember longing for is like, what's the new normal?

Brandon
00:31:44
What's it look like without Rachel?

Brandon
00:31:46
Because I'm not good at a lot of things, right?

Brandon
00:31:48
And you don't realize what you have, so you don't have it anymore.

Brandon
00:31:51
And, you know, I always say this, like, become a noticer.

Brandon
00:31:54
Look at the people around you and all that they do and all that they help with and all that support with and all the things, like, I.

Brandon
00:32:00
Rachel was gone, and things stopped getting done right, you know, that she did all the things.

Brandon
00:32:06
And Covid allowed me this space just to learn how to do it.

Brandon
00:32:10
Us.

Brandon
00:32:10
To create our new norm.

Brandon
00:32:12
And again, far from perfectly, a lot of mistakes.

Brandon
00:32:16
I had to learn how to clean up vomit.

Brandon
00:32:18
I never did that.

Brandon
00:32:19
That was Rachel's thing.

Brandon
00:32:20
She was good at that.

Brandon
00:32:21
I dry heat when I do it, right?

Brandon
00:32:24
Head lice came.

Brandon
00:32:25
Head lice came.

Brandon
00:32:26
Like, two weeks in, like, head lice.

Brandon
00:32:28
During COVID no one would treat my kids.

Brandon
00:32:30
So it's just, like, license all these things that you're just.

Brandon
00:32:33
I remember thinking, rachel, what are you doing?

Brandon
00:32:35
Like, you don't have to do all this right now to me.

Brandon
00:32:38
But it was.

Brandon
00:32:40
We just learned.

Brandon
00:32:41
We just learned to walk through it and figure it out, and it was ugly.

Brandon
00:32:45
And there was a lot of days crying on my closet floor, you know, just closing the door and Just releasing, like, how am I going to figure this out?

Brandon
00:32:53
But you know what we do?

Brandon
00:32:54
We figure it out.

Brandon
00:32:55
We figure it out, you know, as hard as it is and as big of a struggle as it may be, we get to the other side of it, and we figured out headlines, we figured out puke, and we figured out all the things that came along with that.

Brandon
00:33:07
And I am a much better.

Brandon
00:33:10
To answer the question, I'm a much better human today because of what Rachel taught me, because of the lessons I learned while being married to her, because of the lessons she left me with.

Brandon
00:33:20
We had a last date in the hospital where Rachel had eight things for me that she wanted going forward.

Brandon
00:33:26
And one of those things, as selfless as Rachel was like, you need to move on.

Brandon
00:33:30
You need to find love again.

Brandon
00:33:32
Giving me that permission, and not just me, but her parents, the community, so they couldn't judge me for maybe dating again one day, right?

Brandon
00:33:42
For Rachel to say, you need to move on, not in two weeks.

Brandon
00:33:44
That'd be weird, she said, but in due time, you don't need to do this alone.

Brandon
00:33:54
We're supposed to have a partner.

Brandon
00:33:56
You need a partner.

Brandon
00:33:57
You need someone.

Brandon
00:33:58
You have a lot of love left to give.

Brandon
00:33:59
You have a lot of life left to live.

Brandon
00:34:00
So just giving me permission to go do life without her was such a blessing, and so I don't feel the guilt for doing things without her.

Brandon
00:34:11
It's hard.

Brandon
00:34:12
It's hard.

Brandon
00:34:13
My daughter's dance competition last week was really hard without Rachel.

Brandon
00:34:16
Rachel was a dancer.

Brandon
00:34:17
That was their thing.

Brandon
00:34:18
Being the dance dad is not what I'm good at.

Brandon
00:34:21
So it's still hard.

Brandon
00:34:22
But I don't ever feel guilt because I have the permission, which we all should.

Brandon
00:34:27
Whether we lost our person suddenly, whether we lost our person like Emily or I did, but my person giving me the permission to live and to love and to be happy and to be okay is the biggest gift I could have gotten.

Brandon
00:34:41
So I am better today because of that.

Emily
00:34:43
Absolutely, Brandon.

Emily
00:34:45
And so, like, I witnessing you in your loss as well.

Emily
00:34:48
And Rachel sounds like such an angel and just hearing the.

Emily
00:34:53
You know, just to really, like, solidify this in something like resilience, expanding our capacity for what we thought was possible for ourselves in terms of a change.

Emily
00:35:04
And Angela, I'm going to shift the question just a little bit because I have so many topics I want to cover with you guys.

Emily
00:35:11
So in terms of the different ways that we've changed, I really want to get specific around identity loss.

Emily
00:35:18
How did.

Emily
00:35:19
If.

Emily
00:35:20
Did you experience loss of identity in both of your losses and.

Emily
00:35:23
And how.

Angela
00:35:24
So, first off, Brandon, Rachel, just, wow, what an incredible human.

Angela
00:35:30
I mean, I can just like, feel her spirit with the way you speak about her.

Angela
00:35:35
And wow, just what a beautiful gift to the world.

Angela
00:35:40
She.

Angela
00:35:41
Thank you so.

Brandon
00:35:43
She is.

Brandon
00:35:43
Yeah.

Brandon
00:35:44
Thank you so much.

Angela
00:35:44
Thank you a lot.

Angela
00:35:46
So moved by that.

Angela
00:35:47
So thank you for sharing identity loss.

Angela
00:35:51
Yeah.

Angela
00:35:52
I mean, wow.

Angela
00:35:56
That's a whole podcast episode in itself.

Angela
00:35:59
I feel like it's so common for grievers when we experience a traumatic loss.

Angela
00:36:05
I didn't know up from down.

Angela
00:36:06
I didn't know who I was without this person.

Angela
00:36:11
I didn't think I was a person without this person.

Angela
00:36:15
And a lot of.

Emily
00:36:17
Will you just tell us real quick about.

Emily
00:36:19
Tell our listeners about your losses really quick.

Angela
00:36:22
I have two big losses.

Angela
00:36:24
I lost my husband Patrick at 35 to gun violence, and I lost at 25.

Angela
00:36:33
Prior to that, I went through a very traumatic divorce.

Angela
00:36:38
It wasn't technically a divorce.

Angela
00:36:40
He very unexpectedly left me a month before the altar.

Angela
00:36:44
There was no warning sign.

Angela
00:36:45
So I really.

Angela
00:36:47
I experienced that as a death because there was just no preparation for it.

Angela
00:36:52
I know that sounds crazy, like, well, how there had to be signs.

Angela
00:36:55
There wasn't.

Angela
00:36:56
There's actually a term called abandoned wife syndrome.

Angela
00:36:58
I'm sure it happens to husbands, but where somebody just, like, switches a flip and flips the switch, whatever the phrase is, and leaves.

Angela
00:37:08
And so I very much experienced that as a death.

Angela
00:37:11
All my hopes and dreams completely gone.

Angela
00:37:14
There was no future that I had planned for, was no longer there.

Angela
00:37:19
And I was caught in a very deep, very scary, dark place for a very long time.

Angela
00:37:30
That particular first loss, because it was my first experience with a traumatic loss, losing my husband to gun violence was like, we zoomed out so much worse, Right?

Angela
00:37:40
But, like, at the time, at 25, experiencing the death of that relationship out of nowhere and the death of those plans in my future and the person I was supposed to have babies with and this person that I was supposed to spend my life with was so devastating beyond belief.

Angela
00:37:59
This person who I thought I knew so well, it turned out to be someone completely different.

Angela
00:38:04
Was shocking on every level.

Angela
00:38:06
It made me completely lose faith in myself.

Angela
00:38:09
It made me lose faith in the universe for a very long time.

Angela
00:38:12
I was so angry with God.

Angela
00:38:15
I was so confused.

Angela
00:38:18
I was like, how could this happen to me?

Angela
00:38:21
How.

Angela
00:38:22
And I think so many of us experience that feeling of, like, distrust in life and in the universe and in God.

Angela
00:38:31
Or maybe, you know, for people that don't have spiritual beliefs, they're like, yeah, there is no God.

Angela
00:38:37
Right.

Angela
00:38:37
Like, I can see how people go to that place.

Angela
00:38:40
For me, I just felt very betrayed and victimized.

Angela
00:38:46
Right.

Angela
00:38:46
And I really went into, like, that victimization and went deep and dark into it.

Angela
00:38:52
I completely lost my sense of self.

Angela
00:38:54
And I realized through that process, through many years of what I call the dark ages, the dark ages of Angela's life, so much of that identity loss wasn't necessarily from him leaving.

Angela
00:39:09
It was a lot of deep, unresolved childhood trauma that really was pulled to the surface from him leaving.

Angela
00:39:19
I was a child of divorce.

Angela
00:39:21
My father left us very young and moved to Europe.

Angela
00:39:26
He wasn't in me and my brother's life very much.

Angela
00:39:29
So I didn't have that mirror from a father figure that we expect to have growing up.

Angela
00:39:35
Right.

Angela
00:39:35
And on top of it, there was, like, a rejection from him.

Angela
00:39:39
It wasn't like he died, which would mean a whole other trauma.

Angela
00:39:42
In another way, it was.

Angela
00:39:44
He didn't choose me, you know, and so I had to re.

Angela
00:39:49
Experience that betrayal from my own father through my partner leaving and not choosing me.

Angela
00:39:57
This person that I deeply felt.

Angela
00:40:00
I've deeply felt that our love and our bond was unconditional.

Angela
00:40:03
Right.

Angela
00:40:04
Like, as you.

Angela
00:40:04
As you assume and hope in the person that you are going to spend the rest of your life with.

Hope
00:40:11
Right.

Angela
00:40:11
We all.

Angela
00:40:12
We all hope that that's.

Angela
00:40:14
We have faith and trust that that partner feels that that's why we commit to life with them.

Angela
00:40:21
That's the whole thing.

Angela
00:40:23
So I had to really find a home within myself, which I had never done.

Angela
00:40:30
You know, I went from being raised by my mother and then having relationships.

Angela
00:40:34
I'd never been alone before.

Angela
00:40:38
And it was the first time that I had to do this whole life thing on my own and figure out who the hell I was and who was I without him.

Angela
00:40:49
And to not have that worthiness and that validation mirrored back to me from another, which is what I had always relied on to fill the void going back to childhood, wounding from not having it from my family of origin.

Angela
00:41:05
And within that process, what I found was that I am enough on my own.

Angela
00:41:11
I actually don't need another person to mirror that back to me.

Angela
00:41:15
But I had to go to the deepest, darkest pits of loneliness and despair to find that.

Angela
00:41:21
And within that, there was a lot of going back and forth with God, a lot of like, I don't know why you're doing this to me.

Angela
00:41:30
I don't know why we're.

Angela
00:41:31
Why this is happening, you know?

Angela
00:41:33
And I was pissed, truly pissed.

Angela
00:41:37
But through that process, I Realized that I don't know what's going on here.

Angela
00:41:42
Like, who am I to think that I know my life plan?

Angela
00:41:46
Who am I to think that I have any control over any of this and that I somehow know best?

Angela
00:41:53
You know, like, how ridiculous is that, actually?

Angela
00:41:57
And so within that process, at some point, I just had to, like, let go and surrender my illusion of control and just be like, all right, like, just take the wheel.

Angela
00:42:11
Just.

Angela
00:42:13
I trust you.

Angela
00:42:14
Just are.

Angela
00:42:15
Whatever is supposed to happen here, just okay.

Angela
00:42:19
And it was in that place of acceptance of, like, that life's not happening, and I don't know what the future holds, but, like, whatever this is, you need to let go and you need to just trust.

Angela
00:42:32
And when you do that, something will shift.

Angela
00:42:35
I don't know what, but something will shift.

Angela
00:42:38
And that.

Emily
00:42:39
Just.

Angela
00:42:40
That surrender and that trust and that acceptance within that place of uncertainty was what caused the eventual little glimpses of peace and healing to shine through.

Angela
00:42:51
Like that sitting in the discomfort allowed the transformation to eventually take place.

Angela
00:42:58
But that was really what I had to do.

Angela
00:43:00
It's like, you just need to be uncomfortable here and be.

Emily
00:43:04
Not.

Angela
00:43:04
Be okay with it, but accept it, if that makes sense.

Emily
00:43:08
Yeah.

Emily
00:43:09
So what I'm kind of hearing is your losses both really invited you into the depths of darkness to kind of strip away all the layers, heal the old wounds, and to tap into the version of Angela that we get to see here today.

Angela
00:43:24
Absolutely.

Angela
00:43:25
You know, I think we assume that the darkness is, like, killing us on some level.

Angela
00:43:33
Like, it's.

Angela
00:43:34
It's going to overtake us, but, like, that's the fertile void.

Angela
00:43:39
Right.

Angela
00:43:40
In that space is where we actually are becoming our true self.

Angela
00:43:45
We are becoming who we came to be here.

Hope
00:43:48
And we.

Angela
00:43:48
If we cannot sit in that space of discomfort, we're either going to remain stuck or we're going to devolve.

Angela
00:43:55
Right.

Angela
00:43:55
We're going to, like, actually.

Angela
00:43:56
Actually, like, close up and harden our heart and not allow for the mystery to unfold.

Emily
00:44:03
Yeah.

Emily
00:44:04
I love that, Angela.

Emily
00:44:05
And I'm.

Emily
00:44:06
I absolutely echo that.

Emily
00:44:09
And I know we've been on a similar spiritual path.

Emily
00:44:11
I want to hear perspective from Hope and Brandon, in terms of.

Emily
00:44:16
Do you feel like your loss has invited you into a remembrance of who you really are or who you were meant to be?

Hope
00:44:26
You know, I'm really struck by Angela, what you were saying about how experiencing what's called a relational trauma in your mid-20s sent you back to process that earlier relational trauma you had when your dad left.

Hope
00:44:45
And that's completely, completely natural for that to Happen.

Hope
00:44:50
And when I talk about, you know, understanding the beauty that comes with the sorrow, I think, my gosh, what a gift for you to be able to do that at 25 and process that so that that's not there for the whole rest of your life.

Hope
00:45:06
Yeah.

Hope
00:45:07
To do that work at that time, as devastating as it sounds like it was, you know, you were, like, thrown into the crucible of all that early trauma, and you emerged from it differently.

Hope
00:45:21
So I'm really moved by that.

Hope
00:45:24
Thank you so much for sharing that.

Hope
00:45:27
I'm so in that space with you right now that.

Hope
00:45:29
Emily.

Hope
00:45:29
I forgot the question.

Emily
00:45:33
Well, it still relates.

Emily
00:45:34
It still relates.

Emily
00:45:35
Because what you were saying is, you know, she.

Emily
00:45:38
She went through this horrible.

Emily
00:45:39
The question was, do you feel like your loss, this tragedy.

Emily
00:45:45
Right.

Emily
00:45:45
Was also the invitation to remember who the fuck we are and what we were actually meant to do here in this lifetime.

Hope
00:45:54
You know, just the.

Emily
00:45:55
It's okay if you don't.

Emily
00:45:56
I'm just opening it up.

Hope
00:45:57
I don't know that I can answer that.

Hope
00:46:00
Certainly, you know, again, it was.

Hope
00:46:03
It.

Hope
00:46:04
My childhood loss was so different from adult losses that others.

Hope
00:46:09
That you.

Hope
00:46:09
Others have experienced.

Hope
00:46:11
So I'll just talk about divorce grief.

Hope
00:46:13
And I feel like I'm still an unreliable narrator because, as you probably know, you know, like, you develop a story of what happened and how it happened and why it happened and what it means, and it takes time to do that.

Hope
00:46:28
So I think I'm still in that process, but I.

Emily
00:46:31
And the story changes, like, all the time.

Hope
00:46:33
All the time.

Hope
00:46:33
That's why I feel like an unreliable narrator of my own adult history.

Hope
00:46:38
And to Angela's point, when you are.

Hope
00:46:42
When you experience the end of a relationship so unexpectedly and you didn't know it was coming, it throws you into a state where you're questioning your own reality, like, what was real and what wasn't.

Hope
00:46:55
And it was real to me, but if it wasn't real to this other person, what does that mean?

Hope
00:47:02
And what did I miss?

Hope
00:47:03
And, you know, so that takes a while.

Hope
00:47:05
Yeah.

Hope
00:47:05
To that if you are willing and give yourself permission and you're ready to go to that place to really excavate.

Hope
00:47:15
And I think from there you discover a lot about who you are.

Hope
00:47:19
But just the other day, I was looking for a journal to write in to start a new journaling practice.

Hope
00:47:27
And I found one that had maybe only 15 or 20 pages in it that had been used.

Hope
00:47:33
And I was writing during that.

Hope
00:47:35
During lockdown, because my separation occurred three weeks before lockdown.

Hope
00:47:38
So I didn't have access to my usual support networks, you know, the girlfriends who would have flown in to stay with me, et cetera.

Hope
00:47:46
So I was journaling and I found a passage there where I was writing about this, Emily, to your point, and saying, I feel like now I have the space and can give myself permission to go back to who I was in my 20s before this.

Hope
00:48:08
And I was so happy and so relieved to discover that person still existed.

Hope
00:48:15
That person who had a sense of spontaneity and a kind and could explore interests or did explore interests.

Hope
00:48:26
There was a lightness to me, which is not to say that being a wife and mother was heavy.

Hope
00:48:31
It was full of so much happiness and I'm grateful for all of those years, but it was the shedding of those responsibilities to other people to go back to a time when I was accountable mainly to myself and was able to express in ways that I, you know, I had diverted for the greater good of the family unit and did so willingly and consciously and joyfully.

Hope
00:49:01
But it brought me like full circle.

Hope
00:49:04
And I had my best friend from college went through a divorce at roughly the same time.

Hope
00:49:10
And suddenly we were like 19 year olds dating again after a period of time.

Hope
00:49:15
And it was remarkable to go back to that time in our lives together with so much experience and different insight and dare I call it, some form of wisdom to re.

Hope
00:49:29
It was like getting a redo in a sense, except with all of what I wish I'd known then, having it now, if that makes sense.

Emily
00:49:39
Yeah, totally.

Emily
00:49:41
Yeah.

Emily
00:49:42
And what I love about this reflection, hope is even motherhood.

Emily
00:49:46
And going into that portal, it's like the death of being single and having that autonomy and freedom and as you focus, you know, on your kids and the family and then in your kids leaving, it's like the death of being a mom or at least a met capacity.

Emily
00:49:59
These are all metaphorical deaths.

Emily
00:50:01
And it brings you back into that more free spirited version of self.

Emily
00:50:06
So you can kind of see how.

Emily
00:50:09
And it's just like a cycle that goes over and over and the identity.

Hope
00:50:13
Shifts that come with that, right?

Hope
00:50:15
I mean, going from being a wife to being single to then eventually years later becoming someone's girlfriend or partner, being a full time mom to being a single mom and then being a part time, very part time mom.

Hope
00:50:33
My children are in their 20s now and very independent.

Hope
00:50:37
And so all of those shifts, even, you know, going from being a homeowner to selling the house and after the divorce and all of those shifts and identity, you know, shifts happening at, you know, very close together, creates and Then you think, well, what will emerge from that?

Hope
00:50:55
And I think it.

Hope
00:50:56
You know, a lot of.

Hope
00:50:57
If you're.

Hope
00:50:58
If you're lucky and you're able to allow it, I think what emerges is your essential self, your authentic self.

Hope
00:51:06
That's it.

Hope
00:51:06
You know, I.

Hope
00:51:07
I have a friend who's a blues singer, and we joked that he was going to write a song for me called Stripped to the Studs, because that's what it felt like.

Hope
00:51:15
Everything.

Hope
00:51:16
All my attachments, if you think of it in the spiritual sense, all my attachments were being shed by choice or by circumstance.

Hope
00:51:25
I had a friend who said, my God, you are being asked to let go of all of your attachments at once, aren't you?

Hope
00:51:33
And I said, yes, actually.

Hope
00:51:36
Now that you frame it that way, that's what it feels like.

Hope
00:51:38
But in the end, when you have to let go of all your attachments, you know, the identity attachments, what you realize is that you need to let go of the concept of attachment itself.

Hope
00:51:49
And that's when you surrender to that, I think, is when you can find peace.

Hope
00:51:54
Or at least that's what I did when I realized everything here is temporary, everything is impermanent.

Hope
00:52:01
And that is not something to be frightened of.

Hope
00:52:03
That's something to embrace because it allows us to really love and enjoy what.

Angela
00:52:08
We have right now.

Emily
00:52:09
I couldn't agree more.

Emily
00:52:11
The letting go.

Emily
00:52:12
Yeah, I know.

Emily
00:52:13
Seriously, just like the constant shedding and letting go to allow what feels more true and aligned to come through.

Emily
00:52:19
Brandon, I want to hear from you really quick, and then I have one more question, but we'll see if we have time.

Emily
00:52:24
Do you feel like your loss has kind of initiated you into a truer form of your essence?

Emily
00:52:32
What did you.

Emily
00:52:32
What was the word you used?

Emily
00:52:33
Hope.

Emily
00:52:33
It was the essential.

Emily
00:52:35
Essential you.

Brandon
00:52:36
Yeah, so thank you for repeating the question, because I forgot to.

Brandon
00:52:40
Because you're like, I'm a listener right now, and I'm listening and learning.

Brandon
00:52:43
But, man, that's a really good question.

Brandon
00:52:45
I think before Rachel died, having a partner allowed me to be other things.

Brandon
00:52:54
It allowed me to be a boss.

Brandon
00:52:56
It allowed me to be a leader.

Brandon
00:52:57
It allowed me to be many, many, many other things, Right?

Brandon
00:53:01
A speaker.

Brandon
00:53:02
All these things.

Brandon
00:53:04
And once Rachel died, I became dad or Daddy.

Brandon
00:53:09
Like, that's literally my role.

Brandon
00:53:13
That's who I am.

Brandon
00:53:13
It's my favorite role.

Brandon
00:53:14
It's my favorite name in the world.

Brandon
00:53:16
It's.

Brandon
00:53:17
It's what I love being.

Brandon
00:53:20
And, you know, prior to Rachel getting sick, I was very absent.

Brandon
00:53:27
I traveled all the time I was speaking to large organizations on leadership and culture and team building.

Brandon
00:53:34
And you know, I had, I had found my space, right?

Brandon
00:53:38
And it was going well and we were making good money and I was providing and I was doing the things that I thought the man was supposed to do until Rachel called me.

Brandon
00:53:51
Many a time she called me out on it.

Brandon
00:53:52
But there was one final time where she said, look, I'm never going to leave you.

Brandon
00:53:57
This isn't what I signed up for.

Brandon
00:53:59
You know, she's mom raising three kids under five on her own.

Brandon
00:54:02
I'm on the road all the time thinking I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

Brandon
00:54:06
And I didn't know what the solution was.

Brandon
00:54:07
But in true Rachel fashion, she had a solution.

Brandon
00:54:10
It was, we're going to pack all of our stuff up and move into a motorhome and we're going to go with you everywhere you go for the next year.

Brandon
00:54:17
And it became the biggest blessing in the entire world because it taught me so much about perspective, it taught me about presence, it taught me about what really matters in life.

Brandon
00:54:27
And having that year of 40ft where there's nowhere to go, there's nowhere to hide.

Brandon
00:54:32
You're doing your webinars and you're doing your calls and you're doing your meetings and you have five year old and four year old and two year old running around behind you.

Brandon
00:54:38
You're changing diapers in the middle of conference calls.

Brandon
00:54:40
You're doing all the things it taught me how.

Brandon
00:54:43
It just taught me how to be in the season I'm in now where the kids are going to come home, Sorry, I can't change it.

Brandon
00:54:50
They might come in and distract me.

Brandon
00:54:52
Sorry guys.

Brandon
00:54:52
That's what it's going to be.

Brandon
00:54:53
You know, they're a little older now, so I have a little bit more say and control over them.

Brandon
00:54:58
But I'm so grateful for that year of Rachel being Rachel and my children being able to teach me what really matters in life, that right after we got out of the rv, she got diagnosed.

Brandon
00:55:09
And then it was the year of like two years or two years of survival.

Brandon
00:55:12
Like nothing matters but living.

Brandon
00:55:14
Perspective changes.

Brandon
00:55:16
Like, I don't think we had a disagreement in two years, you know, because like, what are you gonna what matters?

Brandon
00:55:22
Like all the things that we argue about, all the things that we disagree about, all the things that we fight about, all the things that we stress about.

Brandon
00:55:28
When literally for two years it was like, okay, how are we gonna survive tomorrow?

Brandon
00:55:32
How are we going to get better?

Brandon
00:55:33
What are we going to do?

Brandon
00:55:34
Like on the Same freaking path to live.

Brandon
00:55:39
Right?

Brandon
00:55:40
None of the other stuff matters.

Brandon
00:55:41
And all that to say.

Brandon
00:55:43
I kind of got on a tangent there.

Brandon
00:55:44
But once she passed away, my identity was dad.

Brandon
00:55:49
That's all that mattered to me.

Brandon
00:55:51
That's all I cared about.

Brandon
00:55:52
That's all that was important.

Brandon
00:55:54
That's all that I needed to be.

Brandon
00:55:59
And the hardest thing for the hardest thing.

Brandon
00:56:01
I always say that there was a lot of hards.

Brandon
00:56:03
Cleaning up puke, doing lice.

Brandon
00:56:05
But the hardest thing for me was Rachel always allowed me to be the good cop.

Brandon
00:56:09
And when she died, I had to be both.

Brandon
00:56:12
And I know y'all can experience this where you feel like, man, I was just the bad cop all day today.

Brandon
00:56:17
I said no all day, you know?

Brandon
00:56:18
And, like, I always got to be the good.

Brandon
00:56:20
And so that's something I still struggle with.

Brandon
00:56:22
Like, doing it alone is not fun because I want to be the good cop all the time.

Brandon
00:56:27
Right.

Brandon
00:56:27
You know, I don't want to be the bad cop, but it's my identity.

Brandon
00:56:32
Is that.

Brandon
00:56:33
And that's enough for me.

Emily
00:56:35
Yeah.

Emily
00:56:35
I love what you said about your whole perspective changes and your loss really helps you see what actually matters.

Emily
00:56:41
And also, it sounds like that Trip did as well to kind of dial in on, like, okay, well, who do I want to be now?

Emily
00:56:48
So we are almost at our time.

Emily
00:56:51
It sounds like, Brandon, your truth is, dad, and in a couple of words, Angela, and in a couple of words, hope, what is your truth?

Angela
00:57:01
I would say my truth is to treat every day as sacred.

Angela
00:57:06
Just that's.

Angela
00:57:07
That's really it.

Angela
00:57:08
Like, everything is a miracle.

Angela
00:57:10
Life is a miracle.

Angela
00:57:12
Tomorrow truly is not promised.

Angela
00:57:14
It really isn't.

Angela
00:57:16
Later today isn't promised.

Angela
00:57:18
Like, even the shitstorms are blessings because there is growth to be had there.

Angela
00:57:25
So just bless it all and don't do things to fit into other people's narratives of what you should do.

Angela
00:57:33
Don't try to fit the societal mold.

Angela
00:57:35
If it's not for you, don't do it.

Angela
00:57:37
Just do you and live your medicine.

Angela
00:57:40
Be in your truth and love that.

Angela
00:57:42
And anyone who doesn't vibe with it, all good.

Angela
00:57:46
They're not wrong, you're not right.

Angela
00:57:47
Vice versa.

Angela
00:57:48
Just do your thing and love all people and be compassionate.

Angela
00:57:53
We're all just doing our best, you know, that's it.

Angela
00:57:58
I think that's really it.

Hope
00:58:00
I think my truth is to always strive for honesty now with myself and others in a compassionate and gentle way.

Hope
00:58:14
And I have a friend who, when I talk with her sometimes about not knowing how to respond or react to something she has given me the guideline that I now rely on, which is what would love do?

Hope
00:58:32
And I stop sometimes, you know, instead of being reactive and I just pause and I think, what would love do in this situation?

Hope
00:58:40
And I try to do that.

Emily
00:58:42
Amen.

Emily
00:58:44
I love that I have similar process.

Emily
00:58:47
Did you have anything you wanted to add Brandon to your kids?

Brandon
00:58:49
No, that's actually.

Brandon
00:58:51
You stole mine, so that was.

Brandon
00:58:53
That was rude.

Brandon
00:58:54
But.

Brandon
00:58:55
But that's what Rachel taught us all, is that love does.

Brandon
00:58:59
It just shows up.

Brandon
00:59:00
It doesn't ask for permission.

Brandon
00:59:01
It doesn't look for an invitation.

Brandon
00:59:04
It just shows up.

Brandon
00:59:05
And what a society we would be if we just showed up and didn't expect anything in return.

Brandon
00:59:12
Weren't looking for a thank you, Weren't looking for a post, Weren't looking for recognition.

Brandon
00:59:16
We're just showing up because that's what love does.

Brandon
00:59:19
And so I think if we could all be a little bit better at showing up for people.

Brandon
00:59:24
Again, not looking for permission.

Brandon
00:59:26
And love shows up in so many different ways.

Brandon
00:59:28
It doesn't have to be extravagant.

Brandon
00:59:30
It doesn't have to be beautiful.

Brandon
00:59:31
It just has to do.

Brandon
00:59:33
You just need to do.

Brandon
00:59:34
And that's what I teach my kids every day.

Brandon
00:59:37
Just show up for people.

Brandon
00:59:38
Show up for the people that.

Brandon
00:59:40
Especially the unloved, the ones that are sitting alone at lunch, the ones that don't have anyone to talk to on the bus.

Brandon
00:59:45
Show up for the people that are unloved because you may be the only love they get in an entire week.

Brandon
00:59:51
And so.

Brandon
00:59:52
And you all do that so well.

Brandon
00:59:54
So thank you all.

Brandon
00:59:55
It's been great to be able to connect with you all and watch the way you guys are living and loving.

Hope
01:00:00
Thank you, Emily, so much for creating this space and introducing us to each other.

Emily
01:00:05
I know such a blessing feels divine.

Emily
01:00:09
Well, thank each of you for sharing all of your wisdom, your insights, and your love here in this space.

Emily
01:00:16
I wish we had a whole nother hour to talk because I have so many things I want to ask you and I hope to have you guys on the show individually as well.

Emily
01:00:27
So thank you so much.

Brandon
01:00:29
Thank you, Emily.

Brandon
01:00:30
Proud of you.

Angela
01:00:31
Thank you so much.

Angela
01:00:32
Love.