Episode 37 - Tony Stewart: Carrying the Tiger

When a doctor's call on a lazy Sunday afternoon revealed that his wife Lynn had stage four lung cancer, Tony Stewart's world imploded. What followed was a six-year rollercoaster of clinical trials, spine surgeries, moments of hope and crushing setbacks as they navigated life with terminal illness. 

Throughout Lynn's cancer journey, Tony took on the role of dedicated caregiver, tracking treatments and attending appointments while attempting to maintain his own career. But beneath his composed project manager exterior, he was crumbling. It wasn't until a series of personal accidents culminated in an emotional breakdown that Tony finally admitted the truth, he couldn't do it alone. 

Tony speaks with remarkable candour about the reality of grief following Lynn's death. Despite their years of preparation and beautiful final conversations, the loss plunged him into an abyss of emotion that defied his expectations. "I will grieve Lynn for my entire life," he reflects. "The challenge is finding a way to live your new life even while you are still grieving."

The most controversial chapter of Tony's story emerged just months after Lynn's passing, when an unexpected connection with a woman named Cordelia blossomed into romance. Their relationship, founded on a shared understanding of loss, brought both healing and intense guilt. Tony describes the complex emotions of finding joy amid grief, and the judgment he faced from some friends who felt he had moved on "too soon."

What makes this conversation truly exceptional is Tony's willingness to reveal the messiness of the human experience. His journey challenges our cultural assumptions about grief timelines and reminds us that healing rarely follows a predictable path. Through his book "Carrying the Tiger" and conversations like this one, Tony offers a lifeline to others navigating similar terrain, particularly men, who often lack models for expressing grief openly.

Have you experienced grief that didn't follow the "expected" timeline? Share your story or grab a copy of "Carrying the Tiger" to continue this important conversation about love, loss, and finding your way forward.

Connect with Tony on Instagram here

Visit Tony's website here

Purchase a copy of Carrying the Tiger

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Everyday Warriors
• 3:32 Tony's Life-Changing Diagnosis
• 9:09 Living with Terminal Cancer
• 16:26 Caregiver Burnout and Breakdown
• 30:59 The Grief Journey After Loss
• 43:40 Finding New Love and Facing Guilt
• 57:55 Healing and Gratitude Reflections
• 1:06:35 Episode Closing

Transcript

Trudie Marie: 0:01

Welcome to the Everyday Warriors podcast, the perfect space to speak my truth and dive into deep conversations with others. This podcast is about celebrating everyday warriors, the people who face life's challenges head on, breaking through obstacles to build resilience, strength and courage. Join me, your host, trudy Marie, as I sit down with inspiring individuals who have fought their own battles and emerged stronger, sharing raw, real and authentic stories in a safe space, allowing you to explore, question and find your own path to new possibilities. Let us all embrace the warrior within and realise that, while no one is walking in your shoes, others are on this same path, journeying through life together. Please note that the following podcast may contain discussions or topics that could be triggering or distressing for some listeners. I aim to provide informative and supportive content, but understand that certain things may evoke strong emotions or memories. If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed or in need of support while listening, I encourage you to pause the podcast and take a break. Remember that it is okay to prioritize your well-being and seek assistance from trained professionals. There is no shame in this. In fact, it is the first brave step to healing. If you require immediate support, please consider reaching out to Lifeline on 13, 11, 14 or a crisis intervention service in your area. Thank you for listening and please take care of yourself as you engage with the content of this podcast.

Trudie Marie: 2:01

Love the Everyday Worriers podcast. It would mean the world to me if you were to leave a five-star review to ensure that the Everyday Warriors podcast is heard by more listeners around the world. You can also support the show for as little as $5 with a one-time donation or by becoming a monthly subscriber. Your contribution helps me to continue bringing you inspiring stories of everyday warriors who overcome challenges to find strength, resilience and new possibilities in life. Head to the link to buy me a coffee and fuel the next episode. Every bit counts. Every bit counts.

Trudie Marie: 2:46

If you're looking for an inspiring story of resilience, healing and rediscovering yourself, then my book Everyday Warrior From Frontline to Freedom is for you. It is my memoir of hiking the 1,000 kilometre Bibbulmun Track, a journey that was as much about finding my way back to myself as it was about conquering the trail through the highs and lows and everything in between. This book is taken from my journals and is my raw and honest experience of overcoming trauma and embracing the strength within. Grab your copy now. Just head to the link in the show notes and let's take this journey together. Welcome to another episode of the Everyday Warriors podcast. Today my guest is international. He's calling in all the way from New York, which is a 12 hour time difference for us. So it's my morning, his evening, and this gentleman and I were connected through another podcast, the Life Shift podcast with Matt Gilhooly, so just I want to give a shout out to Matt for connecting us. But I would like to welcome to the podcast, tony.

Tony Stewart: 4:01

Thank you, trudy. It's a real pleasure to be here and I think it's great that you shouted out to Matt Gilhooly and the Life Shift, because it's a wonderful podcast.

Trudie Marie: 4:14

It is a wonderful podcast, but we wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for him, so I am extremely grateful for him actually connecting us. So your story starts back a few years ago now probably over 10 years ago and I'd love to hear how your life was changed literally in an instant.

Tony Stewart: 4:31

It was an instant it was September 28, 2014, when my wife Lynn and I we'd been together about 29 years. At that point, my wife Lynn had not been feeling right for five or six months, mainly indigestion, digestive issues, things like that. So her doctors had sent her to a whole round of specialists who all looked from the belly button down based on the symptoms that she was, having found nothing. And then there was this little knot of pain in the middle of her back that slowly grew during that same period, which she didn't pay much attention to it first until finally it got bad enough that a friend said hey, you know my son is a neurosurgeon and I know I'm a proud mother, but why don't you go to him and ask him about this back pain? And so she did.

Tony Stewart: 5:19

We were getting a little desperate for months of not finding anything. He took an MRI of her spine and on Sunday afternoon and doctors don't often work here on Sundays, you know, other than you know in hospitals and such On Sunday afternoon the phone rang and it was our GP calling to tell Lynn that that scan showed tumors in her lungs. It wasn't even a scan of her lungs and in her spine, and what we'd been chasing the whole time turned out to be stage four lung cancer that had metastasized to her spine and that day our lives just completely turned upside down.

Trudie Marie: 6:01

That's devastating news to receive any day of the week, but at home on a Sunday, like you said, the doctors aren't working. You know that something's not right if you're getting a call from your doctor on a Sunday. So what happened then? Was Lynn able to receive any treatment? What happened from there?

Tony Stewart: 6:21

What happened from there was within the context of having basically a fatal diagnosis. We had incredibly good luck. We were referred. The GP, who was actually a friend of ours, referred us to an oncologist that he knew. We saw him a few days later and eventually not from him.

Tony Stewart: 6:41

Through some twists and turns we found our way to a clinical trial at a major research hospital near here where Lynn was able to try a new immunotherapy drug. It was a new 10 years ago and it had spectacular success. When you're living with an incurable stage four cancer as we eventually learned, and it took us months to internalize this spectacular success is defined as holding it down, keeping it stable, preventing it from growing. Unbelievable, hardly ever happens. Success would be full remission the tumors disappear, you feel like you don't have cancer. That, of course, we were dying for that to happen. It did not happen, but Lynn lived for about five more years while those drugs held the lung cancer down.

Tony Stewart: 7:40

During those same years, the cancer had so attacked her spine that from the very beginning we had to get intensive radiation in her spine. I mean, like the first thing the oncologist that we went to said was, yeah, we'll get to treating your lung cancer, but right now we have to deal with those tumors in your spine because they're almost on top of your spinal cord and you could be paralyzed within a matter of weeks. What are we going to do about that? And we scrambled. It was like being on a roller coaster tossed into a hurricane Use whatever metaphor you want. We scrambled to find treatment for that which ended up being intensive radiation lifetime's dose of radiation to those two inches in her spine. And then over the next six years, while the miracle drugs were happily preventing the lung cancer from growing, we had.

Tony Stewart: 8:27

Lynn had multiple issues in her spine, many operations, twists and turns. One of them went wrong. She got sepsis, almost died, hospital delirium which is something I hadn't known about which was scary as anything. It was a real rollercoaster ride for five or six years and I should say all of this is in the book I've written. I did write a book about all of this sort of like yours. It's based on the journals that I took at the time, a thing called Carrying the Tiger in my case. So the whole first part of the book tells that story, the twists and turns of what it was like to learn to live with cancer, but it goes on.

Trudie Marie: 9:11

Having being diagnosed with one form of cancer is hard enough, but then to have it metastasize where you're literally dealing with two aspects of the body, now you've got it's like a two-headed monster now and it's hard enough for the patient. Who's actually for Lynn, dealing with this issue of how you know how she was going to work through this issue, but as her husband, literally watching the love of your life like 29 years together, how was that for you in this journey?

Tony Stewart: 9:36

It was really really, really hard, especially at the beginning. Now, I should say we started out. I at the time was in my late 50s. I had been a project manager on many things. I had made movies, I had designed software, I'd done a lot of big projects, and so my personality was such that from the very beginning, I saw this as a project like another big project. I started Googling like crazy to learn about what the drugs were, what the options were, what the terms meant, that the doctors were saying to us, etc. And that served as a huge distraction for me. It gave me something to do in between the doctor's appointments and the twists and turns of treatment. Lynn was a painter, an artist completely different personality didn't behave that way at all, couldn't stand to Google these things because she just kept reading about people dying from what she had. But for the whole first year, which was very much a roller coaster ride with so many twists and turns, I just kept saying we just need to take the next step, we just need to figure out what's the next step. Here. The big picture is imponderable. It's impossible. Let's not get focused on that Like what do we do now, what do we do tomorrow and I kept saying to myself we can do this, we can do this, we can do this.

Tony Stewart: 11:07

I had a full-time job but luckily I was able to do a lot of work from home and I had extremely supportive colleagues and although I was fairly well placed in that organization, I didn't have anyone directly reporting to me made my time incredibly flexible. So I was like working in the hospital room. When I was there with Lynn, I was working in the middle of the night at my desk, that kind of thing and going to work and going to many, many of the appointments with Lynn, because you need a second person with you. It's hugely important when you're going to these kinds of things to have someone else there taking notes, because you the person with cancer in this case Lynn, the patient you've got this huge emotional overlay and we would come back from these meetings and disagree about what they had said and in what order and what was important, and I was consulting the notes and things and I didn't always know because I got a lot of emotions going on too. But anyway, I was hugely involved. I was there with her step by step and I was getting more and more tired.

Tony Stewart: 12:06

We were communicating with our friends, and this is huge. I want to just throw this in there, because the story I'm telling would sound like it was the two of us all on our own in this little bubble. But in fact we were very open with our friends. I was journaling about it in a website called caringbridgeorg that we have here, channeling about it in a place in a website called caringbridgeorg that we have here I don't know whether it's international where you set up a like a Facebook kind of thing, but you can make it private just for your friends and we would post updates about what we were going through and our friends could read it there. So we were getting and they would give us all kinds of support back. So we were getting that kind of support. But I was writing these posts and I did write most of the posts and they eventually became the basis of my book. I was writing these posts to tell people about Lynn.

Tony Stewart: 12:53

I hardly ever, when I look back at these things, when I was doing the book and looked back 10 years later, I realized I hardly had written about myself at all and during that year I was getting strung out with exhaustion and fear and all of these difficult emotions I was having, that I wasn't letting out with anyone until I started to have a series of accidents and one accident like unscrewing the cap of not the radiator but the water reservoir in the car when the thing was overheating and any idiot would know that there was probably going to be steam. And I got second degree burns on my hand and had to go see a specialist for weeks and we wondered whether I would need skin grafts. And then another time, when I was riding my bike in the hills near here for exercise and I kept going in the rain, it started to pour and I didn't stop. I just kept saying to myself you can myself, you can do this, you can do this, until I crashed and broke three ribs and had to be evacuated to a trauma center. And then I was on painkillers and Lynn was on painkillers and it was becoming very hard for me to support her and I actually had a kind of a breakdown. It's just one day I just collapsed on the bed when we came back from a difficult appointment. We still had our coats on and I started sobbing and I started telling Lynn for the first time after 11 months of this how I had been feeling the whole time.

Tony Stewart: 14:15

I started saying I can't do this anymore. I feel like I've been dragging you forward, doing all the planning, talking you into going into things, talking you into trying the immunotherapy because all of that was true. She had been reluctant and scared and I was constantly urging her and I hadn't been getting help for myself and I just couldn't do it anymore and I told her the things that had been in my head that whole year. I mean, like you go through a year like this. I'm thinking maybe it would be better if she died sooner rather than later. I mean, I'm doing everything I can to help her stay alive. I love this woman. I do not want to lose her and I'm having these thoughts where I can't let them out. I didn't dare tell anyone. I didn't dare tell her until finally I broke down and I sobbed and I shared all of that with her and she was so supportive and so wonderful. She pulled me to her and she said she understood and then I went and got help and in my case that was a counselor.

Trudie Marie: 15:14

Look just inside of everything you've just said, like what an ordeal and what a year. There are three things that come to me from what you've just said, and the first was that you, when you first she first got diagnosed, you saw it as like a project. Your logical, analytical mind and the way you processed for work was I'm just going to take this on like another work issue, and I think that's really important to look at, as how different people are affected by different diagnoses or different events in their life. It depends on how you process information as to how you respond to that. So I found that very interesting.

Trudie Marie: 15:56

Secondly, the website that you talked about where you could post details, and even though you only posted details of what was going on with Lynn, I love the idea of that in the sense that your family and friends could stay connected, keep updated with what was going on, but you didn't have to repeat that on a daily basis every time you see one of those friends. The fact that they get that in a way, that's private and it's detailed, but you don't have to keep reliving the story over and over again. It's like you tell it once everybody is on the same page. Everyone gets the same details. I love that and I think that that should be into an international standard that you can just give information.

Trudie Marie: 16:40

My my dad, is currently going through some medical issues and it's horrible having to repeat that story all the time. So just being able to not deal with that like that, I think, is amazing in itself, but I do find it interesting that you didn't share anything about how you were coping and what was going on with you and then then that obviously led to your breakdown, and I think that's. Another really important thing to highlight is that the partner or the family member or whoever it is going through this experience with the patient also needs to look after themselves and take care of themselves, because this is a big deal for them as much as it is a big deal for the patient deal for them as much as it is a big deal for the patient.

Tony Stewart: 17:30

Yes, yes, to all three of the points that you just made. I think they're hugely important. And, like I said, lynn didn't respond, didn't have the same personality as me. So while I'm doing all this project planning, she's living with it. But also, even if I hadn't been there, she never would have been reacting the same way. She wanted to read entertainment stories. She wanted to read entertainment stories. She wanted to read good literature. She suddenly started wanting to watch much more TV than we had ever watched, because we would cuddle together on the couch in the evening. She didn't like to watch TV until now, but now it was really important just to shut everything else out and have time when she didn't have to think about the cancer. I do also want to shout out and support what you said. That website is called caringbridgeorg and it must be international. All websites are international.

Tony Stewart: 18:11

The additional huge benefit was because all of our friends knew what was happening. Not only did they not ask about Lynn's cancer, they talked about other things. The thing Lynn wanted most in the world during that period was to be able to have her life the way she'd always had it, which meant, when she saw her friends, not to spend the whole conversation talking about the twists and turns of her cancer. She wanted to be able to forget that she had cancer and, in fact, was struggling and in fact maybe was severely weakened and would spend the whole next day in bed because of the effort it took her, perhaps to go out to an event, but at the event itself she wanted to be able to have her life the way it always had been, and this form of communication made that possible. It was a huge gift.

Trudie Marie: 19:04

It is a huge gift because I think so many times, when people get diagnosed with something that is terminal, that people start behaving and I think it's almost natural human instinct that you start behaving like you don't know how to deal with people. You don't know what to say or what, how to say the right thing, and I know that even just with my post-traumatic stress experience that people did not know how to communicate because they didn't want to say the wrong thing. But people just want to live their lives, they want to be normal, they want to be okay for those, even if it's those micro seconds or micro moments, that they want to still continue living their life and experiencing the joy in their life, not focusing on the negative.

Tony Stewart: 19:51

Absolutely. This was huge for us. That's sort of I call the first part of carrying the tiger living with cancer. But it's really learning to live with cancer, learning to enjoy your life, learning to have life, learning to and in fact it's thrust upon you when you have terminal diagnosis. It's a truism but it's really true. You start appreciating the world around you so much, every little positive thing, every chance to have joy, every bud in the spring, you know as the flowers come out. All of that because you don't know if you're going to get another season. And I shouldn't speak for everyone. Everyone is different. I know this has been true for a lot of people I'm aware of and it was very true for both of us.

Tony Stewart: 20:37

I imagine that you could spiral into a terrible depression and not be able to enjoy anything and that would be a very big sadness because for us these were once we got past that horrible first year, and I should say actually a part of the second year was even worse.

Tony Stewart: 20:52

But once we got past those parts, we had several years where Lynn had rods in her back and her spine was no longer collapsing and she wasn't going to the hospital and we, the tumors were being held down. They weren't growing and they were wonderful years. We had grown closer together from going through all of this and I thought we started out in a good place. But we were just got you know, you're in the trenches together and it really, really bonded us and we were enjoying every minute all around us. No, you don't actually go through every day, every minute, thinking, oh my gosh, I have to enjoy this sunset because I might not see another. It's not that wild. Of course. You settle into your normal life and none of us can appreciate every sunset that intensely. But those moments kept coming and kept coming and we just loved those years.

Trudie Marie: 21:47

I love that, that you built this bond, that you you already said you had such a strong bond after 29 years but in those final years together that it was so much closer and stronger in that time. You said that Lynn obviously lived for six more years and you had six more years of memories and experiences with her. Was she stable that whole time or towards the end did she start to deteriorate?

Tony Stewart: 22:13

She started to deteriorate. The last year was very, very difficult and I had it's funny when I was figuring out how to tell this story in a book. I had given a lot of space to the first year and then to the horrible events, hospital events that were pretty horrible for us. That happened in the second year with the operation that went wrong. And then delirium we could do a whole episode about hospital delirium that I had never heard of and it scares the hell out of you when it happens to someone you love or even when it happens to you. It scared the hell out of Lynn. She thought she was losing her mind. It would never get it back. So that's the first couple of years and I spend like a hundred pages of the book going through that because that's what it felt like.

Tony Stewart: 22:55

Then we got three or four good years and then the, the miracle drug, stopped working. We, we all knew it would eventually stop, and we also. It doesn't stop on a dime and you keep hoping that you can find a fix. So first one tumor started to grow, but all the others were still stable. So they irradiated that one tumor. It wasn't in her spine. She couldn't have any more radiation in her spine, but it was nicely off in the corner of her lung. They radiated that one tumor. They killed that one tumor. You think, okay, great, maybe we got it, maybe the drug will hold the others down, because what happens is your cancer mutates, just to explain this. So the cells in that one tumor had mutated enough that the drug was no longer working on them. But you hope that it was only that one tumor, that the mutation didn't metastasize.

Tony Stewart: 23:43

So then we went through a few months of fear and checking and it seemed that things were going okay. But then they got worse. And then they got worse and then she felt worse. And then we finally had a set of scans where you go oh, my God, now there's 20 tumors and they're going into her bones. And then you still we I keep saying you, but everyone's different but we, after five years in which the miracle drugs had worked, really hoped that we could find another miracle drug, and the doctors were offering another clinical trial, things like that. So we tried that and it turned out it didn't work. But it takes months to find that out, and meanwhile pain is growing, et cetera, until eventually it got so bad that she decided to stop treatment and go for hospice.

Tony Stewart: 24:28

That year was really horrible. But when I wrote in the book it's like I'm not going to do another 100 pages of pain. No way. The readers just read that 100 pages back. I'm not doing that again. So I compressed it into like 20 pages. So I compressed it into like 20 pages. But it was a year of steadily increasing pain and indignity and fear and trying things and then a month or two later realizing they weren't working. And this is what many, many people with stage four cancer go through in their first year. If you didn't, if we hadn't had the miracle drug, this is probably what our first year would have been like. It's like we're starting over. We don't have a drug that's holding this tumor down. We tried some chemo. It didn't work. We tried a clinical trial and then Lynn died.

Trudie Marie: 25:15

She died about 11 months after the tumor started growing again and that's that must have been such an extremely difficult time, because not only is Lynn now in more pain and life as she knows it is deteriorating, but you're having to watch her go through all of that at the same time. How did you cope during that time?

Tony Stewart: 25:40

I think the most important thing to say is that we had hope the whole time, based on the experiences we had had five years earlier. So the coping I had already put in place put in place. Now I'm speaking like a project manager. I had already gotten a therapist that I was talking to regularly. I had opened up more in the CaringBridge posts. They had gotten much more emotional and open.

Tony Stewart: 26:02

I did not share about my breakdown in CaringBridge posts. They had gotten much more emotional and open. I did not share about my breakdown in CaringBridge. It's in the book, because the book reveals all the things that I was afraid to share. But I was getting much more emotional and open and that was supporting me.

Tony Stewart: 26:15

And of course, I was taking more care of my body, my sleep, to the extent that I could. But the single most important thing is that once again it felt like, okay, we have a new project here, we have a chance of cracking it. But meanwhile we didn't know it's not like we know we're heading towards Lynn's end. No, we know that's coming, but maybe it won't be this year. Maybe we'll be able to find something that buys us another couple of years. We no longer thought we would get five more years. It just didn't seem possible. So I coped by going back into my project manager mode, while also having that much more support and being able to talk to my therapist every week and let out the feelings that I absolutely could not bring myself to share with anyone else.

Trudie Marie: 27:01

I think that's really important too is that for the listeners out there who are in that circumstance where they have a loved one going through a medical issue, is to make sure they do look after themselves, whether that's with some kind of therapist, whether that's the support of friends or family, but whatever form that takes is that you get some care yourself to make sure that you're okay going through all of this with that person, with that loved one.

Tony Stewart: 27:30

Yes, I think that's huge and it's one of the lessons of the book. I tried to make sure I don't draw conclusions in the book because it's based on the real-time journals and I try to tell the whole thing in the present tense, even though I added so much more material that hadn't been on CaringBridge. And I try to tell the whole thing in the present tense even though I added so much more material that hadn't been on CaringBridge. I thought I would tell it make Carrying the Tiger like looking over my shoulder You're looking over my shoulder through all of these years. But I tried to put in it the information that would allow you, the reader, to reach your own conclusions and hopefully realize look, here I have the breakdown. There I get the therapist. Now things are going better for me. I tried to put all of those life lessons in there without having a narrator say and, by the way, my conclusion after going through this is you should get help. There are many books that do that. I wanted mine to be like. You're with me.

Trudie Marie: 28:22

And I love that that you're on this journey together.

Tony Stewart: 28:26

Yes, and as you read it, you don't know where it's going to go. I mean, you know that she'll die I'm not hiding that from anyone, but you don't know the details.

Trudie Marie: 28:35

And I suppose that brings us to the next part of your story is that obviously you knew that there would come a time where Lynn would leave this earthly plane, and that has happened. How were you then through that process? Because that's where the real grief then starts, because now you're living without your loved one by your side.

Tony Stewart: 28:59

Yes, and I do want to talk about that a lot actually. But I also want to say the grief starts earlier, but it doesn't under. There's a thing that I'm now studying. I've been reading up on grief. I'm taking a course to become a certified grief educator now, because I found this whole process of writing the book and talking about it so healing for me and helpful for other people, of writing the book and talking about it so healing for me and helpful for other people. And I've learned about the phrase anticipatory grief, which is a very common phrase. Any of your listeners who know anything have read about grief will have heard this phrase.

Tony Stewart: 29:31

So you actually do start grieving the minute you learn that your life has changed and Lynn is going to die. I mean, I started grieving way back when, but you suppress it. You've got a lot to do. It's there, but it's not there. Then hospice was so beautiful for us and we talked. We talked openly. It was a wonderful experience. We were able to talk about her dying. I mean, like what's it going to feel like? What do you think it's going to feel? Like we didn't have an answer, but we were talking to each other about that and I can't believe this is really happening and you seem so alive. How is it possible that you're going to die in the next few weeks? Those were amazing conversations. So when she did die, I naively thought that maybe the grief that would follow would be on the shallow side, would be, you know, like I've been grieving for years, and we said our goodbyes and it was a beautiful, uncomplicated death. And no, as anyone can tell you, you lose someone you deeply love and you are plunged into an abyss, a maelstrom churning seas, every metaphor you want.

Tony Stewart: 30:41

The first few days I was in shock, as people usually are. I now know and I really thought. I actually, for several days thought, oh, it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay because I've been grieving for so long. And we said our goodbyes Look, the sun is shining. Look, I got on my bike and rode around Central Park for the first time in six months. Oh, that felt good.

Tony Stewart: 31:11

And then, on about the third day, I woke up sobbing at four in the morning and that is the way my days were for weeks and weeks after that and discovered I couldn't get anything done. I would start some household task like sweeping or vacuuming or something, and two hours later sweeping or vacuuming or something, and two hours later, find the sweeper. It's a brand called Swiffer here. Find my Swiffer leaning against a wall somewhere. Because, you know, after five minutes of doing that, my head turned to something else and I did something else and then I didn't finish that job. The dishwasher is sitting open half unloaded. Because I started that two hours ago. I mean, I was really incapable of getting anything done, and that's the first few weeks, although in my case, I was still writing posts at night and this, I think, was huge. It helped me in the long run, but it helped me in the short run. I should also add.

Tony Stewart: 32:00

This was during COVID and we were largely locked down. Lynn died in early 2021. So the vaccines were just coming out. The whole previous year, the hard year, had been during intense COVID, when there were no vaccines. But I was very much in an isolated kind of bubble here. I didn't have a lot of in-person visitors still. We were all very scared still.

Tony Stewart: 32:18

But because I had gotten addicted to writing those journal posts and because my friends our friends had been so supportive in their responses, I started writing them again. Two days after Lynn died. I actually wrote a post the night she died, saying she's gone. Now. This is horribly sad. It happened and I guess that's the end of the journal, because this was called the Lynn Cotulla Caringbridge Journal and Lynn died, but in reality of course it had become the Tony Stewart Journal. I just didn't acknowledge it yet, I didn't know it.

Tony Stewart: 32:52

So two days later I found myself writing a post. I couldn't not write it and that helped me and it also allows me to remember so clearly what those days were like, because I was writing about them every night or two. So I'm plunged in. It was horribly, horribly, horribly shattering, sad, disorienting. I do want to say one thing it's not linear. It's not like, oh, you get plunged in and then a week or two later it gets a little better, and a week or two later, a little better, and you start steadily going up no, no, no, no, no. After, like, the first few days felt good when I was in shock, and then I'm plunged in, and then a few days later I had a day when, wow, I didn't cry that much today, maybe this isn't going to be so bad. And then the next day it's horrible and I can't stop crying and I can't get anything done again and it was up and down and up and down for a very long time, I mean like a year.

Trudie Marie: 33:42

I think that that's underestimated too. A lot of people think that whether it's grief, whether it's trauma, like post-traumatic stress, it doesn't matter what shape it comes in. People seem to have this idea that any kind of recovery is a linear process. You're just going to keep going up and up and up. But I look at it as life is a roller coaster. Our heartbeat is the up and down, there is the up and downs and the plateaus in the middle, just like on the roller coaster, and it's about riding through those, but inside the acknowledgement of what you're riding at that particular point in time, of what you're writing at that particular point in time.

Trudie Marie: 34:27

So the good days acknowledge those good days and enjoy the moments of gratitude and joy and happiness that you feel. But then if the next day is a sad day or a depressive day or an angry day because many people forget about the anger that comes with grief go through that. That's okay to have that day. And then if you have a day in between, that's a little bit, oh well, it's neither happy nor sad or angry, it's just hum ho, that's okay too. Like we have this unrealistic expectation or idea of how life should or shouldn't be. But if we just understand that. It's like the waves crashing. It's just this ebb and flow of life. There are going to be ups and downs and it's all part of the process.

Tony Stewart: 35:09

I think that's really profound. I think that's extremely true and deep and meaningful. I can't speak to PTSD and so many other kinds of trauma, but I know, in terms of grief, there's also this unrealistic expect, multiple unrealistic expectations, oh my gosh. But one of them is that you heal, that I mean, the process is a kind of a ongoing healing, but you never stop grieving. The challenge is to find a way to, to be able to live your new life even though you are still grieving. I will grieve Lynn for my entire life. I carry her in my heart. I'm in another relationship now, doesn't matter. Lynn is there. I was with her for 35 years. That's half my life. That's more than half my life.

Tony Stewart: 35:58

At this point. You never stop grieving, but you do hopefully slowly reach an ability to control the grief, to have it be a manageable part and to have the same memories that made you sob at the beginning, because you'll never have that experience again. Now finally be like happy. Oh yeah, you remember when we did this thing together and it was such a nice day. Well, that it was such a nice day would make me sob for half an hour, a few months after Lynn died. But now, a year later like it was such a nice day. We had a wonderful relationship and many experiences. So you're on this non never ending journey to try and get your life together, your new life.

Tony Stewart: 36:43

But the other huge misconception that people have without thinking about it is that someone else's grief will be like their grief. And in fact, everything I just said is how my grief was and is, and I think the goals are true for everyone. But now that I've been taking a course and learning much more about what grief is like for other people, I've discovered, yeah, there really are people who are able to cope just three months out, even while grieving. That's different from suppressing your grief and trying to go back to your life and your job without dealing with it, which just means it's going to come and bite you and haunt you and mess you up for months or years. But there are people who manage to look as if they've come back to work after a few months and they've got it together. That's just their personality. They're able to do it.

Tony Stewart: 37:32

We as a society, certainly in America, expect everyone to be able to like come out of it in three months, six months, nine months, maybe a year at the most oh my gosh, a year has passed and you're still crying, or you're still unable to go by that place, go by that location that you had such a good time at, or whatever. It's still messing you up. Yeah, a year is a blink in the eye. I mean, my book stops two, two and a half years after Lynn died and my life keeps going, and even at that point I hadn't, like, finished grieving. It's just that I needed to stop the book at some point. You can't. I'm living my life, you know. The book stops, my life keeps going.

Trudie Marie: 38:13

It's so true, and I think that those who actually talk about oh what, you're still grieving, or ask those questions or have no comprehension are those that haven't been through anything like that themselves. I don't think it's until you've actually experienced it in some way, shape or form, whether it's a grandparent, a parent, a partner, a child, a fur baby, for all, like what is what?

Tony Stewart: 38:39

oh, totally, you can have huge grief over over you pet.

Trudie Marie: 38:44

Yeah, it's a process of experience and it's often, yeah, the words that come out of like you should be over it or it should be a certain way, comes from those people who have yet to experience that kind of loss in this lifetime.

Tony Stewart: 39:01

I'll throw another phrase out. It's a terrible thing to say. Is at least Almost any response that starts with at least Well, at least you had a lovely long life together. At least she begins with the phrase at least don't say it, because everyone's grief is their grief and it is their biggest grief, and they do not want to be compared to anyone else. They are going through hell right then. Don't try and tell them they're not or that their grief should be less than someone else's because of this ameliorating factor. That doesn't mean anything to the person who is grieving.

Trudie Marie: 39:47

A hundred percent. There are other ways of being grateful in a situation or finding gratitude in moments, but often it's not in that moment of absolute despair. You find that at the end of that despair you then start to look for the gratitudes to actually lift you back up. But when you're in this, you're right. When you're in that slump of the roller coaster or you know the bottom of the well, you don't need to be told that sort of thing, no.

Tony Stewart: 40:16

No, you just you kind of just want to be, let alone you don't want people to try to fix it. What I wanted most in those first months was to be able to talk about Lynn and to have people acknowledge that I had gone through a big loss. I was very, very lucky because I was writing these posts on CaringBridge and I was able to say what the day felt like and how much I missed her and what my grief was like, and friends would write comments back that were like gold to me. Most of us don't have that. I can't imagine it's just anyone else managing to be in a spot where their beloved one dies and they're writing posts that their friends read every day or two. It's just an accident of my personal journey that I had gotten addicted to writing them in the years leading up to that and it was a natural thing to keep going and my friends were reading them and were able to communicate back. But I will say one of the things that I really remember vividly from that first few weeks was I had friends in this building I'm in an apartment building with multiple flats Friends who invited me over once a week for weeks after Lynn died A lovely gesture to have dinner with them, and so the first time I go there, lynn's place at their table is empty. We've been seeing them for years. Right, there's a. The place she always sits is empty. It's horribly sad.

Tony Stewart: 41:45

I came back home sobbing and I realized maybe after the second or third week we weren't talking about Lynn. We were all uncomfortable talking about Lynn. They were probably on eggshells like what do I say? I don't want to set Tony off. And so the next time I went I said I'd like to talk about Lynn. Could we spend a few minutes talking about Lynn? And we did. And it was wonderful and it was the first time I came home after that dinner that I didn't sob and sob and sob right away, because they helped me keep her alive.

Tony Stewart: 42:20

You know that's what you want in those first months and months, as you're slowly coming to terms with the fact that she's not alive, that she's not with you anymore, which of course is setting you off all the time. It's not like you don't know that, but I was looking for everything I could do to hold on to her and not have to let her go in an instant, and instead that next year or two was a year of slowly, slowly letting go, not needing to talk about her as much, eventually being willing to get rid of a lot of her clothing. The first few months, this house was full of medical supplies and I couldn't get rid of them. It was weeks before I was able to get rid of the stacks of adult diapers and things that we had to have in the house. I gave them to a charity that could use them, but at first I couldn't touch anything. But then, oh my gosh, her clothes in the closet. Gosh, her clothes in the closet.

Tony Stewart: 43:22

It was a solid year, at least, before I was willing to start giving some of them away, and I started with things that were very meaningful to her, that other friends would want, like her favorite scarves that were beautiful, and so I put a message out to all of our friends who frequently used to comment on Lynn's beautiful scarves we would bring them back.

Tony Stewart: 43:36

We used to go to India and Asia a lot, and one of the things we'd bring back are these amazing, wonderful scarves that you could pick up for just a few dollars there. So I started giving those away, and my friends loved it because they could now wear one of Lynn's scarves as kind of a keepsake and that made me feel good and that was the toe in the door that allowed me to start giving away more stuff. But that took a few years but I was slowly working towards being willing to let go of so many of the physical manifestations of Lynn. I kept a lot. I don't want to get rid of everything, you know. I want her all around me, but not like when she lived here.

Trudie Marie: 44:12

And that's totally understandable. I think that, yeah, like the other misconceptions about how to grieve or how to deal with the loss of a loved one is it's okay to still have them around, in whatever shape that takes. It might be one item, it might be many items, but there is a process that you have to go through to get to that point. And the other thing I want to kind of bring up now is and you've mentioned it previously is that for many people dealing with the loss of a loved one and you're in that grief and you don't know how to live life without them, how do you then move into that place where you said you're now in a new relationship, like what was that like?

Tony Stewart: 45:01

That was horribly confusing and guilt ridden. During hospice, lynn and I had open conversation, in fact a beautiful conversation, in which she did say I want you to have another girlfriend after I die. Then she immediately shook her head and said no, I don't want you to have a girlfriend ever. Then she said no, no, I do want you to have a girlfriend. No, no, no, I don't ever want you to have a girlfriend. And then finally, yeah, I'm willing for you to have a girlfriend. I want you to have a girlfriend which encapsulates so much wanting to hold on to me forever but also wanting me to be able to have a life again. I was only in my 60s, you know there's a lot of life ahead. So she gave me that gift that many people do not have, this explicit willingness. But of course, we thought we were talking about two, three, four years down the line. In fact, I had said in that same conversation she said what do you think will happen to you? And I said I had said in that same conversation she said what do you think will happen to you? And I said I'm going to be unbelievably sad for a year, two years, I have no idea how long, but eventually. Yeah, I hope to find someone, and that's when she said those things.

Tony Stewart: 46:15

Just two months after Lynn died, I sent an email. I sent a lot of emails out to invite people to a Zoom memorial for her, which turned out to be a wonderful thing. I highly recommend Zoom memorials. We were in COVID then. I didn't have a choice, but it turned out to be fantastic because you can have so many people talking and they don't all have to fly to the same place to be there. And it was great of people, including a woman who was an acquaintance that I actually hadn't seen in 40 or 50 years since we were kids, but I had been in touch. I'd remained in touch with her father, who lived and worked near us all these years, and when his wife died, this woman's stepmother, lynn and I, had gone to their zoo memorial. So I returned the favor.

Tony Stewart: 46:52

Lynn died just a few months later. I emailed the kids in that family and their father to say I loved the memorial you did. I'm doing one for Lynn, even though you didn't know her. You're welcome to join.

Tony Stewart: 47:05

And she Cordelia is her name wrote me back an email. Oh, she suggested a poem that we could use and I wrote her back. No, lynn, and I picked out a poem by EE Cummings. It goes I carry your heart, I carry it in my heart. It's a lovely poem. And she wrote back to me. Oh, dear, dear Tony, that poem means a lot to me.

Tony Stewart: 47:26

My husband and I had it read at our wedding and now he's just told me he's leaving me after 32 years of marriage. And I wrote back to her oh my God, you years of marriage. And I wrote back to her oh my God, you're going through deep grief, just like I am. And we started writing these emails back and forth. She didn't live in New York, she lived a thousand miles from here. We started writing these emails back and forth about what it was like to go through our day here. I had stumbled onto someone who was going through what I was going through. It's not exactly the same, but it's extremely similar when it's not your choice to get divorced and your husband says he's leaving and it means that all your dreams. The thing about grief is that it's very much based on the loss of the future that you imagined and hoped and dreamed for.

Trudie Marie: 48:11

A hundred percent and no one talks about that.

Tony Stewart: 48:14

Yes, so I've lost. I had years to get used to this, but I've lost the future that Lynn and I once hoped we would have. Cordelia had a month to get used to this and was losing the future that she had thought she was going to have. So we connected over our grief and we started talking more. And then we started talking on the phone and then one day she stopped me in the middle of a sentence and said Tony, are you feeling what I'm feeling Because I'm getting a big crush on you, which was one of the bravest things that anyone has ever said to me. I don't know if I would have had the guts to ever say that to a woman that I was feeling that way about. I'm a pretty shy person and I admitted that, yes, I am too.

Tony Stewart: 48:54

And we started admitting that we were getting attracted to each other and at this point it's like an inside out attraction. You know, you imagine you're going to meet someone from dating on a bar, from a shared activity, where you know them and you see them and you're physically attracted. And in this case I barely knew what she looked like. I knew what her Facebook photos looked like, but I was attracted to the inner person and she had been asking me about Lynn. This is amazing. The thing you want most in the world when you're newly grieving is for someone to ask you to talk about your late wife. And Cordelia just instinctively did that. She never took a grieving course, she just instinctively did that. Like, tell me about Lynn. I want to know who you're doing all this grieving for. And I would tell her stories about who Lynn was and what we had gone through, and then I would start reading her CaringBridge posts that I had written so she could get a feeling for what hospice had been like. So we're sharing all of this and we really started to get this huge attraction for each other. And she was coming to New York in May because she has friends in this part of America, and so we agreed that we would get together and it was pretty clear to us that we were going to go to bed.

Tony Stewart: 50:06

Lynn's memorial was in April. I had her urn sitting on my dresser. Cordelia came and we fell into bed. I mean there was this huge physical attraction. Cordelia came and we fell into bed. I mean there was this huge physical attraction and suddenly I'm in the middle of like being in bed with her when I think, oh my God, that's Lynn looking at us and I'm talking quietly and softly now.

Tony Stewart: 50:29

But it was this horrible shock of guilt, shame, betrayal. It doesn't matter that she had given me permission, I felt like I was betraying Lynn and worst, lynn and I hadn't been able to have fun sex in years because of the physical changes. We had sex, we had intimacy, but the whole other talk about what you do with that. It was very important to us to continue to be intimate, but here I was sort of romping on the bed in an uninhibited way with a woman who didn't have these physical issues and I thought, oh my God, lynn is watching me have more fun in bed with Cordelia than I've had with Lynn in a long time, which felt great for me. I really missed it, but it was the worst betrayal.

Tony Stewart: 51:17

So that's how our relationship started, with these two layers A deep intimate connection, the fact that it was too soon by any measure, the fact that because of that intimate connection, I felt like there was something there that was so special that I didn't want to let go of it and she didn't want to let go of it, even though we both knew we're on the rebound. This is crazy. Probably this will flare and fade, but we kept going Then for the next year and a half, and the book covers this whole year and a half because I think it's really important. I went back and forth up and down between feeling like this is great, this is working, I can do this, and, oh my God, she's driving me crazy, she's annoying me. She's not Lynn. I mean, it took me a while and it was actually in the course of journaling about it that I would reach the realization.

Tony Stewart: 52:10

What's bothering me, when you come down to it, is that she's not Lynn. When you come down to it is that she's not Lynn. All these things about Lynn that I had fallen for Lynn, for a sort of an ease in the world, a quick smile, a really light, sharp sense of humor, those aren't Cordelia's strengths. She's a lovely person, of course, she has a sense of humor, but she didn't have Lynn's strengths, doesn't have Lynn's strengths.

Tony Stewart: 52:33

She's got different qualities that were attracting me really strongly, but every now and then it's like the fact that she didn't get a joke of mine or the fact that she was like in my way in the kitchen. I have a small kitchen. It's easy to be in my way. These would really piss me off. And we then had to go through the ups and downs of that and luckily she liked to call me out on it. What's happening, tony? You seem to be going. This last few days you haven't been nice to me. What's going on? Which is huge? I mean, if she had had a different personality, we would have broken up, because the fact that she asked me those questions allowed me to realize what I was doing. But it took years.

Trudie Marie: 53:14

I find that really interesting, just that whole journey that you've just described in the fact that it's going through that process of, yeah, the grief and everything that you're going through in the loss, and then you happen to miraculously meet somebody else and those feelings of guilt like we are still human beings at the core, regardless of what emotion we're going through, and it's a natural instinct that you would want to continue some kind of intimacy moving forward.

Trudie Marie: 53:46

But then feeling that that guilt and shame of, especially with your, when you're with somebody for like 35 years and you've only known that person, you've only known how to be with that person, you're comfortable with that person and then all of a sudden somebody's new there and it's a whole new nuance, it's a whole new dance that you have to learn the steps to and it's okay, like there is nothing to say that that's right or wrong in that situation.

Trudie Marie: 54:16

But then also the fact that because of that 35 years with somebody and they know you and you know them, that anybody new is like are they stepping into this space, this void that needs filling, or are they? Am I creating something new with them to experience life in a different way that for the last 35 years I haven't experienced. So now this is my time to live a new aspect in a new direction. I can speak for that. Like having been married twice before life with my ex-husband, the father of my children, is completely different to the life I'm experiencing with my current husband now, and neither of them are right or wrong. But it's almost like when you get divorced it's kind of okay to then go and be in another relationship, like life continues on, but when you lose somebody it's almost there's a whole different feeling around that as to whether or not you should or shouldn't move on.

Tony Stewart: 55:16

Absolutely, and I didn't even mention that my friends, Lynn's friends, split into two groups. Now I will say they did not ostracize me and I was writing about Cordelia on CaringBridge. Eventually it took me weeks from when that attraction started before I admitted on CaringBridge that this was happening, because this was crazy and I didn't want people to think I was abandoning Lynn and all the complications. But the first time that Cordelia and I went in public to an art opening where Lynn's paintings were being shown, there was a partial retrospective. It was organized very quickly. It was just that summer, like in July, and Lynn had died in February and I had met Cordelia in person in May and I had written about her. So this was the first time we'd been in an event with.

Tony Stewart: 56:07

Lynn's sister was there, Various friends were there and you could absolutely see, like Lynn's sister, who I'm reasonably close with now, but that was a horrible time for her, Like Lynn's sister, who I'm reasonably close with now, but that was a horrible time for her, and she was like looking daggers at us across the room and wouldn't come near us and turned her cheek away when I tried to kiss her.

Tony Stewart: 56:24

I mean, I wasn't going to kiss her on the lips, but you know, like barely let me kiss the side of her jaw and then got away from me as quickly as she could, and but also you can really understand that that's her own sister that I'm not with, but even some of my artist friends it's like they really didn't like this.

Tony Stewart: 56:42

But luckily one of the husbands in one of those couples where I knew that his wife was feeling really uncomfortable, he took me aside and said Tony, it's just too soon, Meaning you just need to give it time, it will all work out. Don't worry it time, it will all work out. Don't worry about Monica, it will all work out. And he was right. And Monica and Bob remain very dear friends now and Cordy and I have been over, had dinner with them many times in the years since then. But that first year a lot of our friends had trouble because the you know what the hell are you doing? As if she, as if Lynn were still alive, as if Lynn were still alive and I were cheating on her.

Trudie Marie: 57:22

And I think that that's the hardest part in realizing that is that it has nothing to do with you and it has nothing to do with Cordelia and that relationship. It has to do with the fact that that presence of Cordelia alone is a reflection that Lynn is no longer around and people are caught up in their own grief of that's not Lynn and I'm not okay with her not being around and that's an automatic reaction that it has nothing to do with you and the relationship and everything to do with them and their loss and the way they're processing the grief, because Cordelia being on the scene means it's a fact that Lynn is no longer with us and life has changed and people resist that change.

Tony Stewart: 58:14

I think that's really insightful, what you just said, and I hadn't realized it. I've thought about this a lot in the last few years without ever realizing it quite that way, and I completely agree with you, of course. Of course I do know I've heard in my grief course that when people try to minimize by comparing a loss so oh, your loss isn't so bad, that was only your, whatever your aunt, I just lost my wife. Where? To an outsider? If you want to do this sort of balancing, I get where that's coming from. But what it really means is their grief for their wife has not been witnessed enough and they want to say I'm not done grieving for my wife, so I don't want to give you the space to grieve for this person. It's so much about their own personal grief.

Tony Stewart: 59:07

And in this case, what I hadn't thought of is, of course Monica was grieving Lynn. She was very close to Lynn and Lynn wasn't there and I was rubbing her nose in it, so to speak, by bringing a different person. Would have been much better if I'd shown up alone, because then Monica and I would be on the same page looking at the empty spot that Lynn should be standing in. But instead I bring this person. I appear to be happy. Monica doesn't know, didn't know what I was going through and how complicated it was for me.

Trudie Marie: 59:44

She just sees it as if I've turned the page like oh wow, Tony's moving on, how dare he. And everybody has their own journey and no two journeys are ever alike. Yes, you're both dealing with loss, but loss comes in and the feelings that come with that come in so many different forms for every single individual and people. I don't like to say should the word should should be eliminated from the vocabulary of humanity, but people, if people would could only be more understanding that whatever grief journey they're on, or whatever journey they're on in life in general, it's their journey and it's not right or wrong that somebody else is on their journey and how they experience life. Take what you can, share what you can, and if you don't like it, leave it. It doesn't matter. At the end of the day, yes, yes, words of wisdom.

Trudie Marie: 1:00:33

Trudy, I'm going to have to start listening to more of your episodes because I think that you such a beautiful, vulnerable, generous story that for many people, like women and I speak this as a woman that we are quite nurturing, quite talkative, quite supportive of one another going through these moments of incredible pain and suffering through our life.

Trudie Marie: 1:01:16

But for most men there seems to be this shield or this wall that you don't do that, and the fact that you were able to write about it, the fact that you were able to talk about it and now produce a book about it, is like you are the avenue and the light for so many men moving forward that it is okay to feel all these things in whatever part of the journey you're going through and whatever however that loss looks whether it's the loss of a wife, a loss of a child, a loss of a parent or, whatever the case may be, a best friend like I know now that my dad lost somebody actually saw somebody die next to him in a work situation more than probably 40 years ago now but my dad still carries that grief because he was never able to process it in the way we process things today, because we never talked about it, and I think that that's where your book and your writing and who you are as a human being is that you are giving a light to men in particular going through this process.

Trudie Marie: 1:02:25

That that's your new purpose. That that's why you experienced what you did with Lynn is to give men a space that it's okay to feel all the feelings.

Tony Stewart: 1:02:37

I think that's kind of wonderful.

Tony Stewart: 1:02:40

In writing the book I wasn't thinking about gender, I would say.

Tony Stewart: 1:02:46

I wrote Carrying the Tiger specifically to do everything you just said, to reveal what it had been like for me, what my feelings had been like, what happened as a result good and bad and eventually I think it's all good in the end.

Tony Stewart: 1:03:00

I think my, my, my journey, my story, is one in which, having stumbled into so many right things not because I'm a genius, not because I'm a therapist, but because I had the good luck and instinct or whatever I think a lot of it is luck to go down that path, to start writing Caring Bridge and then eventually to get teased into being more emotional, being more revealing about my emotions all of that I wanted to reveal how helpful that had been for me, as well as what the obstacles were that came up and what it was like to try and deal with them. And it never occurred to me until after I published the book that the fact that I'm a man doing this is a whole other layer on top of it, because it is really unusual, Almost all of these stories are told by women, to the extent that they're told at all.

Trudie Marie: 1:03:50

I tend to agree and I think that that's the incredible part of your story. So I will definitely have all the links to your book and to your website and I think for any of the listeners out there who have men in their life who are struggling with grief, then go buy a copy of Tony's book and just find a way that the men in your life can cope through this you know, incredible journey of whatever they're going through.

Tony Stewart: 1:04:19

I hope so. The book is called Carrying the Tiger. My personal website is TonyStewartAuthorcom. It's in wide distribution. You can get it on Amazon worldwide. It's available everywhere, at least that a US-based author is able to make a book available, and I should say it is available as an e-book and also as an audio book. So it's on Spotify and Audible and Carrying the Tiger. If you search for it, you can find it.

Trudie Marie: 1:04:47

And I'm sure because my podcast is listened internationally, so I'm sure that no matter where you are in the world, you will be able to find a copy. Thank you so much for generously giving your time and sharing your story with me. I am forever grateful for Matt connecting us, because I think today has just been a wonderful, evocative story of going through the world of grief.

Tony Stewart: 1:05:14

And you're very welcome and I completely agree what a great conversation, what a great time we've had. Thanks, matt. I wonder if you'll listen. We love you.

Trudie Marie: 1:05:26

And I always love to finish the podcast episode by asking what is the one thing you are most grateful for today?

Tony Stewart: 1:05:45

today Most grateful for. I'm grateful to be alive and it's funny because I never would have imagined I would say that but having been with someone who died, the simple fact that I'm here, that I'm able to enjoy yes, I'm grateful for Cordelia, I'm grateful for my cats, I'm grateful for nature, I'm grateful for the sunset and the flowers and actually I'm into wild things too, not just flowers. I'm grateful for all of that, but the core of it is I'm able to still be here and have this life for a while longer. And if I can help people with my book and these podcasts, I'm grateful for that too, because it gives a purpose to my life. But simply being here, when I see how it will end, it will end for all of us. It has ended for people we love.

Trudie Marie: 1:06:32

I'm grateful to still be here. Thank you for tuning in to the Everyday Warriors podcast. If you have an idea for a future episode or a story you'd like to share yourself, then please reach out and message me, as I am always up for real, raw and authentic conversations with other Everyday Warriors. Also, be sure to subscribe so that you can download all the latest episodes as they are published, and spread the word to your family and friends and colleagues so they can listen in too. If you're sharing on social media, please be sure to tag me so that I can personally acknowledge you. I'm always open to comment about how these episodes have resonated with you, the listener. And remember lead with love as you live this one wild and precious life.