This episode is an important and difficult discussion about grief including the impact it can have on our careers. When Courtney was in her early twenties, her mom, Lois, died suddenly. Courtney had to find her way to the other side of this traumatic life event.
Grief forces us to approach life situations differently and Courtney knew she had to reframe her thinking and evaluate how she saw her life moving forward. For Courtney, running was her safe place. The escape she felt while running and then through cycling, helped her to get through.
Courtney’s determination, passion and resilience were defining pillars in the creation of LOST Cycle–a safe space to move, feel and escape.
Lois continues to be an important part of the script, but the movie that is Courtney’s life continues to be shaped and defined by her resilience, her zest for life, and her full-on heart.
Courtney joined us earlier this season on Episode 5 where we learned about her business LOST Cycle. (find that episode here: S3: Ep 5).
More on Ford Keast Human Resources can be found here: https://www.fordkeast.com/services/human-resource-consulting/
& for all the podcast and YouTube information visit our website:
https://www.career-resilience.com/
If you enjoyed this podcast or our YouTube video and need support in your own career resilience please do get in contact with Jann at HR@fordkeasthrc.ca We would love to hear from you!
Want to show your support?
Subscribe and leave a review! It means a lot!
Thank you
Jann Danyluk, Career Resilience.
This episode is an important and difficult discussion about grief including the impact it can have on our careers. When Courtney was in her early twenties, her mom, Lois, died suddenly. Courtney had to find her way to the other side of this traumatic life event.
Grief forces us to approach life situations differently and Courtney knew she had to reframe her thinking and evaluate how she saw her life moving forward. For Courtney, running was her safe place. The escape she felt while running and then through cycling, helped her to get through.
Courtney’s determination, passion and resilience were defining pillars in the creation of LOST Cycle–a safe space to move, feel and escape.
Lois continues to be an important part of the script, but the movie that is Courtney’s life continues to be shaped and defined by her resilience, her zest for life, and her full-on heart.
Courtney joined us earlier this season on Episode 5 where we learned about her business LOST Cycle. (find that episode here: S3: Ep 5).
More on Ford Keast Human Resources can be found here: https://www.fordkeast.com/services/human-resource-consulting/
& for all the podcast and YouTube information visit our website:
https://www.career-resilience.com/
If you enjoyed this podcast or our YouTube video and need support in your own career resilience please do get in contact with Jann at HR@fordkeasthrc.ca We would love to hear from you!
Want to show your support?
Subscribe and leave a review! It means a lot!
Thank you
Jann Danyluk, Career Resilience.
| 00:12 | I'm so excited to welcome you to season three of career resilience. My name is Jan Danyluk. I'm a senior human resources consultant at Ford Keast, a progressive accounting firm in London, Ontario, Canada.
| 00:26 | Each week I get to talk with people about their career path and their career journey and maybe we can all learn from each other how to be a little bit more resilient in the challenging world of work. Please check out my website career dash resilience dot com where you'll find season one and season two and now season three. Welcome. Love what you do and do what you love. The best career advice I've received follow the fun.
| 00:54 | Those opportunities will just organically and present themselves. You know, establish those connections and maintain those connections. Acceptance just means accepting what is like. Don't think we should just put ourselves in a box. At the end of the day, it was always me that I said, I'm not doing good enough right now. I want it to always be you know movie night on Friday night. And welcome to career resilience, everyone. My guest today is Courtney Stache. Courtney, welcome back to career resilience.
| 01:26 | Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be back. Yeah. And that's kind of unusual for me. There's only a couple people that have come back on and so it's great to see you again. And you were with us actually this season on episode 5. So I encourage anyone listening to us today to go back and listen to episode 5 where we talked about Lost cycle, which is right here in London, Ontario, Courtney's business. She's an entrepreneur. She's an amazing woman.
| 01:56 | High energy. Great to chat with. So when we were chatting, we talked about the fact that your mom had passed away. Yes. So we decided that maybe what we would do is come back and talk a little bit about that and also about my own mother passing away. And just the effect that that has on us, on our careers actually, it does have an effect.
| 02:25 | And just on our lives overall. So we agreed that we would partner up and have that discussion. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is, I think this is an important and often difficult topic. And I think people who are going through grief or loss sometimes it's nice to just hear other perspectives and like many things, it makes you feel less alone when you know someone out there understands your pain or what you're going through.
| 02:55 | Yeah, exactly. So I just want to let everybody know that not necessarily to warn everybody, but just to let you know that we are talking about death and loss and grief today. So that is the focus of our topic together. I wanted to start by talking a little bit about grief. Then I wanted to actually talk about your mom and my mom and then talk about sort of some of the coping strategies that we had or have developed over the years.
| 03:31 | One thing I did ask you was what thought of the phrase that grief is a privilege? Yeah. What are your thoughts on that? Oh, I had mixed emotions. I, the first time I saw that together, grief is a privilege. I kind of had this defensive reaction. Like, no, it's not, you know? Like, there's nothing good about grief. Like, suffering or experiencing loss.
| 03:59 | Like, how is that a privilege? Like, anyone would change that, right? And then I thought about it more. And the more I thought about it, I felt like emotional coming to this realization that without grief, do we really know love if we don't know what it feels like to lose, will we ever understand the magnitude of love?
| 04:29 | Because when you lose something, you experience life differently after that. You, while you're losing so much, you're gaining this perspective on the world that you wouldn't have had, had you not had your world turned upside down, right? So in a sense, the grief we experience unlocks this part of us that allows ourselves to see the world differently that I feel like you can't get to some regard without experiencing that kind of grief.
| 05:06 | Now, I could be wrong, but that's just how I started to see it. Yeah. And I have struggled with that phrase myself. And actually, just because be honest, the first time I heard this was when my mother was actually dying, and of course, my mother was dying over a period of time. And that was one of the things that she said to me to comfort me in advance. And I said exactly what you kind of your first initial reaction was that I didn't need that kind of learning or privilege.
| 05:38 | Yeah, yeah. Having the person with me, but I do understand it in terms of if I hadn't known and loved that person, then I wouldn't have had that privilege of knowing her and therefore the gift is around, I had her from her, and I loved him incredibly. And then when I lost her, I had to honor everything we had together.
| 06:09 | Yeah. I love that. It feels like grief teaches you how to appreciate things differently. And that's not just with losing people. That can be with losing jobs or losing connections with friends. It often, if we're grieving the loss of that, it often teaches us how to approach things differently or reframe how we how we see things.
| 06:41 | Yeah. Yeah. I don't know about you, but my family grew up having animals as a kind of pets. Yeah. Yeah. And part of that was when you lost a pet, you started to understand the grief and loss as a person growing up. And honestly, it's the feeling when you're an animal that you love, right? Yeah.
| 07:10 | I think maybe we feel a little bit guilty about grieving animals in the same way, but it just hurts. It does. Yeah. And the magnitude for how intense it feels and what that looks like for every person is so different based on that relationship, right?
| 07:29 | Like I've known people that have taken a lot of time to grieve a grandparent, whereas for me, the loss of a grandparent, while devastating wasn't something that chipped away at me the same way that losing a parent where it's that immediate connection that that really changed for me. Yeah, that's true. Okay. Let's talk about what our moms are like.
| 07:56 | So if I say to you, what comes to mind when I ask you what your mom would like? My mom was a firecracker. Which is I think how most people would describe her, she was a Libra. But she was the loudest person in the room for sure. Love to put on a show.
| 08:26 | She had a big heart, so she loved to do really nice things for people and make people feel really special. She was silly. She loved to have a good time. But with big personality comes big highs in big lows. So while she was a very exciting person, there was you know parts of her that were also really sad at times or really angry at times.
| 08:57 | Which made our relationship a little bit rocky for most of our upbringing because I'm also you know kind of allowed in person and have a lot of energy. So my relationship with my mom was a journey to say the least, but the years that we were the closest were when I was in probably my mid 20s, so just soon before she passed, I would say was when we really, really connected as people.
| 09:33 | Now, do you have siblings? I have an older brother. So he's three years older than me. Okay. And were you too close? Yeah. So he lives in London as well, and we are still, we're still close. My brother has Asperger's. So his way of processing the loss of our mom was quite different. Naturally than mine. So that's been an interesting piece of this too.
| 10:04 | Yes, that would be. Now, did your mom have a career inside the hall? Yeah. So my mom was a real estate agent for royal lepage for I think something like 30 years. Wow. Yeah. She got into it in her late 20s, I believe, and then she did it most of her life. And she was really, she was a really great realtor. And she just had a very memorable energy about her.
| 10:35 | When she wanted things, she went after them and she would get them every time. Which you can see some of that I took from that kind of approach as well. No, were you your parents were together right up until your mom's death? No, my parents separated in, I believe it was 2007. And then she passed in 2014. So they had been divorced for about 7 years before.
| 11:06 | Yeah. And were you quite close to your dad as well as your mom? Yeah. And I still am very close with my dad. So that made my 20s quite difficult. Having my parents divorced when I was only like 19/20, I kind of became this middle friend kind of instantly. And I started to notice, I guess, early in my 20s that I was no longer the kid anymore.
| 11:39 | I felt equal with my parents and I wasn't ready to be that way. So our relationship has been, I guess, like different. Because I felt like I lost a bit of that. I wasn't ready to be the adult yet, you know? In a sense? Okay. Let me just tell you that probably my mom was a complete opposite of your mom, which is really yeah. But to describe her, I think she was phenomenally brave.
| 12:08 | I had have two brothers and they're older. And when I was ten, my mom woke me up one morning and said, we're leaving. Pack one suitcase, and we never went home again. And I saw my dad maybe two more times. I'm in his life, and that he was not an entity in my life, really.
| 12:35 | And so the family fractured. And so my mom was a very quiet person. She didn't work outside the home. We struggled to make ends meet for a lot of years. And that gave us a real companionship and also the opposite of you know how come everybody else can have that sweater and I can't have that sweater.
| 13:03 | That was kind of shallow things and deeper things as well. Yeah. So that brings me into what impact do you think your mom had on your career? I know for sure that the drive in me comes from her without a doubt. She was at a tough tough critic in a sense, but really believed in me in the same sense.
| 13:37 | So you know there were times growing up where it was difficult because I feel like I got good grades and then it would be like, okay, now let's aim higher. And I always felt like I didn't get long enough in that initial success. It was kind of like, okay, that's great. Now let's keep going. So in ways that's impacted my career and the way I approach my career in that I'm very driven and I don't give up easily.
| 14:09 | I don't go down without a fight, but I also still kind of struggle to take in those really successful moments without quickly jumping to like, okay, what do we have to get on top of next? So I'm trying to shake some of that off and it's been you know a journey for me as well, but I think there's still that part of me that's like, you have to keep going. And I recognize now that just because that was her way of doing things doesn't make it the right way in a way that I feel good about.
| 14:40 | So it's interesting. Yeah. How about you? On the other hand, because my mom didn't work outside the home. I always swore I would. Yeah. I would never rely on another person. Like a partner. I would always rely on me because I saw that. You know, what we had to deal with because she didn't have a career. She didn't have that independence.
| 15:11 | And I always wanted that independence. And I think that's one of the reasons I've been driven is because I want to have well controlled and actually Courtney. Yeah. Yeah. But isn't that everything in life? Yeah. It is all it is all about control and I get that. So well. Yeah. But mine was definitely a cheerleader. And she would always say, you will always land on your feet. Don't worry about that.
| 15:41 | Aw. You always will. And having that behind me was really lovely because we really, for many years, only had each other. Yeah. My brothers went off gosh knows where one of them went to BC and the other one. They both went to BC. Anyway, whatever. We weren't a family unit. It was just so. So it's just interesting not that we didn't have our moments where we would clash because you know what?
| 16:10 | I don't think that there ever is maybe this is too blankety, but a mother daughter relationship with the right clashes. What do you think of? No. I mean, I have found growing up that I had to not compare my relationship with my mom to others because I knew pretty early that we didn't have the same kind of relationship as other girls like.
| 16:38 | We went shopping together and you know do those little things together. But I never really opened up to her that much. And I felt like she couldn't open up to me or many people in general until much later in life.
| 16:56 | So while there were times where it felt like we were doing the mother daughter things, but there was this like emotional piece missing and I saw that sometimes with my friends and like the connections they had with their moms and there was many times that I was envious that I was like, why doesn't mine feel like that you know? So it's tough.
| 17:25 | I think mothers and daughters, it's such a tough relationship because mothers are doing everything they can to help you not end up using air quotes end up where they were or make the same mistakes and my therapist once said you have to let people live out their experiences the way they need to happen.
| 17:54 | And that hit me hard because it's not up to us or our moms to prevent anything bad from happening to us. It's more that they need to just be that loving support. When the bad things happen, eventually, you know? Yeah. Well, you know, I happen to have a daughter and myself. So I had that relationship. And I once said to her, you know, if you would just do everything I say yeah.
| 18:25 | Everything I say. You will have the perfect life. Yes. And of course, she didn't really listen to me very much, and she certainly didn't do everything I said. And I'm so proud of her life and what she's built in a complex. That I really pleased she didn't listen to me. Yeah. And that must be hard to watch, I think, for any parent or friend in general, you know, to watch someone maybe doing things in their life that you don't think are going to work out for them, or you have to watch them fall a bit.
| 19:02 | I get that. But at the same time, you know, you do kind of have to let people just figure it out. So I do feel like my mom kind of let me figure it out, but I felt like I would have benefited from the support earlier, I think. Yeah. To help us have that Bond earlier. Yeah. And just back to that you know.
| 19:32 | One of the things that somebody very clever said to me is I can really only live one life and it has to be mine. Yeah. Yeah, it's so true. We're all main characters, right? In our own stories. Yeah. So then time goes by and tell me about what happened when your mom passed away. Yeah. So my mom's passing was very sudden.
| 20:00 | I had actually just gotten a new job at Kleinfeld bridal. And in Toronto, so we had been kind of texting back and forth. I was in Toronto at the time she was in London. And I had been texting her about how we got to go on these mystery shops and try on all these dresses and how cool it was and we've just been chatting and then it was not uncommon that we would go like a day though with missing a text or so because we were both quite busy and we would just kind of pick up where we left off.
| 20:36 | But I hadn't heard from her for a bit the one day and then I was in the grocery store and my dad was calling me which was strange because he doesn't really ever call me without telling me he's going to. So I thought it was kind of weird and I answered and I could hardly hear him and he asked if I could sit down somewhere and at this time I mean my nana, his mother, she ended up living to be nearly a 101 years old.
| 21:09 | So she would have been like 90s at this time. So any time he would call me out of the blue, which didn't happen very often. I assumed it was nana. So I was like, oh gosh, it's going to be about nana. Yeah. So he was so he was like, can you sit down? And I was like, yeah, like on the phone like, yeah, I'm sitting down. Meanwhile, I'm in the grocery store. And he just says there's police and ambulances at your mom's house and she passed away.
| 21:43 | And I heard him, but like didn't hear him. And I asked him to repeat what he had just said. And then I realized the reason I was having trouble hearing him was that his voice was breaking up. So I kind of remember just asking him, like, if this was a joke or something, like a prank, like it just wasn't real. It wasn't real. Yeah. You know, she was perfectly healthy.
| 22:11 | She was 58 years old you know. It just didn't make sense. So I was in the grocery store and I had a it was like out of a movie I had you know a full basket full of stuff and I told them I said I'll call you right back and I dropped my basket and you know things roll out of it and I was with my boyfriend at the time and I was just like I have to get out of this store and I got into the parking lot and I just started crying but also was I think in shock looking back like I couldn't understand like how so I called my dad back and they had said she had was supposed to show up to a listing appointment with some clients and the clients got to a house and there was no lowest.
| 23:03 | And this was so unusual because she was so organized to like an obnoxious point. Like she had calendars and date buttons and reminders like. She never missed anything. She was always early for everything. So this was a huge red flag. So then when they had called her business partner, her business partner also couldn't get a hold of her and that's when they were like, this does not make sense.
| 23:29 | So they went straight over to the house and they had found that she had passed away on the couch, but looked like she was, you know, just had a nap and never woke up. So it was all extremely sudden. There's still, there's still sometimes I have dreams that like this never happened that she's actually alive and that this was all a joke and a simulation or something.
| 23:59 | Yeah. But yeah, it was one of the most shocking moments of my whole life. So there was no lead up whatsoever. No. So they confirmed that it was a myocardial infarction. So a heart attack. But very sudden heart attack, there was no signs of struggle, like nothing knocked over.
| 24:28 | And yeah, and I had talked to her doctor and you know she was a pretty normal, healthy adult. Yeah. You know, it was just, but the kind of weird but interesting piece of it is that her father also died the same way, I believe in his 50s as well. So it's just very strange.
| 24:59 | But I remember of that period of time right after. A lot of it was a blur. I came home to London. I told my job and I was so scared I was going to lose the job because I had literally just started. But I came home to London and I was staying in her house with my dog and my relatives, her sisters, so my cousins and everyone came in, which was really nice, but it was very overwhelming.
| 25:35 | So it was like a week of just having people in and out of the house, having to call people, having to make funeral arrangements immediately, and I felt like my life turned into a blur, and it didn't really get clear until, I don't know, this year. I don't know. Maybe a couple of years ago. I just felt like my whole life changed and I can't really remember what it was like before that.
| 26:06 | Why do you say that in terms of my whole life changed? I recognize your mom passed away. So that person would not be in your life anymore. But why? Why does it feel so deeply my whole life has now changed?
| 26:25 | I think I think because at that time, having to go through processing her will and probate and the funeral and closing accounts and selling her house and doing all of these things really alone because my brother wasn't able to.
| 26:51 | I think it was the realization that I'm not a kid anymore. And now I have to do all these adult things that I have no idea what I'm doing and I don't feel ready for it and I don't want it. But this is what's happening in a sense it was like you're no longer you know the 20 something year old girl whose mom takes care of you and you know we'll pick you up when you need like it was like I'm on my own now.
| 27:23 | My dad had moved back to Calgary in when they divorced in 2007. So I really was like this is it. I'm alone like. My brother and I are in Ontario and we're on our own like. My mom was the coordinator of things and the boss of the house kind of thing.
| 27:42 | So it was it made me see that nothing is definite and that stressing so much about getting the perfect job that was going to give me the right amount of money to live that none of that mattered anymore because that could all change overnight.
| 28:05 | And that hit me so hard and I feel like that's why my life has never been the same because I had realized that shock of how different things can go without you having any control. Besides yourself, who helped you through all this?
| 28:29 | I had a roommate named Kristen who is wonderful and she came with me a couple of times to help clear my mom's house out and she would come have sleepovers with me at the house when I needed to go down for a day. And this is like two hour drive, right, to go back and forth from Toronto to London. So she was she was there for me a lot of it.
| 28:56 | Even if that meant like us going for bike rides and getting ice cream like we were like ten years old again it was it was a little things. I also. Met this girl who's now one of my best friends named Alanna shortly after my mom had passed and we became really close so I had girlfriends that were just absolute rocks to me.
| 29:23 | I wasn't a really I was in a relationship at the time but it became not a emotionally safe space for me to talk about the loss he was someone that didn't really process things or deal with trauma or things like that.
| 29:45 | So it was not welcomed that I do that either when I was with him so I realized a lot of this was spent alone and I don't know if I can swear on this but it really fucked me up it did like yeah I felt so alone I realized I was so depressed I went back on antidepressants at that time or shortly after and yeah it really it put me in a really dark place.
| 30:20 | Yeah. A place I thought I wouldn't be able to get out of for sure. How long do you think you were in that dark place? I'd say at least at least a year of it feeling like I wasn't going to get out of it. I'm sorry I'm getting emotional.
| 30:44 | I think it's emotional because I remember how hard it was just to get out of bed each day and yeah put on the brave face which I'm sure you know like.
| 31:00 | It became so exhausting and I'll come consuming in a sense like I truly felt like I was drowning in my own sadness and then I once I started to look at what I wanted the rest of my life to look like I realized what I was passionate about at the time was running and it was the one thing that kept me safe and happy and free and I just tapped into that.
| 31:37 | I was like I love this physical escape, whatever's happening while I'm on my run is doing something to save my life right now and I started pursuing that more which turned into cycling and then once I found rhythm riding in a sense that's that piece is what saved me. Yes in the end. Yeah. You saved you.
| 32:08 | Yeah. Which is weird. Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting at the time it's sad and emotional to think back to how broken I felt at the time and now be in such a different place and so badly want to go back and hug that version of myself and be like, oh my God, we make it on the other side. We're going to be okay you know.
| 32:38 | Making it through, right? And how old were you when your mom passed? 40. Okay. So I was a lot older than you. I can't even imagine when you're in your 20s. But I don't know what I don't know if there's like an ideal age, you know? I feel like at any age, it's different pain.
| 33:04 | But I do, I agree that like being in my 20s, the world was already hard enough as it was. And that just made everything so much harder. I was already most of my life struggling with mental health issues. So that moment kind of just was like, let's blow up your world even more. It's interesting to hear that for you running really help you pull out of that because of the physicality of it.
| 33:38 | And I honestly can not tell you what pulled me out of it other than time. Yeah. I do think time is a big piece of it. I think for most people, they always say, right? Time heals all wounds. And I think that's a huge part of it.
| 34:07 | I think for me, I was always so go, go, go on to the next thing on to the next thing. And running, it was just me and my thoughts. And just the road. So it was a great, it was a great time to not have to say anything but work through those thoughts and let go and push myself and I don't know. It became my own little therapy sessions.
| 34:34 | So what do you see as the positives about yourself that came out of dealing with all of that? Oh, man. Most days, I think I'm like, I shouldn't say most days. Some days I look at it as like, this is why I'm messed up, you know? And then and then other days I look at it as this is why I love so hard.
| 35:02 | And this is why I, you know, cry when I hear the most beautiful song ever. And cry right now, thinking about that, you know, like I love that it's taught me to feel everything. And go full throttle with everything.
| 35:26 | Because not a day goes by that I don't feel like if this was my last day, I wouldn't be sitting on my deathbed or in my final words being like, I wish I had done this, this and this and this. I feel like I am just doing what I want to do. And that's not a lot of things. I want to you know be in nature, yes, I created.
| 35:57 | I created a business and I have two locations and that's like the craziest thing I've ever done. It's not just that. It's that I if I want to try a new restaurant, I will. If I want to tell my husband, I love him, I will. If I want to call my friend up and bring up an old memory, I will because I'm not, I know that I may not get tomorrow. And I love that I have that zest for life that not everyone gets.
| 36:31 | Those are words to live by you know. We only have today today. Yeah. What about you? Do you feel similar? Do you feel like in going through that process with your mom? And the slower approach of losing someone versus the immediate cut off, how do you feel like that's been a different process for you like emotionally, or do you think you games similar appreciations just maybe in a different way?
| 37:07 | I don't think it makes a lot of difference. My mind that it was a slow process. Because every day I knew it was coming, but I didn't feel like, wow, I feel really ready. You know, I didn't feel like we've had the talk that is going to get me through the other side of the mountain. Yeah. And I know that I haven't experienced the sudden like you did. So yeah. Who knows?
| 37:36 | I just know my experience with devastating. Yeah. And that the fact that I lost that resource in my life, that person that made me laugh a certain way, or that I could tell anything to, or who would say to me you know, do you need ten bucks for something like, are you okay? Yeah. And I get more money than she did at that point.
| 38:02 | It was just that person that was always always there thinking that I'm amazing. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. And so I think that for me, she still walks with me every day. Yeah. I believe that. And even though you can say to yourself, well, you know, your mom wouldn't want you to be sad. That is absolutely meaningless to me. Yeah. Because we can't help it.
| 38:32 | We lost. Oh, that person. Yeah. They're not just in the next room. And that's something that you know they're just in the next room. Yeah. They're definitely gone. Yeah. And it is the way of life. And I do appreciate I had what I had when I had it. And that we were so close. And I think it is true that one of the things I say is now when I think about my mom, I can think of her with smiles and laughter, not tears.
| 39:05 | So what advice would you give to someone who's going through grief? Oh, that's a tough. That's a tough question. I do have some friends who are, you know, have been going through grief or within the past few years, I would say, and I love that I have these people that I can talk to and sometimes ask for advice.
| 39:36 | And sometimes I feel like I have a good advice and other times I'm like, you know, we just have to cry it out and let time heal us. But if I had to give advice, I think it's, I think it's important to have people to talk it out with. I don't feel like I talked it out enough when it was happening. So a lot of those thoughts were just kind of in my own brain while I was going on these runs, but I wasn't actually saying the words out loud.
| 40:08 | And I think that can be so therapeutic to much like having an event session you know. Yeah. Finding people that you can say it out loud, hear your own words, talking about that person, and how you miss them, I think that's so important. I also think allowing yourself to not be stuck under certain time lines and that you have to really advocate for yourself and understand that it's okay to have a total write off day of sadness.
| 40:43 | Even though it might be years later, you know? Yes. And allow that to happen, but I think the biggest thing for me is realizing the connection you can have with other people. Yeah. To not feel like you're drowning in sadness. I do actually think another piece that's helped me, though I'd be nervous to say it as necessarily advice, but in my, in my opinion, helped me was to find a point in time when I was ready to.
| 41:21 | Not focus on the loss of my mom as this focal point in my drama that is my own movie, you know, where I'm the main character in that there was going to be so many other beautiful things in my life and there were going to be so many things that my mother would now not be there for.
| 41:44 | But fixating on you know the idea that I was going to get married one day and she wasn't going to be there or open my business and she's not there. There's, of course, going to be all those things. And for me, at the time, I really think that that wasn't helping me to look at those things. I worked in bridal. Literally my job was to watch moms and daughters have these beautiful moments of picking their dress. Oh, yeah.
| 42:13 | Moments after my mother dropped dead, you know? Like, this was my reality. So I kind of had to teach myself that it's okay to have pity parties and it's okay to feel sorry for yourself, but at some point you have to decide how you want to live your life. What your life has to start again at some point. Or you could just drown in the sadness you know. Yeah.
| 42:43 | Yes. You could just drown in the sadness when you know I guess use your analogy. The movie of your life should be an interesting movie. It has to be a get up off the sofa movie. Yeah. And that means embracing everything that comes your way. Yeah. And maybe that's part of going to circle the square going back to grief being a privilege.
| 43:12 | It is because you know everything we've built up and everything we continue to build up, it's part of our movie. Yeah. Our movie is what makes us who we are and contributing to the world because we all contribute to the world some way. So it's so true.
| 43:33 | And there's this kind of like maybe you felt this too, but I felt like being someone who's now experienced losing a parent, I reached a point where I was like, I need to be, I need to focus on being strong so that I can show people that go through this, that there is another side to this, and life does go on, and it can be beautiful and amazing, and you can chase your dreams, and I was like, I want to be a success on the other side of this story.
| 44:07 | I don't want to be the, I don't want to be telling someone in 20 years that if this happens to you, well, that's it you know. Your life is you too. Yeah. I want to be able to show people that, hey, we can rise up from really hard things. Really hard things. Yeah. And be strong people. Not for their sake. And you know what they would have wanted.
| 44:35 | But for our sake, as being part of the whole. Yeah. You know, it's our movie. And I want it to be interesting and fulfilling and inspiring you know. Not sad all the time. So I think it's important to have the sad moments and honor those memories, but I do think in life we need something that we can keep driving towards or feel excited about.
| 45:07 | So yep. It's so true. So I think that unless there's something, is there anything you want to add, Courtney? I have one thing I want to add. Is there anything you want to add? Oh, I don't know. Why don't you add yours? And then if I think of something. I'll try not to copy yours. What I'd like to add is if you are someone who knows someone who's going through a tough time related to grief, loss of a parent, and loss of anyone who is informed to their lives.
| 45:44 | Be willing to talk to them about it. They're open to talking to you about it most likely, or they'll say, I don't think I can right now, but I sure appreciate that you chatted with me about this, or are you open the topic that I know I can talk with you? Yeah. And I think that that is one of the things that comes from having lost people is it's okay to talk about it.
| 46:09 | I also think it's really helpful to have full belly laugh moments remembering really positive memories. And that when things are hard or negative memories are coming up, allowing those to also just sit there for a second, we don't have to rewrite the story of the person.
| 46:35 | And make them into this figure they never were suddenly, but you know we also don't have to cry the same tears over something that has already been cried over, you know what I mean? So sometimes when I feel sad for things that weren't in our relationship or things that never could have been, you know, I remind myself that I did cry a lot of tears over that one topic.
| 47:08 | So let's either you know focus on something more positive or maybe I need to like write that out more. Why am I still revisiting that you know? Here's to our moms. Helen, here's to Lois. Yes. Thank you so much for chatting with me today. Yes. Thank you so much. I appreciated that. So two of our viewers and listeners are very different kind of career resilience, but really all part and parcel of what Courtney says, which I absolutely love the movie of our lives.
| 47:42 | It is so, so true. So thank you for joining us today. Watch us on YouTube or listen to us wherever you get your podcast. And until we meet again.