Widowhood, Motherhood, And The 38 Triple D Journey

We speak with author and mom Michaela Cox about turning the 38 Triple D—disability, divorce, and death—into a clear roadmap from surviving to thriving. She shares the five keys of “grace,” how year two of grief can hit hardest, and why self-care isn’t optional when parenting through loss.

• framing the 38 Triple D: disability, divorce, death
• sudden widowhood with young children and rebuilding support
• why year two of grief often feels worse than year one
• moving home fast and making unavoidable decisions
• writing origins, audiobooks, and access with legal blindness
• the five keys: grounding, redesign, mindset, care, equip
• choosing agency over victimhood and redefining normal
• practical self-care that fuels clarity and focus
• which book to start with: Now I See

If you want to know more about Michaela Cox 

 https://youtu.be/Lib2zOIPh8U?si=P7aH1s0NhVypPUsz

This is the link to my TEDx that I gave in fall of 2023. I share my story of what it has been like to answer the knocks at my life's door and navigate through (what I call 38DDD) a life long Disability of legal blindness, Divorce at 26 (in 2005), and Death of beloved husband in 2017. It has taught many things about overcoming, not just surviving, and thriving.

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Michaela-S.-Cox

https://www.instagram.com/nowisee779/

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Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: Life In Our 40s
• 2:29 Meet Michaela And The 38 Triple D
• 4:55 From Surviving To Thriving
• 7:40 Sudden Loss And Parenting Through Grief
• 11:15 Why Year Two Of Grief Hits Harder
• 14:40 Moving Home And Rebuilding Support
• 18:00 A Writer’s Origin Story
• 23:25 Crafting Books Across Motherhood And Grad School
• 28:30 Finding Grace Through Grief: The Five Keys
• 33:10 Audiobooks, Braille, And Access
• 37:20 Workarounds, Independence, And Daily Life
• 41:20 Parenting, Poems, And Early Passions
• 45:00 Telling The Kids And Faith’s Role

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Or let's talk to Diva Tonight with Carlene Humphrey, a relationship podcast with a focus on life, love, and friendship. This is the space where real conversations happen, stories are shared, and women in their 40s feel seen, heard, and inspired. Welcome to Diva Tonight.

SPEAKER_01: 0:21

Hi, I'm Carlene, and this is Diva Tonight. We are currently working on a series with women in their 40s and talking about life. And with life comes many challenges along the way. And I have with me Michaela Koch, and she is an author. She's written a few books, and she's also a mom, and she's a widow, and she's had her own challenges along the way. And I think this is gonna be a great conversation. So hi Michaela, did I say your name right? I did, okay, okay. I think that um what's really important is that you know, um you are in your 40s, so I know I know that, but before we even started the conversation, you were telling me about how in life what was the saying again? What we were saying about life, you know, like things happen that are out of control, right?

SPEAKER_02: 1:21

Well, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. In my case, what doesn't kill me makes me stronger and have a hell of a lot right about Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29

And so you've written many books since your journey started, and now I see is one of your books. And then Tri Thriving in All Things in Life is another book that you've written, and clearly what I talked about a lot in my writing, too. Yeah, yeah. So you're a speaker, a multi-published author, and you go by your journey is called the 38 Triple D, which because you had not what people think. Okay, care to elaborate. What's the triple D?

SPEAKER_02: 2:03

Yeah, it's a journey that I've traveled in life that is encapsulated a good way of describing a good summary of it all, is something of how I learned to go from surviving to thriving and all things, which includes lifelong disability of legal blindness, which is the first D. So there hasn't been a day, or will there ever be a day, where I haven't not seen the world through totally jacked up, completely crazy concoction of visual problems, which we can get into. And it's not going anywhere. It's a permanent disability. And then I did all the normal things, you know, grow up, high school, college, found a guy, got married, figured out that's not gonna work, so let's get the heck out of this one. So divorced in 2005 when I was 26, the second D. And then I was happily and blessed to uh meet uh an amazing man who was the love of my life in 2005, and we got married in 07, and then collectively we were together for 12 years, but then in 2017 came the third D of Death of Beloved Husband, so three D's of disability, divorce, and death, all by the age of 38, hence 38 triple D. And like we said, it's taught me a lot, I've learned a lot, and I don't have all of the answers. I haven't figured everything out, but I've figured out more than I haven't. So I write about what I've learned and what I can share with other people to help them through theirs because you're correct. In life, we are all going to go through something. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when, how much, to what degree, and how often or how many. And, you know, we don't get out of life unscathed. We're all gonna have trauma, drama, something, tragedy, whatever. Yours or other people's may be different from mine, and mine are different from theirs, but the fact of the matter is it is what it is. That's what life is. And so would you rather be someone who is literally staring into the headlights of life like a deer frozen in place and not knowing what you're doing? Or would you rather be a person who eventually succumbs to the life storm you're in and it drowns you and you don't survive? Or would you, door number three, when those knocks at your door come in life and you want to learn how to navigate through them, would you rather define it for yourself and not be defined by your circumstances and have a way or a roadmap or a plan to help you navigate through that so that you don't just have to survive, but then you can thrive in it. So that's what I thought.

SPEAKER_01: 4:21

Yeah, and I think when you lose someone that you love, that obviously takes a toll on you. And you mentioned that you thrive from your experience. And so obviously your husband passed away years ago. Now it's been like eight years. So when you think back to when that happened, um what was the hardest part like about losing your husband and and dealing with that with the kids? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 4:46

All hard. I mean, and at first in grief, you are in survivor mode, there's nothing else you can do. But eventually, once you make it past that part, you do hope to thrive again at some point, whether that comes quickly for someone, because yes, grief is grief is grief, but because we're all unique individuals and we have different life experiences, and so therefore we relate to the world differently, and our path to grief is very different from one to the other, and doesn't make it good or wrong or bad, or good or bad, it just makes it different. And so then how we enter how we respond to grief is gonna be very different as well, depending on how your grief journey began and started and how you relate to it. So mine was sudden and unexpected and not what I thought was gonna happen. And my kids were way younger then, not the youngest I've ever heard of, but my daughter was six at the time, and my son was three at the time. And then when you add, I mean, I've said this before, life is hard, right? Parenting is hard.

SPEAKER_01: 5:42

Yes, it is. But then you throw grief with parenting in life, you're like, oh, yeah, like because you're you're you're you're grieving, but you also have to take care of your kids, like you have to get out of bed, and they say that there's when what is it, Alcoholics Anonymous, like the stages in in in that where it's like the same thing with stages of grief, like you're angry, you're sad, and you're feeling all the emotions. And I think when when you when someone passes away, like how I can relate to your stories, when a good friend of mine passed away and I went to the funeral, and then she was so young, I didn't expect anything to happen. But when when someone you care about passes away and you didn't get to spend so much time with them, it puts things into perspective. And for me, I I said to myself, like with all my friends, I will make more of a conscious effort to see them when I can, because you just never know what's gonna happen. And and yeah, and and I always said, Oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna meet Rochelle, you know, like I'm gonna see her again, and I and it didn't happen.

SPEAKER_02: 6:46

And then, you know, no guarantee is we are not promised anything. You never know. I think it's all hard, but it was just I it's hard to say what was the hardest thing. I don't know. It's just it's all hard and were you were you prepared for it in any way?

SPEAKER_01: 7:02

Like I I think not at all.

SPEAKER_02: 7:03

No. Were you yeah and the he was still in school doing his I lost track of how many degrees, but he was in the military at that time and it was drill weekend for anyone who knows what that means. There's the National Guard Weekend Warriors where you drill once a month, and then there's people in the National Guard who worked for the state that helped take care of the mission for the weekend warriors during the state, and it's called active guard AGR, which is what my husband was, and so he worked for the state full time, but they still have to go to drill weekend, and he was under a lot of pressure that week because he had schoolwork and he knew it was a three-day drill weekend, which is not typical, and so he knew he was gonna have less time than normal, and then like he was stressed about his deadlines in school, and he's like, I got drill weekend this time, I'm not gonna have a lot of time this weekend to work on it, blah blah blah. So he left the house to go do his schoolwork, and he said, I love you, I'll see you when I get home tonight, and that's not how it went. I didn't see him that night, and I haven't seen him since.

SPEAKER_01: 7:58

So anyway, it was very sudden and very so when when I guess when it all happened, when when did you feel like you finally were slowly um recovering from like able to like you know, move on and start your career with writing?

SPEAKER_02: 8:14

Like, you know You don't ever really move on.

SPEAKER_01: 8:17

No, right?

SPEAKER_02: 8:17

Okay. I think more of you move through and you learn to live within you learn to make your way through it. And grief evolves, I call it like a boomerang at times because the first year everyone says, Oh, that's the hardest. No, that's not true. No one tells you the secret about you think the first year is the hardest, but really year two is the worst because under year one, you're still numb and in shock and like on autopilot. Well, in year two, that um for lack of a better term, emotional painkiller or morphine that keeps you protected from the harshness of the feelings because you're on autopilot or like you know, just in a fog or numb all over all the time, you don't have that nice little medication year two, and so you're all of a sudden being hit with all the feels, all the emotions, and it ain't nothing to protect you from it. So it's really the worst. Year two is harder.

SPEAKER_01: 9:09

Yeah. And then did you have the support of like your friends and family um to help you?

SPEAKER_02: 9:15

Living in New Hampshire at the time, because that's where he was doing his military career, which, like you said, I'm in Louisiana, so New Hampshire from Louisiana is like twenty-six hours away. Wow, okay. That summer he died in April, so by June 26th of 2017, I moved us cross-country back to Louisiana where my parents live and some other family is, and a lot of my girlfriends are. So um, I did that because I thought that would be best for the kids to be close to their grandparents. And because of northern school schedules and southern school schedules don't necessarily jive up as well. And so I either had to make a decision like we either have to stay put and let my daughter get through her next school year, or we had to hurry up and get home in time for her to start mid-August her next school year. So, yes, I know the conventional wisdom is don't do any major decisions for the first year of after grief or major life changes, but I didn't even know that was a thing.

SPEAKER_01: 10:07

Oh, wow, okay.

SPEAKER_02: 10:09

That like don't make any major life decisions for like the first year of grief. Oh like sell your house because you don't want to be emotional and all of a sudden just I'm not saying you shouldn't sell your house. Everyone has to find their own path, but I'm just using an example. Like, don't do anything drastic just because you're in the midst of this emotional lifestorm, and then when it kind of clears, you're like, Oh, I shouldn't have done that because they're not ready to really make maybe the best judgments. Yeah. Ridiculous amount of insane hard emotions. So but I had a family and I had kids, and so I had to do what was best for us. So I was forced kind of to make a lot of decisions way quicker than I probably should have advisably logically have made, but because of the circumstance and the life situations I was in, we moved cross-country like less than 90 days after my husband died. So anyway.

SPEAKER_01: 10:54

But I feel like even with those decisions, like it was it was to help you and your family, you know what I mean? And so you were obviously in New Hampshire because your partner, right? Your husband, right? Like, were you there because of like his military work and also because of school and and everything else? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 11:15

And then he had done what's called IST interstate transferred from Louisiana National Guard to the New Hampshire National Guard, and so we moved up there for the that, and then uh two years later he decided to go active guard, and then he just finished out his career, and he was only a year from retirement, and so the plan was we were gonna finish it out there, and then when he retired from the military, we were gonna move somewhere else to where we got a job, and well, that didn't happen. So anyway, here we are.

SPEAKER_01: 11:38

Here we are, yeah. And it's like you started writing, right?

SPEAKER_02: 11:43

And so like I've been writing since I was a kid. Um inherently go write. I think I knew, even though I don't know even though I didn't know as a kid to the degree that I know as an adult, as much as I love America and I think we live in an amazing place and all of our country, the way disabilities are handled and managed and addressed in this country are not the best and they are not the kindest to disabled population. And somehow I knew inherently, like I said, not to the degree I do as an adult, I knew my life was going to be different as a kid, and so I knew that I always felt drawn to the written word. I always felt like I had a message, I had a voice, and that as long as I could write, no one could take that from me, no matter what else may not be given to me. And so as long as I had a way to write, I could always have a voice and have a way of giving something to the world and letting my story be told. And so um I wrote my first editorial when I was in second grade. Like, and I also like politics, which I'm not saying we have to get in that now, but it's the first example of seeds of my writing, is I think it was 86, 87. 87 would have been second grade for me, and we were living in Texas at the time because I'm originally from Texas. I think we heard about in school or something, there was a big Supreme Court case about whether the the right or the idea of burning the flag should fall under the First Amendment rights in the Constitution. And I'm not here to debate that, but my point is I was all hot and bothered and told my mom about it. She's like, Well, you should write an editorial and express your opinion. Uh-huh. Okay. So this little eight-year-old kid writes this editorial to this newspaper in her local town. She's living in Texas, and I actually freaking published it. And so that was my first written. Wow. So that's the reason I brought it. So I've literally been writing my whole life. Now, obviously, what I write now is not what I wrote when I was a kid, or oh dear God, I hope not. We're all in trouble. But and then I wrote my first poem in fourth grade. So as I've journeyed through life, I've always been drawn to the written word. And then I had a high school teacher, English teacher, so you've got a gift, you could use this to really whatever in the world. And so I started developing my craft. Now, because of my disability, when I'm in school, school is a full-time job for me. If I want to do well in academia, which I do, so I don't really do anything else. So the process of writing my first book was a lot more slow and drawn out because high school, college, first marriage, life, you know, whatever. And then grad school attempt and then whatnot. And then that family came out in 2011. But then I went to grad school and was in grad school for five years. And so I was busy writing for papers for the professors, but not my crap. But that was when I got a lot of my new brainstorms for all the series that I built out over the last six years. So I just tucked them away while I was in grad school. And then when I got out of grad school in 2016, I took a month off. I said, I don't want to see a book, I don't want to hear a book, I don't want to do no work for a month. I've worked my butt off for five years. Don't talk to me about anything. I am literally going to decompress and mentally take a break. And then my daughter started first grade that year. I took all those ideas I'd had for the last five years while in grad school and organized them. And so when I was in grad school, I would do my homework during nap time and at night when the kids were asleep or on the weekends. And so I traded nap time and nighttime work and weekend work for grad school work for writing work. And then I started writing my first two books. And the motherhood series, that's just what I felt called. That's what I was in. I'm I'm still a mom, but that was the season of life I was in, is like going through that. And then my husband died, and that kind of went to a screeching that I had to like basically figure out what the crap and put our world back together. Because your world gets destroyed when grief happens. It just does. It's like a hand grenade that goes off in your world and to bits. But and then once I got everything settled and kind of got on an even more like keel of the immediate triage and frenzy of everything kind of not dissipated but kind of went back more to normal life, not what's normal and there's dang through your new normal after grief, but just the idea of more of an even flow of being able to do things. I started writing because that's just inherently who I am. When I'm not writing, I'm thinking about writing, I'm talking about writing is what I do. And then over the last six years, created all these books that I had planned in grad school that I've now been able to write. And so I do that, and I take the opportunity, like I said, I feel like in life when you go through things, you're given a story, you're given a message, you're given a voice that you're it's given for a reason, so that maybe what you've gone through can help maybe equip or empower or shed light for someone else along their journey. And so I do that. I do speak, I do do Mary Kay, and now I'm trying to build out based off of one of the book series that I wrote was Finding Grace Through Grief, is a study I've created, and so I'm gonna be working on building that out. I do write on a variety of topics. I have a series on my faith, I have a series on my life story, which is the now I see one, and then that's how finding grace came to be about. In the now I see series, I talk about what it's like to travel this journey of 38 Triple D, and then like the grief part. And then I felt like that people who are actually grieving needed a more practical, applicable, relatable material to help them through that. So that's how finding grace came to be, and now the study that I'm gonna be doing. And then I did a motherhood series, then I did one not to not about my kids and not written for children, but written to my kids about once you become adults, this is what I want you to take out in your journey of this is what you need for life type thing, like what I want to instill in them. And then, like I said, I'm a little bit of an odd duck because I actually enjoy politics. So I did write a series on not who's right or who's wrong, but understanding what our country is about called We the People. So my point in all that is that is the sixth series that I have out currently. Uh there'll probably be two more down the line. But the finding grace through grief one, yes, I write about it in the context of grief, but the crux of that, excuse me, the crux of that series is d helping people discover the five keys of finding grace through grief. And even though it's written in the context of grief, it really is five keys that would help anyone navigate diversity because I really actually learned this stuff early on in life. I just didn't call it what I'm calling it now because I didn't put the verbiage on it when you're a kid, but it's the same thing I used to get through my disability. So I learned it early on, and then it's kind of like muscle memory. Once you've done it once, you're like, oh, okay, I know what this looks like. I've done this before. So when I got divorced, I'm like, now I know what to do, my roadmap for getting through a divorce. I feel like in life we have a choice. We can either be a victim or a victor, we can choose to just survive or thrive, we can, you know, overcome or not overcome. And once you make that choice to decide to overcome, overcoming is overcoming is overcoming in the sense that, yes, each adversity may be have its own idiosyncrasies that are unique to each person. But the choice of overcoming and wanting to work through the obstacle requires the same thing, whether you're overcoming a medical thing, a financial thing, a relationship thing, a grief thing, a disability, or whatever you have, a family thing, it's still overcoming. It's the same skill set. And yes, I talk about this skill set within the confines of grief or the context of grief, but it's really applicable universally, and that's why I think it could help so many people. And if you want, I'm sure you have questions, and that's fine. I'll take a breath and let you ask. But I'd be happy to walk your audience to those five keys.

SPEAKER_01: 18:54

I was gonna ask you about those five keys, because it seems like through your disability um you've been able to learn from that. Like, I mean, we all have obstacles that get in our way, and and you know, for for anyone, like you know what I mean, that it as it is going through grief right now or it has been through grief, you know, there's always there's always reminders, or there's always periods in your life where you know you reflect on that person because you can't forget who they are, right? Like, even though they're gone and they're not alone here.

SPEAKER_02: 19:25

It just pissed me the crap off in fall of 2017. I watch a lot of TV, okay, and an insane amount of TV, way more than I probably ever should. And I was like, okay, finally, I can enjoy my TV shows in the fall, it'll give me a middle break. I can forget about everything. Every single one of those dead gum shows in the fall was tied to someone who lost one. I'm like, are you freaking kidding me? This is supposed to be my break, and now you're making me think about I'm like, okay, that happened. It was cathartic and it made me slow down and think about it, even though I didn't want to, but worked out, but I'm like, How is this an in vogue topic or popular trendy in network TV for at least one character to be a widower or a widower? I'm like, was this?

SPEAKER_01: 20:08

Who are you watching? So what show is this?

SPEAKER_02: 20:10

Okay, 2017, season eight of Blue Bloods. We all found out that Linda Reagan had passed away and Danny Reagan was a widower. Okay. Oh, okay. I think Ray Donovan was still on and he was a widower because his wife had died of cancer. I was like, I can't get away from this. Like what's going on in the world? Like, what you're killing me. I'm supposed to be escaping this, and every I'm surrounded by my entertainment. I'm like, y'all suck. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01: 20:36

Yeah, you know what? I find I find like if you're trying to, like, there's a saying, if you're going through hell, keep going, right? Winston Churchill says that. But clearly you were trying to escape with television, and it it was just like a reminder of what was happening in the world. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 20:52

Honest conversations, real experiences, and lessons we can all take with us. Diva tonight. Glamour for your ears.

SPEAKER_01: 21:02

Okay, so that aside, that TV aside, getting back to the writing. So what was your what was your favorite author when you were a kid? Because I wrote a lot when I was a kid too. And my I have a favorite author. So but who was yours?

SPEAKER_02: 21:16

I didn't really have them growing up. I became because alright, legally blind. So readings, even though I have the heart of a book wor bookworm and book lover, physically reading a book is is agonizing because I have to look really close. Within five or ten minutes, my eyes are killing, my neck's exhausted. I'm like, this isn't fun. So since about fourth to fifth grade, what's been my lifeline to taking in the world and taking in knowledge is through either people reading to me or audiobooks. I love audiobooks. I'll read everything on audiobooks. I have favorite authors growing up. But as I become an adult in the secular world, I can do Nicholas Sparks, J.K. Rawlings, and John Grisham type things. And then, excuse me, um, in the Christian world, I have several Dr. Gary Chapman, Five Low Languages Guy, I have Max Licato, there is Storio Martin, and there's a couple others that I'm not coming to. Oh, and unfortunately he just passed away. John MacArthur, he's good. John Piper, there was John and Stacey Eldridge, a whole bunch of people in that world. But anyway.

SPEAKER_01: 22:17

Yeah. So you're saying when you were younger, you weren't reading a lot. I don't know if there was a lot of books at that time that were in Braille. Like, I mean, do you read Braille or was it easier for you to do it that way? Like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02: 22:30

Here's the irony. In the sighted world, I'm a I'm literate, like I can read, right? But in the blind, visually impaired world, I'm illiterate because this is what most people don't realize. In Braille, there are three grades as they're called. You have Braille is basically built off of if you look at an egg carton, like a dozen egg carton, you cut it in half because the whole system of Braille is based off of a six dot sale. Like if you were looking at a sale of like six eggs, you would have on the left dots one, two, and three, and on the right, you would have four, five, and six. So every letter is built off of those six dots. So like the letter A in Braille is the top left first number one dot. Um I think L in Braille is the one.

SPEAKER_01: 23:16

So what you're saying is what that you have to learn Braille in order to re to use it.

SPEAKER_02: 23:22

And so Grade one is your basic alphabet numbers, punctuation, and things like that. Okay? Which I did know a little bit. It's been a long time. But then grade two, you know how back in the day when you had um stylist or not stylists, ones that would dictators or not dictators, but like they would take they would take diction for the sec the secretaries that would be stenographers, that was the word I was looking for, who would take the the notes and dictate it or type up, you know, secretaries. They had their own shorthand because they didn't want to write everything out. Well, Braille grade two is basically the Braille's version of a shorthand for a stenographer or a secretary who did dictation. So let's I'm not sure exactly how it works, but the concept behind it is let's take the word brush. Okay, you have brush or br sush. So they're gonna have a symbol for either B R and then maybe for U and then S-H or B-R-U-S-H. So it's gonna be built upon a symbol. So maybe that word, because there's two syllables in that word, I think you're gonna have two symbols to shorten instead of having to write out B-R-U-S-H, you're gonna have two symbols that write out the word. I don't know grade two, and the whole braille world is written in grade two. So ironic of irony is in the sighted world I'm literate, and in the braille world, I'm illiterate. And then grade three is uh even more like your own personal shorthand of what you want to do in braille, and I don't even know what that looks like. But so I prefer audiobooks or have people like in college, I had readers that read to me. And then in grad school, when I was a mom in New Hampshire, I would have all of my audio textbooks in grad school playing in the background while I was playing with the kids and cleaning house. Anyway.

SPEAKER_01: 25:07

So So that's how you essentially did your reading through audiobooks. I mean, audiobooks is is is amazing now. There's so many, there's so many books that you can read on Audible, right? And so a lot has changed. Technology is a blessing and a curse, right? But I still I still like a good hard copy. Like I don't think I will ever get used to I would love reading things down.

SPEAKER_02: 25:29

I would sit down and read them and hear that crisp turning of the pages, and I get it, but I just it's worked for me and I'm not gonna do it. I'm gonna I'm gonna buy them the ones that I really love and collect them because I read that book on Audible and I want the hard copy if I ever want it, you know. But it I it I've gotta be really determined if I'm gonna physically sit down and read a book with my own eyes. I'm like, yeah, no, not gonna happen. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 25:48

Well, I mean, we all have to work with what we're given, right? And so obviously you you have your your workaround, right? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02: 25:56

And so we all have to about everything except for driving, because legally I'm not allowed to drive, which is a good thing, and medically it's not advisable. So aside from anything that is medically not advisable or legally not allowed or dangerous, I pretty much I believe if you have a mountain and that you can't move the mountain, then you either need to find a way over it, under it, through it, or around it. And that's basic I do what everyone else does normally normal people do. I just have to find my own way of doing it. And so I've done that at every step of the way. Like I've always had accommodations at every level and phase and grade of school since I was five years old.

SPEAKER_01: 26:29

Oh wow. So it's always you've always got a way around, right? To figure it out.

SPEAKER_02: 26:34

So even with drive, I just either hire people or thank God we have Ubers or Lyft now, or while I inherently agree with supporting um small small businesses, I anything I can do for my house or have shipped to me, I'm all about it because it makes my life easier because I don't have to worry about how I'm gonna get it. So I love me some Amazon because it kind of straight.

SPEAKER_01: 26:54

Yes, it does, right? You know? And people are like, Amazon. I mean your book is on Amazon too, right?

SPEAKER_02: 27:01

And so And people are like, where'd you spend your Christmas budget? One word for you, baby. How many, how much I don't I'm afraid to ask how much money I've spent on Amazon over these years.

SPEAKER_01: 27:12

You don't want to look at the bill, right? I mean that you know, I'm always buying another notebook like you. I write a lot. I do write a lot, and I did, and I can relate to you with the poem, right? You know, I wrote this one poem in grade six, and I think they published it in the newspaper. So there's the arts has always been a thing for me too. Um like I do enjoy reading and writing, but I think I I I kind of like paused on the writing for a while, and I haven't read a poem in a really long time. But hearing you talk about your own experiences, the fact that it's been a journey for you, and it's something that's always been there. You know what I mean? Like when you're a kid, to whoever's listening, I find like when you're a kid, the things that you were good at when you're a kid, like they they're still there when you're older. Like this the passion for reading, like I all I always love learning, and even now I love learning about people and their experiences and and and knowledge of power and the fact that you yeah, you're creating actually my leaving your legacy, like in terms of the written work, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 28:19

My first book I ever wrote was a collection of poetry, and that was back in 2011. And one of these days I'll get back to my roots. I just have too many other things on my plate. Now, this is gonna sound totally crazy, and I wrote about this in one of my motherhood books, and it was based off of a scene between Richard Gere and um Jason Alexander and Pretty Woman. Oh, wow, okay. And they were and it kind of talks about what we just said. They were sitting in his office, and Richard Gere's character said, When I was a kid, I loved to build things. I loved playing with blocks. We don't build anything. And Jason Alexander said, Okay, when I was a kid, I love money. So what? We we make a lot of money. And so I think it's interesting to see, like you said, that what our kids are into when they're kids, it's like it's almost the beginning seeds of what their life's passions are gonna be, and very well could be a piece of their big puzzle of what they're gonna end up doing in life. And I don't think we as adults pay attention to that, where it can be really telling and something you might want to tune into when you have kids. Like out of all the things my son's been into, to this day, he still plays with Legos. It's like his favorite thing, and he's done Legos for years, and like it's like he loves building things, he loves that creative outlet. So I'm like, I'm paying attention to that thing, where is that creative outlet of building and creating gonna play into his adult picture? So I I think it's fascinating and interesting to kind of tune into that, and your kids are telling you something without even realizing it because they don't know that's what that means, but there's something to it, and it's fascinating.

SPEAKER_01: 29:45

Yeah. And so, yeah, we haven't talked about much about you being a mom and and and navigating like grief and raising them, and how has that been in the last year?

SPEAKER_02: 29:56

Your grief journey looks very different. Like I said, it's not bad, it's not good, it's not wrong or right, it's just different. There's a big difference between when you are an older person in their sixties, seventies, whatever, you've raised your kids, you have grandkids, and your person dies, it doesn't make it any less harder. It just allows you a different approach to your grief journey that maybe is easier than when you're a mom and you have a six-year-old and three-year-old, and literally asked. I literally found out at nine o'clock Eastern time on that Tuesday, my husband was gone, and I had to be up at six a.m. in the morning and get my daughter off to school and act like nothing happened. That was the best freaking Oscar rewarding performance of my life. She didn't have a clue what had just happened less than nine hours ago. Only but God would I'd be able to pull that one off. And I went to bed at 2 30 in the morning that night, and I was up at six doing my usual thing because I had kids. Life doesn't stop just because you're in the middle of it. You should do what you have to do. It doesn't say, I'm sorry, you get to go on break for six months. No, not really.

SPEAKER_01: 31:00

But what when did you tell them that it happened?

SPEAKER_02: 31:03

Like when when did you finally like my head was spinning and I was like, my first thought was how in the heck am I gonna tell my daughter her dad's gone? She was how am I gonna break her? How am I gonna destroy our world? And so I it took me, I don't know, probably a good twenty-four hours because I wanted to r do something that would relate to her because like she was six. I mean, these are hard conversations at any age, but you have to tell a six-year-old or three year old that your dad's gone? Like, how do you do that? That's like something you don't even want to think about ever having to do, and yet I'm having to do it, and I don't have a frickin' clue how to do it. I literally swear I could write a book over the last eight years like with the caption of I've never done this before.

SPEAKER_01: 31:40

But now I have to do it. Like the hardest thing, the hardest thing. I mean, what is the hardest thing in life? I think you've gone through, like you said, the 3Ds, like you know, divorce, um, disability, and death. And and those are hard. Those are hard things, right?

SPEAKER_02: 31:56

I don't know your background, I don't know your audience background, but this is what happened. So it was Wednesday morning, the morning after it happened. I was in the kitchen doing the usual thing, standing at my kitchen sink, trying to do dishes, get ready for school, get breakfast, and I remember thinking in my head, because I am a a Christian, a believer, I remember praying, going, Lord, I don't know what I'm gonna do, I don't know how I'm gonna tell Megan, I need something. You need to point me in a direction because I don't have the fingest idea how to do this. And like I said, I don't know your background, I don't know your beliefs, but this is what happened, this is the story. You could have knocked me over with a feather. My daughter hadn't been a Christian that long at this point, probably a little bit over a year. She comes in the kitchen, and I'm standing at the kitchen saying, I'll never forget this as long as I live. Some moments just stay with you, right? And I'm doing what I'm doing, and she says, Mommy, I need to tell you something. I'm like, what, baby? She says, I think Jesus is really happy when people come to see him. She didn't have a clue what had just happened. She had no clue that her dad had just died and that he was in heaven and that he went to go see Jesus yet. You could have knocked me over with a feather. I'm like, R this is a six-year-old child who knew nothing, nothing about what had just happened less than two hours ago. So that was like, okay, God, message received. So when my parents got to town on Thursday, I think I was waiting because I wanted to have not that there's ever a perfect way to tell a kid your parents gone, but I knew with her grandparents there it would give her extra support. And so and they always love to hear what they're doing and saying and the new things, and I knew she'd want to tell her grandparents about the conversation we had. And so they got there in time to get her off the bus and surprise her because they it was around Easter and they were gonna come in for Easter anyway, but they just moved their trip up about a week, no, about 12 days, and we're in for a while. And I was like, I said, Hey baby, now that you've seen your grandparents, why don't you tell them about this cool conversation that we had yesterday morning in the kitchen? She's like, Okay. So she told my mom and dad what she said that I just told you. I said, Well, baby, I need to tell you something about that conversation. She's like, What, mommy? Jesus is really happy right now. She's like, Why? Because Daddy went to go see Jesus Tuesday night. That's how I told her. That's the only thing I knew to do. I met her where she was at, and something that she brought to me that I thought she would have the slightest ability to try and understand and relate to. Yeah. And that's Did she cry? Yeah. Yes. Cried and I kind of just very generally w watched and waited to see what she wanted to do. Because we were we usually go out to eat when my parents get to town. And because of all the different nothing was usual at this point. There was no usual anymore. There was a new usual, but not our usual. That's why I call normal. Yeah. Which is all by the way. But yeah, yeah. Now I have teenagers, you know, instead of, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 34:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 34:31

And that's a whole another thing in itself, amongst everything else. It's a whole other thing in itself, and you put it together and you really have a new normal. But I was like, we can stay home, we can go out. What would she say? No, I want to go out. I was like, okay, we'll go out. And it was supposed to be art night, like art show or something. Do you want to stay home or do you no, I want to go. Like, she needed the normalcy. I was like, okay. And I gave her the option not to go to school the next morning. She's like, no, I want to go be with my friends. I'm like, okay. I feel like sometimes we have to take our cues from our kids, and I don't mean let them make every decision like you can't go to bed on time or you can't brush your teeth, but like when you're going through something, you need to see what's going to best serve them to help get through it. So if your kid is doing something, you might want to pay attention to it. Like she wanted to be with her friends. She wanted that routine. She needed to hang on to something that she understood and knew was normal to kind of keep her going through this when everything was upside down and spinning out of orbit.

SPEAKER_01: 35:20

Yeah. I think when you're young, it doesn't hit you the same way. I think when you're a kid, like because I mean at six years old, like you're still figuring it out, right? And yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 35:32

I told that for kids, oftentimes grief is very delayed. Because I mean they're still developing, and so their emotional and their mental development is different. So then the way they respond to it is gonna be totally different. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 35:44

Yeah. Well, I'm gonna add a little education to this is that Piaget's theory is years before five last the rest of their lives, but obviously from five onwards, they're still building the memories and they're still finding out who they are as people. And so even at that time, maybe when you're telling her that, it it may not be registering the same way if you had told her if she was twelve or fifteen. You know what I mean? And so it's it's interesting how how resilient kids are and and how they adapt to their environment, right?

SPEAKER_02: 36:17

And so And so what I've done over the last eight years that I've done ear, like I said earlier in my life, about back to the five keys that I wrote about in my books. And and I think another part of that foundation can be is your purpose and why that you have to hold you strong, that like no matter what, I have to do this thing, even though nothing seems like it was supposed to be. So I remember when I found out that my husband was gone, my first thought was I don't know what's gonna be next, I don't know what's gonna happen, I don't know anything other than I have to be there for my kids. That is the one thing I know. I have to make sure they're okay and do what it takes to make sure that they're okay. And so it's been about my kids, and it will always be about my kids. And it always was about my kids, but even more so now that I'm the only one they have. You know what I mean? This became all that much dire, you know what I mean, when you're the only parent. And so I think those components of finding your grounding and your footing is having your grounding is a foundation that's either built on your faith or a belief or a purpose or an inherent why or inherent something that drives you or a source of community of support of either your family or friends or whatever that looks like for you. So that's the first part of grace is having your grounding. And then the second part of grace is the R, which comes to redesign, which goes back to I've always had this thing about I was not gonna be defined by my circumstances in life, whether that was my disability, my divorce, grief now, whatever. I was choosing to define it for myself, and basically me, I'm not gonna be put in a box. I'm going to chart my own path and figure out what works for me, like what I want out of life. I don't have to be, okay, well, this is the hand I was dealt, so that's just what it is, and I just don't get a choice. No, that's not true. Life is about choices, whether we want them to be or not. And well, someone says, Well, I don't want to make a choice. Well, theoretically, and you not choosing, you're still making a choice because you're choosing not to choose. So it still boils down to our choices, and I believe very strongly that whichever set of choices you string together very much will easily take you on one journey that gets you to one destination, as opposed to if maybe you had chose another set of choices that were strung together that would lead you in a completely different opposite direction. So I've always chosen to never quit, never give up, never stop, and not say, and I don't take no very well. You tell me no pretty much means I'm gonna do it.

SPEAKER_01: 38:29

I do have a question though. I I feel like this is a theory of mine, but out of do you have any sibling? Oh yeah, you only child. You're an only child.

SPEAKER_02: 38:40

Oh okay. Perfectionist, you know, all the things. Yeah, yeah. But I am very much a southern Texas redhead Scorpio, so use your imagination. So I don't know how to edit this expression, but that whole thing of hold my beer and sit back and watch, there you go.

SPEAKER_01: 38:58

Oh wow, I haven't heard that term. Mind you, I'm Canadian through and through, but I have been to Texas. But it seems to me like like you were saying, there's there's so many stages and the things that hold you through grief and and you know, um, you said redeem, and then I've also noticed that you said um you mentioned abundance, learning to live in abundance. Umset, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 39:22

I mean it can be finances, but I'm not a financial planner. I have someone for that. I'm mainly talking about the idea, the concept of mindset is the our mindset is the ultimate master key unlocking all the doors and the game changer, because it's very true when it said mind over matter, and like the quote of if you believe you can or if you believe you can't, you're right. Because if you put your mind to it, you can do anything. So if you believe you can't do it, you're probably not gonna do it. But if you believe you can, then you will do it. And so I think there's a lot of power in making sure you have a positive, healthy, good mindset mental space to allowing you. I mean, that's half the battle right there. If you're Trying to achieve something or work through something or reach a goal, that's half the battle is your mindset that allows you to do it. And so I feel like if you can have that mindset of whatever you need to, it'll allow you to get through this a lot easier than if you don't have the right mindset. And then oftentimes in our mindset will allow you to stay true to the choices you make in your design of your new life that you're grounded in that allows you to do it. And then and there's a lot of things that go into having a right mindset. It's like maybe just holding to something that you believe is true to help you stay positive, or you know, maybe it's remembering the things you're grateful for and finding this the even if it's as small as a grain or a sliver of sunshine amongst the clouds of your life storm to see the silver lining that there's always something to be grateful for, even in the hardest of times. And that's even a choice. But then you look at the sea and it's choosing care and clarity over chaos and confusion.

SPEAKER_01: 40:54

Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that, like because in like when things are falling apart, uh when the chaos is happening, I think that a lot of some of us who've had experiences in life, like we're used to chaos. And so when things are not chaotic, like just like care. So how do you know like what you should care about and what should be important? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02: 41:15

It's well, it's not even about what you care about, it's more about the care you give yourself to allow yourself to get what you need during those storms. So like I really feel like all of these could be separate conversations, but self-care is very important because it's in caring for ourselves that allow us to stay balanced and clear-minded and focused and like okay, now I can think through what I need to do because I'm not cluttered up by all this junk. So caring for yourself allows you to stay to have a good mental space, to stay true to your choices that you're grounded in. So it's all connected. And I think self-care is vital because I don't know about you, but you've probably seen I can't just do one thing. I'm an extremely busy woman. And I think for women, we're so good at doing all the things to all people all the time that we're like wells that if we are always giving out our water, we're risking running dry, and there's gonna be nothing left to give, and then we won't be our best version of ourselves to give the best version to whoever we're trying to be, our loved ones, our family who we're helping or taking care of, and they want the best. Not only do our loved ones want the best for us, they want the best version of ourselves. So I think self-care is extremely vital and it can make the difference between surviving and thriving. I personally was not always the best at self-care, but I learned real quick in grief that if I wanted to be able to be the best version of me and do and by doing that, I am doing the best I can for my kids because I'm gonna be available for them, but also give them the best gift of being the best mom I can be. I needed to do self-care, and I think there's a lot of misnomers and myths around self-care, like I have so much to do, I can't stop. No, actually you can. You're actually gonna do better if you take 30 minutes for yourself because you're gonna have a clear mind to go back to whatever you thought you couldn't wait to do, that you'll do it more efficiently and better anyway, because you'll be focused on it. And unfortunately, as much as we may not like it, that laundry pile and those piles of dishes, I promise you'll still be there 30 minutes later. We may wish they disappeared with like a fairy godmother one, so we didn't have to do them, but I promise you they will be very happy they're waiting for you to address, unfortunately, when you get done taking care of yourself. May not be fun, you may wish they had vanished, but they're gonna be there.

SPEAKER_01: 43:21

Oh my goodness. As as I am not a mom, but I've heard this from another mom. And and I've talked to a few moms now, and the dishes and the laundry and and just taking care. And I think in in life when you have kids or like when you're going through different things, like maintaining the house and keeping it clean. Like you said, they're gonna be there. And I think that's that's our guilt kicking in because we know like you know, that's having a caving a clean house, right? And and sometimes you can't always do the things, right?

SPEAKER_02: 43:55

So part of the steward, okay? I'm like, no, I mean basically how to make the fifty and I don't even know what. I'm like, and life's too short, and I would rather my kids enjoy me than mom's always I don't know, I just don't unless you have a house kidding.

SPEAKER_01: 44:11

Which I actually I mean you can't be perfect, but with life, things happen, and uh and I'm I'm grateful that you've shared just even to touch base with that, because there's so much to talk about with grief. And like if anyone is interested in reading any of your books, they are available on Amazon, right? Right.

SPEAKER_02: 44:32

Yeah, right. I would like to say I don't think anyone on their deathbed says, Oh my gosh, I wish I dusted more. I wish I had cleaned the the whatever corner baseboards better. I no one says that on their deathbeds, so it doesn't matter. So I'm like why um not that you don't want to have a clean house or a clean place to live in, but the way we obs women can obsess over some things, it really doesn't matter, people. It just doesn't matter. The last one in the keys is the being equipped because you need things in life to be able to do all this stuff, right? And so don't be afraid to get what you need to help you get the care you need, to help you maintain the mental mindset that you need to stay strong to the choices you want to do for your life, to be grounded in so that you can live your best life and be the best version of yourself. So those are the five keys of grace that has allowed me to work through all the things I've had to work through on my journey of 38 Triple D to go from surviving to thriving. And I still use them on a daily basis.

SPEAKER_01: 45:27

And now that you are in your 40s, what do you say to the woman out there who is in her 40s and you know, life has happened? What do you say to that, to her?

SPEAKER_02: 45:39

I say this a lot in grief, but I also think it's applicable. I think when we're going through hard seasons in life, whether it's grief-related or other things, we need to be kind to ourselves and give ourselves a lot of grace and space and freedom to, you know, be okay with we may not be okay, or it may be a new normal, or that we need a minute to just figure it out. And I think we don't do ourselves any service by not giving ourselves enough grace. And I'm speaking as a perfectionist to her partner herself, okay? I don't need anyone to whatever me about anything because I can be the hardest on myself. But I'm learning to give myself grace and that it really is okay. The world is not gonna fall apart, no one is no pun intended or portraits or nothing is gonna die if it's not taken care of right away, okay?

SPEAKER_01: 46:25

Yes. Yes. It's gonna get done eventually. We will figure it out. We will. We always do. I think in life, we always do. And I'll reiterate what you said. If it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger. And I agree with that completely.

SPEAKER_02: 46:45

Um perfectionism is more about as long as we're trying to do our best to make progress at some point. It's about learning and growing. So, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 46:53

Well, thank you, Michaela Cox for sharing your journey and and sharing your experiences. And you know, the book itself, right? There's more than one book. Which one do you find that many resonate with in terms of the books that you've written?

SPEAKER_02: 47:08

I would say if someone really wants to say which one would you read first, I would say no, I see, because it's my journey, it's the walking people through everything we've talked about today. Everything I've been through. I mean, I can't fit everything in a book. It would be oh God. I mean whatever.

SPEAKER_01: 47:23

But the fact that you wrote a book, you know, that's a huge undertaking, right? You know what I mean? Not everyone they say they want. Yeah, like you know, you've written more than one book, and um, that's amazing, right?

SPEAKER_02: 47:34

And so snapshot into what it's like to have traveled a journey that I've lived through and what I would tell people. So I would start there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 47:41

Okay, amazing. Michaela A. Cox. The book is called Now I See, and you can get it on Amazon. I'm Carlene, and this is Diva Tonight with Michaela Cox and Louisiana. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02: 47:56

Well, thank you for having me, and it's been an honor to be here, and I hope that your listeners out there hold on to a nugget that maybe helps them along their journey as well.

SPEAKER_01: 48:04

For sure, I think it will. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 48:06

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