Second Firsts With Christina Rasmussen

Christina Rasmussen had a master's degree in counseling and psychology, but nothing prepared her for the death of her 35-year-old husband. One snowy day, after running after the mailman to claim her undelivered mail, she realized that she needed to consciously DECIDE to come back to life after loss. We're talking about why Christina believes devastating loss should be a qualification for anyone leading a support group (it's often not) and why we should all be more selfish in our coming back.

Transcript

Well,

Christina,

I am so delighted to have you on Coming Back today.

I told you before we started recording that I have a little post-it note up on my bulletin board of dream guests when I started this show two years ago.

I found you indirectly through another guest named Stephanie Zamora,

Who's actually been kind of a guide for me on my own grief journey,

But your book,

Second First,

Was the first thing that really cracked me open in my grief to,

Wow,

I'm living life again for the first time and allowed for a lot of self-forgiveness,

Which I was not giving myself in the midst of loss.

So I'm excited to have you here.

I'm excited to have you share your story with us and kind of what you're up to since Second First came out into the world.

But first,

I would absolutely love it if you shared your lost story with us.

Awesome.

Shelby,

Thank you so much for inviting me and your post-it note is doing its job and bringing your dreams into reality.

I'm very honored and grateful that you invited me.

My story began in 2006 when my 35-year-old husband passed away from colon cancer.

And I have to tell you that the devastation and just heartbrokenness was so intense and so severe that I wish it was me instead of him and I had no idea how I was going to ever have a life again or a love again or feel alive again.

And a lot of people don't know this about me and I studied grief.

I have a master's in cancer and psychology and my thesis was on the stages of bereavement.

This is what I wanted to do for a living and I had no idea how incredibly difficult feeling the grief versus understanding the theory of grief would have been.

And so when he died,

I really thought that my pain would last forever and ever and ever.

I felt there was this duality in my life where I actually looked great from the outside.

I often say I looked my best after he died.

I looked,

I was at the perfect weight.

I wasn't eating very much.

I was glowing for some reason.

It was so bizarre to me that I looked so good and yet I was dead inside.

And that's where I started thinking about the duality of loss and how everything looks the same on the outside but everything is different from the inside.

My journey began,

My journey of what I now call life reentry began then and I had,

And also for those who don't know,

I also had two little girls at the time,

Ages four and six years old and having to tell them that their dad had passed was the worst moment of my life.

And especially for the six year old,

Alina,

Who's now 19.

I know time is a weird thing.

She and I share this in my book,

Second First,

That she cried adult tears and I remember that moment to this day so clearly.

But that's how my journey began and prior to his passing,

We were fighting his cancer,

Colon cancer,

Which for 30,

He was diagnosed at age 31,

Stage four and he died at age 35.

For 30 something year old guy who looked amazing and was very healthy,

That was kind of a weird diagnosis,

Very,

Very rare and very unexpected.

So his death was almost like a really bad accident or even to this day,

I think about it and can't believe that colon cancer took him so young.

And when I look back now,

I realize how young I was then,

How much I didn't know,

How much I didn't understand and how much life we were going to live without him.

I didn't know how much little life I had lived and how much life was coming ahead of me.

And I know that sounds a bit strange to say,

But living for 13 years now after he had passed,

I realized how much he missed,

How much he didn't experience,

How many graduations,

How many birthdays,

How many changes,

How many moves we've made,

How many houses we moved to.

He never got to see.

And that is something I never feel better about.

People say to me,

Do you still think about that?

I'm like,

Sure.

It wasn't fair.

Anyone who loses their person,

Their safety net,

Their love of their life,

Their child,

Their person,

It's never going to be fair and it's never going to be okay.

And I don't really like the saying,

Everything happens for a reason because I don't know.

I mean,

Sure,

There were so many gifts for my grief and I have helped so many people because of him,

But still not a good enough reason for him to go.

I want to thank you so much for sharing your story.

And the thing that I wrote down that sprang out to me the most was this idea of grief in theory versus grief in practice.

Like I studied grief.

I should know.

I did my project on bereavement and my thesis on bereavement and had all these theories about grief and the way it's supposed to look lined up and then,

But to actually practice it as you get plunged into the experience and you're like,

Wow,

Hell,

Like that's different.

And it's coming up again in this reiterated idea of yours about time and how time works in grief because at the beginning you're like,

In theory,

I'm living the rest of my life without him and it seems so vast and so big and then grief and practice,

You really are kind of marking off each of these birthdays,

Graduations,

Milestones without him.

And I imagine at least for me in my grief,

The feeling of I'm never going to be happy again.

I don't know how to live life without her for the loss of my mom versus crossing off all of these milestones still without her are two different feelings.

They're still both incredibly sad in their own ways,

Kind of like grief in theory is sad,

Grief in practice is sad,

But they're sad in two totally different ways.

I'm wondering if you can expound on that idea more for us of like,

What did you think grief was going to be and then what actually show up for you?

And you know,

When I used to,

I used to live in Houston,

Texas,

Many,

Many,

Many,

Many years ago now I'm back in Texas,

I was in Texas now,

But in my first life,

As I call it,

So I used to work at this hospice and I used to facilitate grief support groups.

And I remember,

You know,

Sitting there as the facilitator prior to losing him,

Prior to his diagnosis,

Prior to anything happening.

And I could tell,

Of course,

The pain that people were going through was so vast and so horrible and devastating.

I couldn't even imagine how it would be.

And one thing I want to add also is that I remember when I was deciding on my thesis,

My being on the stage agreement with Elizabeth Kolder-Ross,

I remember my professor at the time saying,

But Christina,

You're such a happy person.

Why on earth would you choose such a depressing topic to study?

And I said to her,

You don't understand.

I want to know how to help people get through such devastating pain.

I love people so much.

I couldn't imagine losing them.

My biggest fear was to lose the people I loved.

And when he died,

The difference between theory or facilitating as a poor group or hearing people's stories or really understanding the literature of grief versus the reality of it was just such a big gap.

I never ever imagined the,

I wanted to scream at the world and say to them,

You know,

I'm on fire.

Nobody's throwing me any water to take it out.

I'm broken pieces and everything's just moving forward the way it was.

And I was also so angry at the world because if it was hurting so much,

If it was hurting me so much,

I knew that there were millions of people in the world that were hurting exactly the same and nobody was doing anything about it.

And I couldn't understand that.

It was almost like all of a sudden I got the memo of what grief really feels like.

And I was shocked at the reality of it and how the world just kept on going by as if nothing had happened to me or to all the millions of people who have gone through this.

This experience.

I mean,

Knowing what I,

What I learned after he died and then the depths of pain,

If so many people have felt that in their lives,

The government,

Education departments,

Schools should by now have had better response to grief,

Better therapy sessions,

Better,

I don't know,

Models,

Better resources.

And yet it is the industry that's lagging behind the most from everything that we have in the world today.

It's the industry that stayed back a whole century.

And I remember hearing,

And I get so animated about this,

Doesn't matter how many years I've been teaching this,

But I remember hearing over and over again,

Christina,

Just give it time.

And like time heals all wounds.

And I'm like,

This is such PS.

Like I'm dying now.

I can't wait years for me to feel better.

I can't be in this pain forever.

How dare you tell me to give it time.

Or the other thing,

I have this friend who I'm sure she didn't mean anything by it,

But it used to bother me so much.

She used to say to me,

Just take one day at a time.

And I went to scream at her and say,

You have no idea what a whole day of grieving feels like.

You have no clue.

Waving a day at a time feels like a year at a time,

10 years at a time.

And now where the time was hard enough,

A moment at a time.

And I want to say just about the first few weeks of the grief of losing him,

It was so painful and devastating that I couldn't be inside my body.

Like I couldn't be.

I couldn't be.

I couldn't be.

And the knowledge that so many people have that feeling,

As the time was going by,

I remember promising myself,

If I'm ever going to make it back to living,

I will go back and get everyone else.

And that's what I did.

I just love that sentiment just gave me chills just now.

Because it's so.

.

.

You just think about this in such a different perspective.

It was like your immediate instinct to take your own situation and say,

Oh my God,

If this is how all of them have been feeling,

Then holy crap,

I can't believe any of us is alive right now,

Really.

And it's kind of that quote that circles online every now and then,

The be kind for everyone you know is fighting a battle you know nothing about.

Like succinct in this little teeny tiny way of like,

Oh yeah,

So everybody's got these really complicated inner worlds and losses and pains and grief just like me,

Then I have to be nicer to everyone and not nice in like a fake way.

Hi,

How are you?

Fine,

How are you?

It's more of a deliberate tenderness that needs to happen with the human hearts.

I wrote down a question for you that's a little bit.

.

.

It's dicey.

It's a little bit obscene and it's totally opinion based.

But based on your practice as somebody who led grief support groups before having experienced a loss and then experiencing loss and being like,

Wow,

This is the depth of it.

I wonder,

Do you think that people who have never experienced like a high caliber loss should be allowed to lead or facilitate grief support groups?

It's a very big question and I've heard so many stories from people who come to me and say,

Christina,

You have no idea what my,

You know,

Facility said or what my counselor said,

My therapist,

And obviously they've never lost a child or they've never lost a spouse or a parent or whatever that immediate.

.

.

There's a circle,

Right?

There's a circle of a few people around us that if we lose one of those people,

It is one of that very high level of grief.

It's devastating.

It's identity crushing.

It's debilitating.

I mean,

It is the worst thing in the world.

And when the facilitator or the therapist has not had the experience of that level of loss,

Actually,

I don't know why I'm getting chills when I'm saying this.

Maybe it's because it's true,

But they are not able or capable to have the compassion that is necessary to feel,

To create a healing experience in that group,

Number one.

And they don't have the ability to validate and acknowledge all the invisible loss experiences that are happening within that main loss because they don't have the experience to talk about it and to mirror it back and to validate and acknowledge someone saying,

I ate dinner alone at home at night again.

And when that person looks up at that therapist or facilitator,

They need to be able to see in their eyes the knowing of how that feels like,

The loneliness that that person feels every single night at home.

They need to have that knowing in their eyes.

And when that's missing and it's replaced with,

Yeah,

That must be hard,

You destroy your client.

You destroy your group participant.

However,

I'm sure and I've heard of great therapists and facilitators who are compassionate human beings,

Period.

And they are very present and they're amazing listeners.

And they can do this really well regardless of their experience.

But they're the minority,

But they do exist.

So my answer to this is not so much black and white.

I just think that when someone has had a devastating loss,

They're able to reflect better and be more able to hold the space in a human way versus someone who's never had that experience.

But there are people out there,

Professionals that are such amazing listeners and such compassionate souls that are able to do it really well.

And I've seen it,

Even if it's a few times I have seen it.

I think that's such a brilliant answer.

And I literally just wrote down,

They can reflect better.

And I underlined the word reflect because it is.

It's never,

I have had your exact experience.

So let me tell you what that's like.

I've had a similar experience so we can sit alongside together and look at this.

With a lot of the clients I work with,

I often use the metaphor of the dining room table,

Like pretend I invite you into my house and we both stand around my dining room table,

Which is totally empty.

And then we take the entire contents of your brain and toss them on the table and we can kind of sort through stuff and like look at it or put it back together or take it apart together because I've had my brain on a dining room table before kind of all spread out in a thousand million pieces.

And now it's just your turn.

And it creates that safe space but also a deep space when somebody has had that level of loss with you.

And that makes me want to transfer immediately to another question because you were speaking earlier about friends telling you just give it time or take it one day at a time or things like that.

And this thing happens in loss where our friends don't know what to do with us anymore if they have never experienced a devastating loss.

And one of my favorite grief practitioners,

Glen Lord,

Who is one of the co-founders of the bereavement crews,

He talks about how we sometimes need to educate our friends on how to speak to us while grieving.

And I wonder if you think that's our job at all,

Should be our job.

And if our friends can be taught,

If they can,

What do we say?

If they can't,

What do we say?

Either way,

You know,

It's a great question.

And I think the only job we have when we're grieving is to take care of ourselves.

And if someone fails at reflecting well with us and they can't do it,

Then we spend less time with them until we're ready to maybe educate them.

The very first thing that we do as grievers is that we surround ourselves with people who do have the ability to hold the space for us because in the beginning,

And I always say life reentry in second and first is not for the beginning.

It is for some people and people have done the work,

The life reentry work and have read the book really early.

And there are some people who waited for a long time to read it.

It depends where you are with your grief.

But in the beginning,

The first response to grief for us is to really do whatever it is that we need to get by.

And you know,

Shelby,

I have to tell you this that always gives me chills when I share this.

I haven't shared it many times.

Actually,

I remember my husband,

Biana,

Who,

My first husband,

I don't like saying first or second.

I don't like,

He's my husband in heaven or universe and I have a husband here on earth.

They're both husbands.

And I'm a little weird and out of the box when I talk about these things.

So I don't ever want to sound like everyone else.

But he told me,

We knew he was going to die for a long time.

He was fighting the cancer for three and a half years.

And he said to me,

After I'm gone,

Do whatever it takes to get yourself through this.

Whatever it takes,

Whatever it takes.

And that is the advice I give people to not think about educating anyone else.

Tell them what they need to tell you.

They will learn as time goes along.

And if they're really good friends,

They will adapt and be a part of your world.

And they will follow your lead in the way that you live your life.

I've had many friends that I've lost after he died.

But I've also had a couple of friends that stayed from those years.

And they just listened and kept calling even after I never answered the phone 20 times.

Those days we didn't have text.

We had texts,

But phone calls were more regular.

People would call you if they wanted to talk to you.

So I stopped answering the phone and people stopped calling.

But there were a couple of people who stayed and they kept calling,

Just checking in,

Kept inviting me even when I would say no.

And they waited for the time that I would say yes.

So the good friend,

The person who loves you,

They don't need to understand your pain.

They're just going to be with you and just be.

And that's it.

They will learn by seeing you go through this.

But do whatever to get you through in this beginning of the journey,

Because that's the part that is so devastating that I have to say that it could destroy us.

It could kill us.

It could completely derail us forever.

And we don't want that.

So don't educate anyone in the beginning.

Just take care of yourself.

And the one thing that I did not do a good job with,

And I wish someone had told me that then and for everyone who was listening and they're on that first year or two of their journey,

Take care of yourself first before anyone else.

I cannot emphasize this enough.

Like nourish yourself,

Go for a massage,

Choose yourself.

If you don't want to go out for dinner with a friend,

Say,

No,

I'm sorry,

I can't.

Do not explain yourself.

Just say no.

If you're overworking,

Take a break.

If you're not happy in a relationship,

Get out of it.

Like be selfish.

Be selfish as much as possible.

Take care of yourself.

And then if you have kids,

Then take care of them.

It's not the other way around.

It's not about your kids,

It's about you.

Because without you,

Nobody will have anyone by their side.

So self-care,

Self-love,

Self-care,

Self-care,

Self-care,

And surround yourself with the very few people who will be able to listen and just be there.

And it won't be about their grief.

It won't be about their experience.

It will be about you.

Because there are people,

And I'm sure you've met them,

That make your grief about them.

Oh,

You didn't call me back.

And obviously you don't want to see us anymore.

The moment you hear from a student like that,

Run the other direction.

Run as fast as possible.

I think you just dished out so many permission slips.

And I love it.

And the first one came from your husband.

Do whatever it takes.

Because to me,

My ears,

That sounds like,

Go skydiving.

Have a bunch of crazy sex.

Eat the chocolate cake.

Whatever you have to do to get through this thing.

And for me,

I think in my loss,

I was looking for permission to be crazy because it felt like such a crazy experience.

I was like,

This is so insane.

It can't possibly be my life.

And so I needed to do insane things to comprehend it.

And it's just permission to,

Like you said,

Be selfish because there's this societal belief that,

Like,

Don't become a saint.

Oh my God.

So well said.

So exactly,

I mean,

And I wish someone had come and told me this.

Because it is,

Like you said,

And Shelby,

You said it so well,

It is such a crazy,

Insane experience.

And you better make mistakes then.

You better be making mistakes.

I've made mistakes during those early days,

Weeks,

Months,

Years.

Make mistakes.

Your new identity is nowhere near.

Your old identity is out the window.

And you're in this gap,

In this waiting room,

In this place between lives.

And you don't even know your name,

Really.

You forget who you are in the morning.

You're confused when you go to bed at night and crying and upset.

And you cannot function.

And you should not be expected to.

And anyone who expects you to function in the first couple of years,

They don't deserve you.

And you should never see them again.

And I'm sorry,

I'm very direct when it comes to this,

Shelby.

I like that though,

Because it removes the doubt.

It removes the question of,

Well,

They've been my best friend for 10 years,

Or they're my relative,

Or they're one of my estranged children coming back because of the loss.

And I should give them a chance.

I'm like,

No,

Do not.

You just don't have the capacity for chances right now.

And also dating,

I remember I have this question being asked only so many times.

And one of the things people say to me,

What if my kids,

And a lot of people who lose spouses specifically as well,

They have older kids.

And they're not as young as I was.

They have either teens,

Teenage kids who have a lot to say about your decisions for adult kids.

And those kids don't want their parent dating anytime soon.

And I have all these horrible,

Painful emails that come in and put human souls.

I want to hug them and say,

Christina,

I met this person and I want to go out on a date,

But my daughter doesn't want me to.

And she's really upset with me for seeing this guy.

What should I do?

I'm like,

Oh my God,

This is so cruel.

It is so cruel because it's your daughter,

Right?

And you want to make them happy.

They also lost their father.

And people have such a hard time,

Shelby,

Saying yes to themselves.

So if someone is listening,

You better go out and do whatever you want.

People will get over it.

It's not their life.

It's yours.

I hear you so much on that.

And I think in those situations,

Especially,

It's like,

What are we really talking about here?

It's never about the date.

It's not about the date.

It's something else is changing that I can't control.

And that's really scary.

But you're not having that conversation.

You're saying,

Mom,

Don't go out with that guy.

And I'm laughing about it.

But these conversations can get knocked down,

Drag out,

Fight worthy,

Move out of the house.

Siri,

They're scary to have.

You're like,

I've already lost so much.

And I don't want to lose my kids too.

So there's a risk in putting yourself first in grief.

But I mean,

I'm totally on board with you.

I'm like,

That is absolutely necessary.

And people say,

It's so easy to say and so hard to do.

And please know,

We get this.

I get how hard it is to do it.

But your grief is harder.

Your grief is harder.

And your loss is harder.

And you're the one who's going to bed alone at night.

And you will have guilt and shame when you are starting over again.

I remember when I had to pick my new wedding dress.

I went there and I put it on and looked in the mirror.

And I was like,

Oh my god,

What am I doing?

I felt so guilty.

I mean,

We are ourselves worst enemies.

I was like,

How can I marry again?

How can I love someone else again?

Shame on me.

The guilt,

Survivor's guilt is massive.

But we cannot let that voice,

I call that voice the survivor self.

We can't let that voice speak to us for too long.

And we need to shut it down.

And we need to start living life as soon as possible.

And even if it takes the smallest,

Most ridiculous steps,

Like buying lipstick or something so easy that you may think that it doesn't count as a step,

It does.

It really does.

And I think that's the perfect place to transition into kind of like the inspiration and the story behind Second First.

And I love that you gave a disclaimer of like,

Don't read it in the immediate aftermath.

Because there are books for that.

There are meditations for that.

And one of my favorite phrases comes from the grief recovery method.

And I asked one of my instructors as I was going through that certification,

I said,

When should I start telling people is a good time to take this?

And she said this exactly.

She said,

As soon as the numbness wears off.

And I thought that was such a perfect entry point of like,

OK,

I realize I'm here.

I want to go somewhere next.

You're just starting to see the horizon line again.

And that's when I found your book Second First.

It was literally like the perfect foot in the door at the time.

And I was like,

Yes.

And I finally got to sink my teeth into something.

And if I'm remembering correctly,

I haven't read the full manuscript,

Probably.

And at least you can hear it too.

But I feel like it started with a trip to the mailbox.

There was a mailbox story.

The mailman story?

Oh,

My gosh,

Yes.

So let me share that.

And I've shared this on stage so many times.

And it's interesting how this story and the mailman story has spoken to people from all over the world.

And people have written to me to tell me their own mailman story,

Which wasn't the mailman,

But something else,

Something similar to that.

And so here how it was.

And it was Christmas.

It was just a few days before Christmas.

And I used to live in the Boston area.

And there was a lot of snow.

And it was going to be the first Christmas alone.

It was the second Christmas since it passed.

But the first Christmas,

The first holidays alone with the girls.

And of course,

I'm a little silly.

I told my parents not to come and visit me because I wanted to really know what this reality is like for real.

Let's not have anyone at home confusing me that I'm not alone.

So I told them not to come.

And I was feeling sorry for myself.

And my life was just so dreadful and horrible and terrible.

And because of the snow,

The mailman had stopped giving us the mail,

Putting it in the mailbox because there was so much snow accumulated outside of our mailbox.

And of course,

I hadn't shoveled lately.

And I was working full time at the time.

And I didn't have time.

So on a Saturday morning,

I'm like,

We need those cards,

The Christmas cards.

We need the letters.

We need magazines.

We need things.

We need gifts.

So me and the girls went down.

We shoveled and shoveled and cleared up the space,

A good enough space for the little mail truck to stop in front of it.

So here we go.

We go back into the house.

And I'm actually,

Girls are playing.

They're under 10 years old.

And they don't really care much about anything.

But themselves,

So they're playing there in the background.

And I'm waiting to see when he arrives and drops off the mail so I could go and get it.

And actually,

Our driveway was long.

I promise you,

A very small house,

But with a really long driveway.

It had this natural horrible pond in front of it.

So the driveway would go around the pond.

And so the mailbox was far,

But I could see it from the window.

So I'm looking,

And the car,

The little mail car,

Is arriving slowly,

Slowly,

Slowly,

Stops in front of the mailbox,

And then starts driving again without any mail being delivered.

And whatever happened to me in that moment in time was a divine intervention.

It was the universe helping me change paths.

I don't know what it was,

But it was a very,

Very big moment in my life.

I had two options.

I had,

Option one was to sit back down on the couch and cry.

And cry my eyes out and say,

Look,

I can't even get my Christmas cards.

I can't even.

My life sucks.

My life is just dreadful.

And option two,

The crazy one,

Was to put on my snow boots.

And I had my,

Actually had my,

Not BJs,

But kind of like BJs underneath everything.

It was Saturday when I went to travel,

Put my big coat and kind of ski thing on,

You know.

Nobody could see underneath.

So I had my kind of BJs on,

And I put my snow boots on out in the door.

And I started running,

And running,

And running,

And running,

Crying like a crazy woman on the snow.

And you know the,

And I share this,

And I laugh about it now,

But the car would stop,

The hand would come out of the window,

Open the box,

The mailbox of the house next door,

The house next door,

Put their mail in,

Close,

And then he would drive to the next house,

And then do that.

So every time I would catch up with him,

He would drive off again.

And he could see me from his rear view mirror.

He could see me.

I could see him.

I could see his face from the mirror,

Looking at me,

Thinking,

What is he doing?

Because obviously,

I was not a runner.

This was not with like sneakers on and so on.

And four blocks down,

I caught him,

Because he had delivered a package,

So he had to leave the car.

And so out of breath,

So kind of full of tears,

Mascara rolling down my eyes.

And I catch him,

And I'm on one side of the car,

And he's on the other.

And he's bending down so he can see me through the window.

They're both open.

And I look at him,

And he's like,

Yes,

Kind of look at me.

What do you want?

OK.

And I said,

You didn't deliver my mail.

And he knew who I was,

Which I found fascinating.

He's like,

Well,

There was not enough space for me to stop the car delivering your mail.

I said,

Well,

We shoveled today,

And we shoveled well.

He said,

Well,

He goes,

You should have asked your husband to do it.

And I swear this,

I think to myself,

Who says that?

Who?

I mean,

Who says that?

If this is not a divine intervention,

I don't know what it is.

And I said,

No,

He would have if he could,

But he can't,

Because he's dead.

Now give me my mail.

This conversation really happened just like this.

And his color on his face just,

I mean,

He went white.

It's like I was seeing a ghost.

He gave me the mail,

And he said,

I'm so sorry.

And I took the mail.

And then just take my mail back.

I took my life back.

I was no longer going to let my life just drive by every single day.

And of course,

We never missed our mail ever again.

I remember going to the post office to do something with the girls weeks later.

And there he was waving at us,

Hi,

Girls.

You know,

We were best friends all of a sudden.

But that choice to sit back down again and cry my eyes out about how horrible my life is versus to go out and get it,

Made that was my first re-entry point.

I call it the portal.

It was like a portal opening and throwing me into this new chapter in my life.

And things changed very quickly after that.

I get chills even just thinking about it.

It was like,

Well,

I know what it was now.

But at the time,

I was so blown away by it.

I got a massive promotion at work,

Like a really big promotion at work.

I remember I was a single mom working full time.

That was a really big deal for me and my kids.

And a few weeks after that,

I went out on a first date with Eric,

My husband today.

So it was just whatever I did when I know exactly why now,

But that running,

That chasing my life and saying no more.

I'm not going to be a passive receiver.

Changed the direction of my life,

Shelby,

Completely.

That's one of my all time favorite stories ever,

Because I remember as I was reading this for the first time,

I was sitting.

I had this little green chair that I bought from Ikea on my birthday the year after my mom died.

And I was sitting in this chair,

And I was verbally rooting for you the whole time.

And when he started driving away,

I was like,

No,

He did not.

And I was so upset on your behalf.

And then you were like,

Well,

He would,

But he's dead.

And I was like,

You fuck,

Tell him.

And I was just ready to.

You know when people shout at the television?

I shout at books when I read.

And I just had this moment where I felt like I was having this experience with you,

Because I didn't necessarily.

There are so many grievers who have these lightning bolt experiences that just bring them back.

And for me,

It was this very slow egg cracking open where I kind of pulled all these little pieces into my world one by one.

And then I was ready to join the world myself.

And so it was not this revolutionary moment.

But oh my goodness,

I was so floored.

And yet I identified with it still.

Like I can point to about a three or four month time span where I was like,

Then that's when I started to choose for myself.

And a bet,

And Shelby,

A bet,

And for those who were listening,

What is your mailman story?

The thing is,

I believe that you and everyone who's listening has had one of those stories.

But the brain stops us from seeing it as a portal.

And there's got to be,

And I always look for it in people's stories.

I always look for it.

There's got to be a moment,

A simple moment,

A small moment that you made a different choice.

And maybe you didn't have to greet a very rude,

Pale man telling me that I should have asked my husband to shovel instead of myself,

Which,

I mean,

Seriously,

Like maybe he didn't have that part of the story.

But I really believe that everyone's life at a moment of change has a seemingly insignificant story like this.

And they are portals.

They're entry points.

They're the beginning of a new chapter.