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44. All You Have To Do Is Pay Attention To The Signs - With Jen Zwinck
70 Plays4 years ago
Jen Zwink shares with us her grief journey after becoming a widow. Their daughter was only two years old when this tragedy happened. Jen felt as is the world was closing in on her! She took a bold leap to move herself and Claire to a small Island in Turks and Caicos for some time. She needed space to sit with her grief, but also be in nature to help her heal. When she came back to her home in Louisiana she found a community of widows to help her through her grief journey.
It has been almost 10 years since Brent passed away, and Jen is now happily married to and has another young daughter. She recently created her own podcast called Widow 180, where she interviews other widows about their journey.
Listen to her beautiful story, and how she shares all the signs she received along her grief journey, that brought solace to her soul.
Contact Jen Zwink: https://www.widow180.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/widow_180/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/groups/312036956454927
Contact Kendra Rinaldi to be a guest or for a coaching session:
https://www.griefgratitudeandthegrayinbetween.com/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/griefgratitudpodcast
FB: http://www.facebook.com/griefgratitudpodast
Music: http://www.oneplanetmusic.com
Logo design: http://www.pamelawinningham.com
Production: Carlos Andres Londono
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Transcript
Claire's Message to Never Give Up
00:00:00
Speaker
I was laying there in bed with Claire one night and she looked up at the ceiling and she's staring up at the ceiling and then she like reaches over and she grabs my face and she like turns my face so that it's like right in her face and she was like, mommy. She said, never give up. Never ever give up. Like just so like
00:00:28
Speaker
Oh my God, this child wanted to give me this message, you know? And I said, what, baby? I'm like, what did you just say? She's like, mommy, never give up.
00:00:41
Speaker
And I said, OK, I'm like, I won't. She was so serious. She was so like this was something she had to tell me. I'm a two year old. It's like, how does this happen?
Introduction to the Podcast
00:01:01
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Grief, Gratitude and the Gray in Between podcast.
00:01:08
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.
00:01:24
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 Jen Zwink and Her Story
00:01:47
Speaker
Welcome to today's episode. I am so excited to have my friend, Jen Zwink. She is a podcast host of Widow 180. She's a mother. She's a widow. She's an optometrist. How many hats do you wear? What other hats do you wear? What other one am I missing? Mother, daughter, son. Not son, not son. Welcome, Jen.
00:02:13
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me, Kendra. I love your show. I'm so excited to be here to talk to you today. I'm so excited you're here too. Now, I'm going to tell the listener something. So we actually recorded this a while back. I'm very transparent. So I'm going to tell the listeners this. We recorded this.
00:02:32
Speaker
a few months ago and the internet gods were not in our favor that day because afterwards when I heard the podcast the sound was horrible on my end it was not good connection I was like oh no now I have to try to ask Jen to come on again and so Jen and I have chatted then a few times but since it's been a few months you'll be like listening to your story
00:03:00
Speaker
fresh and new for myself again. And FYI, we just talked for like 25 minutes just prior to recording, just exchanging little notes here and there because we're both podcasters. It's like, oh, what are you doing? Oh, do you need a host? I have another guest for you here.
00:03:20
Speaker
I love it. I love it. I love that too. I love the little community and support. It's not a competition, right? It's like, it's like, oh, it's all a learning game to you. We're like, how do you,
00:03:35
Speaker
How are you doing this and what works for you? Right. Yeah, because it is. We just all launched this recently. So let's actually go
The Tragic Disappearance of Jen's Husband
00:03:45
Speaker
to that. When did you launch your podcast and when did you launch it? This last year, right? I did. Yes. It was July of 2020.
00:03:56
Speaker
But the idea was actually in my head for like two years prior to that. It was brewing. It was brewing. Until I couldn't take it anymore. It took me forever to make it happen, but it did actually happen finally. And it's been life changing for me. So I love doing it. I just love it.
00:04:16
Speaker
It is called Widow 180 and we'll find out the why right now as we hear this story. So Jen, tell us your story about then how did you become a widow? So my story actually when I became a widow was in October of 2011. And this was just a normal day.
00:04:43
Speaker
Saturday my husband had been invited to a bachelor party and This was a man that never went out. He was a total homebody. He loved being at home with us It was we had our little girl Claire and she was two years at the time two years and nine months and So he was invited to this bachelor party in New Orleans. We live right outside of New Orleans and he had
00:05:12
Speaker
excited he was going to go and I was like, sure, fine, you know, have a great time with a bunch of guys. And he was going to be staying down there overnight. So he didn't have to drive home. And I was like, I'll just see you tomorrow. You know, have a great time. Um, so
00:05:30
Speaker
he was texting me and we were talking actually the whole time that he was driving to go downtown. And so I had a really nice, long conversation with him. It was probably 35 minutes on the phone. And that was the last time that I talked to him. But he goes to the party. He was supposed to text me. What city is this in? What city? New Orleans. Yeah, he was in New Orleans.
00:05:55
Speaker
So he was supposed to text me when he got back to the hotel, like just to let me know that he had gotten home or, you know, gotten back to the hotel safe and sound. So I remember looking at my phone at like five o'clock in the morning and he still hadn't texted, but I just wasn't thinking anything of it. I'm like, he's just out having a good time, you know, whatever. So that was Saturday night. Sunday morning comes around.
00:06:26
Speaker
And he was supposed to be, he was supposed to be home by noon to watch the Saints game. And so it was like 10 o'clock in the morning. I still hadn't heard from him. No texts, nothing. 11. And then like the game starts at noon. He's still not home. I was like, what is happening? I don't know where he is. So I text his friend and his friend said, well, you know, let me go check in the hotel room and just see if he's there.
00:06:55
Speaker
Um, so he went to go and try and knock on the door and find him and he wasn't in there. And so he told me, so he called me the friend and, and he said, um, he's not back in his room. It doesn't look like he made it back to the room. Um, the last time that I saw him was when he left the bar and he left the bar by himself, like he was tired. So he left at like, I don't know, four 30 ish in the morning.
00:07:23
Speaker
And all of the other guys wanted to stay and he was just tired and he was like, I'm going, I'm going back to the hotel. And he left by himself. Not the last time that he saw him. So his friend that, you know, this is the next day of the conversation. He's like, well, he didn't come back to the hotel.
00:07:43
Speaker
He's like, why don't you call your parents? He's like, I'm going to go to the police station. Why don't you come meet us down here, have somebody watch Claire, you know, call your parents. And I was just like, wait, what? This was, so this was by this time, it's like two o'clock in the afternoon. So surreal. It's like, it's just like you, you don't expect that you just going to go say bye to your husband, going to a party and then like not find him the next day. Like, I don't know if I would like, that's just crazy. Okay.
00:08:14
Speaker
Sorry. Like nothing, like no, no communication. So it was like, okay, where could he possibly be? Something, you know, something is he, you know, he, whatever.
The Search and Discovery
00:08:24
Speaker
I had no idea. So, so I did, you know, what he told me, I call my parents, I said, uh, rent's missing and, you know, we've got to, he didn't come back from the party. And so my parents came to Claire and then my dad came with me to go downtown. Um,
00:08:44
Speaker
I brought some pictures of Brent. The police met us at the hotel. And then I had a couple of friends come down there, too. And we just kind of split up. And some of, like, they were walking back to the bar to go and, like, you know, talk to the bartenders or, like, see if anybody had seen anything. Like, where did he go? Which direction? They have cameras at these bars. And so they were trying to, like, get footage. And the police were helping.
00:09:11
Speaker
But this time it was like hours had gone by and we were trying to trace his phone. So we finally were able to do that. And we tracked his phone to a junkyard that was about two miles from the bar. So we go, by this time it's like, I don't know, eight o'clock at night. So it is dark.
00:09:37
Speaker
And the police are there and we tell them that we found, we traced the phone, it's in this junkyard. And I just remember standing there and it was my dad and these four or five policemen. And they were like, okay, well, they didn't want me to go. They were like, you need to just stay here. And I was like, are you crazy? Like, no, I'm going, I'm going. I'm not gonna sit here.
00:10:06
Speaker
So we all go and this junkyard is like, picture this in your head, okay? It's got like, it's dark. It's got barbed wire like all around the top of it. And there's like Rottweilers and like Pitbull, like all kinds, like five dogs in there.
00:10:27
Speaker
It's giant. It's a giant junkyard, okay? Like something you would see in a movie. Yeah, that sounds like a CSI type of, like one of those crazy kind of movie or TV shows. This is Sunday night at like nine o'clock. And so they couldn't get in touch with the owner to let us in. And so they called the fire department and the fire department comes out
00:10:53
Speaker
with the trucks and then they put up their ladders and they had these big spotlights so they would go up they went up to the top of the ladder and then they would like they were shining their lights like down into the junkyard to see if they could find him or find the phone and then they would like they would shut off all the lights and they would say you know okay Jennifer we want you to call the phone and see if like we're gonna see if we could see it light up in the junkyard
00:11:22
Speaker
And this is a massive junkyard. Okay. This is not like, I'm like, this is a needle in a haystack. It really is, but this is what we're trying to do. Like this is literally just the phone. His car was still at the hotel park. Yeah. Yeah.
00:11:38
Speaker
So anyway, we did that for about, I don't know, 30 minutes or so. Couldn't find the phone, still couldn't get in. The dogs were in their bark and going crazy. And so I just remember these two detectives, they were standing there and they were like,
00:11:54
Speaker
Okay, ma'am, we just need you to go home and try and get some rest and we're gonna do our job. Just let us do our job and you just try and go home and get some sleep. It was straight out of a movie. Kendra, I'm telling you, I was like, did that man just say that to me? That is a line from a movie. This is not real. This is not really happening. Is this some kind of a joke? So I'm like, you want me to go home? I can't leave here.
00:12:24
Speaker
without my husband, you know, I'm not going to go home. Where is he? Like this is, this is, it had been like, you know, 24 hours. Um, but I did, we left, we went home and I had my little girl still to take care of and, um, went home and tried to get some sleep. There's no way that that was happening. Um,
00:12:51
Speaker
But I just remember, so I crawled into bed with Claire and I'm just sitting up in bed and I'm looking around and we had this little nightlight that
Coping with Loss and Explaining to Claire
00:13:04
Speaker
was plugged in for her. And it was casting a shadow up onto the wall, but kind of directly in front of me on the other side of the room.
00:13:19
Speaker
And I just kept saying over and over, I was like, Brent, you have to give me a sign. Like I need a sign. Tell me that you're okay. I need a sign. You know, show me that you're okay. What's going on with you, whatever. And I look across the room and there's, the shadow was his silhouette. Like it was, it was like life-size silhouette of him on the wall.
00:13:45
Speaker
And whether or not you believe in that kind of stuff or not, I that's it was, it was, it's your truth. It's, it was, it was, it was him. And it was, it was the sign and I looked at it and I was like, Nope, like I turned my head.
00:14:02
Speaker
And I was just completely in denial, but I was like, I don't see that. I'm not listening to that. I'm not looking at that. Give me a sign. I need a different sign. Tell me that you're okay. I just need to know that you're okay. And then I look back over and it's still there. You know, like it was a silhouette of him on the wall. And then I just knew, I was like, okay. I'm like, that's it, you know?
00:14:29
Speaker
He's gone. I still didn't want to believe it, but I felt it in that moment. I was like, okay, this is real. And it wasn't until the next morning, so of course I didn't sleep. I just sat there all night. But it was eight o'clock in the morning, the next morning when the coroner's office called.
00:14:57
Speaker
And they asked us to come down there to go. And they said, we're not sure that this is your husband, but we have a good idea that this is your husband. And so, yeah, I had to go down to the coroner's office, went with my parents and my brother.
00:15:23
Speaker
They brought us into the office and it was just this big, long conference table. And the picture, they had a picture that was upside down on the table and I could see it. When I walked in, I could, you know, I could tell what the picture was. And so the coroner flipped over the picture and then, uh, and then he took it away, like right away. He took it away. And, um, and I was like, wait, I said, I want to see it again. And he was like, no.
00:15:52
Speaker
that I don't want you to see it again. Um, and I said, I said, well, is he here? Like, is he in this building? I want to, I want to see him, you know? And because I still felt like it wasn't real, like it still was not, I needed the proof, you know, I wanted to see. And, um, and they wouldn't let me see him. Like he said, he said, no. So.
00:16:22
Speaker
Um, so what were the circumstances and of his, what did he find out of how he had died? The fact that they didn't want you to see him. So they took it a picture way. So what happened was he had gotten tired at the party. He had
00:16:44
Speaker
a lot to drink, left by himself. And they actually had video footage of him walking out, walking down the street. So they did get footage, but they did not get footage of what actually happened to him. But he was walking down the street. He took a left turn instead of taking a right turn to go to the hotel. He turned the wrong way.
00:17:12
Speaker
And he walked one block in the opposite direction of where he was supposed to go. And two guys had followed him out of the bar. They saw that he left by himself. So, you know, he was kind of an easy target, I guess. Made it one block down the street and they, I guess they came up behind him and they hit him on the head and they took his wallet, they took his phone.
Entering Survival Mode
00:17:40
Speaker
So he had no identification.
00:17:43
Speaker
Um, and so he was found, like, I don't know exactly how long he was laying there on the sidewalk, but he was found, um, by a guy that was walking home, you know, from a different bar by himself. And he found him and called 911 and, um,
00:18:08
Speaker
but he was already gone. At least that's what I was told. They were working on him in the ambulance, but that he was already gone at that point. And this was like- The impact to the head, is that how they attacked him? Yeah. The aspect of, yeah, so he,
00:18:33
Speaker
Basically, when you were searching for him that day before, he had already been found, but because he didn't have identification, they couldn't put together, right? That they didn't put together that that was your husband? Yes. But we had contacted the police.
00:18:57
Speaker
at like, you know, three o'clock, maybe four o'clock on Sunday. And part of like, one of the things that we did was call a bunch of hospitals. Like I was thinking maybe he had gotten hurt or something. And, you know, for whatever reason, he couldn't call me. I don't know. I was like, I have no idea. But we had a list of local hospitals and. Exactly.
00:19:22
Speaker
Maybe you didn't remember my phone number. I don't know. I was a concussion and lost his memory of, yeah. I know anything, right? Anything but what actually happened. So yeah, I was making all of these phone calls and that's what I would say. Did a man come in? He's got brown hair, blue eyes, no identification, whatever. I was like, I don't know. Have you had anybody
00:19:50
Speaker
get dropped off or any, and, and everybody said no. Um, so that was kind of just, you know, where do we go from here? So we had filed a missing person report, but yeah, they didn't, they didn't try to contact us overnight that night. They just waited until eight o'clock in the morning on Monday. But so that was, so yeah. What did you tell that two year old?
00:20:19
Speaker
your two year old daughter, Claire, like what do you tell her during this like, because she's so little, like, what do you say as you're like, they can't find daddy, like, what, what words do you use for him not being home?
00:20:35
Speaker
No, to be honest with you. Okay. Like that first, so that happened on Monday. Um, I had to, I had to go back to my house and like, I can't even remember who was watching Claire that day when we went to the coroner's office. We had somebody watching her, but I mean, she's two years and nine months at the time. So I had to,
00:21:01
Speaker
start calling people and telling them that this is what happened. And it's a shock to everybody. I had to, you just went to a party. This is not so unexpected. And so I
00:21:19
Speaker
With her, it was like everything with Claire was just a matter of survival and getting through and what does she need to be fed and be okay for right now and I will get to this hard conversation when I need to get to it. I had to plan, I had to go and plan the funeral.
00:21:37
Speaker
On Tuesday, I was out at the funeral home picking out plots and trying to pick out like what kind of casket like I was so overwhelmed and in a daze.
00:21:50
Speaker
I couldn't even think about having a conversation with her. You were just going through the business of ... That's the part that a lot of times ... I'm sorry to interrupt. A lot of times, one of the things people don't realize, those first days and even weeks, a lot of what happens in your grief process is business stuff. It sounds really weird, but it's like what you said about days is not only do you have this information about it, but you're also trying to plan.
00:22:14
Speaker
a funeral, trying to select things, trying to then afterwards dealing with paperwork, things like that. Sometimes people don't really end up even experiencing their real start to their grief journey until a few weeks later after they're done with all the business. Exactly. And I'm doing air quotes as I'm here doing this.
00:22:35
Speaker
It's something, yeah, lots don't realize. So when you check in with somebody and they maybe don't return your call as you're trying to check in to see if they're okay, just know they're dealing with a lot of stuff that is administrative stuff around the aspect of someone's death, that you haven't even addressed the aspects of having a conversation, like you said, with your two-year-old child yet.
Claire's Profound Words and Moving Forward
00:22:56
Speaker
So thank you for bringing that up. Okay, so continue.
00:23:01
Speaker
Well, and then I didn't want to say the wrong thing to her either. So it was like, okay, we ended up having the funeral a week later. So this was the following Saturday because we had a lot of people that were trying to come in from out of town. Tuesday was the day I was actually making the arrangements.
00:23:25
Speaker
Friday was the day that I could actually see him at the funeral home. So it had been, I saw, I had seen him Saturday when he left, and then I got to see him Friday morning at the funeral home. You know, it was almost a week before we could even have the funeral and get that done.
00:23:48
Speaker
So I was trying to get through that. At the same time, I had detectives that were keeping me updated with what was going on with the investigation because they were trying to track down more footage. They were interviewing witnesses or trying to find witnesses.
00:24:13
Speaker
There was all of this other aspect of the case that was happening and that this person was still out there. And so I also had that that I was worried about because they took his wallet. So they knew where I live, you know.
00:24:33
Speaker
I was afraid. I was afraid to be in my house, even though, you know, nothing bad happened in my house. I was just thinking, what if? Like, what if they decide to come here? Or, you know, I had no idea. I was like, my brain was just everywhere with every idea.
00:24:56
Speaker
And actually, now that you said that they took his wallet, had there been any activity in any of his cards?
00:25:04
Speaker
No, and that's nothing. Nothing. No, nothing. And Kendra, when I tell you this man probably had not even like $50 in cash. It's like, who has cash? What are you trying to take? That's like his life is less than $50 in his wallet. I don't understand. There's no rhyme or reason to any of it. There's no reason.
00:25:34
Speaker
It's a pity crime to go get their next hit or something. And they're probably drug-related or things like that. Because if they didn't use the cards and if they threw discarded phone, it's not even like they... No. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So I had the...
00:26:01
Speaker
activity from the detectives, um, that was all happening. And then back to Claire, I was trying to figure out what the best approach was. What was I supposed to say to her? And she had been, you know, she's barely talking at that point. She's kind of like asking some questions. Like she was like, where's daddy or, um,
00:26:24
Speaker
there's daddy's car, like in the driveway and stuff. But it was probably a couple of days after the funeral and I ended up going to, there was a children's hospital. They had a counseling center. I went to them to try and just get some direction and find out what I was supposed to say to her and how I was supposed to say it at a two year old level.
00:26:53
Speaker
And so I did, I sat her down with, it was with my mom and my dad and my brother. And I was just like, I need somebody else to be here just in case I just really break down and I have to leave the room. But I just kind of said, you know, daddy's in heaven. I took out, I took out a piece of paper. I took out some crayons. I was drawing pictures.
00:27:21
Speaker
drawing pictures of him and of, I don't know, I put, I put, and made him look like an angel. You know, I put a halo on him. I put him, I drew clouds and I tried to draw a picture of her and I, just like, you know, this is us and we're here and daddy's about, he's in heaven and he's watching us. And I mean, what do you say to a two year old? I was like, okay, mommy. And then like, can I have a snack?
00:27:51
Speaker
I'm pretty much, I'm pretty sure that's, that's how the conversation went. It just, she didn't get it. And that's understandable, you know? Did that conversation change through the years, of course, as she was getting older? Oh, yeah. Of course, got deeper and so forth, too, with that, because you got to be able to explain a little more as she got
00:28:14
Speaker
older what had happened. Does she know now all the details now that she's not 12? She does not. She hasn't asked me at this point, like any of the of the details. She
00:28:36
Speaker
She doesn't know the full story. And I think we're getting to the age where she can definitely understand that
A New Beginning in Turks and Caicos
00:28:44
Speaker
a lot more. So I know it's gonna come up and I'm ready to have that conversation with her. But yeah, over the years, it's definitely been different in the level of like what I can say to her and what she understands for sure. But that first few weeks,
00:29:07
Speaker
It was really another really strange thing happened. I guess it was about a month after he died and I was having a really hard time.
00:29:22
Speaker
Um, again, just trying to like survival mode, right? I'm just trying to get through the days and do all of the administrative stuff I have to do, figuring out like work and life and all of it. And I was.
00:29:38
Speaker
laying there in bed with Claire one night and she looked up at the ceiling and she's staring up at the ceiling and then she like reaches over and she grabs my face and she like turns my face so that it's like right in her face and she was like mommy she said never give up never ever give up like just so like
00:30:04
Speaker
Oh my God, like she, this child wanted to give me this message, you know? And I said, what baby? I'm like, what did you just say? She's like, mommy, never give up. And I said, okay. I'm like, I won't. She was so serious. She was so like, this was something she had to tell me. I'm a two year old. It's like, how does this happen?
00:30:34
Speaker
What is your real, what do you truly feel happened there?
00:30:41
Speaker
Oh, that was him for sure. Okay. I was struggling. I have chills. Laying there in bed looking up and all of a sudden, turning with such assertiveness, you know, to speak to you that way. I in a two year old, I feel I've completely see that I had a child who can barely speak full sentences, right? And she's like, Mommy, never give up.
00:31:09
Speaker
And like, and then she like, she let go of my face and then she just like looked back up at the ceiling. So like, I kind of like turned my head. Like I was like, I looked up at the ceiling too. Like I'm like, what am I going to see if I look this way? You know, I didn't see anything, but I feel it in my heart that she
00:31:30
Speaker
She was relaying a message from him, for sure. That's beautiful. So beautiful. Okay, crazy. So that is what happened then at that time. Now, take us, since I remember this part of the story, into what then
00:31:46
Speaker
the incident right before you decided you were going to leave. Oh, God. Food with your mom at a fast food restaurant. The Brit was killed October 16th. He was killed. This was two weeks later. It was shortly after. It was the week after the funeral.
00:32:13
Speaker
And again, I'm still like afraid of being in my house and whatever. So my mom said she was running some errands. She's like, come and meet me for lunch and then we'll go run errands together. I was like, okay. So I meet her at this at a McDonald's and I have Claire and we go we're in the McDonald's and
00:32:38
Speaker
my mom takes Claire into the bathroom and we were potty training her at that point but I was sitting there at the table just in a daze and I'm sitting there eating my french fries and I hear like behind the counter the the workers are kind of talking back there and it's getting kind of loud and I was like okay what's happening something is happening I don't know um
00:33:02
Speaker
And then I see right outside of the window. So I looked to the right and a cop car pulls up like screeches, like right outside the window. And this policeman gets out and then he runs into the McDonald's. He has his gun out, runs in. He goes into the men's bathroom.
00:33:23
Speaker
And then he comes running back out with his gun up, whatever. He jumps back in the car and then he like screeches off and drives off. Look, we have sound effects and everything in this one, you guys. This is exactly what happened.
00:33:39
Speaker
I am not kidding you. This is the part two of your movie. It's like the junkyard with the Ruttweilers outside. I'm like moving on. I know you're not. And that's the thing. When we see movies, we got to know in these shows,
00:34:02
Speaker
They're, that's the thing. These things have actually happened to some extent to people. It's like, so what you're saying with the screeching. Okay. So then this, yeah, I always interrupt because I always like to also add the lighthearted part of here in the conversation is something that's hard, right? Oh my God.
00:34:23
Speaker
So, so I'm sitting there and it's like slow motion eating my french fries, right? Like I am just like, what the hell is happening? Um, so totally visualizing that that whole thing of like the french fry, like literally like hanging from your lip, like,
00:34:42
Speaker
Okay. And your daughter, the thing is that if they run to the bathroom, it's like, and your daughter's in there with your mom, like, yeah, I'd be, okay. They come, they, so I look out, I look over and I hear the, and then I hear the workers say, Oh, um, that bank across the street just got robbed. And the, and the guy was like running over to the McDonald's, you know, that's, that's what had happened.
00:35:05
Speaker
And and then I look over and my mom is walking out of the bathroom with Claire and my mom is like Oblivious to what's happening. She's like Guess who just went on the party like she's all excited about about the body training and I lost it like I went and
00:35:27
Speaker
crazy in the McDonald's and I started crying and shaking. I was like, mom, I'm like, this is what just happened. I'm like, you totally missed it. This is what just happened. I'm like this and this and the people are still talking behind the counter. And I just, I started shaking and crying and I was just like, what is happening? And this is a good neighborhood. Okay. This is not like
00:35:51
Speaker
Like bad things don't happen in this neighborhood. It is a very nice neighborhood. And this happened to happen on that day, two weeks after my husband is killed. And I was just like, my world is closing in on me and I do not feel safe. That's right. So I just said, I gotta go. Like, I don't know, I can't be here. I can't be here. My mom had to like take me and like physically hold my shoulders and we
00:36:21
Speaker
go to walk outside. She's like, you got to get some air because I felt like I couldn't breathe. I was just, I was having a panic attack. You know, like you just said, well, what you just said, like you felt the world is closing in on you. That is so claustrophobic. Like you're right. You can't breathe because that is exactly what is happening. It's like seeing like these walls and Deanna Jones style kind of thing of the walls just kind of, you know,
00:36:45
Speaker
closing and closing and closing on you. It was violence. It was a lot of violence. And I was just like, it's too close. All of it. It's too close to me. And that's what I felt like in that moment. I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. I have to leave.
00:37:04
Speaker
So I was like, she took me outside and I said, what is happening? What is happening in the world? I started asking all these questions. I was like, I can't deal with this mom. I was just like, she's hearing me rant and rant and rant. And I was just like, I'm really not handling this well.
00:37:27
Speaker
Anyway, I was crying and I kept saying things like, I just wanna go away. I can't be here, I can't be here. And Claire is like, it was a beautiful sunny day, I
Returning to the States and Finding Love Again
00:37:39
Speaker
remember this. And she's running around and there's these little butterflies and she's just like chasing the butterflies and we're outside like in that front, in front of the McDonald's. And so I'm like having a nervous breakdown.
00:37:55
Speaker
and my mom is trying to talk to me. And then, you know how when it's like you get your food at the McDonald's or whatever and they left out the French fries and you have to like pull, they're like pull up a little bit, you know, like go sit just right in front of the little drive-through window. This, it was a minivan pulls up and they stopped like right next to the little play park where we were standing.
00:38:22
Speaker
And it's a family in there. It was a guy and then the wife was sitting next to him. They had kids in the back of a minivan and he had his window down. And I guess he's like just watching, like watching me have this nervous breakdown. But then he said, excuse me. He was like, ma'am, you have a beautiful daughter. Like he said that to me.
00:38:45
Speaker
And I stopped hyperventilating and I stopped crying. And I look over at this man who is just a random man with his family in a minivan and he snapped me out of it. It was like,
00:39:01
Speaker
Again, it was some kind of divine intervention because it's again that don't is like your again, little Claire's hands on your face saying never ever give up. It's that whole thing of like, come back to the to what the most important aspect right now in your life. Yeah, it's your daughter and being okay for her and in that moment. Wow. Yeah. He said you have a beautiful daughter.
00:39:27
Speaker
I don't even remember what I said to him, but I just kind of looked at him and then I looked over at her and I was like, oh my God, he's right. I do have a beautiful daughter. I need to be here for her. I need to get my stuff together. This cannot be me.
00:39:49
Speaker
I need to do something. I need to handle myself better and get a grip. But I also had that part of me that was like, I don't feel safe here. So I immediately went home. I went straight from there, went home.
00:40:06
Speaker
And I booked tickets to, um, to go to our favorite vacation place, which was, uh, the Turks and Caicos islands. It's a little island, providentialis is in the Caribbean. And I said, I'm going to go down there for like two weeks. I'm going to go with Claire. We're going over Thanksgiving break. Um, I just want to like get away, you know,
00:40:34
Speaker
And so I booked those tickets. A couple of weeks later we went and it was probably on our third day down there when I was like, I feel like I need to stay. And Brent and I had been to that, we had been to that Island probably twice a year for the five years before that. So we were pretty familiar with it. We loved it. It was, um,
00:41:01
Speaker
It was our, our fun place, our vacation place. And it was super peaceful and just quiet and it's not a big party place. There's not much there. Um, so I said, you know, I think this is where I need to be. I just felt it. I felt it was, it was like this like nudge of the universe. Like this is where you need to be. And.
00:41:30
Speaker
Logically, that did not make a whole lot of sense because I didn't know anybody on that island, not a soul, not a single person. And it was just gonna be Claire and I. And by myself and my husband has just been killed, I just felt in every part of my being that I needed to be there.
00:41:55
Speaker
So I found a place in that two weeks that we were down there. I found a place to stay that was going to give me a one year lease. And I said, you know, I think, I think this is what I'm going to do. And so, uh, came back home and I told my family and I said, um, I said, I'm going to go and I'm going to go for a year.
00:42:25
Speaker
And they were like, a year, you know, that's kind of a long time. What about just six months? And I said, nothing is going to change in six months. I know that like this, this feeling is not going to go away in six months. And I said, I'm going to go for a year. And their response was, I mean, of course they were concerned. Nobody tried to talk me out of it. My dad actually said, well, nobody knows.
00:42:54
Speaker
how you're feeling right now, nobody knows what you're going through. So you do what you feel like you need to do, whatever's gonna help you.
00:43:05
Speaker
Like, they were supportive. That's so true right there because he was being very empathetic as to what you were going through. And again, like he said, they did not know what it was. They knew what it was to lose a son-in-law and what they were going through. But they didn't have a child that they had to think about. Like, I mean, they did have you. You're their child. But a little too, you know, now that was left without a dad.
00:43:29
Speaker
to think about and so that's that is that was so good that you had their back that they had your back and they had your support and the other thing that they they were supportive either way they wanted me to come and move in with them so that they could help take care of Claire.
00:43:48
Speaker
Like they would have gladly just let me move in, let me sit curled up in a ball on the sofa for however long I wanted to, you know, they were supportive of that too. So, you know, either way they were gonna be there for me, but I felt like I had already missed like a month of her life because I was so in this,
00:44:16
Speaker
foggy kind of just what is happening phase that I, I was not in the moment with her for sure. Like it was like, I was so detached from being a mom. Um,
00:44:32
Speaker
And I didn't, I didn't want that. You know, nobody wants that. It was, it was like, I need to go away and, and make myself be responsible and make myself be a mom because that's what I am. And she needs me and she needs me to be a mom. And so I had to just remove myself from everything and everyone and just be a mom. You know, like I just, it was so.
00:45:00
Speaker
January 1st, I had signed that lease, packed up four suitcases and most of it was in the house. What did you do with your house things? My brother moved into my house. And he didn't, but he wasn't there all the time. Like he would go and house sit like three days out of the week. He would stay there on the weekends.
00:45:29
Speaker
And then he would go and stay at his house the other days during the week. So it was, somebody was in my house, house sitting, but not all the time, but that was, it was really, really helpful for him to be around and.
00:45:44
Speaker
You were going to pay two leases, your own mortgage, and a renting space for a year. But that's what you needed to do. So you move there. You get there January 1st. You're here with a two-year-old, four suitcases. What did you do then in that year while you were there? And what was your journey then in your grief journey as you're here in this beautiful oasis? What a contrast to the
00:46:14
Speaker
the other emotion that you're feeling before. So this island is, um, it's like 85 degrees and sunny, like 99% of the year. Um, it's, it's beautiful. It is beautiful. And I, again, like I wanted to be in a place where I
00:46:44
Speaker
I knew I had to, I knew I had to grieve. It was so weird Kendra what I did. Okay. So I had my condo that I had rented and the front part of it like looked out onto the beach. So it was one of those big sliding glass window things, you know, the sliding door. And, um, and I kept those shades open like the entire year. I didn't, I didn't really close those curtains at all because I wanted to let the light in and I wanted to,
00:47:13
Speaker
I needed to have that light come in. I don't know, it sounds weird, but- No, it's like you needed that in order for your healing. Like you moved there. Yes. It was a therapy session from nature was being your therapy to some extent. Yes, yes. And so in the back, in the bedroom was set up on the backside of the condo, so it wasn't facing the beach. And I had all of those curtains closed and
00:47:43
Speaker
you know, I never, I never opened them the entire year that I was in your bedroom, you kept like the space. Okay, so okay, I'm trying to vision here. So sorry, I'm like some kind of personal like I'm making. So the the front sliding doors and your home always open always sun coming in your bed, though never opened.
00:48:08
Speaker
Do you feel that you would choose which area of your home to be in? Am I totally over analyzing this? But is it like depending on your emotion, if you needed to try, was that your space in your room? If you wanted to just kind of snap out of it, you'd be in the living room?
00:48:30
Speaker
Yes. Yes. That is exactly what I did and how I ended up setting it up. And that was, I don't know how I did that just like subconsciously or whatever. But yeah, I made this space where I could, like, this is my sad space, you know? This is where I'm going to go. And if I need to just lay in bed and cry and
00:48:55
Speaker
watch reruns of friends or whatever, I'm going to sit in here and this is where I'm going to do it. But a lot of times I just, I made myself.
00:49:06
Speaker
What you're saying though Jen, you don't understand. Like right now it's so wise because sometimes like you don't know what tool, you've never been through this before. You don't know what tools to use for your healing. You just kind of like go with it. So you created your own tools as you were navigating grief. And this was one of them. It was creating a designated space for your grief to be completely
00:49:34
Speaker
you know, naked basically. The focus. Yes, that's exactly it. And that you could express it there, but also knowing that there were other areas in which that part of the sadness of the grief, because again, grief can be laughter and grief could be other moments, but that aspect of the grief of the crying and so forth was not going to be like in the living room type of thing. So that's just amazing what your own
00:50:02
Speaker
what your own soul created for you, for your own healing. Yeah. I set it up. I did. I set it up for like, this is where I need to heal. This is what I feel like I need to do.
00:50:22
Speaker
And then, so Claire ended up going to a little, this was probably a month or so after I got there. I had enrolled her in this little British school, just, it was like two half days a week or something. It wasn't a lot, but it was enough for her to go and get some exposure with little friends and stuff.
00:50:51
Speaker
And then I had some time to myself, which I really needed. I cried in front of her and I talked about him in front of her and I did all of that, but you need time on your own.
Building a New Life and Launching a Podcast
00:51:09
Speaker
It's being a mom and she was three, it was 24 seven. And I just also needed that time to myself. So I did put her in a little school
00:51:21
Speaker
Um, and oh my gosh, it was so cute because it was British and because providentialis is a British Island and her little teacher was British. And so she would come home and she would say, I, I, I put the rubbish in the bin. Like she was, that was so cute. So fancy, so fancy. And did she say rubbish now? No, I wish she would. It was so cute.
00:51:50
Speaker
Thank you. How long did you live there then? Were you there for the full year or were you there longer? After a year, I decided I was not ready to come home. And so I stayed another year and I stayed even longer than that. I was there for almost three years.
00:52:11
Speaker
What and what did you do for work like income wise and could you work being in this either, you know, I like how does it work in terms of those dynamics. So it's you have to have a work permit when you live there. Um, there's a lot of hoops to jump through, but I did them all and
00:52:33
Speaker
So you have to go through a lot of paperwork and then you can actually work there, but they try and limit it to certain careers so that it's not just a whole lot of people trying to come and work on the island. So I did that and I just got a part-time, it was like a part-time work permit and there were two optometrists on the island and I ended up working
00:53:00
Speaker
with one of them and I did some volunteer work with the other one while I was down there and so I did a little bit of work while I was down there but most of it most of the time I would come home because we did come home I didn't stay there you know the full it was if she had a break for like Easter break was like three weeks for her school
00:53:27
Speaker
Um, I would I would we would come home we would come back to the states And I would work in those three weeks. I would work when I would come home Uh, that's great. I have so I do have so much flexibility with my work. It was it was perfect It was just a perfect scenario So I could come back in I could work make some money and then I would go back down there. Um And it was it was a good balance or you know for the time that it was
00:53:57
Speaker
And in the time that I was down there, I just, I met so many people from all over the world. And these people, they just, they just became, they were like my angels. Like I didn't know, like I said, I didn't know anybody at all when I moved there. And then slowly just starting to get to know people through the school like other moms,
00:54:24
Speaker
And some, you know, other, other people that kind of came into our lives. But what was really cool too, was that like, we would have people that were coming to stay for vacations. Cause the condo that I was staying in was right on the beach and people would come in for a week for vacation. And, you know, they would have their.
00:54:46
Speaker
their five-year-old with them or whatever, their kids were with them. And so anytime we would be down by the beach or the pool, Claire would be playing with all these other kids and then I would kind of talk to the parents and maybe we would hang out with these other people for a week while they were in town and then they would leave. And then, you know, the next group of people for the next week would come in, just all these vacationers. So it was like, I was always surrounded by people.
00:55:16
Speaker
If I wanted to be social and talk to people, I could. If I didn't want to, I didn't. You're only going to work a few days a week, and that was just a work hat that you would wear. But in general, it's not like you had your immediate social life like you did in Louisiana, around you all the time.
00:55:44
Speaker
Curiously, did you share your story with some of these vacationers? Would people be asking, why are you living here? Are you vacationing? Was it part of your healing journey to also share your story with people that said you'd meet? That is so interesting that you say that, because at first, it was so hard for me to say it.
00:56:10
Speaker
over and over like anytime I would meet anybody like that you know and I would tell them it was just repeating that story and repeating that story but I didn't know it at the time but it is part of the healing process is to tell your story and
00:56:27
Speaker
I had, I was doing that just because of where I was. Like I meet new people every time. Yeah. Every time every week and I would meet new people or, you know, anybody that would move to that, whatever. It was like, I had to kind of repeat my story and kind of, you know, be okay with telling it, which it brings up a lot of anxiety when, you know, when you have to talk about this painful moments in your life, but, um,
00:56:58
Speaker
It was healing and I didn't even realize it at the time, but that was another thing that was healing me while I was down there, was having to repeat that story over and over again.
The Power of Community and Lessons Learned
00:57:10
Speaker
Doesn't it feel different now, 10 years later, does it feel very different now when you share
00:57:20
Speaker
the story like in terms of your anxiety being less of and it's more like matter of fact, like this is what happened. Do you feel that in terms of when you share the story? I actually, I still feel like a little tense when I tell it. Like even just now, like when I was telling it in the beginning of this interview, it was like, I kind of feel like that shorter breath, like tense in my chest.
00:57:46
Speaker
But I don't have a problem with those trigger words that I did before because there were certain words that would really, really get to me. And even the word death, the word die, these are words that I had a really hard time
00:58:12
Speaker
even like hearing, I couldn't speak them. I was like, I had a rough time with those trigger words for a while. It's interesting that you say that because I've learned that from doing this podcast, I have to sometimes listen to how the person I'm interviewing refers to
00:58:32
Speaker
the death or the loss or the taken from us or from, you know, the way that they phrase it. And then I've had to ask, like, how would you like me to refer to that incident? And it's something, and I don't do it every single time, but I've noticed in some cases, I'm like, okay, should I just keep on saying the day we lost, you know, the word, even though that's not the word I use personally,
00:59:01
Speaker
for myself being sensitive to the words that the person that is going through that specific grief feels comfortable. It is so true. Yes. Like when you just said taken from us, like that feels comfortable to me. But when I say the word, when he died, like it's something about that word. It's just like, I don't do well with it.
00:59:30
Speaker
It's a weird thing. No, no, no, I get it, Jen, because the thing is that in a conversation that I had this week with with Rabbi with the Rabbi that I interviewed, we're talking about that that it's in general, we don't we have not
00:59:45
Speaker
Even as children, we are not talked about death even as kids as often. He was saying about how we do a disservice even to our own children, like when a fish, goldfish dies and the parent just goes, flushes down the toilet and go get a new one and puts it back in the tank and doesn't tell their children.
01:00:07
Speaker
or they send the dog or the dog dies and they don't say they just went to a farm, to a doggy farm. Yes. So we are missing the opportunities as parents and then maybe in some cases, some of us, in my case, it was a little different and maybe that's why I'm so comfortable talking about death. Death was just matter of fact in my home.
01:00:32
Speaker
kind of thing that, you know what I mean? And it was not something that we did not talk about necessarily. So it makes a difference in how then we as adults then may relate to that word because of however it was not necessarily talked about in our own upbringing. Yeah, exactly.
01:00:56
Speaker
Exactly. We're going to jump forward a whole lot because we're going to move to the present. You are now married and you now have a young daughter, but I want you to share your reconnection with your current husband because I just love that
01:01:20
Speaker
I'd love your love story too. And how beautiful that you've had to love stories in your life. It's just beautiful. So please, if you don't mind, and the only reason I'm jumping like that is because you also have to record other podcasts later today too. And so I want to make sure we don't forget to share. Oh no.
01:01:45
Speaker
Okay, after we moved back from Turks and Caicos, I had decided to sell my house.
01:01:55
Speaker
And again, nothing bad happened there, but I just needed to move forward and I didn't think that I could do that in that house. So Claire and I ended up moving in with my parents and they had this space that's above their garage. It was like a three-car garage or whatever, and they had a space that they built out this little apartment for us.
01:02:17
Speaker
And so a lot of things got moved around in the shuffle of going from this house to the storage unit, boxes, whatever. It was like there was just stuff everywhere. And we had moved back, it was a couple of months after I had moved back in with them. And there was one day that I was cleaning, I was like dusting off the, whatever, it was the dresser.
01:02:46
Speaker
And I saw a folded-up piece of paper that said, Jennifer, and it had a little heart over the eye. And so I pick up this piece of paper, and it's folded up, and I open it up, and it was this five-page letter. And I sat down, and I started reading it, and I remembered this letter. I had remembered getting this letter.
01:03:13
Speaker
When I was a teenager, when I was like 15, it was this love letter from this boy.
01:03:21
Speaker
And he was going on and on about I never believed in love at first sight blah blah blah blah blah So i'm reading the letter and i'm laughing and i'm just like this is so funny at the end of the letter He had signed his full name like he had signed doug's wink. This is where I live. This is my phone number This is a school I go to this is where i'm going to be going to college all these things um and so I took this letter and I was like
01:03:47
Speaker
Oh my God, I'm like, somebody loves me. Like this is what I was thinking. I love it. So I remembered where I had gotten the letter. Now this is the story is back in like 1993, they had this youth,
01:04:07
Speaker
gathering of all these different church youth groups. And there was during the summer, it was one August, it was August in 1993, and all of these different church youth groups, and I'm talking like 20,000 kids, like it was all these 20,000 teenagers, everybody got together for this conference, they did these things in the Superdome, we had activities. So it was Friday, the very first day of the conference,
01:04:35
Speaker
I had walked down the little aisle one way and then he had come with his church the other way and we met like right in the middle so in our seats and we started talking whatever we hung out. It was totally innocent. I was 15. He was 16 at the time.
01:04:53
Speaker
church thing, you know, but we ended up hanging out the whole weekend. It was like four days. So like Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday is when he left with his church group to go back to Michigan.
01:05:06
Speaker
So he wrote me this letter on the plane ride back to Michigan. He wrote me this love letter and then he sent it to me in the mail. And I remember getting the letter when I was 15, but at the time,
01:05:23
Speaker
That's what I tell people. At the time, this is 1993. There was no internet. There was no email. You had to make a phone call. It was $2 a minute or something to call somebody in another state. This was different times. I didn't have a driver's license. I didn't have a job. I'm like, he's in Michigan. He's going to college. I am never going to see this boy again. That was my thought.
01:05:50
Speaker
And I am a horrible person because I did not write back to him because I was like, I'm never going to see him, you know?
01:06:01
Speaker
So fast forward like 25 years, 25 years. This letter, I held onto that letter the entire time. I had this letter in a box full of like old high school stuff. Now my house was, I had like six feet of water in my house for Katrina.
01:06:21
Speaker
um this box was up in the attic okay like i this box went from the attic to the storage unit to i don't know how that letter ended up in a box full of old bills from my house
01:06:38
Speaker
My mom was going through this box of bills like it was like the phone bill and like the electricity bill from my house and she saw the letter and she saw that it said Jennifer with a little heart over the eye and she was like well this doesn't look like it belongs here so she put it on my dresser and so that's how that letter got there.
01:06:59
Speaker
into my, into this little attic apartment apartment that we're living in. Yeah. Is that she saw it valuable. Okay. And then so Doug is then who wrote this letter and then how, I found the letter and then I opened it and I read it and I was like, Oh my God, somebody loves me. Um,
01:07:23
Speaker
I saw his full name because there's no way if he had signed Doug, I would have remembered his last name, but he put his full name. So I looked him up on Facebook and I could not tell anything about him on Facebook from his picture or anything. It had nothing really about him because he didn't really go on there.
01:07:41
Speaker
But I messaged him and I said something like, hey, I'm sure you don't remember me, but you came down to New Orleans in 1993 for a church thing. And I said, I have a love letter from you. So I told him. And I said, yeah, I just thought you might want to see what your 16 year old self was thinking, because it's really cute.
01:08:11
Speaker
And so he messaged me back, I want to say, a couple of days later. And he said, I absolutely remember you, Jen. That's what he said. And so I was like, oh my gosh. We started kind of messaging back and forth. And it turns out he was divorced a couple of years before that.
01:08:36
Speaker
And so it was just this timing thing. We start, he, you know, we started talking on the phone. Um, I wasn't really looking to be dating anyone at that time. And when I tell you like, I.
01:08:53
Speaker
was living in an apartment in my parents' garage with my daughter. I'm not really in this head space, but it's a timing thing. You can't ignore those things when they happen. There is a reason why this letter ended up where it did.
01:09:15
Speaker
And I couldn't ignore that. I'm like, how is this possible? You know, this letter has survived 25 years and a massive hurricane and moving 20 times. You know, like, anyway, I don't ignore those things anymore. Like, that's like a slap in the face from the universe. Like, hello.
01:09:35
Speaker
Do you think that that was something new for you in terms of the whole aspect of listening to signs, even from the shadow to then her grabbing your face? Do you think all of that of really listening and being in tune with what's happening is something new to you since Brent's death? Yes. Yes. All you have to do is pay attention to these things. There are so many
01:10:05
Speaker
signs and nudges that point you in a certain direction that you just kind of brush off sometimes. But if you really pay attention to them, it's life changing. Anyway, so yeah, I get in touch with him. We ended up meeting, like re-meeting, quote, he lived in Chicago at the time.
01:10:30
Speaker
And so we got together a couple of months later, we had been talking on the phone for a couple of months, and then we were like, maybe we should re-meet.
01:10:40
Speaker
So yeah, then I had to tell my parents, I'm going on a date but it's in Chicago and can you watch Claire? So yeah, we went out on that date and then 10 months later we were engaged and then 10 months later we got married and then we now have a little girl together.
01:11:05
Speaker
And where did you move then too? Because you were different. So how did you guys decide where you're going to move, live? So we did debate if I was going to move to Chicago, but he doesn't have any family in Chicago. And like all of my family is still here in Louisiana, outside of New Orleans. And so we figured with Claire and then baby on the way, this was a good place to be. And he has a lot of flexibility with his job. He does IT.
01:11:34
Speaker
so he works from home a lot of the time anyway, he travels a little bit but yeah it just worked out better for us to be here so we have a new home and we started this new life kind of together and it's
01:11:53
Speaker
It is unexpected, but it's so like beautiful just to see how all of these little things just, you know, tie in. I needed you to share that because I'm always like, I don't like I'm one of those that if I had still the Hallmark channel, I'd be watching those and your stories like a Hallmark.
01:12:12
Speaker
kind of movie, you know, because it has those aspects of that, you know, the finding the letter I'm literally if I could just like, we should just send this recording to somebody to write the movie script of it. Because I just see the moment of you finding the letter behind the drawer, the dresser, you know, like, just so like,
01:12:36
Speaker
It's not made up. It's real. It is real. It is real. Jen, now what would you say? So in terms of tools, your tools you created yourself and your journey, you needed to move away from the space that was kind of closing you in. You moved. Then you created your tools of
01:12:58
Speaker
Knowing when you needed to be on your own and be with your grief and when you were okay with being with people by being in that space there in the province yet. Is that what it's called?
01:13:14
Speaker
Then your family, of course, was one of the support aspects that you had in your journey with grief. And then, of course, the focus being OK for your daughter was this other driving force. Now, what are some things that you could say that you are grateful for from having gone through the hardships that you did without dismissing the fact that
01:13:44
Speaker
You went through, you know, that it's not dismissing the fact that Brent died is here. Right. And by the way, I'm sorry if I'm if I use the word that you lost Brent, but it's OK. What what what is the.
01:13:59
Speaker
What are some of the things that you feel you've grown or that, like you said right now, you listen more to the signs in life. That's one thing. What other things do you feel you can feel grateful for or that have shifted or made you grow in this process? Oh, I feel like I have
01:14:23
Speaker
my entire perspective on everything in life has changed. I mean like every aspect and I know what's important and what's not and what to emphasize in my life and what to kind of dismiss and get rid of I guess you know um
01:14:48
Speaker
worry about small things. I don't do that anymore. Things that used to be a big deal to me are not a big deal anymore. Um, but as far as being, so I'm grateful for my, my new perspective because I feel like I'm living a better life because of that. I I'm more focused on what's important. Um, and I'm,
01:15:16
Speaker
grateful that I was able to find out who I'm supposed to be in the world. I was just feeling so lost and unsure of anything.
01:15:35
Speaker
anything in my life. There are so many things that I used to believe. I used to believe in happy endings and bad things don't happen to good people.
01:15:48
Speaker
And I had a hard time figuring out what I was supposed to believe in again and how my experience was going to turn me or if I would let it turn me into a negative, cynical, tormented person the rest of my life. Or can I take what I've learned in that experience
01:16:17
Speaker
and turn that around and do something with it.
01:16:22
Speaker
So that is just, those are all like huge. Those are all huge because they're life changing because also just by you already just changing your perspective on life and then the things that matter, just the ripple effect that has of how you raise your daughter and the person she's going to be because of your new perspective. Not of course, you know, disregarding the fact that she's growing up without
01:16:51
Speaker
her dad, but at the same time is that if you had not gained that perspective, then she'd also be growing up without part of you. You know what I mean? She gained a part of you you would have not had otherwise. Yeah. I feel like I can teach her some of these lessons of what's important in life.
01:17:16
Speaker
It's not the material things it's the people that we surround ourselves with and it's the time, how we use our time. You know, that's the kind of stuff I'm definitely trying to teach her.
01:17:31
Speaker
through all of this experience. And now also not only Claire, but now also Penelope that even though Brent is not her dad, it's still somebody that's present in your family's life all the time. And I'm sure is it something with Doug, do you mention Brent's name often in your home?
01:17:51
Speaker
Yes. Yes. And you have a podcast called Widow 180, which even though you're now married is still something that's part of you because you're still giving back. So tell us a little again about the podcast and then how can people find you and your community. And then I'll make sure to put that in the show notes as well. So it's Widow 180, the podcast. And then you can also find all of the episodes on widow180.com.
01:18:20
Speaker
Um, but my reason for starting the podcast and like I shortly after Brent died, I had a local group of widows that I met with. And this was like within the first couple of weeks. Um, my friend put me in touch with this group and I went to this lady's house. I didn't know anybody there, but I showed up crying and with like a box of donuts or something. Um, and I.
01:18:46
Speaker
I had these people that came into my life that shared their stories. They were like a little further along than me.
01:18:55
Speaker
But I could see those people as examples of what was possible, of like, you know, there is hope for me. Like I will, there is a possibility that I can be happy again. Like I don't feel it down to my bones and in my soul that I will ever, ever be happy again. Like truly happy. I just did not see out of that
01:19:23
Speaker
hopelessness and that despair. It was like this overwhelming feeling, but I had these, these other widows that I could talk to and I could hear their stories and I could talk to them about how did they cope? What did they do? What did they say to their kids? You know, how did they deal with this work situation or whatever? It was like anything that came up, I had these people. They were like my lifeline.
01:19:48
Speaker
And so that was my idea with the podcast is that I wanted to put out these stories for other people to hear, like if they
01:19:57
Speaker
if they don't have what I had because I wouldn't be where I am today without those ladies. And they are still a huge part of my life, which is why Doug is very understanding of like, Hey, I've got the widows are coming. Like, you know, like I meet with them regularly, like not lately because of the pandemic, but these are people that are in my life and they will be forever. So, um, so that was what I wanted to do with the podcast was to put out these stories of hope,
01:20:27
Speaker
And to see these people that had walked this path before me, and how did they do it? Because when we don't believe in something anymore, when we have no hope, what do we do? We seek evidence, and we need proof that there can be something after this loss.
01:20:54
Speaker
That is so what I had never seen heard it in that way that you just said. So when we in that moment of grief, when we're hopeless, and we can't even find it for ourselves, then we seek for in others that reassurance that there is light at the end of the tunnel kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I had never had never heard it in the ways that you just said it. Thank you.
01:21:23
Speaker
I feel like, yeah, it's like you, you can't become what you don't see. There's a, it's a saying, but you know, to have that example in front of me and to hear that story, um, that's what helped me get through it. And so that's the, that's the type of stories that I wanted to put out on the podcast. So when I do my interviews, I'm usually talking to somebody who, I mean, these are people.
01:21:49
Speaker
It's really opened up my world Kendra it's like it's again another one of those really changed my life things that has happened out of this horrible thing that happened to me, but this is opening a lot of doors for me now, but I'm meeting people.
01:22:06
Speaker
all over the world. We all have this thing in common. Um, everybody has a different story. Everybody has a different way that they got through it. Um, so that's what I, I love to hear. I love, like I'm so super passionate about it. And I know you are too.
01:22:27
Speaker
I get giddy, it's like, why would somebody get giddy talking about grief? But it's just so intriguing, just the human, how resilient we are as human beings and to hear those stories of resilience in so many different ways. And like you said, different ways in which each person got through their grief. Although I always find that really common thread has been, of course, some kind of support, some kind of tool and something that they believe in that has kind of
01:22:56
Speaker
help them do that. Have you noticed that kind of line in most of your stories too? Yeah. It's been really interesting and I feel like I learned something. I learned something new from every single person and that's the other thing that I love because I'm
01:23:19
Speaker
I'm curious about everything. I'm curious about life and other people's experiences. I just love the lessons that I am learning by doing all of this. So it's really cool.
01:23:34
Speaker
Agreed, agreed. I feel the same way. And I am just, again, so grateful for you coming on my podcast, even though I can't be in yours because I haven't been a widow. But I do send people to yours. I'm constantly sending people to yours. And that's a great thing to all these friendships that we get to develop, like you said, the people that you meet and then the friendships that you get to do. That's another thing to be grateful for. And again, as you would like,
01:24:03
Speaker
Yeah, I always say it in a way that's still sensitive to the fact that it's not that we're wanting, saying that we're glad our loved ones are no longer here. It's not bad. It's just that we always have to look at what else have we then gained in our own loss? What have we gained in that process of losing something? And even within this year, a lot of us have gained a lot of things even in this.
01:24:30
Speaker
whole plus almost a year of the pandemic and so forth too, we've gained a lot too, even if we've lost. I know, I know. So it's a very good way of kind of seeing life of what did we gain, not only what did we lose. Yeah. So thank you once again, my friend, for coming on. Thank you so much for having me on. This has been so fun talking to you.
01:24:57
Speaker
the same and we could go on another hour, but we'll let the listeners tune into your episodes to hear more, to your podcast, to hear more of your story and your interviewees' stories as well. Thank you, Kendra. Thank you.
01:25:20
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.
01:25:48
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.