She Diaries

Loz Antonenko's Story: Grief, Bereavement & Resilience—Daily Habits That Help You Start Over

• Bright Sky House • Season 1 • Episode 4

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In this powerful episode, Loz Antonenko shares her journey through bereavement and grief following the suicide loss of her husband. She walks us through the fractured years of grief and the mental health struggles that went largely unseen.

Loz found her footing by building stories of resilience through so-called “handbrake habits”—simple routines around movement, hydration, rest, nourishment, and breath—that became her anchors. These small, daily acts helped her start over, rebuild trust with herself, and ultimately write Get the F*ck Unstuck, her guide to healing.

By sharing her lived experience, Loz contributes to suicide prevention, modeling how openness, support systems, and dismantling the stigma around grief can help others walk through loss—and toward hope. This episode is a raw and real conversation about surviving heartbreak and reclaiming a life worth living.

Content Warning

This podcast includes real stories of suicide loss. Some episodes may reference the method of suicide and include emotionally intense or uncomfortable descriptions. We understand how sensitive this content is, and we carefully edit each episode to honor and respect both our guests and listeners. If you or someone you know is struggling, please call or text 988 or visit 988lifeline.org for free, 24/7 support. Please take care while listening—pause if you need to. You are not alone.

Takeaways

  • What bereavement and what it means to grieve a spouse look like in real life
  • Why support systems and small daily routines matter in healing
  • How mental health and stigma shape the aftermath of loss
  • Using “handbrake habits” as a foundation for starting over
  • From grief to resilience—the making of a healing blueprint
  • Sharing her story as a form of suicide prevention and hope for others

About She Diaries

In She Diaries, women who have lost their husbands to suicide bravely share their stories of strength while navigating the unimaginable journey of widowhood. Through candid interviews, the podcast explores their lives before the tragedy, moments that changed everything, the web of grief, and the hard-earned lessons of overcoming deep loss. These powerful stories shed light on the strength and courage it takes to move forward.

Produced by Bright Sky House

Mental Health Resources

  • 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988 for free, 24/7, confidential support for mental health crises, suicidal thoughts, or emotional distress.
  • Find a Therapist: Search for licensed therapists near you through directories like Psychology Today, TherapyDen, or Mental Health Match.
  • Join a Support Group: Connect with others through peer-led or professionally facilitated support groups via NAMI or GriefShare.

Stay Connected with She Diaries

Instagram: @BrightSkyHouse
Facebook: Bright Sky House
YouTube: Bright Sky House Official
LinkedIn: Bright Sky House

If you have questions or would like to follow-up with any of our guests, reach out to Hello@BrightSkyHouse.com.

She Diaries is available wherever you listen to podcasts.

Hi, I'm Krista Gregg, your host for She Diaries, a podcast sharing the real, unfiltered stories of women who've lost their husbands to suicide. It's raw, it's honest, and it's about finding your way through the unthinkable. Before we get to the show, please know this podcast includes real stories of suicide loss, and is not for little ears. Some episodes may reference the method of suicide and include emotionally intense or uncomfortable descriptions. We understand how sensitive this content is and carefully edit each episode to honor and respect both our guests and listeners. If you or someone you love is struggling, call or text 988 or visit 988LIFELINE.org. You're not alone. Please take care while listening. Pause if you need to. and you can find links to additional mental health resources in our show notes. Thank you for listening. Hey everyone, before we jump into today's episode, I've got a little good news and well, bad news. The bad news isn't really that bad, but my audio is a bit buggy on this one, meaning my voice in this podcast kind of cuts in and out and it can be a little bit hard to hear me sometimes, which has been mildly frustrating. But I do not want to miss the deadline for getting this episode out because The good news is that our next guest's audio is fantastic. She sounds amazing and her story is one that is incredible. You really don't want to miss this and there are so many great life lessons in here. So this is the joys of being a new podcaster, right? We're still learning. We're still figuring it out. And let's move on from the good news and bad news to introducing our guest. Lazi Antoneko is a wellness coach, speaker, and the author of Get the Fuck Unstuck, a no BS guide to building habits that actually help you heal. In this episode, she shares what it was like to lose her husband to suicide, face multiple chronic illnesses, brain tumors, and rebuild a life rooted in purpose. I just have a quick content warning. At the very beginning of the episode, it does include a brief mention of sexual assault. Laws does a great job of saying trigger warning right before she talks about this part in her life. So if that's something you want to skip through, just know it's there at the beginning. Her honesty, her voice, her mission, all of it is something you won't forget. Laws is an inspiration and she has so many quick phrases. and little tidbits you're definitely gonna wanna implement in your life. Thank you so much for sticking with me through a few of these little technical hiccups on this episode, and I hope you enjoy. This is Laws's story. These are feelings, drive me away. Fingers crossing. Hi, it has been a long time coming for us to meet here on camera for Tea Diaries. And I'm just so grateful you are here to share your story. And do you want to give a quick little intro, who you are, where you are? You're in Friday, I'm in Thursday, all of that. Well, it's an absolute honor and a pleasure, Krista. And yeah, I do come to you from the future. My name's Lozantinenko. I am the world's best mojo mentor and self-confessed, infomaniac, helpaholic, and all-round lycra-loving badass with a good ass. I it. I love it. You're like the ultimate hype person. It just from talking with you, like always a good vibe, always good thoughts. Let's just, know, life's kind of has its ups and downs, but let's keep going. Let's push forward. Let's be positive and grateful. That's 100 % how it is. I always like to ask first, how did you guys meet? What was your relationship like? What was life like? And I know you were going through some big health issues as well. So I've opened the door. It's like Hoover Dam opening up. It's interesting. both of my husbands, cause I am remarried, but I met them both at exactly the same place. So I was a Zumba instructor at the PCYC. So PCYC is like a YMCA. So it's a stands for police citizens and youth club here in Australia. But at the time when I met Brian, I was in the thick of university studies, didn't care about how I looked and like I would I got forced to come to the gym with my friend. She had injured her shoulder and was told she needed to do pilates. Now I thought she said pies and lattes. Honest to God, I thought she said pies and lattes. And I was like, cool. Well, if that's the case, I'm all, I'm coming with you, all good. But we ended up going to this pilates class. It was one the hardest things I ever did, but prior to sitting, prior to going into the class and sitting in the class, I would sit in the hallway with my friend and this good looking sort of, I couldn't work out what his cultural background was, but he looked like, I was like, is he Polynesian? Is, I don't know where he's from. He's mysterious. And he kept walking past to go down to the gym every, every day that we were at Pilates. And he'd always sort of smile at me, you know, like the toothless, the style you do when you don't know somebody. So. For months on end, that would happen. Never spoke to him because I never went to the gym. just went to this Pilates thing, which I hated. And then one day, I was working at McDonald's at the time through my university degree. My friend who was on drive-through said, I've really got to go to the bathroom. Can you just quickly take over for me? I'll just be a couple of minutes. So I took over on the drive-through window and who would come through drive-through, but this guy. who I kept seeing at the gym, who kept staring at me with my panda eyes at the gym horribly on an evening. And I'm like, oh, my God, you're the guy from the gym. And he's like, my God, you're the girl from the gym. And I said, what did you want? And he said, I'll have a large raspberry frozen Coke. And I remember exactly what he ordered. So I processed that for him and I said, what's your name? And I was expecting like Jamal or like something like. Or like, I don't know, something different. And he goes, Brian. I'm like, Brian? I don't know. I was like expecting this completely different name. And so then that evening at the gym, we got talking and that's actually how we met. And, you know, I'll never forget that. like, as soon as he ordered and went through drive-through, my friend came back from the toilet. So he was the only customer I actually served. And it just, it just felt like this really random intersection of time. But. Our relationship was, it was, was a really beautiful relationship. I was a very different person to what I am now. He was a very kind, soft, gentle, sort of caramel koala, hard on the outside, trained really hard, wanted to look a certain way. He was Eurasian. So I found out his dad was Ukrainian English. So his, his Ukrainian heritage, but his mom was Chinese Malaysian with Thai. So this really interesting mixed race. So very good looking. loved looking after himself. But as we progressed through our relationship, I think I realized that we had quite a codependent dynamic where everything we did, we had to do together. didn't really spend, I think in the whole time we were together, like two or three nights apart, you know? So very, very lovely and loving, but it's interesting. The dynamic I have now with my husband that I have now is like a completely opposing dynamic. oh you know, it was... It was 11 years that we were together. Wow, 11 years. And so through this time, when did you guys meet? How old are you? I was, I think I was 19. I was 19. I think I was, just turned 20. just turned 20 and he passed away when you were 31 about to be 32. 31 years, when I just two days after turning 31. So I was, I was 20 and yeah, I was 20. just turned 20 and he was a year younger than me, one year, one day, one month younger than me. So we got married on the 10th of the 10th, 2010. It was an outdoor wedding, the worst torrential rain ever. was a beach wedding, had to have it indoors. I was so stressed, but yeah, we actually met when I just had gotten out of my teens. So still quite young. Yeah, you're still figuring yourself out. again, like kind of life seems like it flowed very much pointing to him in a lot of ways, in a lot of respects as you guys are figuring things out together. Now I've read online you were 26 and you discovered a major health issue. And so when you're with Brandon and you guys are going through things, how did that affect your marriage, your relationship? Did things obviously change quite a bit there? Well, actually prior to that, were a few other things that happened that tested our relationship and solidified it. trigger warning, but three weeks after meeting Brian, I actually was raped. So I was at a, like a horse races and I'd only just met him and I'd already had these tickets with a friend and this sexual assault occurred. had a drink that was spiked and I got resuscitated in a gutter. Um, you know, a little distance away from where it all happened. And I, forgot, I was having these flashbacks. so our relationship was really tested at a very early stage. I remember having to, I knew the perpetrator, he was a housemate of a, of an ex boyfriend. And there was another guy involved and, our relationship, I remember being at the, the police station and calling the perpetrator, trying to get an admission and Brian wanted to listen in on the call. And then. About three weeks after that, his grandfather passed away and he was very close to his grandfather. And so we had this disruption of this homeostasis very early in our relationship. Now, when Brian met me, I wasn't exactly a sick person, but I had some lingering symptoms of some health stuff, gut stuff. And not long after all of those events happened, and I think probably the trauma and the stress of those events potentially, you know, were the catalyst to this this health condition, an autoimmune condition flaring up. I developed all of these intolerances to food. I was very sick. I rapidly started losing weight. I got down to about 40 kilos. I was pooping blood. I was so unwell. And back and forth from medical specialists, they diagnosed me with a condition called ulcerative colitis, which is a form of inflammatory bowel disease, similar to something called Crohn's disease. So when they diagnosed me with that, you know, it was my first real experience of not being well. And so the medical treatment for that, it was quite intense. there lots of steroids and I gained a lot of weight, but you know, he still loved me for me. He, you know, helped me out with my medication. was, it was a lot to go through and I was, I wasn't a very nice person to be around because I was in a lot of pain. They also told me at that time that I had a genetic polymorphism, a gene that if you have that condition, they test you for this gene to see if you're susceptible to other conditions, which I was. And they kind of alerted me in advance that potentially down the track, you could develop all of these other things like lupus, multiple sclerosis, ankle lozings, spondylitis. There's a bunch of other medical conditions attached to that gene. so kind of going through our relationship with this dark cloud that sort of sits over, like you never kind of know what's going to happen. lot for a 20 year old, let alone anyone to handle. Yeah, yeah. And so that, kind of was the bond of our relationship where I was the sick person, he was the healthy person. I never really had any regard for my health other than trying to just keep my head above water. I was diagnosed with a pituitary adenoma in 2014. So they found a tumor on my brain in my pituitary gland. I had some weird lingering hormonal symptoms. Like I was lactating and I was like, what is this? It was so weird. It was such a weird experience. then, and then there were all of these other, it's like, I was like that. I I, I don't think I really understood the other hormonal symptoms, but that symptom I was like, this is something like, what is this? Yeah. That prompted me to go to the doctor. There was just accumulation of all of these medical acronyms after my name through a whole relationship. had, you know, PMDD, premenstrual dysphoric disorder. I got generalized anxiety disorder. I was diagnosed with depression. I had, you know, the other gastrointestinal things. And so, you know, I guess that's when I sort of assumed this identity as a sick person. Yeah. And so our relationship was very much like he was looking after me. I was running a family business trying to be independent, but you know, that dark cloud of illness kind of assumed and consumed a lot of our relationship. so our identities then formed around that. And I kind of assumed this identity of this victim, why me had fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue and I was tired all the time and I couldn't get out of bed. And so, yeah, it's interesting reflecting on that, that 11 years we were together. because I was so stuck. I had no idea how stuck I was now that I'm not that stuck. You know, it's interesting that you asked that question because there's so many things that happened in that relationship on my side. And he had his own struggles that he didn't like to talk about because being Chinese, Ukrainian heritage, they're two cultures where you really never discuss your feelings, especially as a male. It's a very saving face culture. across both of those backgrounds. So it was always about me and managing my things. It was never about him. Was it cultural as well as did he just kind of bottle everything up because he didn't want to pile on anymore, do you think? Yes, yes. I think it was a combination of both, Krista. I think for Brian, he was the oldest child of two. He was the only boy. He always wanted to make his parents proud. And he realized to do that, very tangible tokens of success and wealth were the measures that his family used to define that for him. And so for him, It was always about having nice clothes. We had, I had really expensive handbags. had beautiful cars, beautiful house. We never had kids, didn't want kids, but you know, it's having those tokenized things that represent what it was that he needed. He had a good body. was constantly obsessed with how his body looked, like obsessed to the point of, you know, mental health suffering. And in the end, mean, a lot of this accumulation was what led to the way that story ended. Well, and it's so important to from the outside looking in, he probably looked like he had the best life. But there's, that's why it's so important not to judge everybody else or, you know, see what you see online and think someone really has it together. have no idea what's lingering under the surface. Yeah, you're right. You're right. And that was exactly what he was like. All of his friends, I mean, when he passed away, they had no idea what he was going through because he concealed it so well. At the time when you're 31, what was your health like and what was your relationship like before he decided? So we went through a little bit of a stage in our relationship. So around 2014, when I had all the trauma and all of the health things go on, I decided that I wanted to get a nose job. So I couldn't breathe and it was a health thing. And having plastic surgery, and it sounds really superficial, but it's not, it did something to the way I identified with myself. I had been teased chronically as a kid for having a really big nose. uh Big nose, big bum, no boobs. And so when I had my first surgery, stepped to rhinoplasty, it created this sense of confidence that I'd never experienced. And so our dynamic started to shift because I started to become more confident. I became more conscious of my body and the way that I was experiencing myself. And so for a couple of years, our relationship kind of had this little tiny, I guess it's like a shift like this, where I was starting to understand. what he was kind of going through with his body struggles. And then in 2015, we decided to have an open relationship. So it was interesting because we'd been together for a period of time and we thought, okay, well, let's see what this is like. We'd had other friends that had experienced this. We'd been reading about it and we thought, let's see what can happen here because we both want to explore things. So I had a boyfriend, he had a girlfriend and It was interesting experiencing that, but I think really on the inside, it probably never was going to work. We both still had feelings for each other and we were both still, we weren't cohabitating at that stage, but we were still catching up with each other multiple times a week. So moving towards my 31st birthday. So that went on for about nine months. Moving towards my 31st birthday. We were seeing each other every day. He'd lost his job. He started to lose his sense of purpose. His girlfriend had broken up with him and he realized he just wanted to be with me. And then I realized I didn't know how to experience that. And so every single day, and I still had this white ball where we're trying to like brainstorm the life of Brian, like what's Brian's future look like coming up with new jobs. So I employed him in our family business. and he was doing some deliveries, but deep inside his sense of suffering was just incredibly immense. And he actually had said to me when he lost his job, he'd left a very stable job to pursue another career. And that career change didn't quite manifest itself and he didn't have a job to go back to. He told me that he wanted to kill himself. And I remember it was over the phone. We had this conversation. He was at his parents' and I immediately called the suicide prevention hotline, got some advice. I'd never had this conversation with anybody before, but I remember years prior, we'd always talked about this. It had come up in conversations and he said, I'd jump off something. And it's a very male thing to do. I would jump off a building, he said, if he ever wanted to like opt out of his life. And I could sort of tell that he was going into this mental decline because of the music he was listening to, because we were hanging around each other all the time still, because we were still married. He was listening to very dark, emotional music, um like Linkin Park and Creed and like really like deep thought pondering stuff. But when he told me he actually wanted to kill himself, I then called his mum and his mum didn't really take it seriously. So I ended up getting him help. got him some medication to help him manage his emotional anxiety. But on the day of my birthday, so my birthday was on the Friday and on the Sunday we were having a barbecue, we were having like a uh barbecue breakfast. So he wasn't with me, he was coming that afternoon with his family and they were, we're going to come and celebrate. So on the morning of the 6th of March, 2016, I was in my kitchen preparing food. My mom had come over. My sister had come over and I got a phone call from his mom. And I just assumed she was calling to wish me a happy birthday. And she said, I need you to come get me Brian's fallen. And I was like, straight up, I have no idea what she was talking about. How can Brian, like he was at home with you. Like why, why has he fallen? How has he fallen? Right. um She goes, you need to call his dad, Martin. So I've called, I've called his dad and his dad, I knew immediately what had happened. As soon as his dad answered the phone, I said, where's Brian? And he goes, he's fallen. I said, what do you mean he's fallen? Where are you? He goes, we're out at a location. It was at a mountain. And, and straight away, cause his parents are very aware of the situation. Like a guy wanting to jump off a tall object. Yeah. They took him, his dad and his sister had taken him for a hike up a mountain called Mount French at a place called Boona, which is about an hour's drive from my house. And there's a sheer cliff face and it's about 25 meters. It just goes straight down and it's all like to rocks. And I said, where's Brian? And he goes, he's fallen. And I'm like, okay, I understand that, but what does this mean? Is he alive? And he goes, I don't know. I don't think so. And my heart. I had bacon in my, I had bacon in one hand and the phone and the other. And I remember just falling to my knees in my kitchen with slimy bacon everywhere, bawling my eyes out and my heart was racing and my gaze was narrowing. And I said, did Brian jump? And he goes, yes. So I then had to go and pick up Brian's mom. So everything got aborted. My mom, my boyfriend, who was actually the man that I would marry again. Yeah. My sister. We all hopped in the car. We went and picked up Brian's mum. We drove an hour. And your brain is thinking, it can't be real. It can't be real. I'm going to see him. I'm going to see him. And we get there and there's police. And I remember looking up at the sky and it was such a beautiful day. It was so blue. The trees were so green. And I sat on the ground in the car park, just staring at the sky with tears in my eyes, going, how could this have happened? And so I saw Brian in a body bag and it was, I'd never seen a dead person in my entire life. And he looked exactly as he looked all of the time, but there was some element of premeditation because he left his phone behind. We'd just been texting each other that morning. I have all the texts, you know, we texted each other. We're going to catch up, wash the dogs, have lunch. And yeah, I never heard that from him. He left his wallet in the car. He left everything there. You know, in that moment, I know that for that brief second, there was just a sense of relief that would have just completely overcome him that the pain was going to be over. And a month later, my grandfather died. And it's funny because I'd never left him. I'd never lost a family member. And I'd always expected it to be my grandfather. He was 90 something, but it would be the guy that was the love of my life, you know? And at his funeral, it's... All of the things that, you know, could have been, should have been the sliding door moments. There was a friend who had actually messaged him that morning, but because Brian didn't have his phone with him, he didn't get it. He set up a job for him back at his old workplace in the government. And he was to start next week. You know? No idea. There was a solution at least to one of the bigger problems and I there were solutions to so many of the problems and at his funeral, there was, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people and nobody had any idea about what he was going through because he just, he concealed it and it's never too late to call a mate, you know, but he couldn't, he didn't. I was his person the whole time he was going through all of these challenges. I found out he didn't take his medication, all of his medication, he'd never even opened the packet. So, you know, it's, it's hard. It's never too late to collimate. just, I love that. Yeah, a friend of mine gave me that one. He told me, we've got a thing going on down here in Australia and it's like, it ain't too weak to speak. And he said, that's bullshit because I'm a guy and as soon as you say the word weak, it automatically, that's the word that I think of. So he said, what about, it's never too late to call a mate. And I'm like, wow. you know, it's a conversation that has happened as a consequence of all of this stuff. you know, have been really beautiful. But, you know, the driver for me to continue to live my best life is always that moment seeing Brian in a body bag thinking. Like he can't have died for nothing. Like literally, like even in the hardest moments, you know, I have two brain tumors at the moment, right? Like it's, life is hard, but people always ask, how do you keep going? And it is because of that, whether that's guilt or trauma or an attachment to something, I know that everything that he lived for, I now live for. it's, death is inevitable. And when you're faced with death head on, and there's no escaping it, there's that really finite understanding that even though this person is not here in the form that they are, that energy gets transferred somehow. And it's amazing how the characteristics of somebody that's past, whatever kind of sentient being they are, those traits become manifested in other beings. husband that I have now, he's manifested so many of the traits of Brian. A lot of the men that I have in my life, they've manifested the traits of him. you know, I'm still able to engage in those conversations. We have a photo in the lounge room here of me and Brian. He's there all the time reminding me that life is meant to be unstoppable. Did it take you a while or how long did it take you to finally get to that? And I ask this because when I listened to some of your other interviews, and as you had, think said earlier, you had never experienced stuff before in a sense of like a close stuff like this. So the grief process, I can only imagine, especially for the first time really even going through this, what was the support system like? What was grief like? And when did you finally get to the point of, I won't, I don't want to say Pete's. I'm not sure if there's ever necessarily, and maybe there is, I don't know. I just, to the point where you can speak so intelligently and so emotionally intelligent about what happened. Grief is never something that leaves you and anybody that's experienced intense grief will know that it's always there and it's always triggered and that's a part of who you are. But I think so many people allow grief in whatever form that it is. They allow it to define them rather than refine them. And I think because of my ADD brain and the way that I see things in life, it's not that it's black and white. This forced me to completely embody the gray. I went through a massive stage of totally denying that, I mean, it's not even denial. I knew that it was finite because the closure that I got from seeing Brian's body, not only in the body bag, but at his funeral, we had like a family viewing. That for me has helped me manage the greeting process immensely. I've had many other older family members pass away. And I found that the two family members where I've not been able to have that open casket, emotional, connection, that final conversation with them, it's really delayed my processing of grief. So when my grandmother died and my maternal grandfather died, my memories of them are just the last memories that I have when I saw them. But I found that with Brian particularly being that really firsthand experience of somebody that's close. I threw myself into these really obscure things to try and not just compartmentalize my life, but distract myself from the pain. There was a lot of shame and grief because what if we hadn't had that conversation about the open relationship? What if we hadn't pursued those separate paths in our life for a moment? What if I hadn't have had that nose job and it had become the catalyst of me becoming this new person? Like, blah, blah, blah. And for a really long time and longer than the grief that has plagued me. Right. The first response to the grief was to continue doing the things I was doing. I went to, I was doing burlesque and pole fitness and aerial acrobatics at the time. And I just went to the class and like, Oh, how have you been over the weekend? I'm like, my husband died. And that they all like, what the fuck? Like, how can you be here? Go home. I'm like, don't understand. Like, please don't. And. I found that somebody very wise said to me, it's after the funeral that it's hard. That time leading up to the funeral, you're to have all these people that are going to come and bring you flowers and they're going to come and support you. But you need to find something and a support system to keep you going after the funeral because everybody just assumes you're just going to get over it it's done. That was so true. Leading up to the funeral, like I was an absolute mess. All of the friends that I'd had since I was a kid, still had at that time. None of them are really friends with me anymore, but they were all there around the clock, keeping me alive, cooking me food, making me have conversations with real people. And if there was a reason that I met them back when I was a child, that was the reason. They were all there for me. And going to the funeral, seeing all of the people, hearing all of the speeches, the words of support, the words of gratitude for all of the things that Brian had done. That was important. After that point though, I kind of felt very isolated, alone and lonely all at once. And I had a really great psychologist because six months before Brian died, I had an altercation with my father. We were in business together and we had a physical altercation in our workplace, which resulted in him breaking up my whole family. But I didn't have that support system. from that paternal figure that I'd had for a really long time. And so the psychologist that I was seeing as a consequence of that event, I was still seeing when Brian passed away and I was still seeing when my grandpa passed away a month later. She said to me, all of these things that you're going through, I mean, I had court cases, I had legal battles, I had people contesting wills. was really intense emotionally. My husband's family wanted all of his estate. They believed they were entitled to it. because he was temporarily living with them at the time. And my dad was taking me through court. My husband's family was taking me through court. I was so stressed. And my psychologist said, you need to go and find something, allow time to heal these things. You can't speed up this process. We need to go find something that you feel is consistent in your life. And so that brought me back to the PCYC. And I started going to the gym, properly, sort of. And so I would rock up half an hour before closing time, cause it wasn't 24 seven gym territory at that time. And I, you know, committed to going on the treadmill and just being there, doing something that was somehow positive for my life. didn't really know what I was doing, but that then turned into having a conversation with a volunteer in the gym who was really good friends with Brian. He was an older, much older gentleman. And he said, Brian was an amazing guy and I see you there and you look miserable, but I can see you trying to do something. I'd love to teach you how to improve your life. Why don't you come and lift weights? And I went looking down at like the gym floor with at eight 30 at nighttime. The only people that are there are like middle-aged sweaty ball guys. And I just, remember saying to him, like, don't know, like that. I don't want to be like that. And he said to me, you can't, you can't look like that unless you took steroids. You don't have the hormones. It'll make you feel good. please trust me on this. And so the next night, instead of beelining for the treadmill, I went down to the gym area. And that kind of became this interesting coping mechanism because if other support system organically started to form itself, because I didn't know that the friends that I had, they were all going to just fall away by the wayside. They couldn't understand having lost everything in my life. Like, I'm not even kidding. My entire sense of identity and purpose and structure was stripped. They said I stopped giving in the relationship. And they said, I don't know who you are anymore. You know, it all feels really one way. And I looked back at that and I was like, of course it was one way. What could I have given to that? You know? There's a quote and I want to read it that I I cold from one of your other interviews that I just thought was so important. It's you said when you are an empty cup, you can't give to others and you can only take and it's just such a raw and honest truth. And I'd like to never apologize if you're an empty cup. You're an empty cup. Like my goodness, what you're going through was incredible. And yeah, you need to be able to take from supportive, trusting people that can be there for you. And it's not selfish. It's survival. It is survival. And this is the thing is like, I don't think my friends, cause we didn't have the maturity and the insight in our own development to understand that. And I felt bad. Like I felt challenged by that. I felt like I was a, I was a piece of shit and then I was a bad person and that made my grief worse. And I having all these friends with these expectations coming in. And so it's interesting because organically those relationships started to like dissolve yet at the gym. I was around these, these men and you know, everybody was there for a reason of trying to improve themselves. didn't matter where they were from. If they were policemen, if they were lawyers, if they were the garbage guys, if they were like school groundsmen, like it equalized everybody socially. And we started talking about goal setting and like being better and strategies to improve and then nutrition and then. you know, personal development. And I was having all of these conversations with these strangers that I didn't really know about things that I'd never actually had conversations about with any of my friends before. And that kind of went on for about six months. And not only was I developing this new community and the sense of identity and purpose and belonging with these strangers who would later on become, you know, mentors in some way and friends, but my body was physically changing. in a positive way and my mental health was being balanced out through some sort of physiological intervention. And I think the power that I didn't realize movement had like motion as lotion, right? I feel like being able to commit to that every day, it gave me something to look forward to. you know, Michael, who I also met at the PCYC, who was my boyfriend, who would become my husband. He was not fit. He was the opposite. I mean, I met him because he was teaching music there and I was teaching Zumba and we were just both teachers. And we met in the staff room one day as friends and just talked absolute rubbish to each other about music. And it was this weird banter that I'd never had. He was not interested in fitness. So it's not like something I did with him where I had this codependent relationship. I was creating my own little circle. within six months I was fit. I was healthy. I was strong. was courageous. I had a sense of confidence that I'd never had. went and had a boob job as well. I decided to do a bodybuilding show because Brian was training for one. He always wanted to do one and he always talked about it, but then he never had that confidence within himself to go and step on stage and do the thing. So I thought I'm just going to do this one show in testament to Brian, the coach that I hired to help me get that actually looked like Brian's. It was really interesting. And I told him that, but that kind of turned into, so the grief that I had channeled to get me to that. turned into this obsession and this completely convoluted skewed version of my own reality where I was having to constantly seek external gratification and you know, the metric of success, I call it, to then feel whole and complete. you know, now looking back on that, I think it's completely unsustainable. It was pretty obvious with the red flags that were coming up all the time that I just kept pushing down. But You know, that turned into doing 13 shows in 14 months where, most people do one every three years. It's this obsessive compulsion to have to strive for more and more. And it was never enough. know, I had all these other people on my periphery who I didn't know, strangers, followers on Instagram, on social media, telling me how amazing I was because of how I looked. And so that then reinforced the behaviors that I was instigating every single day to get me there. And I look at how embroiled I was in this toxic culture of, I mean, it's not even a toxic culture of masculinity, it's, it's muscularity. It's a toxic culture of muscularity where everything's about being this hard body and how lean can you get, how much control mechanisms can you put in place to keep you there? And everything became about counting everything. And it was, I realize now like it was actually furthering the stress in my life that led to me having another emotional breakdown and being sick again. because of the stress, but so many people get caught up with that in their grief. They distract themselves. And you asked me a question, how long did it take to process all this? I believe that really I've only probably processed everything within the last two years of my life. So that's taken, you know, eight years, eight years to get to that stage where I realized that, you know, There's a wholeness and a completeness and there's no need to continue to escape and run. It's more being about now, how do I embrace and relax and enjoy being me? ah For everybody, that timeframe is so diverse. You know, I think I'd compartmentalized the finality of the passing of Brian pretty quickly. I mean, it was pretty real that he was gone, but... I think energetically. You never lose sight or hope, but maybe somewhere that person is still there. There's an essence of them that still floats around. And I mean, I still believe that he's, he's somehow part of my life, whether it's mystical or magical or whatever you want to call that. But on a very pragmatic sense, I know that he's not here. He's everywhere. He's everywhere. He's embedded in everything that I do, you know? He'll always be a part of your life. I have two questions. First, I'll ask. hindsight's always 20-20, but one of the most consistent things that I keep hearing from women who have gone through this is the people that they thought would be there for them absolutely weren't or did not know how to be there for them. What advice would you give to loved ones, family members, friends who may find themselves in a position one day of needing to support someone but not knowing how? say there isn't a place, a space, a time or a place that you can't share your challenges and traumas with. It may be a stranger, but it sounds cliche. There's always, you know, a reason, a season or a lifetime for people. And I think we get really attached to having historical friendships. go, well, you know, like I didn't come this far just to come this far with you. Like why would we abort mission now? There are so many ways that you can be connected. you know, I'm having challenging conversations with a few people for their own reasons of feeling very isolated, alone and lonely. And so I always say, look, we live in an era where we're so digitally connected. Find communities of people who are going through similar things. If you have the courage to let people know that you're not okay and that, you know, someone says, how are going? And you may actually X, Y, Z. That can sometimes be a permission slip for people to share back because we've become really fixated on these. I'm going to use the word like filtered realities, right? We've got realities where, you know, we only have like 10 seconds to make an impact now where people's attention spans are less than they've ever been. And there's an augmentation there about how people ought to be. And as much as people have conversations about you got to be authentic and you got to be real. Never before in human history have we lived in such an augmented, skewed version of what our reality is. There's a blurred line between what's a deep fake? What's real? Like if you can connect with people heart to heart, human to human, reach out. People are there. Blood is not thicker than water. My dad should have been there for me for this whole thing. I mean, my whole life was engineered around his belief systems and values. When Brian passed away, he blamed me for Brian's death because he believed he could save him. And he was never given an opportunity. And there's a whole story behind that, but it doesn't matter. He then used me as this scapegoat for his own emotions. And it's odd because I look back at, you know, I haven't spoken to my dad in nearly a decade now. He doesn't want to speak, but there was an expectation that my family would always be there. And he, he, he was a big part of that and he wasn't. Other parts of my family, they dissolved. They've come back now, but Friends, they left, they never come back. You've got to choose to engineer your own reality. Instead of asking questions like, why me? Ask questions like, who do I need? What can I do? And where can I find the support that I crave right now? Because there's always an answer when you frame it like that. Well, and you're not the same person either. I it's almost like everyone is stuck where they were and you have completely evolved into someone new. Right, wrong, or indifferent, you are a whole new person going through a whole new set of things. And you talked about how with Brian, you'd never experienced this before. And then not long after you lost your grandfather and losing him was another experience, but it was different because you had lost Brian so recently. Yeah, and every loss since then, there's an understanding now, because you've experienced it and every time you've experienced it, it doesn't make it less hard or less painful. But you now have an understanding having learned behaviors that this too shall pass and the severity and the intensity and the magnitude of these really intense emotions, they will with time be processed. And you too will become new. You too will become whole. You too will evolve. And the evolutionary process that we go through with our identity, our identities aren't welded. And I get really challenged by people in business specifically, because, you know, I work with business people, is that they have these ideas about who they ought to be and this reality that they think they have to fabricate. And I'm like, it just be you. Like people want you more than you realize. People want to feel you. want to understand you. They want to connect with you. Not this thing that you think you have to be. And I think when I let that guard down and I realized that every situation that I've ever experienced, whether it's health related or emotionally related, whether it's grief related or whatever it is, you know, I feel like my loyalty card for life plot twists, like I think I need a new one. You know, do you know what I mean? Like I kind of max out every one and it's like. Rather than sitting there in the state of victimization, which the former version of me would have done, I reflect on the silver linings and the opportunities for growth and the opportunities to expand and the opportunities to reconnect, not just with myself and my purpose and my values and my identity, but others. Yeah. Because the collective consciousness that we can cultivate through shared challenge, mean, life is a spectrum of emotions and You know, if you are so ingrained and just trying to be happy all the time and positive, you're missing the friggin point. Well, and one of the things that you said, and I actually told this to my husband last night when we were talking, and I was like, guess what? Last night, nothing is never in the way. It's on the way. What does that mean to you? And how should people think about that statement? That's a quote I totally ripped Dr. John D. Martini off from. I love John. I interviewed him from my podcast and he's one of these humans that I connected with at such a deep level because there was so much sharing, because we'd both been through so much. But when you look at life as being an unfolding journey where you get to choose your own adventure, I remember in the nineties there were a series of books called Goosebumps and I used to read Goosebumps. my gosh, right? And they brought out a choose your own adventure version of Goosebumps where you got to a point and you could flip through to a page. And I think about that a lot because you get to choose whether something is a block or a barrier for you to progress and move to where it is that you really want to be. Or to go, actually, I'm just going to find a new way now because clearly that was not the route that I was supposed to take. And maybe it's not. hard enough or you're not sick enough or it's not painful enough or you're not fat enough or you're not poor enough. It's not bad enough for you to realize that there is another way. But if you just allow yourself to be connected to what you know you can do, and maybe you don't even really know exactly what that is, but you have an idea that where I am right now is not where I want to be. This is not the person that I feel is in alignment with the essence of my identity. There's always another route. There's always another way to get there. Hop in a frigging drone, man. Like, walking, find another way. Even if it's longer and it takes you further, you're going to learn so much about yourself that everything is always on the way, not in the way. How much of your life do you spend taking action but also listening and observing, I don't know, silent inferences or, you know, maybe life is telling you to go in this direction, but unless you're listening or observing, you're not seeing those things. How much of that impacts you? through different seasons and sprints and marathons. And so sometimes I'm completely led by action and it's inspired action. I may go through very long periods where I feel completely unproductive and it frustrates me because still part of me is attached to productivity. But in those times, it's when I'm in my information acquisition era, you know, I'm like listening to all of the things and I'm looking at all the signs and I'm going, okay, like where is this telling me to go? whether or not you believe in divine intervention or quantum mechanics or the possible realities that sit beyond our scope of understanding as human beings with our brains. All of these other realities and possibilities sit there. For me, what helps to weld myself to possibility is I use vision boards now. There's no way in a million years I ever would have used a vision board. I'm a very pragmatic, very practical person. I had ideas about what I wanted to achieve. but it was always very action orientated, not goal specific. So now what I do every year is I think of all of the things that I want to be able to achieve and experience and feel. And I find some visual representation of those things and pop them up on a board that I put in my room. And so every day it sits at the end of my bed on the wall without me even realizing I'm seeing that thing when I wake up and it's the last thing I see before I go to sleep. My husband has one as well now, so Mick has the same thing. And it's interesting because the power in manifesting your reality, and I hate the word manifesting because it's a word that's overused so much. I've been using it since I was a kid, because it means to make something real, right? People think it's this magical thing. And if you think about something long enough, it will happen. No, you actually have to take the action. But if you are totally aware of the thing that you want to strive for, every time a moment in time presents itself for you to make a decision about what it is that you're going to do, You then question, does this thing take me closer to that thing? Does it keep me still or does it take me backwards? But if it takes me backwards, does it take me another route? And so it enables you to create a bit more of a buffer zone between you and the action. So you can make an informed cognitive decision about whether you're going to do the thing or not. And so as somebody with ADHD who's unmedicated, it helps me to have those sprints. So there may be times like seven or eight weeks where I'm just like, my God, I'm killing myself here. This was really hard, but I'm getting a heap of work done. That then means that when I slow down for the marathon and that information acquisition stage, I'm far more conscious about what it is that I'm choosing to listen to and read and acquire to help me move into another sprint. Does that make sense? Yeah, well, and it seems, mean, if it's right in front of you and you see it frequently, you can't forget it. And you're reminded of it and it's always at the front of your mind or just right there in the back where if you see something, it's an immediate tie or connection or you can think about it. But if you just have a thought and you don't write it down or you don't create a visualization, you're going to forget about it. And so when the opportunity presents, you're not going to make that tie. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And it allows you to make these synapses where, you know, because you're constantly got that thing sitting there and it's very subtle. Having a, having a vision board. mean, you're seeing it 365 friggin times a year, twice a day, right? That's, that's a lot of saturation, at least. The reality is, that it's never here at the front of your brain, but it's always here. And so when something comes up or it looks like the universe is like putting an opportunity in front of me, I'm like, oh. Now that would make sense because that sits to that. And if I do that, then that takes me further to that. Do you know what I mean? So I think that noticing and feeling the signs within your body though, are actually really important. And I don't think people give enough physiological buoyancy to the impact their daily habits and their routines have and the way that they show up for their life and the way that they can actually process challenging emotions. Because if you are coming to battle, And you have an, like life is hard, right? And I think when you just realize that, okay, so that's just it. Like that's a thing. Then you've got to train for that. you know, going into battle, not having had enough sleep, not having drunk enough water, not having moved your body mindfully enough, not breathing adequately or fueling yourself effectively. It makes battle so much harder to manage. So this is where for me. I mean, even as a coach, mean, this is literally what I do for a living now is it's helped people realize the importance of like, if we simplify, we can amplify. If we do one thing and do it again and repeat that for a period of time and create really ingrained habits into our daily routines, it means that when we are faced with challenge, trauma, grief, pain, and uncertainty, we're actually so much more physiologically equipped. to emotionally manage and balance and process whatever is there ahead of us that we may not even realize is there. And I think now in my life, I look at the person that I was when I met Brian, that girl thinking it was pies and lattes, that was having panda eyes, working at Maccas at uni, stress to the eyeballs. The regard that I have for my own physiological state of health, wellbeing and fitness, it's so specific. My- My threshold for what's unacceptable in my life is so small. So before, you know, I'd eat a Monte Carlo, do know Monte Carlo biscuits are? No, didn't. Do you have those? my God. So they're like biscuits with like cream and jam and they're delicious and they come in this huge packet. God. I'm coming for the Monte Carlo biscuits, but I would literally have one and then like not be able to control myself and eat a whole packet. I had a sugar addiction, an addiction to everything. Now, I mean, I wouldn't even have them in my house because my buffer zone for what's unacceptable in my life, I mean, it's so tight. As soon as I stray for a little bit emotionally, physically, like as soon as my sleep isn't hitting what it needs to for more than two nights, I am making sure I'm sleeping in the other room. I'm setting myself up success, catching up on my sleep. If I haven't moved my body in a way that feels good for more than two, listen. more than two days, I'm back. know, eating, I make sure I have like this 80-20 rule. 80 % of the time as a minimum, sticking to my guns, making sure I'm prioritizing protein, always getting enough water. And I give myself up to a 20 % buffery on my life so I can still have balance and still feel the things and enjoy the cheese and drink the wine and you know, all of the things that make life fun. But I think also being really sensitive now to when it's just... hit that threshold, I think that's really important because it allows me to show up to battle, because now my battles are more health related. Knowing that I have trained for this, I can get through this. It may be hard now, but I'm doing all of the things that help me get through it. You show up to the battle prepared, healthy, ready to go. You're not just waiting for battle and hoping you can survive every day training for those moments. And so I want to say, so the things that you listed, they are called your handbrake habits. And it's all, I believe within your book, get the fuck on duck. Tell me about the book. Tell me what people can expect and how they can reach out to you to learn more. So Get the Fuck Unstuck is really that it's a BS free healthy habit handbook for busy people to take their lives from stuck to unstoppable. It actually says that on the front. Exactly what I said. The thing is, having done so many extreme things, you know, I've done bodybuilding shows, I've starved myself, I've weighed all my food, I've counted all my calories, I've been to Tony Robbins, I've walked on hot coals, I've raried, I've taken all the courses, I've read all the books, I've done all the like, I've done all of the extreme things. In a crisis, we have this tendency to reach for these silver bullet magical solutions to solve our problems, but instead end up chasing this elusive mythical beast that just slips away like smoke for a dream that was never really there in the first place. And we overlook the fundamentals of the things that we're doing every day, which are those spied things, those spy fare and break habits, our eating, breathing, sleep, movement and hydration. So on a daily basis, they're the things that every single person on this planet is already doing to some degree. It doesn't matter where you live or who you are. or what your goals are, we all have to eat, we all have to breathe, we have to sleep, we have to move and we have to hydrate. And so in Australia, and I don't know what it's like in the States, but nine out of 10 deaths are associated with chronic disease. And most of those could be prevented if we just did those five things a little bit better and release the handbrakes. But what the book actually looks at beyond the handbrake habits is like an operating system that I've created so that when we're looking at our whole life, not just at a daily basis, but like, at a spectrum of like, this is what my life awaits for me between now and the end of it. I've created this operating system and it's called the healthy habit hierarchy. So the healthy habit hierarchy takes people through a process in which the handbrake habits are actually interweaved. And it's a, six process. So momentum, menu, mindset, movement, mastery and mentorship. So there's six Ms and it's a hierarchy. So if we start at the bottom and we work our way to the top, And then we find ourselves stuck at some point in our life. We can work out where we're stuck and which handbrake habit is the one that probably is holding us back that we need to focus on. And it sounds complicated, but actually the way the book's laid out, it's very easy to read. The chapters are color coded. You can actually see down the spine, all of the colors of the chapters and all of the pages. So you know where you're up to. There's a quick guide at the front so that if you're like me you don't like reading books from front to back, you're not a linear reader. You can skip to the part that's important, but... get the fuck unstuck was really born because people kept asking me, you know, who knew me before all of this stuff happened? Like, how the heck did you become this person who seems so confident that's getting their life together, that's living that's unstoppable life? And for a long time, I didn't really know how to answer that. But then I realized, what if using my ADHD superpower, I could pull apart the methodology that I took, reassemble that in something that's replicatable and teachable and then help. educate people about, okay, maybe don't do what I did. Here's what I did. Maybe don't do that. Maybe do this instead. Here's some science and some evidence to suggest that why this is the best reason and now go do the thing. And that's the whole premise as a book is it's very interactive. It's practical. There are exercises we've all throughout it. And it's also available as an audio book and it's downloadable anywhere you want to get your audio books or your eBooks. I have physical copies, which are really pretty. But the idea of the book is it's really It's supposed to be a blueprint. It's there to help people actually problem solve and develop self-governance and autonomy. I don't want people to have to rely on me for the inspiration constantly. You don't have to experience all the things I've experienced, but you can be courageous. Whatever you're hauling, like if your choice of suffering, if it's grief, if it's pain, if it's fear, I mean, if you're hauling a grief case through your entire life, you get to choose how heavy it is. What inspired you or drove you to take everything you've learned and use it as motivation to help others through these teachings and through these books and through everything that you've spent time researching and studying and piecing together to help other people? What's that emotional or what's inspirational drive for you? I think from a young age, I'd always been a helpaholic. A helpaholic over like- Alcoholics. Freeze this. Thank you. Thank you. And it's funny because as a child, like I was always the mediator in my parents' and I had to learn from a very young age how to balance out arguments. You never want to have an argument with me because I'm always right. But also, Brian passing away has always been the anchor for me because as I said earlier in this chat, I will never let him die for nothing. And so if there's somebody that I can help and inspire, you get to experience experience with me. There are so many things that I've had major life plot twists that I've had to carry that you can't make this shit up. for whatever reason it is that I've been carrying all of these things, whether it's heart surgery, brain tumors, the suicide of a husband, multiple autoimmune conditions, incapacitation to the point of not being able to walk for nearly a whole year in the middle of COVID. Whatever the thing is, why, why ever I'm the person that's meant to go through that stuff to help people not have to go through it and realize that they can actually get themselves unstuck is a mystery of the universe. But there is a compelling part of me that's been connected to me since a kid, which is, and I now realize that service above self is, one of the highest values that I have. And before it was always about me, I was really embroiled in having to have everybody look after me as a victim. But now that I've released the shackles of victimization and realized that you can choose to be happy, healthy, and amazing and unstoppable, I would love for other people to be in that position as well, because it's much nicer when everybody's getting to be positive and happy and experiencing their version of reality. It's a nicer place to exist in. Absolutely, as you're making the world so much better. I cannot wait to read this. Where can people purchase the book? So you can get the audio book or the, which is narrated by myself. And it's funny, you know, like most people, when they listen to audio books, they listen to it like one and a half or two times speed. I'm like, bitch, you're going to throttle that down to like quarter speed. Like, cause I speak at hyper speed, right? But you can download the audio book anywhere where you like to get audio books. You can download the ebook anywhere where you like to get ebooks. But if you'd like a physical copy, signed copy. I'm going to show you what it looks like. Hang on. I have been more prepared. If you want to, if you want a physical copy, um, I actually, and it's, it's a color book, like it's colored. Um, you can get these on LozLife.com. So I post them, I post them all around the world. You can buy physical copies on Amazon too. You can actually buy your own copy, but I won't be able to sign it. So if you want a signed copy LozLife.com post globally or Amazon. So you can kind of find it anywhere. oh just, absolutely deeply appreciate you laws and thank you so much for sharing your story today. know we're going to be helping a lot of people with your advice and also just letting people know they're not alone. They're not alone. There's always, you know, column eight. What was that phrase again? Never too like to call them. I love it. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for being on the show and sharing your story. really appreciate it. It's been completely unreal, Krista, and I look forward to being able to connect with anybody who has any questions. So perfect. Thank you for joining us for this episode of she diaries. We know these conversations can be incredibly heavy. If you're feeling overwhelmed or need support, please take a moment to care for yourself. In the show notes, you'll find links to mental health resources, crisis lines, and support groups. If you're in crisis or need immediate help, call or text nine eight eight or visit nine eight eight lifeline.org. You are not alone. If today's story moved you, we'd love for you to subscribe, leave a review, or share the episode with someone who might need it. To stay connected, follow us on social media at BrightSkyHouse and subscribe to our e-newsletter at brightskyhouse.com. If you'd like to connect with a guest or share your own story for a future episode, send us a note at hello at brightskyhouse.com. Every story deserves to be heard. Thank you for helping bring this one to Until next time, I'm Krista Gregg and this is She Diaries. These are feelings, drag me away. Feelers crossing me.