Life after Loss: Mollie on Remarriage, Faith, and Rebuilding (Part 2)

🎉 Chris’s book Walking Away from the Ledge is now available for preorder! ⭐️Grab your copy here:⭐️
https://books.by/w-brand-publishing/walking-away-from-the-ledge

*Note🎙️: You might notice a little echo in parts of this conversation.  Podcasting isn't always perfect, and while I did my very best in post editing, some audio echos and quicks couldn't be fully fixed.  Thanks for your grace and for sticking with it. Mollie's story is truly worth hearing!

In Part 2, Mollie shares what came next,  the journey of rebuilding, rediscovering love, and learning how to blend families with lessons learned. From step-parenting to healing old wounds and honoring the past while embracing the future, her story is a powerful example of second chances and strength in the face of deep change.

Takeaways from Mollie: 

• Grief is a personal journey that varies for everyone.
• It's essential to allow light and joy to return after loss.
• Living with intention can transform one's perspective on life.
• Experiences and memories hold more value than material possessions.
• Open communication is crucial in blended families.
• Grief can coexist with happiness and new beginnings.
• It's important to prioritize what truly matters in life.
• Moving on doesn't mean forgetting; it means honoring the past.
• Creating a supportive environment for children is vital after loss.
• Life is about creating meaningful experiences, not just surviving.

💌 Contact Mollie if her story resonated with you:
FB: Mollie Hamilton
https://www.facebook.com/share/1CF3c1cMVj/?mibextid=wwXIfr

🎧 A big shoutout to Zach King for jumping in and helping me clean up the audio on this episode, Part 1 and Liz Davis' story. So grateful for his help behind the scenes.
Connect with Zach:  zac@warriorkingproduction.com
Co-Host of YouTube: Winter Wolf Den Podcast:  FrostCast
https://www.youtube.com/@winterwolfsden

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome back to Hidden Chapters. I'm Genevieve, and I'm so glad you're here. If you're just tuning in, this is the second half of my conversation with Molly, a longtime friend whose story of love, loss, and resilience is one you won't forget. In part one, we talked about the life she had with her husband, Ashley, the day everything changed, and the early days of walking through grief. Today, we begin part two, what it looked like to heal, to love again, and to live differently after everything changed. This conversation is powerful and full of hope, and I'm grateful you're here for it. Okay, so now let's talk about what came next. Not the pain, but the rebuilding, and what it looks like to fall in love again and to make space for joy in the world that was so different. So you've said you're not the same person you were before Ashley passed. In what ways have you changed?

SPEAKER_03: 1:00

I definitely think that I'm stronger. I think I'm more compassionate. I'm patient. I give more grace to myself, to others. I understand people's feelings better, I think, and give them more space to have those things and exist in those. Like, As we age, I think we get more patient with people and give a little more grace to people because we have more life experience to understand what other people may be going through. I think I know how to set boundaries better and advocate for myself in a way that's positive and constructive. And I definitely think that I see everything differently. Life, existence, children, school, work, you name it. The entirety of my existence with a completely different perspective. One that I never had before and never would have had I not gone through that. And that lens is more like, when I die, are my kids, are my family, are the people who are behind me, are they going to care about

SPEAKER_02: 2:15

this?

SPEAKER_03: 2:16

Does this really matter? Does this have substance, enough substance that it's going to impact me to that level? And so a lot of times we go through life and, you know, we have these visceral reactions to the minor inconveniences, you know, and it's like, is the guy cutting you off in traffic really going to be that important? If you don't get there first, does it really matter?

UNKNOWN: 2:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 2:46

You know, if you had to change your vegetable with dinner tonight to something else because a lady in front of you took the last one, does it matter? And the answer is not. Don't matter. It really doesn't matter. What matters is the dinner that you had and the conversation that was made.

SPEAKER_00: 3:03

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03: 3:03

Sitting at the table.

SPEAKER_00: 3:05

The time that you had spent.

SPEAKER_03: 3:07

Right. And so making the most. of those moments and those times and prioritizing what really matters is different because I have the perspective and the change that comes with those experiences that happened before.

SPEAKER_00: 3:25

Yeah. What was that timeline like for you? How long did that take you between getting through that grief with Ashley and then just realizing that you're going to be okay through all of this?

SPEAKER_03: 3:35

Well, sometimes I'm still doing that.

SPEAKER_00: 3:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 3:38

No, I

SPEAKER_00: 3:39

know. That's not like an absolute.

SPEAKER_03: 3:41

No, I mean, listen, I feel like I process things really quickly. It doesn't mean I moved on and made healthy, perfect decisions, but I definitely process things really quickly. I would say within six months of him passing away, I knew this is awful. This is terrible. I spent time feeling sad for myself and being a complete disaster. I went through a lot of problems and issues. But then I knew, listen, at some point, you're going to pick up. You're going to move on. You're going to keep going. Some of that comes from childhood stuff. When you're pushed down and you overcome and you push down and you overcome. This was just another for me. Just another push down that I needed to overcome. And that doesn't mean I did it in the most healthy way or I made all the right decisions. It just means that I knew mentally, logically, I had processed what had occurred and I knew I was going to overcome. Now, when that was going to happen, I wasn't sure. So it was years, probably two years before I was at a place where I felt even remotely healthy mental health wise. and felt more confident in myself and some of the decisions that I was making and the choices that I was making to kind of move my life forward. I'll go ahead and preface this to say, like after I met Jeremy, I had to make a decision about how we were going to date because I lived in Fayetteville and he lived in Virginia. And part of the decision-making process for me to move to Virginia was around him. I didn't move right into his house or do anything crazy like that. I got my own place. I made sure my son was safe and stuff like that. But, you know, I made that decision in a place where I, at that point in time, I was really feeling confident in my decisions. I needed to step away from the area that we lived in, the people that we were surrounded. And I needed an opportunity to kind of breathe and stand on my own two feet. It looked like I needed to leave in order to have a little space, remove myself from some people who maybe were still had a lot to say. You know, there's always those people. And I just needed a fresh start.

SPEAKER_00: 6:17

Well, I don't blame you either. You just you needed a different environment and a change. But that was what I was going to ask you is how you ended up meeting Jeremy. And what was it like letting love in again? I

SPEAKER_03: 6:30

met Jeremy online. That's okay. I was online dating, but my parents were actually from this area. My mom and dad were born and raised up here where I live at. And they went to high school here. They got married. They moved off to Fayetteville because he was in the military. But all my family's still here. My grandparents were here. My aunts, uncles, cousins, everybody is here. And one of my cousins was getting married and I was up here in the area and I opened up my app to respond to somebody else I was talking to. And Jeremy and I started talking. And I was back and forth in this area quite a bit, actually. I told you I had two cousins that came down during that time frame. I spent a lot of time with them in the years following that, visiting, coming up here, kind of getting away from Fayetteville and spending time with them. And they had kids and our kids would hang out and stuff like that. So I came back up here a week or so later. It was like a bridal shower I was up here for. And then I came back and we went out together on a date. And we started dating. And then it kind of reached a point where, like I said, I had to decide what I really like this person. And he has a lot of great qualities. And this is a good opportunity for me. And he has a good job. He has a nice family. And Colton needed some balance. One of the things that happens when you have a small child lose one of their parents is that sometimes grandparents can encourage your child to learn to manipulate the situation. There's no other way to say it. When you're eight years old and you can go... I really want this and do this for me. So it's like one of those things where it's like, they're going to turn him into a complete maniac. I have to get this under control. And I don't, you know, it's not that I'm saying that I moved because my grandparents were spoiling Colton or anything. It's like his teachers at school. Yeah. It was such a big part of his story. Yeah. that there were so many people bending to his will. And the fact of the matter is, is whether anyone agrees with me or not, the world does not care. Right. That's right. I've had to look at Colton. I've had to look at him and say, listen, Colton, your boss will not care. Your high school teacher will not care. The policeman will not care. Nobody cares the way that we care. About what our loss is. And that's not an excuse for you not to get it done or have bad behavior or act out like you. This doesn't give you an excuse to not do the right thing. Yeah. And that's part of the learning and understanding. Right. For little ones, I feel like as they go through, like his therapist, like this is completely normal.

SPEAKER_00: 9:29

That's great teaching for him, though. Right. And that he doesn't use that as an excuse.

SPEAKER_03: 9:34

I do not allow that. I've been hard on him and not everybody agreed with the way that I parented Colton. But I was very quick afterward to say, don't say that. Don't do that. We're not doing that. This is not an excuse. He is not an excuse for us. He should be an inspiration. He should be a lot of things, but he will not be the reason why we don't succeed. Absolutely. We're not going to not succeed because he passed away and left us. That's not what we're going to do. And so I was really hard about that. And so I felt like it was the right thing for him to kind of pull him out of that scenario and put him somewhere where he wasn't defined by that anymore. And I wasn't defined as that anymore. Like I could move on from that. kind of people looking at me and that being the entirety of my story. Like I'm talking about it now, but I have a very rich story, one that has a lot of parts and pieces, you know, and I'm more than just that. This

SPEAKER_00: 10:41

is a two part because this isn't where your story ends.

SPEAKER_03: 10:44

No, not at all. I think it's important that people need to understand that everybody faces bad stuff, right? But part of what makes us who we are as just humans and people is that we can persevere, we can overcome. Yes. We can push past the hard stuff. We're capable. Making that decision to move, it was multifaceted. It wasn't an easy choice to make, but I knew that it was the right choice for us to be able to start moving a second phase in our life where we were at a place where we weren't defined by what had happened and that we had the opportunity to carry on his memory. If you look in our yard, there's tributes to him. We talk about him. There's pictures in our home of him. He is a part of our life. He's a part of our story. We didn't leave him behind, but he is not all that defines us. And that's part of the reason why we need him. because we needed to be somewhere where he wasn't the entirety of our story.

SPEAKER_00: 11:50

So when you met Jeremy and then you all had that fresh start, what was that like? Because you said Jeremy had children of his own. How was that blended family dynamic?

SPEAKER_03: 12:02

So Amber is an adult. She's off in her life. She's doing her thing. And Jeremy had an older daughter that This was an adult. She's a year younger than Amber. That's out in the world doing her thing. And he had two children at home. And at first we lived apart. That was the right thing to do. We had just been dating. And, you know, Jeremy was going through a divorce at the time. And it wasn't my plan to meet someone who was going through a divorce. Like they were separated and stuff. Yeah. That's how it, that's just how it panned out. You know, like I didn't want to meet anyone that was going through anything dramatic or whatever. Kids are dealing with a lot and stuff like that. That was a lot. His kids lived with him. I made a quick move to come up here and be close to him so that we could continue to date and connect and grow our relationship. And I made the choice, a difficult decision to pull Colton out of school in the middle of the year. Like I waited until Christmas break and I enrolled him in school here in Virginia where we live at. I got my own place. We stayed around the corner from each other. We were close, but we didn't blend our families, right? Like we weren't hanging out together as a family. We took it really slow. So from, you know, you heard about me and Ashley, check the juxtaposition here, you know, warp speed with Ashley and then Jeremy, it was very slow. Very thoughtful. I made the decision to move quickly in order for us to progress the relationship because living four hours away from each other, it's hard to do that. Yeah. But I'm, I ultimately, um, we didn't move supremely fast. Um, I say to my piece, we continue to date. Jeremy spent time with Colton. I did not spend time with his children. They were processing their own grief. They needed their own time to get to the point where they needed to. His daughter was ready before his son and her and I spent some time together. I would do simple things like he needed. She needed someone to like take her to practice and he didn't. worked 45 minutes away and was stuck in traffic or I would take her to practice. We did little things like that for each other, but I wasn't coming over and sitting at the house and doing dinner and stuff like that. I mean, we kind of just like, it was just him kind of meeting and being around Colton.

SPEAKER_01: 14:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 14:37

And Colton has struggled. The move wasn't easy for him. That was not easy for me. It wasn't easy for him. And we were, so we were kind of stabilizing and figuring things out. And his kids, you know, they were stabilizing. They were figuring things out. And sometimes Jeremy and I, you know, we're just dating. So we're struggling. We're figuring things out, you know, but there was a lot of patience. Jeremy had to show me a lot of patience. I had to show him some. Everybody was showing each other a lot of grace, patience. And we stayed like that for a while. until his son decided that he was ready to meet. And so we met and we spoke. He, you know, he was processing a little bit more. And after some more time passed, we talked about, you know, bringing the families together and spending some time together and doing stuff together as a group, which we did. And the kids always, his kids always treated Colton really well. And Colton really liked them. And they've always kind of done well. It doesn't mean that they haven't bumped up with each other or whatever. But generally speaking, it went really well. And then I think the biggest thing is that when it was time for me to, I say move in, move in. I actually moved in. but then left and went back to North Carolina. So I moved my things into this house that we live in together, but then I still had my business. I never let go of the business. Half the year, I wasn't working. The other half of the year, I work nonstop, nonstop, 12, 14 hours a day, seven days a week, no days off, right? So I would... I moved my stuff into the house, but they still had time. It was like stuff came into the house and then we left. Colton and I, we left. We went back to North Carolina and we went to work. And he was always with me. He did virtual school at that time. So he did his school from North Carolina and my stuff was here, but we weren't here, which gave them another six months to kind of acclimate.

UNKNOWN: 17:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_03: 17:07

and see how things were going to be, you know? And I think that that was important, right? And then I come back, I come back with Colton and people are going back to school and, or they're in school and we're, you know, together as a family. But I think the most important part of integration and blending that family together was that I had learned a lot about what not to do with Amber. I had made, it'll make me cry again, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00: 17:47

Don't apologize.

SPEAKER_03: 17:49

A whole list of mistakes that when I think about them still break my heart because my relationship with her, while it's good because of the interaction that we had, Prior to that, my relationship with her was very strained. And then we had this interaction where her father passed away and we had to come together as a team, which we did very well. But I learned how to not be a step parent with Amber. As a result, I came into this understanding that they have a mother and they have a father. They don't need another mother. You know, I love them like they're my own. I call them my kids. I don't even typically call them a stepchild. I'm saying that now for clarity in this, but they're my kids. I learned from her and she knows this. I've told her before. I learned from her how to be better, how to do it better, how what they really need is support and support. advice sometimes if they ask for it you know there's like they don't need another parent they have two parents and i can i have the luxury being a step parent you know you can be a friend i was able to approach those relationships in a way where i allowed them to come to me on their terms You know, like I offered a lot of opportunity. Hey, I'm going to do this. Do you want to come? Do you want to participate? Yes. Great. Come on, let's go. Or no, I don't think so. Okay, cool. See you later. It's like, you don't have to be hurt by everything. No, it's like really, really approach the relationship with them with a lot of intention so that I gave them the space and time to come to me and they get to decide. the tone and tenor of the relationship to a certain extent. Like I don't push myself into their life any more than I'm invited into, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00: 19:58

And I think they'd appreciate that too, because like you said, they've got mom, they've got dad, but they have you as that support and that extra encourager, if anything, you know, somebody that's on their side. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 20:10

Yeah. And I definitely feel like we actually just sat on the deck and over the weekend and had this conversation where one of them said something to the effect of like, sometimes we feel like you guys just really only give us the good and you don't tell us the bad or something. You know, they're off in college now, but I said to them, Jeremy and I kind of said to them, at this point in time in your life, we don't feel the need to be negative. Like the world is negative enough. You will figure out the negative on your own. Our job is to, we feel like, to encourage and if necessary, maybe point out that, hey, this is something you might want to look at, but then we're just going to leave it there. If you pick it up, you pick it up. If you don't, okay.

SPEAKER_00: 20:58

Right. Well, they've got choices to make now. They're adults.

SPEAKER_03: 21:03

They're adults. Yeah. So, you know, that relationship, though, in the beginning phases was more just about, being available and letting them kind of decide what that relationship looked like. And I think as we have aged and grown and spent time together, that relationship with them has changed and evolved over time and grown slowly, but steady. I don't feel like I'm ever pushing or pulling. I'm just kind of letting the relationship come to the terms that they're comfortable with. And I think because of that, we have a lot of open relationships. honest conversation. And Jeremy has said like they've never talked this openly and been this honest with one another. You know, like I think that's part of what I tried to inject into the house is that sometimes parents and kids can get passive aggressive. You know, there's these negative things that we learn, that we pick up, that we inject into our world. And once again, I don't want to live that way. When I look at the perspective and the whole, the totality of the world that I'm living in and I go, is this what I want to look back on?

SPEAKER_01: 22:11

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 22:13

Do we have to have a knock-down, drag-out fight because the laundry didn't get done?

SPEAKER_00: 22:19

Well, you said that too, is the experience of what you've been through and then the relationship that you and Colton carried into it. Having that open communication is so healthy versus not. Right. So when did you and Jeremy decide to get married?

SPEAKER_03: 22:39

Jeremy and I... live together and it was 2020 in December when he asked me to marry him and in May of 2021 we got married so just a few months later we got married and we had a small ceremony with just our parents and our children and our grandchildren and And our siblings came together. We got married and had a beautiful wedding in downtown Norfolk and started living life together. Not in sin, finally. We wasn't living in sin no more. We finally got married and lived together. I

SPEAKER_00: 23:26

remember those beautiful pictures too. And I was happy for you that life had to move on for you and you didn't feel guilt by that time.

SPEAKER_03: 23:36

No, I didn't feel guilt. I felt... Like Ashley and I kind of talked about what things would look like later on. And when Ashley died, I was only 36. You know, and the thought that I would raise our child completely alone and live without any companionship at that point in time wasn't really an option for me. I subscribe to some things that some people don't. One of them is that I believe that that moms and dads together can give our children the most. Not everybody feels that way. I feel that way. I feel like our boys, our girls need men and women to mom and be there for them. We all, you know, have things that we're good at, right? Like men aren't always the most emotional creatures. Some of them are. Some of them are not. Right. But our girls need to see men model good behavior and our boys need to see men model good behavior. And I'm a female. I can't give him some of the things that a man can give him. And I felt like he needed a male influence in his life. And he was getting that during that time from grandma or grandpa and uncles and stuff like that. But somebody in his life, steady. I felt like it was important. And then also, I want companionship. I don't want to be alone forever. And I didn't want to wait until Colton got older. I knew that if I continued and didn't date and... find someone to be in my life, to be a companion, to help me raise Colton, that my life was going to revolve around one person, and that was Colton. And I didn't think that that was the right environment, the right thing for me to do for him. Our children, I feel like, once again, not everyone will agree with this, Our lives don't revolve around our children. They are a big part of it.

SPEAKER_00: 25:57

They're not supposed to.

SPEAKER_03: 25:58

Yeah. Right. But our lives, we don't live entirely for them. God and then the couple, the mom and the dad and then the children. And I subscribe to those thought processes. I believe in that. And I believe that for me to be the best mom that I can be, I had to have a partner who could fulfill me with intellect and adult conversation and adult time and fulfill me in the ways that I could not be fulfilled alone. That was the way for me to be the best that I could be for Colton. And Colton reached the benefit of that relationship. So No, I didn't feel guilty. I felt guilty for a time period about a lot of different things. But then I got to a point where I was like, this is the right thing for me. It's the right thing for him. And I can feel good about this. I'm okay with this. And I moved forward and I didn't feel guilt about that at all. I felt joy. I felt like I was really doing the right thing for all of us. And I think... With me being retrospective, I don't just think that it was good for me and Colton. And this particular instance, even though the odds are against us, right? We're a blended family. He's got kids. I got kids. The likelihood that we're going to wind up divorced and completely out with one another is extremely high. But I believe that my influence, even for his children, it was positive for them, too. And I wouldn't have been able to be such a positive influence on him, not just them,

SPEAKER_00: 27:42

but him too. Well, I think all of your grief and the grief that you had and the grief that they had in their situation really made all of your hearts bigger.

SPEAKER_03: 27:51

Yeah, I do. I think so. And we kind of talk a little bit about the fact that grief doesn't really change anything. My viewpoint is, is that the grief and the pain, you can see it when I'm telling the stories, right? You can hear it in my voice. I'm still crying. I still feel it. I still feel it just as strongly as I did that day. The grief remains the same, but the life that I've built around the grief becomes so big that your perspective is on the grief changes, right? You can hold onto it a little bit better. And it isn't the biggest thing. At first, it's the biggest thing. It's everything. But as your life grows around the grief, it becomes a smaller part of the puzzle, of the picture. And you're able to keep the grief in perspective. It's important that Colton, And I, we talk about it. We keep it in our memory. Like I said, there's pictures in the house. It's there. I want him to know his dad's stories, but I want him to recognize that his life is bigger. And the perspective is, is that, you know, we have a lot to be thankful for. We have a lot of people that love us, a lot of support around us, and we deserve that. And we have

SPEAKER_00: 29:09

it. And dad would want that for us.

SPEAKER_01: 29:12

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 29:12

You said life is more about experiences than stuff. So what taught you that?

SPEAKER_03: 29:19

Yeah, so I think loss taught me to value the moment over the thing. And we touched on this a lot, but I think really part of my story as I'm evolving and, you know, I'm getting into this time and age where, you know, Retirement is just a decade or two away. As we're cultivating this life, we're thinking about what our life looks like later on and transitioning plans, you know, and stuff. And we spent so many years working hard, getting things, having a house, having the car, like having this dream, you know, and it's like, in the end, it was like, we got to this point with Ashley, where when I looked back, I thought, I didn't care about none of them things, you know, like, right. That furniture is gone. That car got sold. Like, you know, it's like none of that stuff held meaning for me. That the memories did. That the experience did. And I didn't care. There's obviously certain things that I carried with me and I have given or will give to our children for them to have. belong to their father. But most of those things that we work so hard to like achieve and have and get and hold on to, and there's all these things and they're ours, you know, didn't mean anything. It didn't mean anything. We don't talk about that. What we talk about are those experiences. And that's like how we live on as people.

SPEAKER_00: 30:52

When you finally came to me and you said you were wanting to share your your story. You said your coworker had lost a husband recently and how that circumstance of hers moved you to speak up.

SPEAKER_03: 31:05

I think I really just want people to know that you're not alone. Each of us have this experience through life and everyone has an individual experience. No one's going to have my story. I'm not going to have anyone else's story. So everybody's grief is different and we all grieve different things. We grieve the father that we didn't have. We grieve the youth that wasn't the greatest. We grieve the divorce of our parents. We grieve a lot of things. Grief is a big part of a human experience. While our experience might not be the same, you're not alone. We're all grieving those things in a different way. We show it differently, but we all experience it. And you're not alone. Widowhood is lonely, even if it doesn't look like that on the outside. There were times where I was able to look really happy and really okay with everything. And the fact of the matter was I was very lonely, very sad. I had a lot. But you're not alone. There's a life out there beyond that experience that's calling to you. And you don't have to be afraid to grab a hold of it and to create the next phase of your reality. And so at times I felt like I would be doing a disservice to the person who I lost. But the fact of the matter is, is that stopping and not living when we are alive is the disservice. You have to move on. And so I decided that I was going to create the best possible life that I could possibly create. And it's in tribute to him. It's because of him, all he gave me, all he taught me. He gave me all kinds of things. I learned all kinds of lessons. And I try my hardest to live the best life that I can as a tribute to him. And I think that stopping is the disservice. And I think I want people to know that, like, you should live the best life that you can. You should do the best that you can. Don't stop living. Keep going. The bigger you make your life, the happier they will be. And the more perspective you will have on the grief that you feel.

SPEAKER_00: 33:30

What do you think Ashley would say if he saw the life that you've created today?

SPEAKER_03: 33:37

I think that he would be really happy. I do. I think he'd be proud

SPEAKER_00: 33:40

of me. I think he would

SPEAKER_03: 33:41

too. I think he would. For living and giving him the best parts. And I think that he'd be proud of how I keep his life and memories alive. We talk about him so much.

SPEAKER_01: 33:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 33:57

I think he'd be proud of how strong Colton and I both are. And I think he would validate just my willingness and ability to open up to love and create this home that we have. And I think he would think it was brave. And I think he would tell me that he's never left my side. One part of my story was that when they were waiting for the surgeons to arrive, I was sitting next to his bed and I was crying. And he reached up and put his hand on the side of my face. And he said, why are you crying? And I said, I feel like I'm going to lose you. And he said, I will always be with you. That was the last thing Ashley said. That's not some fabrication for, you know, that's really what happened. Right after that happened, they pushed him out and he went into surgery. And, you know, I do honestly believe he would tell me, I haven't left you. I'm still here. So. I think he would be proud of the peace and the happiness and love that we have around us.

SPEAKER_00: 35:26

Yeah. Molly, I want to thank you for sharing this with me. I know that this is such an important topic that needs to be heard. And I am so grateful that I've had your friendship after all these years. But I'm also grateful that I've been able to just watch you go through these things and continue to have the life that is inspiring. So thank you for

SPEAKER_03: 35:51

this. Well, thank you for having me. I'm sorry I cried so much.

SPEAKER_00: 35:55

Don't apologize. I've been trying to hold it together. I promised myself I was going to have tissue. And while you've got tons of tissue, I don't have any. Molly's story is one of heartbreak, but also one of hope. It's about allowing light to return without guilt. about honoring the past while still choosing joy. I'm so grateful she let us walk beside her today. Molly isn't just surviving. She's truly living with intention. Her life now is rooted in experiences and not things. She's grown through her grief and is showing up with courage, grace, and a heart wide open. I took so much from these two episodes, and I know I'm not alone in that. And that's really what Hidden Chapters is about, honoring the parts of people's stories we don't always see, the hard and the healing. If her story moved you, would you take a second to leave a quick review? It helps more people find these hidden chapters, and it truly means the world. Until next chapter, keep listening for what connects us the most.