Made for Mothers
13. For Moms Walking Through Grief, Death, and Widowhood with Verhanika Willhelm
I am deeply honored to call Verhanika Willhelm a dear friend, with whom I've shared a profound connection for over a decade now!
Verhanika, based in Seattle, Washington, is an organizational development consultant and executive coach with a rich background in theater management and psychology. Armed with a master's degree in organizational development, she has seamlessly transitioned from her roles as a stage manager and financial planner to becoming a catalyst for fostering healthy workplaces. Known affectionately as a workplace therapist, a moniker I wholeheartedly relate to given my own role in facilitating business therapy sessions, Verhanika is adept at instigating lasting change that harmonizes traditional structure with humanity.
Over the years, both our businesses and personal lives have undergone profound transformations. In a candid conversation, Verhanika and I delve into the topic of her husband's battle with cancer, and the profound grief she endured upon losing him—the love of her life. Amidst navigating her grief, she persevered in growing her business and mothering her young son. Our discussion also touches upon the arduous struggle of seeking help as a mother, emphasizing the importance of specificity when receiving support that truly meets one's needs or those of their family.
Regrettably, our society often lacks safe and accessible spaces for confronting the uncomfortable realities of death and grief. We discuss WHY we just can't talk very well about death?
I treasure the depth and sincerity of my conversation with Verhanika. Her courage in sharing her journey of grief and widowhood with the world is a gift! Please connect with her on IG if you feel seen in this convo!
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Connect with Verhanika on Instagram
Learn more about working with Verhanika by visiting her website
Listen to Verhanika’s podcast: How to Have the Best Day Ever At Work!
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Connect with me on Instagram
Learn more about booking coaching sessions and working together by visiting my website
Hey I'm Mariah. I'm a Boy Mama, the very PROUD founder of Made for Mothers, obviously a Podcast Host, and a Marketing and Business Mentor for Moms. I offer Biz Therapy Sessions. Unlike traditional business coaching, this is a space where the whole person is honored, motherhood is celebrated, limiting beliefs are uncovered, messaging is prioritized, niches are defined, roadblocks are clearly identified, systems are taught, marketing is simplified, and the support is a month long.
1 x 90-minute session + 30 days of voxer support
I am deeply honored to call Verhanika Willhelm a dear friend, with whom I've shared a profound connection for over a decade now!
Verhanika, based in Seattle, Washington, is an organizational development consultant and executive coach with a rich background in theater management and psychology. Armed with a master's degree in organizational development, she has seamlessly transitioned from her roles as a stage manager and financial planner to becoming a catalyst for fostering healthy workplaces. Known affectionately as a workplace therapist, a moniker I wholeheartedly relate to given my own role in facilitating business therapy sessions, Verhanika is adept at instigating lasting change that harmonizes traditional structure with humanity.
Over the years, both our businesses and personal lives have undergone profound transformations. In a candid conversation, Verhanika and I delve into the topic of her husband's battle with cancer, and the profound grief she endured upon losing him—the love of her life. Amidst navigating her grief, she persevered in growing her business and mothering her young son. Our discussion also touches upon the arduous struggle of seeking help as a mother, emphasizing the importance of specificity when receiving support that truly meets one's needs or those of their family.
Regrettably, our society often lacks safe and accessible spaces for confronting the uncomfortable realities of death and grief. We discuss WHY we just can't talk very well about death?
I treasure the depth and sincerity of my conversation with Verhanika. Her courage in sharing her journey of grief and widowhood with the world is a gift! Please connect with her on IG if you feel seen in this convo!
____
Connect with Verhanika on Instagram
Learn more about working with Verhanika by visiting her website
Listen to Verhanika’s podcast: How to Have the Best Day Ever At Work!
____
Connect with me on Instagram
Learn more about booking coaching sessions and working together by visiting my website
Hey I'm Mariah. I'm a Boy Mama, the very PROUD founder of Made for Mothers, obviously a Podcast Host, and a Marketing and Business Mentor for Moms. I offer Biz Therapy Sessions. Unlike traditional business coaching, this is a space where the whole person is honored, motherhood is celebrated, limiting beliefs are uncovered, messaging is prioritized, niches are defined, roadblocks are clearly identified, systems are taught, marketing is simplified, and the support is a month long.
1 x 90-minute session + 30 days of voxer support
I'm Veronica Wilhelm, an Organizational Development Consultant and Executive Coach based in Seattle Washington. I have a background in theater management and psychology and a master's in organizational development. I transitioned from being a stage manager and financial planner to helping organizations create healthy workplaces. I'm originally from the swamps and beaches of Florida, but now I call the mountains and waters of the Pacific Northwest home, and my clientele includes everything from Ford, starbucks, ukg, chewy, the Seattle Rep, the Seattle Opera, wolfgang Puck, catering, landessa and a lot of small businesses, entrepreneurs and arts organizations like Fifth Avenue Theater and Act Theater here in Seattle. I'm known as a workplace therapist, bringing lasting change that balances structure and humanity, but I prefer to think of myself as your workplace bestie, offering the best advice you've ever received.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to the Made for Mothers podcast, your one stop shop for candid and relatable conversations about motherhood and entrepreneurship.
Speaker 2:Think of the show as your new mom friend, where we dive into all things marketing, branding, mindset, money, child care and growing your business. While we all navigate our roles as both CEO and mom. I'm your host, mariah Stockman, and I wear a bunch of hats I'm a boy mama, I'm serving as a marketing mentor for mothers, I'm running a six figure marketing agency and on top of that, I'm the proud founder of the Made for Mothers community. This show is about sharing the real stories and the practical strategies from fellow mother run businesses. So dive in, grab your headphones, reheat that coffee and let's go.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the Made for Mothers podcast. I am your host, mariah Stockman, proud boy mama and marketing mentor, biz mentor for moms on a mission moms, you know, running businesses and the very proud founder of the Made for Mothers community, which is growing and growing and growing. I have Veronica here with me today. You guys just heard a little bit about her bio, but she is. I love this whole concept of a workplace therapist, you know, because I run biz therapy, so I love that Workplace service.
Speaker 2:Hi Veronica, welcome. Hi Mariah, hi, okay, so let's just like set the stage for a second, because I know when this, I know eventually in the you know evolution of this podcast, I know I will eventually run out of friends to have on and I know eventually my guests will become strangers. But until that day I do get to have a personal friendship you know, monologue as you will with my guests, because most all my guests I have some either like personal connection to or I'm a super fan girl I've had a couple of those or I know them here locally, like in the real life. But I met Veronica so many years ago.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, Ten years ago, it was 10 and a half years ago. I can remember it was the summer after a year after I got married, because we did a big road trip down to California and that's when I got to meet you, because you were roommates with one of my best friends, who still one of my best friends from grad school. Hello, Janae.
Speaker 2:Hello Janae. I lived with Janae for what feels like forever and she is just like a brilliant piece of, like glow stick. I mean I don't even know how to like explain Janae in the world, but we went out to brunch, we went to Cafe Brazil in my hometown and we'll get into this. But I feel really fortunate because I was able to meet your late husband. You guys were there and I got to meet Andy. No, kids were on the scene, we were just. We were just like young. You know what I mean? We were just like we had so much time and we were just having brunch and you guys were just like on a road trip and I don't even know what I was doing. I don't even know. I was probably doing like super, super nonprofit stuff.
Speaker 2:Fast forward, you know, a decade minus a couple years, veronica signed up for my marketing summer camp to focus on your business and your marketing and you were in a group coaching program with a whole bunch of other like super amazing women. Still, I was not a mom, you were a mom and your husband had passed away at this point, right. So it's crazy to think, like the Veronica that I met 10 years ago versus the Veronica that showed up in marketing summer camp like a totally different version of yourself, right? I mean, so much life was lived in the span of those 10 years and today, you know, is a really cool opportunity because I have watched your life and business and family evolve in so many different ways.
Speaker 2:But today we're going to talk about loss and grief and death and the loss of your you know, son's father and your husband, and all under the same like road of owning a business, a business that you really love and a business that you're really, really skilled at and you are definitely a like niche. I think you know you are a very specific consultant for very specific outcomes in this world and I'm excited to talk about that. So that's Veronica. But, veronica, why don't you just kind of like share a little bit about what you do? Obviously, I dropped the big widow bomb right there and let me just just for the listener's sake, veronica and I have like a super great relationship and we're like tight. So if you feel like I'm being at all like too sarcastic around loss or anything like that, just know that like this is my podcast, like and do what I want, and also it's acceptable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's acceptable.
Speaker 2:Like I feel like I don't have to like tip toe here where we were talking. No, like me, and if this was someone else, I feel like I would be like oh my gosh, like oh eggshells, tip toe. So, wildly open online on Facebook and like I have loved watching and reading and like participating kind of in that part of you like that's been so amazing to witness.
Speaker 1:Well, I think so much of the openness started purely from self preservation, like I, we were very lucky. So Andy and I met in theater. I was an intern he was the master electrician at the Seattle Repertory Theater and I know it was and we did secret for about six weeks and then when my internship was done, we went public and it was it like had an impact because we were on opposite sides of the union negotiating table. He was the president of the union and like I got to sit in and like learn from from that and like there were some some things about that. But for us we were like I didn't, I don't know Like we were six weeks in our relationship. There was not a lot of talking about that kind of stuff happening. So we we moved in very quickly with each other. We were deeply in love and I don't know how much I believe in the idea of like a soulmate or like the one.
Speaker 1:Andy is definitely someone who changed me, taught me for the better in a lot of ways and and it's because of him that I am who I am and how I, how I became this person in the world, and because we were in theater and we had so many people in our many layers of circles when Andy got diagnosed with stage four colon cancer in November of 2017. I knew that I didn't want to have to tell the story of every doctor's appointment a hundred times, which truly is about how many times I would have to tell it, with how many different people we had tracking us and so I started this caring bridge journal, which caring bridges, this great online resource where you can sort of chronicle your journey, but also you can like have a meal train going or like other tasks that people can go. So a lot of people, whether they knew us or not, started following along with our journey just because I think I I wrote about it from a place of like this is the medical stuff that's happening and this is the impact to our family, and this is what it's like to watch the most important person in the world to me go go through this situation, like to see how he was reacting to things when I was learning about myself in the process, and coupled with this was, you know, ronan, my son was. He was 17 months old when his papa was diagnosed with cancer and right. So it was like motherhood and cancer and building a business are all inextricably intertwined, for me like the most tight braid you can possibly think of, because I I stayed home for the first 1415 months with Ronan and then I started, you know, going to various co working spaces to like work on business stuff and then when Andy got sick, like stage for cancer, care is a it is a full time job.
Speaker 1:But I also knew that my full time job couldn't be my husband and that wasn't even like conscious that way. I just knew like I felt like a more full version of myself when I was also doing my work at the same time and I was never one of those women who I truly thought I would never have kids. I met Andy and I was like sure, let's have kids. And then I didn't think I was going to have a child until I was like closer to 35. But then I ended up getting pregnant when I was 29, which, like was planned, like that was fine, andy has a joke. This was actually a good Andy joke. We got pregnant on the first try and Andy was like because I'm, because this is a sniper, I'm a sniper and I was almost such a retake. That's what I was trying to talk about.
Speaker 2:But you're absolutely right, You're a sniper bud.
Speaker 1:Right, good job, buddy. Yeah, so I was trying to navigate toddler hood and new motherhood and growing a business and cancer care and grief and watching my husband ultimately watching my husband die all at the same time, and we had a lot of my processing of this was through this caring bridge journal, and so a lot of people got to know us and know our story and felt very invested in what happened with us, and so that's where we're at.
Speaker 2:How old was Andy when he was diagnosed?
Speaker 1:He was 46 when he was diagnosed because we had a 15 year age difference, which was. The other scandalous thing about us is I was a 22 year old intern when we started dating oh my God. But that means he was still only 48 when he died, so he was still pretty young.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally. And did you, I mean, tell me about? I'm so curious, like, how did you even? How are you here? How did you get through the other side of this? Well, this is so interesting.
Speaker 2:You know, I have a very morbid thinking we won't get into that I struggle with. I have like a morbid thinking strain in my head and it's from family dynamics and it's a way I like to describe it as like final destination. If I didn't just date myself there for all our youngies, Google it and traumatize for life. But I always think the logs are going to come off the truck right, Like it doesn't matter, Like the plane, I don't have like crippling anxiety, but the plane will go down, my husband will crash on the plane, he doesn't. He calls me, it's fine, but it's always just like a little thread there, always, always.
Speaker 2:And people can look up morbid thinking and see all the reasons why people have it and it's something I'm just very comfortable with and familiar I know myself like really intimately in that regard of all these parts of me. But something I think about if my husband were to pass away right now and I have a almost two year old so I can put myself sort of in that zone of like gosh the 17th month old. I basically have that in my house right now. How were you able to mother him and also mother yourself during?
Speaker 1:that I want to touch on. So, in listening to the episodes that you have already put out with some of your guests, a lot of them have talked about the concept of I want a commune, I want a village, I want these people that I can raise my children with.
Speaker 2:We all want to arm with communes, exactly. We all want to live next door to each other and raise each other.
Speaker 1:And I think what's so interesting about that is that that concept for some of us does exist. I absolutely have a commune and a village, and we are spread across the city of Seattle.
Speaker 2:We don't all share property, but I You're not growing carrot, you're back here together, yeah, and raising Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. But I definitely had a wealth of people that rose up in response to this. We literally started a Facebook group called the Wilhelm Army and I could put in their requests like, hey, we have chemo on Monday. If you're available and can put together a little gift basket, we would love that. Or here are times that we definitely know we could use a meal. Or here are times who knows a good house cleaner? Because I need someone else to clean my house for me, and we had all sorts of offers for help. I started developing a rule that if anyone offered me anything specific to help with, I had to say yes to it. So if someone was, like, do you want me to come over and do your laundry, my rule was I had to say yes to that instead of the general, which, let me tell you, is really fucking terrifying.
Speaker 2:And I think this is the part what I was already thinking that it was like Veronica, how did you even ask for help? Because I feel like that A like hello women, b hello motherhood. So hard, it's so hard. So this is an unused muscle in us that feels so uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:That's the part about a commune that I think people often forget when they have this vision of it. They think of the alleviation of the burden that comes with the day-to-day tasks and they forget about the extra skills that you will have to develop and work against around communication. And so for me, I knew that I was going to.
Speaker 2:My family would suffer if I didn't figure this thing out and it by no means got like I'm still not great at it, Like it still is very hard for me, like if you were building, laundry and cooking and also caring, and also If the weight of the world was on you, then there would be like no family, I mean it would just not exist. It would crumble yeah.
Speaker 1:And because we have so much research that shows the health of the family can only be as high as the health of the mother. So if you, I'm sorry, say that again, uh-huh. So if you are a mom and you are having a rough time right now, your children can only be as healthy as you can be. And so, for me, I walked through this journey with cancer care, saying like, great, my family can only be as healthy as I can be. What do I need to do to feel as much health as I can feel as possible while all this is happening?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, ann, just the juxtaposition of, like you are saying, like I need to be as healthy as possible, while Andy's health was Deuteriorating, deuteriorating and so like that in itself is just like what a weird, what a weird dynamic, like our duality or space or whatever the work are like to be focused on such opposite life experiences while also being the same life experience.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh. I knew that if I didn't figure this out, I would suffer and therefore my son would suffer and therefore my husband would suffer. And so it became if anyone offered something, I would take them up on it. And then I also got really good at being like what are the things that are stressing me out, that I actually have some that I actually can't outsource. I can't outsource going to Andy's doctor's appointments, because that is a bit of information that I need to have to understand the landscape of my family, but I can outsource someone cleaning my house for me. I can outsource someone mowing my lawn. I can outsource I don't even know what else outsource childcare. Yeah, exactly All that stuff.
Speaker 1:Childcare too, and so I started parsing those things out as I could, and it was really interesting because it required me to. I'm already like a really good. I'm a really good communicator. I don't even know this, but I'm like, I'm a really good communicator.
Speaker 2:Literally, we're all business based on. We'll get there, I promise. Maybe not so good, but there will be an episode about your communication at some point. Yes, so I had to get even more. And, virgo, can we just take that for the record too? So I mean and like Virgo, Virgo and I share a Virgo like part song. It's just like a year. We've only sent each other like Virgo memes. Virgo memes.
Speaker 1:It's the best thing ever. Well, and I don't know if you know this, but I'm also a Gemini moon and a Gemini rising, and so all three of those signs are governed by Mercury, who is the communicator. So I have like some, it's a world right there the three of us.
Speaker 2:It's probably just like everyone around me is so dumb. Everyone around me is so dumb. I mean, I'm not an astrologist, but I know a thing or two about being a.
Speaker 1:Virgo, the Gemini's, yeah, and the Virgos.
Speaker 2:I dated a Gemini for like five years and I will never do it again. I'm getting married to Virgo, which hello. I don't know if anyone knows this, but a Virgo. And a Virgo is like fire, such a good match. Well and.
Speaker 1:I've repartnered with the Virgo too, and so, oh well, there you go.
Speaker 2:I love it with the word partnered. Is that like widow Speak? That's widow speak. Yep, partner yeah.
Speaker 1:So yeah. So so much of this was around communication, getting really clear about what hung me up on, talking about what I needed, what hung me up on, like people's offers for certain things. Getting really clear about like, oh, it's not, it's this word that I have a challenging time with, or it's this concept of asking for this category of help that's challenging for me. And where does that come from and what is that about?
Speaker 2:What categories of help are challenging? Because I could think of my own Anything that would involve driving would like if it had a drive to me or something like that, because I'm living in a country. So I would feel like, wow, what a burden they have to drive.
Speaker 1:Yes, they have to drive 12 minutes, and I think that was the category to me of anything that felt like an extra burden.
Speaker 2:So, like sending a DoorDash card, you were like no guilt, because you're like, wow, that's not a problem.
Speaker 1:If that person had like financial means for it like, whatever you were probably like check it off.
Speaker 2:Great Thanks for that.
Speaker 1:But if they had to drive to go or they made something, oh my God, if they made something, the biggest one for me, honestly, was when and this was the most helpful was when people would show up at my house and clean my kitchen for me. Oh yeah, how dare they? That was really hard, and because oftentimes I would not only want my kitchen to be cleaned, but like I would want the connection with the person who I loved too.
Speaker 2:I thought you were going to say I'd want my Tupperware color coded. I thought you were really going to let it show right there. I'm wrong, no.
Speaker 1:But even just that, like I would feel incredibly guilty about sitting at my kitchen table while they clean my kitchen.
Speaker 1:But the reality was the best use of my time and my body at that moment was to recover from whatever it was that I had done and to let them, like, not only do the dishes for me, but that they get to do the dishes they get to do, the thing that contributes to alleviating my burden, because for them, doing my dishes was like the small way that they could contribute to the overall health of my family and that was like not only a gift for me in alleviating that task, it was a gift for them and I would be selfish if I didn't allow them to give me that gift, which sounds fucking crazy.
Speaker 2:No, it doesn't. It sounds okay. It's not an explicit episode. Yay, yeah, so it is, that's okay. Think about it. Think about the people who think about this podcast is listened to only by moms. Hello, raise your hand. If you're a mom, you should all be raising your hand.
Speaker 2:It is the number one challenging, complicated experience as a new mom is like you bring this precious baby home from the hospital or a home birth or whatever, and you're in these like one, two, three, four weeks postpartum.
Speaker 2:God forbid five months postpartum, when you still really need meals.
Speaker 2:I mean to be honest, but I actually started now sending a meal first week and then I send a meal like five months in, and I always like include a card that says you know the fourth trimester is over, but it's still so hard.
Speaker 2:You know like you're still so sleepless and groggy and not yourself. You know God forbid hormones, okay, but new moms, it's like how many people like want to help and they don't know how, and you don't know how to ask for help, but you need so much help and not everyone has like I don't have like a mom who's just going to like come over and just like, live with me for a month and fold everything and do everything. It just doesn't exist. You know, and not everyone has, not everyone has a village that looks the same to and we've talked about on a different episode of this is like sometimes it's hard for new moms to show up. For new moms because, like, I'm on a, like a lifeboat, and You're on a lifeboat and now we're thinking, I'm thinking of, like Jack and Whatever from the Titanic, you know it is yeah, rose, we can't both.
Speaker 2:It's one or the other, jack, you know. I mean like a new mom is is drowning herself and you can't be like a lifeboat, you know? Does that make sense? Yeah? And there are really beautiful metaphor out of that, because that's what I'm trying to. It's like I'm fascinated by this whole concept of like becoming totally badass at Asking for very specific help when you need it, whether it be death, birth, you know surgery whatever, and folded into that was like the whole time.
Speaker 1:Well, I was still trying to figure out how to be a mom to my 17 month old through three-year-old. I also had my husband, who I mean Andy was a. He was the most incredible father. He was so excited to be a dad. When he met Ronan I was like I remember being like, oh, I'm like, I'm the love of Andy's life and it's so great. And then he met Ronan and I was like, oh, I'm like Ted compared to this child. Oh, my god.
Speaker 2:I mean I was thinking about my son, uh-huh. I mean, I'm always like in my room and I'm always like and Josh always hears me say this I always go Henry, whose mom is best friend, and he always goes Henry, and I'm like, I'm always wondering, like, if Josh is just in there going like True, though, true, that's right, my kid is cool that's.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's how I felt about my kid too. It's like he's cool, and so I want his father to be able to have these connections with him while he could, and so while we watched. You know, andy, andy worked until a month before he died, and that's because he, just like, loved his work so much and he loved the people that he was with, and so we were constantly. We were so Blessed to have a workplace that he was in. Who wanted to keep him, who wanted to keep his expertise, who saw the value that he provided for the people who worked around him, and so we were constantly really rallied around him too.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I mean, I saw, Didn't he have a memorial in the theater?
Speaker 1:but he was so we had a memorial in his theater and then he also I mean they, they invented a job for him so he could stay, and I will forever be grateful to all the people who made that happen because it meant I believe so strongly that, like, your work can be an important part of your identity, like hello, this whole podcast is about that. Like, how are you balancing these two important parts of your identity, you know. And so there are some people who were like, oh my god, he worked until a month before he died. That's awful.
Speaker 1:And I'm like no, for Andy this was really important, that he got to show up and be with the people he cared about and do the thing that he loved the most. And so that meant that we were constantly evaluating how does he do fatherhood in in these new ways? Because there were some days that he was like I feel like my old self again. I'm, I can, I can hang out, I can party, I can do whatever. And then there were some days that it was like I'm attached to. He had for part of his chemotherapy he had a little pump that would, that would go with him for a couple days and and the chemotherapy would be administered over a couple days and it's like, okay, how do I interact with my son when I have this pump attached to me?
Speaker 2:How do I interact with who's like in a very grabby, crawly, rage-related sort of stage development, who is like Henry, don't pull up my hair, don't pull at this like you know, like it's, you also have to be mindful, right? Oh, mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:And then how do we also get just like the face time with him?
Speaker 1:Because, since Andy worked in theater, he would have some weeks where he would work like an eight to five schedule.
Speaker 1:But then he knows some weeks where, because he was in Tech, it was like eight or nine to eleven or midnight, and like while he was in in cancer care, they would they split the shift eventually where, like, someone would come in and do the notes in the morning or something like that, so he could have more time. But, like, how do we make it so Andy can still be with Ronan, even if you know he's gone for 16 hours that day? And that's when I did a lot of like okay, on dinner break we're gonna drive down to Papa's theater, we're gonna have dinner with Papa, we're gonna hang out with him, we'll go on a picnic, we'll do something like that and and that way Ronan and Andy could have time together. You know, while all this was fitting, and so while I'm trying to figure out my motherhood, I'm also trying to figure out how do I support this man in his fatherhood so that way he can still maintain this relationship as much as possible.
Speaker 2:He's maintaining his work. Community passion, mm-hmm, and you're building a business.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So yeah, so all of that that me long was was happening at the same time, and I think one of the things that that gifted me in business was that I feel like, even though I've owned my business now for almost 10 years, I feel like I've only actually gotten started in the last like four or five years. It gave me a long, a lot of permission to take my time to build things up, because there was always something that was just like a Higher priority for me. You know, my son or my, my husband or something was a higher priority. But it also meant that I learned very quickly that I can't work with assholes, and you learned. You you made a switch because you had an experience with this where you had someone who was like I have no grace for you in this major life event that's happening, and you were like cool at them, mm-hmm, I'm gonna change. I'm gonna change how I approach this. I'm gonna make sure that the people I work with Well.
Speaker 2:First, I'm gonna become like a self pity, like ball of, like yarn and destroyed my cat emotionally.
Speaker 2:Well, I was through exposed part. I'm wearing a diaper because I just had like a traumatic birth experience. Then I, then I rose the rise. The rise was very much. After the self-proclaimed pity party, it's, uh-huh, the diaper party. I'm like, yes, the day, oh god, no one tells me about that. I mean, I had the mm-hmm. That's a long postpartum recovery For someone who didn't have C-section. I still man, I really had a rough recovery because Henry was like a, please, like a. Anyone know about Pac-Man? Remember those commercials? Oh my god.
Speaker 2:He like no, no, pac-man. And where he like, not Pac-Man. Sorry, excuse me, the Kool-Aid man.
Speaker 1:Oh, are you like? Oh, my god, yes, through the brick wall that was medicated, oh my god.
Speaker 1:Well, I think I think you know too Ronan was. I had preeclampsia towards the end and so Ronan had to come six weeks. He had to come six weeks early, so we left the hospital without a baby, which is truly the most devastating thing ever, and we came back every day and hung out in the NICU and I was very lucky again. This is like Andy's commitment to fatherhood, was he? He basically had a Contract he was gonna do for a few weeks because we thought we still had more time. He canceled that contract that he was gonna do for that that bit of work, and then we got ten weeks together for Ronan's first bit home, which was amazing because it helped us sort of figure out what is our rhythm here? What are the? What he actually got to see me pump, because I had the like. Ronan was so little he could barely breastfeed, so we pumped, yeah you could see all this stuff that went into that man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so so we did all of this stuff and so he he could. He could see up close and personal what it looked like all the time. And we constantly had this funny back and forth of like God, I wish I could be contributing more to the finances of the household and him being like God, I wish I could contribute more to, like, raising this child, you know. So we both just were constantly thinking about each other and how do we support each other? And so sometimes that would be that was me driving down to the theater on dinner break so he could see Ronan for a little bit, and him coming home at night and, and you know, washing bottles before he got into bed. We just we really were partners and communicators in the best way possible. And when things got huff, you know, when we went into cancer, we, we prioritized our relationship first and I think that made all the difference, because the priority wasn't necessarily let's keep Andy alive. That was a secondary thing to let's make sure that you and I are good through this whole thing.
Speaker 2:At what point in this whole journey did you and Andy Realize that this was going to be terminal? At what point was that They've just you know, I, you know a given or like acceptance, yeah so stage 4 colon cancer is a death sentence.
Speaker 1:So always like I mean so you knew from the beginning? No, but we didn't know from the beginning because we had the oncologist said most people who have stage 4 colon cancer Die within two years. I'm sure you will live longer than that, I just don't know how much longer. But what I have since learned is that the medical standards in Seattle are such that very rarely do doctors give prognoses around this kind of stuff because they're just so wrong all the time. But there is no one who escapes stage 4 colon cancer. You die because of that, because of that diagnosis, and some people can live for two years or six years with this kind of diagnosis. But it's a very aggressive.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm and a cancer, and Andy, in particular, had a rare kind of cancer. That was even. It was even rare. It was called signet ring cell and what did? What was special about it was, instead of it all coalescing into one tumor somewhere that could get cut Out, it was a bunch of little pinprick tumors all over the inside of his body. So it was. It was just huge and it was such a big thing to take on, and it was probably.
Speaker 1:He died in October of 2019. In June, that was when he was had an extended stay in the hospital and I remember he got taken away to go have some test run and his oncologist had come to visit at the hospital and I was like, should I be preparing for the end here? And he was like, yes, you should be. And this was also again part of the relationship that we had built with the oncologist, the Relationship we had with each other. We were very Clear communicators about what was happening, because I think the last thing you want as a young mother, as a someone you know, as a somebody's building their life, is to be caught off guard by the death of your person. Yeah, so I was incredibly grateful that this doctor was like yep, this is it's already.
Speaker 2:Yeah, being transparent, mm-hmm. Yeah, just prepare like. Yeah, like what you're saying, like just preparing you. At least you can. Yeah, I don't know what you could do, but you did it. Let me tell you what we did right, we talked about it.
Speaker 1:We talked about what a good death meant for him, and oh, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yes, I feel like I knew this part. I feel like Andy, with a big part of his, of his plan memorial.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so as he was dying, it was like I mean, as the pro theater folks you two are.
Speaker 2:I mean anyway, what is the story? We're gonna tell what's the show we're gonna put on.
Speaker 1:But I was like, what do you? What do you want this to be? How do you want to be remembered? And and we were lucky that our hospice team had a videographer on it who came in and, like you know, did a video of him so he could do one of these funny like from beyond the grave kind of videos where he was like hey, everyone, you're watching this video because I'm not here anymore, and it was. It was hilarious, it was actually amazing. And then he made everyone cry because he made everyone promise to take care of me and Ronan and all of that. And then he wanted people to tell stories. He had a couple of people he wanted to speak and and that was it, and it was like it was a true encapsulation of who this man was. I think one of the coolest things I got to do was because I knew he was dying.
Speaker 1:I wrote his eulogy and then I read his eulogy to him and uh-huh, and there is nothing more beautiful than hearing about the impact that you have made on the planet while you were still on it, and so you can understand what that legacy is that you're leaving. And so for him, I read it to him and I was like do you think this is this? Is you, do you think I got you right? And he was like you absolutely did, and so it was just really cool. When I read that eulogy At his memorial service, I was like this was blessed.
Speaker 1:This was blessed by Andy. He was part of this process. He got to tell his story, and the ability to tell your own story is so important to like to the work that I do so much about. It is like being able to like what is the story that you are bringing, how do you want your managers or the people around you to know about it, which makes it sound like I tell you my story but it's truly just like what are the things I'm feeling and experiencing that I want other people around me to know about, and how do I get help with those things that I'm feeling and experiencing? So, yeah, I feel like that was a really roundabout Fuck about it all, but like now no, but now but but yeah, I mean, here we are, but I want you to sort of explain, like October, to the listeners now.
Speaker 2:I feel, like something that's very like remarkable about you is your ability, your self awareness is just is unparalleled, and so I love how you Prepare and set yourself up, I'm gonna say, for success, which sounds Kind of like okay, mariah, whatever, but he passed away in October and you preserve yourself in this month doing different things throughout the years. And what does that look like for you? Because I love, I love, like that you, I love what you do yeah.
Speaker 1:So Andy died on October 3rd 2019, and I remember the next year when that ruled around, I was like, oh, there is no way that I can hold space for anyone while I'm doing this. And so it was honestly like it was space for me. It was also a reality of just like, what is the level of customer service I can provide at this time, like, how can I give people the experience that that I want them to have with me? And so it started out as like and the exact length of time changes a little bit every year but it was like I took the two weeks before and the week after of his of his death day off, and that's because I knew so.
Speaker 1:My birthday is August 27th. The day after wait before after Right around my birthday is when we made the official decision to like stop treatment and he was going to enter hospice, and so then all of September was it was him in hospice and then he died on October 3rd. The month of September is like very heavy for me. My birthday now is very heavy for me, and I just know that, like, I have a lot of fucking feelings. I have a lot of feelings for how I move through the world. I like because of, like you and I have a lot in common about how we were raised and like what that has produced in the kind of nervous system that we have and I just know like Disregulation.
Speaker 1:Disregulation, yeah, yeah yeah, therapy it's great, and I so I feel like I walk around the world with, like my, my top layer of my skin off for that time. We're just like everything is raw and chafing and like uh-huh, and so I'm like this is I don't. I don't want to be moving through the world and like Reacting on people while I'm feeling that way. That's just not.
Speaker 2:That's not how I want to make your feelings about how you're reacting to them. To yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So every year, now when I, when October 3rd is rolling around, I'm like, all right, what do I think I need off right now? When? Where does October 3rd fall in the week and what else is going on, you know? And so I usually try and take like a week before and then maybe the week after, half a week after, at this point Off, because I know I will just have a lot of stuff that emerges that's like, oh right, on this day, why do I feel? Why do I feel this?
Speaker 1:Like the body remembers, you know. The body remembers that I was Holding my husband's hand during this time and like telling him all of my fears. And my body remembers, like him Sleeping and then waking up and being like, oh god, I got to go to the afterlife and I got to meet the people who are going to meet me over there and I was like how do I talk to you about this? This is wild, you know. And then also my body remembers, like the, the breakdown that I would have, you know, trying to process all of the feelings of grief that were going through me. Not knowing how multi-faceted grief is like. I always thought it was just sadness or anger, but it's so many things at once, and so I just like I try to really honor the reality of I am a human that feels a lot of things in the world. I lost the most important person on the planet to me I. I love my work and I will be bad at my work by trying to keep pushing through this time, and I'll be back.
Speaker 2:I'll be back and I'll be better and not better. But I mean I won't be worse, you know. Yeah, I won't cause any worse in my business or whatever. Whatever it seems, yeah, almost just so surface level even care about your business around that time.
Speaker 1:But it is because my business is an extension of me, like my business is. I mean, of course it's just so.
Speaker 2:It's so wildly disproportionate, in a way like I'm just when you're talking about your husband passing away and like honoring that anniversary and then you being like, oh yeah, but I have emails. It's like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this and this was like part of my like no assholes rule was that the people who I told this is what's happening like they were like we understand, like you go do what you got to do. So if I didn't, so if I was like I'm sorry, I'm late on this deliverable because we're in hospice or because we had an extra you know, I had an extra appointment that I had to take him to, or we had a sudden emergency and I had to go to the hospital on mother's day, which I did for several years in a row like people would be like okay, like thanks for letting me know there was nothing that I was doing. The only life or death thing I was doing was my husband nothing else.
Speaker 2:It was on that scale. Yeah, so how? Why do you think it is that people Don't know how to talk about this? And I know, and I know that you don't represent the kingdom of widowhood, like I know you're not the oh, but I do, I'm the emperor. I know you're not like this spokesperson for all widows, widowers widowers, widows and widowers okay, widowed people with those who have lost their significant other. So what, what, what is that about? What is the deal with death and talking about it?
Speaker 2:like why, why? Why don't people, why don't we know how to text you and ask you, like how you're doing? Like why do people pause and like rewrite those texts and like overanalyze them? Okay, I have a really super good friend here. If she's listening, I love you, and she's a two-time breast cancer survivor, sub 40. Like I mean, wow, right, like go get your pomegranates women. So she's gone through a lot of Grief and fear of like is it coming back? Is ever coming back? She's also a mom. She's I think he's what 10 now, 11 now, okay.
Speaker 2:So she told me. She said the worst thing you can do is just not Do anything. Like the worst thing you can do is just like not send the text. The worst thing you can do is like overthink it. She also taught me this Super, incredibly valuable thing which has never left me, which she said Never say to anyone new mom, sickness, cancer, grief, loss, whatever trauma. Let me know what I can do for you. God, no, yeah, she. It described it to me in such a beautiful way, though. She said the minute you say, I'm really thinking about you. Let me know if we can help, or let me know if we can do anything, the way she described to me was all of a sudden you are putting a task on to that person and they are incapable really in most situations like that's why most people just say hey, thank you so much, okay, thanks you know, and that person will never ask you for anything.
Speaker 2:So she said to be really specific, and if you don't have the bandwidth, like to contribute, at least just acknowledge and say something and just be in community with that person. But what is it with death and our society and and the fears that An anxiety that it comes up Around wanting to be like perfect?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're about it, so I have an answer your face.
Speaker 2:I wish people could see it. What's the answer, Veronica, to this very loaded question?
Speaker 1:I mean, but it's like, it's like it's a loaded question, it's a loaded response and so I feel like I feel very, I feel a little self-conscious saying it, but like it's, patriarchy is what it is, god I know, and like that feels like so big I'm going to break it down. Okay, so patriarchy is this idea that we have to uphold things in our world that are masculine and we devalue things that are feminine. Sadness is feminine, anger is masculine. People dying is sad. We cannot give space to the sadness, because then we are upholding things that are feminine, and that is it. That is the thing that really it comes down to, because who are the people that get up, who are allowed to be sad, who are the people that are allowed to grieve?
Speaker 1:Why do we hear about widows and not widowers so often, and why are circles of support for widows so much more common than for widowers? It's like, first of all, there's like the actuarial, like we just outlive men more often. But also, sadness is feminine, it is viewed as feminine by our culture and so, therefore, the only people who can express it are people who are feminine, who are coded feminine. That means that there are no easy ready spaces to provide for conversations around death and grief. The places where it is more likely to happen are places where they have integrated femininity more, or they have changed the coding around sadness or something like that to be equally masculine as it is feminine, or they sequester it in a way. People go die over there and that's fine. We recognize that. That is the place where people go die.
Speaker 1:But for us, as an American culture, the reason why we could grieve Andy's death but we have a hard time grieving the death of the software engineer is because theater is inherently feminine. Oh interesting. It's an expressive art form. Art forms are considered our coded feminine by most of our culture, and expression is coded as feminine. So the men within theater had more opportunity, had more freedom although I doubt they would consider themselves free to feel this way but they had more freedom than the guy who works in finance.
Speaker 1:And I remember when Andy died and my brother works in IT and my brother didn't get bereavement leave because his brother-in-law died, my brother couldn't. If he had feelings about it, he had to go somewhere where it was quiet and he could get it together and then he could come back to his meeting, whereas if I started openly weeping. And well, I mean, I'm closer to it if my husband's sisters started openly weeping in the middle of a work meeting because it hit them. Everyone was like, okay, that's okay, brother, her brother just died, her brother just died, yep, yep. So for them, while it is difficult because of all of the stories we have around, what crying and sadness and all of that means those of us who are female presenting have a little bit more privilege in our ability to grieve.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, do you think it's easier? Sorry?
Speaker 1:No go ahead.
Speaker 2:Do you think it's more? Okay, this is a weird way to compare it, but we love an engaged woman. We love someone who gets engaged. Sure, do we love a pregnant woman? We don't really love a new mom. We love a brand new baby, but we don't really love a toddler. It's creepy. There are certain stages in life where I think our feminine parts of us are more accepted. Do you think it's easier for people to communicate their feelings and sadness and hold space for your feelings and sadness while Andy was sick versus after he died? Maybe there's this assumption of oh, she'll be better at some point or something, yes, yes, because I feel like she's never going to be better, never.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just feel like how does that wound ever fully heal? I just feel like it's just now a part of your leg or whatever. That is exactly it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you're absolutely right, because the sentiment that I got from people when he was dying, when he was actively in hospice and in the month and a half between when he died and when the memorial happened, I had so many people telling me I love you, I miss him, I wish he were here, and then it's like but until he was in hospice and then after the memorial, it was like a drop-off and the people who talked about him remembered him. It's exactly what it was, gail, exactly. I feel like the permission to talk about it went away. Because it is allowed during these very particular times. We allow for that in some instances and for some people, but otherwise, nope, it's not allowed. Because, again, grief is the primary emotion we associate with.
Speaker 2:Grief is sadness, sadness is inherently feminine and everything we do is stupid, pe and tacky uncomfortable for people and it's just, it's wildly uncomfortable for people and so they just don't know how to do it, and because they don't know how to do it, we never talk about it.
Speaker 2:You know, it's like there's so many things in this world that I don't know how to talk about and I just want to be in a space where I can say I don't know how to talk about this, but can I, can I just start, and can I learn how to talk about this and do this, and that way I can learn and get better at it, and then that way the next person I talk to maybe I won't say anything that's wildly offensive, but maybe I'll feel better in my body during conversation because I won't have all this like useless, anxious anxiety about it. You know, like I don't know what there's so much like tenderness in motherhood and there's so much tenderness, I'm assuming, and loss and grief. I mean I've lost that. Nothing like this, you know. And it's also funny, because sometimes I say to you my husband travels a lot, right, Like, like.
Speaker 1:I love this asterisk. You put on this every single time, every single time.
Speaker 2:I mention this to you like and I probably won't ever not mention it because it's it's probably some weird eggshell people pleasing mechanism in myself that makes me feel like I'm calling the cat, like I'm just calling it out. So that way it's. I we're all acknowledging it without me maybe straightforwardly acknowledging it or I don't know. But basically this is what it looks like with me and Veronica. My husband travels like 150 days of the year and we can have all of these conversations about the correct terminology of single parents and solo parents. There's so many weird blog posts and things that I've read of on both sides of this. But I say that when my husband's traveling I'm a solo parent because one of my best friends is a single parent and I would never put myself, I would never call myself a single parent out of respect for the fact that I know that she's a single parent in that walk. So I always say I'm a solo parent.
Speaker 2:So sometimes, just very casually, I will make say something like in complaining venti mode to Veronica and I'll be like like today I had to go freaking, put salt and shovel. I had to shovel our eight inches of snow on our driveway with a Fisher price plastic shovel from Target that is my son's like fun sand shop, because our actual snow shovel is actually at our parents house, like a half hour away, anyway. So my mother-in-law and I are out there like spread and salt and my nanny can't get up the driveway. Or I'm literally looking at our car that is halfway up the driveway, anyways, stuck, and I'm thinking well, maybe the ice will melt tomorrow, maybe should we go leave. I don't believe, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Anyways, I always have this asterisk, like you just said about like I go, oh you know, like not to, not to complain about my husband being gone, because, like God forbid I complained to God forbid I vent about my husband being gone to Veronica and I love your. You didn't say it today to me, but you often say like hey, two hard things can coexist, like my heart can exist and your heart can exist. But right there, when you say that, it is acknowledging that, like everyone's, hard is hard. And if we can't talk about our hard, what are we doing here? What are we? What are we doing? We're never going to connect in a real, human, deep, meaningful, valuable way with each other. If I have a yardstick out every fucking time I want to talk to you, yeah.
Speaker 2:I say oh, you know what? I can't share anything that's hard or anything that's relevant in my life, because Veronica's husband passed away and her heart will always be harder which in a lot of ways it will, for sure, I acknowledge it but it's like but, then it's like no one. Then you're not living forward at all with anybody. Everyone is putting you back here where it's been died, but I think it's so complex and so confusing for people to know what's right and wrong, because we are sticklers in this world about being right.
Speaker 1:Right. So let's talk about that for a second, because I think this is also to go back to your. Why is it so hard? I think one of the challenges that people have is, when someone is having a moment of grief, the idea of just like hanging out and like being receptive to that, like there are several systems of oppression that dig into that, and you know, like a bunch of my work has to do with like the systems of oppression that overlap with business and like how do we dismantle all of that?
Speaker 2:The listeners don't know that, because we have touched on that. We will in another episode, but this is literally the container of body of work that Veronica works in. Maybe we should have started with that, because then we really really would have set the tone of like how some of these conversations but anyways, coming soon a really really bomb episode of Veronica really getting into like workplaces and systems of oppression and how don't believe in workplaces that cause more sickness and we cause the cause more health, and so, anyways, carry on, yeah.
Speaker 1:So this idea of I'm gonna I'm gonna hold space for you while you have a moment, Not only is that moment less allowed because it's feminine we have a hard time with that but also the idea of being receptive is feminine. Also, the idea of being right is a tenant of what's a premise. So if you are like I have to be right and I have to do this right, Like A, I'm sure that there is family of origin trauma that is baked in there, but like there is literal white supremacy culture around us telling us do not open your mouth unless you are absolutely right about this.
Speaker 2:You know so right, and so if you have this feeling- how many people are right now are just like wildly triggered by that whole statement that you just said? Just us. We don't know how to think of it right or wrong Like we don't know what to do with the words you just said. We don't know how to categorize them in our head in this current state of our society where everything is so right and wrong, like right now, no gray area, we're not allowed. No, god forbid we have any gray area anywhere right now.
Speaker 1:Well, and I think this is one of the challenges that I have doing this kind of diversity, equity, inclusion work, is that you know, people do think there is a right and a wrong way to do this, and there are so many different ways to do it.
Speaker 1:It's a matter of how do you want to do it and how do the humans in your system work best with this and do they need more of this kind of approach or more of this kind of approach and like.
Speaker 1:So I never go into doing this kind of work and think like, all right, here's my prescription, here's how we're going to do it. It is always this incredible exploration process and because we're all learning, ultimately, when I am setting up is a culture of learning in these organizations, how can you take in information where you did something that felt wrong to someone and you know how to rise it different inside of you, Like, okay, I don't use that language, I use this language instead, and how? That's really challenging to those of us who are A, not only in a culture that tells us that rightness is the only way to be, but also then, if you stack on like high achievers hello Virgos. You stack on like family, of origin stuff around like God, if only I get like straight A's then like maybe my situation will be better, Like all of those things stack on top of each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah exactly. And the fact that we're we've been doing something the same way for so long, and so it's literally like working another muscle, making changes like this, exactly because the first thing to change and system change is our, us, is the individual. One part of this changes. The whole system changes like that's like family of origin, right, right.
Speaker 1:But yeah, and that's the idea too of you know, how can I be, how can I, how can I try this on and potentially be wrong, and be okay with the idea of being wrong and like especially in you.
Speaker 2:I mean without people, exactly like safe spaces to be wrong.
Speaker 1:And I think also the resilience of round. Like you know, if you do something wrong that someone has called wrong, you know which like we can like question even that whole doctrine. But like if someone has decided that you've done something wrong, your entire identity doesn't have to collapse around that Like you can take in that information and be like oh, for that person that feels wrong. I'm still going to go try it on over here, you know. But that scaling from like oh God, I don't want to get it wrong to actually the putting the thing out there and potentially getting feedback, that's hard to hear, you know. Like right in there about eight different concepts we could break down. But this idea of like what is the right thing that I should say your friend is absolutely right Silence is is the wrong thing to say the right thing can be everything from. I'm thinking about you. Here's a funny meme.
Speaker 2:Heart emoji yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have a friend right now who's dealing with the loss of her brother and, like her, her marriage is breaking up and and like I will send her every once in a while like hey, I just want you to remember I love you.
Speaker 1:Or I'll send her, like I'll try and send her videos when I think about her, and very occasionally I'll be like, do you have time for breakfast together?
Speaker 1:And like the other thing that I have had to figure out for myself is like I can't get offended when she doesn't respond to that because it's not about me, it's about the shit that she's in right now and can't and can't get back to me. And and that's also hard if you are someone who like, like me, in a vacuum one of the things I tell leaders all the time is in a vacuum of information, people will make up stories and they will make up the story that fits their trauma the best. So it's really easy, when you send something like that and you don't get anything back, to immediately be like, oh God, they must think I'm insert all the terrible things about yourself that your trauma tells you you are, yeah, as opposed to, this person is dealing with whatever they're dealing with. You know, if they were able to read my text message, then like great, they were able to read my text message and like and now I'm going to move on with my life as like the world's worst texture.
Speaker 2:I am the world's worst texture, like I. If people text me and they don't get a response back, like they will take it personally for sure. But that's I cannot like. I don't know what it is about me. I am. It is like a black hole sometimes, but I have. I have identified that my thought process around it is I am so busy, like in my motherhood and in the fact that my husband's gone 150 days the year and I have multiple businesses that Often I will get a text message and literally my response is like oh, I can't wait to like carve out a little bit of time and have a really thoughtful response, but then, guess what, that time never comes and so my thoughtful response just goes boom. So I feel like I almost want to have like a standard like I receive like almost like an auto reply email Like I received your message, you're going to get a response within 48 to 72 hours.
Speaker 2:But what I will say, though, it's interesting because I do have certain relationships who get really stressed out by my lack of response and I can start to feel they're like very like needing of me and like, if I don't respond or if I don't want to hang out, because they're thinking I don't want to hang out.
Speaker 2:I would love to have a life in three, five years where I can have a little more freedom and flexibility with my relationships, but I get that feeling from them and I start to get like boxed and I get to I'd stresses me out.
Speaker 2:I do better in like close, intimate relationships that are so like free and not a lot of rules and not a lot of expectation, and then where it just feels sort of like it is not like a heavy lift to go into those spaces because I have a hard time with my own commitment level of like my time and it's something that I get sad about sometimes where I'm like I wish I had more time for my other relationships outside of like my child, my marriage, my business, my house. So it's just interesting because the stories that we think people are having and then also there are stories that we know, that are real, that they're having and how that changes our perception of our communication and our rightness and wrongness, because I'm always like gosh, I'm wrong, I'm so wrong because I'm not responding to these text messages when really it's like I'm not wrong, I'm not bad, I'm not bad. That's the key. No capacity, and no one else is living in my life with limited capacity but me.
Speaker 1:You know, this is the key, because I think that this is ultimately so right If you total tangent by the way, no, but it's like it goes back to the thing.
Speaker 1:It goes back to the thing about communication, which is what I started this whole thing with. You know, like the reason why I could ask for help and accept help when it was offered to me is because of how clear I got about my communication. Was my stuff what? How do I talk about my stuff? How am I aware of where my stuff is? And the reality is like I have friends like you who are like in my close circle of friends and like we do have these moments where I'm like, hello, asshole, I need you to actually respond to me. I miss you so much, are you mad at me? And then they're like I'm not mad at you, I'm drowning, and I'm like, okay, I love you. And then that's what we have to do. We have. I have to do that sometimes because I am that friend that, in the absence of feedback, I will make up the worst case scenario I've done something terribly wrong. You are so mad at me you never want to speak to me again. Yeah, I'm so much brawn ago, I know.
Speaker 2:Are you mad at me? I'm like I do not have time to be mad at anybody, but this is it. I said it. I'm mad at my hoods and troubles. Period, period. End of story. Close the book.
Speaker 1:And that I think, almost is. I'm not mad at you. I'm drowning right now. I'm not. I'm not mad at you. Hi, got your message. I love you Like I can't respond right now, or even the thing that you have done for me sometimes, which I love, which is like you respond to me and you're like I don't have. I'm holding my phone. No one can see that I have a prop right now, but like.
Speaker 1:I am drowning in this right now, but here are my three bullet points that I'm thinking of right now and like even that, because I also think that this again is like the like, the what, what are our stories about? What is the right way to do this? It's like you are like I'm going to give the most thoughtful response I possibly can, and I don't think you realize that, like, even what you consider to be like 10% of thoughtfulness has an impact on the people who you are, who you are communicating with. You imagine if I can give 100%. Wow, no, I don't, I don't even want to imagine that, because, like, the world would just like explode with your awesomeness.
Speaker 1:So that's so kind of you.
Speaker 2:But I do, but I do want to be fully, I want to be more present in my communication always, and I think that that's it's like God I actually it's. I'm so not mad at you. I love you so much that I'm not responding. Yeah, because my like trash service guy were to text me real fast like, hey, I'm stuck on the side of the road because you're snow. Yeah, I would text him back in like two seconds, you know, in a like a time. It's sense of I don't care how he receives my text message, but, like those people, it's like I want to have good, good, present communication.
Speaker 1:Anyways we have to wrap up soon, but what you don't want to talk for another two hours about this, because I absolutely could.
Speaker 1:I think that the takeaway is like it has to do also with the seasons of life, right, like I was really lucky that in my grief and in the crisis I actually became a better communicator because I entered that sort of like you know, trauma informed crisis mode and could talk about things. And there are some people who, like right now, have a hard time understanding what this season of life is, that you are in with like a toddler and fucking eight inches of snow and your husband being gone for as much as he is, you know, like they do not understand that they don't have the ability to put themselves in that and that really sucks, that sometimes those people have to have distance from us when that happens. I lost so many friends after Andy died because they just could not Good.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've thought about that. They just could not hang. I thought that about that too. I was just like I wonder how Wait before we go. I guess I hear you. Thank you, here are my three bullet points on it. Okay, here's my 10% response One. The other one thing I want to mention really fast is have you become like the beacon for death In your, in your, in your circles? Have you become like sort of like the token poster child, whatever the terminology around that is? Have you become like the main one that people go to?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I and I love what's that like, I love it.
Speaker 2:I feel like, because you shared your journey so openly on Caring Bridge and all that you shared, so you're also like, oh, a beautiful writer. So you're not just sharing in this, it's like deep diary journal, beautiful, poetic, colorful writing. That really is like a transformative skill and it's a storytelling skill for sure. So you did, you didn't just like let people in, you took people with you and I think that that's like the difference. But now I feel like if anyone has any experience with death or loss, are you the person that they go to?
Speaker 1:I hope so. I really want to be, because I think one of the one of the gifts I came to this planet with was that, like, I really like education, I like being a teacher. And so when people ask me, how did you do this, how did you get through this, how did you navigate this part, I'm like let me tell you. And let me tell you not just about how, let me tell you not about the specifics, how I did it. Let me tell you about the principles, the structures, the things underneath that made it so I could make decisions that aligned with my values better. And so some people ask me various like. I just had a friend who asked me very specifically do you have a spreadsheet that you used for like end of life stuff, where you could figure out how to shut down Andy's estate? And I was like, well, yes, I did in fact have that. Here you go. And I was able to send it off to her. Her brother is dying. And so I was able to say here's what you have. You know, let me know if you need any help with that.
Speaker 1:But also I have people who say, oh my gosh, my friend is going through such a hard time, how do I help them? And I'm able to say, instead of saying, offer this, this and this, I'm able to say well, think about what you know about your friend. What are the things that they talk about constantly? Are the things that they have a hard time with? Where are the things in their life that seem to hang them up? And is there a way that you can, as unobtrusively as possible, offer help in that place?
Speaker 1:And then, because it's a dialogue, because I rarely have these one-off conversations with these people, then it's like well, my favorite one was like a friend was like my friend that I'm trying to help she's in her car a lot.
Speaker 1:And I was like great, what do you think would happen if you showed up on Saturday morning and cleaned out the inside of her car for her? And they were like amazing, they did it. And of course, since this person was a parent Goldfish smudged into things and like got a little replaced. And then so the next time this person got in her car, of course she also had the like oh God, I can't let this person see the inside of my car. But then, because it's disgusting, but then this friend was like please, please, please, let me do this for you and for me. This makes me feel like I could help if I can do this for you, and they like and so many, so many women are able to make that switch when it's like please let me do this for you. For me they're like okay, well, if it's for you, then I guess it's fine, you know, but like.
Speaker 1:So then uh-huh, right, right, so yeah. So I do have people who regularly ask me about this kind of stuff, and I am so happy to do it because it's a way of not only exercising a skill set that I have. It's a skill set that I got to have because of Andy, so in a way, it's like I get to. His legacy lives on by my ability to do this too.
Speaker 2:Well, that's so crazy that you said that, because I was going to say something we talk about on every episode almost is legacy building and is the legacy, and there is so much. There is so much beautiful dialogue and conversations around leaving a legacy or building a legacy while you're also raising a family and babies and children, and so having your son watch you move to this world and what that legacy is and you sharing that, how you operate and show up in the world now is an honor of Andy, and that's just, that's beautiful. What is that like legacy for you that you're hoping to like instill or, you know, gift to your son as he's when he thinks back on his my mom did this, she built my mom did this, yeah, she's just. I'd ask at this oh, like what you know impact?
Speaker 1:I remember one time I had a therapy session with Andy. We did this thing. We had a standing appointment with our therapist and then we would like sometimes one of us would go, and then sometimes we'd go together and we'd sort of trade off who needed to talk to her. And one time he was like I'm so worried that Ronan will never remember me and our therapist was like he will have baked into him this idea that he was deeply loved. He may or may not remember specific things about you, but he will know he was deeply loved and that's that's important.
Speaker 1:And so when I think about Ronan, I want him to, so many years from now, be like oh, my mom loved me so much. There's like no question, my mom loved me so much. And not only did she love me so much, like she did, she took care of me in the ways that I needed to be taken care of. I watched her do these things to make sure that, like my needs were met, as opposed to I don't know like how people told her my needs needed to be met, but like I want him to to unequivocally know that I love him, and I want him to have the world be like, if I can leave the world like 1% better than I left it because of all these like tiny ways I'm trying to impact people.
Speaker 1:If Ronan can show up to work and be like, yeah, I'm not going to accept a boss who talks to me this way and I know that I want to get paid this amount and I'm going to. I'm, I have an ability to honor the you know the feelings in my life Like I want that for him. I want him to know that, like, all parts of him are okay and that he was deeply loved by his mama and he was deeply loved by his papa too. So, yeah, so that's my legacy for Ronan, legacy beyond. Honestly, I need to think about that one. I can't believe you actually asked me that, because I ask people that all the time and I'm like I don't know if I've ever actually answered that question for myself. So I mean, it's I.
Speaker 2:I mean I think too it's not like a target.
Speaker 2:You know it's a, it's a moving target or whatever you know, it changes and shifts and you know, if you were to ask me what I wanted my legacy to be two years ago versus now, I mean it's, it's. It's radically different, totally different, and I think that in different seasons of life, it's okay. But I think it's for, it's okay for it to change and I think that that's very normal. And I think we live in this entrepreneurial world where, like change and pivoting can sometimes equate to like failure, like, oh, I had this marketing agency and I loved it and it was super lucrative, and then I, like you know, in a gypsy worship circle around a bonfire, burned it down literally burned it up in a fire and it was so great, but it's like I I could have easily thought like, oh wow, I failed at that.
Speaker 2:I'm going to pivot, I'm going to change and oh, look at Mariah, like thinking about the feminine right. Look at Mariah, she works with moms. Now, oh, she must not be this savvy at all. I must work with a bunch of like MLMs. I must be teaching people how to like sell oils and stuff, which it's fine. There's, do you know, like the top millionaires in the country who are women are in MLMs and so, like people really talk poorly about that and they shouldn't, because they're actually like there's so much I could talk about in terms of like wealth in women and investing in women.
Speaker 2:No-transcript. I'm soft now, right, because I work with moms and it's like that's so the farthest from the truth and the only people who know that are like the moms that I work with, who like really understand, like how badass and how hard and how much heart and purpose and passion and strategy and time management and focus and determination you have to have and you have to have the sales to back it, because childcare is not inexpensive and so it's like you know it's actually like criminal how much it costs, but it's like we are like the most. I think we are like the elite Moms and I do. I feel that we are the top whatever percentage of business owners because we are being pulled in every direction and so it's like I'm totally fine with my legacy being tied up in a pretty bow around that and I'll be curious when you do think about it and when you come back on, because when you come back on to a new next time to chronic little home we talk.
Speaker 2:When we come back on, we will talk about what she actually does for work and how to create healthier workplaces. But there's just not enough time on this episode because the grief and the death and the you know, widowhood and all of that is just it's. It's just so like palpable for a conversation around real, like a real conversation around real life and real realness.
Speaker 1:It's dense, it's dense. All of this, yeah, that's any time I see my therapist I'm like she's like so how have you been since I saw you and I was like my life has been dense. It's always very dense. She's like a lot happening.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry that I didn't respond to your text message. My life is very dense right now. My life is very dense.
Speaker 1:Right now I will say I'm I've over committed myself, but like that, because like we didn't even get a chance to touch on, like children's grief, or like what it's been like to like date and repartner since anti died, what it's been like to like hold his workplace while he, while they, went through his death, how I'm still connected to that that world, but also not in some ways and what that's been like. And then the funny thing that happens is not only did I lose friends after Andy died, I lost another set of friends when I finally got to the point that I was on my feet enough that I didn't need as much support.
Speaker 2:Oh, but there's a losing. Did you lose friends, when you repartnered? I just got, repented you. Yeah, I there was something that you and Andy had a lot of conversations about his wishes for you and his dreams for you and your future and your love, life and your companionship Right, and that would make us I actually wrote a blessing for the newly grieving and that, like that, has in it this idea, like the ideas that he had for me around this, but I did make.
Speaker 1:There is a if folks want to, if folks listen to this podcast and they want to come and hang out with me for a minute, then go to my website and willhomconsultingcom slash mothers and I have a landing page for them for like all sorts of stuff that's like grief resources, but also like stuff that I think would be helpful for mothers, and I'll add on there this like blessing for the newly newly grieving. So you guys can read that too, because I actually think it's one of my best written works I've ever done and I'm very proud of it.
Speaker 1:I will definitely put that in the show notes for sure. Yeah, but yeah that's. I want you all to come hang out with me because I think mothers, motherhood, encapsulates so many of the things that I'm trying to do to make workplaces healthier for people, less traumatizing, and I think one of the workplaces that we are in every single day that we forget is a workplace, is our own home, like it is a group of people working on trying to achieve a certain goal, and like what more challenging goal is there than like raising the next generation of humans? And how easy is it to traumatize yourself and them in the process, you know.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I got stuff like that, and then like the re-parenting through the parenting oh my gosh, there's so much there, veronica. Oh my gosh, you know.
Speaker 1:Mariah. Maybe we should, we might, we might need to do like a mini series on like Mariah and Veronica take apart the world through their I don't even know, through their Virgo lenses, on trauma et cetera. I don't even know, but like there's so much stuff that you and I have talked about and touched on that I can't even yeah, there's in somehow, despite the fact that we live on opposite coasts, we communicate almost exclusively through Virgo means and text messages. Somehow you and I have managed to touch the absolute breadth and gamut of all sorts of different topics and I feel like I've learned so much from you and you've, like, gifted me the ability to talk about things in a really cool way because of what you've taught me about marketing and communications and how I bring things into the world, and I still feel like I have so much to learn from you and from all of this.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I feel like I just I feel like every time I'm in like communication or friendship or whatever in contact with you, I always feel like braver. That's just how I feel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And like more courageous and more capable, and I think that that's just. I do think it's an energy that you just bring into spaces, because I feel like when I look at you, I think of someone who's just like wildly capable through just surviving, like I just feel like that is how I feel when I'm with you. I'm like, wow, I feel like I'm like, you know, like strong, you know fortified, yeah, yeah, that's how I feel about you too.
Speaker 1:I feel fortified.
Speaker 2:So dense, fortified and dense I think those have to do with baking bread. So give Veronica a shout, give her a follow. I will link everything in the show notes. I am just I'm always just so impressed with you and I can't wait to have you back on and we'll talk more and more and more about all the different things. And you know, if anyone was inspired by this conversation, please rate this podcast, follow it, give it a review, follow Veronica, and we'll talk to you next time.
Speaker 2:Go, you know, take a nap, get a snack. Thanks, veronica, thanks Mariah. Yay, you just finished another episode of the Made for Mothers podcast. As always, you can find more details about today's show in the show notes and be sure to give us a review. Subscribe so you don't miss a chance to grow your biz from fellow moms. Are you wanting more one-on-one support, or are you looking to learn how to market your business in a way so you can spend more time with your family and less time stressing about what to do next? Than follow along on Instagram at Mariah Stockman, or book a one-on-one biz therapy session with yours truly and let's find that work mom-ahood harmony we all deserve. Until next time, this is your host Mariah Stockman, and thank you so much for tuning in.