Episode 55 - Cass Barrie: Widowed & Pregnant

One moment you’re building a future, the next you’re learning how to breathe through the ruins. I’m joined by Cass from Queensland for a raw conversation about grief in its many forms, and how it can show up not just after death, but after a business closes, a career ends or your body finally says “enough”.

Cass shares what happened when she launched a brick and mortar venue in Ipswich with a genuine goal of supporting local small businesses, only to realise the work was draining her mental health, her relationships and her sense of alignment. We talk about stress and the body, including a frightening diabetes diagnosis that later proved false and why it matters to listen to your inner knowing alongside the black-and-white of test results. If you’ve ever felt like your nervous system is stuck in overdrive, you’ll recognise a lot of yourself here.

The heart of Cass’s story is her husband Glenn’s sudden death in 2015 while she was 30 weeks pregnant and the long, complicated road of parenting a child through grief when that child never had the chance to meet his dad. We explore survival mode, delayed grief, unexpected triggers and the powerful idea that joy and grief can coexist. Cass also explains how breathwork, somatic therapy, and holistic counselling helped her process emotion as “energy in motion”, plus how a later bike accident and career-ending injury added another layer of identity loss and healing.

If you’re looking for an honest episode on grief support, trauma healing, breathwork, somatics, emotional regulation and solo parenting after loss, press play. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review to help more people find these stories.

Connect with Cass on Instagram here

Cass's website can be found here

Transcript

Safety Note And Lifeline

Cass 0:00

So my husband Glenn passed away in 2015 and I was 30 weeks pregnant with our son.

Trudie Marie 0:09

Wow.

Cass 0:10

Yeah. He was 26 at the time, and I was 28, and we'd just been married. So I went from wife to widowed in nine months.

Support The Show And Guests

Cass Joins And Sets The Scene

Trudie Marie 0:23

This is the Everyday Warriors Podcast, where courageous guests share the truth of what they've survived, what they've learned, and how they have rebuilt their lives. I'm your host, Trudy Marie. Listen to these stories of resilience, purpose, and hope so you can remember you're not alone. 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 prioritise your well-being and seek assistance from trained professionals. There is no shame in this. In fact, it is the first brief 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. Before we dive into today's episode, if you'd like to support the show and go a little deeper, you can subscribe to Everyday Warrior Moments. These are short personal episodes from me released between guest conversations. A few minutes of reflection, perspective, and encouragement. You can also visit my new website and apply to be a guest and share your own story. Or you can explore the Everyday Warrior Journal if you're ready to write your story in your own words. All the links you'll find in the show notes. Welcome to another episode of the Everyday Warriors podcast. And today I have a guest with me from Queensland, and we have a really awesome topic to discuss because it has so many facets. So I'd like to welcome to the show Cass.

Cass 2:39

Hey, how you going?

Trudie Marie 2:41

I'm good, lovely, and it's so glad to have you here as well.

Cass 2:45

Yeah, it's good to be here. It's been a bit of a long time coming, getting this date booked in, but we're here now.

Dreaming Up A Business Hub

Trudie Marie 2:52

Yes, it's always timing. I think timing is perfect. It's meant to happen when it's meant to happen, as we will discuss as part of this conversation. But I want to take you back to the beginning of last year where things started to go a little bit shaky for you.

Cass 3:09

Yeah, so last year I got given an opportunity to launch a brand new business. It had been a long time since I'd actually been in a brick and mortar business. A lot of my stuff prior to that had been online, or I could just run my life from my laptop. And I had this idea of creating a venue in my local area, which is Ipswich here in Queensland. I just wanted to create a hub to support other small businesses. At the time, we had 13,000 small businesses registered in the Ipswich area. So I was like, we need something, we need a venue that people can use, we need a location that we can come together. Like all of these boxes that I could tick with this one business. I decided to yeah, take the leap and do it. And it only lasted about six months. It didn't take me long to realize that this was not the right thing for me to be doing. It was not the right place. The energy felt quite toxic in the area, and I started to decline rapidly within my health, with my mental health, my relationship with my son. It just went downhill really fast because I was out of alignment.

Trudie Marie 4:33

Yeah, and being in alignment is something we don't often look at because things go off for a reason. And clearly it wasn't meant to be for you at that point in time.

Cass 4:46

No, and I was if not at all. Well, exactly, and that's what it was. I was like, oh, maybe it's not the right timing, or maybe it says, No, this is not where you are supposed to be. You are not supposed to be locked down in one location. I realized obviously when you're out of it and you're looking at it from a different perspective, I was just like, everything that I did with this business, this brand, this company, like building it all out, everything I did was with the intention of helping others, which that's great. As humanity, we want to help others, we want to support and be kind and all of that kind of thing. But at the end of the day, I was helping others and not filling my cup at all. It was literally sucking the life out of me. And I had a friend who invested a large chunk of money into it because she saw the vision, and I saw the vision as well, but it just was not the right place for me. So the vision was there, but it wasn't supposed to be my vision.

Trudie Marie 5:45

And it's funny how that actually happens as well, that you have this bright idea, but you're the one that's not meant to execute it.

Stress And A Diabetes Scare

Cass 5:55

Yeah, and exactly right. I was like, I should have I need to just hand it over to somebody else or let some let somebody else take the reins. But for me, like I started off the year like being diagnosed as diabetic, and I just knew in me, I was like, I'm not diabetic, this is not right. But the worst thing was is like my doctor's like, I've got your blood tests, I've got this here, I've got this here. It's all it's for them, it was in black and white, and I'm just like, no, I am like I'm not diabetic. I know that is not what's going on for me. And then as the business kind of progressed, and I then made the decision to call it quits, I have now since gone back to my doctor. Oh, I think we've done two blood tests. Surprise, surprise, I'm not diabetic. I was like, I just knew in myself that I wasn't, and then now I've got the black and white evidence that I'm not, but whatever was going on within my body back then, because I was just so out of alignment, everything within me, physically and mentally, was so freaking haywire that even the science was showing the chaos.

Trudie Marie 7:11

100%. And that's what people also don't consider is that when things happen to us in our body, it's not by accident, something led us to this point, and so often we go to the doctors, we look for their resolution, their excuse, what's going on, and they perform tests and say, right, in your case, it's diabetes, but you know in yourself that's not the case, and that there is something going on elsewhere, and until we actually start looking at the metaphysical side of things and what is actually causing this disease in our body, not the disease, as we like to say one word, but as it's proven in your case, is that you were right, it wasn't diabetes, it was something else going on, and that's what stress can do to the body, put us into a total state of disease.

Cass 8:08

Yeah, a hundred percent. And I use that word disease. I'm a breathwork facilitator, and when I run my sessions, I use that word a lot, and people are like, What? I'm like, Yeah, break it down, break it down, and that's the thing for me. Like, when I actually finally stopped and stepped out of the business and broke it down, it was just like it's me. It was me because it was my energetics, because I just knew I wasn't supposed to be here. So no wonder the business isn't succeeding, no wonder the business isn't growing where it needs to go, because I am not energetically aligned with it, I am not connected to it, I do not have the passion for it. I'm continuing to try and pour from an empty cup, trying to fill an empty cup that is a business, wondering why nothing's fucking filling up and why nothing's working. So in the end, yeah, I was only open for six months. I then decided to shut my doors. I had to go through a whole lot of like like legal stuff because there was a lease, there was money I owed to my investor and that kind of thing, and then it rolled into this reminder of shame, guilt, resentment, grief. I was like, oh my god, like now. So then I spent the last half of the year grieving, and I'm like, I'm a seasoned professional when it comes to grief, but I was just like, oh man, now there's this whole process. I've just gone through this process in the business, and now this whole other process that I've got to go through to get over the business.

Trudie Marie 9:42

And I don't think people realize either that grief takes on so many forms, and for most people, they think of it only through the loss of a loved one. That's when you grieve, and we were talking off-air how that's bereavement. Grief is the emotion you feel, but grief can happen in so many other areas of our lives, and that we have to give it time to go through the grieving process.

Wife To Widowed While Pregnant

Cass 10:12

Yeah, oh 100%. Like grief does come up so much, and that's what I specialise in now. I am now a grief counsellor. I wasn't always, I was a hairdresser for many, many years, surprisingly. So grief shows up in so many different aspects. You can grieve a relationship, you can grieve a career, you can grieve obviously the loss of a loved one through death, but you can also grieve like the transition from maiden to mother, you can transition that grieve that transition from going from say mothering to empty nest up. There's so many different ways that grief will actually show up in your life, and the reality is as well, is I feel like once it's come to visit, I call grief my sidekick now because for me now, and for everyone who's had like a traumatic grief experience, it's something that you will always carry. So my husband Glen passed away in 2015 and I was 30 weeks pregnant with our son.

Trudie Marie 11:16

Wow.

Cass 11:17

Yeah. He was 26 at the time, and I was 28, and we'd just been married. So I went from wife to widowed in nine months. It was fucking shit.

Trudie Marie 11:31

I can only begin to imagine like losing a what loved one at any stage, but to do that in early marriage, and while you're carrying your child, like this is supposed to be the beginning of your life together and parenthood together, and you've had everything ripped away from you. That's a whole different level of grief.

Cass 11:52

Yeah, yeah. And it's just carrying the grief now as well for my son, too. That's a whole experience in itself. But Glenn just went to sleep, so that was what made it that little bit harder to wrap my head around. We didn't have a, you know, oh, he's sick, he's gonna, his time's coming to an end. We didn't have any preparation, and there's lots of people out there who have lost loved ones who don't have any preparation time essentially, but he just went to sleep. Like, I don't feel like there was any signs, there was no kind of lead up or anything like that. He went to sleep and he just never woke up again. He was also overseas at the time, too, so he wasn't even in the same country, so that was a whole other experience in itself, and then just being pregnant, like that's its own fucking roller coaster in itself, being pregnant, and then moving into then having a child as well. So I really don't feel like I actually fully faced the grief of his death until Franklin was almost five.

Trudie Marie 13:09

That's a long time to process everything that is going on for you because, like I said, you're grieving the loss of your new husband, but then you're grieving the loss of a life that you could have had together because you've just started this married life. You're now grieving the loss of your son's father because you're having, and then you're having to be mother, father, friend, and foe as a single parent. So not only are you trying to manage this new world of parenthood and motherhood, you're having to do it solo, not by choice. So there I can only begin to imagine all the things that were going on for you, and that yes, something like that does take time. It doesn't, it's not like you can flick a switch and go, yep, cool, I'm done, let's move on. Life isn't like that.

Survival Mode And Delayed Grief

Cass 14:02

No, it's not, and that's where I come back to that. Like, grief is my sidekick because it will always be with me, and sometimes it does. My sidekick does show up and support me and help me through the fight. Sometimes my sidekick shows up and is completely fucking useless and just hangs around and it's just like, oh hey, I'm grief, I'm just here to be annoying. It's a constant sort of cycle with grief. You don't know when it's gonna come, you're not always guaranteed how it's going to trigger you. And for me, with having Franklin, so that first year I was a first-time mum. My life was to keep my small human alive. Okay, I was nothing but a milk bar, really. Like I spent 12 months on the couch keeping this child alive. So, in that, I don't feel like I had time, but I was also still so numb to it. And then as life progressed, you're busy. So I've gone from a newborn to then a toddler, and my child is very busy, just like me. So we were just constantly on the go. I then have my entrepreneur brain that was just like, okay, cool, you've rested for five minutes, let's start something new. So I really found it wasn't until Franklin started school that I then kind of actually went, Oh shit, I've got a little bit of time for me now. And that's when it all came crashing down.

Trudie Marie 15:34

And I can totally relate to that, especially from a career perspective, and even like being a police officer and losing that career, it's not until you stop in that silence and in those moments where you have time for yourself that you actually start to process what is it that's been going on? Because so often we're in survival mode, we just do what we need to do to survive, and until we stop, pause, reflect, that's when we start to realise holy hell, this is what's really been going on.

Cass 16:12

And that's why there is so much fear around rest. There is so much fear around stopping, because we know that once we stop, things will come up, things will start to shift. And with a lot of my clientele, I'm like, if you actually just stopped, we could process what we need to process, and then we can move on from it. But a lot of the time there is just such a strong fear around the stopping and allowing anything to rise that people just stay busy to avoid it completely, and some people get through life avoiding it completely. Awesome, good on you. Some people don't, some people get to a point and it just comes crashing down, and it's harder to wade through the mess than it is if you started to just tidy it up one little spot at a time, and there is no right or wrong way to process trauma, grief, or anything that's happened. The key is just that you do process it in some way, shape, or form. But again, grief, even no matter how far you process, I'm now coming up to or just clicked over 10 years since Glenn passed, and there's still some times for me where it comes up and it still hits almost just as hard as it did in those first 12 months, and then there's some times that I'm like anticipating perhaps a date or an anniversary, and then I get past it, and I was like, oh, okay, actually, that wasn't too bad this year, but you just don't know. You've just got to be prepared and accept the fact that it's okay to grieve, whether it's a year later, 10 years later, 20 years later, whatever the time frame is, it's still okay to grieve.

Trudie Marie 18:08

I think what's interesting in what you just said then is that it's through those anniversaries or dates of importance that you often cope the best. And I think it's because you prepare yourself for that. It's the moments that something comes up unexpected, out of the ordinary. It could be a song on the radio, it could be a moment in time, a memory that just wafts into your vision. They're the moments that catch you out the most because you are not prepared for that.

Cass 18:43

Oh, I had it only like I think it was like last week or the week before. It was only recently that I went in to wake Franklin up for school. And beside his bed, he's got a whole collection of picture frames with photos of his dad in them. And I don't know what it was just the timing and the way the sun was coming through the window, and it was shining on these photos of Glen, and I'm waking Franklin up, and then I've just looked up and I just burst out crying. Franklin's 10. We've been in this house now for oh, probably almost five years. Those pictures have been in the same spot on the same wall for five years, but it was just in that moment that the emotions hit and triggered me, and I'm waking him up with like snotting tears, and he's like, What, mum? And I'm like, I just miss your dad. And then he's like, Me too. And he will give me a hug and we just get on with the day. But you've got to, again, in those moments too, is you just gotta allow that to rise and fall. If I stood there and went, nope, suck it up, nope, gotta get on with the day, you know, don't feel I would have carried that energy for the entire friggin' day and crashed and burned at the end. But if I because I let those emotions rise, I worked through it. I felt what needed to be felt, and I came out the other side within a few minutes.

Trudie Marie 20:10

And like you said, that we avoid stopping because we don't want to process the information. We also avoid processing the emotion. Because how many times do people actually stop themselves from crying or stop themselves from getting angry or stop themselves from feeling joy? Probably that's one of the hardest things for me in coming outside the other side of the post-traumatic stress, is that people feel like you shouldn't be happy. And when you do want to feel a happy moment, you almost feel guilty for those happy moments. And that's part of the whole process, is that yes, something sad happened, even at I think at people's funerals and things, you're just supposed to be sad the whole time, but why not be joyful and reminisce about the good times? Because that's part of life.

Cass 21:07

Yeah. There was something that I saw the other day, and it was like it said, You're not gonna lose your happiness, but you do need to process your anger. And I think so many people fear facing things because they know that they're gonna get angry and they know that they need to get angry, but then they're afraid of getting stuck in the anger and losing their happiness or losing their joy. And the reality is if you don't process, again, like you said, those emotions, then you will lose other emotions. So if you're carrying this anger and sadness and frustration and all of that, eventually the joy that you're and the happiness that you're living in a bit of an illusion with. Is gonna come crashing down because the anger's gonna finally seep through. So it wouldn't it make more sense to go hey, cool, I know I've got to process the shit that's over here, but if I process this and understand it and learn about it and know how to talk with it, know how to manage it, then if it starts to creep into my happiness and joy, I can do what needs to be done to separate them. So you're better off facing it than sticking your head in the sand.

Trudie Marie 22:31

I totally agree. I think it's something that's overlooked in society as a whole, that we're meant to either, in certain circumstances, we're either meant to go around sad, or we're meant to go around happy, or we're meant to go around angry, but we're not actually just dealing with the raw emotions as they occur and just processing them in that moment and then moving on. Because all it needs to do is just go through our bodies, and it's when we start to store it that going back to the beginning of the conversation, the disease settles in.

Cass 23:08

Exactly, and emotions are energy in motion, so the energy needs to be moved through, and that is your emotion. So when an emotion rises, it's energy that needs to be moved. And once you learn techniques on how to move it, how to connect with it, how to understand it, you actually realize that it's not quite as difficult as we thought it would be. Communicating with your body actually isn't as hard as we make it out. The things we've just we're just not taught that. We're not taught to feel emotions, we're not taught to show emotions, because if we do all of those things, then that creates an individual strong human. And at the end of the day, at the core of it, it's not what society wants.

Breathwork, Somatics, And The Woo

Trudie Marie 23:53

I totally agree with that one. And I want I need to ask then, is that how you then got into you said you're a breathwork facilitator, a grief counsellor? We also talked about somatics. Is that how that journey started for you in actually starting to process the grief with the loss of Glenn?

Cass 24:12

Yes, yes. It all started out a bit woo-woo, which I love. The day that my son was born. So, in the space of a couple of months, our family had lost two men. And my dad went down to my uncle's place and was cleaning out his house, and he rings me and he's like, Oh, Uncle Dougie's house has got all these rocks and shit. I'm like, crystals? And he's like, Yeah, and he's got all those boxes of smelly sticks and stuff. I'm like, incense. I'm like, such a dad way to explain things. So my uncle had yeah, a whole collection of crystals and tarot cards and all of this woo-woo stuff, and it just was not. My uncle was like, I think he was either the a deputy or a principal or whatever. He was a principal of an all-boys Catholic school, and so finding crystals and tarot cards and things like that in his house was definitely not what any of us expected. So I was like, Yeah, bring it all home. I'm like, I love all that shit. So bring it all home. And when he did, I started going through the crystals and stuff, and I was just like, I know what these are. Like, I'd never really worked with crystals or anything before, but obviously, shiny rock, like I had a few pretty things, but then I was just like, I just know what these are for, I know what these do, I know how to use these. It was just something that just kind of clicked. So whilst I was living the life of being a live-in milk bar for my newborn, I was sitting on the couch and I went, I want to explore. So I started studying things like oracle card reading, crystal healing, like meditation, and kind of some of the woo-woo modalities. And then in 2018, I went to an event and they had a breathwork experience there. And I think it went for maybe an hour and a half. I had the most insane experience, the most energetic, emotional release I had felt honestly ever in my life, but definitely since Glenn had passed, so much just came up and through me and out of me. And I just was like, what the fuck was that? Like, what just happened? I remember crying for probably a good 45 minutes after, to the point that Shane, one of the facilitators, came and he took me out of the room and he was like, Can I hold you? And I was like, Yes. And I just remember after I stopped crying, I'm just like, I need to buy you a new shirt because it's all covered in my snot. Because I just cried and cried into this man's chest, and so that then sent me on a journey of why the fuck did that work? What just happened? So then I went into the space of studying breath work, and I've done breath work training with a couple of different facilitators because again, it's a modality that has shit tons of different versions, and then it just naturally progressed from there. So then I went and I did some somatic therapy training, I did my holistic counselor diploma, I just started to experience things for myself and going, well, they work, I want to know how and why. And then yeah, it's naturally progressed now into being my profession.

Trudie Marie 27:42

And the thing that stands out for me the most is the fact that you said it started on a woo-woo journey. And I think so many people consider what has always been around, what has always been practiced in current society as seen as this version of woo. Yet, if people actually looked at the woo, there is scientific backing to back the woo. And it's not until we start getting involved in that, and for me, there's always been some element of it in my life, and I the minute I got diagnosed with post-traumatic stress, I went down a very holistic route, which turned off a lot of people because even when I fronted my medical board, they're like, You haven't been medicated, you haven't done this, and I'm like, Yeah, but I've done all this over here, which you wouldn't pay for and you won't acknowledge. But that's done more for me than any of the stuff that you wanted to do and pay for. So I think you have to make the choices that there is other alternatives out there that will help you process whatever you're going through, and it is such a personal journey that we all have to undertake.

Cass 28:56

Oh, a hundred percent, and you've got to find what works for you. I know for me, I've gone deeper into the woo-woo, as they say, and I'm just like, whoa, no, that's not for me. And then I've done other things where it's quite spiritually scientific, and I'm like, nah, that's a bit too structured for me. So there's so many different levels of it, but at the end of the day, it is. I think the difference is with the woo-woo with commas around it, it's its embodiment, it's humanness. Whereas we do have some other things where it is like, yeah, take this medication or take this thing that's outside of you to manage what's inside of you, and by all means, no judgment on anyone who does live and take medications and things like that, it all has its place, but for me personally, getting to know me inside and out was the best medicine.

Trudie Marie 30:05

And how has that impacted life even with your son? Because obviously, he's come into the world, and from day one, he doesn't have a father figure present because his father has passed, and he's now having to manage grief. I suppose from a very young age, it's different where family split and couples divorce, and you have a parent that comes in and out of your life, but from the very beginning, he doesn't have his father around, he only knows his father through photos, through stories, through videos of what other people know of his father. So, how has processing your grief helped him to process his?

Cass 30:53

Oh mate, it's been a fucking wild ride. It is so hard to watch this small human, I can't say small, he's almost as tall as me now, but I'm not I'm five foot nothing. But to watch this little human grieve someone he never knew, someone he has never physically met. And it's not even that he's just grieving Glenn as the human, he's grieving the expectation of life of you have a you, you know, you should have a father, kind of thing. So he's grieving the life that he should have, then he's grieving the loss of that connection to the man, then also grieving in ways like you know, my parents, I've got them, they're together, that kind of thing. So there's just so many areas of grief just for him, which then on flows to me because I am his mother, I am responsible to help him understand, live, and love life. And for me, it's taken a little bit to separate and be like, okay, I can help him through this, but it doesn't mean that I have to then go and have a really heavy day. I don't have to be triggered by helping him through it, and that took that's taken and still to this day still takes time because naturally I'm gonna get upset because my kid's upset. But then I also want to step into a space of yes, I want to show him that he can be his emotions and feel them and let them flow, but then I also want to step out and be like, no, hey buddy, I can be your strength, I can be your support. So again, it's a roller coaster, and you just don't know what way it's gonna go. Because sometimes it's like he'll be like, Oh, I really miss dad. Okay, cool. In my head, I'm like, I don't know how like you miss him, but you've never met him, and so for him, it's been triggered by something, so I want to understand what he's been triggered by. I want to understand where that thought is. Is it he's missing his dad because he's playing music like his dad did, or is it just a random thought, or just I want to understand where it comes from for him, so I can support him through it, or eliminate the triggers. And you can't always have that conversation with a tech girl.

Trudie Marie 33:27

No, and I think just what you said inside of all of that, that it's a roller coaster, and it is a continuous roller coaster that we can almost never get off. That's life. Like you look at a heartbeat, a heartbeat is ups and downs, a roller coaster is ups and downs, and it's how to not stay in the up, and it's how to not stay in the down. It's this constant coming backward and forwards through it. And like you said, being a mother, you you want to be there for your child, you want to love your child and protect them and make sure they're okay, but at the same time, you're like, no, what he's going through is his version, and what I'm going through over here is my version, and being able to then create that balance, I suppose. That must be so difficult inside of the difficulty that parenthood is, added layer of pressure.

Cass 34:27

That's exactly right. So, like, hey, here's motherhood, but let's add this to it as well, and I think that's the thing too. And again, I know there's so many people, and there's so many women and men who are out there parenting on their own, but I think sometimes I'll have conversations with friends, or especially when I went and back into the dating scene for a little bit, it was like, guys, no, I'm a solo parent, I'm not a single parent, I'm a solo parent. I don't get every other weekend for my son to go somewhere. And there are so many of us out there who are the same, but there are also so many of us out who they just don't get that. Yeah, he doesn't have a dad. I don't have another person, and it's those milestones as well, like starting school, achieving things at school, sports, all of these kind of things, that's often another reminder of fuck, I'm doing this on my own.

Trudie Marie 35:23

Yeah, I can only begin to imagine I was a single parent, so I can relate to that part of it where there is another part of you, there is the other parent there in the background. But when you're doing it on your own, in the truest sense, because the other person isn't there to experience all of that, and that brings up, like you said, with the milestones, it brings up those moments of grief where there is no other alternative, it's there's no other way it can be.

Joy And Grief Living Together

Cass 35:54

The beautiful thing in it, but is that I've learned and that I love to remind everyone is joy and grief can coexist. You can be grieving and you can be sad, but that doesn't have to take away from you feeling happy. So for me, Franklin's born at the end of January, so we all always have his birthday, and then within a few days, he'll start school, and then my wedding anniversary with Glenn is on the 7th of Feb. So from that sort of period in January, there are so many things that happen so quickly that I'm excited for. Like, I'm excited for Frankie's birthday. I'm happy to celebrate him. I love that, and then I'm excited for him to start school, where it's obviously always a new year. This year he was in grade five. I'm just like, oh, this is so exciting. But then there's so many other parts of me in that same time that are just like wanting to just cry and be sad, and then I want to be happy and joyous at the same time, and they used to fight, they used to fight so hard within me. The sadness was like, no, no, no, you're not allowed to be happy, and then the happy's like, Well, I don't want to always be sad. When I finally come to the understanding that they can actually both hang out at the same time, that grief became more manageable.

Trudie Marie 37:21

I think that's a really good lesson for any listener out there to remind them that it is not an all-or-nothing. There is that coexistence that makes us human, that we can feel both the sadness and the joy at the same time. Like on his birthday, you're like, yay, it's his birthday, he's another year older, but at the same time, Dad's not here to witness that. Or like on your anniversary, you remember the good days and you feel happy about that, but sad that you're not going to be able to celebrate another one with him. I think they do go hand in hand. So why is it that society believes it's one or the other?

Cass 38:07

And especially in the early stages, well, I even still experienced it last year. I had an interaction with somebody in regards to like grief and Glenn's death, and you carry this fear of, oh, I better not look too happy, or I better not look like I'm doing too okay because people have their opinions or people have their thoughts. I carried this massive fear of success for quite a few years because Glenn had been a massive part of my businesses. I had multiple businesses before he passed, and he had always been a part of that journey. And so when I came back into the entrepreneurial world, I carried this fear of success, which was capping me, and it led to this fear of I can't be too happy or too successful without him. You know, I can't show up and be too happy or do too good because my husband died. So it really brought on this like spinster mentality of your husband died, you're widowed now, you've got to be miserable for the rest of your life. And again, that's from society. It's not from within me because it's not what I wanted to do. I was so confused and trying to fight it and figure it out. And then once I again you step outside of it and you go, fuck, this isn't actually my belief. This is just what has been passed on through the ages and passed on through society and other people's beliefs and other people's stories that had started to stick to me.

Trudie Marie 39:46

Yeah, society has a lot to answer for sometimes, and I always go back to the reflection that until you're walking, like no one else walks in those shoes. Your life experience is your life experience, and you can walk on the same path with other people who are going through grief or going through trauma or whatever it is in life that you're experiencing, but they're never going to have your journey. And these keyboard warriors and lounge critics that come in with their little two-bit information that say this is how it should or shouldn't be. I hate the word should in the English language because there is no should. Could is a way better word because there are possibilities around the word could. Should is almost a one way or the other. And that's not life. Life is a myriad of possibilities, even inside of grief.

Bike Crash, Identity, And Purpose

Cass 40:45

Oh, a hundred percent. Because for me now, I now know that Glenn's passing and the lessons and the grief and the life that I now live was orchestrated for a reason because of what I get to do now. And then I thought I was doing the work and I wasn't doing it to the universe's expectations, so then it hit me with a car and pushed me further and further into the next stage of what I was supposed to be doing. I was a hairdresser at the time, so this is 2018. I was a hairdresser, I owned multiple salons, and I was out on my bike, and a car ran a stop sign and took me out, and so I ended up with like shoulder surgery, and that was career ending. Yeah, I, as a hairdresser, it's not very fun to work with a broken shoulder. So it then pushed me again to learn another version of grief. I had been a hairdresser since I was 15 years old. So at the time, it was pretty much half of my life. That was all I knew. It was who I was, it was my identity because I'd had multiple businesses in the area. That's just what everyone knew me as. Oh, you're the hairdresser, you own this salon. That's you. So I went through this process of one grieving the physical capabilities of my body. I then had an addiction to pain meds as well, so that was another roller coaster to ride through. And then when I got the all clear to say come back to work, I went back and I just couldn't do it. I physically could not do what I used to do. So then that was a whole identity shift and taught me even more about grief and propelled me rapidly into what I do now as a counselor.

Trudie Marie 42:48

And the world is a better place because of it, because your lessons and your wisdom and your journey is now being passed on to other people and serving a new purpose that you may not have known at the time. Like when you married Glen, you had a whole different dream and vision, but now the universe has gifted you with your purpose.

Cass 43:15

Oh, a hundred percent. Like I reflect now, and you gotta be mindful with grief because sometimes when you reflect, you do you start to get triggered by the vision of what was meant to be, and you have to come back to that reminder of if that was meant to be, it would have happened that way. So it's coming to that space of acceptance, which we know is one of the major parts of grief, but coming back to that space of accepting that I don't have that life because that is not the life that I was meant to have. This is where I am meant to be now. It doesn't make it suck any less, and I still wish to this day that my husband was here, but I know that. That our experiences and our love that we had leading up to his death was meant to happen that way to then lead me and carry me through into where I am now.

Trudie Marie 44:12

It's such a beautiful place to come from. Holding on to those precious moments, those precious memories, the magic that you created when he was alive. I mean, a little bit of him will always be with you, with your son.

Cass 44:26

Oh, definitely, definitely. And he still gets the blame even when Franklin is playing up. It's still his fault. So your father.

Trudie Marie 44:41

Yeah. Thank you so much today for taking us through this journey of grief and how it can appear in our lives. And like you said, you've lost a business, you've lost a husband, you've lost a career as well. There are so many different versions that grief has shown up in your life. Yeah, you've so so vulnerably shared the roller coaster ride that that was.

Cass 45:10

And I yeah, and I think the thing is like I obviously I reference to the roller coaster a lot because it's the easiest way to explain it. But as long as your roller coaster is still always moving, then you're okay. It's when you get stuck at the top of that ride or when you pull the brakes on, that's when that's when it can get really hard. That's when you want to really start questioning what's going on and what you're doing. If you are continuing to ride that roller coaster through the mess, then you're doing a bloody great job.

Trudie Marie 45:46

Totally agree. Thank you so much for being part of the show. I've had a really beautiful conversation today, and I always finish by asking what is the one thing you are most grateful for today?

Cass 45:59

I'm grateful for my grief.

Trudie Marie 46:03

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.