In 2002, I thought I had it all: I was married to my high school sweetheart, Mark, we had two beautiful children, and lived in a quiet suburban home. Then, on a Sunday afternoon in September, my husband, the father of my children, was killed while riding his bicycle.
At 37 years old, my entire world crumbled in an instant. It became unrecognizable, blurry, and excruciatingly painful. Suddenly and unexpectedly, I became an only parent, left to raise two young children on my own.
For years, confronted with overwhelming grief, depression, and numbness, I lived only to exist. I was stuck in survival mode, struggling to just get my kids through another day without their dad. My life was one painful moment after another and for a long time I could see no future for myself.
I developed an idiopathic disease that narrowed my trachea making it very difficult to breathe. This required 19 surgeries in a 10 year period to reopen my airway. It was the jolt I needed to reevaluate my life and how I was living – or not living as the case was in those early years.
At the onset of my disease, I had a tracheostomy and was terrified of leaving my children with no parent at all. I began to push myself to persevere, become resilient, build a new normal, a new life for my children and myself. Simply surviving was not enough and served no example to my children. I had to thrive! I had to reimagine what life could be. I had to heal myself. I needed to overcome my fears, perceived inadequacies, and self doubt – but HOW was the question that haunted me?
My recovery journey began with reading and researching. Then, I took self help workshops, attended motivational conferences, talked to counselors, sought out support groups, took classes, and started journaling. I tried meditation, healing touch, energy work, and many other conventional and nonconlvential therapies. I became educated and certified in coaching, NLP, and MBTI®️. I was obsessed with gaining knowledge and putting into practice the things I learned. It became a passion within me that continues today.
Now, I’m an expert with the skills and strategies needed to find your purpose, overcome life’s transitions and challenges, and rebuild a happy, fulfilled, thriving life.
I’ve built a community to help others who feel stuck, isolated, lonely, uncertain, or fearful while trying to navigate their own life path. It’s my mission to guide others so they too can see and own the possibilities for a reimagined life. Join my community here.
In my book, Suddenly Widowed: A Memoir of Survival, I share the details of surviving widowhood, the challenges I faced, and the many mistakes I made along the way. Read more about my book here.