FIRE IN HER EYES PODCAST
A podcast about women who persevered! Stories and conversations with and about resilient women.
FIRE IN HER EYES PODCAST
Discovering Purpose Through Grief
Nina Rodriguez shares her transformative journey from a successful career in real estate to becoming a certified grief guide after the sudden loss of her brother. Through her organization, Grief and Light, she emphasizes the importance of community, the healing power of sharing one's truth, and the need for a supportive environment for those navigating grief
Nina Rodriguez is a grief guide, podcaster, speaker, and writer who helps people navigate grief with hope and agency. Following the unexpected loss of her only sibling, Yosef, she founded GRIEF AND LIGHT, a podcast and supportive online community to educate and empower individuals navigating loss and life-altering change. Through the podcast, grief circles, publications, collaborations, social media, Substack, and online community, Nina aims to foster a more grief-informed, hopeful world. Learn more at: griefandlight.com.
Gift: Download the Grief Tending Toolkit for free here
TRIGGER WARNING: Sensitive Content Related to Grief and Loss
This episode contains heartfelt discussions about the death of a loved one, personal grief experiences, and the emotional journey that follows. If you have recently experienced a loss or are navigating deep grief, please listen with care. Take breaks if needed, and reach out to a mental health professional or support group if you feel overwhelmed. You are not alone.
For grief support resources, visit griefandlight.com.
Hello and welcome to Fire in Her Eyes. This is a podcast about women who persevered through pain to find peace and purpose. So if you're looking for a little inspiration and motivation to sustain you through difficult times, join us as we share stories of women who were empowered through pain and transformed struggles into sweet success. I'm your host, Tanya Skowronski. Welcome back to Fire in Her Eyes, a podcast that amplifies the voices of women who have turned pain into purpose and heartbreak into healing. Today's guest is someone who meets grief with tenderness, truth, and transformation. Nina Rodriguez is the founder of Grief and Light, host of the Grief and Light podcast, and a certified grief guide. After the sudden and devastating loss of her only sibling, Yosef, Nina stepped into the hardest space of her life. And rather than turn away from it, she let it reshape her. Through storytelling circles and community care, Nina helps others navigate loss in a world that is so often silenced. In this conversation, we'll explore what it looks like to carry your grief with grace. How Women Persevere Through Life-Shattering Moments, and How Healing Can Lead to a Deeper Sense of Purpose. Nina, welcome to Fire in Her Eyes.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you so much, Tanya, and it's an absolute honor to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
SPEAKER_01:I'm so looking forward to this conversation. So let's go back a few years ago. I know that you're in real estate. Can you tell us a little bit about how that shift happened from real estate to grief and light being born?
SPEAKER_02:Sure. So let's go back to 2019. I was in residential real estate in Miami and I was, you know, 10Xing my business, coming up with my five to 10 year plan. I thought I had it all figured out and it was just a matter of ramping everything up. September 10th, I go celebrate my brother's birthday. His name's Joseph. He was three years younger than me. He was my only sibling. And it was a regular Wednesday afternoon. And after work, seven o'clock, I asked my husband if he's willing and able to make the drive, our drive up north with me to celebrate his birthday. Something had nudged me. It was like an intuitive feeling. And we decided to go. And I'm so glad I did because on September 11, the day after, I got the call that he had passed. And it was completely sudden and unexpected. And had we not decided to follow that intuitive, had I not decided to follow that intuitive pull, I would have regretted it very much because it's the last time I got to hug him and tell him I love him and be with him for the rest of our lives. That was a very shocking moment. I've experienced other losses in my life. I've lost other people in my life as well, but nothing like losing him. We were very close. It was and continues to be my honor to be his sister. And I say that in the present tense because I practice continuing bonds, which is death ends a life, but not a relationship. So it looks very different, but I still feel connected to him and our relationship. And I believe he still guides the work that I do at that time is, you know, let's think about it. It's end of 2029, beginning of 2020. That's the year that we had the pandemic shutdown. So six months later, I'm still grieving. It's I'm realizing this grief thing is bigger than I understand it to be. And at that time, I remember wishing the world would slow down But little did I know that it was actually going to completely shut down as a result of the pandemic. And I'm laughing at it now, making a little bit of light, but I'm fully aware that a lot of people experienced horrible losses during that time. So I'm not making light of the losses that people experienced. I'm just saying that it was one of those, I wish the world would stop. And then it did. That was very puzzling. And it also has its own grief because you are very aware that life as we know it is changing and we're not fully aware how exactly and what effect or when it was going to end. So during that time, I sought out information about sibling loss. I found very little, as somebody said, there's more literature on pet loss than there is on sibling loss because of the different types of dynamics. So I did my own research. I asked myself, Life changed. Now what? And why, if grief and loss are such a common experience, we will all experience it at some point. Why is it not talked about? Why is it so taboo? This shouldn't be this hard to find information and support on. So as that journey started, I simultaneously started feeling very disconnected from my work. And that's when I hired Vilma, a holistic career coach. And I worked with her for about a year. And she helped me unpack all the emotions and feelings, beliefs, and stories that I had told myself over the years about what life should look like. She helped me unpack that and led me to the path of grief support because I was so interested in this topic. It became more than just a question. It became almost like an obsession, something I would think about every single day. And what are people doing to support each other? And why is it so shunned and dismissed? And why are we not talking about the important things in life? That became a guiding question. The answer started to come in the form of my desire to create a podcast, which became my sort of bat woman, bat man signal to the world to see where are the people speaking about this, willing to talk about this. And I very quickly realized after creating Grief and Light podcast, and side note, I called it Grief and Light because grief thrusts you into living in the both end of life where multiple things can be true at once. Life went from you know, me saying things are supposed to be this way too. There's more nuance. There's more in the middle that doesn't have a clear answer that takes time to figure out. So I started dipping my toes into those waters and realizing very quickly that I'm not the only one with these questions. My podcast garnered enough attention from people who wanted to share their stories. And I realized the importance of creating spaces where people can speak honestly without being corrected. without being told to look at the bright side. And this only grew over time and over the years. And I decided to get more formal education. So I completed my grief care certification program under Megan Devine. She's the author of It's Okay That You're Not Okay. It's a book a lot of grievers are very familiar with. And she helped me gain the tools and the language of grief and how to support people. Now, the grief and light program is paradoxical in that once you speak about grief and you allow somebody to say what they need to say as they need to say it, it's freeing. It liberates them. That thing that was holding them in shame and pain and guilt gets released because a lot of the shame and guilt lives because we're not allowed to speak authentically about what happened to us, what we went through, and how that's reshaping our lives. Loss changes how we show up in the world. And loss is not just limited to physical loss. It could be also the loss of safety in our lives. It could be a big life transition like a divorce or leaving an abusive relationship or changing a career that was not meant for you. It's found in all those aspects.
SPEAKER_01:Before Joseph's loss, had you considered changing careers or did you actually enjoy being in the real estate business?
SPEAKER_02:Yes and yes. So I've enjoyed being in the real estate business. It's not my first pivot, but it was my first intentional pivot. I consider myself a multi-potentialite in the sense that my attention went in many different directions and I've known to follow my curiosity, but it has been more reactive than it has been intentional. It's more like, I don't like this place. Let me see what else is out there. This time it was like, what aligns with who I am and who I am becoming? Because after loss, you're not sure who you are. So how can I pivot when I'm not even sure the ground underneath my feet? So I learned that it's okay to learn to move forward as you learn who you are becoming. You are never a finished product. You don't have to be one to be able to keep moving forward. And so what then becomes your guiding light? Your guiding light becomes your trust in yourself to get through something. So that was not my first pivot, but it was my first intentional pivot.
SPEAKER_01:What surprised you most about building a community through grief?
SPEAKER_02:How life-affirming and beautiful it is. A lot of people think my work is depressing and sad. And while, yes, it is very sad to hear somebody lost their person or pet or the things people have endured, that's very sad. And also, it's beautiful to witness somebody and their truth. beautiful to see how they come alive after they're allowed to speak and how in a group setting, especially, I love groups, in a group setting, I don't tell people what to feel. I help them unlock their own wisdom through their own journey, through their own conversations as they exchange their truth with each other. So I hold the space. What surprised me most is one, how willing people are to share. It's not even willing. It's like, They were just waiting for this opportunity to say this and how healing it is and how life-affirming it is. Life is not perfect. There is a lot of hurt in people's lives that we would never know because from the outside, we look like we're fine. And there's immense ache. So seeing people speaking that authentically is very powerful.
SPEAKER_01:What is it about speaking our truth that's so healing even now? As you're speaking it, sometimes you feel overcome by pain and tears. It's hard to even articulate your feelings, but there's something so healing once you speak your truth. Why is that?
SPEAKER_02:It creates congruency between your inside experience of life and the life outside of you. Suffering comes in the dissonance. We tend the pain and we adjust the suffering. The pain is the element you cannot control. So somebody died. You cannot undo that. That pain will always be there and that's okay. You tend the suffering. The suffering is the story you tell yourself around that pain. Had I done this, they would still be alive. If I would have done this, my life would have been, you know, blah, blah, blah. Like it's all these shoulds. I shouldn't have done this. I should have done this. I should do this. Those are stories we tell ourselves. So when we share this happened, These facts cannot be changed. This is the finite point that I never wanted. And this is what my life looks like now. When we say that, we shed any outer layer that doesn't serve us. And it creates congruency between the reality that we know to be true and our life outside of us. And so when we're able to speak that, it creates, I believe, like a flow between the inside and our hearts, our minds, and our spirit. and how we show up in the world every day, I find that guilt and shame play a huge part in loss, no matter what happened, whether it was expected in the sense of like a terminal diagnosis or sudden in the case of my brother. It doesn't matter how or why, there's always an element of shame and guilt and regret. That is the part that we tend to, and the story's we unpack around the suffering. Once we do that, it reduces the pain and it helps us accept what's happened and move forward with agency. And eventually what I find is people choose to make meaning of their loss in the way that feels aligned with their truth.
SPEAKER_01:Grief is often described as love with nowhere to go. Where has your love gone now?
SPEAKER_02:That's beautiful. I also heard grief is love with everywhere to go. It spills onto everything. It's like falling in love with somebody. Can you contain it to certain hours in the day? No, like you're thinking about this person all the time. They make you smile at odd times. Grief works like that too. Grief is a natural, normal human response to loss and life altering change. Sadness is an element of grief, but it is not grief. Grief is the umbrella term for the experience of loss. Once people start understanding this and unpacking this, they realize that Just like love needs expression, grief needs expression. For me, that started as the podcast. For me, that started as journaling. I have back there somewhere, I have a journal with conversations with Joseph. Like, hey, we would love to know that mom and dad did this or they now enjoy doing blah, blah, blah, right? They still have your turtle. They bought a big pond for it. So that's how I give my grief a place to go.
SPEAKER_01:I think some of us are afraid of grieving because we don't want to hurt. We just want to move on and we don't want to sit in the pain, so to speak. We don't want to drown in our sorrows. Those are expressions I've heard. So, you know, how do you embrace the pain but still move on?
SPEAKER_02:That's a beautiful question. Yeah, I believe we move forward. We move forward with When somebody said, you have to move on from the loss of your brother, it was the most painful statement because you're saying, leave him behind. That life is dead. And I said, no, he's coming with me in whatever form I choose. And it's not a denial, not a pathology. It's this is how I'm choosing to make meaning of my life now. And this is what it looks like. Some people don't want that. We decide what story we tell ourselves around loss. And we live in the context of a grief-averse, grief-illiterate society that needs us back to normal, back to work in order. If you're lucky, you get three bereavement days in your company, and then you better come back the next week. There'll be sad eyes and a couple of hugs, and then two weeks later, everybody goes back to normal, acting like nothing happened. Meanwhile, your life is completely destroyed, and this is very present. So to sit with our feelings, I have found, one, we have built in innate mechanisms that keep us from being in pain all the time. Tears alone have chemical compositions that are meant to soothe us. So when you allow yourself to cry, instead of trying to keep it all in, when you allow yourself to release, your tears are divinely designed to help calm you down. It reduces cortisol. It helps you come back to homeostasis. So that's one. Number two, when you allow yourself to speak or cry or express in whatever way, shape or form that looks like to you in that moment, when you don't you know, the word that's popping in my mind. It's like when you don't allow yourself to be so constipated with your emotions. That's so funny. I'm sorry. But when you allow yourself to release, you will find that grief just needs to be witnessed and needs an empathetic witness. That could be yourself or that could be somebody else. Once that happens, you gave it the room it needed to be expressed and then it moves on to something else. So for example, my mom the other day, it was her birthday. She said, I'm really sad today. I said, do you want to listen to sad songs on your birthday? Like that's That seems very counterintuitive. We listened to two sad songs and all of a sudden her mood lifted because her grief just needed a moment. It just needed some acknowledgement that it's her birthday. She's probably thinking about her son missing him, the fact that he's not there. And is that wrong or is that more normal than we think? A mother being sad on her birthday because their son is dead. I think that's pretty sad. So can we acknowledge that that's pretty sad? And once that happens, happier things followed. But giving grief that space, even if it's for a little bit, actually shifts our energy into a bit of a more normal state. You're not going to be sad forever. Now, grief in the first year, in the first month, yes, it's very intense. There's that mourning. There's the sorrow. There's that very primal pain that doesn't last forever. but you do have to give it somewhere to go.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I wish there was a way to fast forward through that initial period. We do. And I've often thought, you know, when we lose a loved one, you're so busy at the beginning making all the necessary arrangements, whether, you know, they're religious arrangements or social arrangements, whatever it is, right? You have to go to the funeral home. You have to do this. You have to do that. You have to order flowers, this, that, that. And everybody, you know, gathers around you and they show up for the wake and all of that happens. And you're just on autopilot. Go, go, go, go, go. And then I feel like once all of that is done, you're left there thinking, now what? Like everybody went back to their normal lives and I'm here. Can anybody feel my pain? Does anybody realize? I'm still sitting in it. I'm drowning in it. And I often think it would be so wonderful if we can reach out to somebody we love who's lost a friend or a family member or who's grieving, not just immediately after the event, but maybe a month after or six months after or a year after. I've often thought like the first set of holidays after we lose a loved one are so painful. The first birthday that they're gone, it's so painful. But it feels like the rest of the world has moved on. And, you know, you just want somebody to acknowledge that you're hurting, that you're sad, that you know you're thought of. And somebody recognizes that you're still hurting.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. And grief lasts longer than most people think. It's also very personal. Depends on degree of closeness on, you know, how the person past affects how you grieve. sudden versus expected, et cetera, et cetera. So not giving ourselves the arbitrary timeline, understanding it's probably longer than we realize. That year of firsts, you are literally relearning how to exist in a new paradigm without them. So give yourself at least a year is what I tell people to not try to go back to normal. If you happen to feel whatever normal means to you, if you happen to feel that before the year mark, wonderful, great, follow that. And also don't put that timeline. Don't look at a calendar and say, by this date, I need to feel X, Y, Z. It evolves as you evolve. It grows with you and it won't be the last time you feel grief because we're humans. And so long as we're here, there will be other painful situations that we experience. So my suggestion is to have a grief tending practice, whatever that looks like to you. That's why I hold the monthly grief tending session. So you have a space to come and join and talk about it and release whatever is feeling very present in your life in that moment with people who understand and in a place where nobody's going to correct you. This is how you feel. This is great. You will also be empowered with tools. But I believe that having a grief tending practice the same way that you exercise or eat healthy or brush your teeth or clean your home, something that is routine, it will serve as an anchor in the good times and the bad times because the good times will come, so will the bad times. So not expecting life to be perfect and when that bad time hits again or that challenging time, let's say, I don't like to say good or bad, it's just when challenges arrive a little bit stronger than you expected, you have something in place that is an anchor and it's a point of consistency and that's very important.
SPEAKER_01:In what ways has grief changed your relationship with yourself?
SPEAKER_02:In every way. I'm not who I used to be like that old version of me. I miss her, but I love this new me. And I am more empathetic, more caring, less judgmental. I see people for who they are in their season in which I'm meeting them. I don't assume that because I met somebody in this season, that's who they are and that's what they're going to be their whole life. I love having the deep conversations. I love approaching life with care. It comes with a heavy burden, especially in the world that we're living in, where there's less empathy and it's currently being weaponized. So it's a weird time that we're living in. And also, I think we need more of this and we need more people who understand this.
SPEAKER_01:I couldn't agree with you more. When you said that you are so different than the Nina you used to be, my first thought was, how is this impacting your circle of family, friends, and acquaintances? So, you know, how is the Nina 2.0 compared to the Nina 1.0? And have some people been left feeling uncomfortable? Like, I met the old version of you. Who are you? Has that affected you? in any negative or unexpected way your relationship with other people you knew before the loss of your brother.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. Yes. There's people I no longer speak with. You know, obviously my family, so did they, they were grieving too. So I had to get to know the version of my parents. Now, my extended family, my husband had to get used to this new version of me and he's done so beautifully, but I know a lot of people struggle with this. It's not a sharp contrast in that you wouldn't necessarily recognize me because I've always been kind-natured and caring and It's just that the level of judgment that I had prior to this version of me, before all the stories that I've heard from different people and understanding that life is really, really, really nuanced at the end of the day, and it's so unique to each person. I give more people grace. So maybe Nina before would have had a bit of a short fuse and understood life to be this and this way only, and that's it. So now it's a lot more living in the gray, although I'd like to say living in all shades of color, all layers of nuance.
SPEAKER_01:To anybody who's actually following every episode of this podcast, it would not be surprising for them to hear me say once again one of my favorite quotes is, is from a book by Khalil Gibran, the prophet. And he says, pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. And I think that is so spot on. I can tell you from my experience as a child growing up, living through the horrors of war, moving to the US when I was 15 years old. So, you know, you're grieving the loss of family and friends in Lebanon. You're grieving leaving behind what is familiar to come to a country where the culture is unfamiliar, the language is unfamiliar, trying to adjust all of that. But I always say that the, quote, gift that the war gave me was it carved deeply into my soul the capacity to contain joy, to contain awareness, to contain passion, to contain purpose. The simplest of things that most people take for granted are I don't. You know, I grew up, we had to oftentimes hide in underground shelters, no running water, no electricity. So let me tell you, to this day, 39 years of living in the US, every once in a while, I walk into a room and I turn the switch and I'm like, ooh, every time I turn the switch, there's electricity in my house. I'm very aware of the whooshing sound that trees make, bright, sunshiny day where you feel the warmth of the sun penetrating through you and just infusing your soul in its own way, providing such beautiful healing. So I really feel that. Pain has a capacity to destroy you or carve deeply into your soul. And I think with the right help and support system and remarkable human beings like you, we can transform our pain into something beautiful and to understanding and peace and purpose. You truly are amazing. I'm inspired listening to you.
SPEAKER_02:I'm inspired listening to what you just said. That was so incredibly beautifully stated. And it's so true. The paradox is it expands our capacity to hold more pain and joy and the good things in life. And when we lean in, I think that's the key. It's when we lean in. And it's so beautifully stated. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01:So many women carry invisible grief, whether it's from death, divorce, identity loss. What would you say to the woman who feels alone in her sorrow or a woman who's in the eye of a storm
SPEAKER_00:and
SPEAKER_01:And can't see that there's a light somewhere, no matter how hard you try to show her and guide her.
SPEAKER_02:What a beautiful question. Wow. Grief holds its own wisdom. And each person has their answers within. We cannot see that when we're in the middle of the storm, or it's very hard to see that when we're in the middle of the storm. Learn to show yourself grace. This is as hard as it is. Right. And also there are many non-therapy ways to lean into grief in a way that you're resourced and supported. That's why I created, for example, the online community and the grief groups. That's another outlet. Books are fantastic. Podcasts are fantastic. They help us gain perspective outside of our immediate circumstance. And it is very important to learn to operate with agency. And we do that by understanding that we're worthy of help. We're worthy of support. We're worthy of not having to walk this path alone. I do believe community is key. I do believe that there are times when we do need our privacy, we need our solitude. That's okay. But don't stay there. Be careful not to self-isolate. I think once we start self-isolating, we can get into a little bit of a dangerous territory with mental health. So What I would say to that person is validate yourself first and foremost. Don't question like, why am I feeling this way? Because it is a very painful and stressful situation. And also you deserve to be supported and cared for in community and in your truth. So seek out that help and learn to receive it as best as you can, or at least open the door to that.
SPEAKER_01:You speak often about being grief-informed. So what does that look like in practice?
UNKNOWN:Sure.
SPEAKER_02:Grief informed first, it's understanding that grief is a natural, normal human response to loss and life altering change. I keep repeating that because people associate grief with a pathology, something that you need to get rid of, something that is a problem that you need to overcome, the hurdle, not a teacher or not as the way through. So maybe just even shifting that story in our minds from something I need to get rid of to, oh, this is what I have to do to get through to the next phase of my life or to whatever levity I'm desiring. I would suggest three things. One, lean into your heart-centered curiosity. When you meet the moment as it is, when you meet reality as it is, through curiosity instead of judgment, instead of wanting it to be over, instead of wanting to skip the parts that are not going to be skipped as fast as we would like. It has this counterintuitive effect of, like I said, if you're sad, play a sad song and watch your energy shift a little bit after that. Sometimes just giving yourself the space to feel is what you need to be your own empathetic witness. And then we move forward. So the second is to have and enforce your boundaries. Like know where your boundaries are because when we are grieving, we tend to, I don't know about you, but I felt exhausted. You know, I was tired. I was drained. I didn't know left from right. So when people with their best of intentions ask things of me in that moment, I was like, oh yeah, okay, sure. No problem, blah, blah, blah. And it further depleted. So learn your boundaries, learn what's okay, learn what's not okay, and learn to enforce those. And be very, very gentle with yourself. I think that's so important. We extend grace to other people. We don't extend it to ourselves. And if you were your best friend going through the situation, would you talk to yourself? Like our minds tend to be borderline abusive sometimes with this is you should be doing better. You should be doing this. You should be doing that. Like extend that grace that you give other people to yourself and be very gentle with yourself. This really is hard. And the more gentle we are with ourselves, the more that it softens the experience all around. And in a way, if you will, sort of expedites the process if that's what somebody is after.
SPEAKER_01:So I know that Grief and Light was born after the loss of your brother. Do you offer grief support for sibling loss specifically, or has it expanded significantly? to offer support to others that's not necessarily sibling loss only?
SPEAKER_02:I support others in various types of losses. Sibling loss is obviously one of my main focuses because it's my personal experience. So I do have groups catered to sibling loss. I also have groups that are more general. Like if you go to my online community, there's spaces for child loss, stigmatized losses, loss of a pet, different types of losses. Because, you know, your relationship to the loss or the person lost and the way in which they pass affects how you grieve. Having those subgroups is powerful so that people can speak in, you know, in a way that each other understands that very personal experience and very specific experience.
SPEAKER_01:What is one thing that has surprised you in the process of creating, founding Grief and Light? Something you didn't expect.
SPEAKER_02:How much of it heal me? And it continues to heal me. I'm healing through helping others. And I'm finding my footing in the world through helping others. And I'm finding my purpose through helping others. In January, we ended up on a billboard in Times Square because we released a co-authored anthology with other people in the grief space. It's not even what drives me. It's a cool side effect. What was really powerful about that moment is I got to meet those people in person, the people I've connected with over the internet and over the few years. And we just hug and cry and we talk about signs and we talk about our people. We know our people's anniversaries and we know what we've been through and how I'm becoming this person. I honestly cannot tell you where I'm going. That five to 10 year plan that I had as a real estate professional, I don't even have a one week plan at this point. And that's okay because I've learned to trust myself to walk the path and know where I'm going just based on what is aligned with me. So that's been very surprising.
SPEAKER_01:How do your parents feel about you creating Grief and Light?
SPEAKER_02:They love it. Always like, oh, I like this episode or I love this. I love that. They thank me because nobody talks about my brother to them or rarely anybody. I would say my grandparents do and some of my uncles. This is how I've helped them keep him in our lives. And so they're grateful. I know that they're grateful
SPEAKER_01:for
SPEAKER_02:that.
SPEAKER_01:So I have never met your brother, but I can only imagine how proud he must be of his sister for the way you continue to keep honoring him and keep his memory alive and the way you are transforming the lives of so many. through the work that you're doing. And you do it with such generosity and vulnerability and humility and kindness. You truly exemplify what my hope is, the purpose of fire in her eyes, women who persevere, women who transform pain into something beautiful, purposeful. If any of our listeners would like to reach out to you and get some support, what is the best way for them to do so?
SPEAKER_02:The best way is going to griefandlight.com. And on social media is at Grief and Light all across the board. I'm mostly active on Instagram. I also want to thank you for that beautiful comment. I feel very proud to share. Anytime I get to share about him and talk about him, this is how I get to be his sister. This is how I continue to be his sister. He didn't have any kids. I don't have kids. Whenever my parents go, assuming they go before me, I'll be all alone having to bury them and live my life without them. My family is very small, so it's really... just me, like this branch of my family tree ends with me. And there's a lot of grief in that as well. And also I believe that this is how I get to carry my people forward. So whoever's next, I will continue to be this way and I will continue to heal through my work and also provide spaces for others. So thank you. Thank you for that acknowledgement. And thank you for the beautiful work that you're doing, because it is very, very important to have these conversations and to provide these spaces for people to share.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you, Nina. You say that you would be the only one. You might be. It might be, quote, just only you. But let me tell you, you are mighty. I can see the positive ripple effect you're creating. You and I have never met in person. This is our first time having this conversation. And I am moved to tears. And I'm so inspired by you. And I can only hope to have a positive effect on another woman one day the way you have on me. Truly, it's an honor to meet you.
SPEAKER_02:Likewise. You just make me cry. But thank you so much. It's an absolute honor. And this is what I'm most grateful for. I get to connect with people like you. So thank you so much. And I share your tears. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you for spending time with me today. If you enjoyed this content, please make sure you subscribe to this podcast and leave a quick review to help us share the message.