Fly Free Forever: After the Fire, Love Still Remains

From Heartbreak to Living a Fuller Life

What heartbreak, caregiving, grief, and hope teach us about becoming fully alive again.

Every life has a before and an after. 

For Jenny Brandemuehl, the after began with a devastating plane crash that left her husband, Mark, with life-threatening burns over most of his body,

and placed Jenny in the unchosen role of caregiver, advocate, witness, and eventually widow.

Jenny is a seasoned technology executive turned memoirist, speaker, and advocate. 

Her memoir, Forever Fly Free, tells the story of trauma, fierce love, grief, intuition, community, and the stubborn miracle of hope.

In this podcast, we talk about what happens after heartbreak - not as a slogan, but as a lived human journey. 

How do we stay open after loss? 

How do we trust life again? 

And how do we discover that healing is not a straight line, but a slow return to the heart?

Watch the podcast on YouTube.

About Jenny Brandemuehl:

• Former technology executive with leadership roles at Hewlett Packard, Gap Inc., JDS Uniphase, and Chegg.
• Author of Forever Fly Free, a memoir about trauma, love, caregiving, grief, miracles, and hope.
• Advocate for burn survivors and families, including work with the Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors.
• Bay Area resident and passionate supporter of women leaders.

TIMELINE:

1:02 – Introduction: Jenny Brandemuehl and her book "Forever Fly Free"

1:12 – The accident: Mark's plane crash and emergency landing

2:48 – Before Jenny: life as executives, avid skiers, empty nesters

4:26 – The after Jenny: crisis mode at the Arizona Burn Center

5:39 – Love as an energy: the story of nurse Crystal Anne and David

10:16 – Becoming an "emotional athlete" while caring for Mark

16:23 – The two phases of loss: amputation and Mark's death

19:35 – The miraculous rescue by Thomas Honeycutt

26:16 – Shifting from left-brain to whole-being (head, heart, body)

41:48 – Hope, perspective, and advice for those facing hardship

CONTACT JENNY BRANDEMUEHL

https://www.foreverflyfree.com/

Jenny's Brandemuehl's Substack

Jenny Brandemuehl LinkedIn

Jenny Brandemuehl Facebook

Jenny Brandemuehl's Instagram

CONTACT DR. ARDESHIR MEHRAN

Dr. Mehran Studio

LinkedIn

Podcasts 

Blogs 

YouTube

Bestselling Book

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You're not depressed, just unfinished. This is the podcast for leaders, high achievers, and entrepreneurs who have built impressive lives on the outside, and yet sense something is dying on the inside. If you ever stared at everything you have accomplished and felt strangely empty, this show is for you. Today's podcast is about starting over. It's about events that divide our life to before and after. When a major catastrophe, a tragedy, or a loss happens, and we need to rewrite our life all over again. My guest is Jenny Branmuel. She is a corporate executive in high tech, an author, a keynoter, an advocate, and a writer of a best-selling book. And let's get started.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Jenny, welcome. Thank you, Artist Show. What a pleasure to be here with you today. I'm calling in from Mountain View, California, not too far from where you are, here in the Bay Area. And I think you were mentioning who was the before and after Jenny. And for those of you who've not read my book, Fervor Fly Free, One Woman's Story of Resilience and the Power of Hope and Love, I've been a longtime Silicon Valley executive. I was chief people officer for an ed tech company. And on that fateful day in June of 2019, my husband Mark, who was a recreational pilot, took off from Scottsdale Airport and declared emergency 11 minutes after takeoff. He reported a rough-running engine. And essentially, what followed in the sequence of events is that he tried to emergency land, tried to avoid three drivers on the road, swerved to the right, and by doing so put his own life at risk, and ultimately crash-landed the plane and it was on fire. And a Good Samaritan rescued him, and he spent five months at the Arizona Burn Center. And I moved out there to be with him every day, took a leave of absence from work. The before Jenny, before this whole terrible situation happened, is I'd been a longtime executive leader. I was a mother. And so we were in the process of buying a house in Lake Tahoe because we were both skiers. Mark was a double black diamond skier, and I skied fast just to keep up with him. And so I was avid skier, advert hiker, loved to travel. We both loved life. Mark loved life more than anyone I knew. He loved to enjoy life and we made each other feel alive. So we were the type of couple that worked hard and played hard. And we were a make things happen couple. We're both individually like that, and we were also like that as a couple. And we had a big social network, big group of friends, and we loved to entertain. And I, as I said, I was a go make things happen person. And so that's who I was. And my life was on a happy autopilot, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Happy autopilot.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Happy autopilot is how I would describe the moment before everything happened. I was excited about retiring to Lake Tahoe. I was retiring early. I had come off a really successful period of time, seven years at my last company, helped them go public, helped them go through a turnaround, and now I was leaving on a high. And so there were a lot of good things happening at that time. And who Jenny was afterwards, just to explain, is that after Mark had his accident, even though he was rescued, 80% of his body was third degree burned. And as a result, he was in a medically induced coma at the Arizona Burn Center when I arrived. And that was the new Jenny. That was the after Jenny, which was in survival mode and realizing that he could die in two weeks. And being unable to speak to him because he was completely wrapped up like a mummy lying there when I arrived late at night in Phoenix. And so I went into, and we can talk about this a little bit more. Having been a leader and having dealt with crisis management, I immediately put that role on and went into crisis management mode.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Yeah. Thank you for sharing. First of all, it's a very important story, personal story, and very relatable. It touches your heart, your soul. From my own family, I had multiple tragedies, people that I cared for in hospital surgery units for weeks and months. So I keep you in mind as we go through our conversation. If Mark, your husband who passed away, could listen to this podcast, what do you think he would have liked for the listeners to really hear?

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Mark was also uh marketing and sales leader, and he was a serial entrepreneur and uh loved to mentor and had a lot of friends. Yeah, I think the message from him that he would want us to hear is that love is the most powerful energy in the universe. He wasn't a particularly spiritual person, but through my own experiences and what I know about him, the love between he and I, so we were soulmates. We met first job out of college. We'd been married 31 years when he died. And I feel like the bond and the love between us, I was at the hospital every day for five months from about to 8 p.m. every day to be by his side. I really believe now that love is an energy and that it has a ripple effect. There are a couple of things for that one. One example was there was a young nurse in her 20s named Crystal Ann who used to take care of Mark. And one day she put him on speakerphone while I was at the doctor's. Now she said he's feeling anxious, and I wanted him to hear your voice. Most nurses would, that's above and beyond. Most nurses would just say, Don't worry, Mark, Jenny will be here in a couple hours. I'm taking care of you. So she put him on speakerphone. So I was able to talk to him and say, I love you, honey. I'll be there soon, and just reassure him.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

And I after after asked her afterwards, why did you do that? And she said, The love that I've seen between the two of you is unlike anything I've seen between couples who where one was injured here. And it's caused me to raise the bar on who I want to date. And I was really touched by that. And then I forgot about it. Yeah. After Mark died, Crystal Ann got in touch with me and she said, Do you know what? You the inspiration I had from you and Mark caused me to begin dating David, the nurse who took care of Mark the day he died. And I know David, the most kindest, gentlest soul. And so she said, I want you to know we're engaged. And when we're ready to have our wedding, you have front row seats, you must come.

SPEAKER_02 8:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

And so it was almost like a death in this material world led to the birth of a new love.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

And I think that is something Mark would want people to know that love is an energy. And he was a scientist by background, right? He was an electrical engineer. And so one of the things I started to do after he died was I learned to meditate. I was terrible at it before his accident. I had a monkey mind. I couldn't quiet my mind. Even guided meditation was tough. And afterwards, because he died right before COVID, I was in social isolation. In some ways, it was a blessing in disguise because I was forced to find inner stillness. And I start to meditate. I took a six-week heart-coherent meditation workshop at Heart Math Institute because of my experience of feeling that much love all around.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

When I was at the Burns Center, I said, there must be some approach to meditation that could be love-based. And that's what they teach. And the research now shows that when you feel love and appreciation for a loved one, whether you're in the same room in the same house or at a physical distance, your heart rhythms start to synchronize. And so there's science behind.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

When our podcast goes live, send them the recording for them to hear. Yeah, that they record the story. I will, because it's a beautiful story. It is a beautiful story. So you arrive at the hospital and you're an executive, and executives they project a strength, they take charge, they focus on control. What do I manage? Plan, action, follow-up. So you went there. How did you feel truly inside? What you were there taking care of Mark?

SPEAKER_00 10:26

What a great question, Artisher. I feel like it was discipline. It was, I wrote about this in the book. It's like there were many times it was a roller coaster, the emotional roller coaster, because when you lose 80% of your protective barrier, which is your skin, you're so susceptible to infection and to all sorts of physical dysregulation. And so one minute he'd be his blood pressure would be too low, another minute he'd be on the threat of an infection. Then every day you didn't know what was going to happen. And throughout that time, and I wrote about this in the book, I was often at the precipice of a cliff, about to fall off. Yeah. And I pulled back. I pulled back because I knew I couldn't fall apart. I had to be strong for him.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

And because Mark, yes, what does pulling back mean?

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Not falling apart emotionally, not allowing myself to just not even go to the hospital, not I so I really optimized my life. I worked out every day, I ate well, I treated myself like an athlete, an emotional athlete, that I had to be strong because he was in a coma for four and a half months of the five. And Mark was an incredible, he was one of the smartest people I knew. And I knew he would want me, I felt responsible that he needed me to make the best decisions I could for him on his behalf because he couldn't. He had no voice during that time. And so I put it on myself that I couldn't fall apart.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

That's right. It's a very powerful term because I've cared for a loved one in the hospital, that emotional athlete that when they were between their medication and wake up, I always want to make sure when they look at me, that is there, daddy's taking care of you, and I'm smiling. Then they would, you know, basically go medication would knock them out. But I wanted to be there for them. Months later, I crashed myself physically, emotionally, but for those weeks, I want to be there and be present and be strong. Emotional athlete. Yeah, that's a very powerful term you're using.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Yeah, artist. Your description also reminded me, a good friend of mine said when her mother was in a coma at the hospital, yeah, when she woke up from the coma, she remembered her daughter and her agitation by her bedside. And he said to me, Don't underestimate how much they can feel the energy in the room. And so part of being the emotional athlete was feeling that I needed to provide a positive energy presence for Mark in order for him to heal.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

That's right, that's right. Jenny Depp, your book, which for listeners, Forever Fly Free, starts with the call. As I was reading your book, basically everything around me stopped. It is so intense, so real, and so relatable. The call. What was that call like for you when you got that call?

SPEAKER_00 14:15

It was pure shock, disbelief, not knowing what happened when the doctor came on the call. Mark called me from ER amazingly. Yeah, I'm astounded that the man had the presence of mind to do that. And when he called, and he just wanted to tell me that something happened to the plane and that he loved me. And then the doctor came on, and the doctor just explained his medical condition in very technical medical terms. I didn't understand a word he was saying.

SPEAKER_02 14:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

And all I asked was one question are his injuries life-threatening? And when the doctor said yes, that's all I needed to know. And so that call was a shock. Our family were not warriors. We didn't worry. In other words, some families will say, Oh, you're going, you're driving to LA or you're going on a road trip or you're flying to the ball to Boston. Give me, call me when you get there. That was not our family. We just didn't worry about each other. We might check in, but it was never out of anxiety of are you gonna be safe? Yeah, and so that day I was at work when I received that call. It was a huge shock.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

Yeah. And in your book, you talk about loss. So why did you talk about the strong love? 31 years of marriage, there's a stability. You guys were soulmates. Suddenly you had a loss. What surprised you about loss? Surprised you, whether you can say zip awakened you, and also what surprised you when Mark no longer was part of your life?

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Yeah. I think two things there were two phases of loss. The first loss was at the Arizona Burn Center when they amputated both legs and partial fingers. They were so badly burned they couldn't save those parts. And so the first loss was recognizing that he wasn't physically going to be the same when he came home and he would be disabled. And for someone who was as physical as he was, that was very difficult to consider. The second loss was, of course, when five months later he succumbed to a routine hospital infection that was resistant to antibiotics and he died within 24 hours. And so now it was the shock of the loss of thinking he was gonna make it and come home disabled, and now not at all. And so what surprised me about both losses, I think, and especially after he died, is that as human beings, and I felt this deeply, that I could feel two emotions at the same time. I could feel an incredible sadness of never not seeing him again in this material world, yeah, and at the same time seeing and feeling the beauty of love.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Yeah. So how did that happen? This is a very powerful before and after you experienced significant tragedy loss, and then love. After that, how did that journey come about?

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Yeah, when I was at the Arizona Burn Center, that's where much of my journey started. If you think about it, I'm from the Bay Area, I was away from family and support. What and I was a very private person artist year before this happened. And I started writing daily medical updates to friends and family on a private caregiver community or platform. And what I found myself doing was because of everything we were going through, I started to pour my heart out in those posts. It became more than a medical post. It was about our marriage, it was about the vulnerability of seeing where Mark was, my own vulnerability.

SPEAKER_02 18:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

And it was the first time I opened up in that way. And I was just overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support I received online.

unknown 18:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

And it became a virtuous circle. I felt like I tapped into a portal of love.

SPEAKER_02 18:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

And I had even Mark's Stanford business school class started because they were inspired by his courage and they were inspired by the Good Samaritans' courage.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

The story was extraordinary to them about a classmate they knew, and it prompted them to start discussing spiritual topics among themselves for the first time. And to talk about their own health scares and crises they'd faced in life. And it became a much deeper connection and conversation even among them. And so something became bigger than me in what happened. And I think the other thing that happened, it was a miracle in my mind, how Mark was rescued. So if you read in the book about what happened to him, he was he had swerved to avoid hitting the three drivers, but by doing so, he lost balance and his right wing clipped through the two light poles and caught on fire. And then the plane hit a concrete barrier, flipped upside down, and he crash-landed face down. And all these people had gathered and called 911 and they were filming. And a good Samaritan named Thomas Honeycutt came driving by that day and he got of his car and he's he was angry. He saw all these people filming and he said to himself, if I don't go out and rescue the pilot now, he's gonna die.

SPEAKER_02 20:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

And in that moment, 95 degree temperature, he's in shorts and flip-flops. He goes running out there and he said to me, Jenny, while I was running out to the plane, I thought to myself, if that seatbelt is still on the pilot, I am not gonna be able to rescue him. And he said, Amazingly, I got to the cockpit window. The cockpit window was cracked open. I saw Mark and I saw the seatbelt melt off him in that moment. And there was another eyewitness, a woman who got there before him, and she said, I was distressed. I saw him, I heard him calling for help. I didn't know what to do. And so I start praying for him. And when we pieced together the timing of when she started to pray, and when Thomas got to the cockpit window, it was the same time.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Yeah. So I felt like it was a miraculous rescue that Mark would have died if Thomas hadn't been there at that moment. And he said, by the way, I'm normally not on that road at that time. I'm a cell tower service technician. I work all over town. I happened to be going to a counseling appointment with my partner that day. It was our first appointment. So he had no business being there. And somehow he was the right person at the right time. And so when I got to the hospital, one of the things Mark's doctor role modeled for me is he never said never and he never said always. And what that meant was whenever something happened to Mark, he would say, Here's the best case scenario, here's the worst case scenario, and here's everything in between. And I I think it really caused me to start understanding the power of hope.

SPEAKER_02 22:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:07

And that carried me through that five months. It carried me through after Mark died. And my definition of hope artifure, which I still carry in my heart today, is hope is not holding an expectation, but holding a belief in possibilities.

SPEAKER_01 22:23

Right now.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

Right now. And I think the other thing that served me well was I was reading a book by Eckhart Tolle, and it was really about focus on the now, live in the present moment, don't dwell on the past, don't overthink the future. Every burn survivor that was inspiring to me, who I met at the Burn Center in Arizona, said the same thing in their own way.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

And so those so hope was incredibly a powerful force that kept me going throughout that time.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Jenny, listening to you of Mark's rescue and being brought to the burn center, I just want personally. The things you mentioned is the power of hope, power of possibility, power of being and supporting each other as you can. Like that woman she didn't know what to do, she prayed. That man rushing in and thinking, I'm gonna do something. The doctor, it just all these steps of showing up, doing your best, make a difference in our daily lives. Amazing. There's something uh you shared with me preparing for what it's called about burn and the statistics about burn. I didn't know that. That there are there's so many people every year in the US that actually globally they die of burn. Pretty sure that the statistics and the effects of burnt.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Yes, but on average, every year, eight million people suffer a burn injury. They may die or they may not, but they are severely burned. And in as a comparison, I think I mentioned I had read somewhere a statistic that 11 million people are diagnosed with cancer every year. And these are global statistics. And so it's a large number of people, and I think there's just not a lot of awareness about the burn condition. It you hear about it in terms of the way people got burned because it's always a traumatic accident of some sort. So if we think about last year, it was the Crans-Montana bar fire, and then it was the Louisville UPS flight that crashed. Every one of those incidents is that you read about, there will be people who died, possibly, and then people who survived and went through exactly what Mark went through, potentially. It's just that you don't hear about it in the press. And often these are industrial accidents, yes, traumatic accidents, car accidents, plane crashes, what have you. And also places like Arizona where you can suffer a second-degree burn in the middle of July and it's 115 degrees and you fall on pavement while you're going to the driveway to pick up your mail.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Yeah, amazing. As a successful business leader, there are we call competencies, the capabilities, the skills you have to get to the top, to be successful at the top. How did you change in what ways after your experience?

SPEAKER_00 26:07

What a great question. I think Artisure and on this may be what some of your listeners can relate to. The world I came from for 31 years of working, yeah, is very focused on the left brain way of thinking about the world. And even my undergrad degree was in psychology, but was research psychology. And so, again, the analytical research methods. And that's what you get rewarded for when you work in technology companies, most companies, right? Business.

SPEAKER_02 26:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

And then you're in a leadership role. It's project management, risk mitigation, make things happen, goal setting, vision, strategy, all of that. That's very left brain. There is some element of right brain, you know, especially around visioning. But for the most part, your day-to-day work is very pragmatic and left brain. And Mark's accident and his passing really shook me to my roots. I started one of the things I say now is that loss can be an invitation to personal growth.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

You can choose for it to be. And for me, it really triggered me to really spend a lot of time thinking about and unpacking how did my family on both sides of the family, mother, father, shape me and to who I am today? How did my career shape me? How did Mark shape me? I spent 31 years with him. And I realized that I became over-indexed in my life left brain way of the world. And I started to spend a lot of time the last five or six years cultivating my right brain. So a better way to describe it would be to say head, heart, and body. That's a more holistic way of being in the world and not over-indexing on the KPI around my brain, around my head. And so I believe today I'm a better balance of all three modalities in terms of how I orient myself in the world. And I trust my intuition so much more now in a way that I couldn't even fathom before Mark had his accident. And I'm just going to tell a short story about what caused me to tap into that intuition. When Mark had a fungal infection that was near fatal, somewhere in his five months, the doctor said to me, Call the whole family in. So the family came in. Everybody was, of course, worried and anxious, including myself. And one morning in the waiting room, I heard a voice say, Mark will be fine. Don't worry, don't doubt. And I thought, wow, the stress is getting to me.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

I'm hearing things.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

I'm going to hear voices. Something's happening. And I just dismissed it. The second day, again, early in the morning, I went for a walk. I heard that voice again. Don't worry, don't doubt. Mark will be fine. It was short, sweet, and emphatic. And I thought, wow, where'd that come from? Is that my inner voice, my intuition? Is it God? What is it? I don't know. Third day, heard it again on my way to the gym. And I this time I paid attention, but I was too scared to tell anybody about it because I thought, I just don't know. I just don't know. He might die this weekend. And what do you know? Six weeks later, he came out with flying colors. He didn't die. The doctor said to me, that was a medical miracle. We thought he was probably gonna go.

SPEAKER_02 30:03

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 30:04

And that was the day I think I started to trust. And I think the more I found inner stillness through meditating, yeah. And I meditation is simple. It's not for me, it's not a one-hour sit down, it's five minutes, ten minutes. It could be throughout the day where I pause and I just go inside myself and I'm quiet and I'm coming from a core place of peace. And when I'm in that state, I hear things I do, and I've decided, artists, doesn't matter where it comes from, right? And everyone has access to that inner wisdom.

SPEAKER_02 30:40

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

It doesn't matter if it's God, an inner voice, your intuition, it's the same, it's the same, right? And and so I pay attention to signs and synchronicities now, yeah, because I believe, and I'll just finish that thought and we can move on, is that when you're open to what the world will bring, yeah, and notice things more, and people and events will show up in your life in ways that you could never imagine. Yeah, when you're not driving hard, because I was a type A person before Mark had his accident.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

Left brain. The term healing, which we talk about, you know, in this call, healing has a Latin root, and it literally means to be made whole. In the Western world, actually, I think this is global. From the early on, we are taught to think logical, process, rationalize, and the skill and capacity to also feel it's an underdeveloped capability of human beings. When that happens, that minimizes our capacity for intuition, for sensing, for seeing a bigger picture. So in my client work, people come to me for trauma, depression, anxiety, ADHD. They're in pain, they are unhappy with with how they are. And what they all have in common, they have an amazing, gifted left brain, very successful, admire, but they have a hard time feeling their feelings. They can think about their feelings, they can name it, but they're not feeling that. So part of the work is growing their right brain capabilities, which always been there. In fact, all the medications we take, they are their main purpose is enhancing the communication between left and right brain. So sometimes tragedies like in a shock scene life awaken us that realize we have a deeper wholeness to us, and it makes us to become more full. So what I'm curious, and I think our listeners are so that's Jenny, whether it's 2.0 or 3.0, but it's the new Jenny. So, what is your life now like in terms of who you are, your relationships, your activities, what you what do you say yes to, what do you say no to this day?

SPEAKER_00 33:22

Yeah, I did retire on schedule, so I didn't leave I did leave the corporate world January of 2020, like we planned. And I would say the journey I've been on now, I decided about 14 years ago I wanted to be a writer. And by the way, the journey before, when I was 10, I wanted to be an archaeologist or a writer. And my father talked me out of both of them because he said, You're not gonna make a living, you can't make a living in either, right? Even back then. And I loved my career in change management, organization development, HR leadership. And at the same time, there was a side of me that I really was longing to bring back in, which was a creative, a real right-brain creative side to me. And so 14 years ago, between jobs, I drafted a novel and I took a couple creative writing classes at Stanford in the evenings. And I loved it, Arde Share. I found writing fiction, the sky's the limit in terms of what you can create on paper or on your laptop. Whereas when you work for an organization or company, you're always working in service of a mission or a purpose, right? That's collective. And even if you're CEO, it's the board that you're answer to. And so I loved it. I knew so. Fast forward after Mart died, I said, I gotta get back to the writing. I have that novel to work on. I needed to restructure the plot. I was working on that. And I would say that out of that, I about two and a half years after Mark died, I felt called to write the memoir. I had a number of friends who said, your story could inspire and help others so much, Jenny. And I trust my intuition enough now that when they said that to me, I thought, I'm not ready right now, but I know when I will be ready. And I trust that I'll know when that is. So I felt no pressure. And about two and a half years later, while I was working on the novel, I said, Oh, I think I need to put this on the back burner and work on the memoir. I know what I want to say, and I have a clear message. And so I started working on that. Now, through all that work, I've had so many people tell me how much the book and what I've spoken to has really helped them. And it doesn't have to be something as tragic as what I went through. It's any kind of setback in life. It can be loss of health, it could be loss of your home, it could be loss of a job, right? There are many losses more than just losing someone physically. And so I am also experimenting with letting go of control in life. Now that doesn't mean I don't plan. Yeah, it doesn't mean I don't plan I'm gonna go skiing next season, or I went on my vacation to Europe recently, or I have to work on the book or the next book. But I hold and I wear everything loosely now.

SPEAKER_02 36:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:31

And I pay attention to what's around me. And if I feel the intuition to shift gears, I'll shift. I think after Mark died and everything I went through, I realized life is highly fluid and highly dynamic. I spent a lot of time in nature and I observe the natural ebb and flow. And you and I, Ardisher, we come from change management, organization development, transformation. I talked a good line about change management, but when you're in survival mode like I was, it takes on a whole depth of meaning.

SPEAKER_02 37:07

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 37:08

And I said, in many ways, I now trust my intuition to lead me. And when I make decisions, I do a three-pronged check, my head, my heart, and my body. And if anything feels off, I hit the pause button. I don't rush through decisions anymore, especially the big ones. And I trust that I will know. I'll know. And the other thing I was going to say about how I've changed is my motto in life now is to inspire and be inspired. And I live my life with creative spontaneity, and it helps, and it's interesting that remember I said Mark and I were the make things happen couple. We were both quite type A, but we were very compatible because we wanted the same things. It would be a problem if we wanted different things, right? We'd be fighting all the time. My partner, Robert, now, and there's a whole other story sometime I could share about how he and I met. He and Mark are completely different. I can't even begin, I don't compare them, thankfully. They're just different. Robert is spontaneous, he's very right brain and left brain optimized. He's very he's a musician. Yeah. Yeah, he came from technology, but he's very right brain and he's more emotionally, he leads sometimes more with emotion. Yeah, and he said to me when we first started dating, because I was talking all about how independent I was and how independent I was ever since I was a kid. And he said, How do you feel about being taken care of now? And I said, Wow, I don't know. I think I would like that. And what I found with him is that it encourages me to be less type A, to be much more relaxed, to be much more creative and much more spontaneous.

SPEAKER_01 39:05

And so I'm working on living a life that's creative and spontaneous, and more in relating versus just doing. That's very powerful. One of the ways that I support my clients who come, they find their new way forward. And these are people who have accomplished a lot. I share with them everything in this life, in this world we live in, has a duality, night and day, positive, negative, good and bad, love and hate. I said that the way we want to go through life, to work, through projects is to see uh dichotomies, to see uh patterns and focusing on the truth right now. Right now, what makes sense? What values do we have? What is helpful, what is not helpful? How do we show up to make a different difference right now, knowing that there are different forces that pose us in different directions versus trying to find the right answer? Right answers create rigidity. Yeah, and so Jenny mentioned there's truth, wisdom all around us. Instead of pushing harder, we need to slow down and look around and then decide what do I want to do right now to make a difference.

SPEAKER_00 40:37

Yeah, I love that Artisure. I think that we're not trained to behave that way or to think about life that way. And my favorite analogy now about life is it's like you're on a canoe on a river, and that you do have some control. You're steering the boat, right? You're steering the canoe, but there are times in life where it's a rapid rushing river, yeah, and there are times when it's slow and peaceful, yeah, and it's being aware of the time and season of your life that you're in, yeah, and nudging it so that you continue to move forward, but you're also open to the forces around you.

SPEAKER_01 41:20

Absolutely, absolutely. Jenny, we're folks who are listening to our podcast, and either they are going through difficult times or they know of people who are going through difficult right now. Do you think we can give them perspective tools for them to basically stay the course?

SPEAKER_00 41:48

Yeah, I think my definition of hope, which is if you recognize that the world and life is dynamic all the time and constantly changing, and you take that through its logical conclusion. Yeah, it means if you're going through a really difficult time right now in your life, there will come a time when you're going to go through a wonderful time in your life. And I think after everything I went through, I could have been on a depressive spiral, but I didn't go there, Articher, because back to my definition of hope, I realized something terrible happened in my life and my life could be good and happy again. I can find joy again. I might not feel it right now, but the hope of knowing that could come and the that it's a possibility, not an expectation, yes, was really powerful for me. And that's what I would say to someone who's in the middle of a major setback in life or crisis or difficulty, even that's so hope. And I think life was never meant. I love this quote I read from somebody life is an adventure, not a package tour.

SPEAKER_02 43:01

That's right, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 43:03

And so what we perceive as safety is really an illusion. The structure you build around yourself, the routines and the structure. And there's so much more to our life that's possible. And so I think it's just opening your eyes and seeing that it's not even just hope, but that there are many more possibilities of who you can be and what you can do that's right in life.

SPEAKER_01 43:33

Exactly. You mentioned about hope, and life is a dynamic force, just like a river, a canoe with a river. As a kid, I would go to my grandmother. She was the inspiration and the calmness in the family. I had a ki chaotic family. She would always use a version of these two words, you will be okay. And things will change, and things will change for the better. And I'm a student of history. I read history of the world, different nations, and you know, life is cyclical. There are crises, tragedies, but then there are building, there are glories coming up, and just trusting that you will be okay. Do the work, be present, have hope, have love.

SPEAKER_00 44:25

Can I also add that I think he liked community is really important.

SPEAKER_01 44:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 44:31

We were not meant to be alone when we go through difficult times. And I think there's a tendency to want to be private about this, to not show who what you're doing and what you're suffering through, because maybe you feel ashamed or embarrassed, or the world sends you a message that you have to be strong. And I do think that is a societal aspect and a cultural aspect to the US that is actually not very healthy. And one of the things that helped me a lot after Mark died, because it was COVID in the privacy of home, I allowed, I gave myself permission to feel the full cycle of emotions without judgment and without shame. And I think the more people can also allow themselves to feel everything and to trust that they can come out of that. But if you sweep it under the rug, it's gonna come out some other time when you didn't expect it or want it. And I think that's also another important aspect.

SPEAKER_01 45:38

It's a very important aspect, the way you describe your experience. You had wonderful doctors around you, those two nurses. They witnessed you, they were there with you, and then you through journaling, through communicating. So you had the group of people that they know you matter to them, they know your story. Connections during a time of uh crisis and upheaval important, it's fundamental. Yeah, we heal and we get hurt together, yeah. It's to building those relations that they support us through change. Wonderful. Jenny, where do people find you?

SPEAKER_00 46:22

I have a website, foreverflyfree.com, and I think Ardashir, you've got the links to my social media and Substack articles, and so if that can be sent to everybody, find me there. Any future speaking engagements would be posted on my website and my social links. And the other thing I wanted to mention was that music was very healing for me. Everybody has some people love art, some people like athletic activities, hiking. I love nature and I love music.

SPEAKER_01 46:56

And what kind of music?

SPEAKER_00 46:58

Oh, everything from rock to pop, Bruno Mars to classical Bach, however, the mood suits me. And yeah, what I found about music is it can reach your heart. You know, you mentioned that some of your listeners struggle with feeling their feelings. I found that for me, music would reach my heart faster than anything else, and help me feel things that I couldn't even articulate in language that I had no language for. And so on my website, I have two playlists. One was Mark's favorite music. I always had music playing at the Burns Center because I believe music can be healing, and he too loved music. And I had a second playlist that is called The Healing Journey, which was music I listened to after he died and through my grief journey. Yes, really just comforted me. And listeners might want to take a look at that and it might be helpful to them.

SPEAKER_01 48:01

Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, Jenny, for your time. And the message for the listeners is that life sometimes shows us very hard scenarios, loss, tragedies, financial tragedies, job loss. But those tragedies do not define us. Those are the moments that actually, through love, through hope, through connection, through having faith that we will be okay, we can rise and create a new reality and new relationships for us. This session today was really about hope, about becoming, about having faith in our greatness. Hope this was enjoyable for you. Please share this with your loved ones, with your friends, families, and then the follow Jenny and her story and the continuously growing and sharing. Thank you.