Grief Series, Episode 3: Spiritual Gifts

In the third episode of Chasing Destiny’s Grief Series, Dez sits down with Detective Marty for a powerful conversation about loss, identity, spirituality, and healing.

Marty reflects on losing loved ones at a young age, navigating grief as both a police officer and a sister, and how those experiences reshaped her understanding of purpose, empathy, and human connection. Together, they explore how grief shows up in everyday life, and how healing often begins with reflection and honest conversation. 

 Catch every episode of Chasing Destiny on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Subscribe, follow, and stay locked in. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

As I sit with what grief means to me, I realize that there's an overall collective of grief, specifically speaking about New Orleans, and I think I didn't realize that I was grieving more than one thing at a time. And that's something I learned in my conversation with Marty. Thanks for coming. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So more comfortable, you're comfy. I'm good. So I've been in a space where I've been contemplating grief a lot. Like what does it mean? How does it affect my everyday life? Right. And I'm curious as to what you think grief is.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Well, you know, it's like it's like I have said before, grief is linear. People don't like to say it is, people believe it's not, but it's just like healing. You're gonna grieve something every day, right? So we grieve living, we grieve the dead, we grieve pets, we grieve jobs we had that we no longer have. So grief is linear. We are always grieving. It just depends on what you're grieving and how you go about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:35

It's interesting that you said pet jobs, because I don't think people realize how much you can even grieve an old version of yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Like that's the main one.

SPEAKER_02 1:45

There's there's so many things that can be grieved and I feel like we're going every day not realizing that you're grieving something.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

And I personally had the experience of having to grieve like who I once was and trying to like get back to that.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Right.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

And I feel like that's where people get stuck, where it's like, it it's probably time to go forward, but you're still right here trying to go back.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

So you gotta have that personal funeral for that old self to prepare your new self to come to fruition. Kind of like the phoenix.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Explain.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

The phoenix it it it grows, right? So there's a baby phoenix. As the phoenix gets older, it's going through lessons and journeys, and it has a purpose. And once it reaches that specific purpose, it dies in the flame, right? And it's reborn again. And as we go through our years, uh days, we we got that same thing. Our purposes may change, right? So my purpose in my twenties may be different than my purpose in my thirties.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

So I have to be reborn again. The Phoenix is always going to be reborn again once it completes its purpose.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

Yeah, man. I didn't think about it like that. I do I do feel like I went through a season where I was like, alright, this is the rise of the phoenix. And then I feel like I went through like a small season where I was contemplating a victim or villain, and then I grew into realizing like it's neither. I don't believe in either or I just believe in it is what it is. Um and I remember after the death of my dad, realizing like, oh, I have to be the woman who I think I am and who it's who it's time to be. Like there's there's there's nothing else stopping me. There's no one to lean on, there's no one to look to, like it's time. Right. And it made me think like what what kind of grief experience you've had that's kind of shifted your direction or left an impact.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Right. So I've experienced death at a young age. Um, a lot of people I think living down here don't exp don't understand how much we as a community experience death. And I would say my first experience, I lost a classmate. She burned in a fire. Um how old were you? I was 13. And just learning how it happened, you know, it kind of it messed with me real bad because I was young. I'm like, damn, like I didn't expect that to happen. I knew she it was painful for her. But I still couldn't grasp how bad it was. I just knew like it was something sad. Um shortly after that, I lost my grandfather. He had a heart attack. I knew anything I didn't know anything about it. I found out from my best friend. My father called other people and it got around before it even got to me and my mom.

SPEAKER_02 4:52

How did that make you feel?

SPEAKER_00 4:54

If anything, I think that really hurt me that I had to find out from other people instead of my own father.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Right.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

So I didn't really have the time to grieve and process that. Because even after that, you know, we got parents down here, they want you to be hard, you know. And he was like, I understand what you're crying for. I got a daddy who just he didn't understand it. Like he didn't understand what is there to be sad about because he's so used to people dying. And even being a girl, it's like, why are you talking to me like that? Like me looking back at it now, like you couldn't, you couldn't even hug me and be like, oh, it's okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Um when my grandmother passed, I was 21. That was tough for me. Uh I think that was like at the time I thought that was the toughest. I didn't think I could get out of that.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

Because she practically raised me. It was his mom. And I found out when I was on the plane for the army.

unknown 5:55

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

So I had told them, like, look, man, I can't leave, you know, like I can't leave. And it was like, nah, you gotta leave. So literally, I'm on the plane, and I find out when my grandma passed because somebody posted that shit on Facebook. So here we are in this era where now they're posting stuff on Facebook.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

I couldn't even get a call. I had to see the shit, getting off the plane, and my Facebook growing up.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

So I struggled, but I was 21. So I went through this little rebellion phase. Um and basically just isolating, right? Um, but and at that time, the isolation wasn't something that I like I recognized as something I needed. I did it because I didn't know how to let my feelings out. So with that being said, I isolated, I cried. The only thing I could say I did good was the crying. But I didn't let anybody help me because I was always in that situation where it's like you gotta pull yourself together.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

Got it. So Do you think grief was like your first introduction on the isolation?

SPEAKER_00 7:04

No, my first introduction on the isolation was just me being a kid, um, being the oldest, because I'm the oldest.

SPEAKER_03 7:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

My mom had me at 19. So she had to work. My dad, he was 21. He was enjoying his life, you know. He ain't won't really. So I had to get it out of the mud with my grandparents. I'm out here playing with my little sticks and shit. Like, you know, just stuff that we did back then. So isolation was just something I knew. It was never a bad thing. I just my second sibling didn't come till I was five. So couldn't really play with her till she was like three. Yeah. So, you know, I'm at this time I'm eight, so the isolation came naturally. I say that. Um it wasn't until I started being the police that I started to understand grief. Um you going through the police academy, you know, a lot of people think, oh, you just you they teach you how to violate people and you get out here and you harassing people, it's not that. I would say for New Orleans, it's not. You have to understand all the aspects of the community. They teach you about the Supersones, they teach you about the second lines, they teach you about all the different wards and the cultures, and they bring you to the coroner's office. And they try to teach you that in this community everybody grieves different. Uh New Orleans, they don't understand grief, right? It's more anger, it's more rage. They haven't dealt with their feelings. So they try to teach us how to take that into account, how to not take it personal and try to be there for them as best as you know we can because like I say, a lot of us, it's like that follow us, you know what I'm saying? A lot of people, family members get killed every year.

SPEAKER_02 9:04

Like that's interesting. That's interesting that NOPD as an institution is saying, hey, what we've observed is the people don't handle death well. Right. And so we're gonna give you guys some tools and understanding about the people and the culture and the different neighborhoods on how they handle that. Yeah. Which I think is so contradictory to things like I'm always I've always been on the side of um celebrating life when it comes to second lines and and just jazz funerals in general, like to me it seems more like a celebration. Right. And so that's interesting to see how the two worlds collide in that way.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Yeah, and it is it's it is a celebration, but the part before it gets to that point, and even after that point, a lot of people don't understand it's after the smoke settles, after the celebration settles. Those people that's like, if you need anything, call me, they're not there. You don't have that support that they say you're gonna have, you don't have that.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Most times you don't even have the answers you want immediately after. You know, people go through them phases. Yeah, they're angry, they mad, and you got your support system who, like, look, we're gonna get through this, we're gonna have a celebration of life. But when all the noise stops, all you got is the same feelings you had when it initially happened.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

You want answers. You don't have the answers. You want to know if it was your fault. If somebody was killed, you want to know, well, what answers the police have? Why you don't have answers right now? So all that stuff comes back to the front of your head after the smoke settles. And I understand it.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

Why do you feel like you understand it?

SPEAKER_00 10:50

Well, um, just a little backstory on my situation with my sister. So my sister passed in 2023. Um recent. Yeah, yeah, it is. Now that that's the turning point for my life. She she had a um, so she had a a rare condition already. And it's it's basically um it's from the genetics, it's from our ethnicity. So uh my family, my grandmother's German, so I'm not talking about no like 116s, like I'm I'm I'm biracial. And my sister got sick when she was two, and nobody could understand where it came from. So it took them about 13 years to figure out like, hey, it's a rare like a rare genetic disease. And only Germans get it, and one in like eight, so eight hundred, eight hundred thousand people get it, but it was nothing that they could do. So but it affected her growth. So she was it affected her growth, her hormones. So she had no tear ducts, she had no ferro, like her, like body odor, no body odor, uh, she would develop slowly. At some point, she would lose her eyesight, um, nose function to eat, so her throat started wearing away. But she made the best of it, right? My sister lived to be 27. So what happened was because she was so fragile, she got out of bed and she tripped over a charger wire and broke her hip. And they had to do surgery, and when they did the surgery, instead of them doing anesthesia, they intubated her. So they intubated her and fluid built up on her lungs, and they couldn't stop the fluid from building up, and that's what caused her to pass away.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

So it was tough because and I now understand it, the fluid built up, they had to like put on a respirator, and at some point they got the fluid down. She woke up, she couldn't talk, but she was waving at everybody, she was in a good mood, she knew I was there, like we and I talked to her, and like after that, she got worse. And I couldn't understand like what happened because she was just up and you know, y'all said everything was looking good, and it was like, well, it's coming back. So my mom had to make a decision: do we let her suffer or do we pull a plug? And that's tough on my mom, so my mom's like, I don't want to let her suffer anymore, you know. We've been fighting for 27 years, she's tired. And I mean, as selfish as I wanted to be, I agreed, you know. So um at the time, my only issue was what if she's not ready? You know what I'm saying? What if she's not ready to go and she got these plans, she wanted to do things. And um, my mama felt the same, but she was like, we can't let her suffer. So at the time, I stayed in the room with her, and I held her hand until she took her last breath. But it's a funny thing because while she did that, she she felt my mom, she heard my mom so upset, it's like she kept like she would like she flatlined and then she would raise back up, and like they had to pull my mom off of her so she could actually flatline again and actually go.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Um and after that, I just like I went through all these questions like why me? Like, what is my purpose?

SPEAKER_01 14:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Um with that happening, I just started doing a lot of soul searching, digging deep into my spirituality, like, what am I here for?

SPEAKER_02 15:00

I think that level of self-reflection is where people get caught up at. And you mentioned something that that I feel like people don't realize that they have to grieve as well, the decision-making process. It's like you're stuck playing God to some degree, and you have to sit with a choice, and that choice is always gonna leave you with a regret.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

And so you have to grieve the the option not chosen.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Either way go. Yeah. You grieving.

SPEAKER_02 15:29

Something.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

If the decision was made to keep her here, you grieve in the decision that you're putting her through worse. Correct. We made the opposite decision. So now you got a parent that's grieving. I hope she doesn't hate me. What if I made the wrong decision? What if we could have found a workaround? We know we couldn't have because the damage was done with the respirator. She already had them broke her hip. They say, look, she's not gonna be able to walk no more. So it's like you you choose the lesser of the two, but you still gonna grieve something.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

For sure. For sure. Sitting there with that is it's a tough position because I I feel like you're you're stuck with options. And it would have much you would much prefer getting a phone call saying it was over with versus you having to be the one to make the choice.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

That that's a gift and a curse because I look at it like this. You got people that don't get to say things they want to say. You got people that don't get to see people they haven't seen in a long time, and they get that call. For me, yeah, I probably would have much rather get the call that it was over with, but I know for a fact that me being there holding her hand made her feel safe enough to let go. It made her feel like, look, I know she's here, I know she loves me, I'm not doing this by myself. So I think I probably would have been more upset to not be there because every time my sister has ever gotten sick, she never asked for nobody else. It's always been call me. It's like you need to call her. So I think even though I didn't know my purpose at the time, I think she already always knew. Like, whatever happens, when it happens, I need it to be her that's gonna be there. Because nobody else is gonna be able to handle it.

SPEAKER_02 17:31

Man, that's a that's an amazing feeling. I think I think you handled that like a champ. Uh I I remember getting a phone call from my dad about two days before he passed, it was Thanksgiving. It was great, great conversation. I mean as strong as he had ever sounded. And then two days later, I got the call that he was gone. And I was just like, How? How could he have sounded so amazing? How could it have been such a great conversation? How could I could finally hear that maybe he was actually proud of me in his voice to nothing two days later? And sitting with that idea, like, oh, they're okay, they also made this choice, um brings a sense of peace, but I think it's hard to grapple with at first, whereas like this is also a a part of uh their co-creation. Like they wanted it to be like this to some degree. I think that that was hard to to sit with through the grief process too, like accepting the way that the things played out.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

Right. And you know, because just like you said, he was he sounded good, like, oh he that's that burst of energy, right? They get that, they get this burst of energy, and they get this moment where they're like the happiest they've ever been. And people say that's a telltale sign. At first I'm like, nah, but now I mean it makes sense because I see a lot of people go through it. I've witnessed it with my sister, you just said it. So that's the thing. They just get this burst of energy, they want to talk, they want to laugh, so they can go out how they want to go out. Because although, like I said, my sister couldn't talk. She acted like she was up in the bed, like, you know, she was, I'm like, alright, I'm things looking good. And then again, like the next day they're like, Yeah, it's not looking good. We have to put her back under. But now looking back, I'm like, it gave me the opportunity to look her in her eye and show her, I'm here. Yeah, I love you, you know I love you, I'm here. And she was like, she like, yeah, like that's her. And I'm like, alright, we at least she knew. Yeah, she didn't have to wonder, is she here? She saw me, she heard me when she was transitioning, she saw me. So I'm grateful for that. Because I would never want her to wonder who was there, was she there? Who you know, nah, she saw who was there.

SPEAKER_02 20:03

What what did you learn in grief as a cop and then grief in your own life? What what's the common factor that you feel like merged between the two experiences?

SPEAKER_00 20:15

We all the same. No matter the experience, no matter the trauma, no matter how it happens, we are all the same. Our lives have value, our lives have meaning, and no life should be more important than the other. So when I see people down talk other people's kids or family members, you know, when they say, Oh, y'all thought this person was a good person. Listen, to them they were a good person. That person had value. We are not our experiences or whatever we do. We are much more deeper than that. If we make a decision, that could be a good decision or a bad decision. It doesn't mean I'm a bad person. You don't know what this person went through to get them where they got, you know, wherever they were. So I don't believe in, oh yeah, this was a bad person, unless you just out here killing just for the hell of it, meaning like serial killers, but like systemic racism is a thing. What we go through is a thing, poverty is a thing. So when you say, oh, he was a good kid, yeah, he probably was a good kid. But what set him up down this path? You can't take that away from a parent, from any family member when they say my per my child or my niece or my grandchild was a good person. Because guess what? They probably were people I've lost on a job. I can't say they were bad people. When I've lost a kid, and I'll never forget this kid. They was like, Well, he did so much stuff. I said, This kid never disrespected me. This kid never killed nobody. He might have broken cars, he might have stolen some shit. But as far as I know, as a police, that kid ain't killed. Nobody, so the way he went out that stuck with me, that bothered me. I had dreams about it. I kept in contact with his mom. She calls me. You know, I hugged her. Everybody's like, wow, you yeah, on the scene. I'm hugging her. It's okay to hug people. You don't have to be a robot. You could, you know, you could give care and love to people that lose people. And I think that's what separates me from most police. I'm gonna do that.

SPEAKER_02 22:28

How how is it dealing with that being in such proximity to grief outside of your own, being able to witness it as well?

SPEAKER_00 22:36

Um it's a little draining, you know, like it it takes the energy from me, but like I said, I think it goes with my purpose. It's something that I have to give. So if I can give it in that moment, I'll give it. And then I can go home and replenish my energy for the next day or for whatever the next thing is.

SPEAKER_02 22:57

How do you how do you replenish?

SPEAKER_00 23:00

Oh man, look, that goes with a lot of meditation, um, I sage, you know, I throw on my laundrell. I I just gotta get positivity going in my frequency, in my house, and just bleed out all the the bad stuff that I soaked up. Yeah. Cold showers first, spiritual baths than a regular shower.

SPEAKER_02 23:27

Well that sounds like that sounds like an intense amount of work.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

Not really. It's really not, it's more relaxing.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

Really?

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:34

I think I think when it comes to changing my energy, I I personally run or I'll dance. I have to do some form of sweating.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

Right.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

If I can sweat, I can I'm I'm releasing some things for sure. For sure. I think that that's that's um that's interesting that you said um releasing the the energies out of your space. I think that there's this idea that grief is dark, and I think they don't talk about some of the lighter times when grief is actually just a moment of laughter, and when it can bring um happiness. Um I think we get caught in the the depths of the the harder feelings and never really get to the other side where you're doing something and you it reminds you of them and then you just start laughing at you guys.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

Yeah, and you know that's the light side, right? Like, like I say, like if I'm going through some things and I'm like, man, I need a sign. I need a sign.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

And the sign could be the two cardinals playing in my yard, like a cardinal literally tapping on the window, and I'm like, Well, where the hell you came from? Because I know you wasn't here, right? It happens. Or like my sister, she liked Hello Kitty. So in passing, if I see somebody walking around randomly and I see Hello Kitty, I already I see my signs, right? That's the light side of things. Like I know she's trying to say, Look, I'm here. Whatever you're doing, keep doing it. You don't have to be sad on my account. So there is a light side to it. It doesn't always have to be heavy because again, we grieve everything. We don't just grieve the dead.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

Yeah. I think when you going back to the part where you were talking about how uh the police force, you know, tries to and um educate you guys on how these communities process these things. I think for New Orleans the light side is a celebration, right? The second line, uh a celebration of death. And I've always found that to be the most extravagant thing, honestly, that I've come across in my learning about things about the world. And I appreciate how we're not the only place that does that, right? Cities in Africa, even some places in Europe still. Exactly. Like it it's global to celebrate a life. And I think that uh after hearing you say how the police institution decides to um teach you guys and support the community in that way, to know that in in some way y'all y'all are supporting each other because yeah, I didn't I didn't think that that would be the way that they would educate y'all. Honestly, I didn't think that they would that there was any form of education.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

So I'm glad to know that it runs deep. It runs deep.

SPEAKER_02 26:31

That it was a perfect segue into the game.

SPEAKER_03 26:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 26:35

So, you know, the name of the podcast is Chasing Destiny. Gotcha. And so our first one is gonna be a pull of purpose. This question is designed to ask you something about your purpose or your destiny. You ready? I'm ready. What challenge in your life ended up shaping the person you are today more than any success ever could have? The death of my sister. And when you mentioned that earlier, I was like that goes with the death. That's the one.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

Um, I feel like that because I guess I I never realized the depth of how much it would affect me to the point of me questioning everything around me. Yeah right? Like, like I told you, um, it made me recognize my spiritual gifts. A lot of people don't like to talk about them, a lot of people don't like to acknowledge them. I astral project. She's not the first person I've seen in my astral projection. I've seen other dead people. So being able to do that, that's what made me reshape who I was. It made me read up on uh different religions. You know, they're all the same. I'm not tied to a religion. I'm I consider myself spiritual. But it made me understand that we do have ancestors that's still out there that would like to reach out to us. We just gotta reach out to them. So I just see things deeper now because her debt made me question it to begin with, and it opened me up spiritually and my gifts.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

What what do you where do you go when you ask for project?

SPEAKER_00 28:18

So I'm gonna break it down to you. So it's a spiritual, it's the it's their realm, right? But their realm is tied to them specifically, so they choose a state that they like in uh an area that is familiar and comfortable for them, and that's where you go. So for my sister, because she didn't get to have a normal childhood, her state in that realm, when I've seen her, the many times I've seen her, she's in that child state. She's running around, and we're in the yard where we used to live before Katrina.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

And I know that that's the realm she chose just as well as other family members I have because they used to live across the ditch away from us.

SPEAKER_01 29:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

So when I'm in that realm, not only am I seeing my sister, I'm looking, I'm like, holy shit. I'm seeing my other relatives, and they over there, like, but I know where I'm at. I'm like, damn, like, so this is what they chose. My grandmother's realm is different. For her, it's her home. Her porch.

SPEAKER_03 29:33

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 29:33

So I've been, I've just been writing it down, like, alright, like, okay, this is what I see when I'm seeing this person. This is what I'm seeing when I'm seeing that person. So it's what they choose.

SPEAKER_02 29:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

You just gotta pay attention to the state that they choose for themselves and the place.

SPEAKER_02 29:50

Yeah. Why do you feel like the death of your sister was more influential than any success?

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Um, because I was stagnant, right? Uh I was coasting. I had nothing to challenge me to that point, right? My sister was living. So it's not like I had anything to push me deeper. I know my grandmother was gonna pass. Because my grandmother's older. She's elder. She she went through whatever she went through in life. She completed her purpose, right? But when you got somebody that's young and you want them to live past the years they live past, it does push you and make you question things, especially someone that you know hasn't done wrong, was just a loving person, did right by the powers that be. And you know, it make you question why do they leave us sooner than the people that don't do right by the powers that be?

SPEAKER_01 30:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:51

So all that stuff just made my mind spin.

SPEAKER_02 30:54

Yeah. I like I like how you brought up questioning things. So my next question is do you believe in destiny or fate?

SPEAKER_00 31:07

Um, destiny is a I believe in both. Okay, explain. So I believe I have a destiny. I believe I was destined to do what I'm doing. I was destined to be a police officer. I was destined to be a protector and provide the empathy and the sympathy to people that I do and just be on this journey. No matter what it is, I cannot, I find it hard to pick a job that's outside of the realm of justice, in a sense. Okay. Um, and as far as fate go, this was fate, meeting you, sitting here doing this to help push forward this destiny and get other people to understand the process of grief. So I believe in both.

SPEAKER_02 32:03

I like that. I like that. Okay, so let me ask you respect or love? Which would you rather?

SPEAKER_00 32:10

Um, I would rather respect. Okay. And I feel like with respect comes love. Because you learn a person and you take the time to learn their boundaries, right? But you could you could love somebody and not respect them. You know what I'm saying? You you you could have love for anybody and not respect what they stand for. So I would prefer respect and then have someone learn to love me once they learn to respect me.

SPEAKER_02 32:44

Yeah. I agree with you. I think I would I think I prefer respect over love too. I feel like you can you can cultivate love. Love can be developed at any point, but if there's no respect, you won't you won't really be able to. Yeah, yeah. So the last set of questions are called Confess, Reflect, and Redirect. These are meant to get you to open up about something, uh, think deeply on it, and then provide us with some form of direction afterwards.

SPEAKER_00 33:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 33:18

Okay. What mistake you made that taught you a lesson you couldn't have learned any other way?

SPEAKER_00 33:29

Um I would say staying in one of my past relationships longer than I should have stayed.

SPEAKER_01 33:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

That that's yeah, that's the one. Uh again, it all ties into my sister's death. Um, me and this person was together for like seven years, seven, eight years. And you know, my sister passed, and I don't have that capacity to focus on that relationship and be strong when I need somebody to do that for me.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

Right?

SPEAKER_02 34:12

I can do it for myself, but in that moment, when you going, when you having that reflection and you like, hold up, I just experienced something real traumatic, and you're making it about you, or you know, having any form of expectation for me right now in general. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

So um, that kind of messed my head up. But to work around, to redirect, I met with my tarot reader. And outside of her reading my cards, she said, look, I'm about to tell you some shit. You're not gonna, you're not gonna like what I'm about to say, and I probably shouldn't say it. She said, but I'm gonna tell you like this. She said, if you could live without your sister, you could live without that woman. Dang. And she said, I'm gonna say it again. She said, if you could live without your sister, you could live without that woman. Man. And when she said that, that shit was a gut punch to me, right? Yeah. And I was like, like, damn, that hurt, right? Yeah. But hindsight, now that I look back at it, she's right. And I'm gonna take it deeper for y'all. Nobody can hurt me because I've already gone through the worst pain I could go through. A person telling me that's why your sister did, all that shit that people do to you, that don't hurt me. I've already experienced her death. There is nothing someone can do to hurt me as bad as I've been hurt by losing her and having to go through that process, how I had to go through that process and make all them decisions. Yeah, you can't hurt me.

SPEAKER_02 35:51

So looking back, you feel like that's something you learned. You learned that I've accepted what has happened, so that's not a tool that you can use to try to get to the world.

SPEAKER_00 36:01

And even with relationships for me, right? I drug that out, thinking if I let go, this is gonna hurt me.

SPEAKER_03 36:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

The lady was right. You've already lost somebody that's so close and dear to you. This ain't gonna hurt you like you think. You already hurting. Let it go. And that was the breaking point where I was like, okay, I'm letting it go. And I literally wasn't no bad breakup or nothing. I just she did something I didn't like, and I was like, alright, I'm out. We ain't fighting. Was there any grief in that process? It was definitely grief, but it wasn't much grief because I was still busy grieving my sister.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:45

And and I think after that smoke cleared, yeah, it's not that I grieved that relationship. I started remembering things, like traumatic things that happened that I that I guess I pushed back.

SPEAKER_01 37:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

And what I mean by traumatic is it's not something bad where like, oh, she put her hands on me or something like that. It was like, damn, like she did this to me and I let it slide. Like, yeah, she just played in my face and I let it slide, right?

SPEAKER_01 37:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

I started remembering things, but it wasn't to help me, it wasn't to make me grieve it, right? Yeah, it was to make me reflect and understand this is why you could no longer stay. We got something else to focus on. You can't you can't keep going through that.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

You are in a different chapter.

SPEAKER_02 37:33

It's interesting before we get to the to the redirect. We gotta come back, we're gonna come back because you said something I I have to I have to. You can grieve multiple things at once. And I think that that's something people don't acknowledge when they're going through stuff. Like you already grieving your sister, now you're about to go through this breakup. I d I 1000% understand. Yeah. Because as I was grieving my father, I was also grieving the law of my separation of my marriage. Like my marriage was this was going down a hill. It was rapidly down the hill. So I get that. And I also remember being like I kind of compartmentalized for a minute. I compartmentalized my dad's death. Right. So I didn't even actually really grieve that at the time. I was more so focused on the of my first marriage just going down a hill. And so that's all I focused on. I didn't grieve my dad until much later. Like shit, six months, maybe seven months later, when I felt like I was starting to make room right for it. So that that's something you're right. Like a lot is happening at once, and sometimes you gotta you gotta choose, man. Pick one, you know. Um so that brings me to this last question. How has that lesson changed the way you move or make decisions today?

SPEAKER_00 38:46

Um, it makes me I don't I don't take things personally anymore. Like, if like even not not just dating, like if I meet someone or meet a friend or and they can't show up for me, or they're you know, projecting or being defensive, I understand that they fighting their own battles and they grieving shit that I don't know nothing about.

SPEAKER_02 39:13

Right.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

They grieving things that they may not have even told me. Because again, one a lot of people, even my friends and family, they don't consider grief. Griefing you know, for the living or like I said, for jobs, or they don't consider that grief. They just consider that, oh, adapting, I'm adapting, I'm changing. You know, you're grieving. Yeah, so I just don't take it personal. If somebody tells me something mean, I don't I don't get mad, I I I pity them because I want them to overcome whatever they grieving. That's making them say the things they say and do the things they do to try to hurt me because they hurting. Yeah, I don't take it personal. We all going through something.

SPEAKER_02 39:58

And it's it's it sounds like you've also understood, you also come to understand grace. It's just like I gotta give them the space and time to be them and to deal with their things. I'm I'm now understanding that the way people respond to me or react to me has more to do with what they have going on than me. And so if I give it a second and I'll allow them to show up and me just to receive for a moment, then I can respond accordingly instead of reacting. I can allow them to just lay it all out, and then I can choose if I want to partake in that or not. I don't I don't have to just give energy to that.

SPEAKER_00 40:35

I get to choose. Definitely get to choose. Definitely.

SPEAKER_02 40:40

Man, that is I I appreciate you coming on and really expressing this with me and having this conversation.

SPEAKER_00 40:46

That's no problem. I enjoyed this, honestly. I mean, I always I got a lot of shit to say because I I think the it's not just about the women I begin to shit me. So