He Lost His Wife, His Identity and Almost Himself - Widower & Author Danny Lesslie | EP 37

What happens to a man’s identity when the person he built his life around is gone?

Host Alessandro sits down with Danny Lesslie, a father and author who watched his wife suffer for years after a 2020 diagnosis, then had to wake up to a life where she’s simply not there. 

Two daughters. Lost jobs. Lost a house. And a grief that doesn’t “resolve,” it shows up like a gorilla on your chest when it wants to. They go deep on the only way grief becomes survivable: you don’t beat it, you build containers for it. 

Chapters:
00:03:41 - When Identity Disappears Overnight
00:06:56 - Marriage Isn’t the Finish Line
00:09:14 - Standing at the Base of the Mountain
00:10:47 - Realizing You Have to Keep Climbing Alone
00:12:54 - Why Faith Became the Only Explanation
00:15:42 - Vulnerability Creates a Vacuum
00:22:36 - Why You Can’t Hold Grief Together
00:35:38 - The Urgency to Show Up for Life

Danny shares how identity is a box people shove you into, and if your whole identity is “husband,” then losing your wife isn’t just loss, it’s annihilation. He talks about why “vulnerability is a vacuum,” why men staying closed keeps them alone, and why people can’t help you if they don’t know you’re bleeding.

And underneath it all is faith. Faith forged by “Jesus moments” that were too precise to dismiss, including a $6,300 provision that hit the exact number they needed.

Press play and learn to put your phone down and choose your people while they’re still here.

Connect with guest: Danny Lesslie
Pick up a copy of: Thank You, Cancer: A Story of Love, Loss & Hope

Become a Better Husband in Just Two Minutes a Week for Free: HERE

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy. Always seek qualified guidance for your personal situation.

Views shared by Alessandro Frosali and his guests reflect their lived experiences and opinions. Every listener’s journey is unique, and no therapeutic relationship is created.

Transcript

Danny Lesslie 0:00

Waking up and choosing each other every day. That was the commitment. She spent two years on her belly in bed. I woke up the next day. It's just me.

Alessandro Frosali 0:06

It was the first problem in life that you cannot fix.

Speaker 2 0:11

In the moments where the grief subsides a little, they do stuff that's like their mother.

Speaker 1 0:16

Your shared story continues, and there's no fixing it. You can't solve it. You can't do anything. And I would do it all again. Welcome to the podcast, Danny.

Speaker 2 0:24

Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Honored to be here.

Alessandro Frosali 0:26

Ah, thanks, man. Really. I'd love to know, you know, just for my audience, uh, can you take us back to who you were before all of this happened? What was life before the diagnosis?

Danny Lesslie 0:40

We live in the States, moved to Los Angeles to the coast to start a fitness business, to start a gym, did that, had success there in that process. I got married to the love of my life. We were pregnant when we, you know, when we got married. So like we were on it, had two baby girls, and decided to leave the coast and then head back inland. And we're kind of just figuring out life, you know, there and reinventing ourselves and just in that struggle with little kids, you know, just you do there's just so much going on, you know, identity-wise and and and just all these things.

Speaker 1 1:20

And yeah, like I mean, tell me tell me a little bit about that. How did you uh approach life with kids and before having kids? You know, like how was your process of approaching life together?

Speaker 2 1:31

Well, I was very growing up, I was the best way I would describe it is very linear. Like I would think like, oh, well, you'll achieve this thing, then you'll achieve this thing, then you'll achieve this thing, and you'll achieve this thing. In the process of that, I was a very, I don't I wouldn't say I didn't have much depth. Which is sad to say, but it's the truth. And I realized that later on in my life. But um, I just kind of like thought in a linear perspective. And then when I met my wife, I learned that sometimes progress isn't linear. It's it's in like an expansion, which isn't comfortable because you know, like I want to achieve this thing and I see it in the future, and you're like, your life is clearly getting better, but you're not moving towards that target anymore. And that was really the challenge for me. Having kids did the same thing, but I was, I was, you know, my heart was expanding. So things were getting were great. And then I let go of that dream that I had, which was to have a gym and have a fitness business. And then I went through this like 10-year identity crisis of who I was, and because like I was the fitness guy. Well, at least in my mind, that's who I was. And then all of a sudden I actively got rid of that. And then I was like, well, who am I now? And that was a whole battle. Uh, and in that battle, excuse me, was when this all came about, and that was in 2020. So my wife got diagnosed in 2020.

Speaker 1 2:55

Very interesting. And it's very interesting that we talk about this now and we talk about identity and we talk about all of these things because in a way, and I don't want to jump the gun here, but like, are you scared of being known as the guy, you know, in the situation that you're in now? The guy who's lost a wife. You know, like I don't I don't want to be, I yeah, I don't want to be crafty. I mean that with all love.

Speaker 2 3:16

What's hard, what I've found it's really challenging. I I don't worry about that because that is my life and that is my story. And I'm, you know, I I wouldn't trade my experience with her for anything else. Like you couldn't give me any pile of whatever to trade in my story with her. Um, but the hard part about it, I think, is that as people, we want to put people in a box, and identity helps us do that. And as men, you know, um, profession is one thing that's like really easy to do. Okay, what do you do? What do you do? Well, the but the hardest thing I figured out is like if I told you who I was, and then you know, you told me who you thought I was, and then five other people didn't, no one describes the same person, right? So identity is not a realistic thing, it's a it's a carrot that we hold in the future that we can go after. It's when we hold that as our definition that we get crushed. And I'll use myself as an example. Like, if my entire identity of my entire life was being a husband, I'm no longer a husband. So what happens now? That's a really hard reality. And I'm very blessed to have dealt with like, let's say, the identity dragon before this came about. Because I mean, I get professionally, I got derailed for 10 years and I was really spinning and struggling. And I finally figured that piece out. But if that came about now, like with what I'm currently dealing with, I don't know that I just wouldn't be sunburnt in a ditch. You know, so I don't know.

Speaker 1 4:56

So it's the most, yeah, that's a lot. There's a lot. That was one of the most powerful lines I've heard in regard to I, you know, I don't, I'm not a husband now. Do you do you not do you really believe that? Or do you believe that that lasts and goes on with you, you know?

Speaker 2 5:11

I mean, you know, it it's a weird, it's a weird reality in a weird space because I still love her. And I, you know, I we have our kids and we have our life and we have, but I think the harsh reality is that she's not here anymore. And she will always live in my heart. And in a black and white perspective, I'm not a husband anymore, but I wore my ring.

Speaker 5:36

Yeah, I get that.

Speaker 2 5:37

What was the moment you need the I'm on I'm on the same path that I was on, and that's hard to come to terms with, too, because you know, someone's timeline ends, and it's like, well, we had all these things we wanted to do, and this life we we we had committed to and were living that's now gone. And I I didn't ask for this to do this by myself, yet I am, and so in that I think I've begun to come to terms with carrying the torch for us alone, which is terrible. But it's also kind of I I feel like it's the only choice, right? Yeah, because I'm not I'm not gonna like try to forget, I'm not gonna like try to mute it out, or I'm not gonna, it just it is, and that's the reality of our situation.

Speaker 1 6:26

I get that. And what I what I see here is like a really beautiful thing where, as you said, your story continues, you know, your shared story continues. Yes, you're holding the flame. And and to me, uh it just doesn't seem so black and white. Like it cannot be that black and white, and you as a husband is not that. Like the husband is not the physical of it, you know. It's it's kind of what we embody in a weird way because you still embody a lot of that, even though you might end up one day with another woman, and maybe that might be the hardest thing to even think of. I don't know. But you embody that, and I I see that within you, you know, you're carrying that torch, and I I respect that. I really do.

Speaker 2 7:06

Yeah, it's it's very, I don't know. There's there's just so so many things that are so so odd about the whole experience. But one thing that we learned, my wife and I, was so I I thought growing up that marriage was the destination. I was like, oh, you get married, and then like you're good. Like you're you did the thing and you're there, you're like in the room and you're good. You're like, it's it's it, which is flawed, I will say. And then she didn't want to get married. She always wanted to have kids, but she didn't want to get married. Well, I wouldn't say that's flawed, but we met and decided to to create a union, right? But in that, I think we both realized that it wasn't actually about the legal, you know, the ring. Like it that's not the thing. The thing was waking up and choosing each other every day. That was the commitment. And so, and I like I said, I was flawed in my approach before, but I began to realize through my love for her that I had to show up every day for us. And then that got amplified in the in the end when she wasn't able to do much, and and I was just that was what I was doing, right? And so I still choose her. So are we married? No.

Speaker 1 8:29

But that's like I think you you hit on you hit on something, you hit on something really beautiful there. And I think this is the thing that I think maybe a lot of reasons why people actually don't necessarily feel like they want to get married now, is because we do see a lot of this not propaganda, that's a strong word here, but just in this terms of marriage is a happily ever after. And we've seen that in, you know, media and we've seen that in pop culture for maybe the last what are we talking? Probably a hundred years since movies sort of started, and even the silent movies, this love as being this, ah, you know what, you love each other, that's it. Well done, happily ever after. And and I think we do have a lot of people rebelling against that. But I think the marriage itself is a lot more sacred than that because there is a lot of choosing each other every single day. And every single day.

Speaker 2 10:12

You know, and I I think of it now as like going through what we've been through is like, you know, I think marriage feels like an answer at a certain point in your life. Like it feels like the next thing that you should do or something. And what you don't see is that when you get married, you're just like stepping up to the base of a mountain. Like marriage's hard. Like it gets it's really hard. And it's hard to like to decide to commit to someone, like really do it, like legally, you know, like you're like now. I'm bound to this commitment and and hoping that they're gonna do the same.

Speaker 1 10:48

I think, I think that's that's a that's a brilliant analogy, is to arrive at the at the bottom of the mountain.

Speaker 2 10:54

Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna take my sword and I'm gonna lay it down, and I'm gonna like, I'm committing to you in hopes that that thing gets reciprocated, right? And if it doesn't, you have a problem, right? And so it's just really I learned that the this the commitment that we all think it is, which I had this flawed perspective of, was like, no man, you just gotta show up for someone every day. And that's that's what it is.

Alessandro Frosali 11:21

I think I think your metaphor is actually even quite powerful though, and it's even more powerful than the other person not reciprocating. It's it's this it's this idea that when you climb that, you forsake other mountains. And you choose this mountain you have to, you have to, and you do what you can while on that mountain together. You can't do anything else with it. Um I I hate to ask you this this really personal question, but how how does it feel knowing that you have to walk alone? Like, have you thought about what that looks like for you going forward and for your kids? I mean, I I guess that's the thing is you did start this mountain and you have kids involved. And that for me makes it feel like you're at least walking with them, right?

Danny Lesslie 12:05

Yeah, and it's you know, if you think about the analogy of the mountain, it's like, okay, well, you're, I don't know, you're halfway up the mountain. I don't know where you are. And it's like, so there's really nowhere to go. Like, you could go back down, but you like admittedly, you can't reverse time, so it doesn't it's that's a a fool, Erend, right? So I didn't want to do this by myself. I was very angry and just sad, and I'm still sad. But as time moves, thankfully, time moves because it feels still that there are time there are moments where the grief washes in and washes out, right? There's there are there are moments where like I was walking yesterday and it was like I felt like a gorilla like nuzzled up against me and then just started choking me. And I was like, I was I was I was like staggering. And there's days that seem okay. The kids, because like they need help because they're kids, force me to like to do things, right? Like I like there's no you can't like not cook for your kids. At least it's not gonna last a long time, right? And they're eight and ten, like they're and they check on me. And you know, what I notice is that when like the grief is really heavy, I can't see her in them. But in the moments where the grief subsides a little, they do stuff that's like their mother, and so that's this weird gift that you would never expect to be given, you know, but it's inside this like thunderdome of pain that is life, right? I you know, I think this is the part where um where God comes into the equation, because like I I I can't imagine there being like any reason for this if there wasn't God, like the pain of it and like the you know, when when you wake up the next day after your person dies, it's like what am I doing here? Why am I here? Because I can't see any reason that I would go through all this pain because it doesn't go away. I mean, she's been gone for almost, I don't know, six or seven months, you know, and uh just past a couple hundred days. And it's just it's it doesn't go away. I mean, and that's I don't know, it's just what we're here doing, you know. And so I think it's the it's that, okay, if I'm gonna do something in my life, if I'm gonna like continue, the steps I make are gonna be purposeful steps. Otherwise, I'm not doing it. Now, I I'm not the person who's like, I'm not gonna go off myself. That's not me. I that's not my mindset.

Speaker 1 14:52

But what does what does purposeful steps mean to you?

Speaker 2 14:56

Connection with people, things like this. Uh what I've found is in our in our life, we decided to to share about our story. And a lot of people, you know, don't agree with that and whatever. But for us, it was it was a choice we made. So I've always been very open about what's happening. And if people see my posts, I talk very vulnerably about what I'm going through. And in that, I see I see her and I see people um connecting in their own lives. And so this mess that is this season of our life feels like it has purpose to me, and it also connects me to her. And you know, one of my favorite things to do is always introduce people to her. But now I can't, obviously, but when I talk about her, I can do that. So, like I said earlier, it's hard to wake up and not want your reality. Like you just don't want it, and like there's there's guilt in that, and there's shame in that, there's like all these things because you have life, and you're like, I have life, but you're in such pain that there's like this yearning for some sort of connection that's not accessible because she's not here, the bed isn't empty, that and so in like the writing for me, I felt like I was connecting those two realities, like the oil and the water, I was connecting them, right? And so that I just try to just stay open and just keep my heart open in my days, and you know, just and that's what I try to do.

Speaker 1 16:46

I can see you're very vulnerable about it, and and I I really appreciate that. And I think that's amazing, especially in men. You know, I see that a lot not a lot of men can be vulnerable nowadays. And I'd love to know these these last five years, this whole process. What does a torture about being vulnerable?

Speaker 2 17:00

Vulnerability is a vacuum. And when you when you um and I can I can reach back to the first experience I've ever had of this, but I remember seeing my father cry at my at his father's funeral, and I immediately cried. It was like, I mean, it was right there. And my experience has been that men don't allow their vulnerability to be to be available to to much maybe, maybe like a few people. Um when when vulnerability comes out in the room, it's amazing what happens in the room because what what I've found and what I was not expecting, and this has been from my own vulnerability, is that I've openly shared many things, you know, in like media, social media, and I constantly hear people pouring their stories into that space, their pain, pouring their pain into that space. And it's in a weird, safe zone that I mean, people write out me messages all the time that are they're unbelievable. They're about their experiences and how they haven't been able to share and they haven't been able to think about it. And and like my words were their words, you know, like all these things. And it's just people can't help you if they don't know you're hurting. And so you're welcome to keep all the hurt for yourself. I've learned that people are very, very generous in their desire to help. And I've seen it in so many ways, but it was because we were vulnerable enough to ask. And we, you know, we've had, I mean, our story is insane. Like there's, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars of of generosity to find treatment for my wife came from people. I claim no ownership of the funds to do any of it. And um, yeah, there's a crazy story, not to go on a tangent, but we needed this blood test for my wife, and she had been looking for it for like a year, and she couldn't find it anywhere. We were living in Kansas City, which is right in the middle of the US, and she couldn't find it anywhere. And uh, so I put up a GoFundMe to raise money for treatment, and one of a mentor of mine shared the GoFundMe. Well, there's a guy that sits across from me in a in a Bible study, men's Bible study I've been going to for like years. Okay. He sends me this long text message, and it in his text message it includes the blood test that they offer at their medical clinic. But I didn't mention the blood test in the GoFundMe. He doesn't know. There's no way that that would come about. The interesting thing is he comes out of a Bible study that that I attend, right? Which is interesting. Well, so he goes, hey, we have this test, so we contact him, we go get the test. The test is $8,000. Okay. We don't have $8,000. We don't have anywhere near that much money because this the drain that that cancer care is, I at least in the States, is like it's unbelievable what things cost, which is a whole other many conversations. But $8,000, like, we don't have it. The blood work got sent to Greece, um, which is crazy. It comes back. So we need the results. And he we're like, we don't have the money. And he was like, okay, well, I can give you like a friend of the practice discount over like $6,300 was the number. And so we're like, cool, man, we don't have it. Uh yes, thank you. Like trying to figure out how we're gonna make this money. So my wife, Rafi, gets a text from a friend of hers, like one of her best friends, uh out of nowhere. And she says, Hey, our church decided to give your family our month's tithe for the whole church, and it's $6,300. And I was like, dude, like we we have fully committed to it. Like we we had the test done, we didn't have the money. And then God was like, hey, here you go. Come to find out, the guy, the pastor of that church spoke at my wife's at her celebration of life, and he said that just before all that happened, they had made this commitment to be wildly generous in their giving. Like, okay, we can we can give a thousand bucks, but we're gonna give 6,300 bucks type deal. Like, way overshoot the the mark. And we were the first family to receive for that. And I was like, it's it's uh just it became undeniable, like the the presence of God in this story. And that was um ultimately, I think that's what saved me in in the uh in the journey, because if not for that, if not for the the many, many times that uh like we called them Jesus moments, if not for those, I would have been so angry with God. But we had so many times spoken and experienced his grace in the whole journey. And and and that's you know, there's so many stories. There's 50, 60 stories of this. But that was in her passing. I I wasn't angry with God. And it was a really weird moment because you would expect I don't know, I don't know what you would expect, but it would see because there's there's no retribution when you lose someone. There's no like you can't go like, you know, you can't like clean it up.

Speaker 1 22:27

Like can't bring them back.

Speaker 2 22:29

No.

Alessandro Frosali 22:30

And um I sort of described it uh when I lost my father. It was the first problem in life that you cannot fix, and it almost feels as if you Do you know when you when you burn off a wound and you cauterize it? So you instead of healing it, you you cauterize the wound. I was like, it reminds me of that because you always have it and you create a New wound on top of it just by having it, and there's no fixing it. It's just cauterized wound, and that's you can't solve it, you can't do anything, it's just now something that's part of you.

Danny Lesslie 23:03

And um it's just it's just a broken thing that you just you there's just no fixing it.

Speaker 1 23:08

It's it's a part of you that doesn't grow anymore.

Speaker 2 23:10

Yeah. And it is what it is. That's right.

Speaker 1 23:14

And um what is that um, you know, we've got a lot of things mixed in here. We've got this this grief, we've got we've got God, we've got faith, we've got this anger, we've got a lot of that that's sort of going in here. How do you hold that as a man? Like, how do you not flip out and shout and be angry and and and run into the streets? Like, what is is that a process for you? Is that something that you you you feel like you want to do? Like, or or is that something is there some knowledge that you have in there from this whole experience about holding it all together?

Speaker 2 23:48

I think holding it all together is a lie, first of all. What I've found that's been very helpful, and I've I've literally stumbled into this, is I call it containers. So I I there are containers that I have for my grief, not physical containers, but they're like pursuits. So one thing for me that's been very, very big is writing. So when I write, if it's if it's like, you know, like a post or poetry or the book or whatever, like I aim all of the guns I have, my all of my angst and anger and grief and sadness, everything I've got into the words that I put on the page. And I can literally like see it pouring out of me. And it's like, so when I'm doing that, many times I like I'm crying in a coffee shop or I'm you know crying over my computer, or but everything is is intensely focused in that space. Um, and uh so for me, that writing I would consider a container for grief. And I I use that daily. I also something that I kind of stumbled into was I walk with a weighted vest. And I was after she passed, I didn't want to leave my house. I didn't want to be in the world. I didn't want people to see me, and I didn't, I I, you know, talking to someone at the grocery store was too much. I didn't have the the wherewithal to even, I mean, even like a someone at the gas station, I didn't have the capacity for any interaction. And so I was like, okay, I need to like get out in the world. And this is weird for me because I, like I said, I came from the fitness space. Like it's not like I don't have the knowledge of what to do. It's that I felt so paralyzed in in the heaviness of grief that I was like, I have to do something for my body. It's like, all right, well, I'll just go walk because then I'll get out in the sunshine and I'll breathe and I'll move. And and I know all the science behind movement and training and stuff, but I was so stuck. And so I was like, all right, I'll just get a vest. So I get this weighted vest and start walking. What came of that was I realized that I was choosing the burden and then I could get rid of the burden. So now when I walk, this is months and months later. It's like I said, all guns aimed at grief, right? I'm listening to music, I'm crying, I'm talking to God. I was literally, I would have liked to have seen a video of me the other day staggering down the street because I was going very slow and I was not going in a straight line. But for me, I know that that moment and that time is like all guns aimed at grief, and I'm it's my container. And then I get home, you know, and I'm sweaty and I feel good because I move my body, but then I take that thing off, and my spirit feels lighter. Because what I've found with the grief, and as an example that brings clarity to my mind, is like I feel like you're sitting there and you've got this giant expansive cave next to you, and it's just darkness. And who knows how big it is, and who knows what's in there, and who knows? And you will deal with the whole all of the darkness, and it's on its own terms, right? It's gonna come and it's gonna visit you like the gorilla and choke you out whenever it wants. For me, I was like, I need some sort of control of something. And so I know that I can control walking with a weight of S. I can control writing. And I don't know, I don't think it advances you through it. I don't think it, but it's like a teaspoonful of tolerance for the day. And I at least, you know, it I dance with the grief in that moment.

Speaker 1 27:36

Would you say the grief is gonna come out no matter what? And it's better that you Oh, it's coming for you. It's coming for you. So it's it's better that you actually give it its space within those containers, right?

Speaker 2 27:47

Yeah, it's not it's not, you don't you also you don't finish. And I'll it's not like it's not like okay, well, you have three years of grief and good job, you're done. It's like, no, like you you carried it like for forever. Now you can avoid it as well, but you'll deal with it. You know, it's like it it'll it'll show up sometime in your life, and it'll just participate.

Speaker 1 28:12

I saw a really beautiful analogy, and it was this little box. So if you can imagine like um a box, and you know those old like Rick or Paddle games where you know you you'd you see a little ball and you could bounce it bounces off the walls, you know, like at the beginning of competitive. Yeah, so it said that grief was essentially a big red button, a huge red button in a box. And this little ball, every time it touches the button, grief comes. Now, so so like you're fine, but then the ball hits the button, you're like, ah, and this button's so big that literally it's gonna go right now. Over time, the button just becomes a little bit smaller, and a little bit smaller. Eventually, maybe after 30 years, the button's still there, but it's just really small within the box.

Speaker 29:01

Yeah.

Speaker 1 29:01

So you're not gonna trigger it at every single point, but it's still there. It's still there. And I I've had that experience with my father, and um that's the closest I can I can empathize with you, with you, with you here is like I knew that it was quite a lot at first, and and now I'm at a point where it doesn't actually like I I I miss him, but I'm I understand him. I'm not angry anymore. I haven't gone I've gone through all those stages, but there are occasional moments, there are occasional moments that I I just it the ball hits it just right, and then you're like, oh yeah, there it comes. Oh and I so have and I I um I know that process is you're early in that process, and I can't imagine the I can't imagine the pain. So I you know, I send you a lot of love. I send you a lot of love.

Speaker 2 29:48

Yeah, it's um some days it's unbearable, you know. And but I I know that when I if I talk about it or I write about it or I feel better in that moment. And the thing that that sucks, kind of like all things, like if you sweep the floor today, you gotta sweep it tomorrow. Like it's gonna have more stuff on it. It's like it's the same way. It's like tomorrow you gotta show up too. And it, you know, you just gotta show up for yourself and in it. And I I imagine that one day the the deep pains turn into a smile because it was, right? Because you knew that. I hope.

Speaker 30:30

Tell us about this book. Why did you write it and what's in it?

Speaker 2 30:34

So uh, so like I said, we always shared about kind of our story, and in all this pain, we decided it was like there's no way that all this happens, and and light and hope don't come from this. So we we actually, I remember we were talking about writing this book in like 2021. And our thought was like, hey, it'd be so cool to tell a story from two different perspectives. Because admittedly, as we experience life, we experience it for ourselves. We don't see the other side of the the coin, right? Unless someone tells us. And so we very much just ran out of days. We never got to accomplish that thing in our life. And then after she passed, I was I was writing and I was just writing because I knew that writing would extract some of the guru out of me. And uh I was like, oh, the book. And I was like, maybe, maybe I'll write the book. And so I decided to do it. And then, but the issue was is that we the thought was that we were both going to contribute to it. We were gonna write it together. And so what I did was I looked back over the the five years, and she had written entries the whole time. So I took her words, original unedited words, and I dropped all of those into a timeline. Not all of them, but a lot of them. So what you have is like a story told with lots of gaps, right? A five-year story with lots of gaps. So then I took my words from the same time and dropped them into that timeline as well. So then you have this story told in the moment of the experience, because I have a I believe that when something's happening and you're telling about it, there is like an angst and it and like a grit that you capture with your words that you can't recall later. So if I told you a story that happened to me as a kid, it would not be like if I told you the story when I was a kid after it happened, right? So there's lots of dense power in those words. So there's this story told from two perspectives, but there were still holes because it wasn't when we were writing, we weren't trying to tell a story, we were just talking about a moment. So I went through as a narrator and kind of stitched all of that together. And there were some patches that I put in. So you have this kind of patchwork quilt, two perspective story telling our story over these years. And then, like the $6,300 story, there were so many more of those that happened. Those are our Jesus moments. So I put all of those in the story, and then each one of those is followed by a Bible verse that applies to exactly what happened. So, like, here's where God said it, here's where it happened in our life. You know, so effectively what you have is you have this story of hope, you have this story of massive struggle and massive pain and love, and and it all comes together and it's told from three perspectives. It's told from my voice, her voice, and God's voice. And so it is our story of all of these years, and it it doesn't end at her passing, which I think is very important because in in my experience in losing her, I thought I had kind of run it out in my mind what it would be like losing someone and and being in my position now and living with them not here, but I didn't do a very good job because it's it's hard to put in your mind and do that exercise. But the story's not over, obviously. Like I'm still here, like I woke up the next day. Oh, our our kids are still here, like they're they're my perspective of life and the experience was too small because the experience is larger, and there's a reason for that. And I was caught in the same trap, I think everyone else is. I thought death was the end. It's not the end. Okay, so there are bigger questions that need to be asked, and that's the purpose of this like, yes, we did lose her, and yet we're still here, and there there has to be some thought around that, right? So there's more to the book, and there's more beauty in the story, and there were some really profound things that happened that I share that that I that I believe will bring people hope because I know the moment where you you think it's over, but it's so clearly not over. And that's really hard to reconcile in your mind. So yeah, so the book is it will be delivered to my house in a month, and then I'm sending out all the copies that have been that have been pre-purchased, and then it's still available, of course. But um, yeah, it's uh it was there's a so much heart in that book, and like I said, her original words are in there, and and it was interesting, like I was talking about perspectives, like me going back, putting the book together and reading what she wrote about things that I was involved in was really eye-opening because I hadn't read those words before. You know, like I like if you're a person's journaling, you're not reading their journal, you know, like I was there, I don't, you know, but it was really eye-opening. And I think there's just so much in that book, and it's she was just magnificent. And to think that, you know, 1,592 days was from her diagnosis to the day she passed, and she was in pain every single day, I'm sure of it. I mean, like searing pain. She spent two years on her belly in bed, she couldn't sit, she could hardly walk. I mean, and she still showed up in her life with joy for me and the girls, and was a loving mother, a loving wife. Like it's her, she was just beyond. And so that this her story has to be told. Like, there's no way all this happens, and it just happened, you know, there's no way. So the book is there.

Speaker 36:44

It's beautiful.

Speaker 1 36:45

What would you love? Somebody who reads the book, somebody who listens to you, what would you love for them to understand?

Speaker 2 36:52

I say this because I know who I was before all this happened. I I wish that I could like take like urgency to like swim inside your moments and place it in your heart because there's so many things in our life that pull from like our focus on our people and on the things we actually love. Like, I in the course of this time lost two jobs, got fired from them, and and they would never tell you this, but they fired me because I picked my wife and my family over my job. And we lost a house and we ran out of money so many times, we had to move so many times, and I would do it all again. And I realized that things get taken away from you, you know, and I talk about it many times, like it's an unlayering in your life. And unfortunately, I think we as humans pour all of our, everything we've got into, you know, a job or or or family or or kids or whatever. And it's like there will come a day when it's just you, and that's a very hard realization because in that day, if you haven't poured into yourself and you haven't worked on your connection with God, it's a very hard conversation because you're just there by it's just you. And that was, you know, that's what I found when I woke up the next day. It was just me. I didn't, my wife wasn't there anymore. And so I was like, okay, well, why am I here? Who am I? Okay, God, what's what's going on? You know, like these are the questions that, and these are the things that they may as well be written on your walls because they're not going out of your mind. You can't drink them away. You can't, you know, just go have sex with a bunch of people and it goes away. You can't drug them away. You you can't do that. Like they're not, they're they're etched in your psyche because the pain that you're dealing with demands an answer. And so if I could take, if I can tell my story in such a way that puts that in your heart, that urgency to like, look, I man, I gotta show up today. Because I mean, you know, there I don't know if you guys follow what's happened here, but I live in Texas and these floods down here just swept away uh hundreds and hundreds of people and in a camp and RVs and houses, and there are missing children and missing people. And it's like, man, we we got right now, and stuff goes away. And uh, and so if if it if I could just take that and put it in your heart and cause you to invest in your life today, and maybe it's uh having a conversation, maybe it's telling someone you love them, maybe it's uh saying you're sorry, you know, whatever the thing. Everyone knows the next thing is for them. Maybe it's you know putting your phone down and paying attention to your kids, I don't know what it is, but uh we gotta stay plugged in. And my wife was a wizard with that. Like she was there was like no veil between like explosive joy or uh like weeping. There was no veil. Me, like if I feel something because of how I was raised, man, I gotta like engage. Like if a sad thing happens, I have to like work to to to feel. She was just, it was just there, man. It was so beautiful. It would like it would like engulf you, like you would see it, and you like she would laugh, and it was like you feel like the party just showed up and you were the guest of honor, and she's laughing. You're like, it was what a gift to be that engaged in your life. Because most of us aren't, and I know that because I'm a guilty party, but I I hope that it doesn't take this much pain in in your life to turn you on, because we all have our layers of things we hide behind, you know, whatever, pick your poison, whatever there.

Speaker 1 41:05

I love that. I love that so much. Thank you so much for your honesty, for your vulnerability. Thank you for bringing her memory alive as well. She sounds like she was amazing.

unknown 41:16

Thanks.

Speaker 2 41:17

It was yeah.

Speaker 1 41:18

I'll put all the links in the description below. Is there anything else you want to say just before we finish?

Speaker 2 41:22

Thank you for having me. It was an honor to be on and and and just tell her, tell her story and talk about us. And thank you. Oh good man.

Speaker 1 41:30

That's the episode. That's all I got for you today. Just want you to remember you're not alone in this. Make sure you subscribe to stay connected, of course, and comment your win, you know, because every time a man sees other men winning, they don't feel alone anymore. And I love that. Tools are in the show notes, starting with the better husband in two minute emails. Let's build this together. I'll see you next week.