Today I brought my husband Justin on today, to talk about our life, and life after the death of our daughter Aria.

Here’s some things we talked about:

We’ve been living in our bus for almost 11 months now. How would you describe, to those who are listening that maybe don’t know what we are doing, or how we are currently living, what we have been doing for the last 11 months.

There is no amount of talking or ignoring that can override your human innate reactions and responses that you don’t have any control over.

It’s when you actually deal with the trauma that everything can change.

What if I told you, that the anxiety you feel every moment, or the fear you’ve been living with for the last 10 years, or the constant on edge feel, or the checking on your husband all night long terrified he will die in his sleep like I did, or the family vacations that are ruined by your anxiety. What if I told you that could not exist?

Sometimes we focus solely on one area, and forget that there are other ways to support healing in our bodies and minds, and not always just healing, but growth and movement in our capacity to feel and experience what is happening in our lives. It’s like the ability to navigate through the difficult things we are working through in our lives. The reason I use all of these pillars is because each one has something amazing to offer, and sometimes we lean more on one than the others, but each one of these pillars can be incredible tools to help you process the grief in your mind, and in your body.

Suzanne Leib shares her story of the death of her son, and how she began to grieve his death many years later. She shares about the anxiety she’s lived with, and how she’s learning to sit with and feel her emotions.

I often do a meditation where I guide the moms through imagining a wall around them, and sometimes we judge that wall as something bad, as it shouldn’t be there. But if you can take a moment to recognize that this wall has been there to protect you. Your body and brain does everything it can to protect you and keep you safe, and if you can take a moment to thank it, and see how it’s trying to help you, then you can open up to what’s underneath.

Ask yourself, why am I holding on to this? Why do I need this? How is this helping me? Give yourself some time and space to really pause around this question, as nothing will change until you are honest with yourself about it.

“We live in Cape Town, South Africa and our son, Nicholas was working as a Chemical Engineer in Texas. He was a golden child, words are not enough to describe his zest for life, beautiful nature and the opportunities that lay ahead of him after we had "launched" him into adult life. We received a call in the middle of the night 21 months ago to say he had been involved in a freak vehicle accident and had died instantly. We had messaged with him just half an hour before as was our daily custom. Our lives were turned upside down as we navigated this trauma and getting to the USA with Covid and all the restrictions and all the complex detail that has followed”

What if you could just allow yourself to be present in the emotion you are feeling now? Without resistance or judgment? Just allowing yourself to be exactly where you are at. Letting yourself grieve the expectations that you have had for your life. Allowing yourself to feel the pain that your life has not gone the way you thought it would. Allowing yourself to acknowledge that you’re hurt, in pain, broken.

If you don’t find the time for it, someday you will be forced to, which is the whole point of this episode. I would love it if I could show you why right now is the right time to start doing the internal work rather than after everything has fallen apart, but I’m not sure if you’re going to listen to me! Right now is the time to care for yourself, before you don’t have any other choice.

So this means slowing down. This means noticing what’s going on in your body. This means getting out of your head and into your body.