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69. Kindness And Compassion- With Faith Fuller Wilcox
68 Plays4 years ago
Faith Fuller Wilcox believes that self-expression through writing leads to healing. Her writing is reflective of a growing body of medical research about “narrative identity,” which illuminates
that how we make sense of what happens to us and the meaning we give to experiences beyond our control directly impact our physical and psychological outcomes. Faith learned these truths firsthand when her thirteen-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer that took her life. Faith’s journey from grief and despair to moments of comfort and peace taught her life-affirming lessons, which she shares today through her writing. Faith is the author of Hope Is A Bright Star: A Mother’s Memoir of Love, Loss, and Learning to Live Again that was published in June 2021. Faith is also the author of Facing Into The Wind: A Mother’s Healing After the Death of Her Child, a book of poetry.
A longtime resident of Massachusetts, Faith leads a journal writing program at MassGeneral Hospital for Children for patients and their families designed to give participants the opportunity to express themselves, alleviate stress, celebrate victories, and honor their grief.
Connect With Faith Fuller Wilcox:
https://www.faithwilcoxnarratives.com/
Contact Kendra Rinaldi for coaching or to be a guest on the podcast:
http://www.griefgratitudeandthegrayinbetween.com
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
I just started to look at life as a whole and know that loss is part of life. It's not separate from life. I experienced it at a young age, I was about 40, but loss is part of life and to know that you can hold both sorrow and joy together and that slowly, slowly dawned on me that I would always miss Elizabeth enormously.
00:00:29
Speaker
But she taught me a lot about grace. She handled her illness extraordinarily well. Hello and welcome to Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray in Between podcast.
00:00:47
Speaker
This podcast is about exploring the grief that occurs at different times in our lives in which we have had major changes and transitions that literally shake us to the core and make us experience grief.
00:01:03
Speaker
I created this podcast for people to feel a little less hopeless and alone in their own grief process as they hear the stories of others who have had similar journeys. I'm Kendra Rinaldi, your host. Now, let's dive right in to today's episode.
Introducing Faith Fuller Wilcox and Her Story
00:01:26
Speaker
We will be listening to Faith Fuller Wilcox's story. Faith is an author, and she has a book that actually will be launched tomorrow as we're recording this. She is the author of the book, Hope is a Bright Star, a Mother's Memoir of Love, Loss, and Learning to Live Again.
00:01:48
Speaker
And we will be hearing her story. She's also authored a book called Facing Into the Wild, A Mother's Healing After Death of Her Child, which is a poetry book. So Faith, welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much.
00:02:06
Speaker
I'm so grateful you are here. And we were just chatting before we started recording that you live where I've lived before. So share with the listeners where you live, a little bit about your life, and then we'll navigate your grief journey and hearing about your daughter, Elizabeth, and so forth. Yes, I live in a suburb west of Boston, and I've lived here for
00:02:33
Speaker
Oh, about 30 years now. Um, this is a part of the world that I like very much. And, um, I am married and have a wonderful golden doodle dog. And I have a daughter, um, a surviving daughter, uh, who is now 35 years old. And I started my journey of this particular difficult time 21 years ago.
Elizabeth's Diagnosis and Initial Reactions
00:03:02
Speaker
when my daughter Elizabeth was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer called osteosarcoma. This was a huge shock to us. Initially she had an X-ray done of her knee and we thought she perhaps had had a fracture in her knee or something was wrong. And the doctor told us to just wait over the weekend and they would get back to us on Monday.
00:03:32
Speaker
And on Monday, I got a call from my pediatrician, not the orthopedic doctor that we'd seen. And I was really, really surprised. And he said, you need to see another orthopedic doctor tomorrow. And I really didn't have time to ask too many questions. I could tell from his voice that it was urgent. So the following day we went to see an orthopedic doctor.
00:03:58
Speaker
And it wasn't until I was standing just outside the door that I saw on the sign, orthopedic oncologist, and I had absolutely no idea. So I brought in my 13 year old daughter. Fortunately, I stood in such a place as to block that sign. So I didn't want her to see it. But once we were in the room.
00:04:22
Speaker
I could tell that many people had had fairly major procedures, people there who were amputees and people in neck braces and back braces. And you could tell that the people there had had some significant surgeries. The doctor could not have been kinder and nicer to Elizabeth, but he did an initial exam. And even from the initial exam, he said, I know that Elizabeth has some growth.
00:04:50
Speaker
So that very day we had, she had some blood draws done and we went and later in the day she had an MRI and she had a CAT scan done and we didn't get home until late that night. Two days later we went back in and she had a biopsy done of some bone tissue in her right knee or the area right near her knee, her femur. And we
Impact on the Family
00:05:18
Speaker
found out two days later
00:05:20
Speaker
much to our shock and surprise that she had this illness called osteosarcoma, which is very rare. Only one in every 250,000 children get this illness each year. And it was a very devastating diagnosis. So we went from having a summer time of the girls riding their bicycles and swimming on the swim team to having a very devastating diagnosis.
00:05:50
Speaker
May I, may I ask, I'm sorry to interrupt. May I ask what is the age difference? How old is your living daughter and what is her name? Her name is Olivia and she's 18 months older. Okay. Okay. So that, yeah. So this was her, her friend, her, her friend as well as her sister, because it's not just the sister that is
00:06:14
Speaker
but it's her playmate. So then when you took her in initially, was it because her knee was hurting or had she had an injury that then just didn't heal or what was that first reason of why you took her to the pediatrician for the knee?
00:06:33
Speaker
Her knee was hurting her and simultaneously she also had some pain in her lungs. And later, much later we found out that her tumors had spread to her lungs and that is why she was having trouble when she was breathing, when she was swimming, she was having some pain in her lungs. The first pediatrician we saw before the orthopedic doctor
00:07:02
Speaker
had said that Elizabeth thought Elizabeth was having growing pains because she had grown from five, six to five, nine in just a year. And he had no idea why she was having pain in her lungs. So our first doctor missed this whole diagnosis.
00:07:22
Speaker
Is this a diagnosis that had it been able to been seen earlier on before metastasize? Is this a type of cancer that is treatable? It is treatable, but it's very, very aggressive. And very sadly, some children who we met on the hospital floors who had had all of the procedures, they had the
00:07:49
Speaker
10 months of chemotherapy and the radiation and some children had amputations and still the cancer came back. It's very
00:07:59
Speaker
virulent and very, very hard to stop. So then from this, then this summer, then going from appointments and so forth, then what was the treatment then that was suggested at that point? Did she go through any type of chemotherapy or was it just too even late to do that?
Treatment and Challenges
00:08:24
Speaker
No, it wasn't too late to do that at all. She had chemotherapy. She had a very aggressive kind of chemotherapy, and she would usually be in the hospital for a full week. She was very, very weak after each therapy. And so she had chemotherapy for actually 10 months every three weeks.
00:08:49
Speaker
And she actually even had an experimental treatment, which they brought from the Mayo Clinic, which was a really, really wonderful and innovative treatment plan. But sadly, by the time she had it, her illness had already spread. It already metastasized more. And the experimental treatment only helped in reducing some pain. Very, very sadly, this
00:09:18
Speaker
These growing bone tumors also cause a lot of pain because they are in your bones and your bones don't don't expand the way you know a muscle might expand and contract.
00:09:30
Speaker
So it was very, very rugged for my daughter, Elizabeth. For all of you as well. That's the thing with these kind of illnesses and being myself, having been a family, my mom died of cancer, like having to be on that end of also being the caretakers of somebody that is going through that. Everybody's going through it, right? Only that just one person's physically going through the pain, but emotionally.
00:09:59
Speaker
Um, mentally, everything is just draining on the whole family. What did you all do? So the whole process then was 10 months with chemo. How long then from diagnosis till she passed away? And, and what is the word passing away, the word you'd like to use around this or what transitioned, what kind of word would passing away is just, this is fine. Okay. Well, after 10 months.
00:10:25
Speaker
Elizabeth was incredibly brave. And she told me that she had tried as hard as she could for one year. And she really did not believe that she could keep going with more treatments. And the doctors echoed this as well, because it's, as you know, the chemotherapy so hard on your whole body, not just the area that it's treating. And so we had about six weeks without any treatments.
00:10:55
Speaker
During that time, we had a really, really wonderful, memorable make a wish trip to Bermuda. And that was something very, very special. And the people around us couldn't have been kinder to us. And Elizabeth was able to go to the sea, which is her favorite place to be. She was able to sit in the sun and float on a raft in the sea and just listen to
00:11:23
Speaker
the birds and see the flora and fauna and that was very, very uplifting for her. Elizabeth actually died in my arms 365 days after she was diagnosed on a warm summer day.
Elizabeth's Passing and Family Support
00:11:39
Speaker
Wow. To the day or to the say. Exactly.
00:11:46
Speaker
Exactly to the same day, August 25th. Was she home? Was she at the hospital? What were the circumstances when she transitioned? We were home. We had started to have hospice care about a week before that because I could tell she was getting weaker and weaker. And I absolutely wanted her to be home and in her own bed.
00:12:12
Speaker
And my older daughter, Olivia, and I were by her side on her queen-size bed. And my dad, who was a retired physician, was in the room, as were both of my sisters. So it was interesting. It was a whole day-long time of her slipping away. And having my family there was very, very supportive to us, even though there were times when I was unaware that they were there.
00:12:42
Speaker
because I was so focused on Elizabeth but she died really very peacefully and I was very grateful for the hospice care that we received and that she was able to die at home in my arms. Thank you so much for sharing that and I know it's not easy to retell and
00:13:10
Speaker
I also know that it's part of that journey to share right and that every time we share it, it could also just be again part of that grief journey as well so I appreciate you sharing that with us and I'm sure more of these details are also in the, in the book.
00:13:26
Speaker
Let's talk about the aspect of the tools that you had in that grief journey. In that year, as a family, did you receive any type of support for anticipatory
00:13:42
Speaker
grief support as a family or anything like that from the hospital? And did you receive any support after or from your community around what kind of grief support was accessible to you? I was very fortunate. We had a therapist at the hospital. The hospital where she was treated was very, very aware that the whole family is impacted greatly.
00:14:12
Speaker
with an illness for a child. I also had a therapist who I saw who helped me enormously just with starting, as you say, anticipatory grief. And slowly I had to let in that Elizabeth might not make it. And that was just excruciating for me, really almost debilitating.
00:14:39
Speaker
I could be sort of slowly nurtured along. And I had a close group of six girlfriends who would do amazing things for me, not only bring me meals, but drive me because there was a time when I was in shock and I really wasn't able to drive safely. And they would bring my daughter Elizabeth and me to hospital appointments. And also they even spent nights
00:15:09
Speaker
um, by Elizabeth's bedside in the hospital. I would spend three or four nights in a row there, but as you probably know, one cannot have a good night's sleep in the hospital. You're woken up very frequently. And one of my girlfriends then offered to come and spend the night, um, with Elizabeth. And that was wonderful for me because I could go home. I could spend some more quality time with my daughter, Olivia, and I could rest.
00:15:38
Speaker
And I really needed the rest to be able to recharge the best that I could. So my friends were enormously supportive. And as was my church community, I was very, very fortunate.
00:15:53
Speaker
That is so beautiful that you had that and that you had the support of your friends. It's so interesting because some of the times as we're supporting somebody that's going through grief, we don't know what to do, right? We feel so helpless. Yet that little action that your friend did of offering to be her to stay the night at the hospital just so you could get a good night's sleep, that was
00:16:18
Speaker
You know, something so simple that we could all do at those times, right? Yet sometimes we don't all think about it. So that was so thoughtful of her that she offered that. So beautiful. Yes. And if other people are in a caregiving role, just simple things like we had to drive into a city and it's always really hectic drive and parking is close to impossible.
00:16:45
Speaker
Being able to offer a friend a ride to the hospital or a ride to an appointment even if it's not in a hospital just takes a layer of stress away.
00:16:57
Speaker
Because that part too of that, when you were mentioning of how you are emotionally and driving, how dangerous that is too, right? And especially if you've just been from an appointment in which you've gone through chemo and seen your child go through that and then having to drive yourself back home can be extremely hard, you know, to keep it kind of together. So that is that you're right. That is something so simple that we can also do of
00:17:23
Speaker
offering a ride to somebody that's going through this kind of situation. Now, what kind of things did you do with Olivia during that year? And what part did she play? And also would she go then to chemo with her sister? How was her role there as a sister as well?
00:17:51
Speaker
Well, it was, she did the very best that she could. She frequently after a school day, she was a freshman in high school would go to Boston. If she could get a ride with a friend, I would have already been there. She was starting a new high school and we had been in a different town with a much, much smaller middle school. And then all of a sudden she went to a big regional high school. So it was a huge transition for her.
00:18:21
Speaker
Anyway, the year would have been a big transition. And she did her very best to integrate into a new school. And she tried her very best to get good grades and do the best that she could. But it really tore her up to see her sister so weak. One thing they did, which was very simple, but when Elizabeth was home, they would watch their favorite programs like Friends. They would find things on the television that made them laugh.
00:18:50
Speaker
And they would just do their silly antics. They would just be their sister time together. There was no one big activity that they could do because Elizabeth was so weak. But just being together was really soothing, I think, for both of them. That's wonderful.
00:19:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's just the being, right? Just being there. Just being there. Just that being, just being. And being still yourself and maintaining a little bit of that normalcy per se, you know, that relationship that is also very soothing for the soul, right? Of the person that's going through something hard as well as the family.
Journey Through Grief
00:19:31
Speaker
Now, what was then the steps you took after she passed away going through that? You mentioned in the email when you reached out to share your story that it was something you struggled with a lot in your grief journey. Would you like to
00:19:51
Speaker
go into that a little bit of what it is that was either lacking in that grief journey or basically I just go into that before I just lose myself in my words trying to articulate correctly. I felt almost physically disabled after she died. My heart was often racing
00:20:19
Speaker
And I found it difficult to do even the simplest things like to go to the grocery store. And inevitably I would walk by something like her favorite brownies, uh, that they had for sale there that I used to put in her lunchbox and I would leave their sobbing and leave all my groceries in the cart. Sometimes it was very hard because I'd see people I know and I, I had to make a very quick assessment. If the people I saw.
00:20:48
Speaker
who I thought would be understanding and who could handle my grief might give me a big hug in the aisle. Other times I thought I can't explain what I'm feeling to these people and I would go down a different aisle. So in many ways, the simple things were very difficult, but slowly
00:21:12
Speaker
I found that my friends, again, were incredibly supportive and comforting to me. And they started to invite me sometimes over for dinner, sometimes to go for a swim in a pond, sometimes to visit them in a different location. And I started to see in the outside world that the world was continuing to go on as much as I thought it might
00:21:41
Speaker
It might stop that very day that Elizabeth died. And I also started to, after about six months, I went back to work, which was initially very, very hard for me, but was the best thing for me to do. I had to support my family. And also at work, I wasn't seen as a bereaved mother. I was seen as a colleague. So even though there were days that I didn't really have the energy for work,
00:22:10
Speaker
actually very helpful for me to return to work. I continued my counseling, counseling helped me enormously. And my counselor suggested that I go on a silent retreat. And I went to an Episcopalian monastery where the brothers were very, very loving and kind. And it was next to a wide tidal river and there was about a hundred acres of land. And I would just walk in the woods, walk along the shoreline of the river.
00:22:39
Speaker
And I started to find moments and places of comfort and peace. And going forward, nature is a place that really helped me walking along the shoreline, looking at the sea, being on top of a mountain and looking out where I could see that life went on for me and life will continue after me. I found enormously comforting that I was part of an eternal life.
00:23:06
Speaker
And I could bring that home with me after having those experiences. And since then, just taking walks with my golden doodle dog in the woods or spending some time with my husband, just keep being together. We don't need to do some particular activity just to be together.
00:23:25
Speaker
was comforting too. You mentioned your golden doodle. I have a golden doodle as well. And she has been my therapist since my mom passed away. People that are listening to this podcast have heard this story many times already.
00:23:45
Speaker
But her pickup day from her breeder was the day that was going to be my mom's first birthday since her passing. We didn't pick that date. The breeder did, not us. So it was like her gacha day is my mom's birthday, her first heavenly birthday. So it was like the timing could have not been more perfect because like you said, it's like walking in nature was probably one of my biggest
00:24:13
Speaker
therapies as well. And of course, taking a dog out, you kind of have to because you have to, right? So they really do help a lot. But you've only had recently your dog, or has your dog been in your life for many years? Many years. In fact, I had one dog for 10 years. And so during the previous 10 years,
00:24:40
Speaker
I had an incredibly sensitive golden doodle dog who could tell when I was feeling down, even as a puppy, he would be so quiet and just be next to me, or he'd be all frisky and fun. And that would be great because that would just pull me outside. This dog sadly died of cancer three years ago, and we have a new golden doodle dog who's the same way, very sensitive to my moods and also plenty frisky.
00:25:10
Speaker
I do get out and about a lot with her. That's wonderful. Nature is so beautiful. How you describe that of just observing and knowing that life does continue, even though we feel it's ended in those moments, but we see it. We see it in the sunrise and a sunset.
00:25:31
Speaker
It's constantly changing before us, right? Every day is something new and shifting. There is that hope there of that continuation. Talking about that, how did your religious beliefs play a part in your spiritual beliefs and what you had been brought up to believe about death play a part in your grief, Germany?
00:26:00
Speaker
For a while, I did not go to church. I didn't understand why a child would die. I just, I couldn't grasp it. I wasn't angry so much as dismayed. And I slowly began to realize that I believe that God was suffering with me as well.
00:26:25
Speaker
And that I wasn't alone on this journey. I started to have times and places of not feeling alone on this journey, that there was a spiritual presence with me, by me, supporting me. And I slowly returned to church. I started singing in a choir, which was a very good way for me to reenter church because I had a community within a community and I had something to do. I found it.
00:26:53
Speaker
almost painful just to sit in a pew by myself or with my husband and have a lot of people looking at me. So I liked actually the singing I like to return actively with. And singing also was rejuvenating. I don't know if you've done a lot of singing, but it brings a lot of oxygen into you. And if you've been singing for an hour, you really feel better after you've been singing.
00:27:20
Speaker
And so again, sort of like returning to work, I had no idea that this would be so helpful for me, but my people that I was singing with in the choir were just wonderful. And it really, it really helped me along on my journey. So, so far of what I've heard of the tools that you've mentioned throughout this journey, some of them have been for sure, the family around you, the community,
00:27:49
Speaker
the your walks in nature and returning to work and having some kind of rhythm and schedule into your life kind of woven into your life and then
00:28:03
Speaker
reintegrating into your community life and your church through the choir. Those are some of these tools that you used in your journey, and each of them served a different purpose in this path. So when did your writing come into play as your next tool for grief, for your mourning process?
Healing Through Writing
00:28:29
Speaker
I was going to mention that my writing started early on. I started writing when Elizabeth was in the hospital and I wrote by her bedside. I found that there was two things going on. There was so much information that you'd be given on a daily basis. And a lot of times the terms that I would hear would be new terms for me and it would be very hard to remember them.
00:28:55
Speaker
So if I wrote them down, it helped. And then I could go back when a doctor or a nurse returned to the room and I could say, can you please explain this to me? Or can you please explain what types of chemotherapy you'll be using or what this surgery will do and what her recovery time will be? So for practical reading reasons, writing was extremely helpful.
00:29:17
Speaker
but also for emotional reasons. I wrote down my anxieties. I wrote down my hopes. I wrote down our small victories. I wrote things that I otherwise would have kept inside and not been willing to share with the outside world. That's something that I do. I internalize a lot. And I found that writing released a lot of the thoughts that I had trapped inside. I continued to write after Elizabeth's death.
00:29:47
Speaker
on a daily basis and it helped me enormously just capture what I was feeling. And somehow each time I wrote, I felt unburdened. I had shifted thoughts that were inside me to being on the paper. And what I did as I was preparing to write my book is I went back and I read many of my journal entries and I slowly started to map out a book in my mind
00:30:16
Speaker
And I continued to write some of what I would, when I was writing some chapters, it was of course very, very difficult, but it was also cathartic for me. I also started to see some themes and it helped me to frame what happened to Elizabeth and to give it some structure. And in some ways I could find some meaning
00:30:45
Speaker
of the journey that she was on and the journey that I had been on. What was one of these aha kind of realizations of that journey? Why do you feel your family went through something so hard? Well, it's
00:31:09
Speaker
or what did you learn from having gone through? Let me, let me, what shifted in you that's different, uh, faith now of who, you know, who faith is now based on having been through something so hard. Well, I realized that many people go through very hard things. It doesn't always happen fortunately to a child, but after being in the hospital, I saw that there were many children who had either
00:31:39
Speaker
debilitating illnesses, or they had a critical illness, or they had something that was going to be lifelong and was going to sadly or difficulty change their life in some way. And I saw some amazing parents that had readjusted their expectations for their child. And they knew that their child was going to have a good life and a full life, but probably quite different than what they first imagined.
00:32:10
Speaker
So I saw some parents really still embrace life and that was very hopeful for me. And I just started to look at life as a whole and know that loss is part of life. It's not separate from life. I experienced it at a young age, I was about 40, but loss is part of life. And to know that you can hold both sorrow and joy together
00:32:40
Speaker
And that slowly, slowly dawned on me that I would always miss Elizabeth enormously. But she taught me a lot about Grace. She handled her illness extraordinarily well. And she did things like when she was in the hospital, she would get in her wheelchair, pull up the hood of her sweatshirt and put on a baseball cap and go into rooms with patients, children who had just arrived.
00:33:10
Speaker
And she would explain things like medical terms to them in a way that they could understand. And people would come to me in the hallway and say, I was so afraid when we first came here, but your daughter's winning smile and the way she was really helped alleviate a lot of our fear. And we're so very grateful. And I just realized by watching Elizabeth's actions that her compassion had grown enormously.
00:33:40
Speaker
She really went from being a 13 year old to a very, very wise 14 year old. And I've also learned in life that compassion, I believe, is one of the greatest things that we can contribute to the world. If we can be aware that many people are suffering, perhaps we don't see it on the outside, but we don't know their lives. And if we can show kindness and compassion,
00:34:07
Speaker
We will hopefully make some people's lives just a little bit better. Oh, gosh. The audience does not know that you are seeing me right now, as I'm like, when you were telling her story, her wheeling, going into the different rooms right now and being, you know, kind of being that motherly figure now to these children that are coming in and explaining everything that she already knew as she had already been through that.
00:34:36
Speaker
what so beautiful just so beautiful that image of her just taking that onto herself that maturity to that I see sometimes
00:34:51
Speaker
so much in children that have been through a lot. Like you said, from that 13 to that 14, going through something like that made her mature in a way so quickly, right? Because even making that decision 10 months after her journey with chemo of just stopping it, that's such maturity as well. And not just mental maturity. It's an emotional and spiritual maturity that is admirable.
00:35:22
Speaker
Absolutely. So those are some just by watching my daughter, I learned so very much about life and accepting what comes our way. And sometimes it is very, very rugged. But if we can accept what happens, it doesn't mean that it won't be hard. But I don't want to be someone who either blames or rages
00:35:52
Speaker
In life, Elizabeth would not want me to be like that. She would want me to embrace life again and to go back and to be with life. And I love being with children and I started to work. I left the job where I was working and I started to work for a school as the director of communication where all the children have learning disabilities.
00:36:15
Speaker
And it meant so much to me to be working really on their behalf and to see how much they grew and they changed when their confidence grew as they learned more about their learning disabilities. And they learned different strategies for how to do their work, their schoolwork, and their confidence would grow. And I felt very good about spending my time and my effort on that mission.
00:36:47
Speaker
contribution to somebody else's life, just like she was in that hospital setting, being of contribution to other patients as they were going through. Now you do that in your work too.
00:36:59
Speaker
Can you share with us that first book then that you wrote, the poetry book? When did you release that book? That one's already been released. Share about that and when you started writing, was it kind of like in your journal that then you turned into a book or how was that process of that first book?
00:37:19
Speaker
My first book, Facing Into the Wind, was written and published in 2007. I went and looked at a lot of my journals. To start with, I found that it was difficult to write narrative. I found that poetry just evolved very naturally to me, and I draw a lot of metaphors with the natural world. And that to me was the way that I could express my feelings
00:37:47
Speaker
and express the reality that I had been facing. And it just flowed that way. So if people enjoy reading about the natural world and about loss and about healing and grieving, my poetry draws people into that world. As far as writing the book that I have now, I started writing that book about five years or so after I wrote my first book.
Announcing the Book
00:38:17
Speaker
This book, Hope is a Bright Star, that will be published tomorrow, is an accumulation. And we're recording this on June 8th, as we speak. So when you guys listen to this, it's already out there. And then we'll share the where in the little show notes. Go ahead. Sorry. Thank you. That's wonderful. Hope is a Bright Star. So Hope is a Bright Star. So I felt that I had many lessons to share. I wanted to share Elizabeth's strength and
00:38:47
Speaker
And I've just shared to you some of the extraordinary things that she did and the growth and the maturity that she found on her journey. And I wanted to share that people can have great deal of suffering, but it doesn't mean that life will end. And it doesn't mean that you have to live a life either raging at the world or with a lot of anger or with feelings that can really, really pull you down.
00:39:15
Speaker
that if you open your heart and if you open your arms, there will be people who will support you and who will love you and who will care for you. And it's not that every day is an easy day for me, for sure. There are many days that are difficult, especially like anniversary dates. But I have found different strategies for those dates. For example, on the first anniversary of Elizabeth's death, I planted a garden with a really dear girlfriend.
00:39:44
Speaker
And we had my older daughter, Olivia, and my sister, Sarah helped. And we had two strong men to pull out all these old ewes and errant roots. And then I, then one, my friend Lisa came up with a van full of plants that we had discussed earlier because we had planned out this garden. And we spent all day in the garden planting, weeding, bringing in new soil. And it was so.
00:40:12
Speaker
rejuvenating and really made me feel closer to my daughter, Olivia and my sister, Sarah, because we'd shared something almost sacramental. It just felt extraordinarily beautiful on that day. And I find that I, one other activity that I do on an anniversary date was with another friend. There's a pond near us that is quite large and it takes about an hour and a half to swim the circumference.
00:40:41
Speaker
But my friend and I do that on the anniversary of her death. And I always feel rejuvenated by doing that. I don't feel tired by it. I feel restored by it. Elizabeth was a very good swimmer. And I feel closer to her when I do that. So I found activities to do that helped me. So on the anniversary dates, I don't dread them.
00:41:09
Speaker
make a plan so that I can go forward through them.
00:41:16
Speaker
That's so perfect because you already have something that you're going to be doing because sometimes what ends up kind of creating that anxiousness and anticipation sometimes the day before of a certain special date is the not knowing how we're going to feel that day, right? So by you already having a plan of something you're going to do, whether like you mentioned, either swimming the lake or planting the garden like you did in her first anniversary, you already have
00:41:45
Speaker
something that you're doing. And it's again connecting back to nature, which is one of the many tools that reminded you of this continuation of life and connecting you to her as well. Absolutely. So beautiful. So in your book, do you share then a lot of this about your journey? I do. I share about my journey. I share about the times that
00:42:15
Speaker
times and places that I find comfort and peace. I share about my friends who supported me enormously through my transitions and I share the hope that I found that as I mentioned life can go on and life can be good again and you can even find joy in life. You find that you can you can carry both sorrow and joy. One doesn't have to be exclusive of the other and
00:42:46
Speaker
through my marriage, it's my second marriage. Now I have a stepchildren and grandchildren and they bring me enormous joy. And I feel if I had closed up and not reached out, I would not have gotten married again. And I probably wouldn't know the joy of having stepchildren and grandchildren in my life. And one other thing that I did is I decided that writing was so beneficial to me.
00:43:15
Speaker
that I wanted somehow to give back to the hospital where Elizabeth was cared for. So I went on to a committee called the Family Advisory Council, and I proposed having a journal writing program there. And they asked to see some research, and there actually is quite a lot of research done about journal writing being beneficial to one's well-being. And I shared some of this research with them, and they said that would be terrific.
00:43:43
Speaker
So I started on Tuesdays afternoons to go into the floors where Elizabeth was treated and to bring journals. At first I thought maybe the parents would meet me in a like a family room, but most parents don't want to leave their child's bedside. So I actually go into the rooms. I talk with them about the benefits of journal writing. I have journals that I give to them as gifts. And I've had an extraordinarily positive response to both parents
00:44:14
Speaker
grandparents, siblings, and the slightly older children, like 13 and older. And I both talk about how writing can help really alleviate stress, but I also encourage children to write about favorite places, favorite times, and encourage them to write stories, ways to bring their mind away from being in a hospital room to being in the outside world. And this has been
00:44:42
Speaker
extraordinarily rewarding for me and when I find that I'm leaving and someone has a smile on their face and sometimes they start writing before I even leave the room. I know in some small measure I've helped someone on that day.
00:44:58
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keep paying it forward and you wouldn't be offering this had you not gone through this yourself and having used journaling as this tool for yourself. So that's again that ripple effect that there is right in our own learnings and how we pass down the torch to others as well and in their own journeys as well.
00:45:19
Speaker
So, beautiful Faith, thank you so much for sharing. Is there anything else you'd like to share with the listeners? We will share your website down below. Your book will be found on your website or there are links on your website, Amazon, what way? Yes. If you go to my website, there are links there. My website is Faith, Wilcox, W-I-L-C-O-X, narratives.com.
00:45:47
Speaker
It's also available on Amazon. It's available in Barnes and Noble. It's available in independent bookstores. And if the independent bookstore doesn't have it on hand, they can order it. So you can find it. You can find it in a lot of places. I also recorded an audio book so you can have it in an audible, many, many different places to find an audio book, wherever you like to get your audio books, it will be available.
00:46:15
Speaker
How exciting. Do you think you have a third book? There's two. Do you think you have a third book in you as well? It looks like something, it's kind of like when people, you know, the people that get tattoos, I don't have any tattoos, but I've heard like people that get tattoos, they get one, they get two, they get three, they keep going. I think with authors, it tends to be that way, right? There's so many books that you keep going. So are there more books in you?
00:46:39
Speaker
There very well might be more books than me. I continue to write. I continue as you know my life's journey and there very well might be right now.
00:46:49
Speaker
I'm just thrilled to have this one be launched and hope that it can help people who are on the journey of grieving and healing. Wonderful. Thank you again so much for sharing. It's been an honor to hear your journey and to listen to Elizabeth's story and her courage, her compassion, her generosity, her grace, so many attributes and virtues that she
00:47:15
Speaker
has resembled in her life and that now you carry on in yours. So thank you. Thank you. It's been a joy to speak with you.
00:47:31
Speaker
Thank you again so much for choosing to listen today. I hope that you can take away a few nuggets from today's episode that can bring you comfort in your times of grief. If so, it would mean so much to me if you would rate and comment on this episode. And if you feel inspired in some way to share it with someone who may need to hear this, please do so.
00:48:00
Speaker
Also, if you or someone you know has a story of grief and gratitude that should be shared so that others can be inspired as well, please reach out to me. And thanks once again for tuning into Grief Gratitude and the Gray in Between podcast. Have a beautiful day.