Grief Is A Cluster With Alison L. Miller

Alison L. Miller and her husband, Chuck, had a life and a future together. In just three weeks, he was dead and sitting in an urn in the passenger seat of her car. Committed to make good on a promise, Alison is on an Odyssey of Love driving across the country in a bright pink car so Chuck can find her out on the road. We're talking about how grief makes us mad at colors, objects, and words, and how even if you know all about grief, you're never really prepared to experience loss.

Transcript

Allison I'm delighted to have you on coming back this week because your story gave me so much joy to read. It was heartbreaking yes but it was also joyful because the way that you've chosen to take your grief out into the world is so like rebellious and revolutionary so I would can't wait to get into your story and also more about the color pink. So if you could please start us off with your lost story this week. All right well my husband Chuck and I we had been living in New Jersey he was retired Air Force and then went into civil service and I was running a nonprofit back there that I'd started for women grieving the death of their moms or mother figures. And we've been talking for a few years about you know what our dream is just to get get out on the road and just just meander to wander to have adventures. And in 09 we decided to leave our jobs and sell everything or house most of our belongings and just go out on the road. And initially we were what I called state shopping looking for a place where we could just settle down at some point you know get off the East Coast in New Jersey and go further west. And around about the three-month point Chuck and I kind of looked at each other as we're just kind of driving around and we realized that we were having such a good time so why stop. So we kept on driving and that so that was in 09 and in 2011 he got cancer and we were out in Oregon when we found it. We didn't quite realize what it was at first we just we didn't know and so we went back to New Jersey and he went to Philly and it ended up being cancer sarcoma cancer of the ulnar the sheath around the ulnar nerve in his left forearm. And we went through six surgeries to to just totally deal do away with it and then the reconstruction surgeries. And in between every trip every surgery every MRI everything that we had to do and CAT scan we'd always go right back out on the road again. And he was good he had a really good prospects for the cancer never coming back again. And then into late 2012 at around December he started getting sick again and it crossed my mind twice and I asked him do you think the cancer has come back and he said no absolutely not. And we thought it was a systemic fungal infection but in in March of 2013 we woke up one day we were out in Southern California at a condo we'd rented and he said I can't do this anymore you need to take me to the ER. And I I mean we'd only been there a few weeks I didn't know my way around he didn't so I just quickly googled an ER and it ended up being Eisenhower Medical Center and I drove him there and they admitted him right away. He was having trouble breathing and I know they thought he was probably having a heart attack and they did CAT scans immediately and the doctor came and told us when we were still in the ER he said there's a huge mass in your lungs and he didn't say tumor he didn't say cancer but I knew right away that's what it was and I knew too that this this was it. Chuck wasn't gonna make it and they admitted him to the hospital and he had a week there. I started calling the kids right away from our kids from around the country to come and be with him because I knew that was gonna be it and I remember talking to a friend on the phone and as soon as she answered I said I'm going to be a widow and I didn't know what that meant really other than what everybody knows about it and we had a week well about five days in the hospital and then I found a hospice for him and that was one of the hardest conversations I've ever had with him because I I'd worked in hospice I'd been a bereavement support facilitator for for years so I knew all about grief and none of it none of it helped at that moment when I had to say to my husband I think it's time to find hospice and I said if you want to if you want to fight this somehow then I'll go to bat for you and I'll do everything and and we'll do it but I don't think we have time but I don't want you to think that I want you to die I just don't think we have time to do anything and he thought for a moment and then he took my hand and he said let's call hospice and so I did and we found him a hospice nearby and our four kids were there and I I just let everybody know and friends came from back east Chuck was in AA and people that he had sponsored came to bring meetings to him and to give him his 25-year coin and he died three weeks later and I went with him to be cremated and I covered him with flowers I opened the box and I covered him with flowers and I pressed the switch to open the door to the crematorium and a week later I went back and I got his urn and I set it on the seat of my pet of my car riding shotgun and I headed back east to give him full military honors out of McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey and I knew that I needed that I wanted to stay on the road as he and I had I honestly also didn't know what else to do we didn't have a home for me to return to I also knew that I didn't want to stay in hotels because I thought that is just the saddest most pathetic thing I could think of with all of the grief some sad woman sitting in some hotel in the back of beyond you know sobbing into napkins so my daughter found a link with teardrop trailers tad teardrop trailers and she sent it to me and she said Ma check these out and I went I was in Connecticut at the time and I went and I looked at these trailers and I bought one on the spot and I didn't know a damn thing about trailers I didn't even think of all I'm gonna need a hitch like I knew nothing and I bought it and I had already bought a new car when I went to Arizona after Chuck's death and I had had a man create a shade of pink for me customize a shade of pink and paint my car that color and so I when I bought my trailer I gave the guy the can of paint with the formula on it and I said everything that's yellow paint it pink to match my car I knew that grief is very isolating I didn't know anybody out on the road I was riddled with anxiety and you know I devastated at Chuck's death I mean all of these things and I knew if I at least painted everything pink if I if I kind of made myself really big out there and noticeable then I would be held accountable for showing up and if I started writing about it maybe people would read what I wrote and if on one day I missed it maybe somebody would message me and say hey where are you because all I wanted to do was drive into the desert and disappear I could not bear the weight of the grief of Chuck being dead and I started my Odyssey of love having no clue what I was doing I never camped I'd never towed I didn't know how to travel you know with all the planning the way that Chuck had done he had been a long-range planner in the Air Force and so he mapped and he routed and made reservations and I knew not only didn't my brain not work that way in the best of times with all of this grief it certainly wasn't working that way so I thought well how am I gonna do this and then one day early on it occurred to me you know like if I were to ask Chuck that how am I gonna do that what would he say to you Allison and I knew that his response would be you know what you don't have to do it the way I've done it you do it the way it works for you and I started off and I just took all of that grief and pain and devastation and confusion and everything I just packed it all right up with me and I kind of closed my eyes and hitched up my rig and started off and now it's over five years later I love so much of this story and thank you for sharing it with us in as much detail as you did because it's heartbreaking but especially there at the end there are these moments of self inquiry like what am I gonna make of this like if I have to make something of this which is the decision that all of us are faced with in grief if I have to make something out of this crap storm what am I gonna make it into and I want to go back to something that you said earlier about working in the bereavement field and knowing all about grief and yet you weren't prepared because that's something that I've read in so many grief books of like psychotherapists and hospice workers and all this other stuff they're like I didn't realize until it actually happened to me so what was different from the tools that you were taught or maybe had been using for years and years versus the grief that you actually experienced when Chuck died well I I had known it all in my heart for many years you know I when you're a brief group facilitator you work from the heart and I had first started learning about it my mom my brother and my mom my brother Kisa and then my mom both died within six months of each other in 1996 and that started me off in my hospice career so I learned so much I was a volunteer for 9-11 up in New York City I mean I was a crisis response captain I knew all of these things and I worked from the heart and then Chuck died this relationship that was my most intimate relationship and suddenly all I knew about it was intellectual and it didn't touch my heart you know I could reel off the words and I did work with my kids in our hospice time talking about anticipatory grief and so I recognized what was going on but I didn't know how to shift or change anything because I was just in this absolute tsunami and when Chuck died it was it was like atomic bombs just the the power in the world around me just evaporated disintegrated and so whatever I knew it was only in my head because I couldn't make it work in my heart and from my heart death to guide me because none of it made sense anymore it's like oh yeah I know all of that but so what what does it have to do with what I'm actually going through right now yeah I like how you phrase that because I think so much of grief society or the world or psychology or whatever likes to make it intellectual like give me the steps give me the how-to but we forget so much that it's a conversation that we're having with our spirits in our heart and at some point words aren't enough and logic and step-by-step instructions just can't do the trick it's just impossible it's very true there's there really is no language for for any of this and so and I that's one of the quotes that I actually remembered from my hospice time and I am not going to be able to tell you who said it but this person who worked in hospice said that there is no language for grief therefore we must engage the five senses and I mean my everything was numb at the same time as everything was pain it was just like this mass confusion a total and and it's when really language came into play I started almost becoming I I remembered Chuck's language from the military and I started really just using it and the first word that came to mind was clusterfuck and snafu situation normal all fucked up and it's like those words were yes like I don't know what else to say besides it but I can say yeah this is a clusterfuck and so I've always been kind of I've loved color and expression and mostly was verbal and in writing that I was able to express myself but I I remembered that one quote that we must engage the five senses and this wasn't even necessarily a an actual thought as it was I just realized I knew those words and so I started learning I don't know I found somebody who taught me how to mix how to make a mixed media art journal and I started looking at the inside of my trailer and you know what I want a picture of Chuck here and a picture of me and Chuck there and then I want to do this and paint here and I didn't know if you could do any of that inside a trailer but I thought this is going to be my canvas and I started creating and just because I didn't know how to do it didn't stop me because I didn't care and if something didn't work then I just did it over again or incorporated it into something more and so I really started using my five senses and I realized your brain is so fogged at this point Allison you know they call it widow fog or grief fog so trust your heart like that's all that you can trust anymore anyways all that I knew anymore after Chuck died was that he left so much love behind for me from the love we had for 24 years I knew I had that I knew I could trust it and that was in my heart and so I decided you know what I'm gonna let my heart lead me wherever I need to go whatever direction I need to go if I need to stop somewhere my heart will tell me yes and if I need to go it will tell me go so it was for the first time in my life truly listening to my heart instinct and that's still still what I use as my guide and then I you let my heart show me okay you want to do this go ahead and do it so what if you muck it up then you'll just do it over again like who cares if you make a mistake like the language that we use in our culture is so limiting and and it puts periods on everything like even making like well don't make a mistake and don't make big decisions the first year good Lord Almighty that's when you have to make some of the biggest decisions of your life after you have been widowed so but if you make a mistake then live with it and just go on to something else you know I mean that's absolutely true and that's one of the most frustrating things like pieces of false literature that I see about grief is that like don't make any big decisions and the second year is always harder than the first there's all these there's periods you're right there's definite on all this stuff related to grief I'm like you don't know like maybe that was true for you but it in my heart and my spirit and my five senses like that's not how it's rolling out for me and sometimes especially in the case of big decisions like we have no choice like a decision must be made I want to circle back to something that you said to your friend on the phone I literally wrote this down and put it in quotes next to me it just says I'm gonna be a widow and there seemed to be so much I think I counted the times you said it was four or five in this introduction of I knew I knew I knew I knew of this just like intuitive maybe tuned in to your heart even before his death of just like this knowing of this is going to happen can you talk about maybe where that came from and if that sense was something that scared you or was a comfort to you because intuition can mean so many things to people it didn't comfort me I didn't it didn't scare me though either primarily because I I didn't really know emotionally what the word meant I like the fullness of it interestingly enough at the condo where Chuck and I had made reservations for when they were in Southern California weird we went down to the hot tub one evening very early on before he was really really sick and we didn't even know he was sick and there was a woman who was there in the hot tub with us and so we started talking to her and introduced ourselves and it ended up that she was a widow she told us that she'd been widowed two months previously and a friend had loaned her her condo there so that she could just kind of have some time to be by herself if she wanted so that's the only person we met at that condo which was interesting was a woman who had just been widowed and then just a month later Chuck was dead and I was a widow I didn't I didn't know the fullness of that word I knew Chuck had survived his first cancer and I don't know how I knew so exactly that this was it the night he was admitted to the hospital I did go and speak to the admitting nurse who had been nursing for 30-plus years and I I asked him what would you think you know what you know what are we looking at here because I always want to know the bottom line as much as possible I've always been that way so that I can prepare myself as much as possible and and of course he was reluctant to say anything I said look I've worked in hospice I've worked with dying people I've been around death I'm not afraid I'm more afraid to not know than I am to know the possibilities so I said how long do you think my husband has and he said I think given what all of the test results are he has maybe three weeks and he was actually right on target I'd known before that though in the emergency room I don't know there is just something I just knew like maybe I'm maybe I was being fatalistic I don't know but I just knew this was it and what made it difficult after that was as I was calling people to let them know friends and family and I spent so much time on the phone and you know I'd step outside the ER room because for some reason I didn't want to talk to about this in front of Chuck and people would say oh you have to stay positive you know and all this other and I just wanted to scream at them and say will you please listen to me this is going to be it he is going to die and nobody would and I get why but it's I I just hate that somebody couldn't say that sounds really scary and you know maybe we can hope for the best but plan for the worst because that's what I had always learned from my mom and so that that kind of really drove me batshit crazy hearing people say oh you know he got better before and it's like no he's going to die this time and I I don't know why I know it so certainly I'm not trying to be negative this isn't a time for negative or positive this is a time to be real because we need to prepare as much as we can and so I got all the kids there and I just started making all of the making all of those calls and we started finding tumors they were appearing we're chasing them every hour more and more tumors would appear and and Chuck and I would find them and we just couldn't keep up with them and that's when we called hospice and he was admitted but we did have the opportunity to have some conversations he and I between us and one of the conversations we had was I guess I told him I guess I'm I'm going to continue traveling but I don't know I just I have nowhere else to go so I'm going to continue traveling and and so we started talking about the places that we had gone in our last four years together because we hit all of the lower 48 states over those four years and we started naming some of our favorite places and I said well I'm going to go back to those places and to scatter your commens and I said I'm going to paint my car pink so that you can find me out on the road and I remember him just looking at me and smiling and taking my hand and saying I'll be looking for you and another thing in one of the other conversations we had he said black isn't your color he said don't mourn for me in black he said we're pink that's one of those laugh with tears in your eyes stories where it's like oh I finally listened but you're not here to you know tease me about it and I thought this was just so cool because for me as someone who lost a mom to breast cancer pink is like a very hard color for me I hate it like I hate pink I hate pink in the month of October especially like there's so many it's funny how grief changes our response to what is normally neutral stimuli like colors or like certain types of flowers or like music or things that have never done anything to us all of a sudden become hostile and unwanted because of our grief and because of our pain and I just so love that this was almost like the color pink was a contract that you agreed upon even before his death my mom Betty Catherine she actually died of breast cancer also and and so I understand about the whole color pink and it wasn't I mean I liked the color pink but it was wasn't my end all be all and but then after Chuck died you know with our conversations and having told him okay I'm gonna paint my car pink so you can find me out on the road I I needed him to be able to find me because I didn't know where he was I don't know what I believe about the afterlife you know it's all speculation anyways so it was more incumbent upon him to find me so if I did what I told him I would and paint my car pink and if I wear pink then he'll be more likely to find me now when I say that it's kind of also like another layer of that is that it's I'm kind of leaving markers for him this was an interesting twist on just even all of the whole color thing you know I would meet people along the way and I've had people come to me especially early on and bring me messages from Chuck who people who didn't know him I wasn't around my car trailer they had no way of knowing my story and I had a woman come to me very early on and tell me that Chuck wants me to tell you that he has left you markers along the way to both physical and metaphysical and he said and he wants me to tell you to make sure to look for them and so by my doing what I had told him I would do it just it made it more likely that I could leave markers for him as I looked for the markers that he had left for me and those markers have come in the way of people often most often and people find me because of all of this pink and then it started becoming kind of this bigger thing like a like this and I started calling it my Odyssey of Love and I've always been so aware that I'm only the vehicle for this you know it's it's much bigger than I am it's it started out as me and Chuck you know a tribute to the love story that he and I shared and that was that was okay for a while but then there was more started happening along the road people being drawn to this shade of pink you know and everything being pink and and so I started realizing you know I need to expand this now and so I started inviting people from my widow community to send me the names of their loved ones and I would write them on my rig and then I realized you know this has never been just about me and Chuck it's never been just about being widowed it's about love and all of the love that Chuck left behind for me that is the only thing that I know for sure is real anymore and so I expanded it to just anybody and everybody I would meet and so people from around the world you know they'd find my blog and my Facebook page and they would write to me and say you know a woman from New Zealand wrote to me and she said my daughter always wanted to come to America and travel and she just died last month could you add her name to your trailer and I'll know that she's traveling with you and so my trailer which is all trimmed out in pink is now covered in red auto paint pen of names and messages of love so it's it all started out as color and just about me and Chuck and now it's all of this pink and and all of this magic really because love is magic to me and magic is love and it's just become this really big thing in this whole traveling tribute to love that is my Odyssey of love because it pink was just a color but now it is a power statement for me and the color that was created for me by this man named Anthony I found in Arizona right after Chuck died he worked he did he had his own garage and worked on cars and I I had found him in the phone book and I told him our love story and I said I need a color pink create a shade of pink created for me can you do that and he I went and picked up the car which had been silver I picked up my car that he painted and it was this perfect shade of pink and he handed me the paint can and he'd named the color and the color of my car and my trailer is named Chuck's watching over me pink and he said that's to give you courage to return to the road on your own Chuck will always be around you now and and that's how it is so but I've gotten questions oh it's so Barbie pink oh it's so pretty it's so cute and it's like that's no fucking Barbie pink this is a strong powerful pink and on the front of my trailer because it's a tab teardrop so there used to be a big oval logo that said tab on it and I had them remove that and I had them put in big raspberry pink lettering fwg which is a term I came up with after Chuck died to remind myself that I can do this and I will do this and I am doing it and it means fucking warrior goddess so when people say oh that's such a cute Barbie pink I tell them that's not a Barbie pink I said that's a fucking warrior goddess and I said I'm out here kicking ass in the name of love and but people have also said oh is that for breast cancer and nothing against all of that you know breast cancer but no this is my shade of pink this is fwg pink and it is an honor of my husband and it's an honor of love and it's an honor of everybody out there who has love who wants love who's seeking love who wishes for love who misses love that's what this kind of pink is so it's about changing the meaning isn't it because every color and every word has so many layers of meanings I'm so excited because as you're talking about gathering all these stories of people literally from around the world stories of love I got this visual of like when a leg is broken or an arm is broken you go to the doctor and they put a cast on it and as something is healing people come in and visit you and like pop in along the way and they sign your cast and I feel I'm getting chills saying this because it's like as you begin to mend your own heart as you kind of put a cast over it it's like all these people are now coming to you to like sign it and wish you well but then the larger piece too of of healing is like there's a community around this and there is a it's a tribute it's actually it becomes its own object it's no longer just this is here helping me heal it's like this and all of these people and some magical component as well of good wishes and and love and and just like I'm like you have your own pink like that is just so cool and here's and here's me telling you how much I hate pink which is not like that's an overstatement but it's it's also just you're so right that we we are allowed to determine what our grief means yes that's right we are the people we absolutely are yeah and I do I will not allow anybody to define this for me I've had people tell me along the way oh you know you're just what a wonderful vacation you're on your permanent vacation it's like so if this is your idea of a vacation with my husband's cremains and his fly a grant riding shotgun with me I don't ever want a vacation with you this is not a vacation this is not fun it's powerful it's transformative I'm giving words to it you can you know all you people out there call it whatever you want I know what this is and I'm doing it my way and just don't get in my way and also I had someone early on when she kind of stepped back when I said she was asking what fwg means and I told her and she said oh well maybe you should just you know that's kind of an offensive word and maybe you should just say friendly warrior goddess and I looked at her I said do I look like a friendly warrior goddess I mean I'm losing love I get that I hug people I support I encourage but this is fucking warrior goddess I'm I'm not out here having fun sweetie I'm out here transforming myself my love story my life my history my future and trying to inspun inspiring almost by default like I didn't set out to inspire this has been just really for me so that I can keep on going but that's what it ends up doing and so women kind of have gotten upset about that sometimes that I say it so blatantly whereas guys just they just give me a high-five or you know they hug me or they you know give me a fist bump because they're not offended by it and I don't care anymore who's offended I'm not using it to offend you I'm using it to describe my journey and who I am and I'm a fucking warrior goddess so you know deal with it or don't you know whatever it doesn't matter one way or the other but we define this we all define our lives nobody can do it for us they try to but you know we just need to be strong enough to tell them to buzz off can you say a couple of words maybe to people who have like a gut feeling of how they wanted to find their life but are maybe afraid of what other people might think or afraid that they're not doing it correctly or like things of that nature because you have such a strong voice like you're a woman on a mission I knew that from the time your email landed in my inbox I was like she's got stuff to do like this this powerhouse of an entity and there's such a there's such a surety in the way that you speak about your grief and the way that you live your life I'm wondering for people who are like I feel like I'm on the edge of that or I'm not sure if the words are right for it yet if maybe you have some wisdom for them from just further up the road so here's the thing I started out not having a frickin clue what I was doing I didn't call it an odyssey but I started remembering conversations that Chuck and I had had and what I what we talked about I I was I was just as fearful as the next person seriously I didn't have a clue I don't necessarily have a clue now like I don't plan I think planning is naive because you know like what's your five-year plan I don't know maybe I might still be alive or I might drive off a bridge tomorrow who knows so I don't plan but the thing is you take all of the indecisiveness I don't care where you are in it you take the indecisiveness the uncertainty the fear the just everything whatever it is you're feeling and you just pack it all up in your backpack or your suitcase and you go and you do it anyways and if it's the wrong thing for you so what go and do something else then trial and error right and if and people will judge you and they will have things to say to you and you just my favorite saying is I tell them to fuck off with all the love in my heart because I'm in my shoes or my boots I'm paying my bills it was my husband my relationship and you go do whatever you're gonna do this is what I'm doing so I stopped I stopped giving a fuck what anyone thought about it you just have to go do it you don't wait it you don't have to wait a year you might want to if you have a big house sell it anyways and if you've made the wrong financial decision well you know what the economy is never a certain thing anyways we all know that I don't know I I kind of now more subscribe to the eat drink and be merry for tomorrow you may die because like literally Chuck was in the best of health in every way except for that damn cancer and we had a life and we had a future that we hoped for and three weeks later he was dead and sitting in a mound of ashes in an urn on my passenger seat what do any of us have to really be afraid of especially for those of us whatever the relationship who have confronted the death of a loved one the worst has happened what else is there to fear so just be afraid but go do it anyways because and you just you learn to ask for help because people might say yes and my mom taught me that she said always give people the opportunity to say yes so I do I don't know everything I don't fact I freely own to the fact that I hardly know anything anymore and I don't care about that either I just ask for help when I need it you just pack it all up everything that you might feel whether they've just died whether it's six months ago if you want to go and do it then you just damn well go out and do it and you know I'm gonna have a foam finger made of you know flipping the bird so that I don't have to you know do the action of it I can just hold the foam finger up for anybody who wants to have a judgment about me and now so that's what I recommend everybody just go do it people don't like it they're gonna judge you think they're always going to doesn't matter don't let it stop you I just love your energy so much I really do well thank you I know I swear a lot Chuck would even say well you know that word kind of turns people off a lot well he's not here anymore so he doesn't get it I gave you the pink thing shut up already I'm wearing pink alright let me swear yep people people will you know they're just funny about things and this is it truly is my life and what I know is Chuck loved me more than anything and I returned that love to him and and I'm gonna go out and live my life that I have to live without him in as colorful and as bold a way as possible in as non-traditional a way as I possibly can I'm gonna do a I'm gonna do a live feed on my happily homeless page Facebook page of how to because his urn is just a little plastic black plastic box that he came in and I had put pictures on it I decoupage it it's just another art project to me so I'm gonna do a live feed of how to how to design and decorate your own urn and I'm gonna use his urn as an example because you know what also let's not forget the shock value you know for those people who are judging you go out of your way to shock them that's what I say people need to be shaken out of their complacency yeah and there's something to be said about art in that too if arts not shocking you it's not really doing its job and I feel kind of the same way about grief like if grief is not shocking you it's not really doing its job either so that's a that's a really powerful thing to say I'm wondering now as we get close to the end of our time together where people can find you and speak to you maybe get their names added to your trailer to your car also just where they can get in touch to share stories and to be be with you as you continue on this journey yes people can find me I have a website that is the name of it is happily homeless is moonstruck. Com and there are links to my happily homeless Facebook page there and anything you know the Twitter and everything else all of which I'm still learning so on my website they can kind of get the backstory of how this Odyssey of love started and how it became the traveling tribute to love and just all everything that goes along with it and pictures of my travels and all of that so an unhappily homeless Facebook page and what else is there you can find me at an opera camp in the Ozark Mountains this summer working at an opera camp and so if anybody's in Arkansas this summer come look me up outside of Eureka Springs so and I have different projects going on I'm going to be I'm still finishing my book that I'm calling love and grief in the fuck of widowhood and that hopefully will be out next year I'll be finished with it by then I'm so thrilled and I just want to say out loud for all of our listeners as well if life ever gives you a reason to swear grief is like the number one reason you should ever be swearing so like come on let them drop I love that when I when I've heard the different different guests on your on your podcast Shelby that I thought okay yeah this is another reason I want to be able to have an interview with you because I heard people drop the f-word and I thought yeah okay this is cool she's she's strong enough to hear it so this is at this point I'm like I've used it 10 billion thousand times in my entire life grief expressions and as joy expressions as well but I'm like it's a word we give it it's all it's like grief you create your own meaning so I I love it and we are all in our own ways fucking warrior goddesses on this Odyssey of love yes I am just so delighted to have hosted your presence on the show today I thank you for reaching out listeners if you want to tell your own story on the show know that it is not beyond you it's not just other podcasters and authors and like you know you don't have to have anything in your name to come on the show you just have to have a lost story and just about all of us do and I just this was just so much fun Oh for me too Shelby and you know we have to make our own opportunities right ain't nobody gonna do this life for me and I believe in making my own opportunities and seizing them when I can and I make a point when I like I still have my military ID privileges and so I stayed a lot of military bases as I'm traveling at their what they call fam camps and I started a couple years ago finding the website of a the base that where I was going to be and I would find their public affairs office and I would write to whatever contact I could find on there to let them know that I was who I was I'd introduced myself tell them about my Odyssey of love and I'd tell them you don't have to do anything with this information at all but I am coming and my husband's cremains are with me and I think it is so important for you to know that a veteran is passing through your base on his final travels and so and so I started getting interviewed by various base newspapers and all that I don't believe in sitting still for this for all that I'm grieving and devastated all of this I am also out there kicking ass in the name of love for my husband Chuck and in the name of everybody out there who had love still has love and they're just looking for the possibilities from keeping your heart open oh my goodness that's just perfect I have no more to add thank you Alice and so much for coming on coming back today thank you Shelby this was believe me amazing to be able to do